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  • Devoxx 2011: Java EE 6 Hands-on Lab Delivered

    - by arungupta
    I, along with Alexis's help, delivered a Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 40+ attendees at Devoxx 2011. The lab was derived from the OTN Developer Days 2012 version but added lot more content to showcase several Java EE 6 technologies. The problem statement from the lab document states: This hands-on lab builds a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 Web application that retrieves customer information from a database and displays it in a Web page. The application also allows new customers to be added to the database as well. The string-based and type-safe queries are used to query and add rows to the database. Each row in the database table is published as a RESTful resource and is then accessed programmatically. Typical design patterns required by a Web application like validation, caching, observer, partial page rendering, and cross-cutting concerns like logging are explained and implemented using different Java EE 6 technologies. The lab covered Java Persistence API 2, Servlet 3, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, JavaServer Faces 2, Java API for RESTful Web Services 1.1, Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.0, and Bean Validation 1.0 over 47 pages of detailed self-paced instructions. Here is the complete Table of Contents: The lab can be downloaded from here and requires only NetBeans IDE "All" or "Java EE" version, which includes GlassFish anyway. All the feedback received from the lab has been incorporated in the instructions and bugs filed (Updated 49559, 205232, 205248, 205256). 80% of the attendees could easily complete the lab and some even completed in much less than 3 hours. That indicates that either more content needs to be added to the lab or the intellectual level of the attendees at the conference was pretty high. I think the lab has enough content for 3 hours but we moved at a much more faster pace so I conclude on the latter. Truly a joy to conduct a lab to 40 Devoxxians! Another related lab that might be handy for folks is "Develop, Deploy, and Monitor your Java EE 6 applications using GlassFish 3.1 Cluster". It explains how: Create a 2-instance GlassFish cluster Front-end with a Web server and a load balancer Demonstrate session replication and fail over Monitor the application using JavaScript The complete lab instructions and source code are available and you can try them. I plan to continue evolving the contents for the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to cover more technologies and features and will announce them on this blog. Let me know on what else would you like to see in the future versions.

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  • Why is my class worse than the hierarchy of classes in the book (beginner OOP)?

    - by aditya menon
    I am reading this book. The author is trying to model a lesson in a college. The goal is to output the Lesson Type (Lecture or Seminar), and the Charges for the lesson depending on whether it is a hourly or fixed price lesson. So the output should be: lesson charge 20. Charge type: hourly rate. lesson type seminar. lesson charge 30. Charge type: fixed rate. lesson type lecture. When the input is as follows: $lessons[] = new Lesson('hourly rate', 4, 'seminar'); $lessons[] = new Lesson('fixed rate', null, 'lecture'); I wrote this: class Lesson { private $chargeType; private $duration; private $lessonType; public function __construct($chargeType, $duration, $lessonType) { $this->chargeType = $chargeType; $this->duration = $duration; $this->lessonType = $lessonType; } public function getChargeType() { return $this->getChargeType; } public function getLessonType() { return $this->getLessonType; } public function cost() { if($this->chargeType == 'fixed rate') { return "30"; } else { return $this->duration * 5; } } } $lessons[] = new Lesson('hourly rate', 4, 'seminar'); $lessons[] = new Lesson('fixed rate', null, 'lecture'); foreach($lessons as $lesson) { print "lesson charge {$lesson->cost()}."; print " Charge type: {$lesson->getChargeType()}."; print " lesson type {$lesson->getLessonType()}."; print "<br />"; } But according to the book, I am wrong (I am pretty sure I am, too). The author gave a large hierarchy of classes as the solution instead. In a previous chapter, the author stated the following 'four signposts' as the time when I should consider changing my class structure: Code Duplication The Class Who Knew Too Much About His Context The Jack of All Trades - Classes that try to do many things Conditional Statements The only problem I can see is Conditional Statements, and that too in a vague manner - so why refactor this? What problems do you think might arise in the future that I have not foreseen?

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  • How do you manage extensibility in your multi-tenant systems?

    - by Brian MacKay
    I've got a few big web based multi-tenant products now, and very soon I can see that there will be a lot of customizations that are tenant specific. An extra field here or there, maybe an extra page or some extra logic in the middle of a workflow - that sort of thing. Some of these customizations can be rolled into the core product, and that's great. Some of them are highly specific and would get in everyone else's way. I have a few ideas in mind for managing this, but none of them seem to scale well. The obvious solution is to introduce a ton of client-level settings, allowing various 'features' to be enabled on per-client basis. The downside with that, of course, is massive complexity and clutter. You could introduce a truly huge number of settings, and over time various types of logic (presentation, business) could get way out of hand. Then there's the problem of client-specific fields, which begs for something cleaner than just adding a bunch of nullable fields to the existing tables. So what are people doing to manage this? Force.com seems to be the master of extensibility; obviously they've created a platform from the ground up that is super extensible. You can add on to almost anything with their web-based UI. FogBugz did something similiar where they created a robust plugin model that, come to think of it, might have actually been inspired by Force. I know they spent a lot of time and money on it and if I'm not mistaken the intention was to actually use it internally for future product development. Sounds like the kind of thing I could be tempted to build but probably shouldn't. :) Is a massive investment in pluggable architecture the only way to go? How are you managing these problems, and what kind of results are you seeing? EDIT: It does look as though FogBugz handled the problem by building a fairly robust platform and then using that to put together their screens. To extend it you create a DLL containing classes that implement interfaces like ISearchScreenGridColumn, and that becomes a module. I'm sure it was tremendously expensive to build considering that they have a large of devs and they worked on it for months, plus their surface area is perhaps 5% of the size of my application. Right now I am seriously wondering if Force.com is the right way to handle this. And I am a hard core ASP.Net guy, so this is a strange position to find myself in.

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  • Audio Stutters at gdm

    - by Allan
    Ok I have a problem every 2 times out of 3 I login (I cant be specific it fairly random) I get a Stuttering GDM warning (not the login sound just the Bell sound to wake you up) the only way to stop it is to login I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo 1718 with a 2gig of memory (only hardware mod) using 10.10 Maverick and I have disabled KMS as my system was freezing as per the release notes. The only time this has happened before on the same machine was when I gave Kubuntu a try when 10.04 came out then it happened at the login screen and at random times while listening to music in any program. By the way audio is fine as is almost everything else once I have logged in. I would like an answer to this as I am an advocate of Ubuntu and its kind of embarrassing when the first thing that happens is *bing*. as requested Daniel alsa-info Pulse verbose log Not sure how useful the pulse log will be as I cant replicate the bug with a terminal open but I wouldnt be asking the question if I knew the answer so..... Edit 24/12/2010 ......been living on cocktail sausages and pickled onions for five days now made a make shift splint with cocktail sticks..... oops so updated the alsa drivers but I still get the same message in the dmesg No response from codec, disabling MSI: last cmd=0x10a90000 googleing it brings up a forum post from some other distro with a green logo the only common denominator seems to be graphics ie ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M which is why I have had to turn of kms as the chip is so old that small mice try to eat the "kernel" ;) funnily enough following the bug link at the end of the post, I found a comment about "Ubuntu Black Magic" so mabey I am coming at this from the wrong angle...... Bad Joo Joo any one. I will try the second part of Daniels Fix and Update with the result. The final Edit: (Plays air guitar) In the end neither of these solved the problem as such However I have given Roland a tick for reminding me of the solution and I gave Daniel the Bounty for the effort in trying to solve the problem. The answer for future readers was the enable the correct HD Audio Model I found the answer back when using Karmic Koala 9.10 in this forum post Amilo Li1718 Skype - Can't get it working... the model is options snd-hda-intel model=3stack position_fix=1 enable=yes which can be added to the end of alsa-base.conf thanks all for helping and hope anyone with a similar problem will find the answer here.

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  • Windows Desktop Virtualization Gets Easier

    - by andrewbrust
    This past Thursday, Microsoft announced that Windows (7) Virtual PC (WVPC) and its XP Mode feature would no longer require hardware assisted virtualization (HAV).  That means any PC running Windows 7 Pro, or higher, can now run this software.  And that’s a great thing because, as I noted in a post almost five month ago, determining whether a given PC you might be planning to buy actually offers HAV can be extremely difficult.  That meant even dedicated, sophisticated PC users, with a budget for new hardware, might be blocked from using this technology.  And that was just plain silly. One of the features offered by WVPC, and utilized heavily by XP Mode, is the concept of virtual applications: apps within a guest VM that can actually run within the host’s desktop environment.  I find this feature so powerful that my February Redmond Review column entertained the notion of a future version of Windows that runs all applications in this manner. The elimination of the HAV requirement for XP Mode and WVPC was just one of many virtualization-related announcements Microsoft made on Thursday.  And, interestingly, most of the others were also desktop-related, rather than server-related.  This is a welcome change from the multi-year period in which Microsoft enhanced its server virtualization lineup (in Hyper-V) and let the desktop platform fester.  Microsoft now seems to understand desktop virtualization is in high-demand and strengthens the Windows franchise.  As I explained in the column, even cloud computing can have a desktop spin if desktop virtualization is part of the equation. One company that knows this well is Citrix, and a closer alliance between Microsoft and Citrix was one of the many announcements from Thursday.  In fact, there’s a whole Web site dedicated to the alliance at http://www.citrixandmicrosoft.com/. I’d love to see virtual applications and entire virtual desktops offered as Azure-branded services.  This could allow me to run, for example, the full Office client on a variety of desktops I might use, and for large organizations it could easily reduce the expense, burden and duration of the deployment cycle for new versions of Office.  Business Intelligence providers, including my own firm, twentysix New York, would find great relief in enabling their customers to run the newest version of Excel, with the latest BI capabilities, instead of having to wait the requisite two to three years it takes for many Fortune 500 customers to upgrade. Microsoft should do more, and faster.  WVPC still does not support 64-bit guest images, even on 64-bit hosts.  That needs to be fixed.  File access from the guest to the host needs to be improved (right now, it’s done through Terminal Services/Remote Desktop file sharing, and it’s slow) and VM load times need to be significantly reduced before virtualized apps can become the norm.  (I suppose the advance of solid state drive technology will help there.) I do think these improvements will come, because Microsoft is focused on the virtual desktop now.  And that’s a smart focus to have.

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  • Ubuntu Sluggish and Graphics Problem after Nvidia Driver Update

    - by iam
    I just recently started using Ubuntu (12.04) since a few weeks ago and noticed that the interface is very slow and sluggish: On Dash, I have to type the entire app name and wait a few seconds before it shows up in the search box, and a bit later before it displays search result Opening new files or applications takes also quite long and awkward Dragging icons or moving app windows around is not very spontaneous too: I have to take extra attention in moving the mouse otherwise Ubuntu would not do a correct movement or might ends up doing something incorrect instead e.g. opening the windows to full screen options or move the file to different folders, which is frustrating My PC is a few years old already (1.7 GB RAM) so this could be a reason too but when I checked in System Monitor it's hardly ever consuming much memory. Plus web-surfing on Firefox is actually lightning fast (much more than Windows), so I suspect there might be something wrong with the graphics driver (mine is GeForce 7050). I checked around System Settings and found an option to update the Nvidia driver. So I tried it and restarted, as instructed. Now, I got into a big problem upon restart... as the login-screen windows (where I have to type in the password) would take several attempts to display and finally did not manage to (it'd freeze for several seconds before there's any movement again). The background screen also kept reloading several times too and at some point the screen turned black with pixelated color strips running on the bottom 1/3 of the screen, and after a long while the background screen would come up again. Eventually I'd manage to be able to access the desktop but the launcher, top menu bar and app windows border would not disappear. I searched around and found many other people have this similar problem after updating Nvidia driver too, and on some threads the suggestion is to use "killall -u $USER" in command line (it's the only thing among various online suggestions I could do, as at that point I could not access Terminal without the launcher - Ctrl-Alt-T doesn't work for me). So I did that and was able to access the desktop correctly again with launchee/menu by creating a new account. But I would still have the same problem if logging into my original account. So I just finally tried upgrading to 12.10 and now can access my original account with fully-functional desktop - the launcher, menu and windows border are all back now. However, the problem with sluggishness still remains. And now I get scared of ever having to update the Nvidia driver again! I wonder if anyone knows what's the reason that updating the Nvidia driver is causing this problem and is there a way I can update it safely in the future? I'm still not sure how to solve the problem with the sluggishness too and not sure where else to look to find a solution.

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  • Game Review: God of Light

    Luckily I came across this title at a very early stage. If I remember correctly, I took notice of God of Light on Twitter right on the weekend it has been published on the Play Store. "Sit back and become immersed into the world of God of Light, the game that rethinks the physics puzzle genre with its unique environment exploration gameplay, amazing graphics and exclusive soundtrack created by electronic music icon UNKLE. Join cute game mascot, Shiny, on his way to saving the universe from the impending darkness. Play through a variety of exciting game worlds and dozens of levels with mind-blowing puzzles. Your goal is to explore game levels, seek for game objects that reflect, split, combine, paint, bend and teleport rays of light energy to activate the Sources of Life and bring light back to the universe." Mastering the various reflection items in God of Light is very easy to learn and new elements are introduced during the game. Amazing puzzle game Here's the initial review I posted on the Play Store: "Great change in puzzles Fantastic and refreshing concept of puzzle solving. The effects and the music match very well, putting the player in the right mood to game. Get enlightened and grow your skills until you are a true God of Light." And it remains true, even after completing the first realm completely. Similar to Quell it took me only a couple of hours during the evening to complete all levels in the available three realms, unfortunately. God of Light currently consists of 75 levels, well it's 25 in each realm to be precise, and the challenges are increasing. Compared to the iOS version from the AppStore, God of Light is available for free on Android - at least the first realm (25 levels). Unlocking the other two remaining realms is done through an in-app purchase. The visual appearance, the sound effects and the background music provided by UNKLE makes God of Light a superb package for any puzzle gamer. Whether it is simply reflecting light over multiple mirrors, or later on bending the rays of light with black holes, or using prisms to either split, enforce, or colourise your beam, God of Light is great fun and offers a good amount of joy. Check out the following screenshots for some impressions. God of Light: Astonishing graphics and visual appeal throughout the game God of Light - Introduction to the game during the first levels. New light items are introduced at each stage during the game play God of Light: Increasing complexity and puzzle fun Hopefully, Playmous is going to provide more astonishing looking realms and interesting gimmicks in future versions. Play Store: God of Light Also, check out the latest game updates on the official web site of Playmous

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  • User connection management in Reporting Services configuration

    - by Testas
    IT professionals will use Reporting Services Configuration Manager to perform post installation tasks for SQL Server Reporting Services. Introduced in SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services Configuration Manager provides an intuitive interface to perform tasks including specifying the report server database, report manager url, and indeed one of the first post installation tasks that should be performed is backing up the encryption keys that are used to protect the sensitive information within the rdl files.  Many of the options that are selected within Reporting Services Configuration Manager are written to a number of configuration files including the rsreportserver.config file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Report Server InstanceName\Reporting Services\ReportServer folder.When opening this file you will notice that there are more configuration settings within the rsreportserver.config file than is available through the Reporting Services Configuration Manager Interface. As a result there are additional configuration options that can be defined within this file.  A customer was having a problem performing stress tests against a new Report Server that would be going live for an enterprise reporting system. One aspect of the stress test was to fire 50 connections from a single user account. When performing the stress test an error described that the maximum active request had been exceeded. Within the rsreportserver.config, there is a key that is added to the file:  <Add Key=”MaxActiveReqForOneUser” Value=”20”/>  Changing the value from 20 to 50 accommodated the needs of the stress test, however, a wider question should be asked pertaining to this setting when implementing Reporting Services to a production environment. Within an intranet environment, the default setting is appropriate when network bandwidth is high, users are known and demand for reports is particularly high from a group of users.  However, when deploying a Reporting Server solution to an extranet, or the internet, you may want to consider reducing this setting to reduce to scope of connections that can be acquired by a single user and placing unnecessary pressure on the report server. I do hope that Reporting Services Configuration Manager evolves to include an advanced page that includes an intuitive interface to change configuration settings such as the MaxActiveReqForOneUser, and also configure rendering and data extensions and define secure connection levels to the report server. All these options can be configured within the rsreportserver.config file, and these are setting that customers would like to see in Reporting Services Configuration Manager in the future.   If you think that the SQL community would benefit from this addition, you can vote on it at Microsoft Connect  https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/565575/extending-reporting-services-configuration-manager-rscm    

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  • C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism

    - by Daniel Moth
    At AMD's Fusion conference Herb Sutter announced in his keynote session a technology that our team has been working on that we call C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) and during the keynote I showed a brief demo of an app built with our technology. After the keynote, I go deeper into the technology in my breakout session. If you read both those abstracts, you'll get some information about what C++ AMP is, without being too explicit since we published the abstracts before the technology was announced. You can find the official online announcement at Soma's blog post. Here, I just wanted to capture the key points about C++ AMP that can serve as an introduction and an FAQ. So, in no particular order… C++ AMP lowers the barrier to entry for heterogeneous hardware programmability and brings performance to the mainstream, without sacrificing developer productivity or solution portability. is designed not only to help you address today's massively parallel hardware (i.e. GPUs and APUs), but it also future proofs your code investments with a forward looking design. is part of Visual C++. You don't need to use a different compiler or learn different syntax. is modern C++. Not C or some other derivative. is integrated and supported fully in Visual Studio vNext. Editing, building, debugging, profiling and all the other goodness of Visual Studio work well with C++ AMP. provides an STL-like library as part of the existing concurrency namespace and delivered in the new amp.h header file. makes it extremely easy to work with large multi-dimensional data on heterogeneous hardware; in a manner that exposes parallelization. introduces only one core C++ language extension. builds on DirectX (and DirectCompute in particular) which offers a great hardware abstraction layer that is ubiquitous and reliable. The architecture is such, that this point can be thought of as an implementation detail that does not surface to the API layer. Stay tuned on my blog for more over the coming months where I will switch from just talking about C++ AMP to showing you how to use the API with code examples… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • Best practice while marking a bug as resolved with Bugzilla (versioning of product and components)

    - by Vincent B.
    I am wondering what is the best way to handle the situation of marking a bug as resolved and providing a version of component/product in which this fix can be found. Context For a project I am working on, we are using Bugzilla for issue tracking, and we have the following: A product "A" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, This product "A" have the following components: Component "C1" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, Component "C2" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, Component "C3" with a version number like vA.B.C.D. Internally we keep track of which component versions have been used to generate the product A version vA.B.C.D. Example: Product "A" version v1.0.0.0 has been produced from component "C1" v1.0.0.3, component "C2" v1.3.0.0 and component "C3" v2.1.3.5. And Product "A" version v1.0.1.0 has been produced from component "C1" v1.0.0.4, component "C2" v1.3.0.0 and component "C3" v2.1.3.5. Each component is a SVN repository. The person in charge of generating the product "A" have only access to the different components tags folder in SVN, and not the trunk of each component repository. Problem Now the problem is the following, when a bug is found in the product "A", and that the bug is related to Component "C1", the version of product "A" is chosen (e.g. v1.0.0.0), and this version allow the developer to know which version of component "C1" has the bug (here it will be v1.0.0.3). A bug report is created. Now let's say that the developer responsible for component "C1" corrects the bug, then when the bug seems to be fixed and after some test and validation, the developer generates a new tag for component "C1", with the version v1.0.0.4. At this time, the developer of component "C1" needs to update the bug report, but what is the best to do: Mark the bug as resolved/fixed and add a comment saying "This bug has been fixed in the tags v1.0.0.4 of C1 component" ? Keep the bug as assigned, add a comment saying "This bug has been fixed in the tags v1.0.0.4 of C1 component, update this bug status to resolved for the next version of the product that will be generated with the newest version (v1.0.0.4 of C1)" ? Another possible way to deal with this problem. Right now the problem is that when a product component CX is fixed, it is not sure in which future version of the product A it will be included, so it is for me not possible to say in which version of the product it will be solved, but it is possible to say in which version of the Component CX it has been solved. So when do we need to mark a bug as solved, when the product A version include the fixed version of CX, or only when CX component has been fixed ? Thanks for your personal feedback and ideas about this !

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  • Part 1 Basic Webtrends REST Examples

    - by GeekAgilistMercenary
    In this entry I just want to cover some examples of how to connect to Webtrends DX Web Services.  The DX Web Services use REST as the architecture, providing simple URI based end points to connect to.  With the Webtrends SDK you can connect to these services with your account information.  Here are the basic steps to retrieve a profile list, the reports from one of those profiles, and then the report you want from that report list. First step is to create a Webtrends User. WebTrends.Sdk.Account.User webtrendsUser = new Account.User(); webtrendsUser.UserName = username; webtrendsUser.Password = password; webtrendsUser.AccountName = account; After you create the Webtrends User, simple request a profile list by getting list of ProfileDefinition Objects. List<WebTrends.Sdk.Profile.ProfileDefinition> profiles = WebTrends.Sdk.Factory.NavigationFactory.BuildListing(webtrendsUser); Next you will want to grab a report based on the profile you are in and your credentials. List<WebTrends.Sdk.Report.ReportDefinition> reports = WebTrends.Sdk.Factory.NavigationFactory.BuildListing(profiles[i], webtrendsUser); In the code above, i would equate to the specific profile you want from the retrieved list of profiles in the profiles list.  The common scenario is that one has pulled the profiles into a drop down, combo, or list box that the user can select.  Then when the user selects the specific profile that profile object can then be used to pull the List of ReportDefinitions. Once we have the report definitions, all sorts of criteria can be added together to query for a specific report.  This is also were things can get a little tricky.  For instance, take a look at the code below. WebTrends.Sdk.Factory.ReportFactory.CreateDimensionalReport( report.ID.ToString(), profiles[i].ID.ToString(), "2010m01", webtrendsUser); The CreateDimensionalReport takes 4 parameters for this particular overload.  The report ID, profile ID, the Webtrends Date Format, and the Webtrends User Object.  There are a number of other overloads available within this factory's method that allow for passing the specific REST URI, and other criteria to retrieve the report of your choice.  In the near future we will be adding some more to this method also, which will provide more flexibility without needing to use the full REST URI. I will have more on this, so all you Coders out there using Webtrends DX Services, I hope this is helpful!  Enjoy. Original Entry

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  • Windows8, JavaScript and HTML5 - A good thing?

    - by Albers
    Most of us have seen the Windows 8 news regarding support for native HTML5/JavaScript applications. The press has pushed this as a potential threat to the .NET developer community because JavaScript and HTML5 were called "our new developer platform". The press release refers to "Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.".Microsoft has also been hush on details related to these comments. Before we buy the hype and start worrying about a world where we drop our Visual Studio licenses and buy DreamWeaver - let's think about how Windows 8 HTML/JavaScript applications would be implemented. The HTML5 spec offers support for offline applications, but this won't offer the OS-integrated experience the press release refers to. MS has to be planning a way to extend access beyond the traditional JavaScript feature set. Microsoft has a similar option today: HTML Applications or HTAs. They come close to required features, but HTAs need ActiveX or Java integration to provide the promised OS-level access. I'm guessing that Microsoft's future OS strategy isn't built on developers cranking out ActiveX controls or Java applets. So where is Microsoft headed? One possibility is that MS builds a new JavaScript framework from the ground up outside their current APIs. Another idea would be for Microsoft to add support for JavaScript as a first class .NET language using the Dynamic Language Runtime. A solution based on the DLR could be integrated into an HTA-like model to provide the promised access, along with the full range of features in .NET Framework. Security comes included in the Framework. And the work necessary to support this integration would tie in nicely with the effort MS has recently made providing better JavaScript and HTML5 support in Visual Studio 2010. As a bonus, a full-fledged JavaScript DLR implementation would allow single language web solutions across client and server (think node.js) and would appeal to developers who are familiar with JavaScript but have less experience with the Microsoft tech stack. We will all get a better picture after the Build conference in September. But in the mean time we know that Microsoft has a reputation for providing strong developer support. We might want to reserve our harshest judgement and consider that the press release could hint at new opportunities for .NET development.

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  • Introducing Agile development after traditional project inception

    - by Riggy
    About a year and a half ago, I entered a workplace that claimed to do Agile development. What I learned was that this place has adopted several agile practices (such as daily standups, sprint plannings and sprint reviews) but none of the principles (just in time / just good enough mentality, exposing failure early, rich communication). I've now been tasked with making the team more agile and I've been assured that I have complete buy-in from the devs and the business team. As a pilot program, they've given me a project that just completed 15 months of requirements gathering, has a 110 page Analysis & Design document (to be considered as "written in stone"), and where I have no access to the end users (only to the committee made up of the users' managers who won't actually be using the product). I started small, giving them a list of expected deliverables for the first 5 sprints (leaving the future sprints undefined), a list of goals for the first sprint, and I dissected the A&D doc to get enough user stories to meet the first sprint's goals. Since then, they've asked why we don't have all the requirements for all the sprints, why I haven't started working on stuff for the third sprint (which they consider more important but is based off of the deliverables of the first 2 sprints) and are pressing for even more documentation that my entire IT team considers busy-work or un-related to us (such as writing the user manual up-front, documenting all the data fields from all the sprints up front, and more "up-front" work). This has been pretty rough for me as a new project manager, but there are improvements I have effectively implemented such as scrumban for story management, pair programming, and having the business give us customer acceptance tests up front (as part of the requirements documentation). So my questions are: What can I do to more effectively introduce change to a resistant business? Are there other practices that I can introduce on the IT side to help show the business the benefits of agile? The burden of documentation is strangling us - the business still sees it as a risk management strategy instead of as a risk. What can we do to alleviate their documentation concerns and demands (specifically the quantity of documentation and their need for all of it up front)? We are in a separate building from our business, about 3 blocks away and they refuse to have their people on the project co-habitate b/c that person "won't be able to work on their other projects while they're at our building." They expect us to always go over there and to bundle our questions so that we can ask them all at once and not waste that person's time with "constant interruptions." What can we do to get richer communication from them? Any additional advice would also be appreciated. Thanks!

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  • SCVMM – Round 2 – How to create a Private Cloud using PowerShell

    - by Waclaw Chrabaszcz
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Wchrabaszcz/archive/2013/06/28/scvmm--round-2--how-to-create-a-private.aspxHave you ever seen "A Bridge too far" movie? To not to wake up a click too far, it is good to script some tasks. Yes of course we can follow wizards, but some of us want to be warriorsJ. A small tip, take a look on credentials and system GUID examples. I don't know how about you, but for me it will be really useful in the future.    # credents$credential = Get-CredentialNew-SCRunAsAccount -Name "TESTDOMAIN\Administrator" -Credential $credential #storage $opsMgrServerCredential = Get-SCRunAsAccount -Name "TESTDOMAIN\Administrator"New-SCStorageClassification -Name "Bronze" -Description "" –RunAsynchronouslyNew-SCStorageClassification -Name "Silver" -Description "" –RunAsynchronouslyNew-SCStorageClassification -Name "Gold" -Description "" –RunAsynchronously # add a shared storageFind-SCComputer -ComputerName "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net"Add-SCStorageProvider -AddWindowsNativeWmiProvider -Name "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net" -RunAsAccount $opsMgrServerCredential -ComputerName "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net"$fileServer = Get-SCStorageFileServer "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net"$fileShares = @()$fileShares += Get-SCStorageFileShare -Name "VMMLibrary"Set-SCStorageFileServer -StorageFileServer $fileServer -AddStorageFileShareToManagement $fileShares –RunAsynchronously #fabric network$logicalNetwork = New-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" -LogicalNetworkDefinitionIsolation $false -EnableNetworkVirtualization $true -UseGRE $true -IsPVLAN $false$allHostGroups = @()$allHostGroups += Get-SCVMHostGroup -Name "All Hosts"$allSubnetVlan = @()$allSubnetVlan += New-SCSubnetVLan -Subnet "10.0.0.0/24" -VLanID 0New-SCLogicalNetworkDefinition -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network_0" -LogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -VMHostGroup $allHostGroups -SubnetVLan $allSubnetVlan #IP pool$logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network"$logicalNetworkDefinition = Get-SCLogicalNetworkDefinition -LogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network_0" # Gateways$allGateways = @()$allGateways += New-SCDefaultGateway -IPAddress "10.0.0.1" –Automatic# DNS servers $allDnsServer = @("10.0.0.1")# DNS suffixes$allDnsSuffixes = @("TESTDOMAIN.net")# WINS servers$allWinsServers = @()New-SCStaticIPAddressPool -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" -LogicalNetworkDefinition $logicalNetworkDefinition -Subnet "10.0.0.0/24" -IPAddressRangeStart "10.0.0.51" -IPAddressRangeEnd "10.0.0.75" -DefaultGateway $allGateways -DNSServer $allDnsServer -DNSSuffix "" -DNSSearchSuffix $allDnsSuffixes –RunAsynchronously #Hyper-V Virtual Networks$logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" $vmNetwork = New-SCVMNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-VMN" -LogicalNetwork $logicalNetwork -IsolationType "WindowsNetworkVirtualization" -CAIPAddressPoolType "IPV4" -PAIPAddressPoolType "IPV4"Write-Output $vmNetwork$subnet = New-SCSubnetVLan -Subnet "10.0.0.0/24"New-SCVMSubnet -Name "Con-SN" -VMNetwork $vmNetwork -SubnetVLan $subnet # bind VLAN with the Network Adapter$vmHost = Get-SCVMHost -ComputerName "VMM01.TESTDOMAIN.net"$vmHostNetworkAdapter = Get-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmHost #-Name "Intel 21140-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (Emulated)"Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -Description "" -AvailableForPlacement $true -UsedForManagement $true $logicalNetwork = Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network" Set-SCVMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHostNetworkAdapter $vmHostNetworkAdapter -AddOrSetLogicalNetwork $logicalNetworkSet-SCVMHost -VMHost $vmHost -RunAsynchronously -NumaSpanningEnabled $true #Create a Private Cloud$Guid = [System.Guid]::NewGuid()Set-SCCloudCapacity -JobGroup $Guid -UseCustomQuotaCountMaximum $false -UseMemoryMBMaximum $false -UseCPUCountMaximum $false -UseStorageGBMaximum $false -UseVMCountMaximum $false -CustomQuotaCount 10 -MemoryMB 10240 -CPUCount 10 -StorageGB 386 -VMCount 10$resources = @()$resources += Get-SCLogicalNetwork -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Service-Network"$resources += Get-SCLoadBalancer -Manufacturer "Microsoft"$readonlyLibraryShares = @()$readonlyLibraryShares += Get-SCLibraryShare | where { $_.LibraryServer.Name -eq "dc.TESTDOMAIN.net" -and $_.Name -eq "VMMLibrary" }$addCapabilityProfiles = @()$addCapabilityProfiles += Get-SCCapabilityProfile -Name "Hyper-V"$Guid2 = [System.Guid]::NewGuid()Set-SCCloud -JobGroup $Guid2 -RunAsynchronously -AddCloudResource $resources -AddReadOnlyLibraryShare $readonlyLibraryShares -AddCapabilityProfile $addCapabilityProfiles$hostGroups = @()$hostGroups += Get-SCVMHostGroup -Name "TESTDOMAIN"New-SCCloud -VMHostGroup $hostGroups -Name "TESTDOMAIN-Cloud" -Description "" –RunAsynchronously

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  • Referencing a picture in another DLL in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    This one has burned me a few times, so here is how it works for future reference: Usually, when I add an Image control into a Silverlight application, and the picture it shows is local (as opposed to loaded from the web), I set the picture’s Build Action to Content, and the Copy to Output Directory to Copy if Newer. What the compiler does then is to copy the picture to the bin\Debug folder, and then to pack it into the XAP file. In XAML, the syntax to refer to this local picture is: <Image Source="/Images/mypicture.jpg" Width="100" Height="100" /> And in C#: return new BitmapImage(new Uri( "/Images/mypicture.jpg", UriKind.Relative)); One of the features of Silverlight is to allow referencing content (pictures, resource dictionaries, sound files, movies etc…) located in a DLL directly. This is very handy because just by using the right syntax in the URI, you can do this in XAML directly, for example with: <Image Source="/MyApplication;component/Images/mypicture.jpg" Width="100" Height="100" /> In C#, this becomes: return new BitmapImage(new Uri( "/MyApplication;component/Images/mypicture.jpg", UriKind.Relative)); Side note: This kind of URI is called a pack URI and they have been around since the early days of WPF. There is a good tutorial about pack URIs on MSDN. Even though it refers to WPF, it also applies to Silverlight Side note 2: With the Build Action set to Content, you can rename the XAP file to ZIP, extract all the files, change the picture (but keep the same name), rezip the whole thing and rename again to XAP. This is not possible if the picture is embedded in an assembly! So what’s the catch? Well the catch is that this does not work if you set the Build Action to Content. It’s actually pretty simple to explain: The pack URI above tells the Silverlight runtime to look within an assembly named MyOtherAssembly for a file named MyPicture.jpg in the Images folder. If the file is included as Content, however, it is not in the assembly. Silverlight does not find it, and silently returns nothing. The image is not displayed. And the fix? The fix, for class libraries, is to set the Build Action to Resource. With this, the picture will gets packed into the DLL itself. Of course, this will increase the size of the DLL, and any change to the picture will require recompiling the class library, which is not ideal. But in the cases where you want to distribute pictures (icons etc) together with a plug-in assembly, well, this is a good way to have everything in the same place Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • How to keep balance / Unlock items / achievement rules

    - by Mark Knol
    I'm working on an engine for a game, too learn javascript and just because its fun. I'm a flashdeveloper, I know how to build websites. Now making games is a different challenge, javascript is a challenge, but I'd love to learn how to structure code and what patterns are common. I dont mind if the game ever finish, I'm mostly interested in the programming part of it. I dont have a particular endresult in mind, so I'll see where it takes me. I currently have a system where you can buy items. The items cost a specified amount of gold, silver, diamonds etc. When you have selected and bought the item, it takes time before getting rewarded. When time is over, you are getting rewarded with other properties (gold, energy, diamonds). For example, you can buy an apple for 50gold, It takes a minute, you get rewarded with 75energy. Or if you take a run, it cost 50energy, it takes 5minutes, reward is 25gold and 25silver. These definitions is what i call actions. Currently I already have a system where this already works and I can define as much actions with as much properties as I want. The definitions I have kinda looks like this: {id:101, category:544, onInit:{gold:-75}, onComplete:{energy:75}, time:2000, name:"Apple", locked: false} {id:102, category:544, onInit:{gold:-135}, onComplete:{energy:145}, time:2000, name:"Banana", locked: false} {id:106, category:302, onInit:{energy:-50, power: -25}, onComplete:{gold:100, diamonds:2}, time:10000, name:"Run", locked: false} {id:107, category:302, onInit:{energy:-70, silver: -55}, onComplete:{gold:100}, time:10000, name:"Dance", locked: false} {id:108, category:302, onInit:{energy:-230, power: -355}, onComplete:{gold:70, silver:70}, time:10000, name:"Fitness", locked: false} Now, I would love to add a system where I can lock/unlock the actions using achievement rules. Lets say, if you buy 10 apples, you unlock a new action, like bananas which cost more, and reward more. In the future I maybe want to restrict achievements and actions to levels. I am kinda stuck how to structure this. I have 2 questions: Which patterns are used to define achievements? How/where are they defined? Should it be part of the action, or should it be a separate controller? Is it a good idea to register all completed actions to it? I think I want multiple types of achievement rules, Id love to hear some ideas how to develop it. How do you create/find a good balance, so the user does not get stuck or can cheat by repeat a pattern of actions to get too much rewards. I know there is not a simple answer and i'm lacking of a good game-concept, but I wonder if anyone created such a game and how you dealed and played with it.

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  • Three Master Data Management Deployment Tips

    - by david.butler(at)oracle.com
    MDM is all about data quality and data governance. We now know that improved data quality raises all operational and analytical boats. But it's not just about deploying data quality tools. It's about deploying data quality tools within and across the IT landscape - from a thousand points of data entry to a single version of the truth. Here are three tips to deploying MDM across your applications and enterprise.   #1: Identify a tactical, high-value business problem where MDM can materially help. §  Support a customer acquisition and retention program with a 'customer' master data solution. §  Accelerate new products and services to market with a 'product' master data solution. §  Reduce supplier exceptions or support spend control initiatives with a 'supplier' master data solution. §  Support new store (branch, campus, restaurant, hospital, office, well head) location analysis with a 'site' master data solution. §  Fix long standing Chart of Accounts and Cost Center problems with a 'financial' master data solution. §  Support M&A activity, application upgrades, an SOA initiative, a cloud computing program, or a new business intelligence deployment by implementing a mix of master data solutions.   #2: Incrementally expand to a full information architecture. Quite often, the measurable return on interest from tactical MDM initiatives will fund future deployments. Over time, the MDM solution expands into its full architecture to cover the entire IT landscape. Operations and analytics are united, IT flexibility is restored, and sustainable competitive advantage is achieved.   #3: Bring business into every MDM deployment. To be successful, MDM must work hand in hand with data governance. In fact, Oracle MDM incorporates data governance tools for business users. IT can insure data quality, but only after the business side has defined what quality means. The business establishes the rules for governing the master data, and then IT enforces the rules via the MDM applications. Without this business/IT collaboration, MDM initiatives seldom achieve their full potential.   It is not very often that a technology comes along that can measurably assist organizations across a wide variety of top IT initiatives. Reducing costs, increasing flexibility, getting more out of existing assets, and aligning business and IT are not easy tasks for any CIO. But with MDM, success is achievable. IT can regain its place as a center for innovation.   For more information on this topic, take a look at my article Master Data Management Deployment Tips in the Opinion Section of Oracle's Profit Online magazine.

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  • Investing in Servers by Intel

    - by Koushal Deshpande
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/BizTalkAndOtherTechs/archive/2013/10/31/investing-in-servers-by-intel.aspxA nice article reference from Intel, refer here. Referees to cloud as well. Choose correctly what you need. 1 Do determine right server for your company. There is no use getting a server that has redundant services but still add to the costs. 2 Do get servers that can be upgraded. A server with limited memory and storage may not be able to keep up with your business growth. The basic memory and storage options might not be sufficient. Consider at least 8GB of RAM and 1 terabyte of hard disk space. 3 Do check the server has at least one Gigabit Ethernet port. This allows high speed transferring of files and increases productivity for your employees. USB and Firewire ports may not be enough as their transfer speed is too low and will affect the productivity of your company. Infinite Technologies is ready to help perform this upgrade. Contact Infinite Technologies now View our other resellers » 4 Do verify that the server comes with documentation. Documentation allows you to make a claim when your server breaks down and is supported by a warranty. 6 Do check the support options for the server from the manufacturer. Different manufacturer has different support options such as maintenance plans and software upgrades. 5 Do always look into the warranty. Get an enhanced warranty that guarantees response and repair time to avoid disruption. 7 Do get server management tools that can be used on any computer. Server management tools should be cross compatible across different operating systems to take into account future PC replacements. 8 Do check the power usage of the servers. Get the right power supply to avoid damaging server hardware and consider the Intel® Xeon® E3 processor to help save on your electricity bills. 9 Do check what built-in security packages are available. Ensure that your server is protected. Built-in security1 helps you save on getting add on security packages.

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  • Correct way to handle path-finding collision matrix

    - by Xander Lamkins
    Here is an example of me utilizing path finding. The red grid represents the grid utilized by my A* library to locate a distance. This picture is only an example, currently it is all calculated on the 1x1 pixel level (pretty darn laggy). I want to make it so that the farther I click, the less accurate it will be (split the map into larger grid pieces). Edit: as mentioned by Eric, this is not a required game mechanic. I am perfectly fine with any method that allows me to make this accurate while still fast. This isn't the really the topic of this question though. The problem I have is, my current library uses a two dimensional grid of integers. The higher the number in a cell, the more resistance for that grid tile. Currently I'm setting all unwalkable spots to Integer Max. Here is an example of what I want: I'm just not sure how I should set up the arrays of integers of the grid. Every time an element is added/removed to/from the game, it's collision details are updated in the table. Here is a picture of what the map looks like on my collision layer: I probably shouldn't be creating new arrays every time I have to do a path find because my game needs to support tons of PF at the same time. Should I have multiple arrays that are all updated when the dynamic elements are updated (a building is built/a building is destroyed). The problem I see with this is that it will probably make the creation and destruction of buildings a little more laggy than I would want because it would be setting the collision grid for each built in accuracy level. I would also have to add more/remove some arrays if I ever in the future changed the map size. Should I generate the new array based on an accuracy value every time I need to PF? The problem I see with this is that it will probably make any form of PF just as laggy because it will have to search through a MapWidth x MapHeight number of cells to shrink it all down. Or is there a better way? I'm certainly not the best at optimizing really anything. I've just started dealing with XNA so I'm not used to having optimization code really doing much of an affect until now... :( If you need code examples, please ask. I'll add it as an edit. EDIT: While this doesn't directly relate to the question, I figure the more information I provide, the better. To keep your units from moving as accurately to the players desired position, I've decided that once the unit PFs over to the less accurate grid piece, it will then PF on a more accurate level to the exact position requested.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-07

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Exalogic Webcast Series: Rethink Your Business Application Deployment Strategy Learn best practices for simplifying IT operations while delivering the application performance that a business needs. These on-demand Sessions include: Faster and Easier: Deploying ERP Applications on Oracle Exalogic Redefining the CRM and E-Commerce Experience with Oracle Exalogic The Road to a Cloud-Enabled, Infinitely Elastic Application Infrastructure Virtualization at Oracle - Six Part Series Links to all six articles in the series by Matthias Pfuetzner and Detlef Drewanz, spanning SPARC and x86. WebCenter Content shared folders for clustering | Kyle Hatlestad A-Team blogger Kyle Hatlestad shares the details on "how the file systems should be split and what options are required." Eclipse DemoCamp - June 2012 - Redwood Shores, CA When: Wednesday, June 13, 2012. 6:00pm - 9:00pm Where: Oracle HQ - 10 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood Shores, CA Presentations: The evolution of Java persistence, Doug Clarke, EclipseLink Project Lead, Oracle Integrating BIRT into Applications, Ashwini Verma, Actuate Corporation Developing Rich ADF Applications with Java EE, Greg Stachnick, Oracle Leveraging OSGi In The Enterprise, Kamal Muralidharan, Lead Engineer, eBay NVIDIA® NsightTM Eclipse Edition, Goodwin (Tech lead - Visual tools), Eugene Ostroukhov (Senior engineer – Visual tools) BI Architecture Master Class for Partners - Oracle Architecture Unplugged When:June 21, 2012 Where: City Office, London, UK This workshop will be highly interactive and is aimed at Oracle OPN member partners who are IT Architects and BI+W specialists. This will be a highly interactive session and does not involve slide presentations or product feature details, it addresses IT-Architectural issues and considerations for the IT-Architect Community. Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards | Oracle Excellence Awards Share your use of Oracle Fusion Middleware solutions and how they help your organization drive business innovation. You just might win a free pass to Oracle Openworld 2012 in San Francisco. Deadline for submissions in July 17, 2012. Oracle Service Bus 11g: listing projects and services with WLST - part 1 | Michel Schildmeijer "For automating and repetitive purposes, as well for uniformity it's always good to have some scripting," says Michel Schildmeijer. Creating an Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 Application Part 3 : Creating the User Interface | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman continues his article series. WebLogic Advisor WebCasts On-Demand A series of videos by WebLogic experts, available to those with access to support.oracle.com. Integrating OBIEE 11g into Weblogic’s SAML SSO | Andre Correa A-Team blogger Andre Correa illustrates a transient federation scenario. InfoQ: Cloud 2017: Cloud Architectures in 5 Years Andrew Phillips, Mark Holdsworth, Martijn Verburg, Patrick Debois, and Richard Davies review the evolution of cloud computing so far and look five years into the future. Thought for the Day "One cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs – but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelet." — Charles P. Issawi Source: softwarequotes.com

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-06

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Creating an Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 Application Part 3 : Creating the User Interface | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman continues his article series. WebLogic Advisor WebCasts on-demand A series of videos by WebLogic experts, available to those with access to support.oracle.com. Integrating OBIEE 11g into Weblogic’s SAML SSO | Andre Correa A-Team blogger Andre Correa illustrates a transient federation scenario. InfoQ: Cloud 2017: Cloud Architectures in 5 Years Andrew Phillips, Mark Holdsworth, Martijn Verburg, Patrick Debois, and Richard Davies review the evolution of cloud computing so far and look five years into the future. Call for Nominations: Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards 2012 - Win a free pass to #OOW12 These awards honor customers for their cutting-edge solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware. Either a customer, their partner, or an Oracle representative can submit the nomination form on behalf of the customer. Submission deadline: July 17. Winners receive a free pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco. SOA Analysis within the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 2.0 – Part II | Dawit Lessanu The conclusion of Lessanu's two-part series for Service Technology Magazine. Driving from Business Architecture to Business Process Services | Hariharan V. Ganesarethinam "The perfect mixture of EA, SOA and BPM make enterprise IT highly agile so it can quickly accommodate dynamic business strategies, alignments and directions," says Ganesarethinam. "However, there should be a structured approach to drive enterprise architecture to service-oriented architecture and business processes." Book Review: Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack 11gR1: Essentials | Rajesh Raheja Rajesh Raheja reviews the new AIA book from Packt Publishing. ODTUG Kscope12 - June 24-28 - San Antonio, TX San Antonio, TX June 24-28, 2012 Kscope12, sponsored by ODTUG, is your home for Application Express, BI and Oracle EPM, Database Development, Fusion Middleware, and MySQL training by the best of the best! Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c : Enterprise Controller High Availability (EC HA) | Mahesh Sharma Mahesh Sharma describes EC HA, looks at the prerequisites, and shares screen shots. The right way to transform your business via the cloud | David Linthicum A couple of quick tests will show you where you need to focus your transition efforts. Thought for the Day "Most software isn't designed. Rather, it emerges from the development team like a zombie emerging from a bubbling vat of Research and Development juice. When a discipline is hugging the ragged edge of technology, this might be expected, but most of today's software is comprised of mostly 'D' and very little 'R'." — Alan Cooper Source: softwarequotes.com

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  • What if you could work on anything you wanted?

    - by red@work
    This week we've downed our tools and organised ourselves into small project teams or struck out alone. We're working on whatever we like, with whoever we like, wherever we like. We've called it Down Tools week and so far it's a blast. It all started a few months ago with an idea from Neil, our CEO. Neil wanted to capture the excitement, innovation, and productivity of Coding by the Sea and extend this to all Red Gaters working in Product Development. A brainstorm is always a good place to start for an "anything goes" project. Half of Red Gate piled into our largest meeting room (it's pretty big) armed with flip charts, post its and a heightened sense of possibility. An hour or so later our SQL Servery walls were covered in project ideas. So what would you do, if you could work on anything you wanted? Many projects are related to tools we already make, others are for internal product development use and some are, well, just something completely different. Someone suggested we point a web cam at the SQL Servery lunch queue so we can check it before heading to lunch. That one couldn't wait for Down Tools Week. It was up and running within a few days and even better, it captures the table tennis table too. Thursday is the Show and Tell - I am looking forward to seeing what everyone has come up with. Some of the projects will turn into new products or features so this probably isn't the time or place to go into detail of what is being worked on. Rest assured, you'll hear all about it! We're making a video as we go along too which will be up on our website as soon. In the meantime, all meetings are cancelled, we've got plenty of food in and people are being very creative with the £500 expenses budget (Richard, do you really need an iPad?). It's brilliant to see it all coming together from the idea stage to reality. Catch up with our progress by following #downtoolsweek on Twitter. Who knows, maybe a future Red Gate flagship tool is coming to life right now? By the way, it's business as usual for our customer facing and internal operations teams. Hmm, maybe we can all down tools for a week and ask Product Development to hold the fort? Post by: Alice Chapman

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  • A Hot Topic - Profitability and Cost Management

    - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com
    Maybe it's due to the recent recession, or current economic recovery but a hot topic and area of focus for many organizations these days is profitability and cost management.  For most organizations, aggressive cost-cutting and cost management were critical to remaining profitable while top line revenue was flat or shrinking.  However, now we are seeing many organizations taking a more "surgical" approach to profitability and cost management, by accurately allocating revenue and costs to individual product lines, services, customer segments, locations, channels and other lines of business to understand which ones are truly profitable and which ones are not.  Based on these insights, managers can make more informed decisions about which products or services to invest in or retire, how to price their products or services for different customer segments, and where to focus their marketing and customer service resources. The most common industries where this product, service and customer-focused costing and profitability analysis is being adopted include financial services, consumer packaged goods, retail and manufacturing.  However we are seeing adoption of profitability and cost management applications in other industries and use cases.  Here are a few examples: Telecommunications Industry:  Network Costing and Management to identify the most cost effective and/or profitable network areas, to optimize existing resources, infrastructure and network capacity.  Regulatory Cost Accounting to perform more accurate allocations of revenue and costs across services and customer segments, improve ability to set billing rates for future periods, for various products and customer segments and more easily develop analysis needed for rate case proposals. Healthcare Insurance:  Visually, justifiable Medical Loss Ratio results, better knowledge of the cost to service healthcare plans and members, accurate understanding of member segment and plan profitability, improved marketing programs through better member segmentation. Public Sector:  Statutory / Regulatory Compliance:  A variety of statutory and regulatory documents state explicitly or implicitly that the use of government resources must be properly tracked and tied to performance goals.  Managerial costing methods implemented through Cost Management applications provide unparalleled visibility into costs and shared services usage throughout a Public Sector agency. Funding Support:  Regulations require public sector funding requests to be evaluated based upon the ability to achieve performance goals against the associated cost.   Improved visibility and understanding of costs of different programs/services means that organizations can demonstrably monitor performance and the associated resource costs improve the chances of having their funding requests granted. Profitability and Cost Management is one of the fastest-growing solution areas in Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management product line and we are seeing a growing number of customer successes across geographies and industries.  Listed below are just a few examples.  Here's a link to the replay from a recent webcast on this topic which featured Schroders Plc, a UK-based Financial Services company: http://www.oracle.com/go/?&Src=7011668&Act=168&pcode=WWMK10037859MPP043 Here's a link to a case study on Shenhua Guohua Power in China: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/shenhua-snapshot-159574.pdf Here's a link to information on Oracle's web site about our profitability and cost management solutions: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/performance-management/profitability-cost-mgmt/index.html

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  • How to use TFS as a query tracking system?

    - by deostroll
    We already use tfs for managing defects in code etc, etc. We additionally need a way to "understand the domain & requirements of the products". Normally, without tfs we exchange emails with the consultants and have the questions/queries answered. If it is a feature implementation we sometimes "find" conflicts in the implementation itself. And when that happens the userstory is modified and the enhancement/bug as per that is raised in TFS. Sometimes it is critical we come back to decisions we made or questions we wanted answers to. Hence we need to be able to track how that "requirement idea" or that "query in concern" evolved. Hence how is it that we can use TFS to track all of this? Do we raise an "issue" item for this? Or do we raise a "bug" item? The main things we'd ideally look in a query tracking system are as follows: Area: Can be a module, submodule, domain. Sometimes this may be "General" - to address domain related stuff, or, event more granular to address modules, sub-modules. Take the case for the latter, if we were tracking this in excel sheets, we'd just write module1,submodule2; i.e. in a comma separated fashion. The things I would like here is to be able search for all queries relating to submodule2 sometime in the future. Responses: This is a record of conversations between the consultant and any other stakeholder. For a simple case, it would just be paragraphs. Each para would start with a name and date enclosed in brackets and the response following that...each para would be like a thread - much like a forum thread Action taken: We'd want to know how the query was closed, what was the input given, what were the changes that took place because of that, etc etc. These are fields I think I would need in such a system apart from some obvious ones like status, address to, resovled by, etc. I am open for any other fields which are sort of important. To summarise my question: how can we manage "queries" in the system? Where should we ideally store data pertaining to those three fields I have mentioned above (for e.g. is it wise to store responses in the history tag assuming we are opening a bug for the query)?

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  • NuGet JustMock

    - by mehfuzh
    As most of us already know JustMock got  a free edition. The free edition is not a stripped down of the features of the full edition but I would rather say its a strip down of the type you can mock. Technically, free version runs on  proxy as full version runs on proxy + profiler. In full version, It switches to profiler when you are mocking final methods or sealed class or anything else that can not be done using inheritance. Like in full version you can mock non public methods , in free version you can still do it but it has to be virtual for protected or must be done through InternalsVisibleTo attribute for internal virtual methods (If you have access to the source and can apply the attribute). Now, you can get a copy of free edition from the product page. Install it and off you go. But it is also exposed to NuGet. Those of you are not familiar with NuGet (that will be odd). But still NuGet is the centralized package manager from Microsoft that cuts the workflow of manual inclusion of  libraries in your project. I think NuGet in future will limit the scope of  “.vsi” packages and installers because of its ease (except in some cases). Its similar to ruby gems. In ruby, virtually you can install any library in this way “gems  install <target_library>” and you are off to go. It will check the dependencies, install them or less prompt with the steps you need to do.   Now sticking to the post, to get started you first need to install NuGet package manager. Once you have completed the step pressing “Ctrl + W, Ctrl + Z” it will bring up an console like one below:   Once you are here, you just have to type “install-package justmock” Next, it will should print the confirmation when the installation is complete: Moving to visual studio solution explorer, you will now see:   Finally, NuGet is still in its early ages and steps that are shown here may not remain the same in coming releases, but feel free to enjoy what is out there right now. Regarding JustMock free edition, there is a nice post by Phil Japikse at Introducing JustMock Free Edition. I think its worth checking if not already.   Have fun and happy holidays!

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