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• P90X or How I Stopped Worrying and Love Exercise

  - by Matt Christian

  Last Wednesday, after many UPS delivery failures, I received P90X in the mail.  P90X is a series of DVD's and a nutrition guide you use to shed pounds and gain muscle.  Odds are you've seen the infomercial on TV at some point if you watch a little tube now and again.  I started last Thursday and am still standing to tell this tale. At it's core, P90X is a 12 DVD set of exercise videos.  Each video is comprised of a different workout routine that typically last around an hour (some up to 1 1/2 hours).  Every day you are supposed to do one of the workouts which are different every day (sometimes you may repeat a shorter 6 min workout dedicated to abs twice a week).  There are different 'programs' focused on different areas, for weight loss you do the Lean Program, standard weight loss and muscle gain do the Regular Program, and for those hardcore health-nuts, the Insane Program (which consists of 2 - 1 hour long exercises per day).  Each Program has a different set of workouts per week which you repeat for 3 weeks, followed by a 'Relaxation Week' which is essentially a slightly different order.  After the month of workouts is over, you've finished 1 phase out of 3.  P90X takes 90 days, split into 3 Phases (1 phase per month).  Every phase has a different workout order which is also focused on different areas (Weight Loss, Muscle Gain, etc...)  With the DVD's you also get a small glossy book of about 100 pages detailing the different workouts and the different programs as well as a sample workout to see if you're even ready to start P90X. The second part of P90X, which can also be considered the 'core' (actually the other half of the core) is the nutrition guide that is included.  The Nutrition Guide is a book similar to the one that defines the exercises (about 100 glossy pages) though it details foods you should eat, the amounts, and a number of healthy (and tasty!) recipes.  The guide is split up into 3 phases as well, promoting high protein and low carb/dairy at during Phase 1, and levelling off through to Phase 3 where you have a relatively balanced amount of every food group. So after 1 week where am I?  I've stuck quite close to the nutrition guide (there isn't 'diet food' in here people, it's ACTUALLY food) and done my exercise every day.  I think a lot of the first week is getting into the whole idea and learning the moves performed on the DVD.  Have I lost weight?  No.  Do I feel some definition already starting to poke out?  Absolutely (no pun intended). Tony Horton (the 51-year old hulk that runs the whole thing) is very fun to listen and work along with and the 'diet' really isn't too hard to follow unless all you eat is carbs.  I've tried the gym thing and could not get motivated enough to continue going.  P90X is the first time I've ached from a workout, BEFORE starting my next workout.  For anyone interested, Google 'P90X' or 'BeachBody' to find out more information about this awesome program!

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• Taking the training wheels off: Accelerating the Business with Oracle IAM by Brian Mozinski (Accenture)

  - by Greg Jensen

  Today, technical requirements for IAM are evolving rapidly, and the bar is continuously raised for high performance IAM solutions as organizations look to roll out high volume use cases on the back of legacy systems.  Existing solutions were often designed and architected to support offline transactions and manual processes, and the business owners today demand globally scalable infrastructure to support the growth their business cases are expected to deliver. To help IAM practitioners address these challenges and make their organizations and themselves more successful, this series we will outline the: • Taking the training wheels off: Accelerating the Business with Oracle IAM The explosive growth in expectations for IAM infrastructure, and the business cases they support to gain investment in new security programs. • "Necessity is the mother of invention": Technical solutions developed in the field Well proven tricks of the trade, used by IAM guru’s to maximize your solution while addressing the requirements of global organizations. • The Art & Science of Performance Tuning of Oracle IAM 11gR2 Real world examples of performance tuning with Oracle IAM • No Where to go but up: Extending the benefits of accelerated IAM Anything is possible, compelling new solutions organizations are unlocking with accelerated Oracle IAM Let’s get started … by talking about the changing dynamics driving these discussions. Big Companies are getting bigger everyday, and increasingly organizations operate across state lines, multiple times zones, and in many countries or continents at the same time.  No longer is midnight to 6am a safe time to take down the system for upgrades, to run recon’s and import or update user accounts and attributes.  Further IT organizations are operating as shared services with SLA’s similar to telephone carrier levels expected by their “clients”.  Workers are moved in and out of roles on a weekly, daily, or even hourly rate and IAM is expected to support those rapid changes.  End users registering for services during business hours in Singapore are expected their access to be green-lighted in custom apps hosted in Portugal within the hour.  Many of the expectations of asynchronous systems and batched updates are not adequate and the number and types of users is growing. When organizations acted more like independent teams at functional or geographic levels it was manageable to have processes that relied on a handful of people who knew how to make things work …. Knew how to get you access to the key systems to get your job done.  Today everyone is expected to do more with less, the finance administrator previously supporting their local Atlanta sales office might now be asked to help close the books for the Johannesburg team, and access certification process once completed monthly by Joan on the 3rd floor is now done by a shared pool of resources in Sao Paulo.   Fragmented processes that rely on institutional knowledge to get access to systems and get work done quickly break down in these scenarios.  Highly robust processes that have automated workflows for connected or disconnected systems give organizations the dynamic flexibility to share work across these lines and cut costs or increase productivity. As the IT industry computing paradigms continue to change with the passing of time, and as mature or proven approaches become clear, it is normal for organizations to adjust accordingly. Businesses must manage identity in an increasingly hybrid world in which legacy on-premises IAM infrastructures are extended or replaced to support more and more interconnected and interdependent services to a wider range of users. The old legacy IAM implementation models we had relied on to manage identities no longer apply. End users expect to self-request access to services from their tablet, get supervisor approval over mobile devices and email, and launch the application even if is hosted on the cloud, or run by a partner, vendor, or service provider. While user expectations are higher, they are also simpler … logging into custom desktop apps to request approvals, or going through email or paper based processes for certification is unacceptable.  Users expect security to operate within the paradigm of the application … i.e. feel like the application they are using. Citizen and customer facing applications have evolved from every where, with custom applications, 3rd party tools, and merging in from acquired entities or 3rd party OEM’s resold to expand your portfolio of services.  These all have their own user stores, authentication models, user lifecycles, session management, etc.  Often the designers/developers are no longer accessible and the documentation is limited.  Bringing together underlying directories to scale for growth, and improve user experience is critical for revenue … but also for operations. Job functions are more dynamic.... take the Olympics for example.  Endless organizations from corporations broadcasting, endorsing, or marketing through the event … to non-profit athletic foundations and public/government entities for athletes and public safety, all operate simultaneously on the world stage.  Each organization needs to spin up short-term teams, often dealing with proprietary information from hot ads to racing strategies or security plans.  IAM is expected to enable team’s to spin up, enable new applications, protect privacy, and secure critical infrastructure.  Then it needs to be disabled just as quickly as users go back to their previous responsibilities. On a more technical level … Optimized system directory; tuning guidelines and parameters are needed by businesses today. Business’s need to be making the right choices (virtual directories) and considerations via choosing the correct architectural patterns (virtual, direct, replicated, and tuning), challenge is that business need to assess and chose the correct architectural patters (centralized, virtualized, and distributed) Today's Business organizations have very complex heterogeneous enterprises that contain diverse and multifaceted information. With today's ever changing global landscape, the strategic end goal in challenging times for business is business agility. The business of identity management requires enterprise's to be more agile and more responsive than ever before. The continued proliferation of networking devices (PC, tablet, PDA's, notebooks, etc.) has caused the number of devices and users to be granted access to these devices to grow exponentially. Business needs to deploy an IAM system that can account for the demands for authentication and authorizations to these devices. Increased innovation is forcing business and organizations to centralize their identity management services. Access management needs to handle traditional web based access as well as handle new innovations around mobile, as well as address insufficient governance processes which can lead to rouge identity accounts, which can then become a source of vulnerabilities within a business’s identity platform. Risk based decisions are providing challenges to business, for an adaptive risk model to make proper access decisions via standard Web single sign on for internal and external customers,. Organizations have to move beyond simple login and passwords to address trusted relationship questions such as: Is this a trusted customer, client, or citizen? Is this a trusted employee, vendor, or partner? Is this a trusted device? Without a solid technological foundation, organizational performance, collaboration, constituent services, or any other organizational processes will languish. A Single server location presents not only network concerns for distributed user base, but identity challenges. The network risks are centered on latency of the long trip that the traffic has to take. Other risks are a performance around availability and if the single identity server is lost, all access is lost. As you can see, there are many reasons why performance tuning IAM will have a substantial impact on the success of your organization.  In our next installment in the series we roll up our sleeves and get into detailed tuning techniques used everyday by thought leaders in the field implementing Oracle Identity & Access Management Solutions.

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• A quick look at: sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server places data into cache as it reads it from disk so as to speed up future queries. This dmv lets you see how much data is cached at any given time and knowing how this changes over time can help you ensure your servers run smoothly and are adequately resourced to run your systems. This dmv gives the number of cached pages in the buffer pool along with the database id that they relate to: USE [tempdb] GO SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) , database_id ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC; This gives you results which are quite useful, but if you add a new column with the code: …to convert the pages value to show a MB value then they become more relevant and meaningful. To see how your server reacts to queries, start up SSMS and connect to a test server and database – mine is called AdventureWorks2008. Make sure you start from a know position by running: -- Only run this on a test server otherwise your production server's-- performance may drop off a cliff and your phone will start ringing. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS GO Now we can run a query that would normally turn a DBA’s hair white: USE [AdventureWorks2008] go SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] …and then check our cache situation: A nice low figure – not! Almost 2000 pages of data in cache equating to approximately 15MB. Luckily these tables are quite narrow; if this had been on a table with more columns then this could be even more dramatic. So, let’s make our query more efficient. After resetting the cache with the DROPCLEANBUFFERS and FREEPROCCACHE code above, we’ll only select the columns we want and implement a WHERE predicate to limit the rows to a specific customer. SELECT [sod].[OrderQty] , [sod].[ProductID] , [soh].[OrderDate] , [soh].[CustomerID] FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] WHERE [soh].[CustomerID] = 29722 …and check our effect cache: Now that is more sympathetic to our server and the other systems sharing its resources. I can hear you asking: “What has this got to do with logging, Jonathan?” Well, a smart DBA will keep an eye on this metric on their servers so they know how their hardware is coping and be ready to investigate anomalies so that no ‘disruptive’ code starts to unsettle things. Capturing this information over a period of time can lead you to build a picture of how a database relies on the cache and how it interacts with other databases. This might allow you to decide on appropriate schedules for over night jobs or otherwise balance the work of your server. You could schedule this job to run with a SQL Agent job and store the data in your DBA’s database by creating a table with: IF OBJECT_ID('CachedPages') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE CachedPages CREATE TABLE CachedPages ( cached_pages_count INT , MB INT , Database_Name VARCHAR(256) , CollectedOn DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE() ) …and then filling it with: INSERT INTO [dbo].[CachedPages] ( [cached_pages_count] , [MB] , [Database_Name] ) SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , ( COUNT(*) * 8.0 ) / 1024 AS MB , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY database_id After this has been left logging your system metrics for a while you can easily see how your databases use the cache over time and may see some spikes that warrant your attention. This sort of logging can be applied to all sorts of server statistics so that you can gather information that will give you baseline data on how your servers are performing. This means that when you get a problem you can see what statistics are out of their normal range and target you efforts to resolve the issue more rapidly.

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• RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: Writing Java code to blink LED

  - by hinkmond

  So, you've followed the previous steps to install Java Embedded on your Raspberry Pi ?, you went to Fry's and picked up some jumper wires, LEDs, and resistors ?, you hooked up the wires, LED, and resistor the the correct pins ?, and now you want to start programming in Java on your RPi? Yes? ???????! OK, then... Here we go. You can use the following source code to blink your first LED on your RPi using Java. In the code you can see that I'm not using any complicated gpio libraries like wiringpi or pi4j, and I'm not doing any low-level pin manipulation like you can in C. And, I'm not using python (hell no!). This is Java programming, so we keep it simple (and more readable) than those other programming languages. See: Write Java code to do this In the Java code, I'm opening up the RPi Debian Wheezy well-defined file handles to control the GPIO ports. First I'm resetting everything using the unexport/export file handles. (On the RPi, if you open the well-defined file handles and write certain ASCII text to them, you can drive your GPIO to perform certain operations. See this GPIO reference). Next, I write a "1" then "0" to the value file handle of the GPIO0 port (see the previous pinout diagram). That makes the LED blink. Then, I loop to infinity. Easy, huh? import java.io.* /* * Java Embedded Raspberry Pi GPIO app */ package jerpigpio; import java.io.FileWriter; /** * * @author hinkmond */ public class JerpiGPIO { static final String GPIO_OUT = "out"; static final String GPIO_ON = "1"; static final String GPIO_OFF = "0"; static final String GPIO_CH00="0"; /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { FileWriter commandFile; try { /*** Init GPIO port for output ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); // Reset the port unexportFile.write(GPIO_CH00); unexportFile.flush(); // Set the port for use exportFile.write(GPIO_CH00); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to port input/output control FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+GPIO_CH00+"/direction"); // Set port for output directionFile.write(GPIO_OUT); directionFile.flush(); /*--- Send commands to GPIO port ---*/ // Opne file handle to issue commands to GPIO port commandFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+GPIO_CH00+"/value"); // Loop forever while (true) { // Set GPIO port ON commandFile.write(GPIO_ON); commandFile.flush(); // Wait for a while java.lang.Thread.sleep(200); // Set GPIO port OFF commandFile.write(GPIO_OFF); commandFile.flush(); // Wait for a while java.lang.Thread.sleep(200); } } catch (Exception exception) { exception.printStackTrace(); } } } Hinkmond

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• Tuning Red Gate: #3 of Lots

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I'm drilling down into the metrics about SQL Server itself available to me in the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor to see what's up with our two problematic servers. In the previous post I'd noticed that rg-sql01 had quite a few CPU spikes. So one of the first things I want to check there is how much CPU is getting used by SQL Server itself. It's possible we're looking at some other process using up all the CPU Nope, It's SQL Server. I compared this to the rg-sql02 server: You can see that there is a more, consistently low set of CPU counters there. I clearly need to look at rg-sql01 and capture more specific data around the queries running on it to identify which ones are causing these CPU spikes. I always like to look at the Batch Requests/sec on a server, not because it's an indication of a problem, but because it gives you some idea of the load. Just how much is this server getting hit? Here are rg-sql01 and rg-sql02: Of the two, clearly rg-sql01 has a lot of activity. Remember though, that's all this is a measure of, activity. It doesn't suggest anything other than what it says, the number of requests coming in. But it's the kind of thing you want to know in order to understand how the system is used. Are you seeing a correlation between the number of requests and the CPU usage, or a reverse correlation, the number of requests drops as the CPU spikes? See, it's useful. Some of the details you can look at are Compilations/sec, Compilations/Batch and Recompilations/sec. These give you some idea of how the cache is getting used within the system. None of these showed anything interesting on either server. One metric that I like (even though I know it can be controversial) is the Page Life Expectancy. On the average server I expect see a series of mountains as the PLE climbs then drops due to a data load or something along those lines. That's not the case here: Those spikes back in January suggest that the servers weren't really being used much. The PLE on the rg-sql01 seems to be somewhat consistent growing to 3 hours or so then dropping, but the rg-sql02 PLE looks like it might be all over the map. Instead of continuing to look at this high level gathering data view, I'm going to drill down on rg-sql02 and see what it's done for the last week: And now we begin to see where we might have an issue. Memory on this system is getting flushed every 1/2 hour or so. I'm going to check another metric, scans: Whoa! I'm going back to the system real quick to look at some disk information again for rg-sql02. Here is the average disk queue length on the server: and the transfers Right, I think I have a guess as to what's up here. We're seeing memory get flushed constantly and we're seeing lots of scans. The disks are queuing, especially that F drive, and there are lots of requests that correspond to the scans and the memory flushes. In short, we've got queries that are scanning the data, a lot, so we either have bad queries or bad indexes. I'm going back to the server overview for rg-sql02 and check the Top 10 expensive queries. I'm modifying it to show me the last 3 days and the totals, so I'm not looking at some maintenance routine that ran 10 minutes ago and is skewing the results: OK. I need to look into these queries that are getting executed this much. They're generating a lot of reads, but which queries are generating the most reads: Ow, all still going against the same database. This is where I'm going to temporarily leave SQL Monitor. What I want to do is connect up to the server, validate that the Warehouse database is using the F:\ drive (which I'll put money down it is) and then start seeing what's up with these queries. Part 1 of the Series Part 2 of the Series

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• Windows Azure Use Case: New Development

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Computing platforms evolve over time. Originally computers were directed by hardware wiring - that, the “code” was the path of the wiring that directed an electrical signal from one component to another, or in some cases a physical switch controlled the path. From there software was developed, first in a very low machine language, then when compilers were created, computer languages could more closely mimic written statements. These language statements can be compiled into the lower-level machine language still used by computers today. Microprocessors replaced logic circuits, sometimes with fewer instructions (Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC) and sometimes with more instructions (Complex Instruction Set Computing, CISC). The reason this history is important is that along each technology advancement, computer code has adapted. Writing software for a RISC architecture is significantly different than developing for a CISC architecture. And moving to a Distributed Architecture like Windows Azure also has specific implementation details that our code must follow. But why make a change? As I’ve described, we need to make the change to our code to follow advances in technology. There’s no point in change for its own sake, but as a new paradigm offers benefits to our users, it’s important for us to leverage those benefits where it makes sense. That’s most often done in new development projects. It’s a far simpler task to take a new project and adapt it to Windows Azure than to try and retrofit older code designed in a previous computing environment. We can still use the same coding languages (.NET, Java, C++) to write code for Windows Azure, but we need to think about the architecture of that code on a new project so that it runs in the most efficient, cost-effective way in a Distributed Architecture. As we receive new requests from the organization for new projects, a distributed architecture paradigm belongs in the decision matrix for the platform target. Implementation: When you are designing new applications for Windows Azure (or any distributed architecture) there are many important details to consider. But at the risk of over-simplification, there are three main concepts to learn and architect within the new code: Stateless Programming - Stateless program is a prime concept within distributed architectures. Rather than each server owning the complete processing cycle, the information from an operation that needs to be retained (the “state”) should be persisted to another location c(like storage) common to all machines involved in the process.  An interesting learning process for Stateless Programming (although not unique to this language type) is to learn Functional Programming. Server-Side Processing - Along with developing using a Stateless Design, the closer you can locate the code processing to the data, the less expensive and faster the code will run. When you control the network layer, this is less important, since you can send vast amounts of data between the server and client, allowing the client to perform processing. In a distributed architecture, you don’t always own the network, so it’s performance is unpredictable. Also, you may not be able to control the platform the user is on (such as a smartphone, PC or tablet), so it’s imperative to deliver only results and graphical elements where possible.  Token-Based Authentication - Also called “Claims-Based Authorization”, this code practice means instead of allowing a user to log on once and then running code in that context, a more granular level of security is used. A “token” or “claim”, often represented as a Certificate, is sent along for a series or even one request. In other words, every call to the code is authenticated against the token, rather than allowing a user free reign within the code call. While this is more work initially, it can bring a greater level of security, and it is far more resilient to disconnections. Resources: See the references of “Nondistributed Deployment” and “Distributed Deployment” at the top of this article for more information with graphics:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx  Stack Overflow has a good thread on functional programming: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844536/advantages-of-stateless-programming  Another good discussion on Stack Overflow on server-side processing is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064018/client-side-or-server-side-processing Claims Based Authorization is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx

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• career in Mobile sw/Application Development [closed]

  - by pramod

  i m planning to do a course on Wireless & mobile computing.The syllabus are given below.Please check & let me know whether its worth to do.How is the job prospects after that.I m a fresher & from electronic Engg.The modules are- *Wireless and Mobile Computing (WiMC) – Modules* C, C++ Programming and Data Structures 100 Hours C Revision C, C++ programming tools on linux(Vi editor, gdb etc.) OOP concepts Programming constructs Functions Access Specifiers Classes and Objects Overloading Inheritance Polymorphism Templates Data Structures in C++ Arrays, stacks, Queues, Linked Lists( Singly, Doubly, Circular) Trees, Threaded trees, AVL Trees Graphs, Sorting (bubble, Quick, Heap , Merge) System Development Methodology 18 Hours Software life cycle and various life cycle models Project Management Software: A Process Various Phases in s/w Development Risk Analysis and Management Software Quality Assurance Introduction to Coding Standards Software Project Management Testing Strategies and Tactics Project Management and Introduction to Risk Management Java Programming 110 Hours Data Types, Operators and Language Constructs Classes and Objects, Inner Classes and Inheritance Inheritance Interface and Package Exceptions Threads Java.lang Java.util Java.awt Java.io Java.applet Java.swing XML, XSL, DTD Java n/w programming Introduction to servlet Mobile and Wireless Technologies 30 Hours Basics of Wireless Technologies Cellular Communication: Single cell systems, multi-cell systems, frequency reuse, analog cellular systems, digital cellular systems GSM standard: Mobile Station, BTS, BSC, MSC, SMS sever, call processing and protocols CDMA standard: spread spectrum technologies, 2.5G and 3G Systems: HSCSD, GPRS, W-CDMA/UMTS,3GPP and international roaming, Multimedia services CDMA based cellular mobile communication systems Wireless Personal Area Networks: Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards Mobile Handset Device Interfacing: Data Cables, IrDA, Bluetooth, Touch- Screen Interfacing Wireless Security, Telemetry Java Wireless Programming and Applications Development(J2ME) 100 Hours J2ME Architecture The CLDC and the KVM Tools and Development Process Classification of CLDC Target Devices CLDC Collections API CLDC Streams Model MIDlets MIDlet Lifecycle MIDP Programming MIDP Event Architecture High-Level Event Handling Low-Level Event Handling The CLDC Streams Model The CLDC Networking Package The MIDP Implementation Introduction to WAP, WML Script and XHTML Introduction to Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) Symbian Programming 60 Hours Symbian OS basics Symbian OS services Symbian OS organization GUI approaches ROM building Debugging Hardware abstraction Base porting Symbian OS reference design porting File systems Overview of Symbian OS Development – DevKits, CustKits and SDKs CodeWarrior Tool Application & UI Development Client Server Framework ECOM STDLIB in Symbian iPhone Programming 80 Hours Introducing iPhone core specifications Understanding iPhone input and output Designing web pages for the iPhone Capturing iPhone events Introducing the webkit CSS transforms transitions and animations Using iUI for web apps Using Canvas for web apps Building web apps with Dashcode Writing Dashcode programs Debugging iPhone web pages SDK programming for web developers An introduction to object-oriented programming Introducing the iPhone OS Using Xcode and Interface builder Programming with the SDK Toolkit OS Concepts & Linux Programming 60 Hours Operating System Concepts What is an OS? Processes Scheduling & Synchronization Memory management Virtual Memory and Paging Linux Architecture Programming in Linux Linux Shell Programming Writing Device Drivers Configuring and Building GNU Cross-tool chain Configuring and Compiling Linux Virtual File System Porting Linux on Target Hardware WinCE.NET and Database Technology 80 Hours Execution Process in .NET Environment Language Interoperability Assemblies Need of C# Operators Namespaces & Assemblies Arrays Preprocessors Delegates and Events Boxing and Unboxing Regular Expression Collections Multithreading Programming Memory Management Exceptions Handling Win Forms Working with database ASP .NET Server Controls and client-side scripts ASP .NET Web Server Controls Validation Controls Principles of database management Need of RDBMS etc Client/Server Computing RDBMS Technologies Codd’s Rules Data Models Normalization Techniques ER Diagrams Data Flow Diagrams Database recovery & backup SQL Android Application 80 Hours Introduction of android Why develop for android Android SDK features Creating android activities Fundamental android UI design Intents, adapters, dialogs Android Technique for saving data Data base in Androids Maps, Geocoding, Location based services Toast, using alarms, Instant messaging Using blue tooth Using Telephony Introducing sensor manager Managing network and wi-fi connection Advanced androids development Linux kernel security Implement AIDL Interface. Project 120 Hours

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• Silverlight Cream for January 08, 2011 -- #1023

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Heavy and yet incomplete Issue: Mike Wolf, Walter Ferrari, Colin Eberhardt, Mathew Charles, Don Burnett, Senthil Kumar, cherylws, Rob Miles, Derik Whittaker, Thomas Martinsen(-2-), Jason Ginchereau, Vishal Nayan, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight)" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Windows Phone Blue Book Pdf" Rob Miles Sharepoint/Silverlight: "Discover Sharepoint with Silverlight - Part 1" Walter Ferrari Shoutouts: Dave Isbitski has announced a WP7 Firestarter, check for your local MS office: Announcing the “Light up your Silverlight Applications for Windows 7 Firestarter” From SilverlightCream.com: Leveraging Silverlight in the USA TODAY Windows 7-Based Slate App Mike Wolf has a post up about Cynergy's release of the new USA TODAY software for Windows 7 Slate devices, and gives a great rundown of all the resources, and how specific Silverlight features were used... tons of outstanding external links here! Discover Sharepoint with Silverlight - Part 1 Walter Ferrari has tutorial up at SilverlightShow... looks like the first in a series on Silverlight and Sharepoint... lots of low-level info about the internals and using them. Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight) Colin Eberhardt has a really cool AutoTooltip attached behavior that gives a tooltip of the actual text if text is trimmed ... and has an active demo on the post... very cool. RIA Services Output Caching Mathew Charles digs into a RIA feature that hasn't gotten any blog love: output caching, describing all the ins and outs of improving the performance of your app using caching. Emailing your Files to Box.net Cloud Storage with WP7 Don Burnett details out everything you need to do to get Box.Net and your WP7 setup to talk to each other. Shortcuts keys for Developing on Windows Phone 7 Emulator Senthil Kumar has some good WP7 posts up ... this one is a cheatsheet list of Function-key assignements for the WP7 emulator... another sidebar listint Windows Phone 7 Design Guidelines – Cheat Sheet cherylws has a great Guideline list/Cheat Sheet up for reference while building a WP7 app... this is a great reference... I'm adding it to the Right-hand sidebar of WynApse.com Windows Phone Blue Book Pdf Rob Miles has added another book and color to his collection of both -- Windows Phone Programming in C#, also known as the Windows Phone Blue Book... get a copy from the links he gives, and check out his other free books as well. Navigating to an external URL using the HyperlinkButton Derik Whittaker has a post up discussing the woes (and error messages) of trying to navigate to an external URL with the Hyperlink button in WP7, plus his MVVM-friendly solution that you can download. Set Source on Image from code in Silverlight Thomas Martinsen has a couple posts up... first is this quick one on the code required to set an image source. Show UI element based on authentication Thomas Martinsen's latest is one on a BoolToVisibilityConverter allowing a boolean indicator of Authentication to be used to control the visibility of a button (in the sample) WP7 ReorderListBox improvements: rearrange animations and more Jason Ginchereau has updated his ReorderListBox from last week to add some animations (fading/sliding) during the rearrangement. Navigation in Silverlight Without Using Navigation Framework Vishal Nayan has a post that attracted my attention... Navigation by manipulating RootVisual content... I've been knee-deep in similar code in Prism this week (and why my blogging is off) ... Creating a WP7 Custom Control in 7 Steps WindowsPhoneGeek creates a simple custom control for WP7 before your very eyes in his latest post, focusing on the minimum requirements necessary for writing a Custom Control. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Oracle Social Network and the Flying Monkey Smart Target

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I teased this before OpenWorld, and for those of you who didn’t make it to the show or didn’t come by the Office Hours to take the Oracle Social Network Technical Tour Noel (@noelportugal) ran, I give you the Flying Monkey Smart Target. In brief, Noel built a target, about two feet tall, which when struck, played monkey sounds and posted a comment to an Oracle Social Network Conversation, all controlled by a Raspberry Pi. He also connected a Dropcam to record the winner just prior to the strike. I’m not sure how it all works, but maybe Noel can post the technical specifics. Here’s Noel describing the Challenge, the Target and a few other tidbit in an interview with Friend of the ‘Lab, Bob Rhubart (@brhubart). The monkey target bits are 2:12-2:54 if you’re into brevity, but watch the whole thing. Here are some screen grabs from the Oracle Social Network Conversation, including the Conversation itself, where you can see all the strikes documented, the picture captured, and the annotation capabilities: #gallery-1 { margin: auto;? } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }    That’s Diego in one shot, looking very focused, and Ernst in the other, who kindly annotated himself, two of the development team members. You might have seen them in the Oracle Social Network Hands-On Lab during the show. There’s a trend here. Not by accident, fun stuff like this has becoming our calling card, e.g. the Kscope 12 WebCenter Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. Not only are these entertaining demonstrations, but they showcase what’s possible with RESTful APIs and get developers noodling on how easy it is to connect real objects to cloud services to fix pain points. I spoke to some great folks from the City of Atlanta about extending the concepts of the flying monkey target to physical asset monitoring. Just take an internet-connected camera with REST APIs like the Dropcam, wire it up to Oracle Social Netwok, and you can hack together a monitoring device for a datacenter or a warehouse. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but we’re a lot closer to that reality than we were even two years ago. Another noteworthy bit from Noel’s interview, beginning at 2:55, is the evolution of social developer. Speaking of, make sure to check out the Oracle Social Developer Community. Look for more on the social developer in the coming months. Noel has become quite the Raspberry Pi evangelist, and why not, it’s a great tool, a low-power Linux machine, cheap ($35!) and highly extensible, perfect for makers and students alike. He attended a meetup on Saturday before OpenWorld, and during the show, I heard him evangelizing the Pi and its capabilities to many people. There is some fantastic innovation forming in that ecosystem, much of it with Java. The OTN gang raffled off five Pis, and I expect to see lots of great stuff in the very near future. Stay tuned this week for posts on all our Challenge entrants. There’s some great innovation you won’t want to miss. Find the comments. Update: I forgot to mention that Noel used Twilio, one of his favorite services, during the show to send out Challenge updates and information to all the contestants.

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• Improved Performance on PeopleSoft Combined Benchmark using SPARC T4-4

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle's PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 combined online and batch benchmark achieved a world record 18,000 concurrent users experiencing subsecond response time while executing a PeopleSoft Payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 32.4 minutes. This result was obtained with a SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Database 11g Release 2, a SPARC T4-4 server running PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 application server and a SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle WebLogic Server in the web tier. The SPARC T4-4 server running the application tier used Oracle Solaris Zones which provide a flexible, scalable and manageable virtualization environment. The average CPU utilization on the SPARC T4-2 server in the web tier was 17%, on the SPARC T4-4 server in the application tier it was 59%, and on the SPARC T4-4 server in the database tier was 47% (online and batch) leaving significant headroom for additional processing across the three tiers. The SPARC T4-4 server used for the database tier hosted Oracle Database 11g Release 2 using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for database files management with I/O performance equivalent to raw devices. Performance Landscape Results are presented for the PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service and Payroll combined benchmark. The new result with 128 streams shows significant improvement in the payroll batch processing time with little impact on the self-service component response time. PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service and Payroll Benchmark Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) SPARC T4-4 (db) 18,000 0.988 0.539 32.4 128 SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) SPARC T4-4 (db) 18,000 0.944 0.503 43.3 64 The following results are for the PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service benchmark that was previous run. The results are not directly comparable with the combined results because they do not include the payroll component. PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service 9.1 Benchmark Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) 2x SPARC T4-2 (db) 18,000 1.048 0.742 N/A N/A The following results are for the PeopleSoft Payroll benchmark that was previous run. The results are not directly comparable with the combined results because they do not include the self-service component. PeopleSoft Payroll (N.A.) 9.1 - 500K Employees (7 Million SQL PayCalc, Unicode) Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-4 (db) N/A N/A N/A 30.84 96 Configuration Summary Application Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 512 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 PeopleTools 8.52 PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Database Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 256 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 PeopleTools 8.52 Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031 Micro Focus Server Express (COBOL v 5.1.00) Web Tier Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 server with 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 PeopleTools 8.52 Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.4 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Server X2-4 as a COMSTAR head for data 4 x Intel Xeon X7550, 2.0 GHz 128 GB memory 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (80 flash modules) 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (40 flash modules) 1 x Sun Fire X4275 as a COMSTAR head for redo logs 12 x 2 TB SAS disks with Niwot Raid controller Benchmark Description This benchmark combines PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 HR Self Service online and PeopleSoft Payroll batch workloads to run on a unified database deployed on Oracle Database 11g Release 2. The PeopleSoft HRSS benchmark kit is a Oracle standard benchmark kit run by all platform vendors to measure the performance. It's an OLTP benchmark where DB SQLs are moderately complex. The results are certified by Oracle and a white paper is published. PeopleSoft HR SS defines a business transaction as a series of HTML pages that guide a user through a particular scenario. Users are defined as corporate Employees, Managers and HR administrators. The benchmark consist of 14 scenarios which emulate users performing typical HCM transactions such as viewing paycheck, promoting and hiring employees, updating employee profile and other typical HCM application transactions. All these transactions are well-defined in the PeopleSoft HR Self-Service 9.1 benchmark kit. This benchmark metric is the weighted average response search/save time for all the transactions. The PeopleSoft 9.1 Payroll (North America) benchmark demonstrates system performance for a range of processing volumes in a specific configuration. This workload represents large batch runs typical of a ERP environment during a mass update. The benchmark measures five application business process run times for a database representing large organization. They are Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation, Payroll Confirmation, Print Advice forms, and Create Direct Deposit File. The benchmark metric is the cumulative elapsed time taken to complete the Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation and Payroll Confirmation business application processes. The benchmark metrics are taken for each respective benchmark while running simultaneously on the same database back-end. Specifically, the payroll batch processes are started when the online workload reaches steady state (the maximum number of online users) and overlap with online transactions for the duration of the steady state. Key Points and Best Practices Two PeopleSoft Domain sets with 200 application servers each on a SPARC T4-4 server were hosted in 2 separate Oracle Solaris Zones to demonstrate consolidation of multiple application servers, ease of administration and performance tuning. Each Oracle Solaris Zone was bound to a separate processor set, each containing 15 cores (total 120 threads). The default set (1 core from first and third processor socket, total 16 threads) was used for network and disk interrupt handling. This was done to improve performance by reducing memory access latency by using the physical memory closest to the processors and offload I/O interrupt handling to default set threads, freeing up cpu resources for Application Servers threads and balancing application workload across 240 threads. A total of 128 PeopleSoft streams server processes where used on the database node to complete payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 32.4 minutes. See Also Oracle PeopleSoft Benchmark White Papers oracle.com SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Managementoracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (Payroll) oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 8 November 2012.

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• Is this simple XOR encrypted communication absolutely secure?

  - by user3123061

  Say Alice have 4GB USB flash memory and Peter also have 4GB USB flash memory. They once meet and save on both of memories two files named alice_to_peter.key (2GB) and peter_to_alice.key (2GB) which is randomly generated bits. Then they never meet again and communicate electronicaly. Alice also maintains variable called alice_pointer and Peter maintains variable called peter_pointer which is both initially set to zero. Then when Alice needs to send message to Peter they do: encrypted_message_to_peter[n] = message_to_peter[n] XOR alice_to_peter.key[alice_pointer + n] Where n i n-th byte of message. Then alice_pointer is attached at begining of the encrypted message and (alice_pointer + encrypted message) is sent to Peter and then alice_pointer is incremented by length of message (and for maximum security can be used part of key erased) Peter receives encrypted_message, reads alice_pointer stored at beginning of message and do this: message_to_peter[n] = encrypted_message_to_peter[n] XOR alice_to_peter.key[alice_pointer + n] And for maximum security after reading of message also erases used part of key. - EDIT: In fact this step with this simple algorithm (without integrity check and authentication) decreases security, see Paulo Ebermann post below. When Peter needs to send message to Alice they do analogical steps with peter_to_alice.key and with peter_pointer. With this trivial schema they can send for next 50 years each day 2GB / (50 * 365) = cca 115kB of encrypted data in both directions. If they need more data to send, they simple use larger memory for keys for example with today 2TB harddiscs (1TB keys) is possible to exchange next 50years 60MB/day ! (thats practicaly lots of data for example with using compression its more than hour of high quality voice communication) It Seems to me there is no way for attacker to read encrypted message without keys even if they have infinitely fast computer. because even with infinitely fast computer with brute force they get ever possible message that can fit to length of message, but this is astronomical amount of messages and attacker dont know which of them is actual message. I am right? Is this communication schema really absolutely secure? And if its secure, has this communication method its own name? (I mean XOR encryption is well-known, but whats name of this concrete practical application with use large memories at both communication sides for keys? I am humbly expecting that this application has been invented someone before me :-) ) Note: If its absolutely secure then its amazing because with today low cost large memories it is practicaly much cheeper way of secure communication than expensive quantum cryptography and with equivalent security! EDIT: I think it will be more and more practical in future with lower a lower cost of memories. It can solve secure communication forever. Today you have no certainty if someone succesfuly atack to existing ciphers one year later and make its often expensive implementations unsecure. In many cases before comunication exist step where communicating sides meets personaly, thats time to generate large keys. I think its perfect for military communication for example for communication with submarines which can have installed harddrive with large keys and military central can have harddrive for each submarine they have. It can be also practical in everyday life for example for control your bank account because when you create your account you meet with bank etc.

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• Create Panoramic Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you ever wanted to capture the view from a mountain or the full size of a building?  Here’s how you can stitch multiple shots together into the perfect panoramic picture for free with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Getting Started First, make sure you have Windows Live Photo Gallery installed (link below).  Live Photo Gallery is part of the Windows Live Essentials suite, you can select other programs to install along with it if you want. Make sure to uncheck setting your home page to MSN and setting your search provider as Bing if you don’t want them changed.   Now, make sure you have pictures that will work good for a panorama.  These need to be taken from the same spot, and the edges of the pictures need to overlap so the program can find where the pictures connect.  Here we have taken pictures inside a building with a cell phone camera. Make your Panorama Open Live Photo Gallery, and find the pictures you want to use in your panorama.  It will automatically index and display all of the photos in your Pictures folder or Library if you’re using Windows 7. If your pictures are saved elsewhere, add that folder to Photo Gallery.  Click File, Include a folder in the gallery, and select the correct folder at the prompt. Now select all of the pictures that you will use in your panorama.  You can easily do this by clicking the checkbox on each picture that appears when you hover over it.    Once all of the pictures are selected, click Make in the menu bar and select Create panoramic photo… Alternately, right-click on any of the pictures you’ve selected, and click Create panoramic photo… Live Photo Gallery will analyze your photos and compost them together to create a panorama.  The amount of time it takes will vary depending on the number of photos, size of the pictures, and computer speed. When it’s finished making the panorama, you’ll be prompted to enter a file name and save the picture. Your new panorama picture will open as soon as it’s saved.  Depending on your shots, the picture may have quite a bit of black space around the edges where each picture didn’t cover the exact same amount of area. To correct this, click Fix on the menu bar, and then select Crop Photo in the sidebar that opens. Select the center of the picture with the crop tool, and click Apply when you’ve got the selection you want. Live Photo Gallery automatically saves your picture changes, and you can revert back to the original picture if you wish. Now you’ve got a nice panoramic shot, trimmed and ready to print, share, and more. Conclusion Panoramic shots are great ways to capture your whole surroundings, whether it’s a sports stadium, mall, or a scenic mountain view.  They can also be a great way to capture more with low-resolution cameras. Link Download Windows Live Photo Gallery Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Family Fun: Share Photos with Photo Gallery and Windows Live SpacesLearning Windows 7: Manage Photos with Live Photo GalleryEasily Re-Size Photos in Windows Vista or XPInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7Convert Photos to Flash for Your Website TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Using Node.js as an accelerator for WCF REST services

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Node.js is a server-side JavaScript platform "for easily building fast, scalable network applications". It's built on Google's V8 JavaScript engine and uses an (almost) entirely async event-driven processing model, running in a single thread. If you're new to Node and your reaction is "why would I want to run JavaScript on the server side?", this is the headline answer: in 150 lines of JavaScript you can build a Node.js app which works as an accelerator for WCF REST services*. It can double your messages-per-second throughput, halve your CPU workload and use one-fifth of the memory footprint, compared to the WCF services direct.   Well, it can if: 1) your WCF services are first-class HTTP citizens, honouring client cache ETag headers in request and response; 2) your services do a reasonable amount of work to build a response; 3) your data is read more often than it's written. In one of my projects I have a set of REST services in WCF which deal with data that only gets updated weekly, but which can be read hundreds of times an hour. The services issue ETags and will return a 304 if the client sends a request with the current ETag, which means in the most common scenario the client uses its local cached copy. But when the weekly update happens, then all the client caches are invalidated and they all need the same new data. Then the service will get hundreds of requests with old ETags, and they go through the full service stack to build the same response for each, taking up threads and processing time. Part of that processing means going off to a database on a separate cloud, which introduces more latency and downtime potential.   We can use ASP.NET output caching with WCF to solve the repeated processing problem, but the server will still be thread-bound on incoming requests, and to get the current ETags reliably needs a database call per request. The accelerator solves that by running as a proxy - all client calls come into the proxy, and the proxy routes calls to the underlying REST service. We could use Node as a straight passthrough proxy and expect some benefit, as the server would be less thread-bound, but we would still have one WCF and one database call per proxy call. But add some smart caching logic to the proxy, and share ETags between Node and WCF (so the proxy doesn't even need to call the servcie to get the current ETag), and the underlying service will only be invoked when data has changed, and then only once - all subsequent client requests will be served from the proxy cache.   I've built this as a sample up on GitHub: NodeWcfAccelerator on sixeyed.codegallery. Here's how the architecture looks:     The code is very simple. The Node proxy runs on port 8010 and all client requests target the proxy. If the client request has an ETag header then the proxy looks up the ETag in the tag cache to see if it is current - the sample uses memcached to share ETags between .NET and Node. If the ETag from the client matches the current server tag, the proxy sends a 304 response with an empty body to the client, telling it to use its own cached version of the data. If the ETag from the client is stale, the proxy looks for a local cached version of the response, checking for a file named after the current ETag. If that file exists, its contents are returned to the client as the body in a 200 response, which includes the current ETag in the header. If the proxy does not have a local cached file for the service response, it calls the service, and writes the WCF response to the local cache file, and to the body of a 200 response for the client. So the WCF service is only troubled if both client and proxy have stale (or no) caches.   The only (vaguely) clever bit in the sample is using the ETag cache, so the proxy can serve cached requests without any communication with the underlying service, which it does completely generically, so the proxy has no notion of what it is serving or what the services it proxies are doing. The relative path from the URL is used as the lookup key, so there's no shared key-generation logic between .NET and Node, and when WCF stores a tag it also stores the "read" URL against the ETag so it can be used for a reverse lookup, e.g:   Key Value /WcfSampleService/PersonService.svc/rest/fetch/3 "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6" "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6" /WcfSampleService/PersonService.svc/rest/fetch/3    In Node we read the cache using the incoming URL path as the key and we know that "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6" is the current ETag; we look for a local cached response in /caches/28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6.body (and the corresponding .header file which contains the original service response headers, so the proxy response is exactly the same as the underlying service). When the data is updated, we need to invalidate the ETag cache – which is why we need the reverse lookup in the cache. In the WCF update service, we don't need to know the URL of the related read service - we fetch the entity from the database, do a reverse lookup on the tag cache using the old ETag to get the read URL, update the new ETag against the URL, store the new reverse lookup and delete the old one.   Running Apache Bench against the two endpoints gives the headline performance comparison. Making 1000 requests with concurrency of 100, and not sending any ETag headers in the requests, with the Node proxy I get 102 requests handled per second, average response time of 975 milliseconds with 90% of responses served within 850 milliseconds; going direct to WCF with the same parameters, I get 53 requests handled per second, mean response time of 1853 milliseconds, with 90% of response served within 3260 milliseconds. Informally monitoring server usage during the tests, Node maxed at 20% CPU and 20Mb memory; IIS maxed at 60% CPU and 100Mb memory.   Note that the sample WCF service does a database read and sleeps for 250 milliseconds to simulate a moderate processing load, so this is *not* a baseline Node-vs-WCF comparison, but for similar scenarios where the  service call is expensive but applicable to numerous clients for a long timespan, the performance boost from the accelerator is considerable.     * - actually, the accelerator will work nicely for any HTTP request, where the URL (path + querystring) uniquely identifies a resource. In the sample, there is an assumption that the ETag is a GUID wrapped in double-quotes (e.g. "28cd4796-76b8-451b-adfd-75cb50a50fa6") – which is the default for WCF services. I use that assumption to name the cache files uniquely, but it is a trivial change to adapt to other ETag formats.

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• Troubleshooting High Load on Plesk LAMP Dedicated Server

  - by Callmeed

  I have 2 nearly identical dedicated servers with the same provider. They also run a nearly identical software stack: RedHat 5 64-bit, Plesk, PHP, Apache, & MySQL. We use them for hosting custom sites we build. The problem is, while our 1st server has a load average (in top) of around 0.3, the 2nd server consistently has a load average of around 4.0 or higher. Basic functions in Plesk are delayed and there is a bit of latency when executing shell commands. Anyone have ideas why it would be so high? And why it would differ from our other server so much? Here is my current top output (sorted by %MEM) ... Any help is much appreciated ... top - 21:48:04 up 100 days, 4:28, 1 user, load average: 3.74, 4.20, 4.23 Tasks: 336 total, 1 running, 335 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.8%us, 0.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.3%id, 7.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 12290884k total, 11886452k used, 404432k free, 2920212k buffers Swap: 2096472k total, 244k used, 2096228k free, 6560692k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 22536 apache 15 0 860m 547m 6484 S 0.0 4.6 0:10.96 httpd 26467 apache 15 0 859m 546m 6408 S 0.0 4.5 0:07.67 httpd 3620 apache 15 0 859m 545m 5552 S 0.0 4.5 0:06.15 httpd 1895 apache 15 0 858m 544m 6356 S 0.0 4.5 0:08.25 httpd 16933 apache 15 0 858m 544m 5488 S 0.0 4.5 0:01.57 httpd 6431 apache 15 0 856m 542m 6076 S 10.6 4.5 0:05.32 httpd 14417 apache 15 0 856m 542m 5568 S 0.0 4.5 0:03.88 httpd 15403 apache 15 0 855m 541m 5616 S 0.0 4.5 0:03.73 httpd 19165 apache 15 0 853m 539m 6252 S 0.0 4.5 0:12.40 httpd 15898 apache 15 0 852m 539m 5376 S 0.0 4.5 0:02.68 httpd 14401 apache 15 0 851m 538m 5460 S 0.0 4.5 0:02.97 httpd 15393 apache 15 0 851m 538m 5404 S 0.0 4.5 0:03.12 httpd 15427 apache 15 0 851m 538m 5496 S 0.0 4.5 0:02.44 httpd 14412 apache 15 0 851m 538m 5324 S 0.0 4.5 0:02.15 httpd 18330 apache 15 0 851m 537m 5136 S 0.0 4.5 0:01.30 httpd 18303 apache 15 0 848m 535m 5140 S 0.0 4.5 0:00.47 httpd 21190 apache 15 0 845m 533m 3988 S 0.0 4.4 0:00.33 httpd 15923 root 18 0 822m 521m 9928 S 0.0 4.3 10:04.81 httpd 22021 apache 15 0 828m 520m 4964 S 0.0 4.3 0:00.16 httpd 22146 apache 15 0 823m 515m 3016 S 0.0 4.3 0:00.02 httpd 22345 apache 15 0 822m 514m 2408 S 0.0 4.3 0:00.00 httpd 14721 apache 15 0 733m 510m 488 S 0.0 4.3 0:00.00 httpd 5094 root 15 0 1452m 122m 15m S 1.0 1.0 852:24.24 java 4636 mysql 15 0 532m 57m 6440 S 1.0 0.5 488:05.84 mysqld 4799 popuser 15 0 166m 53m 2368 S 0.0 0.4 0:36.64 spamd 16761 popuser 15 0 159m 46m 2312 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.38 spamd 4797 root 15 0 158m 45m 2448 S 0.0 0.4 0:01.27 spamd 5074 root 34 19 255m 20m 2144 S 0.0 0.2 1:37.53 yum-updatesd 9917 named 15 0 366m 9804 1980 S 0.0 0.1 0:10.26 named 4332 sso 18 0 119m 8028 5212 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.06 sw-engine-cgi 4341 sso 18 0 119m 8028 5212 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.07 sw-engine-cgi 4350 sso 18 0 119m 8028 5212 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.09 sw-engine-cgi 4352 sso 18 0 119m 8028 5212 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.11 sw-engine-cgi 4376 ntp 15 0 23388 5020 3896 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.58 ntpd 4331 sw-cp-se 15 0 61336 4572 1480 S 0.0 0.0 5:53.22 sw-cp-serverd 4213 haldaemo 15 0 31252 4460 1684 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.52 hald 4778 postgres 18 0 117m 4164 3484 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 postmaster 18555 root 16 0 98.3m 3716 2852 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 sshd 4488 sso 18 0 119m 3044 224 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 sw-engine-cgi 4489 sso 18 0 119m 3044 224 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 sw-engine-cgi 4492 sso 18 0 119m 3044 224 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 sw-engine-cgi 4493 sso 18 0 119m 3044 224 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 sw-engine-cgi 4490 sso 18 0 119m 3040 220 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 sw-engine-cgi

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• Windows Azure Use Case: New Development

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Computing platforms evolve over time. Originally computers were directed by hardware wiring - that, the “code” was the path of the wiring that directed an electrical signal from one component to another, or in some cases a physical switch controlled the path. From there software was developed, first in a very low machine language, then when compilers were created, computer languages could more closely mimic written statements. These language statements can be compiled into the lower-level machine language still used by computers today. Microprocessors replaced logic circuits, sometimes with fewer instructions (Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC) and sometimes with more instructions (Complex Instruction Set Computing, CISC). The reason this history is important is that along each technology advancement, computer code has adapted. Writing software for a RISC architecture is significantly different than developing for a CISC architecture. And moving to a Distributed Architecture like Windows Azure also has specific implementation details that our code must follow. But why make a change? As I’ve described, we need to make the change to our code to follow advances in technology. There’s no point in change for its own sake, but as a new paradigm offers benefits to our users, it’s important for us to leverage those benefits where it makes sense. That’s most often done in new development projects. It’s a far simpler task to take a new project and adapt it to Windows Azure than to try and retrofit older code designed in a previous computing environment. We can still use the same coding languages (.NET, Java, C++) to write code for Windows Azure, but we need to think about the architecture of that code on a new project so that it runs in the most efficient, cost-effective way in a Distributed Architecture. As we receive new requests from the organization for new projects, a distributed architecture paradigm belongs in the decision matrix for the platform target. Implementation: When you are designing new applications for Windows Azure (or any distributed architecture) there are many important details to consider. But at the risk of over-simplification, there are three main concepts to learn and architect within the new code: Stateless Programming - Stateless program is a prime concept within distributed architectures. Rather than each server owning the complete processing cycle, the information from an operation that needs to be retained (the “state”) should be persisted to another location c(like storage) common to all machines involved in the process.  An interesting learning process for Stateless Programming (although not unique to this language type) is to learn Functional Programming. Server-Side Processing - Along with developing using a Stateless Design, the closer you can locate the code processing to the data, the less expensive and faster the code will run. When you control the network layer, this is less important, since you can send vast amounts of data between the server and client, allowing the client to perform processing. In a distributed architecture, you don’t always own the network, so it’s performance is unpredictable. Also, you may not be able to control the platform the user is on (such as a smartphone, PC or tablet), so it’s imperative to deliver only results and graphical elements where possible.  Token-Based Authentication - Also called “Claims-Based Authorization”, this code practice means instead of allowing a user to log on once and then running code in that context, a more granular level of security is used. A “token” or “claim”, often represented as a Certificate, is sent along for a series or even one request. In other words, every call to the code is authenticated against the token, rather than allowing a user free reign within the code call. While this is more work initially, it can bring a greater level of security, and it is far more resilient to disconnections. Resources: See the references of “Nondistributed Deployment” and “Distributed Deployment” at the top of this article for more information with graphics:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx  Stack Overflow has a good thread on functional programming: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844536/advantages-of-stateless-programming  Another good discussion on Stack Overflow on server-side processing is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064018/client-side-or-server-side-processing Claims Based Authorization is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx

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• Linux bcm43224 wifi adapter slows down a couple minutes after boot

  - by Blubber

  I just installed Ubuntu on my mid 2012 MacBook Air. Everything worked out of the box, but the wifi is showing some weird behavior. When I first login it's really fast, loading google.com is near instant, and browsing in general feels at least as smooth as it did on Mac OS. However, after a couple minutes the connection slows down dramatically, sometimes it takes over 5s to load google.com, a simple reboot fixes the problem for another couple minutes. Specs: Wifi: 02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01) Driver: open-source brcmsmac driver Kernel: Linux wega 3.8.0-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Tue May 14 22:16:46 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux Distro: Ubuntu 13.04 (uptodate) I tried a number of things, none of which actually helped Use proprietary sta driver from broadcom Installed firmware into /lib/firmware/brcms (which, as far as I can tell from logs, does not get loaded at all) Switch router to only use 2.4 OR 5 GHz Set router to only use a OR g OR n Set router to use AES encryption only Turned off power management on the adapter Set regulatory region to the correct value (NL) on both router and laptop Disable ipv6 Nothing seems to help, the slowdown always occurs. I did notice that the latency (ping google.com) stays roughly the same (around 9ms). Below is some more information that might be of use. $ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4353] (rev 01) Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:00e9] Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge $ rfkill list 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no $ lsmod Module Size Used by dm_crypt 22820 1 arc4 12615 2 brcmsmac 550698 0 coretemp 13355 0 kvm_intel 132891 0 parport_pc 28152 0 kvm 443165 1 kvm_intel ppdev 17073 0 cordic 12574 1 brcmsmac brcmutil 14755 1 brcmsmac mac80211 606457 1 brcmsmac cfg80211 510937 2 brcmsmac,mac80211 bnep 18036 2 rfcomm 42641 12 joydev 17377 0 applesmc 19353 0 input_polldev 13896 1 applesmc snd_hda_codec_hdmi 36913 1 microcode 22881 0 snd_hda_codec_cirrus 23829 1 nls_iso8859_1 12713 1 uvcvideo 80847 0 btusb 22474 0 snd_hda_intel 39619 3 videobuf2_vmalloc 13056 1 uvcvideo snd_hda_codec 136453 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_cirrus bcm5974 17347 0 bluetooth 228619 22 bnep,btusb,rfcomm snd_hwdep 13602 1 snd_hda_codec lpc_ich 17061 0 videobuf2_memops 13202 1 videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_core 40513 1 uvcvideo videodev 129260 2 uvcvideo,videobuf2_core bcma 41051 1 brcmsmac snd_pcm 97451 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel snd_page_alloc 18710 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi snd_rawmidi 30180 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 61554 2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi snd_seq_device 14497 3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi snd_timer 29425 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd 68876 16 snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_cirrus mei 41158 0 soundcore 12680 1 snd apple_bl 13673 0 mac_hid 13205 0 lp 17759 0 parport 46345 3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc usb_storage 57204 0 hid_apple 13237 0 hid_generic 12540 0 ghash_clmulni_intel 13259 0 aesni_intel 55399 399 aes_x86_64 17255 1 aesni_intel xts 12885 1 aesni_intel lrw 13257 1 aesni_intel gf128mul 14951 2 lrw,xts ablk_helper 13597 1 aesni_intel cryptd 20373 4 ghash_clmulni_intel,aesni_intel,ablk_helper i915 600351 3 ahci 25731 3 libahci 31364 1 ahci video 19390 1 i915 i2c_algo_bit 13413 1 i915 drm_kms_helper 49394 1 i915 usbhid 47074 0 drm 286313 4 i915,drm_kms_helper hid 101002 3 hid_generic,usbhid,hid_apple $ dmesg | egrep 'b43|bcma|brcm|[F]irm' [ 0.055025] [Firmware Bug]: ioapic 2 has no mapping iommu, interrupt remapping will be disabled [ 0.152336] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored [ 2.187681] pci_root PNP0A08:00: [Firmware Info]: MMCONFIG for domain 0000 [bus 00-99] only partially covers this bridge [ 12.553600] bcma-pci-bridge 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002) [ 12.553657] bcma: bus0: Found chip with id 0xA8D8, rev 0x01 and package 0x08 [ 12.553688] bcma: bus0: Core 0 found: ChipCommon (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x800, rev 0x22, class 0x0) [ 12.553715] bcma: bus0: Core 1 found: IEEE 802.11 (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x812, rev 0x17, class 0x0) [ 12.553764] bcma: bus0: Core 2 found: PCIe (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x820, rev 0x0F, class 0x0) [ 12.605777] bcma: bus0: Bus registered [ 12.852925] brcmsmac bcma0:0: mfg 4bf core 812 rev 23 class 0 irq 17 [ 13.085176] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: qos enabled: false (implement) [ 13.085186] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_config: change power-save mode: false (implement) [ 20.862617] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcmsmac: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: associated [ 20.862622] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 0 (implement) [ 20.862625] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: qos enabled: true (implement) [ 20.897957] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 1 (implement) $ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"wlan" Mode:Managed Frequency:5.22 GHz Access Point: E0:46:9A:4E:63:9A Bit Rate=65 Mb/s Tx-Power=17 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=63/70 Signal level=-47 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:13 Invalid misc:56 Missed beacon:0

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Texas Industries, Inc.

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryTexas Industries, Inc. (TXI) is a leading supplier of cement, aggregate, and consumer product building materials for residential, commercial, and public works projects. TXI is based in Dallas and employs around 2,000 employees. The customer had the challenge of decentralized and manual processes for entering 180,000 vendor invoices annually.  Invoice entry was a time- and resource-intensive process that entailed significant personnel requirements. TXI implemented a centralized solution leveraging Oracle WebCenter Imaging, a smart routing solution that enables users to capture invoices electronically with Oracle WebCenter Capture and Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition to send  the invoices through to Oracle Financials for approvals and processing.  TXI significantly lowered resource needs for payable processing,  increase productivity by 80% and reduce invoice processing cycle times by 84%—from 20 to 30 days to just 3 to 5 days, on average. Company OverviewTexas Industries, Inc. (TXI) is a leading supplier of cement, aggregate, and consumer product building materials for residential, commercial, and public works projects. With operating subsidiaries in six states, TXI is the largest producer of cement in Texas and a major producer in California. TXI is a major supplier of stone, sand, gravel, and expanded shale and clay products, and one of the largest producers of bagged cement and concrete  products in the Southwest. Business ChallengesTXI had the challenge of decentralized and manual processes for entering 180,000 vendor invoices annually.  Invoice entry was a time- and resource-intensive process that entailed significant personnel requirements. Their business objectives were: Increase the efficiency of core business processes, such as invoice processing, to support the organization’s desire to maintain its role as the Southwest’s leader in delivering high-quality, low-cost products to the construction industry Meet the audit and regulatory requirements for achieving Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance Streamline entry of 180,000 invoices annually to accelerate processing, reduce errors, cut invoice storage and routing costs, and increase visibility into payables liabilities Solution DeployedTXI replaced a resource-intensive, paper-based, decentralized process for invoice entry with a centralized solution leveraging Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g. They worked with the Oracle Partner Keste LLC to develop a smart routing solution that enables users to capture invoices electronically with Oracle WebCenter Capture and then uses Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition and the Oracle WebCenter Imaging workflow to send the invoices through to Oracle Financials for approvals and processing. Business Results Significantly lowered resource needs for payable processing through centralization and improved efficiency  Enabled the company to process invoices faster and pay bills earlier, allowing it to take advantage of additional vendor discounts Tracked to increase productivity by 80% and reduce invoice processing cycle times by 84%—from 20 to 30 days to just 3 to 5 days, on average Achieved a 25% reduction in paper invoice storage costs now that invoices are captured digitally, and enabled a 50% reduction in shipping costs, as the company no longer has to send paper invoices between headquarters and production facilities for approvals “Entering and manually processing more than 180,000 vendor invoices annually was time and labor intensive. With Oracle Imaging and Process Management, we have automated and centralized invoice entry and processing at our corporate office, improving productivity by 80% and reducing invoice processing cycle times by 84%—a very important efficiency gain.” Terry Marshall, Vice President of Information Services, Texas Industries, Inc. Additional Information TXI Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content Oracle WebCenter Capture Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition

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• Recap: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation

  - by Harish Gaur

  Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Oracle Fusion Middleware & Java took the stage on Tuesday to discuss how Oracle Fusion Middleware helps enable business innovation. Through a series of product demos and customer showcases, Hassan demonstrated how Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete platform to harness the latest technological innovations (cloud, mobile, social and Fast Data) throughout the application lifecycle. Fig 1: Oracle Fusion Middleware is the foundation of business innovation This Session included 4 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies: 1. Build and deploy native mobile applications using Oracle ADF Mobile 2. Empower business user to model processes, design user interface and have rich mobile experience for process interaction using Oracle BPM Suite PS6. 3. Create collaborative user experience and integrate social sign-on using Oracle WebCenter Portal, Oracle WebCenter Content, Oracle Social Network & Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 4. Deploy and manage business applications on Oracle Exalogic Nike, LA Department of Water & Power and Nintendo joined Hasan on stage to share how their organizations are leveraging Oracle Fusion Middleware to enable business innovation. Managing Performance in the Wrld of Social and Mobile How do you provide predictable scalability and performance for an application that monitors active lifestyle of 8 million users on a daily basis? Nike’s answer is Oracle Coherence, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Exadata. Fig 2: Oracle Coherence enabled data grid improves performance of Nike+ Digital Sports Platform Nicole Otto, Sr. Director of Consumer Digital Technology discussed the vision of the Nike+ platform, a platform which represents a shift for NIKE from a  "product"  to  a "product +" experience.  There are currently nearly 8 million users in the Nike+ system who are using digitally-enabled Nike+ devices.  Once data from the Nike+ device is transmitted to Nike+ application, users access the Nike+ website or via the Nike mobile applicatoin, seeing metrics around their daily active lifestyle and even engage in socially compelling experiences to compare, compete or collaborate their data with their friends. Nike expects the number of users to grow significantly this year which will drive an explosion of data and potential new experiences. To deal with this challenge, Nike envisioned building a shared platform that would drive a consumer-centric model for the company. Nike built this new platform using Oracle Coherence and Oracle Exadata. Using Coherence, Nike built a data grid tier as a distributed cache, thereby provide low-latency access to most recent and relevant data to consumers. Nicole discussed how Nike+ Digital Sports Platform is unique in the way that it utilizes the Coherence Grid.  Nike takes advantage of Coherence as a traditional cache using both cache-aside and cache-through patterns.  This new tier has enabled Nike to create a horizontally scalable distributed event-driven processing architecture. Current data grid volume is approximately 150,000 request per minute with about 40 million objects at any given time on the grid. Improving Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels Customer experience is on top of every CIO's mind. Customer Experience needs to be consistent and secure across multiple devices consumers may use.  This is the challenge Matt Lampe, CIO of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) was faced with. Despite being the largest utilities company in the country, LADWP had been relying on a 38 year old customer information system for serving its customers. Their prior system  had been unable to keep up with growing customer demands. Last year, LADWP embarked on a journey to improve customer experience for 1.6million LA DWP customers using Oracle WebCenter platform. Figure 3: Multi channel & Multi lingual LADWP.com built using Oracle WebCenter & Oracle Identity Management platform Matt shed light on his efforts to drive customer self-service across 3 dimensions – new website, new IVR platform and new bill payment service. LADWP has built a new portal to increase customer self-service while reducing the transactions via IVR. LADWP's website is powered Oracle WebCenter Portal and is accessible by desktop and mobile devices. By leveraging Oracle WebCenter, LADWP eliminated the need to build, format, and maintain individual mobile applications or websites for different devices. Their entire content is managed using Oracle WebCenter Content and secured using Oracle Identity Management. This new portal automated their paper based processes to web based workflows for customers. This includes automation of Self Service implemented through My Account -  like Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History and Usage Analysis. LADWP's solution went live in April 2012. Matt indicated that LADWP's Self-Service Portal has greatly improved customer satisfaction.  In a JD Power Associates website satisfaction survey, results indicate rankings have climbed by 25+ points, marking a remarkable increase in user experience. Bolstering Performance and Simplifying Manageability of Business Applications Ingvar Petursson, Senior Vice Preisdent of IT at Nintendo America joined Hasan on-stage to discuss their choice of Exalogic. Nintendo had significant new requirements coming their way for business systems, both internal and external, in the years to come, especially with new products like the WiiU on the horizon this holiday season. Nintendo needed a platform that could give them performance, availability and ease of management as they deploy business systems. Ingvar selected Engineered Systems for two reasons: 1. High performance  2. Ease of management Figure 4: Nintendo relies on Oracle Exalogic to run ATG eCommerce, Oracle e-Business Suite and several business applications Nintendo made a decision to run their business applications (ATG eCommerce, E-Business Suite) and several Fusion Middleware components on the Exalogic platform. What impressed Ingvar was the "stress” testing results during evaluation. Oracle Exalogic could handle their 3-year load estimates for many functions, which was better than Nintendo expected without any hardware expansion. Faster Processing of Big Data Middleware plays an increasingly important role in Big Data. Last year, we announced at OpenWorld the introduction of Oracle Data Integrator for Hadoop and Oracle Loader for Hadoop which helps in the ability to move, transform, load data to and from Big Data Appliance to Exadata.  This year, we’ve added new capabilities to find, filter, and focus data using Oracle Event Processing. This product can natively integrate with Big Data Appliance or runs standalone. Hasan briefly discussed how NTT Docomo, largest mobile operator in Japan, leverages Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence to process mobile data (from 13 million smartphone users) at a speed of 700K events per second before feeding it Hadoop for distributed processing of big data. Figure 5: Mobile traffic data processing at NTT Docomo with Oracle Event Processing & Oracle Coherence    

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• Kernel oops on Linux running in VirtualBox breaks some IO-related functionality on the server

  - by Kristoffer E

  We are having problems with CentOS release 6.3 running in VirtualBox on Windows 7 machines. The symptoms are the following: Everything works as normal for several hours, even days. Then something happens which breaks the system. What we still can do after this something happens: Access the web server Use existing SSH sessions to run top and free What does not work: Starting new SSH sessions (hangs after username and password is entered) Running ls in existing SSH sessions (hangs) SSI includes from our web servers that fetch data from remote machines probably more What we see on the server when this something happens is the following: Load average go from basically nothing to around 3 CPU usage is still low (5%) Disk activity is low (running iostat) Plenty of memory available Plenty of disk space available In /var/log/messages we get the following: Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: e1000 0000:00:03.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: Tx Queue <0> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: TDH <2e> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: TDT <30> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: next_to_use <30> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: next_to_clean <2e> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: buffer_info[next_to_clean] Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: time_stamp <1038284db> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: next_to_watch <2f> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: jiffies <103828b42> Jun 14 01:10:48 devvm kernel: next_to_watch.status <0> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: e1000 0000:00:03.0: eth0: Detected Tx Unit Hang Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: Tx Queue <0> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: TDH <2e> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: TDT <30> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: next_to_use <30> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: next_to_clean <2e> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: buffer_info[next_to_clean] Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: time_stamp <1038284db> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: next_to_watch <2f> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: jiffies <103829312> Jun 14 01:10:50 devvm kernel: next_to_watch.status <0> Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: ------------[ cut here ]------------ Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: WARNING: at net/sched/sch_generic.c:261 dev_watchdog+0x26d/0x280() (Not tainted) Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: Hardware name: VirtualBox Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (e1000): transmit queue 0 timed out Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: Modules linked in: vboxsf(U) ipv6 ppdev parport_pc parport microcode sg vboxguest(U) i2c_piix4 i2c_core e1000 snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_codec ac97_bus snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_pcm snd_timer snd soundcore snd_page_alloc pcnet32 mii ext4 mbcache jbd2 sd_mod crc_t10dif ahci dm_mirror dm_region_hash dm_log dm_mod [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan] Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64 #1 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: Call Trace: Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: <IRQ> [<ffffffff8106b747>] ? warn_slowpath_common+0x87/0xc0 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8106b836>] ? warn_slowpath_fmt+0x46/0x50 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814595fd>] ? dev_watchdog+0x26d/0x280 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81099138>] ? sched_clock_cpu+0xb8/0x110 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81459390>] ? dev_watchdog+0x0/0x280 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8107e897>] ? run_timer_softirq+0x197/0x340 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff810a21c0>] ? tick_sched_timer+0x0/0xc0 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8102b40d>] ? lapic_next_event+0x1d/0x30 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81073ec1>] ? __do_softirq+0xc1/0x1e0 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81096c50>] ? hrtimer_interrupt+0x140/0x250 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100c24c>] ? call_softirq+0x1c/0x30 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100de85>] ? do_softirq+0x65/0xa0 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81073ca5>] ? irq_exit+0x85/0x90 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81505be0>] ? smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x70/0x9b Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100bc13>] ? apic_timer_interrupt+0x13/0x20 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: <EOI> [<ffffffff810387cb>] ? native_safe_halt+0xb/0x10 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff810149cd>] ? default_idle+0x4d/0xb0 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81009e06>] ? cpu_idle+0xb6/0x110 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814e433a>] ? rest_init+0x7a/0x80 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81c21f7b>] ? start_kernel+0x424/0x430 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81c2133a>] ? x86_64_start_reservations+0x125/0x129 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81c21438>] ? x86_64_start_kernel+0xfa/0x109 Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: ---[ end trace 2c7bb984812cf120 ]--- Jun 14 01:10:52 devvm kernel: e1000 0000:00:03.0: eth0: Reset adapter Jun 14 01:10:53 devvm abrtd: Directory 'oops-2013-06-14-01:10:53-1537-0' creation detected Jun 14 01:10:53 devvm abrt-dump-oops: Reported 1 kernel oopses to Abrt Jun 14 01:10:53 devvm abrtd: Can't open file '/var/spool/abrt/oops-2013-06-14-01:10:53-1537-0/uid': No such file or directory Jun 14 01:10:55 devvm kernel: Bridge firewalling registered After this we see for a while, every two minutes: Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: INFO: task events/0:19 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: events/0 D 0000000000000000 0 19 2 0x00000000 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: ffff880116c4fb90 0000000000000046 00000000ffffffff 0000000000000008 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: 0000000000016680 0000000000016680 ffff880028210400 0000000000016680 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: ffff880116c4daf8 ffff880116c4ffd8 000000000000fb88 ffff880116c4daf8 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: Call Trace: Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8105b483>] ? perf_event_task_sched_out+0x33/0x80 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814fe6a5>] schedule_timeout+0x215/0x2e0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100975d>] ? __switch_to+0x13d/0x320 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814fe323>] wait_for_common+0x123/0x180 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81060250>] ? default_wake_function+0x0/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814fe43d>] wait_for_completion+0x1d/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108d093>] __cancel_work_timer+0x1b3/0x1e0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108cbe0>] ? wq_barrier_func+0x0/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108d0f0>] cancel_work_sync+0x10/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffffa01c5ca5>] e1000_down_and_stop+0x25/0x50 [e1000] Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffffa01cb695>] e1000_down+0x155/0x200 [e1000] Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffffa01cbcb0>] ? e1000_reset_task+0x0/0xe0 [e1000] Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffffa01cbd1e>] e1000_reset_task+0x6e/0xe0 [e1000] Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108c760>] worker_thread+0x170/0x2a0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff810920d0>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108c5f0>] ? worker_thread+0x0/0x2a0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81091d66>] kthread+0x96/0xa0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100c14a>] child_rip+0xa/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81091cd0>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100c140>] ? child_rip+0x0/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: INFO: task parted:8069 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: parted D 0000000000000003 0 8069 7994 0x00000080 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: ffff8800908b3bb8 0000000000000082 0000000000000000 ffff88010ab50080 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: ffff880116c7d500 0000000000000001 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: ffff88010ab50638 ffff8800908b3fd8 000000000000fb88 ffff88010ab50638 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: Call Trace: Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814fe6a5>] schedule_timeout+0x215/0x2e0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814fe323>] wait_for_common+0x123/0x180 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff81060250>] ? default_wake_function+0x0/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8112b6d0>] ? lru_add_drain_per_cpu+0x0/0x10 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff814fe43d>] wait_for_completion+0x1d/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108d177>] flush_work+0x77/0xc0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108cbe0>] ? wq_barrier_func+0x0/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8108d2f3>] schedule_on_each_cpu+0x133/0x180 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff811ad440>] ? invalidate_bh_lru+0x0/0x50 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8112ae35>] lru_add_drain_all+0x15/0x20 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff811adf6a>] invalidate_bdev+0x2a/0x50 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8125e9a4>] blkdev_ioctl+0x3b4/0x6e0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff811b381c>] block_ioctl+0x3c/0x40 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8118dec2>] vfs_ioctl+0x22/0xa0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8118e064>] do_vfs_ioctl+0x84/0x580 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8118e5e1>] sys_ioctl+0x81/0xa0 Jun 14 01:14:22 devvm kernel: [<ffffffff8100b0f2>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b In /var/spool/abrt/oops-2013-06-14-01:10:53-1537-0 we can see the following information: In backtrace: WARNING: at net/sched/sch_generic.c:261 dev_watchdog+0x26d/0x280() (Not tainted) Hardware name: VirtualBox NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (e1000): transmit queue 0 timed out Modules linked in: vboxsf(U) ipv6 ppdev parport_pc parport microcode sg vboxguest(U) i2c_piix4 i2c_core e1000 snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_codec ac97_bus snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_pcm snd_timer snd soundcore snd_page_alloc pcnet32 mii ext4 mbcache jbd2 sd_mod crc_t10dif ahci dm_mirror dm_region_hash dm_log dm_mod [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64 #1 Call Trace: <IRQ> [<ffffffff8106b747>] ? warn_slowpath_common+0x87/0xc0 [<ffffffff8106b836>] ? warn_slowpath_fmt+0x46/0x50 [<ffffffff814595fd>] ? dev_watchdog+0x26d/0x280 [<ffffffff81099138>] ? sched_clock_cpu+0xb8/0x110 [<ffffffff81459390>] ? dev_watchdog+0x0/0x280 [<ffffffff8107e897>] ? run_timer_softirq+0x197/0x340 [<ffffffff810a21c0>] ? tick_sched_timer+0x0/0xc0 [<ffffffff8102b40d>] ? lapic_next_event+0x1d/0x30 [<ffffffff81073ec1>] ? __do_softirq+0xc1/0x1e0 [<ffffffff81096c50>] ? hrtimer_interrupt+0x140/0x250 [<ffffffff8100c24c>] ? call_softirq+0x1c/0x30 [<ffffffff8100de85>] ? do_softirq+0x65/0xa0 [<ffffffff81073ca5>] ? irq_exit+0x85/0x90 [<ffffffff81505be0>] ? smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x70/0x9b [<ffffffff8100bc13>] ? apic_timer_interrupt+0x13/0x20 <EOI> [<ffffffff810387cb>] ? native_safe_halt+0xb/0x10 [<ffffffff810149cd>] ? default_idle+0x4d/0xb0 [<ffffffff81009e06>] ? cpu_idle+0xb6/0x110 [<ffffffff814e433a>] ? rest_init+0x7a/0x80 [<ffffffff81c21f7b>] ? start_kernel+0x424/0x430 [<ffffffff81c2133a>] ? x86_64_start_reservations+0x125/0x129 [<ffffffff81c21438>] ? x86_64_start_kernel+0xfa/0x109 In cmdline: ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_01-lv_root rd_NO_LUKS LANG=en_US.UTF-8 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=sv-latin1 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rd_LVM_LV=vg_01/lv_root crashkernel=129M@0M rhgb quiet rd_LVM_LV=vg_01/lv_swap rd_NO_DM rhgb quie Additional information: # uname -a Linux devvm 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jun 22 12:19:21 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux # cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 6.3 (Final) VirtualBox version 4.2.6. Any insight in how we can proceed with troubleshooting this is appreciated. If you need more information, just let me know.

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• Bash completion doesn't work, or is ignoring what I've typed; but works for commands

  - by Neil Traft

  Bash completion seems to be ignoring what I've typed (it tries to complete, but acts as if there's nothing under the cursor). I know I saw it work on this machine earlier today, but I'm not sure what has changed. Some examples: cd shows all directories under my current folder: $ cd co<tab><tab> cmake/ config/ doc/ examples/ include/ programs/ sandbox/ src/ .svn/ tests/ Commands like ls and less show all files and directories under my current folder: $ ls co<tab><tab> cmake/ config/ .cproject Doxyfile.in include/ programs/ README.txt src/ tests/ CMakeLists.txt COPYING.txt doc/ examples/ mainpage.dox .project sandbox/ .svn/ Even when I try to complete things from a different folder, it gives me only the results for my current folder (telling me that it is completely ignoring what I've typed): $ cd ~/D<tab><tab> cmake/ config/ doc/ examples/ include/ programs/ sandbox/ src/ .svn/ tests/ But it seems to be working fine for commands and variables: $ if<tab><tab> if ifconfig ifdown ifnames ifquery ifup $ echo $P<tab><tab> $PATH $PIPESTATUS $PPID $PS1 $PS2 $PS4 $PWD $PYTHONPATH I do have this bit in my .bashrc, and I have confirmed that my .bashrc is indeed getting sourced: if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then . /etc/bash_completion fi I've even tried manually executing that file, but it doesn't fix the problem: $ . /etc/bash_completion There was even one point in time where it was working for ls, but was not working for cd ... but I can't replicate that result now. Update: I also just discovered that I have terminals open from earlier that still work. I ran source .bashrc in one of them and afterwards completion was broken. Here is my .bashrc: # ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells. # see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc) # for examples # # Modified by Neil Traft #source ~/.profile # Allow globs to expand hidden files shopt -s dotglob nullglob # If not running interactively, don't do anything [ -z "$PS1" ] && return # don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history. # See bash(1) for more options HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth # append to the history file, don't overwrite it shopt -s histappend # for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1) HISTSIZE=1000 HISTFILESIZE=2000 # check the window size after each command and, if necessary, # update the values of LINES and COLUMNS. shopt -s checkwinsize # If set, the pattern "**" used in a pathname expansion context will # match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. #shopt -s globstar # make less more friendly for non-text input files, see lesspipe(1) [ -x /usr/bin/lesspipe ] && eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)" # set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below) if [ -z "$debian_chroot" ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot) fi # Color the prompt export PS1="\[$(tput setaf 2)\]\u@\h:\[$(tput setaf 5)\]\W\[$(tput setaf 2)\] $\[$(tput sgr0)\] " # enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)" alias ls='ls --color=auto' #alias dir='dir --color=auto' #alias vdir='vdir --color=auto' alias grep='grep --color=auto' alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto' alias egrep='egrep --color=auto' fi # Add an "alert" alias for long running commands. Use like so: # sleep 10; alert alias alert='notify-send --urgency=low -i "$([ $? = 0 ] && echo terminal || echo error)" "$(history|tail -n1|sed -e '\''s/^\s*[0-9]\+\s*//;s/[;&|]\s*alert$//'\'')"' # Alias definitions. # You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like # ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly. # See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package. if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then . ~/.bash_aliases fi # enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable # this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile # sources /etc/bash.bashrc). if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then . /etc/bash_completion fi

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• Movement prediction for non-shooters

  - by ShadowChaser

  I'm working on an isometric 2D game with moderate-scale multiplayer, approximately 20-30 players connected at once to a persistent server. I've had some difficulty getting a good movement prediction implementation in place. Physics/Movement The game doesn't have a true physics implementation, but uses the basic principles to implement movement. Rather than continually polling input, state changes (ie/ mouse down/up/move events) are used to change the state of the character entity the player is controlling. The player's direction (ie/ north-east) is combined with a constant speed and turned into a true 3D vector - the entity's velocity. In the main game loop, "Update" is called before "Draw". The update logic triggers a "physics update task" that tracks all entities with a non-zero velocity uses very basic integration to change the entities position. For example: entity.Position += entity.Velocity.Scale(ElapsedTime.Seconds) (where "Seconds" is a floating point value, but the same approach would work for millisecond integer values). The key point is that no interpolation is used for movement - the rudimentary physics engine has no concept of a "previous state" or "current state", only a position and velocity. State Change and Update Packets When the velocity of the character entity the player is controlling changes, a "move avatar" packet is sent to the server containing the entity's action type (stand, walk, run), direction (north-east), and current position. This is different from how 3D first person games work. In a 3D game the velocity (direction) can change frame to frame as the player moves around. Sending every state change would effectively transmit a packet per frame, which would be too expensive. Instead, 3D games seem to ignore state changes and send "state update" packets on a fixed interval - say, every 80-150ms. Since speed and direction updates occur much less frequently in my game, I can get away with sending every state change. Although all of the physics simulations occur at the same speed and are deterministic, latency is still an issue. For that reason, I send out routine position update packets (similar to a 3D game) but much less frequently - right now every 250ms, but I suspect with good prediction I can easily boost it towards 500ms. The biggest problem is that I've now deviated from the norm - all other documentation, guides, and samples online send routine updates and interpolate between the two states. It seems incompatible with my architecture, and I need to come up with a better movement prediction algorithm that is closer to a (very basic) "networked physics" architecture. The server then receives the packet and determines the players speed from it's movement type based on a script (Is the player able to run? Get the player's running speed). Once it has the speed, it combines it with the direction to get a vector - the entity's velocity. Some cheat detection and basic validation occurs, and the entity on the server side is updated with the current velocity, direction, and position. Basic throttling is also performed to prevent players from flooding the server with movement requests. After updating its own entity, the server broadcasts an "avatar position update" packet to all other players within range. The position update packet is used to update the client side physics simulations (world state) of the remote clients and perform prediction and lag compensation. Prediction and Lag Compensation As mentioned above, clients are authoritative for their own position. Except in cases of cheating or anomalies, the client's avatar will never be repositioned by the server. No extrapolation ("move now and correct later") is required for the client's avatar - what the player sees is correct. However, some sort of extrapolation or interpolation is required for all remote entities that are moving. Some sort of prediction and/or lag-compensation is clearly required within the client's local simulation / physics engine. Problems I've been struggling with various algorithms, and have a number of questions and problems: Should I be extrapolating, interpolating, or both? My "gut feeling" is that I should be using pure extrapolation based on velocity. State change is received by the client, client computes a "predicted" velocity that compensates for lag, and the regular physics system does the rest. However, it feels at odds to all other sample code and articles - they all seem to store a number of states and perform interpolation without a physics engine. When a packet arrives, I've tried interpolating the packet's position with the packet's velocity over a fixed time period (say, 200ms). I then take the difference between the interpolated position and the current "error" position to compute a new vector and place that on the entity instead of the velocity that was sent. However, the assumption is that another packet will arrive in that time interval, and it's incredibly difficult to "guess" when the next packet will arrive - especially since they don't all arrive on fixed intervals (ie/ state changes as well). Is the concept fundamentally flawed, or is it correct but needs some fixes / adjustments? What happens when a remote player stops? I can immediately stop the entity, but it will be positioned in the "wrong" spot until it moves again. If I estimate a vector or try to interpolate, I have an issue because I don't store the previous state - the physics engine has no way to say "you need to stop after you reach position X". It simply understands a velocity, nothing more complex. I'm reluctant to add the "packet movement state" information to the entities or physics engine, since it violates basic design principles and bleeds network code across the rest of the game engine. What should happen when entities collide? There are three scenarios - the controlling player collides locally, two entities collide on the server during a position update, or a remote entity update collides on the local client. In all cases I'm uncertain how to handle the collision - aside from cheating, both states are "correct" but at different time periods. In the case of a remote entity it doesn't make sense to draw it walking through a wall, so I perform collision detection on the local client and cause it to "stop". Based on point #2 above, I might compute a "corrected vector" that continually tries to move the entity "through the wall" which will never succeed - the remote avatar is stuck there until the error gets too high and it "snaps" into position. How do games work around this?

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• Cannot connect to MySQL Server on RHEL 5.7

  - by Jeffrey Wong

  I have a standard MySQL Server running on Red hat 5.7. I have edited /etc/my.cnf to specify the bind address as my server's public IP address. [mysqld] datadir=/var/lib/mysql socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock user=mysql # Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x # clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package). old_passwords=1 # Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks ; # to do so, uncomment this line: # symbolic-links=0 [mysqld_safe] log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid bind-address=171.67.88.25 port=3306 And I have also restarted my firewall sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --destination-port 3306 -j ACCEPT /sbin/service iptables save The network administrator has already opened port 3306 for this box. When connecting from a remote computer (running Ubuntu 10.10, server is running RHEL 5.7), I issue mysql -u jeffrey -p --host=171.67.88.25 --port=3306 --socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock but receive a ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on '171.67.88.25' (113). I've noticed that the socket file /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock is blank. Should this be the case? UPDATE The result of netstat -an | grep 3306 tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN Result of sudo netstat -tulpen Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State User Inode PID/Program name tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:2208 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 7602 3168/hpiod tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 27 7827 3298/mysqld tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 5110 2802/portmap tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:8787 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 8431 3326/rserver tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:915 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 5312 2853/rpc.statd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 7655 3188/sshd tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 7688 3199/cupsd tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 8025 3362/sendmail: acce tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:2207 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 0 7620 3173/python udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:909 0.0.0.0:* 0 5300 2853/rpc.statd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:912 0.0.0.0:* 0 5309 2853/rpc.statd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:68 0.0.0.0:* 0 4800 2598/dhclient udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:36177 0.0.0.0:* 70 8314 3476/avahi-daemon: udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5353 0.0.0.0:* 70 8313 3476/avahi-daemon: udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* 0 5109 2802/portmap udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:631 0.0.0.0:* 0 7691 3199/cupsd Result of sudo /sbin/iptables -L -v -n Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 6373 2110K RH-Firewall-1-INPUT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 RH-Firewall-1-INPUT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 1241 packets, 932K bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain RH-Firewall-1-INPUT (2 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 572 861K ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 1 28 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmp type 255 0 0 ACCEPT esp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT ah -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 46 6457 ACCEPT udp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 224.0.0.251 udp dpt:5353 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:631 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:631 782 157K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 2 120 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:443 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:23 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:80 4970 1086K REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-host-prohibited Result of nmap -P0 -p3306 171.67.88.25 Host is up (0.027s latency). PORT STATE SERVICE 3306/tcp filtered mysql Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.09 seconds Solution When everything else fails, go GUI! system-config-securitylevel and add port 3306. All done!

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• RC of Entity Framework 4.1 (which includes EF Code First)

  - by ScottGu

  Last week the data team shipped the Release Candidate of Entity Framework 4.1.  You can learn more about it and download it here. EF 4.1 includes the new “EF Code First” option that I’ve blogged about several times in the past.  EF Code First provides a really elegant and clean way to work with data, and enables you to do so without requiring a designer or XML mapping file.  Below are links to some tutorials I’ve written in the past about it: Code First Development with Entity Framework 4.x EF Code First: Custom Database Schema Mapping Using EF Code First with an Existing Database The above tutorials were written against the CTP4 release of EF Code First (and so some APIs might be a little different) – but the concepts and scenarios outlined in them are the same as with the RC. Go Live License Last week’s EF 4.1 RC ships with a “go live” license that enables you to use it in production environments.  The final release of EF 4.1 will ship within the next 4 weeks and will be 100% API compatible with the RC release. Improvements with the RC The RC includes several improvements and enhancements.  The EF team has a good blog post summarizing the RC changes.  Scott Hanselman also has a nice video interview with the data team that talks more about the release. One of my favorite improvements introduced with last week’s RC is its support for medium trust security.  This enables you to use EF 4.1 (and code-first) within low-cost ASP.NET shared hosting web environments – without requiring a hoster to install anything to use it. EF 4.1 also now supports validation with not only code-first scenarios, but also model-first and database-first workflows.  Upgrading from previous releases The RC does include a few API tweaks and changes from the prior CTP builds.  Read the release notes that come with the release to get a more detailed listing of the changes. John Papa also has an excellent Upgrading to EF 4.1 RC blog post that describes the steps he took when upgrading a large project he wrote with the previous CTP5 release.  The work to upgrade is pretty straight forward and easy – use his write-up as a guide on how to quickly update projects of your own. NuGet Package Rename One of the changes that the data team made between the CTP5 and RC releases was to rename the NuGet package name from “EFCodeFirst” to “EntityFramework”. They decided to make this change since the EF 4.1 release now includes several additions above and beyond just code first. If you already have installed the “EFCodeFirst” NuGet package, you’ll want to uninstall it and then install the new “EntityFramework” NuGet package.  John Papa’s blog post details the exact steps on how to do this (it only takes ~20 seconds to do this). More EF Tutorials Julie Lerman has created some nice whitepapers and tutorials for MSDN that show using the new EF4 and EF 4.1 feature set. Click here to find links to read and watch them. Summary I’m really excited about the EF 4.1 release that will be shipping next month.  It significantly improves the Entity Framework, and makes it even easier and cleaner to work with data inside of .NET.  You can take advantage of it within all ASP.NET projects (including both Web Forms and MVC), within client projects using Windows Forms and WPF, and within other project types like WCF, Console and Services.  You can use NuGet to easily install it within all of them. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Laptop monitor stopped working and can't be re-enabled on a Dell Latitude E6410

  - by xektrum

  I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 (upgraded from 11.10), everything seemed to work fine until today when my laptop monitor suddenly stopped working. Here are the facts: My laptop is a Dell Latitude E6410, Intel graphics. External Monitor is attached through a docking station. Everything worked fine for about 6-7 month, then upgraded to 12.04 Issue started today after a week of upgrade. I think the issue started after I ran CounterStrike 1.6, both monitors blinked and then only the attached monitor which is connected to a docking station continued to work I thought at first that was a transient issue but then I've rebooted, removed the battery but the same happens. Laptop Monitor and external monitor work fine up to login screen, but after I login it goes black Whenever I try to re-enable laptop monitor from Display Manager I get errors: The selected configuration for displays could not be applied could not set the configuration for CRTC 63 Not sure what technical details are required but here are some: $ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3120 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192 eDP1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1440x900 60.0 + 40.0 VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 474mm x 296mm 1680x1050 60.0*+ 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.1 60.0 800x600 75.0 60.3 640x480 75.0 60.0 720x400 70.1 DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) $ tail /var/log/Xorg.0.log [ 8367.132] (WW) intel(0): flip queue failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.132] (WW) intel(0): Page flip failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.174] (WW) intel(0): flip queue failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.174] (WW) intel(0): Page flip failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.174] (WW) intel(0): flip queue failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.174] (WW) intel(0): Page flip failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.265] (WW) intel(0): flip queue failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.265] (WW) intel(0): Page flip failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.265] (WW) intel(0): flip queue failed: Device or resource busy [ 8367.265] (WW) intel(0): Page flip failed: Device or resource busy I'm using gnome-shell, and the only ways I've been able to get both display working have been: 1) Booting with laptop disconnected from docking and then re attach external with VGA instead of DVI, but only worked for a session. 2) Removing xserver-xorg-video-intel, but then I gnome-shell is gone as well as dri I would appreciate any suggestions. Regards, ============================= WORKAROUND FOUND ============================= So I have tried few things and here is what worked: I've installed a newer version of xserver-xorg-video-intel (2.19 vs 2.17) from ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa, it didn't work at first, it was only showing low graphics mode, so I tried with a different linux-image 3.0.0-19-generic-pae instead of 3.2.0-24-generic-pae, which I believe is 12.04 precise default, then everything started to work again, Now I've installed 3.4.0-1-generic-pae from same ppa and everything goes flawless so I believe the issue is either with linux-image 3.0.0-19-generic-pae or xserver-xorg-video-intel 2.17. Hope this helps someone in the future. PS: Now xrandr shows multiple modes for my laptop monitor $ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3120 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192 eDP1 connected 1440x900+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 303mm x 189mm 1440x900 60.0*+ 59.9 40.0 1360x768 59.8 60.0 1152x864 60.0 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9 VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 474mm x 296mm 1680x1050 60.0*+ 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.1 60.0 800x600 75.0 60.3 640x480 75.0 60.0 720x400 70.1 DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

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• TV not detected by Windows/VGA - when there is a WHDI device in the signal chain

  - by ashwalk

  I'm at my wit's end with this one... I had an EVGA GTS 250, and I used to plug it's HDMI out into a WHDI sender, which transmitted to its corresponding WHDI receiver 15ft away, which then connected to a Samsung LN40D LCD TV through another HDMI cable. PC/VGA < [hdmi cable] < WHDI sender <[air] WHDI receiver < [hdmi cable] < TV It was perfect, stable, no perceivable latency. I just plugged everything the first time and it worked instantly. It sent 5.1 audio, and Windows/nVidia Control Center detected the TV by its name. The WHDI device is this one: http://goo.gl/Q8iWI5 Now I bought an EVGA GTX 650, and WHDI doesn't work anymore. Both Windows and nVidia Control Center won't detect the TV, only the monitor that's connected via DVI. The TV screen shows "TX202913 connected. Check video signal." on top of a black screen. Though the device is not the problem itself, just the fact that it's not allowing direct connection between PC and TV. I would bet that if put an AVR in its place I'd also have this issue. The HDMI on this new card works with other monitors. If I put the older card back, WHDI works normally. I have googled this for 5 months on and off. Once I bumped into a page that showed how to force a display device to always-on through registry edit. Once I restarted windows, the Tv (through WHDI) displayed my expanded or duplicated desktop at 1024x768 ONLY, and listed the display as "digital display". I could not change the resolution and it wouldn't playback audio (although the option was available at nVidia Control Center HDMI audio options, but did not work). This proves that there is no conflict between the devices, except that software-wise, Windows cannot, for the life of it, understand that there's a TV there to send video/audio to. Since this won't do (no audio, poor video), I reverted this regedit. It's also not an EDID problem within the TV, since when connected directly it works. The last weird bit of this saga is that today, I reminded of Windows' "Add Device" dialog, gave it a go, and a "Samsung Generic UPNP TV" showed up, which I promptly installed the drives for, rising to a climax of... ...NOTHING HAPPENING. As far as I can tell, it really didn't change anything other than using up a few kb in my main disc. I should also say that I looked a LOT into handshake problems and nothing applied either. Do any of you have an idea of what may be going on? I can't stand the thought of having a us$200 device not working because of the addition of a newer graphics card, when the much older one had no issues. There is absolutely NO REASON for this to happen. There is NO documentation on WHDI online. Apparently no one buys this stuff. For the same reason, no one responded to this same plea for help on NVidia and EVGA forums. Worst case, this can be a warning about this setup for people in the future. Thanx in advance.

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