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  • What if &ldquo;Microsoft&rdquo; were in our shoes? About Windows Phone

    - by Vijaya Malla
    This is what I think about Microsoft Windows Phone. If Microsoft were in our shoes looking at various phones available their configurations, memory, front facing cameras etc. Microsoft disappointed the USA customer base again by not getting Nokia Lumia 800. The Past: If we talk few years ago, few business people were on their Blackberry’s and few Gadget lovers were on crappy Windows OS devices. The world was all going right till Apple came with a revolutionary device iPhone, which completely changed our perception towards phone and how great a smartphone can be. It’s not just phone but the whole technology industry. The romantic appealing of the phone and smooth touch and feel of it made everyone to get one of those bad boys. The sales went up for not just Apple for AT&T too. Even though everyone complained about the signal strength of AT&T, everyone wanted to be on it because they have iPhones. All world wanted iPhone back then except Microsoft with few comments on how it is not going to be in market. But it did great and rocked the industry. A few years later with iPhone and Android taking over the smartphone market Microsoft realized that it should be in the game too. Worked on the design of it, and gave us the best Mobile OS ever. Everyone thinks that iOS is a great OS for phones but if you have touched a Windows Phone and use it for real then you will realize the strengths of it. so last year we welcomed Windows Phone 7 The Present : Windows Phone 7 has the fastest growing market. The phones are cheap, you can buy from any carrier out there. The phone became smarter and smarter with the recent update “Mango (7.5)” and with the collaboration with Nokia, Microsoft created a new eco-system for smartphones with the best smartphone hardware and best smartphone software. Everyone in the world was excited about the collaboration. As we fly over cloud 9 imagining about Nokia made Windows Phones we all heard a good news from Nokia “Nokia World”. Nokia showed the world what a best hardware making company can do with Windows Phone 7.5 OS. Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 took the spotlight. Everyone here in USA and all over the world wanted to own a Nokia Lumia 800 because of the design, software, proprietary apps from Nokia (maps, ESPN, drive and music). If USA market had Nokia Lumia 800, then it would have been the best step Microsoft and Nokia had ever made in their history of smartphone market. With all the numbers going to Android and IPhone, its not clear on why Microsoft/Nokia did not release Lumia 800 here in USA. Its unclear if Microsoft had learnt the lesson or not. if it had learnt the lesson I guess Microsoft needs to get the Nokia Lumia 800 to the USA. The Future: This is where we hope we get the best form Microsoft. I was an iPhone user, I used 2G, 3G, 3GS, 4 and then moved to Windows Phone and never felt so happy with my iPhones’. From the day when Nokia announced the partnership with Microsoft and said that they going to come up with a new Nokia windows phone, I was dreaming for my Nokia Phone. but looks like it is not going to happen any time soon. My thoughts about the Market :  Nokia has the biggest market base in the world. Even though people moved to Android or iPhone over the years in other parts of the world like India and China, people still love to use Nokia. Everyone who uses a Windows Phone now will wait for that day when Nokia Lumia comes to the USA but what either or both of the companies should do for a better market share is to make a very aggressive move with the hardware and bet on the devices. I am pretty sure that it will work. everyone here in the USA will like to have a dual core windows phone with front facing camera and all other crazy things that android/apple phones offer. I think we just have to wait for that day and hope that day comes soon. Love Microsoft and Nokia Thank you for reading.

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  • SQL SERVER – What is SSRS and Why SSRS is asked for in many Job Opening?

    - by Pinal Dave
    This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This will be a 5 day blog post in getting started with SSRS. Today will show the importance of SSRS in the business. Why is SSRS asked for in so many job openings? If you talk to an SSRS expert it’s very clear to them exactly why companies really need this invention and how it saves time and adds business value. You don’t have to be an SSRS expert to know its value or to start using it. For example you don’t have to be an airline pilot to know the usefulness of modern transportation. Even the people who don’t know how to run SSRS but need the reports can tell you why that is needed. This blog post will go into why SSRS is an important invention by showing how it improves the usage of information in your company. Before SSRS there has always been a need for a company to benefit from the use of its own information. Excel spreadsheets have been a popular way to do this for a long time. With SSRS you can still use this solution and gain many other options too. A friend of mine told me a story about doing database work in the 90s for a major company and how he wished SSRS was available back then. The Vice President of the marketing channel would often come to him just before an important meeting with the board of directors. He often needed to show how certain product sales were performing over time. All this information was in the database so it was my friend’s job to get the information out and organized into a medium the VP could use. This medium was usually Excel. The VP often had meetings all over the world where he showcased this Excel report. The solution to get the VP to him anywhere he was in the world was an Excel file attached to an e-mail. This worked pretty well but with some drawbacks. One time my friend sent the wrong file in the e-mail. A few minutes later my friend realized his mistake and sent another frantic e-mail to VP. This one was saying to ignore the last e-mail and use this newer one. Would the VP see the correct e-mail in time? If SSRS had been available, my friend could have created a solution that let the VP run the report any time he wished. The report could have been published to the company intranet where the VP could run it from any of the offices he happened to be traveling to that month. There is a fair amount of work up front to develop and publish the report, but once that work is completed, the report can be reused as many times as needed. My friend could even be on vacation for the first day of the monthly and the VP can get his real-time report. Not only could the report show the most recent data, the VP could choose to view reports of previous months with just a few clicks. The deployed SSRS is user friendly, and can also be configured to protect reports from being run by the wrong people. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to know if you already have SSRS installed. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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  • Collaborate10 &ndash; THEconference

    - by jean-pierre.dijcks
    After spending a few days in Mandalay Bay's THEHotel, I guess I now call everything THE... Seriously, they even tag their toilet paper with THEtp... I guess the brand builders in Vegas thought that once you are on to something you keep on doing it, and granted it is a nice hotel with nice rooms. THEanalytics Most of my collab10 experience was in a room called Reef C, where the BIWA bootcamp was held. Two solid days of BI, Warehousing and Analytics organized by the BIWA SIG at IOUG. Didn't get to see all sessions, but what struck me was the high interest in Analytics. Marty Gubar's OLAP session was full and he did some very nice things with the OLAP option. The cool bit was that he actually gets all the advanced calculations in OLAP to show up in OBI EE without any effort. It was nice to see that the idea from OWB where you generate an RPD is now also in AWM. I think it makes life so much simpler to generate these RPD's from your data model. Even if the end RPD needs some tweaking, it is all a lot less effort to get something going. You can see this stuff for yourself in this demo (click here). OBI EE uses just SQL to get to the calculations, and so, if you prefer APEX, you can build you application there and get the same nice calculations in an APEX application. Marty also showed the Simba MDX driver used with Excel. I guess we should call that THEcoolone... and it is very slick and wonderfully useful for all of you who actually know Excel. The nice thing is that you leverage pure Excel for all operations (no plug-ins). That means no new tools to learn, no new controls, all just pure Excel. THEdatabasemachine Got some very good questions in my "what makes Exadata fast" session and overall, the interest in Exadata is overwhelming. One of the things that I did try to do in my session is to get people to think in new patterns rather than in patterns based on Oracle 9i running on some random hardware configuration. We talked a little bit about the often over-indexing and how everyone has to unlearn all of that on Exadata. The main thing however is that everyone needs to get used to the shear size of some of the components in a Database machine V2. 5TB of flash cache is a lot of very fast data storage, half a TB of memory gets quite interesting as well. So what I did there was really focus on some of the content in these earlier posts on Upward ILM and In-Memory processing. In short, I do believe the these newer media point out a trend. In-memory and other fast media will get cheaper and will see more use. Some of that we do automatically by adding new functionality, but in some cases I think the end user of the system needs to start thinking about how to leverage all this new hardware. I think most people got very excited about these new capabilities and opportunities. THEcoolkids One of the cool things about the BIWA track was the hand-on track. Very cool to see big crowds for both OLAP and OWB hands-on. Also quite nice to see that the folks at RittmanMead spent so much time on preparing for that session. While all of them put down cool stuff, none was more cool that seeing Data Mining on an Apple iPAD... it all just looks great on an iPAD! Very disappointing to see that Mark Rittman still wasn't showing OWB on his iPAD ;-) THEend All in all this was a great set of sessions in the BIWA track. Lots of value to our guests (we hope) and we hope they all come again next year!

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  • How to Browse Without a Trace with an Ubuntu Live CD

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    No matter how diligently you clear your cache and erase your history, web browsing leaves traces on your computer. If you need keep your browsing private, then an Ubuntu Live CD is the answer. The key to this trick is that the Live CD environment runs completely in RAM, so things like your cache, cookies, and history don’t get saved to a persistent storage location. On a hard drive, even deleted files can be recovered, but once a computer is turned off the data stored in RAM is unrecoverable. In addition, since the Ubuntu Live CD environment is the same no matter what computer you use it on, there’s very little identifying information that a website can use to track you! The first step is to either burn an Ubuntu Live CD, or prepare a non-persistent Ubuntu USB flash drive. Ubuntu treats non-persistent flash drives like CDs, so files will not be written to it, but if you’re paranoid, then using a physical CD ensures that nothing gets written to a storage device. Boot up from the CD or flash drive, and choose to Run Ubuntu from the CD or flash drive if prompted (for more detailed instructions on booting from a CD or USB drive, see this article, or our guide on booting from a flash drive even if your BIOS won’t let you). Once the graphical Ubuntu environment comes up, you can click on the Firefox icon at the top of the screen to start browsing. If your browsing requires Flash, then you can install it by clicking on System at the top-left of the screen, then Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Click on Settings at the top of the Synaptic window, and then select Repositories. Add a check in the checkbox with the label ending in “multiverse”. Click Close. Click the Reload button in the main Synaptic window. The list of available packages will reload. When they’ve reloaded, type “restricted” in the Quick search box. Right-click on ubuntu-restricted-extras and select Mark for Installation. It will note a number of other packages that will be installed. This list includes audio and video codecs, so after installing these, you should be able to play downloaded movies and songs. Click Mark to accept the installation of these other packages. Once you return to the main Synaptic window, click the Apply button and go through the dialogs to finish the installation of Flash and the other useful packages. If you open up Firefox now, you’ll have no problems using websites that use Flash. When you’re done browsing and shut down or restart your computer, all traces of your web browsing will be gone. It’s a bit of work compared to just using a privacy-centric browser, but if it’s very important that your browsing leave no traces on your hard drive, an Ubuntu Live CD is your best bet. Download Ubuntu Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using WineInstalling PHP4 and Apache on Ubuntu 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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  • Oracle’s New Memory-Optimized x86 Servers: Getting the Most Out of Oracle Database In-Memory

    - by Josh Rosen, x86 Product Manager-Oracle
    With the launch of Oracle Database In-Memory, it is now possible to perform real-time analytics operations on your business data as it exists at that moment – in the DRAM of the server – and immediately return completely current and consistent data. The Oracle Database In-Memory option dramatically accelerates the performance of analytics queries by storing data in a highly optimized columnar in-memory format.  This is a truly exciting advance in database technology.As Larry Ellison mentioned in his recent webcast about Oracle Database In-Memory, queries run 100 times faster simply by throwing a switch.  But in order to get the most from the Oracle Database In-Memory option, the underlying server must also be memory-optimized. This week Oracle announced new 4-socket and 8-socket x86 servers, the Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8, both of which have been designed specifically for Oracle Database In-Memory.  These new servers use the fastest Intel® Xeon® E7 v2 processors and each subsystem has been designed to be the best for Oracle Database, from the memory, I/O and flash technologies right down to the system firmware.Amongst these subsystems, one of the most important aspects we have optimized with the Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8 are their memory subsystems.  The new In-Memory option makes it possible to select which parts of the database should be memory optimized.  You can choose to put a single column or table in memory or, if you can, put the whole database in memory.  The more, the better.  With 3 TB and 6 TB total memory capacity on the Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8, respectively, you can memory-optimize more, if not your entire database.   Sun Server X4-8 CMOD with 24 DIMM slots per socket (up to 192 DIMM slots per server) But memory capacity is not the only important factor in selecting the best server platform for Oracle Database In-Memory.  As you put more of your database in memory, a critical performance metric known as memory bandwidth comes into play.  The total memory bandwidth for the server will dictate the rate in which data can be stored and retrieved from memory.  In order to achieve real-time analysis of your data using Oracle Database In-Memory, even under heavy load, the server must be able to handle extreme memory workloads.  With that in mind, the Sun Server X4-8 was designed with the maximum possible memory bandwidth, providing over a terabyte per second of total memory bandwidth.  Likewise, the Sun Server X4-4 also provides extreme memory bandwidth in an even more compact form factor with over half a terabyte per second, providing customers with scalability and choice depending on the size of the database.Beyond the memory subsystem, Oracle’s Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8 systems provide other key technologies that enable Oracle Database to run at its best.  The Sun Server X4-4 allows for up 4.8 TB of internal, write-optimized PCIe flash while the Sun Server X4-8 allows for up to 6.4 TB of PCIe flash.  This enables dramatic acceleration of data inserts and updates to Oracle Database.  And with the new elastic computing capability of Oracle’s new x86 servers, server performance can be adapted to your specific Oracle Database workload to ensure that every last bit of processing power is utilized.Because Oracle designs and tests its x86 servers specifically for Oracle workloads, we provide the highest possible performance and reliability when running Oracle Database.  To learn more about Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8, you can find more details including data sheets and white papers here. Josh Rosen is a Principal Product Manager for Oracle’s x86 servers, focusing on Oracle’s operating systems and software.  He previously spent more than a decade as a developer and architect of system management software. Josh has worked on system management for many of Oracle's hardware products ranging from the earliest blade systems to the latest Oracle x86 servers. 

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  • Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

    - by Giorgio
    This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in understanding and using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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  • A Few of My Favorite HTML5 and CSS3 Online Tools

    - by dwahlin
    I really enjoy coding up HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript applications but there are some things that I’m better off writing with the help of a development tool. For example, CSS3 gradients aren’t exactly the most fun thing to write by hand and the same could be said for animations, transforms, or styles that require various vendor extensions. There are a lot of online tools that can simplify building HTML5/CSS3 sites and increase productivity in the process so I thought I’d put together a post on a few of my favorites tools. HTML5 Boilerplate HTML5 Boilerplate provides a great way to get started building HTML5 sites. It includes many best practices out of the box and even includes a few tricks that many people don’t even know about. The custom download option allows you to pick the features that you want to include in the files that’s generated. You can read more about it here.   Initializr Although HTML5 Boilerplate provides a great foundation for starting HTML5 sites, it focuses on providing a starting shell structure (namely an html page, JavaScript files, and a CSS stylesheet) and doesn’t include much in the way of page content to get started with. Initializer builds on HTML5 Boilerplate and provides an initial test page that can be tweaked to meet your needs. It also provides several different customization options to include/exclude features. CSS3 Maker CSS3 provides a lot of great features ranging from gradient support to rounded corners. Although many of the features are fairly straightforward there are some that are pretty involved such as gradients, animations, and really any styles that require custom vendor extensions to use across browsers. Sure, you can type everything by hand, but sites such as CSS3 Maker provide a visual way to generate CSS3 styles. CSS3, Please! CSS3, Please! is a code generation tool that can be used to generate cross-browser CSS3 styles quickly and easily. All of the main things you can do with CSS3 are available including a clever way to visually generate CSS3 transform styles.       Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator CSS3 Maker (above) has a gradient generator built-in but my favorite tool for creating CSS3 gradients is the Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator. If you’ve created gradients in tools like Photoshop then you’ll love what this tool has to offer especially since it makes it extremely straightforward to work with different gradient stops. @font-face Fonts Although @font-face has been available for awhile, I think fonts are cool and wanted to mention a site that provides a lot of font choices. When used correctly fonts can really enhance a page and when used incorrectly (think Comic Sans) they can absolutely ruin a page. Several sites exist that provide fonts that can be used with @font-face definitions in CSS style sheets. One of my favorites is Font Squirrel.   HTML5 & CSS3 Support and Tests Interested in knowing what HTML5 and CSS3 features a given browser supports? Want to know how various browsers stack up with each other as far as HTML5/CSS3 support. Look no further than the HTML5 & CSS3 Support page or the HTML5 Test page.   CSS3 Easing Animation Tool CSS3 animations aren’t widely supported across browsers right now (I’m not really using them at this point) but they do offer a lot of promise. Creating easings for animations can definitely be a challenge but they’re something that are critical for adding that “professional touch” to your animations. Fortunately you can use the Ceaser CSS Easing Animation Tool to simplify the process and handle animation easing with…...ease.   There are several other online tools that I like but these are some of the ones I find myself using the most. If you have any favorite online tools that simplify working with HTML5 or CSS3 let me know.     For more information about onsite or online training, mentoring and consulting solutions for HTML5, jQuery, .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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  • How do NTP Servers Manage to Stay so Accurate?

    - by Akemi Iwaya
    Many of us have had the occasional problem with our computers and other devices retaining accurate time settings, but a quick sync with an NTP server makes all well again. But if our own devices can lose accuracy, how do NTP servers manage to stay so accurate? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Photo courtesy of LEOL30 (Flickr). The Question SuperUser reader Frank Thornton wants to know how NTP servers are able to remain so accurate: I have noticed that on my servers and other machines, the clocks always drift so that they have to sync up to remain accurate. How do the NTP server clocks keep from drifting and always remain so accurate? How do the NTP servers manage to remain so accurate? The Answer SuperUser contributor Michael Kjorling has the answer for us: NTP servers rely on highly accurate clocks for precision timekeeping. A common time source for central NTP servers are atomic clocks, or GPS receivers (remember that GPS satellites have atomic clocks onboard). These clocks are defined as accurate since they provide a highly exact time reference. There is nothing magical about GPS or atomic clocks that make them tell you exactly what time it is. Because of how atomic clocks work, they are simply very good at, having once been told what time it is, keeping accurate time (since the second is defined in terms of atomic effects). In fact, it is worth noting that GPS time is distinct from the UTC that we are more used to seeing. These atomic clocks are in turn synchronized against International Atomic Time or TAI in order to not only accurately tell the passage of time, but also the time. Once you have an exact time on one system connected to a network like the Internet, it is a matter of protocol engineering enabling transfer of precise times between hosts over an unreliable network. In this regard a Stratum 2 (or farther from the actual time source) NTP server is no different from your desktop system syncing against a set of NTP servers. By the time you have a few accurate times (as obtained from NTP servers or elsewhere) and know the rate of advancement of your local clock (which is easy to determine), you can calculate your local clock’s drift rate relative to the “believed accurate” passage of time. Once locked in, this value can then be used to continuously adjust the local clock to make it report values very close to the accurate passage of time, even if the local real-time clock itself is highly inaccurate. As long as your local clock is not highly erratic, this should allow keeping accurate time for some time even if your upstream time source becomes unavailable for any reason. Some NTP client implementations (probably most ntpd daemon or system service implementations) do this, and others (like ntpd’s companion ntpdate which simply sets the clock once) do not. This is commonly referred to as a drift file because it persistently stores a measure of clock drift, but strictly speaking it does not have to be stored as a specific file on disk. In NTP, Stratum 0 is by definition an accurate time source. Stratum 1 is a system that uses a Stratum 0 time source as its time source (and is thus slightly less accurate than the Stratum 0 time source). Stratum 2 again is slightly less accurate than Stratum 1 because it is syncing its time against the Stratum 1 source and so on. In practice, this loss of accuracy is so small that it is completely negligible in all but the most extreme of cases. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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  • SQL SERVER – 3 Challenges for DBA and Smart Solutions

    - by Pinal Dave
    Developer’s life is never easy. DBA’s life is even crazier. DBA’s Life When a developer wakes up in the morning, most of the time have no idea what different challenges they are going to face that day. Of course, most of the developers know the project and roadmap, which they are working on. However, developers have no clue what coding challenges which they are going face for that day. DBA’s life is even crazier. When DBA wakes up in the morning – they often thank that they were not disturbed during the night due to server issues. The very next thing they wish is that they do not want to challenge which they can’t solve for that day. The problems DBA face every single day are mostly unpredictable and they just have to solve them as they come during the day. Though the life of DBA is not always bad. There are always ways and methods how one can overcome various challenges. Let us see three of the challenges and how a DBA can use various tools to overcome them. Challenge #1 Synchronize Data Across Server A Very common challenge DBA receive is that they have to synchronize the data across the servers. If you try to manually write that up, it may take forever to accomplish the task. It is nearly impossible to do the same with the help of the T-SQL. However, thankfully there are tools like dbForge Studio which can save a day and synchronize data across servers. Read my detailed blog post about the same over here: SQL SERVER – Synchronize Data Exclusively with T-SQL. Challenge #2 SQL Report Builder DBA’s are often asked to build reports on the go. It really annoys DBA’s, but hardly people care about it. No matter how busy a DBA is, they are just called upon to build reports on things on very short notice. I personally like to avoid any task which is given to me accidently and personally building report can be boring. I rather spend time with High Availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning rather than building report. I use SQL third party tool when I have to work with SQL Report. Others have extended reporting capabilities. The latter group of products includes the SQL report builder built-in todbForge Studio for SQL Server. I have blogged about this earlier over here: SQL SERVER – SQL Report Builder in dbForge Studio for SQL Server. Challenge #3 Work with the OTHER Database The manager does not understand that MySQL is different from SQL Server and SQL Server is different from Oracle. For them everything is same. In my career hundreds of times I have faced a situation that I am given a database to manage or do some task when their regular DBA is on vacation or leave. When I try to explain I do not understand the underlying the technology, I have been usually told that my manager has trust on me and I can do anything. Honestly, I can’t but I hardly dare to argue. I fall back on the third party tool to manage database when it is not in my comfort zone. For example, I was once given MySQL performance tuning task (at that time I did not know MySQL so well). To simplify search for a problem query let us use MySQL Profiler in dbForge Studio for MySQL. It provides such commands as a Query Profiling Mode and Generate Execution Plan. Here is the blog post discussing about the same: MySQL – Profiler : A Simple and Convenient Tool for Profiling SQL Queries. Well, that’s it! There were many different such occasions when I have been saved by the tool. May be some other day I will write part 2 of this blog post. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL Tagged: Devart, SQL Tool

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  • SQL Server – SafePeak “Logon Trigger” Feature for Managing Data Access

    - by pinaldave
    Lately I received an interesting question about the abilities of SafePeak for SQL Server acceleration software: Q: “I would like to use SafePeak to make my CRM application faster. It is an application we bought from some vendor, after a while it became slow and we can’t reprogram it. SafePeak automated caching sounds like an easy and good solution for us. But, in my application there are many servers and different other applications services that address its main database, and some even change data, and I feel that there is a chance that some servers that during the connection process we may miss some. Is there a way to ensure that SafePeak will be aware of all connections to the SQL Server, so its cache will remain intact?” Interesting question, as I remember that SafePeak (http://www.safepeak.com/Product/SafePeak-Overview) likes that all traffic to the database will go thru it. I decided to check out the features of SafePeak latest version (2.1) and seek for an answer there. A: Indeed I found SafePeak has a feature they call “Logon Trigger” and is designed for that purpose. It is located in the user interface, under: Settings -> SQL instances management  ->  [your instance]  ->  [Logon Trigger] tab. From here you activate / deactivate it and control a white-list of enabled server IPs and Login names that SafePeak will ignore them. Click to Enlarge After activation of the “logon trigger” Safepeak server is notified by the SQL Server itself on each new opened connection. Safepeak monitors those connections and decides if there is something to do with them or not. On a typical installation SafePeak likes all application and users connections to go via SafePeak – this way it knows about data and schema updates immediately (real time). With activation of the safepeak “logon trigger”  a special CLR trigger is deployed on the SQL server and notifies Safepeak on any connection that has not arrived via SafePeak. In such cases Safepeak can act to clear and lock the cache or to ignore it. This feature enables to make sure SafePeak will be aware of all connections so SafePeak cache will maintain exactly correct all times. So even if a user, like a DBA will connect to the SQL Server not via SafePeak, SafePeak will know about it and take actions. The notification does not impact the work of that connection, the user or application still continue to do whatever they planned to do. Note: I found that activation of logon trigger in SafePeak requires that SafePeak SQL login will have the next permissions: 1) CONTROL SERVER; 2) VIEW SERVER STATE; 3) And the SQL Server instance is CLR enabled; Seeing SafePeak in action, I can say SafePeak brings fantastic resource for those who seek to get performance for SQL Server critical apps. SafePeak promises to accelerate SQL Server applications in just several hours of installation, automatic learning and some optimization configuration (no code changes!!!). If better application and database performance means better business to you – I suggest you to download and try SafePeak. The solution of SafePeak is indeed unique, and the questions I receive are very interesting. Have any more questions on SafePeak? Please leave your question as a comment and I will try to get an answer for you. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Home Energy Management & Automation with Windows Phone 7

    A number of people at Clarity are personally interested in home energy conservation and home automation. We feel that a mobile device is a great fit for bringing this idea to fruition. While this project is merely a concept and not directly associated with Microsofts Hohm web service, it provides a great model for communicating the concept. I wanted to take the idea a step further and combine saving energy in your home with the ability to track water usage and control your home devices. I designed an application that focuses on total home control and not just energy usage. Application Overview By monitoring home consumption in real time and with yearly projections users can pinpoint vampire devices, times of high or low consumption, and wasteful patterns of energy use. Energy usage meters indicate total current consumption as well as individual device consumption. Users can then use the information to take action, make adjustments, and change their consumption behaviors. The app can be used to automate certain systems like lighting, temperature, or alarms. Other features can be turned on an off at the touch of a toggle switch on your phone, away from home. Forget to turn off the TV or shut the garage door? No problem, you can do it from your phone. Through settings you can enable and disable features of the phone that apply to your home making it a completely customized and convenient experience. To be clear, this equates to more security, big environmental impact, and even bigger savings.   Design and User Interface  Since this panorama application is designed for win phone 7 devices, it complies with the UI Design and Interaction Guide for wp7. I developed the frame and page hierarchy from existing examples. The interface takes advantage of the interactive nature of touch screens with slider controls, pivot control views, and toggle switches to turn on and off devices (not shown in mockup). I followed recommendations for text based elements and adapted the tile notifications to display the most recent user activity. For example, the mockup indicates upon launching the app that the last thing you did was program the thermostat. This model is great for quick launching common user actions. One last design feature to point out is the technical reasons for supplying both light and dark themes for the app. Since this application is targeting energy consumption it only makes sense to consider the effect of the apps background color or image on the phones energy use. When displaying darker colors like black the OLED display may use less power, extending battery life. Other Considerations For now I left out options of wind and solar powered energy options because they are not available to everyone. Renewable energy sources and new technologies associated with them are definitely ideas to keep in mind for a next iteration. Another idea to explore for such an application would be to include a savings model similar to mint.com. In addition to general energy-saving recommendations the application could recommend customized ways to save based on your current utility providers and available options in your area. If your television or refrigerator is guilty of sucking a lot of energy then you may see recommendations for energy star products that could save you even more money! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • &lsquo;Publish&hellip;&rsquo; Resulting in Directory With No Files

    - by ToStringTheory
    I was pulling my hair out with this one…  Which isn’t good considering I have so little of it left!  I had just upgraded to the Windows Azure 1.7 SDK the day before with no problems, and used the upgraded ‘Publish…’ dialog to successfully publish a website to my hard disk for hosting on an internal development server.  However, when trying to deploy another project to my file system, it said it was successful, but there were no files in the directory.  The only difference, the first project was an Azure project, the second was a standard ASP.Net Web Application.  If you installed the Windows Azure 1.7 SDK, you may want to read this. The Problem At first it appears that there is no problem: However you may remember that when publishing a web application, the output window will generally iterate through each of the directories as it copies the files from that directory over.  Sure enough, when looking at the output directory – there are no files, no bin directory, no nothing… Troubleshooting Since one site published and the other did not, I believed that the failure may have been to a failed SQL Server 2012 installation that happened between publish.  I rolled back the installation, however that did not work either.  I also checked the Configuration Manager dialog, and ensured that the projects were selected to actually build (just checking, even though the output said it built them..)  I checked the properties of the solution and the projects, and a selection of files in the project to make sure that they were selected for content…  Nothing seemed to work. I then decided to uninstall the Azure 1.7 SDK to see if that was the culprit.  When I opened the Windows 7 ‘Uninstall a Program’ dialog, I noticed that the Azure SDK came with 2 extra packages that just so happen to be in a Release Candidate state from Microsoft – ‘Microsoft Web Deploy 3.0’ and ‘Microsoft Web Publish – Visual Studio 2010’.  It dawned on me that the publish dialog must not be just for Azure, since it appeared when I tried to deploy the regular web application as well.  Therefore, it must have been an upgrade to the publish mechanism in Visual Studio.  I uninstalled both of the programs and received my old publish dialog once again, and was able to successfully publish the solution above as I had done before. After celebrating solving the problem, I tried reinstalling the Azure package, to see if it would repair the publishing process. Even though it brought back the updated dialogs, it did not publish any files. Instead of uninstalling and retreating, I now KNEW what the cause was, and these were packages not just for Azure. I now knew a product name to search for. The Solution Sure enough, with the correct search term in Google – ‘microsoft web publish no files’, and setting the timeline to 1 week, I found what I needed - Microsoft Connect - Publish Web Application FAILS! (by Andrew Rits). I am surprised that I missed something that ended up being so simple…  In the Configuration Manager, I had the following settings: This is how I had been building and debugging the solution always…  However, apparently when installing the new Web Publishing package, it does things a little differently in its configuration for publishing: You see the difference?  The configuration here is set to ‘x86’ instead of ‘Any CPU’.  Sure enough, as soon as I switched the configuration to ‘Release – Any CPU’, the deployment built and published all of my files as I expected. Conclusion It was a small change, but apparently the new ‘Publish web application’ defaults to the x86 configuration, thereby not copying any of the project/bin files to the publish target directory.  I spent forever trying things, but this small drop down eluded me until I was able to target that the dialog was actually working apparently, I just didn’t have the correct configuration. I hope that this saves you the hours of frustration and hastened hair loss that it caused me…  I also hope that before Microsoft brings this publishing package out of RC status, that they change the behavior of that menu to default to the settings of the old publish menu for the first time. Happy Coding!

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  • SQLAuthority News – Public Training Classes In Hyderabad 12-14 May – Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008

    - by pinaldave
    After successfully delivering many corporate trainings as well as the private training Solid Quality Mentors, India is launching the Public Training in Hyderabad for SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint 2010. This is going to be one of the most unique and one-of-a-kind events in India where Solid Quality Mentors are offering public classes. I will be leading the training on Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Query Optimization & Performance Tuning. This intensive, 3-day course intends to give attendees an in-depth look at Query Optimization and Performance Tuning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Designed to prepare SQL Server developers and administrators for a transition into SQL Server 2005 or 2008, the course covers the best practices for a variety of essential tasks in order to maximize the performance. At the end of the course, there would be daily discussions about your real-world problems and find appropriate solutions. Note: Scroll down for course fees, discount, dates and location. Do not forget to take advantage of Discount code ‘SQLAuthority‘. The training premises are very well-equipped as they will be having 1:1 computers. Every participant will be provided with printed course materials. I will pick up your entire lunch tab and we will have lots of SQL talk together. The best participant will receive a special gift at the end of the course. Even though the quality of the material to be delivered together with the course will be of extremely high standard, the course fees are set at a very moderate rate. The fee for the course is INR 14,000/person for the whole 3-day convention. At the rate of 1 USD = 44 INR, this fee converts to less than USD 300. At this rate, it is totally possible to fly from anywhere from the world to India and take the training and still save handsome pocket money. It would be even better if you register using the discount code “SQLAuthority“, for you will instantly get an INR 3000 discount, reducing the total cost of the training to INR 11,000/person for whole 3 days course. This is a onetime offer and will not be available in the future. Please note that there will be a 10.3% service tax on course fees. To register, either send an email to [email protected] or call +91 95940 43399. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] for any additional information and clarification. Training Date and Time: May 12-14, 2010 10 AM- 6 PM. Training Venue: Abridge Solutions, #90/B/C/3/1, Ganesh GHR & MSY Plaza, Vittalrao Nagar, Near Image Hospital, Madhapur, Hyderabad – 500 081. The details of the course is as listed below. Day 1 : Strengthen the basics along with SQL Server 2005/2008 New Features Module 01: Subqueries, Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations Module 02: Table Expressions Module 03: TOP and APPLY Module 04: SQL Server 2008 Enhancements Day 2: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 1 Module 05: Logical Query Processing Module 06: Query Tuning Module 07:  Introduction to the Query Processor Module 08:  Review of common query coding which causes poor performance Day 3: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 2 Module 09:  SQL Server Indexing and index maintenance Module 10:  Plan Guides, query hints, UDFs, and Computed Columns Module 11:  Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans Module 12: Real World Index and Optimization Tips Download the complete PDF brochure. We are also going to have SharePoint 2010 training by Joy Rathnayake on 10-11 May. All the details for discount applies to the same as well. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Using the ASP.NET Membership API with SQL Server / SQL Azure: The new &ldquo;System.Web.Providers&rdquo; namespace

    - by Harish Ranganathan
    The Membership API came in .NET 2.0 and was a huge enhancement in building web applications with users, managing roles, permissions etc.,  The Membership API by default uses SQL Express and until Visual Studio 2008, it was available only through the ASP.NET Configuration manager screen (Website – ASP.NET Configuration) or (Project – ASP.NET Configuration) and for every application, one has to manually visit this place to start using the Security and other settings.  Upon doing that the default SQL Express database aspnet.mdf is created to store all the user profiles. Starting Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0, the Default Website template includes the Membership API controls as a part of the page i.e. When you create a “File – New – ASP.NET Web Application” or an “ASP.NET MVC Application”, by default the Login/Register controls are enabled in the MasterPage and they are termed under “ApplicationServices” setting in the web.config file with connection string pointed to the SQL Express database. In fact, when you run the default website and click on “Logon” –> “Register”, and enter the details for registration and click “Register”, that is the time the aspnet.mdf file is created with the tables for Users, Roles, UsersInRoles, Profile etc., Now, this uses the default SQL Express database within the App_Data folder.  If you want to move your Membership information to some other database such as SQL Server, SQL CE or SQL Azure, you need to manually run the aspnet_regsql command and specify the destination database name. This would create all the Tables, Procedures and Views required to handle the Membership information.  Thereafter you can change the connection string for “ApplicationServices” to point to the database where you had run all the scripts. Now, enter “System.Web.Providers” Alpha. This is available as a part of the NuGet package library.  Scott Hanselman has a neat post describing the steps required to get it up and running as well as doing the basic changes  at http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingSystemWebProvidersASPNETUniversalProvidersForSessionMembershipRolesAndUserProfileOnSQLCompactAndSQLAzure.aspx Pretty much, it covers what the new System.Web.Providers do. One thing I wanted to clarify is that, the new “System.Web.Providers” add a lot of new settings which are also marked as the defaults, in the web.config.  Even now, they use SQL Express as the default database.  But, if you change the connection string for “DefaultConnection” under connectionStrings to point to your SQL Server or SQL Azure, Membership API would now be able to create all the tables, procedures and views at the destination specified (i.e. SQL Server or SQL Azure). In my case, I modified the DefaultConneciton to point to my SQL Azure database.  Next, I hit F5 to run the application.  The default view loads.  I clicked on “LogOn” and then “Register” since I knew there are no tables/users as of then.  One thing to note is that, I had put “NewDB” as the database name in the connection string that points to SQL Azure.  NewDB wasn’t existing and I would assume it would be created before the tables/views/procedures for Membership are created. Once I clicked on the “Register” to register my first username, it took a while and then registered as well as logged in me in.  Also, I went to the SQL Azure Management Portal and verified that there exists “NewDB” which has just been created I could also connect to the SQL Azure database “NewDB” from Management Studio and found that the tables now don’t have the aspnet_ prefix.  The tables were simply Users, Roles, UsersInRoles, Profiles etc., So, with a few clicks and configuration change, I could actually set up the user base for my application on SQL Azure and even make the SessionState, Roles, Profiles being stored in SQL Azure database. The new System.Web.Proivders also required MARS (MultipleActiveResultSets=true) setting since it uses Entity Framework for the DAL operations.  Also, the “Project – ASP.NET Configuration” screen can be used to further create/manage users/roles etc., although the data is stored on the remote database. With that, a long pending request from the community to have the ability to configure and use remote databases for Application users management without having to run the scripts from SQL Express is fulfilled. Cheers !!!

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  • SQL SERVER – Top 10 “Ease of Use” Features of expressor Studio

    - by pinaldave
    expressor Studio is new data integration platform that is being marketed as the most easy to use tool of its kind.  But “easy to use” can be a relative term – an expert can find a very complex system easy, but a beginner might be stumped.  A recent article online discussed exactly what makes expressor Studio so easy use, and here is my view on this subject. Simple Installation There is one pop-up for one .exe file, and nothing more.  You can’t get much simpler than this.  It is also in the familiar Windows design, so there should be no surprises. No 3rd party software dependency Have you ever tried to download software, only to be slowed down by the need to download a compatible system to run the program, and another to read the user manual, and so on?  expressor Studio was designed specifically to avoid this problem. Microsoft Office Like Ribbon Bar and Menus As mentioned before, everything is in the familiar Windows design, from the pop up windows to the tool bars and menus.  There should be no learning curve for using this program, or even simply trying to navigate around a new system. General Development Design Interface This software has been designed to be simple and straightforward.  Projects can be arranged in a simple “tree” design, that is totally collapsible and can easy be added to or “trimmed” with a click of a button.  It was meant to be logical and easy to follow. Integrated Contextual Help This is a fancy way of saying that you can practically yell “help!” if you do get stuck on something.  Solving a problem is as simple as highlighting and hitting F1 for contextual help. Visual Indicators and Messages Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly where something has gone wrong before trying to complete a project.  expressor Studio has a built in system to catch mistakes and highlight them in a bright color, flash a warning message, and even disable functions before you can continue – and possibly lose hours of work. Property Inputs and Selectors Every operator will have a list of requirements that need to be filled in.  But don’t worry; you won’t have to make stuff up to fill in the boxes.  Each one will have a drop-down menu with options to choose from – but not too many as to be confusing. Connection Wizards Configuring connections can be the hardest part of a project.  But not with the expressor Studioconnection wizard.  A familiar, Windows-style menu will walk you through connections so quickly you’ll forget what trouble it used to be. Templates With large, complex projects, a majority of your time is often spent simply setting up the files and inputting data.  But expressor Studio allows you to create one file and then save it as a template, saving you hours of boring data input. Extension Manager Let’s say that you need a little more functionality or some new features on your program. A lot of software requires you to download complex plug-ins that need to be decompressed and installed.  However, expressor Studio has extended its system to an Extension Manager, which allows for quick and easy installation of the functionality you need, without the need to download and decompress. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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  • More SQL Smells

    - by Nick Harrison
    Let's continue exploring some of the SQL Smells from Phil's list. He has been putting together. Datatype mis-matches in predicates that rely on implicit conversion.(Plamen Ratchev) This is a great example poking holes in the whole theory of "If it works it's not broken" Queries will this probably will generally work and give the correct response. In fact, without careful analysis, you probably may be completely oblivious that there is even a problem. This subtle little problem will needlessly complicate queries and slow them down regardless of the indexes applied. Consider this example: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Page](     [PageId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,     [Title] [varchar](75) NOT NULL,     [Sequence] [int] NOT NULL,     [ThemeId] [int] NOT NULL,     [CustomCss] [text] NOT NULL,     [CustomScript] [text] NOT NULL,     [PageGroupId] [int] NOT NULL;  CREATE PROCEDURE PageSelectBySequence ( @sequenceMin smallint , @sequenceMax smallint ) AS BEGIN SELECT [PageId] , [Title] , [Sequence] , [ThemeId] , [CustomCss] , [CustomScript] , [PageGroupId] FROM [CMS].[dbo].[Page] WHERE Sequence BETWEEN @sequenceMin AND @SequenceMax END  Note that the Sequence column is defined as int while the sequence parameter is defined as a small int. The problem is that the database may have to do a lot of type conversions to evaluate the query. In some cases, this may even negate the indexes that you have in place. Using Correlated subqueries instead of a join   (Dave_Levy/ Plamen Ratchev) There are two main problems here. The first is a little subjective, since this is a non-standard way of expressing the query, it is harder to understand. The other problem is much more objective and potentially problematic. You are taking much of the control away from the optimizer. Written properly, such a query may well out perform a corresponding query written with traditional joins. More likely than not, performance will degrade. Whenever you assume that you know better than the optimizer, you will most likely be wrong. This is the fundmental problem with any hint. Consider a query like this:  SELECT Page.Title , Page.Sequence , Page.ThemeId , Page.CustomCss , Page.CustomScript , PageEffectParams.Name , PageEffectParams.Value , ( SELECT EffectName FROM dbo.Effect WHERE EffectId = dbo.PageEffects.EffectId ) AS EffectName FROM Page INNER JOIN PageEffect ON Page.PageId = PageEffects.PageId INNER JOIN PageEffectParam ON PageEffects.PageEffectId = PageEffectParams.PageEffectId  This can and should be written as:  SELECT Page.Title , Page.Sequence , Page.ThemeId , Page.CustomCss , Page.CustomScript , PageEffectParams.Name , PageEffectParams.Value , EffectName FROM Page INNER JOIN PageEffect ON Page.PageId = PageEffects.PageId INNER JOIN PageEffectParam ON PageEffects.PageEffectId = PageEffectParams.PageEffectId INNER JOIN dbo.Effect ON dbo.Effects.EffectId = dbo.PageEffects.EffectId  The correlated query may just as easily show up in the where clause. It's not a good idea in the select clause or the where clause. Few or No comments. This one is a bit more complicated and controversial. All comments are not created equal. Some comments are helpful and need to be included. Other comments are not necessary and may indicate a problem. I tend to follow the rule of thumb that comments that explain why are good. Comments that explain how are bad. Many people may be shocked to hear the idea of a bad comment, but hear me out. If a comment is needed to explain what is going on or how it works, the logic is too complex and needs to be simplified. Comments that explain why are good. Comments may explain why the sql is needed are good. Comments that explain where the sql is used are good. Comments that explain how tables are related should not be needed if the sql is well written. If they are needed, you need to consider reworking the sql or simplify your data model. Use of functions in a WHERE clause. (Anil Das) Calling a function in the where clause will often negate the indexing strategy. The function will be called for every record considered. This will often a force a full table scan on the tables affected. Calling a function will not guarantee that there is a full table scan, but there is a good chance that it will. If you find that you often need to write queries using a particular function, you may need to add a column to the table that has the function already applied.

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  • The Next Wave of PeopleSoft Capabilities for the Staffing Industry Is Here

    - by Mark Rosenberg
    With the release of PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 in January this year, we introduced substantial new capabilities for our Staffing Industry customers. Through a co-development project with Infosys Limited, we have enriched Oracle's PeopleSoft Staffing Solution with new tools aimed at accelerating and improving the quality of job order fulfillment, increasing branch recruiter productivity, and driving profitable growth. Staffing industry firms succeed based on their ability to rapidly, cost-effectively, and continually fill their pipelines with new clients and job orders, recruit the best talent, and match orders with talent. Pressure to execute in each of these functional areas is even more acute on staffing firms as contingent labor becomes a more substantial and permanent part of the workforce mix. In an industry that creates value through speedy execution, there is little room for manual, inefficient processes and brittle, custom integrations, which throttle profitability and growth. The latest wave of investment in the PeopleSoft Staffing Solution focuses on generating efficiency and flexibility for our customers. Simplicity To operate profitably and continue growing, a Staffing enterprise needs its client management, recruiting, order fulfillment, and other processes to function in harmony. Most importantly, they need to be simple for recruiters, branch managers, and applicants to access and understand. The latest PeopleSoft Staffing Solution set of enhancements includes numerous automated defaulting mechanisms and information-rich dashboard pagelets that even a new employee can learn quickly. Pending Applicant, Agenda management, Search, and other pagelets are just a few of the newest, easy-to-use tools that not only aggregate and summarize information, but also provide instant access to applicants, tasks, and key reports for branch staff. Productivity The leading firms in the Staffing industry are those that can more efficiently orchestrate large numbers of candidates, clients, and orders than their competitors can. PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers productivity boosters that Staffing firms can leverage to streamline tasks and processes for competitive advantage. For example, we enhanced the Recruiting Funnel, which manages the candidate on-boarding process, with a highly interactive user interface. It integrates disparate Staffing business processes and exploits new PeopleTools technologies to offer a superior on-boarding user experience. Automated creation of agenda items and assignment tasks for each candidate minimizes setup and organizes assignment steps for the on-boarding process. Mass updates of tasks and instant access to the candidate overview page (which we also expanded), candidate event status, event counts, and other key data enable recruiters to better serve clients and candidates. Lower TCO Constructing and maintaining an efficient yet flexible labor supply chain can be complicated, let alone expensive. Traditionally, Staffing firms have been challenged in controlling their technology cost of ownership because connecting candidate and client-facing tools involved building and integrating custom applications and technologies and managing staff turnover, placing heavy demands on IT and support staff. With PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2, there are two major enhancements that aggressively tackle these challenges. First, we added another integration framework to enable cost-effective linking of the Staffing firm’s PeopleSoft applications and its job board distributors. (The first PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Pack released in March 2011 delivered an integration framework to connect to resume parsing providers.) Second, we introduced the teaming concept to enable work to be partitioned to groups, as well as individuals. These two capabilities, combined with a host of others, position Staffing firms to configure and grow their businesses without growing their IT and overhead expenditures. For our Staffing Industry customers, PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 is loaded with high-value tools aimed at enabling and sustaining a flexible labor supply chain. For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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  • Your Job Search Should be More Than Just a New Year's Resolution

    - by david.talamelli
    I love the beginning of a new year, it is a great chance to refocus and either re-evaluate goals you are working to or even set new ones. I don't have any statistics to measure this but I am sure that one of the more popular new year's resolutions in the general workforce is to either get a new job or work to further develop one's career. I think this is a good idea, in today's competitive work force people should have a plan of what they want to do, what role they are after and how to get there. One common mistake I think many people make though is that a career plan shouldn't be a once a year thought. When people finish with the holiday season with their new year's resolution to find a new job fresh in their mind, you can see the enthusiasm and motivation a person has to make something happen. Emails are sent, calls are made, applications are made, networking is happening, etc..... Finding the right role that you are after however can be difficult, while it would be great if that dream role was available just at the time you happened to be looking for it - in reality this is not always the case. Job Seekers need to keep reminding themselves that while sometimes that dream job they are after is available at the same time they are looking, that also a Job search can be a difficult and long process. Many people who set out with the best of intentions in January to find a new job can soon lose interest in a job search if they do not immediately find a role. Just like the Christmas decorations are put away and the photos from New Year's are stored away - a Job Seeker's motivation may slowly decrease until that person finds themselves 12 months later in the same situation in same role and looking for that new opportunity again. Rather than just "going for it" and looking for a role in the month of January, a person's job search or career plan should be an ongoing activity and thought process that is constantly updated and evaluated over the course of the year. It can be hard to stay motivated over an extended period of time, especially when you are newly motivated and ready for that new role and the results are not immediate. Rather than letting your job search fall down the priority list and into the "too hard basket" a few ideas that may keep your enthusiasm fresh Update your resume every 6 months, even if you are not looking for a job - it is easy to forget what you have accomplished if you don't keep your details updated. Also it is good to be prepared and have a resume ready to go in case you do get an unexpected phone call for that 'dream job' you have been hoping for. Work out what you want out of your next role before you begin your job search - rather than aimlessly searching job ads or talking to people - think of the organisations or type of role you would like before you search. If you know what you are looking for it will be much easier to work out how to get there than if you do not know what you want. Don't expect immediate results once you decide to look for another job, things don't always fall into place. Timing and delivery can be important pieces of being selected for a role, companies don't hire every role in January. Have an open mind - people you meet or talk to may not result in immediate results for your job search but every connection may help you get a bit closer to what you are after . These actions will not guarantee a positive result, but in today's competitive work force every little of extra preparation and planning helps. All the best for 2011 and I hope your career plan whatever it may be is a success.

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  • View Mobile Websites in Windows with Safari 4 Developer Tools

    - by Matthew Guay
    Want to try out mobile websites designed for the iPhone and other mobile devices on your PC?  Safari 4 for Windows lets you do this easily with their developer tools. By default, Safari will show standard desktop websites.  But by making a simple change, you can switch it to work like Safari Mobile on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Getting Started First make sure you have Safari 4 for Windows installed.  You can download Safari directly (link below) and install it as usual.   Or if you already have another Apple program installed, such as QuickTime or iTunes, then you can install it from Apple Software update.  Simply enter apple software update in the Start menu search box. And then select Safari 4 from the list of new software available.  Click Install to automatically download and install Safari. Accept the license Agreement, and then Safari will automatically install. Once this is finished, Safari will be ready to use. View Mobile Sites in Safari First, we need to enable the developer tools.  Click the gear icon on the toolbar, and select Preferences. Click the Advanced tab, and then check the box that says “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. Once you’ve closed your settings box, click the page icon, select Develop, then User Agent, and then choose one of the Mobile Safari settings.  In our test we chose Mobile Safari 3.1.2 – iPhone. To make your browser emulate a mobile device better, you can hide the bookmarks and tab bar to have a more streamlined interface. Click the Gear icon, and select “Hide Bookmarks Bar”, and then repeat and click “Hide Tab Bar”. You can also shrink your window to be closer to the size of a mobile device screen.  Once you’ve done these things, Safari should look similar to this screenshot.  Here we have loaded Google.com, and you can see it in its iPhone-style interface. Simply enter any website into the address bar, and it will load in its mobile interface if it has one.  Here is Google’s other mobile offerings, right inside Windows. Gmail loads messages with the default iPhone interface. One especially interesting mobile site is Apple’s online iPhone User Guide.  When loaded in Safari with the iPhone setting, it loads with a very nice mobile UI that works just like an iPhone app.  In fact, you can even click and drag to scroll, just like you would with your finger on an iPhone. Conclusion Even if you do not have a Smartphone, you can still preview what websites will look like on them with this trick. Not all sites will work of course, but it’s fun to play around with different sites that have mobile versions. Links: Safari 4 Download Apple iPhone online user guide Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaCustomize Safari for Windows ToolbarSave Screen Space by Hiding the Bookmarks Toolbar in Safari for WindowsEdit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8Keep Websites From Using Tiny Fonts in Safari 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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  • C# 4.0: COM Interop Improvements

    - by Paulo Morgado
    Dynamic resolution as well as named and optional arguments greatly improve the experience of interoperating with COM APIs such as Office Automation Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs). But, in order to alleviate even more COM Interop development, a few COM-specific features were also added to C# 4.0. Ommiting ref Because of a different programming model, many COM APIs contain a lot of reference parameters. These parameters are typically not meant to mutate a passed-in argument, but are simply another way of passing value parameters. Specifically for COM methods, the compiler allows to declare the method call passing the arguments by value and will automatically generate the necessary temporary variables to hold the values in order to pass them by reference and will discard their values after the call returns. From the point of view of the programmer, the arguments are being passed by value. This method call: object fileName = "Test.docx"; object missing = Missing.Value; document.SaveAs(ref fileName, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing); can now be written like this: document.SaveAs("Test.docx", Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value); And because all parameters that are receiving the Missing.Value value have that value as its default value, the declaration of the method call can even be reduced to this: document.SaveAs("Test.docx"); Dynamic Import Many COM methods accept and return variant types, which are represented in the PIAs as object. In the vast majority of cases, a programmer calling these methods already knows the static type of a returned object form the context of the call, but has to explicitly perform a cast on the returned values to make use of that knowledge. These casts are so common that they constitute a major nuisance. To make the developer’s life easier, it is now possible to import the COM APIs in such a way that variants are instead represented using the type dynamic which means that COM signatures have now occurrences of dynamic instead of object. This means that members of a returned object can now be easily accessed or assigned into a strongly typed variable without having to cast. Instead of this code: ((Excel.Range)(excel.Cells[1, 1])).Value2 = "Hello World!"; this code can now be used: excel.Cells[1, 1] = "Hello World!"; And instead of this: Excel.Range range = (Excel.Range)(excel.Cells[1, 1]); this can be used: Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; Indexed And Default Properties A few COM interface features are still not available in C#. On the top of the list are indexed properties and default properties. As mentioned above, these will be possible if the COM interface is accessed dynamically, but will not be recognized by statically typed C# code. No PIAs – Type Equivalence And Type Embedding For assemblies indentified with PrimaryInteropAssemblyAttribute, the compiler will create equivalent types (interfaces, structs, enumerations and delegates) and embed them in the generated assembly. To reduce the final size of the generated assembly, only the used types and their used members will be generated and embedded. Although this makes development and deployment of applications using the COM components easier because there’s no need to deploy the PIAs, COM component developers are still required to build the PIAs.

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  • Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

    - by Giorgio
    This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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  • How To Delete Built-in Windows 7 Power Plans (and Why You Probably Shouldn’t)

    - by The Geek
    Do you actually use the Windows 7 power management features? If so, have you ever wanted to just delete one of the built-in power plans? Here’s how you can do so, and why you probably should leave it alone. Just in case you’re new to the party, we’re talking about the power plans that you see when you click on the battery/plug icon in the system tray. The problem is that one of the built-in plans always shows up there, even if you only use custom plans. When you go to “More power options” on the menu there, you’ll be taken to a list of them, but you’ll be unable to get rid of any of the built-in ones, even if you have your own. You can actually delete the power plans, but it will probably cause problems, so we highly recommend against it. If you still want to proceed, keep reading. Delete Built-in Power Plans in Windows 7 Open up an Administrator mod command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt and choosing “Run as Administrator”, then type in the following command, which will show you a whole list of the plans. powercfg list Do you see that really long GUID code in the middle of each listing? That’s what we’re going to need for the next step. To make it easier, we’ll provide the codes here, just in case you don’t know how to copy to the clipboard from the command prompt. Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced) Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c  (High performance)Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a  (Power saver) Before you do any deleting, what you’re going to want to do is export the plan to a file using the –export parameter. For some unknown reason, I used the .xml extension when I did this, though the file isn’t in XML format. Moving on… here’s the syntax of the command: powercfg –export balanced.xml 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e This will export the Balanced plan to the file balanced.xml. And now, we can delete the plan by using the –delete parameter, and the same GUID.  powercfg –delete 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e If you want to import the plan again, you can use the -import parameter, though it has one weirdness—you have to specify the full path to the file, like this: powercfg –import c:\balanced.xml Using what you’ve learned, you can export each of the plans to a file, and then delete the ones you want to delete. Why Shouldn’t You Do This? Very simple. Stuff will break. On my test machine, for example, I removed all of the built-in plans, and then imported them all back in, but I’m still getting this error anytime I try to access the panel to choose what the power buttons do: There’s a lot more error messages, but I’m not going to waste your time with all of them. So if you want to delete the plans, do so at your own peril. At least you’ve been warned! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Learning Windows 7: Manage Power SettingsCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Switch Power PlansDisable Power Management on Windows 7 or VistaChange the Windows 7 or Vista Power Buttons to Shut Down/Sleep/HibernateDisable Windows Vista’s Built-in CD/DVD Burning Features TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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  • #MIX Day 2 Keynote: Put the Phone Down and Listen

    - by andrewbrust
    MIX day 1’s keynote was all about Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  MIX day 2’s was a reminder that Microsoft has much more going on than a new mobile platform.  Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy and others showed us lots of other good things coming from Microsoft, mostly in the developer stack, that we certainly shouldn’t overlook.  These included the forthcoming IE9, its new JavaScript compiling engine and support for HTML 5 that takes full advantage of the local PC resources, including the Graphics Processing Unit.  The announcements also included important additions to ASP.NET (and one subtraction, in the form of lighter-weight ViewState technology) including almost-obsessive jQuery support.  That support is so good that John Resig, creator of the jQuery project, came on stage to tell us so.  Then Scott Guthrie told us that Microsoft would be contributing code to Open Source jQuery project. This is not your father’s Microsoft, it would seem. But to me, the crown jewel in today’s keynote were the numerous announcements around the Open Data Protocol (OData).  OData is nothing more than the protocol side of “Astoria” (now known as WCF Data Services, and until recently called ADO.NET Data Services) separated out and opened up as a platform-neutral standard.  The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was Microsoft’s vehicle for first announcing OData, as well as project “Dallas,” an Azure-based cloud platform for publishing commercial OData feeds.  And we had already known about “bridges” for Astoria (and thus OData) for PHP and Java.  We also knew that PowerPivot, Microsoft’s forthcoming self-service BI plug-in for Excel 2010, will consume OData feeds and then facilitate drill-down analysis of their data.  And we recently found out that SQL Reporting Services reports (in the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint 2010 lists will be consumable in OData format as well. So what was left to announce?  How about OData clients for Palm webOS and Apple iPhone/Objective C?  How about the release to Open Source of .NET’s OData client?  Or the ability to publish any SQL Azure database as an OData service by simply checking a checkbox at deployment?  Maybe even a Silverlight tool (code-named “Houston”) to create SQL Azure databases (and then publish them as OData) right in the browser?  And what if you you could get at NetFlix’s entire catalog in OData format?  You can – just go to http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ and see for yourself.  Douglas Purdy, who made these announcements said “we want OData to work on as many devices and platforms as possible.”  After all the cross-platform OData announcements made in about a half year’s time, it’s hard to dispute this. When Microsoft plays the data card, and plays it well, watch out, because data programmability is the company’s heritage.  I’ll be discussing OData at length in my April Redmond Review column.  I wrote that column two weeks ago, and was convinced then that OData was a big deal. Today upped the ante even more.  And following the Windows Phone 7 euphoria of yesterday was, I think, smart timing.  The phone, if it’s successful, will be because it’s a good developer platform play.  And developer platforms (as well as their creators) are most successful when they have a good data strategy.  OData is very Silverlight-friendly, and that means it’s WP7-friendly too.  Phone plus service-oriented data is a one-two punch.  A phone platform without data would have been a phone with no signal.

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  • A SharePoint Developer&rsquo;s Toolchest

    - by Sahil Malik
    Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). When we develop for SharePoint, we end up using many tools, third party or Microsoft, to facilitate our development. What are some of your favorite tools? Mine are as below - 1. Reflector: When I saw reflector, I was pretty convinced that a tool better and more useful than it doesn’t exist. Well I was wrong! Redgate took over reflector and they still offer it as a free version, but they have a paid version called reflector pro. It lets you debug third party source code, as if you had the source code. Brilliant! Who needs documentation anymore when you have real code? 2. ULS Viewer: It is no secret, reading ULS logs is a pain in the rear. Well, not so with ULS Viewer, which does work with SharePoint 2007 as well. But it’s just way cooler with SharePoint 2010. You know when you get an error in SharePoint 2010 it shows you an error like as below: Well, the ULS Viewer will allow you to set filtering critereon, allowing you to immediately zero in, into an error, across multiple WFEs even. Also there are numerous other facilities built into the tool, such as advanced filtering, critical error notifications, etc. A must have! You can read the documentation of the ULSViewer here. 3. SPDisposeCheck: Did you know that the MySite object is strange? What is strange about it? That you have to dispose it even if you didn’t create it!? Well who the hell remembers all that! Honestly I do! And you should too. But there is a tool to help you sanitize your code. And that is SPDisposeCheck. You run it against your DLL or EXE, and it will give you suggestions on where you might have missed calling dispose on an object. You still have to use your head, but having this tool helps. 4. DebugView: Debugging for SharePoint can be difficult sometimes. Sometimes your breakpoints don’t get hit. And while you can try and make them hit, it is sometimes easier to just write a bunch of Debug.WriteLines, and catch them from an external application such as DebugView. You simply use your code, and DebugView will catch all the Debug.WriteLine’s in your code like this - 5. BGInfo: One annoying thing about SharePoint projects, it causes the number of servers to multiply like bunnies. As I’m RDP’ing into many computers trying to diagnose a crazy issue, sometimes it becomes hard to remember which machine is which. BGInfo puts all that on the wallpaper, alongwith a bunch of other useful info. A bit like this - 5. WSPBuilder: SharePoint 2007 only, but I think there maybe a version for SP2010 coming later. I think the VS2010 tools for SP2010 development are quite nice, so WSPBuilder, well so far I don’t miss it. But lets see what WSPBuilder for 2010 brings – I haven’t seen it yet. However, I want to confidently assert that WSPBuilder for SP2007 is simply awesome. 6. SharePoint Manager: The SharePoint Manager 2010 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties. The VS2010 dev tools now include a server explorer, which show you a subset of properties in read-only. I would LOVE to see SharePoint manager like functionality built into VS2010. SharePoint Manager, a total must-have. Comment on the article ....

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  • When to implement: Together with or after the source product?

    - by Jeremy Oosthuizen
    Somebody recently relayed a prospect's question to me: How hard would it be to implement OUBI after the source product (CC&B, WAM or NMS) has already been implemented? Fact is that MOST non-OUBI Data Warehouse / Business Intelligence implementations take place after the source application(s) are in place and hopefully stable. If an organization decides that they need better reporting and management information, then the logical path (see The Data Warehouse Institute's Data Warehouse Maturity Model) is to a Data Warehouse -- no matter when their last applications were implemented. If there is a pre-built Data Warehouse for their specific application, or even for the desired business process in their industry, they're in luck. Else they have to design and build from scratch, using a toolset. The implementation of a toolset is unlike the implementation of OUBI which, like OBI Apps, contain pre-built ETL routines and user content. Much has been written before about the advantages of that. So, because OUBI is designed specifically for Oracle Utilities transactional products, we often implement them in parallel -- with OUBI lagging a little behind by necessity, like Reporting. Customers know from the start they're going to need the solution, and therefore purchase the products at the same time. My biggest argument FOR a parallel installation/implementation of OUBI with the source product is two-fold: - There could be things (which is the technical term for data elements) that customers figure out they need when implementing OUBI, which are often easier added to the source product's implementation project, than to add later; - OUBI's ETL often points out errors (severe or not) with converted data, which are easier to fix during the source product's implementation project, or it may even be impossible to fix afterwards. The Conversion routines sometimes miss these errors, because the source system can live with the not-quite-perfect converted data. If the data can't be properly extracted, i.e. the proper Dimensions linked to the Facts, then it can't get into OUBI. That means it can't be analyzed effectively along with the rest of the organization's data. Then there is also the throw-away-work argument, which may be significant. The operational / transactional system cannot go live without reports on Day 1. A lot of those reports would be taken care of by the implementation of OUBI. If OUBI is implemented after go-live, those reports STILL have to be built during the source product's implementation project, but they become throw-away after the OUBI implementation. I have sometimes been told that it is better to implement OUBI after the source product, because it cuts down on scope and risk for the source product's implementation project. All I can say to that, is bah humbug. No, seriously, given the arguments above, planning has to include the OUBI implementation and it has to be managed properly -- just like any other implementation. If so, it should not add any risk and it should be included in the scope from the start. The answer to the prospect's question is therefore that it is not that much more difficult; after all, most DW/BI implemenations are done like that. They just have to consider the points above.

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