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• Real-time stock market application

  - by Sam

  I'm an amateur programmer. I'd like to develop a software application (like Tradestation), to analyse real-time market data. Please teach me if the following approach is correct, ie the procedures, knowledge or software needed etc: Use a DB to read the real-time feed from data provider: what should be the right DB to use? I know it should be a time serious one. Can I use SQL, Mysql, or others? What database can receive real-time data feed? Do I need to configure the DB to do this? If the real-time data is in ASCII form, how can it be converted to those that can be read by the DB and my application? Should I have to write codes or just use some add-ins? What kind of add-in are needed? How should I code the program to retrieve the changing data from the DB so that the analysis software screen data can also change asynchronously? (like the RTD in excel) Which aspects of programming do I need to learn to develop the above? Are there web resources/ books I can refer to for more information?

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• Using EC2 instance as main development platform

  - by David

  My problem I am working as a consultant for various companies. Each company provides me with a laptop with their software on and I also have my own, where I have my development environment. I tend to buy a new laptop every second year and find myself spending lots of time configuring and installing software. I also spend a lot of time waiting for my laptop to process things. To solve all these issues, I am now considering using EC2 (running windows instances) as my main development platform and just access this from any PC I happen to be at. I calculated that running the Large instance (cheapest 64-bit) for 8 hours a day for a year costs me 960$ per year, which is acceptable. I imagine that when I approach the workplace each day, I will make a single tap on my phone to fire up the instance, so it is ready when I get to work. I should have different icons on my phone to fire up the various instance types. The same software should of course automatically be loaded on the various hardware (sometimes I would even need their instance with 68.4 GB of memory). Another advantage is that if I am having a specific problem with my instance, I could fire up another instance and have someone look into the problem and update the image. My question: Does anyone have experience with such a setup on EC2? What kind of problems do you foresee?

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• SUM of metric for normalized logical hierarchy

  - by Alex254

  Suppose there's a following table Table1, describing parent-child relationship and metric: Parent | Child | Metric (of a child) ------------------------------------ name0 | name1 | a name0 | name2 | b name1 | name3 | c name2 | name4 | d name2 | name5 | e name3 | name6 | f Characteristics: 1) Child always has 1 and only 1 parent; 2) Parent can have multiple children (name2 has name4 and name5 as children); 3) Number of levels in this "hierarchy" and number of children for any given parent are arbitrary and do not depend on each other; I need SQL request that will return result set with each name and a sum of metric of all its descendants down to the bottom level plus itself, so for this example table the result would be (look carefully at name1): Name | Metric ------------------ name1 | a + c + f name2 | b + d + e name3 | c + f name4 | d name5 | e name6 | f (name0 is irrelevant and can be excluded). It should be ANSI or Teradata SQL. I got as far as a recursive query that can return a SUM (metric) of all descendants of a given name: WITH RECURSIVE temp_table (Child, metric) AS ( SELECT root.Child, root.metric FROM table1 root WHERE root.Child = 'name1' UNION ALL SELECT indirect.Child, indirect.metric FROM temp_table direct, table1 indirect WHERE direct.Child = indirect.Parent) SELECT SUM(metric) FROM temp_table; Is there a way to turn this query into a function that takes name as an argument and returns this sum, so it can be called like this? SELECT Sum_Of_Descendants (Child) FROM Table1; Any suggestions about how to approach this from a different angle would be appreciated as well, because even if the above way is implementable, it will be of poor performance - there would be a lot of iterations of reading metrics (value f would be read 3 times in this example). Ideally, the query should read a metric of each name only once.

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• Using Python to traverse a parent-child data set

  - by user132748

  I have a dataset of two columns in a csv file. Th purpose of this dataset is to provide a linking between two different id's if they belong to the same person. e.g (2,3,5 belong to 1) e.g COLA COLB 1 2 ; 1 3 ; 1 5 ; 2 6 ; 3 7 ; 9 10 In the above example 1 is linked to 2,3,5 and 2 is the linked to 6 and 3 is linked to 7. What I am trying to achieve is to identify all records which are linked to 1 directly (2,3,5) or indirectly(6,7) and be able to say that these id's in column B belong to same person in column A and then either dedupe or add a new column to the output file which will have 1 populated for all rows that link to 1 e.g of expected output colA colB GroupField 1 2 1; 1 3 1; 1 5 1 ; 2 6 1 ;3 7 1; 9 10 9; 10 11 9 I am a newbie and so am not sure on how to approach this problem.Appreciate any inputs you'll can provide.

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• How to capture a Header or Trailer Count Value in a Flat File and Assign to a Variable

  - by Compudicted

  Recently I had several questions concerning how to process files that carry a header and trailer in them. Typically those files are a product of data extract from non Microsoft products e.g. Oracle database encompassing various tables data where every row starts with an identifier. For example such a file data record could look like: HDR,INTF_01,OUT,TEST,3/9/2011 11:23 B1,121156789,DATA TEST DATA,2011-03-09 10:00:00,Y,TEST 18 10:00:44,2011-07-18 10:00:44,Y B2,TEST DATA,2011-03-18 10:00:44,Y B3,LEG 1 TEST DATA,TRAN TEST,N B4,LEG 2 TEST DATA,TRAN TEST,Y FTR,4,TEST END,3/9/2011 11:27 A developer is normally able to break the records using a Conditional Split Transformation component by employing an expression similar to Output1 -- SUBSTRING(Output1,1,2) == "B1" and so on, but often a verification is required after this step to check if the number of data records read corresponds to the number specified in the trailer record of the file. This portion sometimes stumbles some people so I decided to share what I came up with. As an aside, I want to mention that the approach I use is slightly more portable than some others I saw because I use a separate DFT that can be copied and pasted into a new SSIS package designer surface or re-used within the same package again and it can survive several trailer/footer records (!). See how a ready DFT can look: The first step is to create a Flat File Connection Manager and make sure you get the row split into columns like this: After you are done with the Flat File connection, move onto adding an aggregate which is in use to simply assign a value to a variable (here the aggregate is used to handle the possibility of multiple footers/headers): The next step is adding a Script Transformation as destination that requires very little coding. First, some variable setup: and finally the code: As you can see it is important to place your code into the appropriate routine in the script, otherwise the end result may not be as expected. As the last step you would use the regular Script Component to compare the variable value obtained from the DFT above to a package variable value obtained say via a Row Count component to determine if the file being processed has the right number of rows.

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• Dynamic Layout in BI Publisher

  - by Manoj Madhusoodanan

  This blog tells about how to set dynamic layout of a BI Publisher report.Lets take a simple business scenario.If user wants to view the output in either PDF or EXCEL.Two ways we can achieve this.  1) If the output type is not a program parameter the we can choose the layout type at the time of submission in the SRS window. 2) If the report output type is a parameter we need to choose the layout at the time of submission of the request using FND_REQUEST.ADD_LAYOUT. Here I am discussing the second approach.Following components I have created for this scenario. 1) XXCUST - Sample Report : This program actually generates the XML data. It is linked with a RTF template.Note: At the time of creating this program you can uncheck Use in SRS to prevent users from submitting from SRS window.Because we are submitting this program from another concurrent program.Also is not required to add it to request group.2) XXCUST - Report Wrapper : This program calls XXCUST - Sample Report and exposed to user through SRS.3) SAMPLE_REPORT_WRAPPER : Executable which calls xxcust_sample_rep.main4) SAMPLE_REPORT_EXE : Executable which calls xxcust_sample_rep.report_main5) XXCUST - Sample Report Data Definition : Data Definition linked to XXCUST - Sample Report6) XXCUST - Sample Report Template : Template linked to XXCUST - Sample Report Data Definition 7) Package 8) RTF

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• Pros and Cons between learning to program on Windows and Linux and Macs

  - by Amumu

  I have been studying IT for 2 years and I'm going to graduate soon in this year (if everything goes well). I think it's time for me to choose a path to specialized into some fields of this large industry. Personally, I want to be a game programmer. But to be a game programmer, surely I have to invest my time to study Windows Programming, then DirectX and other programming techniques related to game. On the other hand, Linux seems promising as well. I am not sure about Game Programming on for it, but it seems become an expert for this OS, and by expert it's not about using the OS to become an administrator, but can do further than that, such as understand the OS to its essence and can produce applications for it. However, there's some obstacles in my view for this development path. Many of my friends think that Linux is based on free and open source, and if you follow it, as its name suggested: Free and Open Source, it means we also give away our software free. Otherwise, we will have to find a second job to make living. Currently, I think a viable way to make money on Linux is doing works related to client-server. Another way to developer my career is to become expert in developing business applications for companies. This is more on business, not on specialized IT fields so I am not really interested. Another alternative is programming on mobile devices, such as iPhone, Android and it seems very promising and easier to approach. Another way is to become a computer scientist and research on academic subjects such as AI, human-computer interaction, but this is far beyond my reach, so I won't invest my time on it until I feel I am experienced enough. That's all I can think of for now. I may miss a lot of things, so I need more opinions as input to get the big picture of the industry for my career path.

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• Integrated Reporting is Getting Closer

  - by jmorourke

  Oracle recently sponsored a webcast on CFO.com titled:  The CFO Playbook on Integrated Reporting: Integrating Sustainability into Financial Disclosures.  The speakers for this webcast were James Margolis, partner with Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a global provider of environmental, health, safety, risk and sustainability consulting services (EHSS) and Mike Wallace, Director of the Global Reporting Initiative's Focal Point USA. This webcast focused on why top companies in the U.S. and overseas are incorporating sustainability content into their annual reports and other financial disclosures. The speakers discussed the benefits of integrating sustainability reporting with traditional financial reporting. They noted how investors, corporate directors, lenders and most recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission, use this information to better understand, benchmark and value companies. They also discussed the November 2012 release of an Integrated Reporting Framework by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).  See the press release and link to the framework here.  The shift towards integrated financial and sustainability reporting is gaining momentum with a number of global stock exchanges endorsing this approach in 2012.  See the links here if you want to listen to the webcast or download the slides. Also, here is a demonstration of Oracle’s solution for integrated financial and sustainability reporting. If you’re interested in learning more about this and Oracle’s other Sustainability Reporting solutions, click here. If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

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• Building a template engine - starting point

  - by Anirudh

  We're building a Django-based project with a template component. This component will be separate from the project as such and can be Django/Python, Node, Java or whatever works. The template has to be rendered into HTML. The templates will contain references to objects with properties that are defined in the DB, say, a Bus. For eg, it could be something like [object type="vehicle" weight="heavy"] and it would have to pull a random object from the DB fulfilling the criteria : type="vehicle" weight="heavy" (bus/truck/jet) and then substitute that tag with an image, say, of a Bus. Also it would have to be able to handle some processing. Eg: What is [X type="integer" lte="10"] + [Y type="integer" lte="10"] [option X+Y correct_ans="true"] [option X-Y correct_ans="false"] [option X+y+1 correct_ans="false"] The engine would be expected to fill in a random integer value <= 10 for X and Y and show radioboxes for each of the options. Would also have to store the fact that the first option is the correct answer. Does it to make sense to write something from the scratch? Or is it better to use an existing templating system (like Django's own templating system) as a starting point? Any suggestions on how I can approach this?

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• Best peer-to-peer game architecture

  - by Dejw

  Consider a setup where game clients: have quite small computing resources (mobile devices, smartphones) are all connected to a common router (LAN, hotspot etc) The users want to play a multiplayer game, without an external server. One solution is to host an authoritative server on one phone, which in this case would be also a client. Considering point 1 this solution is not acceptable, since the phone's computing resources are not sufficient. So, I want to design a peer-to-peer architecture that will distribute the game's simulation load among the clients. Because of point 2 the system needn't be complex with regards to optimization; the latency will be very low. Each client can be an authoritative source of data about himself and his immediate environment (for example bullets.) What would be the best approach to designing such an architecture? Are there any known examples of such a LAN-level peer-to-peer protocol? Notes: Some of the problems are addressed here, but the concepts listed there are too high-level for me. Security I know that not having one authoritative server is a security issue, but it is not relevant in this case as I'm willing to trust the clients. Edit: I forgot to mention: it will be a rather fast-paced game (a shooter). Also, I have already read about networking architectures at Gaffer on Games.

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• High resolution graphical representation of the Earth's surface

  - by Simon

  I've got a library, which I inherited, which presents a zoomable representation of the Earth. It's a Mercator projection and is constructed from triangles, the properties of which are stored in binary files. The surface is built up, for any given view port, by drawing these triangles in an overlapping fashion to produce the image. The definition of each triangle is the lat/long of the vertices. It looks OK at low values of zoom but looks progressively more ragged as the user zooms in. The view ports are primarily referenced though a rectangle of lat/long co-ordinates. I'd like to replace it with a better quality approach. The problem is, I don't know where to begin researching the options as I am not familiar either with the projections needed nor the graphics techniques used to render them. For example, I imagine that I could acquire high resolution images, say Mercator projections although I'm open to anything, break them into tiles and somehow wrap them onto a graphical representation of a sphere. I'm not asking for "how do I", more where should I begin to understand what might be involved and the techniques I will need to learn. I am most grateful for any "Earth rendering 101" pointers folks might have.

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• Consolidating multiple domain names

  - by Mike

  I have a client that has three separately hosted copies of their website, each on a separate domain name. The websites are all essentially the same, bar a few discrepancies caused by badly managed updates in the past. I will soon be launching a completely new website for them, at which point, all three domain names are to resolve to the same web server. One domain name will become the default domain name that they refer to in all their literature, and the other two will simply be used as catch-alls for old links, bookmarks, and so on. I would like to know what people consider the best route to achieve this. My plan so far is: Get the new site up and running on the new webserver. Change the relevant A record of the default domain name to point to the new webserver. a) Keep the existing hosting accounts in operation. Create a list of 301 redirects from old page names on the old site to new page names on the new site. or b) Configure CNAME records for the non-default domain names, each pointing to the new webserver. Create a list of 301 redirects on the new site that redirect from old page names to new page names. If my understanding is correct, 3a will help to maintain whatever search engine rankings the sites already have (I know it's not going to be perfect), while at the same time informing search engines that the old domain names are no longer in use. What's a good approach to take here?

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• How to structure my GUI agnostic project?

  - by Nezreli

  I have a project which loads from database a XML file which defines a form for some user. XML is transformed into a collection of objects whose classes derive from single parent. Something like Control - EditControl - TextBox Control - ContainterControl - Panel Those classes are responsible for creation of GUI controls for three different enviroments: WinForms, DevExpress XtraReports and WebForms. All three frameworks share mostly the same control tree and have a common single parent (Windows.Forms.Control, XrControl and WebControl). So, how to do it? Solution a) Control class has abstract methods Control CreateWinControl(); XrControl CreateXtraControl(); WebControl CreateWebControl(); This could work but the project has to reference all three frameworks and the classes are going to be fat with methods which would support all three implementations. Solution b) Each framework implementation is done in separate projects and have the exact class tree like the Core project. All three implementations are connected using a interface to the Core class. This seems clean but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Does anyone have a simpler solution or a suggestion how should I approach this task?

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• TODO Formatting

  - by charlie.mott

  Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott TODO's should only be used for a short period of time to remind you that something needs to be done. They should then be addressed as soon as possible. In order to know who owns a TODO task and how long it’s been outstanding, my company uses the following standard for TODO formatting: Format:     // TODO : Owner Initials – Date Created – Description of task. Sample:     // TODO: CM – 2012/01/20 – Move this class to a new location so it can be reused. Using this pattern makes it easy to use the Resharper TODO explorer. The Carrot In order to make it easy for developers to apply this rule, a code snippet can be created in Visual Studio. Even better, I created a Resharper template. This gives the facility to use the current user name and current date macros. image This actually makes the formatting look like this. Sample:     // TODO: cmott – 2012/01/20 – Move this class to a new location so it can be reused. The Stick How to you enforce such a rule? I tried to create a custom Resharper Highlighting Pattern to perform custom code analysis inspection for deviations from this pattern. However, I did not have any success. The find dialog would not accept // text. If I work it out, I will update this blog post. StyleCop Instead I created a custom StyleCop rule. I followed the approach used with the StyleCop Contrib project. This provides a simple to use base class and easy to use unit testing framework. I will upload this todo format analyzer as a patch to that project. image

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• Financial institutions build predictive models using Oracle R Enterprise to speed model deployment

  - by Mark Hornick

  See the Oracle press release, Financial Institutions Leverage Metadata Driven Modeling Capability Built on the Oracle R Enterprise Platform to Accelerate Model Deployment and Streamline Governance for a description where a "unified environment for analytics data management and model lifecycle management brings the power and flexibility of the open source R statistical platform, delivered via the in-database Oracle R Enterprise engine to support open standards compliance." Through its integration with Oracle R Enterprise, Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications provides "productivity, management, and governance benefits to financial institutions, including the ability to: Centrally manage and control models in a single, enterprise model repository, allowing for consistent management and application of security and IT governance policies across enterprise assets Reuse models and rapidly integrate with applications by exposing models as services Accelerate development with seeded models and common modeling and statistical techniques available out-of-the-box Cut risk and speed model deployment by testing and tuning models with production data while working within a safe sandbox Support compliance with regulatory requirements by carrying out comprehensive stress testing, which captures the effects of adverse risk events that are not estimated by standard statistical and business models. This approach supplements the modeling process and supports compliance with the Pillar I and the Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process stress testing requirements of the Basel II Accord Improve performance by deploying and running models co-resident with data. Oracle R Enterprise engines run in database, virtually eliminating the need to move data to and from client machines, thereby reducing latency and improving security"

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• Leveraging Code Across Platforms in Ever Bigger Games

  - by ashes999

  Summary: The same way that I continually build complex engines and libraries within a single platform and technology to allow me to build increasingly bigger and better games, how to continue this when development crosses into different platforms? If I switch platforms, how do I leverage past code and experiences? Games are hard to build. Big games are even harder to build. I've decided that to be able to make big games, I need to start building smaller games, and building up an asset base of code, assets (graphics, sounds), tools, and most importantly, game engines, so that I can eventually get there. One game at a time. Let me give an analogy. To build an MMO 3D RPG, I would approach this by building and releasing small games with increasingly more features. This could entail, for example: A simple 2D game A tile-based game A game with RPG elements (items, equipment, monsters, battle) A full-fledged RPG A 3D RPG The problem now is if I have to change platforms or tools, I don't know how to leverage past code-bases (and experience) to start with a mature product. Right now, I'm writing Silverlight (FlatRedBall) games. Let's say I stick with this for ten years, and then suddenly decide to write a PS6 game, which is in a different programming language entirely. Granted, I have ten years of game-development experience (and correspondingly ten years of professional software development experience from my day job) to back me up. But I would still like some way to transplant that 2D RPG engine into the new programming language, or else leverage it somehow. Is this even possible? What are my options?

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• Alternatives to Pessimistic Locking in Cluster Applications

  - by amphibient

  I am researching alternatives to database-level pessimistic locking to achieve transaction isolation in a cluster of Java applications going against the same database. Synchronizing concurrent access in the application tier is clearly not a solution in the present configuration because the same database transaction can be invoked from multiple JVMs concurrently. Currently, we are subject to occasional race conditions which, due to the optimistic locking we have in place via Hibernate, cause a StaleObjectStateException exception and data loss. I have a moderately large transaction within the scope of my refactoring project. Let's describe it as updating one top-level table row and then making various related inserts and/or updates to several of its child entities. I would like to insure exclusive access to the top-level table row and all of the children to be affected but I would like to stay away from pessimistic locking at the database level for performance reasons mostly. We use Hibernate for ORM. Does it make sense to start a single (perhaps synchronous) message queue application into which this method could be moved to insure synchronized access as opposed to each cluster node using its own, which is a clear race condition hazard? I am mentioning this approach even though I am not confident in it because both the top-level table row and its children could also be updated from other system calls, not just the mentioned transaction. So I am seeking to design a solution where the top-level table row and its children will all somehow be pseudo-locked (exclusive transaction isolation) but at the application and not the database level. I am open to ideas and suggestions, I understand this is not a very cut and dried challenge.

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• How do I prevent my platformer's character from clipping on wall tiles?

  - by Jonathan Hobbs

  Currently, I have a platformer with tiles for terrain (graphics borrowed from Cave Story). The game is written from scratch using XNA, so I'm not using an existing engine or physics engine. The tile collisions are described pretty much exactly as described in this answer (with simple SAT for rectangles and circles), and everything works fine. Except when the player runs into a wall whilst falling/jumping. In that case, they'll catch on a tile and begin thinking they've hit a floor or ceiling that isn't actually there. The player is moving right and falling downwards. So after movement, collisions are checked - and first, it turns out the player character is colliding with the tile 3rd from the floor, and pushed upwards. Second, he's found to be colliding with the tile beside him, and pushed sideways - the end result being the player character thinks he's on the ground and isn't falling, and 'catches' on the tile for as long as he's running into it. I could solve this by defining the tiles from top to bottom instead, which makes him fall smoothly, but then the inverse case happens and he'll hit a ceiling that isn't there when jumping upwards against the wall. How should I approach resolving this, so that the player character can just fall along the wall as it should?

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• How to ask the boss to pay for qualifications?

  - by adamk

  Hi, I'm working as a junior developer for a startup company, and have been working here around 7 months now. After 4 months, we had a late quarterly review, and just before the boss mentioned there was a training budget, and we should let them know what training we needed and they'd get it for us. I asked for some training at the time, but 3 months have passed without mention of it, and I have since learnt what I needed in my own time (I just can't stop learning new things!) I took on a new role recently, so have been given some cheap ($60) training for that however. Now the next review is approaching, and I would like to get Adobe Qualified Expert qualifications for ActionScript 3 / Flex. I was told by a contracted co-worker who had left that I should try to get the company to pay for this, as it's something they can tell potential investors as a selling point. My question is though; how do I approach this with my boss? I don't want it to sound like I'm looking for another job and want the qualifications to look elsewhere!

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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• Microeconomical simulation: coordination/planning between self-interested trading agents

  - by Milton Manfried

  In a typical perfect-information strategy game like Chess, an agent can calculate its best move by searching the state tree for the best possible move, while assuming that the opponent will also make the best possible move (i.e. Mini-max). I would like to use this approach in a "game" modeling economic activity, where the possible "moves" would be to buy or sell for a given price, and the goal, rather than a specific class of states (e.g. Checkmate), would be to maximize some function F of the agent's state (e.g. F(money, widget) = 10*money + widget). How to handle buy/sell actions that require coordination between both parties, at the very least agreement upon a price? The cheap way out would be to set the price beforehand, maybe based upon the current supply -- but the idea of this simulation is to examine how prices emerge when freely determined by "perfectly rational" agents. A great example of what I do not want is the trading algorithm in SugarScape -- paraphrasing from Growing Artificial Societies p101-102: when a pair of agents interact to trade, they each compute their internal valuations of the goods, then a bargaining process is conducted and a price is agreed to. If this price makes both agents better off, they complete the transaction The protocol itself is beautiful, but what it cannot capture (as far as I can tell) is the ability for an agent to pay more than it might otherwise for a good, because it knows that it can sell it for even more at a later date -- what appears to be called "strategic thinking" in this pape at Google Books Multi-Agent-Based Simulation III: 4th International Workshop, MABS 2003... to get realistic behavior like that, it seems one would either (1) have to build an outrageously-complex internal valuation system which could at best only cover situations that were planned for at compile-time, or otherwise (2) have some mechanism to search the state tree... which would require some way of planning future trades. Note: The chess analogy only works as far as the state-space search goes; the simulation isn't intended to be "zero sum", so a literal mini-max search wouldn't be appropriate -- and ideally, it should work with more than two agents.

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• rel="nofollow" SEO impact

  - by Torez

  I saw a technique used where there was a block with three parts: 1. Image (wrapped in an anchor tag) 2. Heading (anchor tag with heading text) 3. Paragraph (regular p tag with synopsis content) e.g. <li class="block"> <a rel="nofollow" class="thumb" href="#"><img src="images/placeholder_service_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" /></a> <a class="h3" href="#"Good SEO Heading</a> <pPellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu...</p> </li> With the image tag there was a rel="nofollow" on the wrapped anchor tag. So the idea is that the users still has the ability to click the image and go to the details page, but the image link does not rank. When users click on the heading text, that is only what ranks for that specific page. Q: Is this the correct approach? Does this even do anything? What is the best practice?

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• TDD: Write a separate test for object initialization or relying on other tests exercising it

  - by DXM

  This seems to be the common pattern that's emerging in some of the tests I've worked on lately. We have a class, and quite often this is legacy code whose design can't be easily altered, which has a bunch of member variables. There's some kind of "Initialize" or "Load" function which would put an object into a valid state. Only after it is initialized/loaded, are the members in the proper state so that other methods can be exercised. So when we start writing tests, first test is "TestLoad" and all we put in there is exercising initialization logic. Then we might add one (or few) TestLoadFailureXXX tests and those are definitely valuable. Then we start writing tests to verify other behaviors but all of them require the object to be loaded. So they all start by running exactly the same code as "TestLoad". So my question: Is TestLoad even necessary? Do you take it and let other tests simply exercise the loading? Or leave it so things are more explicit? I know that each unit test function should have no (or as little as possible) overlap with other test functions, but it seems like in cases of loading, this is unavoidable. And whether we like it or not, if something in the loading code breaks, we will end up with a whole test suite of failures. Is there another approach that I might be missing here? Thank you for the responses. It definitely makes sense that you want to see "InitializationTest" and if that fails you know where to start looking. In case it matters, this question is mostly about C++ and we use CppUnit framework. And now, thanks to sleske, I'll be constantly wishing that CppUnit supported test dependencies. Might have to hack something in one of these days :)

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• Fusion HCM in Boots

  - by Kristin Rose

  These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do…Of course by boots, we’re referring to Oracle’s HCM Boot Camps for OPN members, which offer a hands-on approach to learning about Oracle Fusion HCM and Taleo positioning and capabilities. Those who attend an Oracle HCM boot camp will be prepared to achieve Oracle Fusion HCM Presales Specialist status, discuss Oracle Fusion HCM with customers to build pipeline, and complete competency criteria toward Oracle Fusion HCM 11g Specialization! This in-person event offers expert-led sessions, discussion, and hands-on activities meaning you will get the information quicker and remember it better! Plus, we think a free lunch is always a good thing. As a next step, all interested partners should: Obtain self-service knowledge from the Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management 11g PreSales Specialist Guided Learning Path. Become a Specialist by completing the Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management 11g PreSales Specialist Assessment . Contact their regional Oracle Alliances & Channels point-of-contact to learn more about these free OPN Boot Camp events, and the opportunity to attend the next one. We know you’ll be strutting your stuff after you've gained the knowledge and expertise to become Oracle Fusion HCM Specialized! Check it out! The OPN Communications Team 

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• Team Software Development using Ruby on Rails

  - by Panoy

  I used to work alone on small to medium sized programming projects before and have no experience working in a team environment. Currently, there will be 3 of us in an in-house software development team that is tasked to develop a number of software for an academic institution. We have decided to use the web for the majority of the projects and are planning to choose Ruby on Rails for this and I would like to ask for your inputs, advices and approaches with regards to software development as a team using the RoR web framework. One thing that has really confounded me is how you divide the programming tasks of a project if there are 3 of you that are really doing the coding. It’s obvious that we as developers approach a problem in a modular way and finish it one after another. If the project consists of 3 modules, should each one of us focus on each of those modules? Would it be faster that way? How about if the 3 of us would focus on one module first (that’s what I really prefer). Is using a distributed version control system such as Git the answer to this type of problem? Please don’t forget to put your tips and experiences with regards to team software development. Cheers!

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