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  • JRockit R28/JRockit Mission Control 4.0 is out!

    - by Marcus Hirt
    The next major release of JRockit is finally out! Here are some highlights: Includes the all new JRockit Flight Recorder – supersedes the old JRockit Runtime Analyser. The new flight recorder is inspired by the “black box” in airplanes. It uses a highly efficient recording engine and thread local buffers to capture data about the runtime and the application running in the JVM. It can be configured to always be on, so that whenever anything “interesting” happens, data can be dumped for some time back. Think of it as your own personal profiling time machine. Automatic shortest path calculation in Memleak – no longer any need for running around in circles when trying to find your way back to a thread root from an instance. Memleak can now show class loader related information and split graphs on a per class loader basis. More easily configured JMX agent – default port for both RMI Registry and RMI Server can be configured, and is by default the same, allowing easier configuration of firewalls. Up to 64 GB (was 4GB) compressed references. Per thread allocation profiling in the Management Console. Native Memory Tracking – it is now possible to track native memory allocations with very high resolution. The information can either be accessed using JRCMD, or the dedicated Native Memory Tracking experimental plug-in for the Management Console (alas only available for the upcoming 4.0.1 release). JRockit can now produce heap dumps in HPROF format. Cooperative suspension – JRockit is no longer using system signals for stopping threads, which could lead to hangs if signals were lost or blocked (for example bad NFS shares). Now threads check periodically to see if they are suspended. VPAT/Section 508 compliant JRMC – greatly improved keyboard navigation and screen reader support. See New and Noteworthy for more information. JRockit Mission Control 4.0.0 can be downloaded from here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jrockit/index.html <shameless ad> There is even a book to go with JRMC 4.0.0/JRockit R28! http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-jrockit-the-definitive-guide/book/ </shameless ad>

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  • Is 4-5 years the “Midlife Crisis” for a programming career?

    - by Jeff
    I’ve been programming C# professionally for a bit over 4 years now. For the past 4 years I’ve worked for a few small/medium companies ranging from “web/ads agencies”, small industry specific software shops to a small startup. I've been mainly doing "business apps" that involves using high-level programming languages (garbage collected) and my overall experience was that all of the works I’ve done could have been more professional. A lot of the things were done incorrectly (in a rush) mainly due to cost factor that people always wanted something “now” and with the smallest amount of spendable money. I kept on thinking maybe if I could work for a bigger companies or a company that’s better suited for programmers, or somewhere that's got the money and time to really build something longer term and more maintainable I may have enjoyed more in my career. I’ve never had a “mentor” that guided me through my 4 years career. I am pretty much blog / google / self taught programmer other than my bachelor IT degree. I’ve also observed another issue that most so called “senior” programmer in “my working environment” are really not that senior skill wise. They are “senior” only because they’ve been a long time programmer, but the code they write or the decisions they make are absolutely rubbish! They don't want to learn, they don't want to be better they just want to get paid and do what they've told to do which make sense and most of us are like that. Maybe that’s why they are where they are now. But I don’t want to become like them I want to be better. I’ve run into a mental state that I no longer intend to be a programmer for my future career. I started to think maybe there are better things out there to work on. The more blogs I read, the more “best practices” I’ve tried the more I feel I am drifting away from “my reality”. But I am not a great programmer otherwise I don't think I am where I am now. I think 4-5 years is a stage that can be a step forward career wise or a step out of where you are. I just wanted to hear what other have to say about what I’ve mentioned above and whether you’ve experienced similar situation in your past programming career and how you dealt with it. Thanks.

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  • SQL SERVER – PREEMPTIVE and Non-PREEMPTIVE – Wait Type – Day 19 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    In this blog post, we are going to talk about a very interesting subject. I often get questions related to SQL Server 2008 Book-Online about various Preemptive wait types. I got a few questions asking what these wait types are and how they could be interpreted. To get current wait types of the system, you can read this article and run the script: SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_exec_requests – Wait Type – Day 4 of 28. Before we continue understanding them, let us study first what PREEMPTIVE and Non-PREEMPTIVE waits in SQL Server mean. PREEMPTIVE: Simply put, this wait means non-cooperative. While SQL Server is executing a task, the Operating System (OS) interrupts it. This leads to SQL Server to involuntarily give up the execution for other higher priority tasks. This is not good for SQL Server as it is a particular external process which makes SQL Server to yield. This kind of wait can reduce the performance drastically and needs to be investigated properly. Non-PREEMPTIVE: In simple terms, this wait means cooperative. SQL Server manages the scheduling of the threads. When SQL Server manages the scheduling instead of the OS, it makes sure its own priority. In this case, SQL Server decides the priority and one thread yields to another thread voluntarily. In the earlier version of SQL Server, there was no preemptive wait types mentioned and the associated task status with them was marked as suspended. In SQL Server 2005, preemptive wait types were not listed as well, but their associated task status was marked as running. In SQL Server 2008, preemptive wait types are properly listed and their associated task status is also marked as running. Now, SQL Server is in Non-Preemptive mode by default and it works fine. When CLR, extended Stored Procedures and other external components run, they run in Preemptive mode, leading to the creation of these wait types. There are a wide variety of preemptive wait types. If you see consistent high value in the Preemptive wait types, I strongly suggest that you look into the wait type and try to know the root cause. If you are still not sure, you can send me an email or leave a comment about it and I will do my best to help you reduce this wait type. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • 3 Day Level 400 SQL Tuning Workshop 15 March in London, early bird and referral offer

    - by sqlworkshops
    I want to inform you that we have organized the "3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop" in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011.This is a truly level 400 hands-on workshop and you can find the Agenda, Prerequisite, Goal of the Workshop and Registration information at www.sqlworkshops.com/ruk. Charges are GBP 1800 (VAT excl.). Early bird discount of GBP 125 until 18 February. We are also introducing a new referral plan. If you refer someone who participates in the workshop you will receive an Amazon gift voucher for GBP 125.Feedback from one of the participants who attended our November London workshop:Andrew, Senior SQL Server DBA from UBS, UK, www.ubs.com, November 26, 2010:Rating: In a scale of 1 to 5 please rate each item below (1=Poor & 5=Excellent) Overall I was satisfied with the workshop 5 Instructor maintained the focus of the course 5 Mix of theory and practice was appropriate 5 Instructor answered the questions asked 5 The training facility met the requirement 5 How confident are you with SQL Server 2008 performance tuning 5 Additional comments from Andrew: The course was expertly delivered and backed up with practical examples. At the end of the course I felt my knowledge of SQL Server had been greatly enhanced and was eager to share with my colleagues. I felt there was one prerequisite missing from the course description, an open mind since the course changed some of my core product beliefs. For Additional workshop feedbacks refer to: www.sqlworkshops.com/feedbacks.I will be delivering the Level 300-400 1 Day Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Performance Monitoring and Tuning Seminar at Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey during March. This event is organized by Microsoft Turkey, let me know if you are in Turkey and would like to attend.During September 2010 I delivered this Level 300-400 1 Day Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Performance Monitoring and Tuning Seminar in Zurich, Switzerland organized by Microsoft Switzerland and the feedback was 4.85 out of 5, there were about 100 participants. During November 2010 when I delivered seminar in Lisbon, Portugal organized by Microsoft Portugal, the feedback was 8.30 out of 9, there were 130 participants.Our Mission: Empower customers to fully realize the Performance potential of Microsoft SQL Server without increasing the total cost of ownership (TCO) and achieve high customer satisfaction in every consulting engagement and workshop delivery.Our Business Plan: Provide useful content in webcasts, articles and seminars to get visibility for consulting engagements and workshop delivery opportunity. Help us by forwarding this email to your SQL Server friends and colleagues.Looking forwardR Meyyappan & Team @ www.SQLWorkshops.comLinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan

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  • The 2012 Gartner-FEI CFO Technology Survey -- Reviewed by Jeff Henley, Oracle Chairman

    - by Di Seghposs
    Jeff Henley and Oracle Business Analytics VP Rich Clayton break down the findings of the 2012 Gartner-FEI CFO Technology Survey.  The survey produced by Gartner gathers CFOs perceptions about technology, trends and planned improvements to operations.  Financial executives and IT professionals can use these findings to align spending and organizational priorities and understand how technology should support corporate performance.    Listen to the webcast with Jeff Henley and Rich Clayton - Watch Now » Download the full report for all the details -   Read the Report »        Key Findings ·        Despite slow economic growth, CFOs expect conservative, steady IT spending. ·        The CFOs role in IT investment has increased again in 2012. ·        The 45% of IT leaders that report to the CFO are more than report to any other executive, and represent an increase of 3%. ·        Business analytics needs technology improvement. ·        CFOs are focused on business analytics and business applications more than on technology. ·        Information, social, cloud and mobile technology trends are on CFOs' radar. ·        Focusing on corporate performance management (CPM) projects, 63% of CFOs plan to upgrade business intelligence (BI), analytics and performance management in 2012. ·        Despite advancements in strategy management technologies, CFOs still focus on lagging key performance indicators (KPIs) only. ·        A pace-layered strategy for applications is needed (92% of CFOs believe IT doesn't provide transformation/differentiation). ·        New applications in financial governance rank high on improving compliance and efficiency.

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  • Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP Certified with Oracle Data Integrator EE

    - by denis.gray
    Two days ago Oracle announced the release of Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP.  With the amount of press this has garnered in the past two days, there's a key detail that can't be missed.  This release is certified with Oracle Data Integrator EE - now making the combination of Data Integration and Business Intelligence a force to contend with.  Within the Oracle Press Release there were two important bullets: ·         Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP includes a pre-packaged ABAP code compliant adapter and is certified with Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition to integrate SAP Financial Accounting data directly with the analytic application.  ·         Helping to integrate SAP financial data and disparate third-party data sources is Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition which delivers fast, efficient loading and transformation of timely data into a data warehouse environment through its high-performance Extract Load and Transform (E-LT) technology. This is very exciting news, demonstrating Oracle's overall commitment to Oracle Data Integrator EE.   This is a great way to start off the new year and we look forward to building on this momentum throughout 2011.   The following links contain additional information and media responses about the Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP release. IDG News Service (Also appeared in PC World, Computer World, CIO: "Oracle is moving further into rival SAP's turf with Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP, a new BI (business intelligence) application that can crunch ERP (enterprise resource planning) system financial data for insights." Information Week: "Oracle talks a good game about the appeal of an optimized, all-Oracle stack. But the company also recognizes that we live in a predominantly heterogeneous IT world" CRN: "While some businesses with SAP Financial Accounting already use Oracle BI, those integrations had to be custom developed. The new offering provides pre-built integration capabilities." ECRM Guide:  "Among other features, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP helps front-line managers improve financial performance and decision-making with what the company says is comprehensive, timely and role-based information on their departments' expenses and revenue contributions."   SAP Getting Started Guide for ODI on OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/data-integrator/learnmore/index.html For more information on the ODI and its SAP connectivity please review the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Application Adapters Guide for Oracle Data Integrator11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

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  • Taking AIIM at Social

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Today we are pleased to have a guest post from Christian Finn (@cfinn).  Christian is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter and heads up the WebCenter evangelist team.Last week I had the privilege of speaking at AIIM’s new conference in San Francisco.  AIIM, for those of you not familiar with it, is a global community of information professionals and got its start with ECM and imaging long ago. With 65,000+ members, AIIM has now set about broadening its scope to focus more on the intersection between systems of record (think traditional ECM) and systems of engagement (think social solutions).  So AIIM’s conference is a natural place to be for WebCenter types like me, who have a foot in both of those worlds.AIIM used to have their name on a very large tradeshow, but have changed direction now to run a small, intimate conference.  The lineup of keynotes was terrific, including David Pogue of The New York Times, Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, and Ted Schadler, author of Empowered among many thought-provoking and engaging speakers. (Note: Ted will soon be featured in our Social Business webcast series. Stay tuned.)John Mancini and his team at AIIM did a fabulous job running the event and the engagement from the 450 attendees was sustained over the two and a half days.  Our proudest moment was having three finalists up for AIIM awards including: San Joaquin County, CA, for a justice case management system using WebCenter Content and Oracle BPM; Medtronic and Fishbowl Solutions for their innovative iPad solutions on WebCenter Content, and the government of Louisville, Kentucky/Jefferson County for their accounts payable solution using WebCenter Content’s Image & Process Management.  The highlight of the awards night was San Joaquin winning the small organization award against some tough competition.In addition to the conversations sparked at the show, AIIM promoted the whitepapers their industry task forces have produced on the impact and opportunities created by systems of engagement and systems of record. The task forces were led by: Geoffrey Moore, the renowned high tech marketing guru and author of Crossing The Chasm; and Andrew McAfee, who coined the term and wrote the book, Enterprise 2.0. (Note: Andy will also be featured soon on the Social Business webcast series.)  These free papers make short, excellent reading and you can download them on the AIIM website: Moore highlights the changes to Enterprise IT that the social revolution will engender, and McAfee covers where and how organizations are finding value in using social techniques to foster innovation, to scale Q&A across the organization, and to connect sales and marketing for greater efficiency and effectiveness. Moore’s whitepaper is here and McAfee’s whitepapers are available here. For the benefit of those who did not get a chance to attend the AIIM conference, I’ll be posting the topics of my AIIM presentation, “Three Principles for Fixing Your Broken Organization,” here on the WebCenter blog over the rest of this week and next in a series of posts.  

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  • Understanding Oracle: Demystifying OpenWorld

    - by mseika
    Seminar: Wednesday 24th October 2012: Avnet, Bracknell Oracle OpenWorld is the world's largest event dedicated to helping enterprises harness the power of technology, during a full week in October. Oracle Corporation always uses Oracle OpenWorld to make its most important product announcements, and this year is no exception. We realise that not all our partners can attend this prestigious event in San Francisco, primarily due to time and cost pressures. Oracle OpenWorld is the only conference that goes this deep and wide with Oracle technology, providing thousands of sessions and hundreds of demonstrations geared toward helping partners and customers get better results with the technology it has —and plan strategically for the technology it will need to keep ahead of the competition in the years to come. With the sheer number of announcements planned, it is sometimes difficult to find your way through the fog and identify the opportunities relevant to your business to take advantage of, this coming year. So why not engage with the Oracle's UK team via Avnet and get the announcements shared with you face-to-face, in the UK? As a key Value Added Distributor of Oracle Applications, Technology and Hardware solutions, Avnet has been attending Oracle OpenWorld for a number of years and invites our partners to attend a half day summary event which will share the keynote announcements. We will also help prioritise for you the announcements of greatest interest and business opportunity for the UK channel. Agenda Time Module 12:00-13:15 Registration and lunch 13:15-14:00 Introductions and Key Hardware announcements Discover how Oracle's complete and integrated application-aware virtualization solutions, including virtualization for SPARC and x86 architectures, can help you gain better efficiencies across your business. Get updates on how Oracle storage products and solutions can accelerate database performance, improve application responsiveness, and meet your data protection needs. 14:00-14:15 Q&A and Break 14:15-15:00 Key Technology announcements Technology products, encompassing Oracle's Database 12c and Middleware, are revolutionizing the industry with record-breaking performance, helping customers consolidate onto private clouds and achieve high returns on investment. 15:00-15:15 Q&A and Break 15:15-16:00 Key Applications announcements Presentations focused on Oracle's strategy and vision for its applications business, including Oracle E-Business Suite; Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Hyperion, and Agile products; and the newly available Oracle Fusion Applications. 16:00-16:30 Oracle-on-Oracle announcements & business opportunities with Avnet Learn about Oracle's cloud computing and Oracle-on-Oracle strategies and find out more about Oracle's engineered systems for the broad market 16:30 Close * Please note agenda may be subject to change What do you need to do now Register now or for more information email our Oracle events team at [email protected]. N.B. Places are limited, so please register early to avoid disappointment.

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  • When Less is More

    - by aditya.agarkar
    How do you reconcile the fact that while the overall warehouse volume is down you still need more workers in the warehouse to ship all the orders? A WMS customer recently pointed out this seemingly perplexing fact in a customer conference. So what is going on? Didn't we tell you before that for a warehouse the customer is really the "king"? In this case customers are merely responding to a low overall low demand and uncertainty. They do not want to hold down inventory and one of the ways to do that is by decreasing the order size and ordering more frequently. Overall impact to the warehouse? Two words: "More work!!" This is not all. Smaller order sizes also mean challenges from a transportation perspective including a rise in costlier parcel or LTL shipments instead of cheaper TL shipments. Here is a hypothetical scenario where a customer reduces the order size by 10% and increases the order frequency by 10%. As you can see in the following table, the overall volume declines by 1% but the warehouse has to ship roughly 10% more lines. Order Frequency (Line Count)Order Size (Units)Total VolumeChange (%)10010010,000 -110909,900-1% If you want to see how "Less is More" in graphical terms, this is how it appears: Even though the volume is down, there is going to be more work in the warehouse in terms of number of lines shipped. The operators need to pick more discrete orders, pack them into more shipping containers and ship more deliveries. What do you do differently if you are facing this situation?In this case here are some obvious steps to take:Uno: Change your pick methods. If you are used to doing order picks, it needs to go out the door. You need to evaluate batch picking and grouping techniques. Go for cluster picking, go for zone picking, pick and pass...anything that improves your picker productivity. More than anything, cluster picking works like a charm and above all, its simple and very effective. Dos: Are you minimize "touch" points in your pick process? Consider doing one step pick, pack and confirm i.e. pick and pack stuff directly into shipping cartons. Done correctly the container will not require any more "touch" points all the way to the trailer loading. Use cartonization!Tres: Are the being picked from an optimized pick face? Are the items slotted correctly? This needs to be looked into. Consider automated "pull" or "push" replenishment into your pick face and also make sure that high demand items are occupying the golden zones.  Cuatro: Are you tracking labor productivity? If not there needs to be a concerted push for having labor standards in place. Hope you found these ideas useful.

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  • SQLAuthority News – SQL Server 2012 – Microsoft Learning Training and Certification

    - by pinaldave
    Here is the conversion I had right after I had posted my earlier blog post about Download Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RTM Now. Rajesh: So SQL Server is available for me to download? Pinal: Yes, sure check the link here. Rajesh: It is trial do you know when it will be available for everybody? Pinal: I think you mean General Availability (GA) which is on April 1st, 2012. Rajesh: I want to have head start with SQL Server 2012 examination and I want to know every single Exam 70-461: Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012 This exam is intended for SQL Server database administrators, implementers, system engineers, and developers with two or more years of experience who are seeking to prove their skills and knowledge in writing queries. Exam 70-462: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases This exam is intended for Database Professionals who perform installation, maintenance, and configuration tasks as their primary areas of responsibility. They will often set up database systems and are responsible for making sure those systems operate efficiently. Exam 70-463: Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The primary audience for this exam is Extract Transform Load (ETL) and Data Warehouse Developers.  They are most likely to focus on hands-on work creating business intelligence (BI) solutions including data cleansing, ETL, and Data Warehouse implementation. Exam 70-464: Developing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases This exam is intended for database professionals who build and implement databases across an organization while ensuring high levels of data availability. They perform tasks including creating database files, creating data types and tables,  planning, creating, and optimizing indexes, implementing data integrity, implementing views, stored procedures, and functions, and managing transactions and locks. Exam 70-465: Designing Database Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 This exam is intended for database professionals who design and build database solutions in an organization.  They are responsible for the creation of plans and designs for database structure, storage, objects, and servers. Exam 70-466: Implementing Data Models and Reports with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The primary audience for this exam is BI Developers.  They are most likely to focus on hands-on work creating the BI solution including implementing multi-dimensional data models, implementing and maintaining OLAP cubes, and creating information displays used in business decision making Exam 70-467: Designing Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The primary audience for this exam is the BI Architect.  BI Architects are responsible for the overall design of the BI infrastructure, including how it relates to other data systems in use. Looking at Rajesh’s passion, I am motivated too! I may want to start attempting the exams in near future. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Backup Azure Tables, schedule Azure scripts&hellip; and more

    - by Herve Roggero
    Well – months of effort are now officially over… or should I say it’s just the beginning?   Enzo Cloud Backup 2.0 (beta) is now officially out!!! This tool will let you do the following: * Backup SQL Database (and SQL Server to a limited extend) * Backup Azure Tables * Restore SQL Backups into another SQL environment * Restore Azure Tables in Azure Storage, or SQL Environment * Manage and schedule database maintenance scripts * Drop database schema containers (with preview) for SaaS environments * Receive alerts (SMTP) when operations complete or fail That’s it at a high level… but you need to see the flexibility around these features. For example you can select a specific backup strategy for Azure Tables allowing faster backup operations when partition keys use GUIDs. You can also call custom stored procedures during the restore operation of Azure Tables, allowing you to transform the data along the way. You can also set a performance threshold during Azure Table backup operations to help you control possible throttling conditions in your Storage Account. Regarding database scripts, you can now define T-SQL scripts and schedule them for execution in a specific order. You can also tell Enzo to execute a pre and post script during Azure Table restore operations against a SQL environment. The backup operation now supports backing up to multiple devices at the same time. So you can execute a backup request to both a local file, and a blob at the same time, guaranteeing that both will contain the exact same data. And due to the level of options that are available, you can save backup definitions for later reuse. The screenshot below backs up Azure Tables to two devices (a blob and a SQL Database). You can also manage your database schemas for SaaS environments that use schema containers to separate customer data. This new edition allows you to see how many objects you have in each schema, backup specific schemas, and even drop all objects in a given schema. For example the screenshot below shows that the EnzoLog database has 4 user-defined schemas, and the AFA schema has 5 tables and 1 module (stored proc, function, view…). Selecting the AFA schema and trying to delete it will prompt another screen to show which objects will be deleted. As you can see, Enzo Cloud Backup provides amazing capabilities that can help you safeguard your data in SQL Database and Azure Tables, and give you advanced management functions for your Azure environment. Download a free trial today at http://www.bluesyntax.net.

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  • How to install Huawei Mobile broadband EC306?

    - by serviteur
    How to install Huawei Mobile Broadband EC 306 EVDO RevB in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64bit ? Best Regards Excuses me for my bad english When I connect the modem on ubuntu, it fails to mount system and furthermore it is not recognized as a CD-ROM. I is not installed Windows on my computer, but I try to open the modem under Windows on a PC friend, There is no script file called "Linux", but only Windows. lsusb : serviteur@creation:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 002: ID 15d9:0a4c Trust International B.V. USB+PS/2 Optical Mouse Bus 001 Device 007: ID 12d1:1506 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E398 LTE/UMTS/GSM Modem/Networkcard dmesg Q: 0 ANSI: 2 [16619.060771] sr1: scsi-1 drive [16619.060955] sr 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1 [16619.061099] sr 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 5 [16619.061358] sd 14:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0 [16619.063654] sd 14:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk [16634.224923] usb 1-6: USB disconnect, device number 6 [16638.468041] usb 1-6: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci_hcd [16638.586210] option 1-6:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [16638.586316] usb 1-6: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0 [16638.586435] option 1-6:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [16638.586517] usb 1-6: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1 [16638.586607] option 1-6:1.2: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [16638.586676] usb 1-6: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB2 [16638.586752] option 1-6:1.3: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [16638.586828] usb 1-6: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB3 [16638.586929] option 1-6:1.4: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [16638.586997] usb 1-6: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB4 [16638.587114] option 1-6:1.5: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [16638.587187] usb 1-6: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB5 [16638.646686] option1 ttyUSB5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now disconnected from ttyUSB5 [16638.646706] option 1-6:1.5: device disconnected [16638.660755] scsi15 : usb-storage 1-6:1.5 [16638.663284] option1 ttyUSB4: GSM modem (1-port) converter now disconnected from ttyUSB4 [16638.663301] option 1-6:1.4: device disconnected [16638.689043] scsi16 : usb-storage 1-6:1.4

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  • Is SugarCRM really adequate for custom development?

    - by dukeofgaming
    I used SugarCRM for a project about two years ago, I ran into errors from the very installation, having to hack the actual installation file to deploy the software in the server... and other erros that I can't recall now. Two years after, I'm picking it up for a project once again... oh dear, I'm feeling like I should have developed the whole thing from scratch myself. Some examples: I couldn't install it in the server (again)... I had to install it locally, then copy the files and database over to the server and manually edit the config file. Constantly getting deployment errors from the module builder... one reason is SugarCRM keeps creating a record in the upgrade_history table for a file that does not exist, I keep deleting such record and it keeps coming back corrupt. I get other deployment errors, but have not figured them out... then I have to rollback all files and database to try again. I deleted a custom module with relationships, the relationships stayed in the other modules and cannot be deleted anymore, PHP warnings all over the place. Quick create for custom modules does not appear, hack needed. Its whole cache directory is a joke, permanent data/files are stored there. The module builder interface disappears required fields. Edit the wrong thing, module builder won't deploy again... then pray Quick Repair and/or Rebuild Relationships do the trick. My impression of SugarCRM now is that, regardless of its pretty exterior and apparent functionality, it is a very low quality piece of software. This even scared me more: http://amplicate.com/hate/sugarcrm; a quote: I wis this info had been available when I tried to implement it 2 years ago... I searched high and low and the only info I found was positive. Yes, it's a piece of crap. The community edition was full of bugs... nothing worked. Essentially I got fired for implementing it. I'm glad though, because now I work for myself, am much happier and make more money... so, I should really thank SugarCRM for sucking so much I guess! I figured that perhaps some of you have had similar experiences, and have either sticked with SugarCRM or moved on to another solution. I'm very interested in knowing what your resolutions were -or your current situations are- to make up my own mind, since the project I'm working on is long term and I'm feeling SugarCRM will be more an obstacle than an aid. Thanks in advance.

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  • Dell XPS 15 (L502x) sound problem

    - by lauramolenaar
    I have a problem with my sound on my Dell XPS 15. First, when I had Windows 7, my sound was pretty good (I have a JBL 2.1 speaker system with Waves Maxx audio), but since I installed Ubuntu 12.04 it sounded very cheap and as if I put my laptop in a tin can. I've already tried installing alsa-hda-dkms from the alsa-daily ppa (http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-audio-dev/alsa-daily) This is my audio controller: laura@laura-XPS-L502X:~$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i audio 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04b6 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 51 Memory at f1c00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel I hope you can help me, and you can always ask me for more information. Result of aplay -l: **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC665 Analog [ALC665 Analog] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC665 Digital [ALC665 Digital] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 Result of aplay -L: default Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server sysdefault:CARD=PCH HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Default Audio Device front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Front speakers surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output hdmi:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions

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  • SQL SERVER – LOGBUFFER – Wait Type – Day 18 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    At first, I was not planning to write about this wait type. The reason was simple- I have faced this only once in my lifetime so far maybe because it is one of the top 5 wait types. I am not sure if it is a common wait type or not, but in the samples I had it really looks rare to me. From Book On-Line: LOGBUFFER Occurs when a task is waiting for space in the log buffer to store a log record. Consistently high values may indicate that the log devices cannot keep up with the amount of log being generated by the server. LOGBUFFER Explanation: The book online definition of the LOGBUFFER seems to be very accurate. On the system where I faced this wait type, the log file (LDF) was put on the local disk, and the data files (MDF, NDF) were put on SanDrives. My client then was not familiar about how the file distribution was supposed to be. Once we moved the LDF to a faster drive, this wait type disappeared. Reducing LOGBUFFER wait: There are several suggestions to reduce this wait stats: Move Transaction Log to Separate Disk from mdf and other files. (Make sure your drive where your LDF is has no IO bottleneck issues). Avoid cursor-like coding methodology and frequent commit statements. Find the most-active file based on IO stall time, as shown in the script written over here. You can also use fn_virtualfilestats to find IO-related issues using the script mentioned over here. Check the IO-related counters (PhysicalDisk:Avg.Disk Queue Length, PhysicalDisk:Disk Read Bytes/sec and PhysicalDisk :Disk Write Bytes/sec) for additional details. Read about them over here. If you have noticed, my suggestions for reducing the LOGBUFFER is very similar to WRITELOG. Although the procedures on reducing them are alike, I am not suggesting that LOGBUFFER and WRITELOG are same wait types. From the definition of the two, you will find their difference. However, they are both related to LOG and both of them can severely degrade the performance. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • The Kids Are Alright. With Facebook and SMS. But Not Twitter

    - by ultan o'broin
    I delivered a lecture to business and technology freshmen (late teens, I reckon) in Trinity College Dublin recently. I spoke about user experience in enterprise applications, trends that UX pros need to be aware of such as social media, community support, mobile and tablet platforms and a bunch of nuances around those areas (data and device security, privacy, reputation, branding, and so on). It was all fairly high level stuff given the audience, and I included lots of colorful screenshots. Irish-related examples helped to get the message across. During the lecture I did a quick poll. “How many students here use Twitter?” Answer: None. “How many use Facebook?” All (pretty much). So what do these guys like to use instead of Twitter? Easy - text messaging (or SMS if you like). They all had phones. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised about Twitter, but it’s always great to have research validated by some guerilla UX research on the street. There’s already quite a bit of research about teen uptake (or lack) of Twitter, telling us young adults don’t tweet. Twitter is seen as something for er, older people. Affordable devices and data plans that allow students to text really quickly are also popular (BlackBerry, for example). Younger people just luuurve to text each other. A lot.  Facebook versus Twitter for younger folks? Well, we know the story. No contest. I would love to engage more with students like these. I’ll plan for it. It will also be interesting to see if Twitter becomes more important to them over time. There were a few other interesting observations about the lack of uptake of Foursquare, Gowalla and mobile apps like that. I  don’t think there’s a huge uptake in these kind of apps in Ireland anyway, but maybe students have different priorities anyway?   I’ll return to that another day. Technorati Tags: Gowalla,FourSquare,Twitter,UX,user experience,user assistance,Trinity College Dublin

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  • Oracle AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Celine Beck
    We closed another successful Oracle Open World for AutoVue. Thanks to everyone who joined us this year. As usual, from customer presentations to evening networking activities, there was enough to keep us busy during the entire event. Here is a summary of some of the key highlights of the conference: Sessions:We had two AutoVue-specific sessions during Oracle Open World this year. The first session was part of the Product Lifecycle Management track and covered how AutoVue can be used to help drive effective decision making and streamline design for manufacturing processes. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from customer speaker GLOBALFOUNDRIES how they have been leveraging Oracle AutoVue within Agile PLM to enable high degree of collaboration during the exceptionally creative phases of their product development processes, securely, without risking valuable intellectual property. If you are interested, you can actually download the presentation by visiting launch.oracle.com/?plmopenworld2012.AutoVue was also featured as part of the Utilities track. This session focused on how visualization solutions play a critical role in effective plant optimization and configuration strategies defined by owners and operators of power generation facilities. Attendees learnt how integrated with document management systems, and enterprise applications like Oracle Primavera and Asset Lifecycle Management, AutoVue improves change management processes; minimizes risks by providing access to accurate engineering drawings which capture and reflect the as-maintained status of assets; and allows customers to drive complex maintenance projects to successful completion.Augmented Business Visualization for Agile PLMDuring Oracle Open World, we also showcased an Augmented Business Visualization-based solution for Oracle Agile PLM. An Augmented Business Visualization (ABV) solution is one where your structured data (from Oracle Agile PLM for instance) and your unstructured data (documents, designs, 3D models, etc) come together to allow you to make better decisions (check out our blog posts on the topic: Augment the Value of Your Data (or Time to replace the “attach” button) and Context is Everything ). As part of the Agile PLM, the idea is to support more effective decision-making by turning 3D assemblies into color-coded reports, and streamlining business processes like Engineering Change Management by enabling the automatic creation of engineering change requests in Agile PLM directly from documents being viewed in AutoVue. More on this coming soon...probably during the Oracle Value Chain Summit to be held in San Francisco, from Feb. 4-6, 2013 in San Francisco! Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more information! And thanks again for joining us at Oracle OpenWorld!

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  • SQLAuthority News – SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide – A Comprehensive Whitepaper – (454 pages – 9 MB)

    - by pinaldave
    Microsoft has just released SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide. This guide is very comprehensive and covers the subject of upgrade in-depth. This is indeed a helpful detailed white paper. Even writing a summary of this white paper would take over 100 pages. This further proves that SQL Server 2012 is quite an important release from Microsoft. This white paper discusses how to upgrade from SQL Server 2008/R2 to SQL Server 2012. I love how it starts with the most interesting and basic discussion of upgrade strategies: 1) In-place upgrades, 2) Side by side upgrade, 3) One-server, and 4) Two-server. This whitepaper is not just pure theory but is also an excellent source for some tips and tricks. Here is an example of a good tip from the paper: “If you want to upgrade just one database from a legacy instance of SQL Server and not upgrade the other databases on the server, use the side-by-side upgrade method instead of the in-place method.” There are so many trivia, tips and tricks that make creating the list seems humanly impossible given a short period of time. My friend Vinod Kumar, an SQL Server expert, wrote a very interesting article on SQL Server 2012 Upgrade before. In that article, Vinod addressed the most interesting and practical questions related to upgrades. He started with the fundamentals of how to start backup before upgrade and ended with fail-safe strategies after the upgrade is over. He covered end-to-end concepts in his blog posts in simple words in extremely precise statements. A successful upgrade uses a cycle of: planning, document process, testing, refine process, testing, planning upgrade window, execution, verifying of upgrade and opening for business. If you are at Vinod’s blog post, I suggest you go all the way down and collect the gold mine of most important links. I have bookmarked the blog by blogging about it and I suggest that you bookmark it as well with the way you prefer. Vinod Kumar’s blog post on SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide is a detailed resource that’s also available online for free. Each chapter was carefully crafted and explained in detail. Here is a quick list of the chapters included in the whitepaper. Before downloading the guide, beware of its size of 9 MB and 454 pages. Here’s the list of chapters: Chapter 1: Upgrade Planning and Deployment Chapter 2: Management Tools Chapter 3: Relational Databases Chapter 4: High Availability Chapter 5: Database Security Chapter 6: Full-Text Search Chapter 7: Service Broker Chapter 8: SQL Server Express Chapter 9: SQL Server Data Tools Chapter 10: Transact-SQL Queries Chapter 11: Spatial Data Chapter 12: XML and XQuery Chapter 13: CLR Chapter 14: SQL Server Management Objects Chapter 15: Business Intelligence Tools Chapter 16: Analysis Services Chapter 17: Integration Services Chapter 18: Reporting Services Chapter 19: Data Mining Chapter 20: Other Microsoft Applications and Platforms Appendix 1: Version and Edition Upgrade Paths Appendix 2: SQL Server 2012: Upgrade Planning Checklist Download SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide [454 pages and 9 MB] Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, DBA, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Fair Comments

    - by Tony Davis
    To what extent is good code self-documenting? In one of the most entertaining sessions I saw at the recent PASS summit, Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter) got a laugh out of a sleepy post-lunch audience with the following remark: "Some developers say good code is self-documenting; I say, get off my team" I silently applauded the sentiment. It's not that all comments are useful, but that I mistrust the basic premise that "my code is so clearly written, it doesn't need any comments". I've read many pieces describing the road to self-documenting code, and my problem with most of them is that they feed the myth that comments in code are a sign of weakness. They aren't; in fact, used correctly I'd say they are essential. Regardless of how far intelligent naming can get you in describing what the code does, or how well any accompanying unit tests can explain to your fellow developers why it works that way, it's no excuse not to document fully the public interfaces to your code. Maybe I just mixed with the wrong crowd while learning my favorite language, but when I open a stored procedure I lose the will even to read it unless I see a big Phil Factor- or Jeff Moden-style header summarizing in plain English what the code does, how it fits in to the broader application, and a usage example. This public interface describes the high-level process and should explain the role of the code, clearly, for fellow developers, language non-experts, and even any non-technical stake holders in the project. When you step into the body of the code, the low-level details, then I agree that the rules are somewhat different; especially when code is subject to frequent refactoring that can quickly render comments redundant or misleading. At their worst, here, inline comments are sticking plaster to cover up the scars caused by poor naming conventions, failure in clarity when mapping a complex domain into code, or just by not entirely understanding the problem (/ this is the clever part). If you design and refactor your code carefully so that it is as simple as possible, your functions do one thing only, you avoid having two completely different algorithms in the same piece of code, and your functions, classes and variables are intelligently named, then, yes, the need for inline comments should be minimal. And yet, even given this, I'd still argue that many languages (T-SQL certainly being one) just don't lend themselves to readability when performing even moderately-complex tasks. If the algorithm is complex, I still like to see the occasional helpful comment. Please, therefore, be as liberal as you see fit in the detail of the comments you apply to this editorial, for like code it is bound to increase its' clarity and usefulness. Cheers, Tony.

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  • FREE Windows Azure evening in London on April 15th including FREE access to Windows Azure

    - by Eric Nelson
    [Did I overdo the use of FREE in the title? :-)] April 12th to 16th is Microsoft Tech Days – 5 days of sessions on Visual Studio 2010 through to Windows 7 Phone Series. Many of these days are now full (Tip - Thursday still has room if rich client applications is your thing) but the good news is the development community in the UK has pulled together an awesome series of “fringe events” during April in London and elsewhere in the UK. There are sessions on Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 R2, Sharepoint 2010 and … the Windows Azure Platform. The UK AzureNET user group is planning to put on a great evening and AzureNET will be giving away hundreds of free subscriptions to the Windows Azure Platform during the evening. The subscription includes up to 20 Windows Azure Compute nodes and 3 SQL Azure databases for you to play with over the 2 weeks following the event. This is a great opportunity to really explore the Windows Azure Platform in detail – without a credit card! Register now! (and you might also want to join the UK Fans of Azure Community while I have your attention) FYI The Thursday day time event includes an introduction to Windows Azure session delivered by my colleague David – which would be an ideal session to attend if you are new to Azure and want to get the most out of the evening session. 7:00pm: See the difference: How Windows Azure helped build a new way of giving Simon Evans and James Broome (@broomej) They will cover the business context for Azure and then go into patterns used and lessons learnt from the project....as well as showing off the app of course! 8:00pm: UK AzureNET update 8:15pm: NoSQL databases or: How I learned to love the hash table Mark Rendle (@markrendle) In this session Mark will look at how Azure Table Service works and how to use it. We’ll look briefly at the high-level Data Services SDK, talk about its limitations, and then quickly move on to the REST API and how to use it to improve performance and reduce costs. We’ll make-up some pretend real-world problems and solve them in new and interesting ways. We’ll denormalise data (for fun and profit). We’ll talk about how certain social networking sites can deal with huge volumes of data so quickly, and why it sometimes goes wrong. Check out the complete list of fringe events which covers the UK fairly well:

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  • Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

    - by Dylan Smith
    I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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  • Apple iPad 2 In April, iPhone 5 in June With New Hardware[Rumours]

    - by Gopinath
    Blogs and news sites are buzzing with the rumours of Apple’s next generation iPad and iPhone devices. These rumours interests the bloggers, geeks and end users of Apple devices as Apple maintains very tight lip on the new features of their upcoming products. The gadget blog Engadget has some very interesting rumours on the release of iPad 2 & iPhone 5 as well the new hardware they are going to have. Lets get into the details if you love to read the rumours of high profile blogs iPad 2 Release Date and Specs Apple seems to be all set to release iPad 2 in April, that is almost an year after the release of first iPad. It’s common for Apple to enjoy an one year long time to release a new version of their products. So if at all the rumours are to be believed, I can place an order of iPad 2 in April. Just like many of you out there, I’m also holding my iPad buying instinct and waiting for iPad 2 as it’s going to have at the minimum retina display,  Facetime features and few game changing features in Apple’s style. The report claims, iPad 2 will have a front and back cameras retina display SD Card slot (seems to be no USB) a dual GSM / CDMA chipset, that lets you use it with both GSM(AT &T, Airte) and CDMA(Verizon, Reliance) telecom providers iPhone 5 Release Date and Specs When it comes to iPhone 5 information, the rumour claims that the new iPhone is a completed redesigned device and it’s slated to release in summer of United States(i.e. June 2011). The device is also being tested by senior Apple executives right inside the campus and strictly not allowed to carry it outside. This restriction is to make sure that iPhone 5 will not land land up in a bar and then in the hands of geek blogs like how it happened with iPhone 4 last year. When it comes to the hardware of iPhone 5 Apple’s new A5 CPU (a Cortex A9-based, multi-core chip) a dual GSM / CDMA chipset, that lets you use it with both GSM(AT &T, Airte) and CDMA(Verizon, Reliance) telecom providers via Engadget and cc image credit flickr/mr-blixt This article titled,Apple iPad 2 In April, iPhone 5 in June With New Hardware[Rumours], was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Share Your Top 30 Visited Domains with Visitation Cloud for Firefox

    - by Asian Angel
    Curious about the domains that you visit most or perhaps you want a way to share that information on a social website? Now you can see and share the 30 most visited domains in your browser’s history with the Visitation Cloud extension. Accessing Visitation Cloud As soon as you install the extension you can get started using it. Depending on how your browser’s UI is set up there are three methods for accessing Visitation Cloud: a “Visitation Cloud Button” inserted at the end of your “Bookmarks Toolbar”, a menu listing in the “Tools Menu”, and a “Toolbar Button” (not shown here). Visitation Cloud in Action As soon as you activate Visitation Cloud a new window will appear with your top domains displayed in a cloud format. Keep in mind that this is more than just a static image…each listing is actually a clickable link. Clicking on any of the listings will open that domain in a new tab or window depending on your particular browser settings. If you feel that you have a great set of links and want to share it with your friends then that is easy to do. Right click anywhere within the Visitation Cloud Window and select “Save as…”. The “cloud image” can be saved in “.png, .jpg, or Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)” format. For our example we chose the “.svg format”. Perhaps you love the set of links but not the layout…right click and select “Randomize” to change how the cloud looks. Here is our cloud after being “Randomized”. Things definitely got moved around… Accessing the Visitation Cloud Image in other Browsers Once you have your “cloud image” saved you can share it with friends or save it for your own future use in other browsers. Here is our “cloud image” open in Opera Browser with link opening in progress. The same “cloud image” open in Google Chrome. Very nice… Conclusion While this may not be something that everyone will use Visitation Cloud does make for a rather unique, interesting, & fun way to access and share your most visited domains. Links Download the Visitation Cloud extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix "Security Error: Domain Name Mismatch" Warning in FirefoxAdd Variety to Your Searches with Search CloudletRestore Your Missing/Deleted Smart Bookmarks Folder in Firefox 3Blocking Spam from International Senders in Windows Vista MailSee Where a Package is Installed 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Share High Res Photos using Divvyshot Draw Online using Harmony How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar

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  • Big Data – Interacting with Hadoop – What is PIG? – What is PIG Latin? – Day 16 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the HIVE in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand what is PIG and PIG Latin in Big Data Story. Yahoo started working on Pig for their application deployment on Hadoop. The goal of Yahoo to manage their unstructured data. What is Pig and What is Pig Latin? Pig is a high level platform for creating MapReduce programs used with Hadoop and the language we use for this platform is called PIG Latin. The pig was designed to make Hadoop more user-friendly and approachable by power-users and nondevelopers. PIG is an interactive execution environment supporting Pig Latin language. The language Pig Latin has supported loading and processing of input data with series of transforming to produce desired results. PIG has two different execution environments 1) Local Mode – In this case all the scripts run on a single machine. 2) Hadoop – In this case all the scripts run on Hadoop Cluster. Pig Latin vs SQL Pig essentially creates set of map and reduce jobs under the hoods. Due to same users does not have to now write, compile and build solution for Big Data. The pig is very similar to SQL in many ways. The Ping Latin language provide an abstraction layer over the data. It focuses on the data and not the structure under the hood. Pig Latin is a very powerful language and it can do various operations like loading and storing data, streaming data, filtering data as well various data operations related to strings. The major difference between SQL and Pig Latin is that PIG is procedural and SQL is declarative. In simpler words, Pig Latin is very similar to SQ Lexecution plan and that makes it much easier for programmers to build various processes. Whereas SQL handles trees naturally, Pig Latin follows directed acyclic graph (DAG). DAGs is used to model several different kinds of structures in mathematics and computer science. DAG Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Zookeeper. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Microsoft Technical Computing

    - by Daniel Moth
    In the past I have described the team I belong to here at Microsoft (Parallel Computing Platform) in terms of contributing to Visual Studio and related products, e.g. .NET Framework. To be more precise, our team is part of the Technical Computing group, which is still part of the Developer Division. This was officially announced externally earlier this month in an exec email (from Bob Muglia, the president of STB, to which DevDiv belongs). Here is an extract: "… As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: 1. Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable ‘just-in-time’ processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed—reliably, consistently and quickly. 2. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today’s modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop… to the cluster… to the cloud. 3. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. …" Our Parallel Computing Platform team is directly responsible for item #2, and we work very closely with the teams delivering items #1 and #3. At the same time as the exec email, our marketing team unveiled a website with interviews that I invite you to check out: Modeling the World. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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