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• CMS vs Admin Panel?

  - by Bob

  Okay, so this probably seems like an unusual, more grammar related question, but I was unsure of what to call it. If you use a software such as vBulletin or MyBB or even Blogger and you're the administrator (or other, lesser position such as moderator) of the forum, or publisher/author of the blog, you generally have access to something of an "admin panel". For example, vBulletin's admin panel looks like this and Blogger's admin panel looks something like this. While they both look different and do different things, the goal is fundamentally the same: to provide the user with a method for adding, modifying, or deleting content... to let them control and administrate their forum or blog. Also, they're both made specifically by the company for use in a specific product. Now, there's also options like Drupal. It seems to offer quite a bit more and be quite a bit more generalized. How does something like this work? If you were freelancing, would you deploy a website with Drupal, or would it be something the client might already have installed on their own server? I've never really used Drupal, only heard about it, so please let me know. Also, there seems to be other options like cPanel, a sort of global CMS that allows you to administrate over your entire website. How do those work in comparison to Drupal, or the administrative panels with vBulletin? They seem to serve related, but different purposes. Basically, what is the norm? If I'm developing a web application for a group that needs to be able to edit their website without the need to go into the code or the database (or rather, wants to act in a graphical, easy-to-use content-management/admin panel), would it also be necessary to write my own miniature admin panel? Or would I be able to send them off knowing that they have cPanel? Or could something like Drupal fill this void? Again, I'm a little new to web development, and I'm working on planning out my first, real, large website. So I need a little advice on the standards and expectations for web development - security and coding practices aside, what should I be looking for as far as usability and administration for the client (who will be running the site once I'm done creating the website)? Any extra tips would also be appreciated! Oh, and just a little bit: I'm writing the website using Ruby on the Sinatra framework (both Ruby and Sinatra are things I'm fairly comfortable with) and I'm not being paid to make the website (and I will also be a user, and one of the three administrators of the website) - it's being built for a club I'm in.

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• Forms&Reports upgrade characterset issues

  - by Lukasz Romaszewski

  Hello,This quick post is based on my findings during recent IMC workshops, especially those related to upgrading the Forms 6i/9i/10g applications to Forms 11g platform. The upgrade process itself is pretty straightforward and it basically requires recompiling your Forms application with a latest version of frmcmp tool. For some cases though, especially when you migrate from Forms 6i which is a client-server architecture to a 3-tier web solution (Forms 11g), you need to rewrite some parts of your code to make it run on new platform. The things you need to change range from reimplementing (using webutil library) typical client-site functionality like local IO operation, access to WinAPI, invoking DLLs etc. to changing deprecated or obsolete APIs like RUN_PRODUCT to RUN_REPORT_OBJECT. To automate those changes Oracle provides complete Java API  which allows you to manipulate the code and structure of you modules (JDAPI). To make it even easier we can use Forms Migration Assistant tool (written in Java using JDAPI) which is able to replace all occurrences of old API entries with their 11g equivalents or warn you when the replacement is not possible. You can also add your own replacement definitions in the search_replace.properties file. But you need to be aware of some issues that can be encountered using this tool. First of all if you are using some hard-coded text inside your triggers you may notice that after processing them by the Migration Assistant tool the national characters may be lost. This is due to the fact that you need to explicitly tell Java application (which MA really is) what kind of characterset it should use to read those text properly. In order to do that just add to a script calling MA the following line:  export JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Dfile.encoding=<JAVA_ISO_ENCODING>  when the particular encoding must match the NLS_LANG in your Forms Builder environment (for example for Polish characterset you need to use ISO-8859-2).Second issue you can encounter related to national charactersets is lack of national symbols in you reports after migration. This can be solved by adding appropriate NLS_LANG entry in your reports environment. Sometimes instead of particular characterset you see "Greek characters" in your reports. This is just default font used by reports engine instead of the one defined in your report. To solve it you must copy fonts definitions from your old environment (e.g. Forms 10g installation) to appropriate directory in new installation (usually AFM folder). For more information about this and other issues please refer to https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&doctype=BULLETIN&id=1297012.1at My Oracle Support site. That's all for today, stay tuned for more posts on this topic! Lukasz

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• SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Sending SMS Alerts in SharePoint 2010 Over Office Mobile Service Protocol (OMS)

  - by mbridge

  In this post, I want to share the exciting news of SharePoint's 2010 new feature. Finally it's possible to send SMS directly from SharePoint to mobile phones. The advantages of sending SMS instead of Email messages are obvious: SMS alerts or reminders that are received on mobile phones are more preferred than Email messages that can be lost in the mass of spam. The interface is standard as it's very similar to previous versions of the product. Adjustments are easy to do, simply enter the address of the Office Mobile Service (OMS) web-service which you want to use for sending messages, then specify the connection parameters. Further details on Office Mobile Service is available below. The Test Service button checks if OMS web-service is accessible using provided URL (user name and password are not verified). This check is needed because OMS web-service URL depends on the mobile operator and country. It's now possible to select the method of sending alerts in alerts settings. Email option is selected by default. Alerts delivery method is displayed in the list of existing alerts. Office Mobile Service (OMS) SharePoint 2010 uses exterior servers similar to SMTP servers for sending SMS alerts. However, Microsoft started development and promotion of their own protocol instead of using existing ones. That is how Office Mobile Service (OMS) appeared. This open protocol enables clients to send text and multimedia messages (mobile messages) remotely to the server which processes these messages and delivers them to mobile phones.  Typical scenario of utilizing this protocol is data transfer between computer application and mobile phone. The recipient can answer messages and the server in return will deliver the answer by SMTP protocol, i.e. by email.  Key quality of this protocol is that it's built on base of HTPP(S) and SOAP protocols.     This means that in fact SMS gateway must support typified web-service. What do you get from web-service? What you get is the ability to send SMS from any platform you want.  The protocol is being developed at the moment and version 0.2 from 08/28/2009 was available when the article was published.  For promotion of their protocol and simplifying server search, Microsoft represented web-service http://messaging.office.microsoft.com/HostingProviders.aspx that helps to receive the list of providers, which supports OMS protocol and message delivery to your operator.  All you need to do is decide which provider to use, complete the agreement, then adjust the SharePoint connection parameters and start working.  Some providers advertise themselves not only for clients but for mobile operators as well. They offer automatic adding to the list of the Office Mobile Service Providers.  To view the full specifications of OMS, please go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd774103.aspx.

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• How do I import my first sprites?

  - by steven_desu

  Continuing from this question (new question - now unrelated) So I have a thorough background in programming already (algorithms, math, logic, graphing problems, etc.) however I've never attempted to code a game before. In fact, I've never had anything more than minimal input from a user during the execution of a program. Generally input was given from a file or passed through console, all necessary functions were performed, then the program terminated with an output. I decided to try and get in on the world of game development. From several posts I've seen around gamedev.stackexchange.com XNA seems to be a favorite, and it was recommended to me when I asked where to start. I've downloaded and installed Visual Studio 2010 along with the XNA Framework and now I can't seem to get moving in the right direction. I started out looking on Google for "xna game studio tutorial", "xna game development beginners", "my first xna game", etc. I found lots of crap. The official "Introduction to Game Studio 4.0" gave me this (plus my own train of thought happily pasted on top thanks to MSPaint): http://tinypic.com/r/2w1sgvq/7 The "Get Additional Help" link (my best guess, since there was no "Continue" or "Next" link) lead me to this page: http://tinypic.com/r/2qa0dgx/7 I tried every page. The forum was the only thing that seemed helpful, however searching for "beginner", "newbie", "getting started", "first project", and similar on the forums turned up many threads with specific questions that are a bit above my level ("beginner to collision detection", for instance) Disappointed I returned to the XNA Game Studio home page. Surely their own website would have some introduction, tutorial, or at least a useful link to a community. EVERYTHING on their website was about coding Windows Phone 7.... Everything. http://tinypic.com/r/10eit8i/7 http://tinypic.com/r/120m9gl/7 Giving up on any official documentation after a while, I went back to Google. I managed to locate www.xnadevelopment.com. The website is built around XNA Game Studio 3.0, but how different can 3.0 be from 4.0?.... Apparently different enough. http://tinypic.com/r/5d8mk9/7 http://tinypic.com/r/25hflli/7 Figuring that this was the correct folder, I right-clicked.... http://tinypic.com/r/24o94yu/7 Hmm... maybe by "Add Content Reference" they mean "Add a reference to an existing file (content)"? Let's try it (after all- it's my only option) http://tinypic.com/r/2417eqt/7 At this point I gave up. I'm back. My original goal in my last question was to create a keyboard-navigable 3D world (no physics necessary, no logic or real game necessary). After my recent failures my goal has been revised. I want to display an image on the screen. Hopefully in time I'll be able to move it with the keyboard.

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• Build Dependencies and Silverlight 4

  - by Kyle Burns

  At my current position, I’ve been doing quite a bit of Silverlight development and have also been working with TFS2010 build services to enable continuous integration.  One of the critical pieces of a successful continuous build setup (and also one of the benefits of having one) is that the build system should be able to “get latest” against the source repository and immediately build with no errors.  This can break down both in an automated build scenario and a “new guy” scenario when the solution has external dependencies that may not be present in the build environment. The method that I use to address the dependency issue is to store all of the binaries upon which my solution depends in a folder under the solution root called “Reference Items”.  I keep this folder as part of the solution and check all of the binaries into source control so when I get the latest version of the solution from source control all of the binaries are downloaded to my machine as well and gets me closer to the ideal where a new developer installs the development IDE, get latest and can immediately build and run unit tests before jumping into coding the feature of the day. This all sounds pretty good (and it is), but a little while back I ran into one of those little hiccups that requires a little manual intervention.  The issue that I ran into is that with Silverlight (at least version 4), the behavior of the “Add Reference” command when adding reference to a DLL that is present in the GAC is to omit the HintPath element that it includes with regular .Net projects, so even if the DLL is setting in the Reference Items folder and downloaded to the build machine it cannot be found at compile time and the build will fail. To work around this behavior, you need to be comfortable editing the XML project files generated by Visual Studio (in my case this is typically a .csproj file).  Simply open the project file in your favorite text editor, find the Reference element that refers to the component, and modify the XML to include the HintPath.  Here’s a before and after example of the component that ultimately led me to the investigation behind this post: Before: <Reference Include="Telerik.Windows.Controls, Version=2011.2.920.1040, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5803cfa389c90ce7, processorArchitecture=MSIL" /> After: <Reference Include="Telerik.Windows.Controls, Version=2011.2.920.1040, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5803cfa389c90ce7, processorArchitecture=MSIL">       <HintPath>..\Reference Items\Telerik.Windows.Controls.dll</HintPath>     </Reference>

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

  - by Laurent Bugnion

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

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• How can I attach a model to the bone of another model?

  - by kaykayman

  I am trying to attach one animated model to one of the bones of another animated model in an XNA game. I've found a few questions/forum posts/articles online which explain how to attach a weapon model to the bone of another model (which is analogous to what I'm trying to achieve), but they don't seem to work for me. So as an example: I want to attach Model A to a specific bone in Model B. Question 1. As I understand it, I need to calculate the transforms which are applied to the bone on Model B and apply these same transforms to every bone in Model A. Is this right? Question 2. This is my code for calculating the Transforms on a specific bone. private Matrix GetTransformPaths(ModelBone bone) { Matrix result = Matrix.Identity; while (bone != null) { result = result * bone.Transform; bone = bone.Parent; } return result; } The maths of Matrices is almost entirely lost on me, but my understanding is that the above will work its way up the bone structure to the root bone and my end result will be the transform of the original bone relative to the model. Is this right? Question 3. Assuming that this is correct I then expect that I should either apply this to each bone in Model A, or in my Draw() method: private void DrawModel(SceneModel model, GameTime gametime) { foreach (var component in model.Components) { Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[component.Model.Bones.Count]; component.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix parenttransform = Matrix.Identity; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(component.ParentBone)) parenttransform = GetTransformPaths(model.GetBone(component.ParentBone)); component.Player.Update(gametime.ElapsedGameTime, true, Matrix.Identity); Matrix[] bones = component.Player.GetSkinTransforms(); foreach (SkinnedEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.SetBoneTransforms(bones); effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(model.Angle)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(model.Position) * parenttransform; effect.View = getView(); effect.Projection = getProjection(); effect.Alpha = model.Opacity; } } mesh.Draw(); } I feel as though I have tried every conceivable way of incorporating the parenttransform value into the draw method. The above is my most recent attempt. Is what I'm trying to do correct? And if so, is there a reason it doesn't work? The above Draw method seems to transpose the models x/z position - but even at these wrong positions, they do not account for the animation of Model B at all. Note: As will be evident from the code my "model" is comprised of a list of "components". It is these "components" that correspond to a single "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Model"

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• Solution for developers wanting to run a standalone WLS 10.3.6 server against JDev 11.1.1.6.0

  - by Chris Muir

  In my previous post I discussed how to install the 11.1.1.6.0 ADF Runtimes into a standalone WLS 10.3.6 server by using the ADF Runtime installer, not the JDeveloper installer.  Yet there's still a problem for developers here because JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 comes coupled with a WLS 10.3.5 server.  What if you want to develop, deploy and test with a 10.3.6 server?  Have we lost the ability to integrate the IDE and the WLS server where we can run and stop the server, deploy our apps automatically the server and more? JDeveloper actually solved this issue sometime back but not many people will have recognized the feature for what it does as it wasn't needed until now. Via the Application Server Navigator you can create 2 types of connections, one to a remote "standalone WLS" and another to an "integrated WLS".  It's this second option that is useful because what we can do is install a local standalone WLS 10.3.6 server on our developer PC, then create a separate "integrated WLS" connection to the standalone server.  Then by accessing your Application's properties through the Application menu -> Application Properties -> Run -> Bind to Integration Application Server option we can choose the newly created WLS server connection to work with our application. In this way JDeveloper will now treat the new server as if it was the integrated WLS.  It will start when we run and deploy our applications, terminate it at request and so on.  Of course don't forget you still need to install the ADF Runtimes for the server to be able to work with ADF applications. Note there is bug 13917844 lurking in the Application Server Navigator for at least JDev 11.1.1.6.0 and earlier.  If you right click the new connection and select "Start Server Instance" it will often start one of the other existing connections instead (typically the original IntegratedWebLogicServer connection).  If you want to manually start the server you can bypass this by using the Run menu -> Start Server Instance option which works correctly.

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• Installing MOSS 2007 on Windows 2008 R2

  - by Manesh Karunakaran

  When you try to install MOSS 2007 on Windows 2008 R2, if you are using an installation media that is older than SP2, you would get the following error, saying that “This program is blocked due to compatibility issues”    All is not lost though, all you need to do is to slip stream the SP2 updates to the MOSS 2007 Setup. Here’s a nice how to on how to do that. http://blogs.technet.com/seanearp/archive/2009/05/20/slipstreaming-sp2-into-sharepoint-server-2007.aspx Once you slipstream the SP2 updates, you would be able to continue with the installation with out the above error. HTH.   You may already read from blogs about April Cumulative Update for separate components in SharePoint. Now, the server-packages (also known as “Uber” packages) of April Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. Download Information Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850 Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851 Detail Description Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968850 Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968851 Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 April Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007 Please note: Start from April Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates. After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.  The version of content databases should be 12.0.6504.5000 after successfully applying these updates. For more in-depth guidance for the update process, we recommend that customers refer to the following articles. These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates, identify known issues (and resolutions), and provide information about creating slipstream builds. Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx Create an installation source that includes software updates (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287882.aspx Create an installation source that includes software updates (Office SharePoint Server 2007) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261890.aspx

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• Learn programming backwards, or "so I failed the FizzBuzz test. Now what?"

  - by moraleida

  A Little Background I'm 28 today, and I've never had any formal training in software development, but I do have two higher education degrees equivalent to a B.A in Public Relations and an Executive MBA focused on Project Management. I've worked on those fields for about 6 years total an then, 2,5 years ago I quit/lost my job and decided to shift directions. After a month thinking things through I decided to start freelancing developing small websites in WordPress. I self-learned my way into it and today I can say I run a humble but successful career developing themes and plugins from scratch for my clients - mostly agencies outsourcing some of their dev work for medium/large websites. But sometimes I just feel that not having studied enough math, or not having a formal understanding of things really holds me behind when I have to compete or work with more experienced developers. I'm constantly looking for ways to learn more but I seem to lack the basics. Unfortunately, spending 4 more years in Computer Science is not an option right now, so I'm trying to learn all I can from books and online resources. This method is never going to have NASA employ me but I really don't care right now. My goal is to first pass the bar and to be able to call myself a real programmer. I'm currently spending my spare time studying Java For Programmers (to get a hold on a language everyone says is difficult/demanding), reading excerpts of Code Complete (to get hold of best practices) and also Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (to grasp the inner workings of computers). TL;DR So, my current situation is this: I'm basically capable of writing any complete system in PHP (with the help of Google and a few books), integrating Ajax, SQL and whatnot, and maybe a little slower than an experienced dev would expect due to all the research involved. But I was stranded yesterday trying to figure out (not Google) a solution for the FizzBuzz test because I didn't have the if($n1 % $n2 == 0) method modulus operator memorized. What would you suggest as a good way to solve this dilemma? What subjects/books should I study that would get me solving problems faster and maybe more "in a programmers way"? EDIT - Seems that there was some confusion about what did I not know to solve FizzBuzz. Maybe I didn't express myself right: I knew the steps needed to solve the problem. What I didn't memorize was the modulus operator. The problem was in transposing basic math to the program, not in knowing basic math. I took the test for fun, after reading about it on Coding Horror. I just decided it was a good base-comparison line between me and formally-trained devs. I just used this as an example of how not having dealt with math in a computer environment before makes me lose time looking up basic things like modulus operators to be able to solve simple problems.

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• Endeca Information Discovery 3-Day Hands-on Training Workshop

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  For Oracle Partners, on October 3-5, 2012 in Milan, Italy: Register here. Endeca Information Discovery plays a key role with your big data analysis and complements Oracle Business Intelligence Solutions such as OBIEE. This FREE hands-on workshop for Oracle Partners highlights technical know-how of the product and helps understand its value proposition. We will walk you through four key components of the product: Oracle Endeca Server—A highly scalable, search-analytical database that derives the data model based on the data presented to it, thereby reducing data modeling requirements. Studio—A highly interactive, component-based user interface for configuring advanced, yet intuitive, analytical applications. Integration Suite—Provides rapid unification and enrichment of diverse sources of information into a single integrated view. Extensible Value-Added Modules—Add-on modules that provide value quickly through configuration instead of custom coding. Topics covered will include Data Exploration with Endeca Information Discovery, Data Ingest, Project Lifecycle, Building an Endeca Server data model and advanced modeling techniques, and Working with Studio. Lab Outline The labs showcase Oracle Endeca Information Discovery components and functionality by providing expertise on features and know-how of building such applications. The hands-on activities are based on a Quick Start application provided during the class. Audience Oracle Partners, Big Data Analytics Developer and Architects BI and EPM Application Developers and Implementers, Data Warehouse Developers Equipment Requirements This workshop requires attendees to provide their own laptops for this class. Attendee laptops must meet the following minimum hardware/software requirements: Hardware 8GB RAM is highly recommended (Windows 64 bit Machine is required) 40 GB free space (includes staging) USB 2.0 port (at least one available) Software One of the following operating systems: 64-bit Windows host/laptop OS (Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008) 64-bit host/laptop OS with a Windows VM (Server, or Win 7, BIC2g, etc.) Internet Explorer 8.x , Firefox 3.6 or Firefox 6.0 WINRAR or 7ziputility to unzip workshop files: Download-able from http://www.win-rar.com/download.html Download-able from http://www.7zip.com/ Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Workshop Register here: October 3-5, 2012: Cinisello Balsamo, Milan.  We will confirm with you your place within 2 weeks. Questions?  Send email to: [email protected]  :  Oracle Platform Technologies Enablement Services.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-21

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Real Architects of Los Angeles: OTN Architect Day in LA - Oct 25 No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Why IT is a profession in 'flux' | ZDNet I usuallly don't post two items from the same person in one day, but this post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick deals with some critical issues affecting those in IT. As McKendrick puts it: "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." Cloud, automation drive new growth in SOA governance market | ZDNet "SOA governance tools and processes learned over the past decade are now underpinning cloud projects as they scale across enterprises," reports Joe McKendrick. But there remains a lack of understanding about SOA Governance. For a broader discussion of the importance of IT governance check out the lastest OTN Archbeat Podcast: By Any Other Name: Governance and Architecture How I Simplified the Installation of Oracle Database on Oracle Linux 6 Michele Casey's update of Ginny Henningsen's original article. This version shows how to simplify the installation of Oracle Database 11g on Oracle Linux 6 by installing the oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall RPM package. Fault Handling Slides and Q&A | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen shares the slides and a Q&A transcript from a presentation he and fellow ACE Director Guido Schmutz gave at the recent Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne preview event organized by AMIS Technology. BPM ADF Task forms. Checking whether the current user is in a BPM Swimlane | Christopher Karl Chan "The tricky part here is that the ADF Task Details Form is in fact part of a separate J2EE application to the main workspace," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Christopher Karl Chan. "So if you try to use Java or Expression Language to get the logged in user you will only find anonymous and none of the BPM Roles you will be expecting. So what to do?" Don't guess—read the post and find out. Thought for the Day "The speed of change makes you wonder what will become of architecture. " — Tadao Ando Source: BrainyQuote

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• Webcast Replay : SANS Institute Product Review of Oracle Identity Manager

  - by B Shashikumar

  Thanks to everyone who attended the SANS Institute webinar covering the product review of Oracle Identity Manager. And a special thanks to our guest speakers from SuperValu - Phillip Black and Patrick Abreo. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here  And here are the slides that were used in the webcast.  There were many questions that we could not answer as we ran out of time. We have captured some of the questions with responses below. Is Oracle Identity Analytics still offered as a separate product or is it part of Oracle Identity Manager? Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics are now offered as part of Oracle Identity Governance Suite. OIA and OIM share a common UI architecture, common data model and common support for connected and disconnected resources.  When requesting new access/entitlements is there an approval process? Yes. We leverage SOA BPEL-based workflows for approvals  Are the identity self service capabilities based on Oracle ADF? Yes they are completely based on Oracle ADF  Can you give some examples of personalization and customization with Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2? With the new UI config framework we can enable different levels of UI customization. Customers now have the ability to Point & click to customize; or drag and drop customization without any need for coding. So users can easily personalize the interface of their application within the browser. For example, they can change the logo, Rearrange, hide Home Page regions; regularly searched items can be saved and re-used; Searchable & search results columns can be configured; Sorting preferences are remembered and so on. For more sophisticated customization, Customers can also edit the standard JSF within the page to alter business rules, modify page flows, page layouts and other items. Can you explain the role of sandboxes in customization? Customers can make their custom changes within a sandbox so that it doesn’t impact their production environment. They can make their changes, validate those changes, stage and then commit those changes without affecting production users. This is similar to how source code control systems like perforce work To watch a replay of the webcast, click here

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• What if you could work on anything you wanted?

  - by red@work

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

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• What can I do to make sure my code gets maintained in a developer light environment?

  - by asjohnson

  I am a contract data analyst, so I bounce between jobs every 3-6 months, which I find to be a good fit for me, but it leads to some problems when it comes to coding. I mostly do statistics (I've asked a similar question on cross validated, but the answers there are not relevant here), but I have also found out that the business world loves excel and loves copying and pasting the same thing over and over again even more. This led me to learn how to write VBA scripts and then VB.NET programs to automate as many of these reports as I can. I am certain my programs are not the most elegant, but I put a good bit of effort into making sure they work under as many cases as I can test, I add in exceptions and try to code so the program can handle changes in the files that it processes, but there is a limit, if you remove a huge portion of the data, there is a good chance my program is going to trip up, which I accept will inevitably happen. Usually a pretty minor change in the code fixes the problem and I do try and comment my code and make it readable under the assumption that some other person will have to read it some day. My problem is that I generally get put on teams of folks with essentially no experience with programming (like VBA would be a huge stretch for anyone I work directly with). I am wondering what I should be doing as the person that wrote the code to do my best to keep it maintained. I have two approaches in mind (outlined next), but would be very happy to get any advice. Solution 1: Find the more tech savvy coworkers and run them through the programs and what basic changes can be made. Honestly automating excel is about as easy as it can get when it comes to programming, so I feel like I could teach someone the basics of maintaining it pretty quick. Solution 2: Get in touch with the IT department and show them what is going on and maybe they will be able to help. The problem here is that the IT department is constantly swamped (as I'm sure many of you know) and I feel like kind of a jerk for dumping more things on them. I do leave my personal email address with places and am willing to answer quick questions via email, but I view the need for more exhaustive maintenance as something of an inevitability and would like to make sure I do my due diligence to make sure it gets done. I imagine some combination of the two approaches outlined there, but is there any kind of heads up I should give IT? I feel like I would be annoyed if I started getting requests to fix a program that I had never seen from some random guy that is no longer there.

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• Do we need to adopt a black-box asset our project is inheriting from its predecessor?

  - by Tom Anderson

  Our client has an eCommerce site which was developed by an in-house team, and is now showing its age. I work for a firm brought in as external contractors to build a replacement. Part of the current site is a Flash viewer applet which displays media about the product - zoom-able images, 360-degree views, movies, and so on. We need to show the same media the current site does, so we are simply reusing the viewer. The viewer is embedded on a page in the usual way, and told what media to show by means of an XML file it loads from our server, which is pretty simple for us to generate. We've got this working; it was pretty straightforward. But what else do we need to do? The thing is, as far as we're concerned, the viewer is a binary blob which is served from the client's content-distribution network. We embed it, feed it some XML, and it does its job, but we have no power over its internals. It's completely opaque to us - a black box. We can use it to do what it does, but we can't change it, so if we ever need to do something different, we're stuffed. We're building this site for the client, and when we're done, we'll hand it over for them to maintain. We won't be doing the maintenance ourselves. There's a small team within the client who are working as part of our team, and who will be the ones doing the maintenance. That team only includes one person from the team that built the old site, and it's not someone who knows the image viewer. The people who do know the image viewer are not slated to join our team when our system replaces theirs - they'll be moved to other projects. The documentation on the viewer is extremely thin, and as far as i know doesn't cover the internals at all. My worry is that if someone doesn't take some positive action, all knowledge of the internal workings of the viewer - even down to where the source code for it is - will be lost. It's possible it already has been. Is this something to worry about? If so, whose job is it to worry about it? What should they do about it once they've got worried?

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• Developing for 2005 using VS2008!

  - by Vincent Grondin

  I joined a fairly large project recently and it has a particularity… Once finished, everything has to be sent to the client under VS2005 using VB.Net and can target either framework 2.0 or 3.0… A long time ago, the decision to use VS2008 and to target framework 3.0 was taken but people knew they would need to establish a few rules to ensure that each dev would use VS2008 as if it was VS2005… Why is that so? Well simply because the compiler in VS2005 is different from the compiler inside VS2008…  I thought it might be a good idea to note the things that you cannot use in VS2008 if you plan on going back to VS2005. Who knows, this might save someone the headache of going over all their code to fix errors… -        Do not use LinQ keywords (from, in, select, orderby…).   -        Do not use LinQ standard operators under the form of extension methods.   -        Do not use type inference (in VB.Net you can switch it OFF in each project properties). o   This means you cannot use XML Literals.   -        Do not use nullable types under the following declarative form:    Dim myInt as Integer? But using:   Dim myInt as Nullable(Of Integer)     is perfectly fine.   -        Do not test nullable types with     Is Nothing    use    myInt.HasValue     instead.   -        Do not use Lambda expressions (there is no Lambda statements in VB9) so you cannot use the keyword “Function”.   -        Pay attention not to use relaxed delegates because this one is easy to miss in VS2008   -        Do not use Object Initializers   -        Do not use the “ternary If operator” … not the IIf method but this one     If(confition, truepart, falsepart).   As a side note, I talked about not using LinQ keyword nor the extension methods but, this doesn’t mean not to use LinQ in this scenario. LinQ is perfectly accessible from inside VS2005. All you need to do is reference System.Core, use namespace System.Linq and use class “Enumerable” as a helper class… This is one of the many classes containing various methods that VS2008 sees as extensions. The trick is you can use them too! Simply remember that the first parameter of the method is the object you want to query on and then pass in the other parameters needed… That’s pretty much all I see but I could have missed a few… If you know other things that are specific to the VS2008 compiler and which do not work under VS2005, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll modify my list accordingly (and notify our team here…) ! Happy coding all!

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• Minimizing Dependencies For GUIs

  - by tuba09

  I've been working on a project, and have been charged with designing the projects GUI front-end. I'm coding in Java and using the Swing toolkit. Usability-wise, the GUI front-end follows all of Nielsen's heuristics. Users can easily get to where they want to go through the click of a button / JComboBox. Essentially, in Swing terms, what happens is their actions drive the creation/deletion of custom panels. The GUI is coming along fine for the most part. However, I have to admit to being utterly dismayed at the tight web of dependencies my code is being smothered in. The main problem that I've encountered, that I haven't been able to fix as of yet, is how to keep a reference to the panels/buttons being changed. I'll give an example: Say there's a button A Say there's a panel B displaying picture C Say there's another picture D (not currently being displayed by panel B) When user clicks A, panel B should remove picture C and display picture D My question is, what's the best way of keeping track of panel B? Since I need a global point of access to panel B, my solution has so far been to just shoehorn it into a static variable, and access it through a series of static getters and setters. And this static variable is usually stored in the reference's original class. I.e. UserPanel has a static variable that stores a reference to itself. Is there an easy, tried-and-true way of dealing with these kinds of situations? Like my GUI works fine, but it is not modular and/or robust at all. To add to this, the dreaded 'cyclical dependencies' issue that's shunned by so many programmers is out here in full effect. I'm fairly new to development and just want to make sure that my code will be fairly extensible and won't cause much of a headache to the next person that decides to get a try at it. I know there's loads of books out there that probably have a nice elegant solution to this, but unfortunately I just don't have the time to leisure read right now. I need something that's quick and dirty. Thanks in advance

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• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

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• JavaScript Class Patterns &ndash; In CoffeeScript

  - by Liam McLennan

  Recently I wrote about JavaScript class patterns, and in particular, my favourite class pattern that uses closure to provide encapsulation. A class to represent a person, with a name and an age, looks like this: var Person = (function() { // private variables go here var name,age; function constructor(n, a) { name = n; age = a; } constructor.prototype = { toString: function() { return name + " is " + age + " years old."; } }; return constructor; })(); var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Today I have been experimenting with coding for node.js in CoffeeScript. One of the first things I wanted to do was to try and implement my class pattern in CoffeeScript and then see how it compared to CoffeeScript’s built-in class keyword. The above Person class, implemented in CoffeeScript, looks like this: # JavaScript style class using closure to provide private methods Person = (() -> [name,age] = [{},{}] constructor = (n, a) -> [name,age] = [n,a] null constructor.prototype = toString: () -> "name is #{name} age is #{age} years old" constructor )() I am satisfied with how this came out, but there are a few nasty bits. To declare the two private variables in javascript is as simple as var name,age; but in CoffeeScript I have to assign a value, hence [name,age] = [{},{}]. The other major issue occurred because of CoffeeScript’s implicit function returns. The last statement in any function is returned, so I had to add null to the end of the constructor to get it to work. The great thing about the technique just presented is that it provides encapsulation ie the name and age variables are not visible outside of the Person class. CoffeeScript classes do not provide encapsulation, but they do provide nicer syntax. The Person class using native CoffeeScript classes is: # CoffeeScript style class using the class keyword class CoffeePerson constructor: (@name, @age) -> toString: () -> "name is #{@name} age is #{@age} years old" felix = new CoffeePerson "Felix Hoenikker", 63 console.log felix.toString() So now I have a trade-off: nice syntax against encapsulation. I think I will experiment with both strategies in my project and see which works out better.

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows, --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 -- volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then -- c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) -- c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I ll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• Windows Phone 7 Development Updates &ndash; March 8th 2011

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  Here are the latest update from the Windows Phone 7 Developer Worlds that went live this month. Here are some of the latest numbers: Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 quality apps and games and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps every day. There have been over 1 million downloads of the developers tools for Windows Phone 7. Trial version help you sell more Trials result in higher sales by the numbers: Users like trials  - paid apps with trial functionality are downloaded 70 times more than paid apps that don’t Nearly 1 out of 10 trial apps downloaded convert to a purchase and generate 10 times more revenue on average than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality. Trial downloads convert to paid downloads quickly. More than half of trial downloads that convert to a sale do so within the 1st 24 hours of trial download, and mostly within 2 hours of trial download. Microsoft Ad Control is gaining traction By the numbers - ad supported Windows Phone 7 apps are: Roughly ¼ of all registered U.S. WP7 developers have downloaded the free Ad SDK for Silverlight and XNA Of ad funded apps, over 95 percent use the free Microsoft Advertising Ad Control Monthly impressions from our Ad Exchange has continued to grow by double digits – impressions increased by 376 percent since January Ad Control, the first wave of “How Do I” videos are now available on MSDN: Create an Ad in a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game App Register Ad-Enabled Windows Phone 7 Apps Measure Ad Performance of Windows Phone 7 Apps Boarder International App submission for Free Apps through Yalla Apps As of today you can start submitting your free applications in developer markets that are currently not covered by Microsoft. To submit your Free application if you DO NOT belong to one of the Marketplace supported countries, go to: Yalla Apps Marketplace Policy Updates: Free App Marketplace Submission upped to 100 and other news Microsoft has been revisiting a few of our Marketplace policies based on feedback from developers to reduce friction and cost, word for word: 1. We have raised the limit on the number of certifications that can be performed for FREE apps at no cost to the registered developer from five to 100. This was a common request from developers which we are glad to implement after building alternate methods to ensure that users can find and download high quality apps. 2. We have converted policy 5.6 - related to the inclusion of contact information for support - from a mandatory to an optional policy. This is still a strongly recommended best practice, but we recognized and responded to developer feedback that this policy was creating excessive drag on the certification process for developers without commensurate user benefit for all apps. 3. We also understand the desire for clarification with regard to our policy on applications distributed under open source licenses.  The Marketplace Application Provider Agreement (APA) already permits applications under the BSD, MIT, Apache Software License 2.0 and Microsoft Public License.  We plan to update the APA shortly to clarify that we also permit applications under the Eclipse Public License, the Mozilla Public License and other, similar licenses and we continue to explore the possibility of accommodating additional OSS licenses. Enjoy and happy coding! Official Blog Post for reference.

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• Software monetization that is not evil

  - by t0x1n

  I have a free open-source project with around 800K downloads to date. I've been contacted by some monetization companies from time to time and turned them down, since I didn't want toolbar malware associated with my software. I was wondering however, is there a non-evil way to monetize software ? Here are the options as I know them: Add a donation button. I don't feel comfortable with that as I really don't need "donations" - I'm paid quite well. Donating users may feel entitled to support etc. (see the second to last bullet) Add ads inside your application. In the web that may be acceptable, but in a desktop program it looks incredibly lame. Charge a small amount for each download. This model works well in the mobile world, but I suspect no one will go for it on the desktop. It doesn't mix well with open source, though I suppose I could charge only for the binaries (most users won't go to the hassle of compiling the sources). People may expect support etc. after having explicitly paid (see next bullet). Make money off a service / community / support associated with the program. This is one route I definitely don't want to take, I don't want any sort of hassle beyond coding. I assure you, the program is top notch (albeit simple) and I'm not aware of any bugs as of yet (there are support forums and blog comments where users may report them). It is also very simple, documented, and discoverable so I do think I have a case for supplying it "as is". Add affiliate suggestions to your installer. If you use a monetization company, you lose control over what they propose. Unless you can establish some sort of strong trust with the company to supply quality suggestions (I sincerely doubt it), I can't have that. Choosing your own affiliate (e.g. directly suggesting Google Toolbar) is possibly the only viable solution to my mind. Problem is, where do I find a solid affiliate that could actually give value to the user rather than infect his computer with crapware? I thought maybe Babylon (not the toolbar of course, I hate toolbars)?

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• The Solution

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  So I recently attended a class about time management as well as read the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.  Both have been instrumental in helping me get my priorities aligned as well as keep me focused. The reason I bring this up is that it gave me a great idea for a small application with which to create a great technical stack solution that would be easy to demo and explain.  Therefore, the project from this point forward with be the Liekhus.TimeTracker application which will bring some the time management skills that I have acquired into a technical implementation.  The idea is rather simple, but leverages some of the basic principles of Covey along with some of the worksheets that I garnered from class.  The basics are as such: 1) a plan is a must have and 2) write it down!  A plan not written down is just an idea.  How many times have you had an idea that didn’t materialize?  Exactly.  Hence why I am writing it all down now! The worksheet consists of a few simple columns that I will outline below as well as some modifications that I made according to the Covey habits.  The worksheet looks like the following: Status Issue Area CQ Notes P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   The idea is really simple and straightforward; you write down all your tasks and keep track of them along the way.  The status stands for (P)ending, (F)inished or (L)ater.  You write a quick title for the issue and select the CQ (Covey Quadrant) with which the issue occurs.  The notes section is for things that happen while you are working through the issue.  And last, but not least, is the Area column that I added as a way to identify the Role or Area of your life that this task falls within based upon Covey’s teachings. The second part of this application is a simple phone log that allows you to track your phone conversations throughout the day.  All of this is currently done on a sheet of paper, but being involved in technology, I want it to have bells and whistles.  Therefore, this is my simple idea for a project that will allow me to test my theories about coding and implementations.  Stay tuned as the next session will be flushing out the concept and coming up with user stories to begin the SCRUM process. Thanks

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• Cheating on Technical Debt

  - by Tony Davis

  One bad practice guaranteed to cause dismay amongst your colleagues is passing on technical debt without full disclosure. There could only be two reasons for this. Either the developer or DBA didn’t know the difference between good and bad practices, or concealed the debt. Neither reflects well on their professional competence. Technical debt, or code debt, is a convenient term to cover all the compromises between the ideal solution and the actual solution, reflecting the reality of the pressures of commercial coding. The one time you’re guaranteed to hear one developer, or DBA, pass judgment on another is when he or she inherits their project, and is surprised by the amount of technical debt left lying around in the form of inelegant architecture, incomplete tests, confusing interface design, no documentation, and so on. It is often expedient for a Project Manager to ignore the build-up of technical debt, the cut corners, not-quite-finished features and rushed designs that mean progress is satisfyingly rapid in the short term. It’s far less satisfying for the poor person who inherits the code. Nothing sends a colder chill down the spine than the dawning realization that you’ve inherited a system crippled with performance and functional issues that will take months of pain to fix before you can even begin to make progress on any of the planned new features. It’s often hard to justify this ‘debt paying’ time to the project owners and managers. It just looks as if you are making no progress, in marked contrast to your predecessor. There can be many good reasons for allowing technical debt to build up, at least in the short term. Often, rapid prototyping is essential, there is a temporary shortfall in test resources, or the domain knowledge is incomplete. It may be necessary to hit a specific deadline with a prototype, or proof-of-concept, to explore a possible market opportunity, with planned iterations and refactoring to follow later. However, it is a crime for a developer to build up technical debt without making this clear to the project participants. He or she needs to record it explicitly. A design compromise made in to order to hit a deadline, be it an outright hack, or a decision made without time for rigorous investigation and testing, needs to be documented with the same rigor that one tracks a bug. What’s the best way to do this? Ideally, we’d have some kind of objective assessment of the level of technical debt in a software project, although that smacks of Science Fiction even as I write it. I’d be interested of hear of any methods you’ve used, but I’m sure most teams have to rely simply on the integrity of their colleagues and the clear perceptions of the project manager… Cheers, Tony.

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