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• Announcement: Employee Info Starter Kit (v6.0–ASP.NET MVC Edition) is Released

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/joycsharp/archive/2013/06/16/announcement-employee-info-starter-kit-v6.0asp.net-mvc-edition-is-released.aspxAfter a long wait, the next version of Employee Info Starter Kit is released! This starter kit is basically a project template that contains code samples targeting a specific technology, such as ASP.NET Web Form, ASP.NET MVC etc. Since its first release, this open source project gained a huge popularity in the developer community and had 250K+ combined downloads. This starter kit is honored to be placed at the official ASP.NET site, along with other asp.net starter kits, which all are being considered as the “best” ASP.NET coding standards, recommended by Microsoft. EISK is showcased in Microsoft’s Channel 9’s Weekly Show, as well. The ASP.NET MVC Edition of the new version 6.0 bundles most of the greatest and successful platforms, frameworks and technologies together, to enable web developers to learn and build manageable and high performance web applications with rich user experience effectively and quickly. User End Specifications Creating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Role based security model Key Technology Areas ASP.NET MVC 4 Entity Framework 4.3.1 Sql Server Compact Edition 4 Visual Studio 2012 QuickStart Guide Getting started with EISK 6.0 ASP.NET is pretty easy. Once you've Visual Studio 2012 installed, then just follow the steps as provided below: Download the EISK 6.0 MVC version. Extract the file. From the extracted folder, click the solution file "Eisk.MVC-VS2012.sln". Right click the "Eisk.MVC" project node and select "Select set as StartUp Project". Hit Ctrl+F5 and explore! Architectural Overview Overall architecture is based on Model-View-Controller pattern Support for desktop & mobile browsers. Usage of Domain Model, Repository and Unit of Work pattern from Domain Driven Development approach Usage of Data Annotations in model (entity) classes to centralize basic validation mechanism that facilitates DRY principle Usage of IValidatableObject interface in model (entity) classes that isolates custom business logic from application layer Usage of OOP inheritance and Value Object pattern in model (entity) classes that provides reusability in application architecture Usage of View Model, Editor Model pattern that provides mechanism for testable view rendering logic Several helper classes and extension methods to enable developers build application with reduced code If you want to learn more about it in details, just check the following links: Getting Started - Hands on Coding Walkthrough – Technology Stack - Design & Architecture Enjoy!

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• Source of (programmer) inefficiency

  - by Daniel

  I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to – simply - our own errors (because we are humans – well, almost all of us). I am not interested in how much we are productive or in how many adjustements the customer asks for when the work is done, but where and how each of us spend that part of its time in tasks that are unproductive and there is no one to blame except ourselves. Excluding ego - feeding and / or self – gratification, what I am trying to get (for all of us) is: what are the common issues eating our time; insight on reasons for that issues; identify simple way for us, personally (not delegating actions to other or our organizations), to correct our own problems. Please, do not think in academic terms but aim at the opportunity to compare our daily experiences and understand what are and how we try to fix our personal deficiencies. If you are interested to respond to this post, please: integrate the list if you see something important (or obvious) missing; highlight or name honestly your first issue tellng the way you try to address and solve your issue acting on yourself and yourself only in a sort of "continuous quality improving" My criteria for accepting the answer is: choose the best solution (feasibility and utility) to fix one (or more) of the problems of the list. Of course, selecting an error is not a vote on our skills: maybe we are hyper professional programmers and we lose ten minutes only every year or we are terribly inefficient, losing a couple of days a week: reasons for inefficiency could be really the same - but in a different scale. A possible list: Plain error in the names (variables, functions). Inability to see the obvious in your code. Misreading. Lack of concentration. Trying to use a technology you have not mastered. Errors with data types. Time required to understand your previous code or your documentation. Trying to do something more than requested because you enjoy it Using solutions more complicated than required because you enjoy it. Plain logical errors. Errors due to your fault in communications. Distraction My first personal issue: "Trying to use a technology you do not master." I have to use daily several technologies and I often need to spend significant time correcting code because my assumptions were plainly wrong. Reasons for this: production needs put high pressure and make difficult to find the time to learn. I try to address this reading technical books - as many as I can - even if this actually consumes a lot of time.

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• Finance: Friends, not foes!

  - by red@work

  After reading Phil's blog post about his experiences of working on reception, I thought I would let everyone in on one of the other customer facing roles at Red Gate... When you think of a Credit Control team, most might imagine money-hungry (and often impolite) people, who will do nothing short of hunting people down until they pay up. Well, as with so many things, not at Red Gate! Here we do things a little bit differently.   Since joining the Licensing, Invoicing and Credit Control team at Red Gate (affectionately nicknamed LICC!), I have found it fantastic to work with people who know that often the best way to get what you want is by being friendly, reasonable and as helpful as possible. The best bit about this is that, because everyone is in a good mood, we have a great working atmosphere! We are definitely a very happy team. We laugh a lot, even when dealing with the serious matter of playing table football after lunch. The most obvious part of my job is bringing in money. There are few things quite as satisfying as receiving a big payment or one that you've been chasing for a long time. That being said, it's just as nice to encounter the companies that surprise you with a payment bang on time after little or no chasing. It's always a pleasure to find these people who are generous and easy to work with, and so they always make me smile, too. As I'm in one of the few customer facing roles here, I get to experience firsthand just how much Red Gate customers love our software and are equally impressed with our customer service. We regularly get replies from people thanking us for our help in resolving a problem or just to simply say that they think we're great. Or, as is often the case, that we 'rock and are awesome'! When those are the kinds of emails you have to deal with for most of the day, I would challenge anyone to be unhappy! The best thing about my work is that, much like Phil and his counterparts on reception, I get to talk to people from all over the world, and experience their unique (and occasionally unusual) personality traits. I deal predominantly with customers in the US, so I'll be speaking to someone from a high flying multi-national in New York one minute, and then the next phone call will be to a small office on the outskirts of Alabama. This level of customer involvement has led to a lot of interesting anecdotes and plenty of in-jokes to keep us amused! Obviously there are customers who are infuriating, like those who simply tell us that they will pay "one day", and that we should stop chasing them. Then there are the people who say that they ordered the tools because they really like them, but they just can't afford to actually pay for them at the moment. Thankfully these situations are relatively few and far between, and for every one customer that makes you want to scream, there are far, far more that make you smile!

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 6, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Above and Beyond with the A-Team Maybe it's the coffee… If you follow this blog you've probably noticed that I regularly feature posts from members of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture team, otherwise known as the A-Team. One of those bloggers, someone identified only as "fip" who writes on the A-Team SOA blog, went above and beyond on Dec 4, publishing a total of four substantial technical posts in a single day, each one worth a look: Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks Web Service Example - Part 3: Asynchronous | The Oracle ADF Mobile Blog Part 3 in this series from the Oracle ADF Mobile blog looks at "firing the web service asynchronously and then filling in the UI when it completes." Denis says, "This can be useful when you have data on the device in a local store and want to show that to the user while the application uses lazy loading from a web service to load more data." ADF Mobile - Implementing Reusable Mobile Architecture | Andrejus Baranovskis "Reusability was always a strong part of ADF," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "The same high reusability level is supported now in ADF Mobile." The objective of this post is "to prove technically that [the] reusable architecture concept works for ADF Mobile." Basic is Best | Eric Stephens "The world we live in and enterprises we strive to transform with enterprise architecture are complicated organisms, much like the human body," says Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens. "But sometimes a simple solution is the best approach...Whatever level of abstraction you are working at, less is more." Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture | Ted McLaughlan "EA must be 'sold' directly to the communities that matter from a coordinated, proactive messaging perspective that takes BOTH the Program-level value drivers AND the broader Agency mission and IT maturity context into consideration, " explains Ted McLaughlan. And that's true for any organization. Avoiding the "I'm Spartacus" Scenario in SOA | Ben Wilcock "This ‘SOA Spartacus’ scenario usually occurs quite soon after SOA is articulated as the primary strategic direction of the programme," says Ben Wilcock, "but before the organisation’s SOA capability is mature enough to understand what is meant by SOA, and how it should be designed and delivered." In such cases, perhaps the "A" in SOA is missing, no? Thought for the Day "It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do." — Charles Eames (1907–1978) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• How far is too far?

  - by David Dorf

  Previously I've talked about Safeway's personalized pricing as well as Target's use of analytics to learn about customers.  Then last week I read about Orbitz tailoring their hotel offers based on the browser used.  (Orbitz claims that Mac users are 40% more likely than PC users to book four- or five-star hotels.)  So just how far is too far when tailoring the retail experience? When most consumers read about these types of tactics, they tend to feel violated, as if someone was reading their personal diary.  Nobody wants to be tricked into buying things.  Walking into a grocery store and seeing crates of apples stacked high looks enticing, but the crates are just for display and the apples may be over a year old.  Even though its much cheaper to print markdown tags, many retailers manually write the price tags because consumers think they deal is better if the price is hand-written. The technology already exists to personalize prices and experiences for consumers.  People get upset thinking they paid more for something than a neighbor, but it already happens all the time with cars, flights, and the use of loyalty programs and coupons. There are many variables at play for any purchase.  They only difference is that the customer segments are getting smaller, sometimes reaching a size of one. There's two ways to look at this.  Retailers have always manipulated the environment to get consumers to buy more -- or -- Retailers are getting better at tuning the shopping experience for consumers.  I choose the latter, and so do most consumers by spending their money in the stores they like.  Consumers like to see fresh flowers at the entrance to the grocery store, and they like to see specials scrawled on chalkboards. The key is making sure that consumers benefit from the experience as well.  I'm willing to give up some personal information in exchange for discounts and more relevant marketing, and the next-generation of shoppers are even less concerned about privacy.  Retailers need to use all the tools available to differentiate their offers and connect with their customers. So if Orbitz wants to put three-star hotels at the top of the list for me because I'm using a PC, that's fine by me.

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• Unit testing in Django

  - by acjohnson55

  I'm really struggling to write effective unit tests for a large Django project. I have reasonably good test coverage, but I've come to realize that the tests I've been writing are definitely integration/acceptance tests, not unit tests at all, and I have critical portions of my application that are not being tested effectively. I want to fix this ASAP. Here's my problem. My schema is deeply relational, and heavily time-oriented, giving my model object high internal coupling and lots of state. Many of my model methods query based on time intervals, and I've got a lot of auto_now_add going on in timestamped fields. So take a method that looks like this for example: def summary(self, startTime=None, endTime=None): # ... logic to assign a proper start and end time # if none was provided, probably using datetime.now() objects = self.related_model_set.manager_method.filter(...) return sum(object.key_method(startTime, endTime) for object in objects) How does one approach testing something like this? Here's where I am so far. It occurs to me that the unit testing objective should be given some mocked behavior by key_method on its arguments, is summary correctly filtering/aggregating to produce a correct result? Mocking datetime.now() is straightforward enough, but how can I mock out the rest of the behavior? I could use fixtures, but I've heard pros and cons of using fixtures for building my data (poor maintainability being a con that hits home for me). I could also setup my data through the ORM, but that can be limiting, because then I have to create related objects as well. And the ORM doesn't let you mess with auto_now_add fields manually. Mocking the ORM is another option, but not only is it tricky to mock deeply nested ORM methods, but the logic in the ORM code gets mocked out of the test, and mocking seems to make the test really dependent on the internals and dependencies of the function-under-test. The toughest nuts to crack seem to be the functions like this, that sit on a few layers of models and lower-level functions and are very dependent on the time, even though these functions may not be super complicated. My overall problem is that no matter how I seem to slice it, my tests are looking way more complex than the functions they are testing.

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• Overload Avoidance

  - by mikef

  A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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• Wireless Not Working on Ubuntu 10.10

  - by Promather

  I recently bought a new HP DV6-3118SA laptop, but I am having a very discouraging problem with wireless LAN. It simply doesn't work! Could you please help me with this? EDIT: Following @Ronald and @Oli advice, I am dumping the output of lspci -k: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel Kernel modules: intel-agp 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02) Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05) Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: ahci Kernel modules: ahci 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel modules: i2c-i801 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: intel ips Kernel modules: intel_ips 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series] Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: radeon Kernel modules: radeon 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series] Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 02:00.0 Network controller: RaLink RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 1453 Kernel driver in use: rt2800pci Kernel modules: rt2860sta, rt2800pci 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a Kernel driver in use: r8169 Kernel modules: r8169 7f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a 7f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a 7f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a 7f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a 7f:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a 7f:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 144a

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• Developing Mobile Applications: Web, Native, or Hybrid?

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Authors: Joe Huang, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Mobile Application Development Framework  and Carlos Chang, Senior Principal Product Director The proliferation of mobile devices and platforms represents a game-changing technology shift on a number of levels. Companies must decide not only the best strategic use of mobile platforms, but also how to most efficiently implement them. Inevitably, this conversation devolves to the developers, who face the task of developing and supporting mobile applications—not a simple task in light of the number of devices and platforms. Essentially, developers can choose from the following three different application approaches, each with its own set of pros and cons. Native Applications: This refers to apps built for and installed on a specific platform, such as iOS or Android, using a platform-specific software development kit (SDK).  For example, apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad are designed to run specifically on iOS and are written in Xcode/Objective-C. Android has its own variation of Java, Windows uses C#, and so on.  Native apps written for one platform cannot be deployed on another. Native apps offer fast performance and access to native-device services but require additional resources to develop and maintain each platform, which can be expensive and time consuming. Mobile Web Applications: Unlike native apps, mobile web apps are not installed on the device; rather, they are accessed via a Web browser.  These are server-side applications that render HTML, typically adjusting the design depending on the type of device making the request.  There are no program coding constraints for writing server-side apps—they can be written in Java, C, PHP, etc., it doesn’t matter.  Instead, the server detects what type of mobile browser is pinging the server and adjusts accordingly. For example, it can deliver fully JavaScript and CSS-enabled content to smartphone browsers, while downgrading gracefully to basic HTML for feature phone browsers. Mobile apps work across platforms, but are limited to what you can do through a browser and require Internet connectivity. For certain types of applications, these constraints may not be an issue. Oracle supports mobile web applications via ADF Faces (for tablets) and ADF Mobile browser (Trinidad) for smartphone and feature phones. Hybrid Applications: As the name implies, hybrid apps combine technologies from native and mobile Web apps to gain the benefits each. For example, these apps are installed on a device, like their pure native app counterparts, while the user interface (UI) is based on HTML5.  This UI runs locally within the native container, which usually leverages the device’s browser engine.  The advantage of using HTML5 is a consistent, cross-platform UI that works well on most devices.  Combining this with the native container, which is installed on-device, provides mobile users with access to local device services, such as camera, GPS, and local device storage.  Native apps may offer greater flexibility in integrating with device native services.  However, since hybrid applications already provide device integrations that typical enterprise applications need, this is typically less of an issue.  The new Oracle ADF Mobile release is an HTML5 and Java hybrid framework that targets mobile app development to iOS and Android from one code base. So, Which is the Best Approach? The short answer is – the best choice depends on the type of application you are developing.  For instance, animation-intensive apps such as games would favor native apps, while hybrid applications may be better suited for enterprise mobile apps because they provide multi-platform support. Just for starters, the following issues must be considered when choosing a development path. Application Complexity: How complex is the application? A quick app that accesses a database or Web service for some data to display?  You can keep it simple, and a mobile Web app may suffice. However, for a mobile/field worker type of applications that supports mission critical functionality, hybrid or native applications are typically needed. Richness of User Interactivity: What type of user experience is required for the application?  Mobile browser-based app that’s optimized for mobile UI may suffice for quick lookup or productivity type of applications.  However, hybrid/native application would typically be required to deliver highly interactive user experiences needed for field-worker type of applications.  For example, interactive BI charts/graphs, maps, voice/email integration, etc.  In the most extreme case like gaming applications, native applications may be necessary to deliver the highly animated and graphically intensive user experience. Performance: What type of performance is required by the application functionality?  For instance, for real-time look up of data over the network, mobile app performance depends on network latency and server infrastructure capabilities.  If consistent performance is required, data would typically need to be cached, which is supported on hybrid or native applications only. Connectivity and Availability: What sort of connectivity will your application require? Does the app require Web access all the time in order to always retrieve the latest data from the server? Or do the requirements dictate offline support? While native and hybrid apps can be built to operate offline, Web mobile apps require Web connectivity. Multi-platform Requirements: The terms “consumerization of IT” and BYOD (bring your own device) effectively mean that the line between the consumer and the enterprise devices have become blurred. Employees are bringing their personal mobile devices to work and are often expecting that they work in the corporate network and access back-office applications.  Even if companies restrict access to the big dogs: (iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, possibly Windows Phone and tablets), trying to support each platform natively will require increasing resources and domain expertise with each new language/platform. And let’s not forget the maintenance costs, involved in upgrading new versions of each platform.   Where multi-platform support is needed, Web mobile or hybrid apps probably have the advantage. Going native, and trying to support multiple operating systems may be cost prohibitive with existing resources and developer skills. Device-Services Access:  If your app needs to access local device services, such as the camera, contacts app, accelerometer, etc., then your choices are limited to native or hybrid applications.   Fragmentation: Apple controls Apple iOS and the only concern is what version iOS is running on any given device.   Not so Android, which is open source. There are many, many versions and variants of Android running on different devices, which can be a nightmare for app developers trying to support different devices running different flavors of Android.  (Is it an Amazon Kindle Fire? a Samsung Galaxy?  A Barnes & Noble Nook?) This is a nightmare scenario for native apps—on the other hand, a mobile Web or hybrid app, when properly designed, can shield you from these complexities because they are based on common frameworks.  Resources: How many developers can you dedicate to building and supporting mobile application development?  What are their existing skills sets?  If you’re considering native application development due to the complexity of the application under development, factor the costs of becoming proficient on a each platform’s OS and programming language. Add another platform, and that’s another language, another SDK. On the other side of the equation, Web mobile or hybrid applications are simpler to make, and readily support more platforms, but there may be performance trade-offs. Conclusion This only scratches the surface. However, I hope to have suggested some food for thought in choosing your mobile development strategy.  Do your due diligence, search the Web, read up on mobile, talk to peers, attend events. The development team at Oracle is working hard on mobile technologies to help customers extend enterprise applications to mobile faster and effectively.  To learn more on what Oracle has to offer, check out the Oracle ADF Mobile (hybrid) and ADF Faces/ADF Mobile browser (Web Mobile) solutions from Oracle.   Additional Information Blog: ADF Blog Product Information on OTN: ADF Mobile Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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• June IOUG events

  - by Mandy Ho

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) Regional Events: June 11-12, 2012 – Broomfield, CO 2-Day Seminar- “ High Performance PL/SQL & Oracle Database 11g New Features” Steven Feuerstein, generally considered the world’s leading PL/SQL expert, will be presenting his all-new, 2-day, “Higher Performance PL/SQL and Oracle 11g PL/SQL New Features” seminar on June 11 & 12 at Level 3 Communications in Broomfield, Colorado.  This will be Steven’s first Denver seminar in almost 4  years.  Who knows when he will offer another? http://www.rmoug.org/ June 14, 2012 – Ottawa, Ontario Pythian’s Gwen Shapira puts on 3 great presentations focused on NoSQL, making OLTP run fast and Big Data. http://www.oug-ottawa.org/pls/htmldb/f?p=327:27:1317735724699447::NO June 21, 2012 – Calgary, Alberta Big Data and Extreme Analytics Summit http://coug.ab.ca/ June 22, 2012 – Westborough, MA 10 Things You Probably Did Not Know? With Tom Kyte PL/SQL turns 23 years old this year. It was first introduced in 1988 with Oracle6 Database. This session looks at five technical things about PL/SQL you probably did not know: under-the-covers features that make PL/SQL quite simply the most efficient language with which to process data in the database. http://noug.com/  June 28/29, 2012 – Plano, Texas Jonathan Lewis Oracle Performance Seminars The DOUG (DALLAS ORACLE USERS GROUP) has invited SpeakTech to return to Dallas, and they’re bringing Jonathan Lewis! Topics are Beating the Oracle Optimizer – June 28, 2012, Trouble Shooting & Tuning – June 29, 2012 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3082448687

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for November 1, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Hurricane Sandy Edition Power outages in the Cleveland area made it impossible to publish posts on Tuesday and Wednesday. In my neighborhood most are still without power. The sound of howling winds that dominated on Monday and Tuesday has been replaced by the sound of of portable generators. My internet connection was restored only after AT&T U-Verse crewmen hooked up a portable generator to power the relay station up the street. Bear in mind that Cleveland is 500 miles from the Atlantic coast. Mobile Development Platform Strategy Chart: ADF Mobile, WebCenter Sites, Portal, Content and Social "Unlike desktop web focused efforts, the world of mobile has undergone change at a feverish pace," says social enterprise expert John Brunswick. His extensive post charts various resources that will help you keep up. ADF Essentials - The Bare Necessities | Floyd Teter The experiment is over... And now Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares his impressions after spending some time with Oracle ADF Essentials, the free version of Oracle ADF. Expanding the Oracle Enterprise Repository with functional documentation Capgemini middleware specialist Marc Kuijpers shares information on how Oracle Enterprise Repository can be configured "to contain functional assets, i.e. functional designs, use cases and a logical data model" to aid in SOA governance efforts. A review of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook | RedStack "More so than any other single piece of content that I have seen on the topic, it provides the information that a SOA administrator needs to know in order to successfully configure, manage, monitor, troubleshoot and backup an Oracle SOA environment." So says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team solution architect Mark Nelson of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook, by Ahmed Aboulnaga and Arun Pareek. Eating our own dog food – Oracle’s internal deployment of Oracle IDM Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Brian Eidelman recommends the recent podcast on Oracle’s internal deployment of Oracle OAM and OID. "This was a big project that involved migrating a bunch of critical, high volume applications to leverage OAM and OID," says Eidelman. "So I suggest you tune in to see and hear more about how we deploy our own software." Thought for the Day "Anyone who says they're not afraid at the time of a hurricane is either a fool or a liar, or a little bit of both." — Anderson Cooper Source: BrainyQuote

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• Windows 8 Launch&ndash;Why OEM and Retailers Should STFU

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for the Surface from OEM/hardware partners who create Windows-based devices and I’m sure, to an extent, retailers who normally stock and sell Windows-based devices. I mean we all know how this is supposed to work – Microsoft makes the OS, partners make the hardware, retailers sell the hardware. Now Microsoft is breaking the rules by not only offering their own hardware but selling them via online and through their Microsoft branded stores! The thought has been that Microsoft is trying to set a standard for the other hardware companies to reach for. Maybe. I hope, at some level, Microsoft may be covertly responding to frustrations associated with trusting the OEMs and Retailers to deliver on their part of the supply chain. I know as a consumer, I’m very frustrated with the Windows 8 launch. Aside from the Surface sales, there’s nothing happening at the retail level. Let me back up and explain. Over the weekend I visited a number of stores in hopes of trying out various Windows 8 devices. Out of three retailers (Staples, Best Buy, and Future Shop), not *one* met my expectations. Let me be honest with you Staples, I never really have high expectations from your computer department. If I need paper or pens, whatever, but computers – you’re not the top of my list for price or selection. Still, considering you flaunted Win 8 devices in your flyer I expected *something* – some sign of effort that you took the Windows 8 launch seriously. As I entered the 1910 Pembina Highway location in Winnipeg, there was nothing – no signage, no banners – nothing that would suggest Windows 8 had even launched. I made my way to the laptops. I had to play with each machine to determine which ones were running Windows 8. There wasn’t anything on the placards that made it obvious which were Windows 8 machines and which ones were Windows 7. Likewise, there was no easy way to identify the touch screen laptop (the HP model) from the others without physically touching the screen to verify. Horrible experience. In the same mall as the Staples I mentioned above, there’s a Future Shop. Surely they would be more on the ball. I walked in to the 1910 Pembina Highway location and immediately realized I would not get a better experience. Except for the sign by the front door mentioning Windows 8, there was *nothing* in the computer department pointing you to the Windows 8 devices. Like in Staples, the Win 8 laptops were mixed in with the Win 7 ones and there was nothing notable calling out which ones were running Win 8. I happened to hit up the St. James Street location today, thinking since its a busier store they must have more options. To their credit, they did have two staff members decked out in Windows 8 shirts and who were helping a customer understand Windows 8. But otherwise, there was nothing highlighting the Windows 8 devices and they were again mixed in with the rest of the Win 7 machines. Finally, we have the St. James Street Best Buy location here in Winnipeg. I’m sure Best Buy will have their act together. Nope, not even close. Same story as the others: minimal signage (there was a sign as you walked in with a link to this schedule of demo days), Windows 8 hardware mixed with the rest of the PC offerings, and no visible call-outs identifying which were Win 8 based. This meant that, like Future Shop and Staples, if you wanted to know which machine had Windows 8 you had to go and scrutinize each machine. Also, there was nothing identifying which ones were touch based and which were not. Just Another Day… To these retailers, it seemed that the Windows 8 launch was just another day, with another product to add to the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Apple has their dedicated areas *in all three stores*. It was dead simple to find where the Apple products were compared to the Windows 8 products. No wonder Microsoft is starting to push their own retail stores. No wonder Microsoft is trying to funnel orders through them instead of relying on these bloated retail big box stores who obviously can’t manage a product launch. It’s Not Just The Retailers… Remember when the Acer CEO, Founder, and President of Computer Global Operations all weighed in on how Microsoft releasing the Surface would have a “huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction”? Also remember the CEO stating “[making hardware] is not something you are good at so please think twice”? Well the launch day has come and gone, and so far Microsoft is the only one that delivered on having hardware available on the October 26th date. Oh sure, there are laptops running Windows 8 – but all in one desktop PCs? I’ve only seen one or two! And tablets are *non existent*, with some showing an early to late November availability on Best Buy’s website! So while the retailers could be doing more to make it easier to find Windows 8 devices, the manufacturers could help by *getting devices into stores*! That’s supposedly something that these companies are good at, according to the Acer CEO. So Here’s What the Retailers and Manufacturers Need To Do… Get Product Out The pivotal timeframe will be now to the end of November. We need to start seeing all these fantastic pieces of hardware ship – including the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Acer Iconia, the Asus TAICHI 21, and the sexy Samsung Series 7 27” desktop. It’s not enough to see product announcements, we need to see actual devices. Make It Easy For Customers To Find Win8 Devices You want to make it easy to sell these things? Make it easy for people to find them! Have staff on hand that really know how these devices run and what can be done with them. Don’t just have a single demo day, have people who can demo it every day! Make It Easy to See the Features There’s touch screen desktops, touch screen laptops, tablets, non-touch laptops, etc. People need to easily find the features for each machine. If I’m looking for a touch-laptop, I shouldn’t need to sift through all the non-touch laptops to find them – at the least, I need to quickly be able to see which ones are touch. I feel silly even typing this because this should be retail 101 and I have no retail background (but I do have an extensive background as a customer). In Summary… Microsoft launching the Surface and selling them through their own channels isn’t slapping its OEM and retail partners in the face; its slapping them to wake the hell up and stop coasting through Windows launch events like they don’t matter. Unless I see some improvements from vendors and retailers in November, I may just hold onto my money for a Surface Pro even if I have to wait until early 2013. Your move OEM/Retailers. *Update – While my experience has been in Winnipeg, similar experiences have been voiced from colleagues in Calgary and Edmonton.

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• Oracle Leader in Transportation Management

  - by John Murphy

  Oracle Named a Leader in the Transportation Management Systems Market by Leading Analyst Firm Redwood Shores, Calif. – October 15, 2012 News Facts Gartner, Inc. has placed Oracle Transportation Management in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2012 report, “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS).” (1) Gartner Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. According to the report, “Multiple subcomponents make up a comprehensive TMS across planning (for example, load consolidation, routing, mode selection and carrier selection) and execution (for example, tendering loads to carriers, shipment track and trace, and freight audit and payment).” Built on modern, flexible, Internet based architecture, Oracle Transportation Management is a global transportation and logistics operations system that allows companies to minimize cost, optimize service levels, support sustainability initiatives, and create flexible business process automation within their transportation and logistics networks. With a share of 26% of worldwide software revenue for 2011, Oracle is also number one in TMS vendor share according to Gartner’s report, “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016.” (2) Supporting Quote “Shippers and logistics service providers face increasingly complex challenges as they try to reduce costs, secure capacity and improve overall freight efficiency,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president, logistics product strategy, Oracle. “We believe our high standing in both Gartner reports is a reflection of Oracle’s commitment to addressing these challenges by delivering the industry’s broadest and deepest transportation management platform. With a flexible and modern platform, we are able to support customers with both basic transportation needs, as well as those with highly complex logistics requirements.” Supporting Resources Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016 Oracle Transportation Management (1) Gartner, Inc., “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems,” by C. Dwight Klappich, August 23, 2012 (2) Gartner, Inc., “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016,” by Chad Eschinger and C. Dwight Klappich, September 24, 2012. About Oracle Applications Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go towww.oracle.com/applications About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. ###   Karen [email protected] Simon JonesBlanc & [email protected]

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• Removing hard-coded values and defensive design vs YAGNI

  - by Ben Scott

  First a bit of background. I'm coding a lookup from Age - Rate. There are 7 age brackets so the lookup table is 3 columns (From|To|Rate) with 7 rows. The values rarely change - they are legislated rates (first and third columns) that have stayed the same for 3 years. I figured that the easiest way to store this table without hard-coding it is in the database in a global configuration table, as a single text value containing a CSV (so "65,69,0.05,70,74,0.06" is how the 65-69 and 70-74 tiers would be stored). Relatively easy to parse then use. Then I realised that to implement this I would have to create a new table, a repository to wrap around it, data layer tests for the repo, unit tests around the code that unflattens the CSV into the table, and tests around the lookup itself. The only benefit of all this work is avoiding hard-coding the lookup table. When talking to the users (who currently use the lookup table directly - by looking at a hard copy) the opinion is pretty much that "the rates never change." Obviously that isn't actually correct - the rates were only created three years ago and in the past things that "never change" have had a habit of changing - so for me to defensively program this I definitely shouldn't store the lookup table in the application. Except when I think YAGNI. The feature I am implementing doesn't specify that the rates will change. If the rates do change, they will still change so rarely that maintenance isn't even a consideration, and the feature isn't actually critical enough that anything would be affected if there was a delay between the rate change and the updated application. I've pretty much decided that nothing of value will be lost if I hard-code the lookup, and I'm not too concerned about my approach to this particular feature. My question is, as a professional have I properly justified that decision? Hard-coding values is bad design, but going to the trouble of removing the values from the application seems to violate the YAGNI principle. EDIT To clarify the question, I'm not concerned about the actual implementation. I'm concerned that I can either do a quick, bad thing, and justify it by saying YAGNI, or I can take a more defensive, high-effort approach, that even in the best case ultimately has low benefits. As a professional programmer does my decision to implement a design that I know is flawed simply come down to a cost/benefit analysis?

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• Time passage arithmetic explanation

  - by Cyber Axe

  I ported this from http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5 some time ago. However i'm now wanting to modify it for the purpose of changing it from floating point to fixed point maths for enhanced efficiency (for those who are going to talk about premature optimization and what not, i want to have my entire engine in fixed point both as a learning process for me and so i can port code more easily to systems in the future that dont have native floating points such as arm cpus) My initial conversion to fixed points just resulted in the cycling stuck on either the first or last frame of cycling. Plus it would be nice to understand better how it works so i can add more options and so forth in the future, my maths however sucks and the comments are limited so i don't really know how the maths work for determining the frame it shoud use (cycleAmount) I was also a beginner when i ported it as i had no idea between floating points and integers and what not. So in summary my question is, can anyone give an explination of the arithmatic used for determining the cycleAmount (which determings the "frame" of the cycle) This is the working floating point maths version of the code: public final void cycle(Colour[] sourceColours, double timeNow, double speedAdjust) { // Cycle all animated colour ranges in palette based on timestamp. sourceColours = sourceColours.clone(); int cycleSize; double cycleRate; double cycleAmount; Cycle cycle; for (int i = 0, len = cycles.length; i < len; ++i) { cycle = cycles[i]; cycleSize = (cycle.HIGH - cycle.LOW) + 1; cycleRate = cycle.RATE / (int) (CYCLE_SPEED / speedAdjust); cycleAmount = 0; if (cycle.REVERSE < 3) { // Standard Cycle cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize); if (cycle.REVERSE < 1) { cycleAmount = cycleSize - cycleAmount; // If below 1 make sure its not reversed. } } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 3) { // Ping-Pong cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize << 1); if (cycleAmount >= cycleSize) { cycleAmount = (cycleSize * 2) - cycleAmount; } } else if (cycle.REVERSE < 6) { // Sine Wave cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize); cycleAmount = Math.sin((cycleAmount * 3.1415926 * 2) / cycleSize) + 1; if (cycle.REVERSE == 4) { cycleAmount *= (cycleSize / 4); } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 5) { cycleAmount *= (cycleSize >> 1); } } if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) { reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle); } if (USE_BLEND_SHIFT) { blendShiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount); } else { shiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount); } if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) { reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle); } } colours = sourceColours; } // This utility function allows for variable precision floating point modulus. private double DFLOAT_MOD(final double d, final double b) { return (Math.floor(d * PRECISION) % Math.floor(b * PRECISION)) / PRECISION; }

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• Should I be an algorithm developer, or java web frameworks type developer?

  - by Derek

  So - as I see it, there are really two kinds of developers. Those that do frameworks, web services, pretty-making front ends, etc etc. Then there are developers that write the algorithms that solve the problem. That is, unless the problem is "display this raw data in some meaningful way." In that case, the framework/web developer guy might be doing both jobs. So my basic problem is this. I have been an algorithms kind of software developer for a few years now. I double majored in Math and Computer science, and I have a master's in systems engineering. I have never done any web-dev work, with the exception of a couple minor jobs, and some hobby level stuff. I have been job interviewing lately, and this is what happens: Job is listed as "programmer- 5 years of experience with the following: C/C++, Java,Perl, Ruby, ant, blah blah blah" Recruiter calls me, says they want me to come in for interview In the interview, find out they have some webservices development, blah blah blah When asked in the interview, talk about my experience doing algorithms, optimization, blah blah..but very willing to learn new languages, frameworks, etc Get a call back saying "we didn't think you were a fit for the job you interviewed wtih, but our algorithm team got wind of you and wants to bring you on" This has happened to me a couple times now - see a vague-ish job description looking for a "programmer" Go in, find out they are doing some sort of web-based tool, maybe with some hardcore algorithms running in the background. interview with people for the web-based tool, but get an offer from the algorithms people. So the question is - which job is the better job? I basically just want to get a wide berth of experience at this level of my career, but are algorithm developers so much in demand? Even more so than all these supposed hot in demand web developer guys? Will I be ok in the long run if I go into the niche of math based algorithm development, and just little to no, or hobby level web-dev experience? I basically just don't want to pigeon hole myself this early. My salary is already starting to get pretty high - and I can see a company later on saying "we really need a web developer, but we'll hire this 50k/year college guy, instead of this 100k/year experience algorithm guy" Cliffs notes: I have been doing algorithm development. I consider myself to be a "good programmer." I would have no problem picking up web technologies and those sorts of frameworks. During job interviews, I keep getting "we think you've got a good skillset - talk to our algorithm team" instead of wanting me to learn new skills on the job to do their web services or whhatever other new technology they are doing. Edit: Whenever I am talking about algorithm development here - I am talking about the code that produces the answer. Typically I think of more math-based algorithms: solving a financial problem, solving a finite element method, image processing, etc

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• schedule compliance and keeping technical supports and resolving issues

  - by imays

  I am an entrepreneur of a small software developer company. The flagship product is developed by myself and my company grew up to 14 people. One of pride is that we've never have to be invested or loaned. The core development team is 5 people. 3 are seniors and 2 are juniors. After the first release, we've received many issues from our customers. Most of them are bug issues, customization needs, usage questions and upgrade requests. The issues from customers are incoming many times everyday, so it takes little time or much time of our developers. Because of our product is a software development kit(SDK) so most of questions can be answered only from our developers. And, for resolving bug issues, developers must be involved. Estimating time to resolve bug is hard. I fully understand it. However, our developers insist they cannot set the any due date of each project because they are busy doing technical supports and bug fixes by issues from customers everyday. Of course, they never do overwork. I suggested them an idea to divide the team into two parts: one for focusing on development by milestones, other for doing technical supports and bug fixes without setting due days. Then we could announce release plan officially. After the finish of release, two parts exchange the role for next milestone. However, they say they "NO, because it is impossible to share knowledge and design document fully." They still say they cannot set the release date and they request me to alter the due date flexibly. They does not fix the due date of each milestone. Fortunately, our company is not loaned and invested so we are not chocked. But I think it is bad idea to keep this situation. I know the story of ant and grasshopper. Our customers are tired of waiting forever of our release date. Companies consume limited time and money. If flexible due date without limit could be acceptable, could they accept flexible salary day? What is the root cause of our problem? All that I want is to fix and achieve precisely due date of each milestone without losing frequent technical supports. I think there must be solution for this situation. Please answer me. Thanks in advance. PS. Our tools and ways of project management are Trello, Mantis-like issue tracker, shared calendar software and scrum(collected cards into series of 'small and high completeness' projects).

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• A Community Cure for a String Splitting Headache

  - by Tony Davis

  A heartwarming tale of dogged perseverance and Community collaboration to solve some SQL Server string-related headaches. Michael J Swart posted a blog this week that had me smiling in recognition and agreement, describing how an inquisitive Developer or DBA deals with a problem. It's a three-step process, starting with discomfort and anxiety; a feeling that one doesn't know as much about one's chosen specialized subject as previously thought. It progresses through a phase of intense research and learning until finally one achieves breakthrough, blessed relief and renewed optimism. In this case, the discomfort was provoked by the mystery of massively high CPU when searching Unicode strings in SQL Server. Michael explored the problem via Stack Overflow, Google and Twitter #sqlhelp, finally leading to resolution and a blog post that shared what he learned. Perfect; except that sometimes you have to be prepared to share what you've learned so far, while still mired in the phase of nagging discomfort. A good recent example of this recently can be found on our own blogs. Despite being a loud advocate of the lightning fast T-SQL-based string splitting techniques, honed to near perfection over many years by Jeff Moden and others, Phil Factor retained a dogged conviction that, in theory, shredding element-based XML using XQuery ought to be even more efficient for splitting a string to create a table. After some careful testing, he found instead that the XML way performed and scaled miserably by comparison. Somewhat subdued, and with a nagging feeling that perhaps he was still missing "something", he posted his findings. What happened next was a joy to behold; the community jumped in to suggest subtle changes in approach, using an attribute-based rather than element-based XML list, and tweaking the XQuery shredding. The result was performance and scalability that surpassed all other techniques. I asked Phil how quickly he would have arrived at the real breakthrough on his own. His candid answer was "never". Both are great examples of the power of Community learning and the latter in particular the importance of being brave enough to parade one's ignorance. Perhaps Jeff Moden will accept the string-splitting gauntlet one more time. To quote the great man: you've just got to love this community! If you've an interesting tale to tell about being helped to a significant breakthrough for a problem by the community, I'd love to hear about it. Cheers, Tony.

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• Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

  - by Scott McNeil

  We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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• Tap into MySQL's Amazing Performance Results with the Performance Tuning Course

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  Want to leverage the high-speed load utilities, distinctive memory caches, full text indexes, and other performance-enhancing mechanisms that MySQL offers to fuel today's critical business systems. The authentic MySQL Performance Tuning course, in 4 days, teaches you to evaluate the MySQL architecture, learn to use the tools, configure the database for performance, tune application and SQL code, tune the server, examine the storage engines, assess the application architecture, and learn general tuning concepts. You can take this course in one the following three ways: Training-on-Demand: Access the streaming video, instructor delivery of this course from your own desk, at your own pace. Book time for hands-on practice when it suits you. Live-Virtual Class: Take this instructor-led class live from your own desk. With 700 events on the schedule you are sure to find a time and date to suit you! In-Class: Travel to a classroom to take this class. A sample of events on the schedule are as follows.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Hamburg, Germany  22 October 2012  German  Prague, Czech Republic  1 October 2012  Czech  Warsaw, Poland  3 December 2012  Polish  London, England  19 November 2012  English  Rome, Italy  23 October 2012  Italian Lisbon, Portugal  6 November 2012  European Portugese  Aix en Provence, France  4 September 2012   French  Strasbourg, France 16 October 2012   French  Nieuwegein, Netherlands 26 November 2012   Dutch  Madrid, Spain 17 December 2012   Spanish  Mechelen, Belgium  1 October 2012  English  Riga, Latvia  10 December 2012  Latvian  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  10 September 2012 English   Edmonton, Canada 10 December 2012   English  Vancouver, Canada 10 December 2012   English  Ottawa, Canada 26 November 2012   English  Toronto, Canada 26 November 2012   English  Montreal, Canada 26 November 2012   English  Mexico City, Mexico 10 September 2012   Spanish  Sao Paolo, Brazil 26 November 2012  Brazilian Portugese   Tokyo, Japan 19 November 2012   Japanese  Tokyo, Japan  19 November 2012  Japanese For further information on this class, or to register your interest in additional events, go to the Oracle University Portal: http://oracle.com/education/mysql

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• Brightness Crash and Fan issues in 12.04.1

  - by S.A. McIntosh

  I would just like to state beforehand that I am a total novice in using Ubuntu when it comes to the more complex issues. So I thought it would be best to finally come here and ask for help before being re-directed or closed out for a solution. I have already looked high and low on this board for one but nothing came up for my particular case, so I might as well take a shot asking for the first time here. This is what I have at the moment: -Dell Insprion 1764 w/ 64-bit Intel i5 Core -Dual Boot: Windows 7/Ubuntu 12.04.1 32-bit (from 12.04 install) -Unity shell -Linux kernel: 3.2.0-32 generic-pae ...and this is my fglrxinfo: OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series OpenGL version string: 4.2.11627 Compatibility Profile Context The one issue I have with using Ubuntu is brightness. With the driver in every time I use the slider in the brightness and lock settings or use the keyboard function, it freezes, goes black and comes up with a scrambled colors page like this in the video. So I have looked all over this board and the web for answers looking for a solution that might have an answer. This is what I have done so far to fix this: -First Solution: Looking around, I found this small fix using terminal: sudo gedit /etc/rc.local followed by adding this into "rc.local" echo # > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness This works rarely with the graphics driver still in and I often get lucky say during restart but reboot would only snap back the brightness at max. -Second Solution Simply remove the graphics driver while leaving the solution of first behind. This solves the issue but results in having the monitor flicker and flash at startup which in itself is not a problem to me but maybe not so good for monitor health. Also it causes the fan to speed up throughout the session and render any program that needs the driver useless. -Third Solution This is the most obvious. Just simply use the brightness on AMD Catalyst Control Center software that came with the driver, and I can say that it's form of brightness is HORRIBLE compared to the actual settings. Which leads up to where I am now, back to the driver to stop the fan speed-up and seems that the only solution to the brightness crash is to use the keyboard-controlled brightness at the login screen NOT the desktop if I want the issued effect but will just snap at max bright again if I restart. Fan speed problem is dealt with but now run the risk of crashing my computer if I so much touch the brightness settings. Speaking of which I found this on launchpad and it seems that the issue has been going far since June of 2012. Any help, redirect link or reference would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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• How to install Network Adapter Drivers for Atheros AR8161/8165 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.20) Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Jessica Burnett

  How can I install drivers for 64-bit Atheros AR8161/8165 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.20) for Ubuntu 12.04. I dual boot Windows7/Ubuntu 12.04 drivers work for 64-bit Windows 7. lspic -nn: 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller [8086:0154] (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port [8086:0151] (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 [8086:1e3a] (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 [8086:1e2d] (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:1e10] (rev c4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 [8086:1e12] (rev c4) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 4 [8086:1e16] (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 [8086:1e26] (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller [8086:1e59] (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:1e03] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller [8086:1e22] (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:0de9] (rev a1) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet [1969:1091] (rev 08) 03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 2200 [8086:0891] (rev c4) 04:00.0 System peripheral [0880]: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller [197b:2392] (rev 30) 04:00.2 SD Host controller [0805]: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller [197b:2391] (rev 30) 04:00.3 System peripheral [0880]: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller [197b:2393] (rev 30) 04:00.4 System peripheral [0880]: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller [197b:2394] (rev 30) sudo lshw -c network *-network UNCLAIMED description: Ethernet controller product: AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 version: 08 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi msix bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:d3a00000-d3a3ffff ioport:2000(size=128) *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N 2200 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: c4 serial: 9c:4e:36:14:d4:7c width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.2.0-23-generic firmware=18.168.6.1 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:45 memory:d3900000-d3901fff I also tried Manually configuring wired connection. Nether wired or wireless connects

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• Adding Column to a SQL Server Table

  - by Dinesh Asanka

  Adding a column to a table is  common task for  DBAs. You can add a column to a table which is a nullable column or which has default values. But are these two operations are similar internally and which method is optimal? Let us start this with an example. I created a database and a table using following script: USE master Go --Drop Database if exists IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM SYS.databases WHERE name = 'AddColumn') DROP DATABASE AddColumn --Create the database CREATE DATABASE AddColumn GO USE AddColumn GO --Drop the table if exists IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM sys.tables WHERE Name = 'ExistingTable') DROP TABLE ExistingTable GO --Create the table CREATE TABLE ExistingTable (ID BIGINT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, DateTime1 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), DateTime2 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), DateTime3 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), DateTime4 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), Gendar CHAR(1) DEFAULT 'M', STATUS1 CHAR(1) DEFAULT 'Y' ) GO -- Insert 100,000 records with defaults records INSERT INTO ExistingTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 100000 Before adding a Column Before adding a column let us look at some of the details of the database. DBCC IND (AddColumn,ExistingTable,1) By running the above query, you will see 637 pages for the created table. Adding a Column You can add a column to the table with following statement. ALTER TABLE ExistingTable Add NewColumn INT NULL Above will add a column with a null value for the existing records. Alternatively you could add a column with default values. ALTER TABLE ExistingTable Add NewColumn INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 1 The above statement will add a column with a 1 value to the existing records. In the below table I measured the performance difference between above two statements. Parameter Nullable Column Default Value CPU 31 702 Duration 129 ms 6653 ms Reads 38 116,397 Writes 6 1329 Row Count 0 100000 If you look at the RowCount parameter, you can clearly see the difference. Though column is added in the first case, none of the rows are affected while in the second case all the rows are updated. That is the reason, why it has taken more duration and CPU to add column with Default value. We can verify this by several methods. Number of Pages The number of data pages can be obtained by using DBCC IND command. Though, this an undocumented dbcc command, many experts are ok to use this command in production. However, since there is no official word from Microsoft, use this “at your own risk”. DBCC IND (AddColumn,ExistingTable,1) Before Adding the Columns 637 Adding a Column with NULL 637 Adding a column with DEFAULT value 1270 This clearly shows that pages are physically modified. Please note, a high value indicated in the Adding a column with DEFAULT value  column is also a result of page splits. Continues…

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• Get to Know a Candidate (11 of 25): Roseanne Barr&ndash;Peace &amp; Freedom Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Barr is an American actress, comedienne, writer, television producer, and director.  Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997. She won both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her work on the show. Barr had crafted a "fierce working-class domestic goddess" persona in the eight years preceding her sitcom and wanted to do a realistic show about a strong mother who was not a victim of patriarchal consumerism. The granddaughter of immigrants from Europe and Russia, Barr was the oldest of four children in a working-class Jewish Salt Lake City family; she was also active in the LDS Church. In 1974 she married Bill Pentland, with whom she had three children, before divorcing in 1990 and marrying comedian Tom Arnold for four years. Controversy arose when she sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key at a 1990 nationally aired baseball game, followed by grabbing her crotch and spitting. After her sitcom ended, she launched her own talk show, The Roseanne Show, which aired from 1998 to 2000. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour. In 2011, she starred in an unscripted TV show, Roseanne's Nuts that lasted from July to September of that year, about her life on a Hawaiian farm. The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a nationally-organized political party with affiliates in more than a dozen states, including California, Florida, Colorado and Hawaii. Its first candidates appeared on the ballot in 1966, but the Peace and Freedom Party of California was founded on June 23, 1967, after the LAPD riot in the wealthy Century City section of Los Angeles, and qualified for the ballot in January 1968.  The Peace and Freedom Party went national in 1968 as a left-wing organization opposed to the Vietnam War. From its inception, Peace and Freedom Party has been a left-wing political organization. It is a strong advocate of protecting the environment from pollution and nuclear waste. It advocates personal liberties and universal, high quality and free access to education and health care. Its understanding of socialism includes a socialist economy, where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them. Barr is on the Ballot in: CA, CO, FL Learn more about Roseanne Barr and Peace and Freedom Party on Wikipedia.

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• Leveraging Social Networks for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  For retailers, social media is all about B2C2C. That is, Business to Consumer to Consumer, or more specifically, retailer to influencer to consumer. Traditional marketing targeted mass media, trying to expose the message to as many people as possible. While effective, this approach has never been very efficient, with high costs for relatively low penetration. Then it was thought that marketers should focus their efforts on a relative few super-influencers that would then sway the masses. History shows a few successes with this approach but lacked any consistency or predictability. After all, if super-influencers were easy to find, most campaigns would easily go viral. Alas, research shows that most wide-spread trends were the result of several fortunate events, including some luck. So do people exert influence over each other when it comes to purchase decisions? Of course they do, all the time. But that influence is usually limited to a small set of friends and specific specialization. For instance, although I have 165 friends on Facebook, I am only able to influence my close friends and family on PC purchases, and I have no sway at all for fashion purchases. People trust my knowledge on technology, but nobody asks my advice on shoes. How then should retailers leverage social networks in order to reinforce brand image and push promotions? Two obvious ways are Like and Share. Online advertisements or wall-postings receive more clicks when the viewer sees that friends have "liked" the posting. That's our modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Statistics show that endorsements from friends make it more likely a person will engage. If my friends and I liked it, then I might also "share" (or "retweet" in the case of Twitter) it with other friends. In that case the retailer has paid for X showings of the advertisement, but sharing has pushed it to an additional Y people at no cost. And further, the implicit endorsement by the sharer makes it more likely the recipient will engage. So a good first step is to find people active in social networks that will Like and Share in order to exert influence. Its still tough to go viral, but doubling engagement is still a big step in the right direction. More complex social graph analysis would be a second step, but I'll leave that topic for another day. If you're interested in the academic side of social dynamics, I suggest reading Duncan Watts' work.

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