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• Thinking differently about BI delivery

  - by jamiet

  My day job involves implementing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which, as I have said before, is simply about giving people the information they need to do their jobs. I’m always interested in learning about new ways of achieving that aim and that is my motivation for writing blog entries that are not concerned with SQL or SQL Server per se. Implementing BI systems usually involves hacking together a bunch third party products with some in-house “glue” and delivering information using some shiny, expensive web-based front-end tool; the list of vendors that supply such tools is big and ever-growing. No doubt these tools have their place and of late I have started to wonder whether they can be supplemented with different ways of delivering information. The problem I have with these separate web-based tools is exactly that – they are separate web-based tools. What’s the problem with that you might ask? I’ll explain! They force the information worker to go somewhere unfamiliar in order to get the information they need to do their jobs. Would it not be better if we could deliver information into the tools that those information workers are already using and not force them to go somewhere else? I look at the rise of blogging over recent years and I realise that what made them popular is that people can subscribe to RSS feeds and have information pushed to them in their tool of choice rather than them having to go and find the information for themselves in a tool that has been foisted upon them. Would it not be a good idea to adopt the principle of subscription for the benefit of delivering BI information as well? I think it would and in the rest of this blog entry I’ll outline such a scenario where the power of subscription could be used to enhance the delivery of information to information workers. Typical questions that information workers ask might be: What are my year-on-year sales figures? What was my footfall yesterday? How many widgets have I sold so far today? Each of those questions includes a time element and that shouldn’t surprise us, any BI system that I have worked on includes the dimension of time. Now, what do people use to view and organise their time-oriented information? Its not a trick question, they use a calendar and in the enterprise space more often than not that calendar is managed using Outlook. Given then that information workers are already looking at their calendar in Outlook anyway would it not make sense then to deliver information into that same calendar? Of course it would. Calendars are a great way of visualising information such as sales figures. Observe: Just in this single screenshot I have managed to convey a multitude of information. The information worker can see, at a glance, information about hourly/daily/weekly/monthly sales and, moreover, he/she is viewing that information right inside the tool that they use every day. There is no effort on the part of him/her, the information just appears hour after hour, day after day. Taking the idea further, each one of those calendar items could be a mini-dashboard in its own right. Double-clicking on an item could show a plethora of other information about that time slot such as breaking the sales down per region or year-over-year comparisons. Perhaps the title could employ a sparkline? Loads of possibilities. The point is that calendars are a completely natural way to visualise information; we should make more use of them! The real beauty of delivering information using calendars for us BI developers is that it should be so easy. In the case of Outlook we don’t need to write complicated VBA code that can go and manipulate a person’s calendar, simply publishing data in a format that Outlook can understand is sufficient and happily such formats already exist; iCalendar is the accepted format and the even more flexible xCalendar is hopefully on its way as well.   I’d like to make one last point and this one is with my SQL Server hat on. Reporting Services 2008 R2 introduced the ability to publish data as subscribable Atom feeds so it seems logical that it could also be a vehicle for delivering calendar feeds too. If you think this would be a good idea go and vote for it at Publish data as iCalendar feeds and please please please add some comments (especially if you vote it down). Work smarter, not harder! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Inside Red Gate - Be Reasonable!

  - by simonc

  As I discussed in my previous posts, divisions and project teams within Red Gate are allowed a lot of autonomy to manage themselves. It's not just the teams though, there's an awful lot of freedom given to individual employees within the company as well. Reasonableness How Red Gate treats it's employees is embodied in the phrase 'You will be reasonable with us, and we will be reasonable with you'. As an employee, you are trusted to do your job to the best of you ability. There's no one looking over your shoulder, no one clocking you in and out each day. Everyone is working at the company because they want to, and one of the core ideas of Red Gate is that the company exists to 'let people do the best work of their lives'. Everything is geared towards that. To help you do your job, office services and the IT department are there. If you need something to help you work better (a third or fourth monitor, footrests, or a new keyboard) then ask people in Information Systems (IS) or Office Services and you will be given it, no questions asked. Everyone has administrator access to their own machines, and you can install whatever you want on it. If there's a particular bit of software you need, then ask IS and they will buy it. As an example, last year I wanted to replace my main hard drive with an SSD; I had a summer job at school working in a computer repair shop, so knew what to do. I went to IS and asked for 'an SSD, a SATA cable, and a screwdriver'. And I got it there and then, even the screwdriver. Awesome. I screwed it in myself, copied all my main drive files across, and I was good to go. Of course, if you're not happy doing that yourself, then IS will sort it all out for you, no problems. If you need something that the company doesn't have (say, a book off Amazon, or you need some specifications printing off & bound), then everyone has a expense limit of £100 that you can use without any sign-off needed from your managers. If you need a company credit card for whatever reason, then you can get it. This freedom extends to working hours and holiday; you're expected to be in the office 11am-3pm each day, but outside those times you can work whenever you want. If you need a half-day holiday on a days notice, or even the same day, then you'll get it, unless there's a good reason you're needed that day. If you need to work from home for a day or so for whatever reason, then you can. If it's reasonable, then it's allowed. Trust issues? A lot of trust, and a lot of leeway, is given to all the people in Red Gate. Everyone is expected to work hard, do their jobs to the best of their ability, and there will be a minimum of bureaucratic obstacles that stop you doing your work. What happens if you abuse this trust? Well, an example is company trip expenses. You're free to expense what you like; food, drink, transport, etc, but if you expenses are not reasonable, then you will never travel with the company again. Simple as that. Everyone knows when they're abusing the system, so simply don't do it. Along with reasonableness, another phrase used is 'Don't be an a**hole'. If you act like an a**hole, and abuse any of the trust placed in you, even if you're the best tester, salesperson, dev, or manager in the company, then you won't be a part of the company any more. From what I know about other companies, employee trust is highly variable between companies, all the way up to CCTV trained on employee's monitors. As a dev, I want to produce well-written & useful code that solves people's problems. Being able to get whatever I need - install whatever tools I need, get time off when I need to, obtain reference books within a day - all let me do my job, and so let Red Gate help other people do their own jobs through the tools we produce. Plus, I don't think I would like working for a company that doesn't allow admin access to your own machine and blocks Facebook! Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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• What Counts for A DBA: Observant

  - by drsql

  When walking up to the building where I work, I can see CCTV cameras placed here and there for monitoring access to the building. We are required to wear authorization badges which could be checked at any time. Do we have enemies?  Of course! No one is 100% safe; even if your life is a fairy tale, there is always a witch with an apple waiting to snack you into a thousand years of slumber (or at least so I recollect from elementary school.) Even Little Bo Peep had to keep a wary lookout.    We nerdy types (or maybe it was just me?) generally learned on the school playground to keep an eye open for unprovoked attack from simpler, but more muscular souls, and take steps to avoid messy confrontations well in advance. After we’d apprehensively negotiated adulthood with varying degrees of success, these skills of watching for danger, and avoiding it,  translated quite well to the technical careers so many of us were destined for. And nowhere else is this talent for watching out for irrational malevolence so appropriate as in a career as a production DBA.   It isn’t always active malevolence that the DBA needs to watch out for, but the even scarier quirks of common humanity.  A large number of the issues that occur in the enterprise happen just randomly or even just one time ever in a spurious manner, like in the case where a person decided to download the entire MSDN library of software, cross join every non-indexed billion row table together, and simultaneously stream the HD feed of 5 different sporting events, making the network access slow while the corporate online sales just started. The decent DBA team, like the going, gets tough under such circumstances. They spring into action, checking all of the sources of active information, observes the issue is no longer happening now, figures that either it wasn’t the database’s fault and that the reboot of the whatever device on the network fixed the problem.  This sort of reactive support is good, and will be the initial reaction of even excellent DBAs, but it is not the end of the story if you really want to know what happened and avoid getting called again when it isn’t even your fault.   When fires start raging within the corporate software forest, the DBA’s instinct is to actively find a way to douse the flames and get back to having no one in the company have any idea who they are.  Even better for them is to find a way of killing a potential problem while the fires are small, long before they can be classified as raging. The observant DBA will have already been monitoring the server environment for months in advance.  Most troubles, such as disk space and security intrusions, can be predicted and dealt with by alerting systems, whereas other trouble can come out of the blue and requires a skill of observing ongoing conditions and noticing inexplicable changes that could signal an emerging problem.  You can’t automate the DBA, because the bankable skill of a DBA is in detecting the early signs of unexpected problems, and working out how to deal with them before anyone else notices them.    To achieve this, the DBA will check the situation as it is currently happening,  and in many cases is likely to have been the person who submitted the problem to the level 1 support person in the first place, just to let the support team know of impending issues (always well received, I tell you what!). Database and host computer settings, configurations, and even critical data might be profiled and captured for later comparisons. He’ll use Monitoring tools, built-in, commercial (Not to be too crassly commercial or anything, but there is one such tool is SQL Monitor) and lots of homebrew monitoring tools to monitor for problems and changes in the server environment.   You will know that you have it right when a support call comes in and you can look at your monitoring tools and quickly respond that “response time is well within the normal range, the query that supports the failing interface works perfectly and has actually only been called 67% as often as normal, so I am more than willing to help diagnose the problem, but it isn’t the database server’s fault and is probably a client or networking slowdown causing the interface to be used less frequently than normal.” And that is the best thing for any DBA to observe…

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• SOA, Governance, and Drugs

  Why is IT governance important in service oriented architecture (SOA)? IT Governance provides a framework for making appropriate decisions based on company guidelines and accepted standards. This framework also outlines each stakeholder’s responsibilities and authority when making important architectural or design decisions. Furthermore, this framework of governance defines parameters and constraints that are used to give context and perspective when making decisions. The use of governance as it applies to SOA ensures that specific design principles and patterns are used when developing and maintaining services. When governance is consistently applied systems the following benefits are achieved according to Anne Thomas Manes in 2010. Governance makes sure that services conform to standard interface patterns, common data modeling practices, and promotes the incorporation of existing system functionality by building on top of other available services across a system. Governance defines development standards based on proven design principles and patterns that promote reuse and composition. Governance provides developers a set of proven design principles, standards and practices that promote the reduction in system based component dependencies.  By following these guidelines, individual components will be easier to maintain. For me personally, I am a fan of IT governance, and feel that it valuable part of any corporate IT department. However, depending on how it is implemented can really affect the value of using IT governance.  Companies need to find a way to ensure that governance does not become extreme in its policies and procedures. I know for me personally, I would really dislike working under a completely totalitarian or laissez-faire version of governance. Developers need to be able to be creative in their designs and too much governance can really impede the design process and prevent the most optimal design from being developed. On the other hand, with no governance enforced, no standards will be followed and accepted design patterns will be ignored. I have personally had to spend a lot of time working on this particular scenario and I have found that the concept of code reuse and composition is almost nonexistent.  Based on this, too much time and money is wasted on redeveloping existing aspects of an application that already exist within the system as a whole. I think moving forward we will see a staggered form of IT governance, regardless if it is for SOA or IT in general.  Depending on the size of a company and the size of its IT department,  I can see IT governance as a layered approach in that the top layer will be defined by enterprise architects that focus on abstract concepts pertaining to high level design, general  guidelines, acceptable best practices, and recommended design patterns.  The next layer will be defined by solution architects or department managers that further expand on abstracted guidelines defined by the enterprise architects. This layer will contain further definitions as to when various design patterns, coding standards, and best practices are to be applied based on the context of the solutions that are being developed by the department. The final layer will be defined by the system designer or a solutions architect assed to a project in that they will define what design patterns will be used in a solution, naming conventions, as well as outline how a system will function based on the best practices defined by the previous layers. This layered approach allows for IT departments to be flexible in that system designers have creative leeway in designing solutions to meet the needs of the business, but they must operate within the confines of the abstracted IT governance guidelines.  A real world example of this can be seen in the United States as it pertains to governance of the people in that the US government defines rules and regulations in the abstract and then the state governments take these guidelines and applies them based on the will of the people in each individual state. Furthermore, the county or city governments are the ones that actually enforce these rules based on how they are interpreted by local community.  To further define my example, the United States government defines that marijuana is illegal. Each individual state has the option to determine this regulation as it wishes in that the state of Florida determines that all uses of the drug are illegal, but the state of California legally allows the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes only. Based on these accepted practices each local government enforces these rules in that a police officer will arrest anyone in the state of Florida for having this drug on them if they walk down the street, but in California if a person has a medical prescription for the drug they will not get arrested.  REFERENCESThomas Manes, Anne. (2010). Understanding SOA Governance: http://www.soamag.com/I40/0610-2.php

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• State of the (Commerce) Union: What the healthcare.gov hiccups teach us about the commerce customer experience

  - by Katrina Gosek

  Guest Post by Brenna Johnson, Oracle Commerce Product A lot has been said about the healthcare.gov debacle in the last week. Regardless of your feelings about the Affordable Care Act, there’s a hidden issue in this story that most of the American people don’t understand: delivering a great commerce customer experience (CX) is hard. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The reality of the government’s issues getting the healthcare site up and running smooth is something we in the online commerce community know too well.  If there’s one thing the botched launch of the site has taught us, it’s that regardless of the size of your budget or the power of an executive with a high-profile project, some of the biggest initiatives with the most attention (and the most at stake) don’t go as planned. It may even give you a moment of solace – we have the same issues! But why?  Organizations engage too many separate vendors with different technologies, running sections or pieces of a site to get live. When things go wrong, it takes time to identify the problem – and who or what is at the center of it. Unfortunately, this is a brittle way of setting up a site, making it susceptible to breaks, bugs, and scaling issues. But, it’s the reality of running a site with legacy technology constraints in today’s demanding, customer-centric market. This approach also means there’s also a lot of cooks in lots of different kitchens. You’ve got development and IT, the business and the marketing team, an external Systems Integrator to bring it all together, a digital agency or consultant, QA, product experts, 3rd party suppliers, and the list goes on. To complicate things, different business units are held responsible for different pieces of the site and managing different technologies. And again – due to legacy organizational structure and processes, this is all accepted as the normal State of the Union. Digital commerce has been commonplace for 15 years. Yet, getting a site live, maintained and performing requires orchestrating a cast of thousands (or at least, dozens), big dollars, and some finger-crossing. But it shouldn’t. The great thing about the advent of mobile commerce and the continued maturity of online commerce is that it’s forced organizations to think from the outside, in. Consumers – whether they’re shopping for shoes or a new healthcare plan – don’t care about what technology issues or processes you have behind the scenes. They just want it to work.  They want their experience to be easy, fast, and tailored to them and their needs – whatever they are. This doesn’t sound like a tall order to the American consumer – especially since they interact with sites that do work smoothly.  But the reality is that it takes scores of people, teams, check-ins, late nights, testing, and some good luck to get sites to run, and even more so at Black Friday (or October 1st) traffic levels.  The last thing on a customer’s mind is making excuses for why they can’t buy a product – just get it to work. So what is the government doing? My guess is working day and night to get the site performing  - and having to throw big money at the problem. In the meantime they’re sending frustrated online users to the call center, or even a location where a trained “navigator” can help them in-person to complete their selection. Sounds a lot like multichannel commerce (where broken communication between siloed touchpoints will only frustrate the consumer more). One thing we’ve learned is that consumers spend their time and money with brands they know and trust. When sites are easy to use and adapt to their needs, they tend to spend more, come back, and even become long-time loyalists. Achieving this may require moving internal mountains, but there’s too much at stake to ignore the sea change in how organizations are thinking about their customer. If the thought of re-thinking your internal teams, technologies, and processes sounds like a headache, think about the pain associated with losing valuable customers – and dollars. Regardless if you’re in B2B or B2C, it’s guaranteed that your competitors are making CX a priority. Those early to the game who have made CX a priority have already begun to outpace their competition. So as you’re planning for 2014, look to the news this week. Make sure the customer experience is a focus at your organization. Expectations are at record highs. Map your customer’s journey, and think from the outside, in. How easy is it for your customers to do business with you? If they interact with many touchpoints across your organization, are the call center, website, mobile environment, or brick and mortar location in sync? Do you have the technology in place to achieve this? It’s time to give the people what they want!

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• IE9, LightSwitch Beta 2 and Zune HD: A Study in Risk Management?

  - by andrewbrust

  Photo by parl, 'Risk.’ Under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This has been a busy week for Microsoft, and for me as well.  On Monday, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.  That evening I flew from New York to Seattle.  On Tuesday morning, Microsoft launched Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 2 with a Go-Live license, in Redmond, and I had the privilege of speaking at the keynote presentation where the announcement was made.  Readers of this blog know I‘m a fan of LightSwitch, so I was happy to tell the app dev tools partners in the audience that I thought the LightSwitch extensions ecosystem represented a big opportunity – comparable to the opportunity when Visual Basic 1.0 was entering its final beta roughly 20 years ago.  On Tuesday evening, I flew back to New York (and wrote most of this post in-flight). Two busy, productive days.  But there was a caveat that impacts the accomplishments, because Monday was also the day reports surfaced from credible news agencies that Microsoft was discontinuing its dedicated Zune hardware efforts.  While the Zune brand, technology and service will continue to be a component of Windows Phone and a piece of the Xbox puzzle as well, speculation is that Microsoft will no longer be going toe-to-toe with iPod touch in the portable music player market. If we take all three of these developments together (even if one of them is based on speculation), two interesting conclusions can reasonably be drawn, one good and one less so. Microsoft is doubling down on technologies it finds strategic and de-emphasizing those that it does not.  HTML 5 and the Web are strategic, so here comes IE9, and it’s a very good browser.  Try it and see.  Silverlight is strategic too, as is SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, so here comes Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 and a license to deploy its apps to production.  Downloads of that product have exceeded Microsoft’s projections by more than 50%, and the company is even citing analyst firms’ figures covering the number of power-user developers that might use it. (I happen to think the product will be used by full-fledged developers as well, but that’s a separate discussion.) Windows Phone is strategic too…I wasn’t 100% positive of that before, but the Nokia agreement has made me confident.  Xbox as an entertainment appliance is also strategic.  Standalone music players are not strategic – and even if they were, selling them has been a losing battle for Microsoft.  So if Microsoft has consolidated the Zune content story and the ZunePass subscription into Xbox and Windows Phone, it would make sense, and would be a smart allocation of resources.  Essentially, it would be for the greater good. But it’s not all good.  In this scenario, Zune player customers would lose out.  Unless they wanted to switch to Windows Phone, and then use their phone’s battery for the portable media needs, they’re going to need a new platform.  They’re going to feel abandoned.  Even if Zune lives, there have been other such cul de sacs for customers.  Remember SPOT watches?  Live Spaces?  The original Live Mesh?  Microsoft discontinued each of these products.  The company is to be commended for cutting its losses, as admitting a loss isn’t easy.  But Redmond won’t be well-regarded by the victims of those decisions.  Instead, it gets black marks. What’s the answer?  I think it’s a bit like the 1980’s New York City “don’t block the box” gridlock rules: don’t enter an intersection unless you see a clear path through it.  If the light turns red and you’re blocking the perpendicular traffic, that’s your fault in judgment.  You get fined and get points on your license and you don’t get to shrug it off as beyond your control.  Accountability is key.  The same goes for Microsoft.  If it decides to enter a market, it should see a reasonable path through success in that market. Switching analogies, Microsoft shouldn’t make investments haphazardly, and it certainly shouldn’t ask investors to buy into a high-risk fund that is sold as safe and which offers only moderate returns.  People won’t continue to invest with a fund manager with a track record of over-zealous, imprudent, sub-prime investments.  The same is true on the product side for Microsoft, and not just with music players and geeky wrist watches.  It’s true of Web browsers, and line-of-business app dev tools, and smartphones, and cloud platforms and operating systems too.  When Microsoft is casual about its own risk, it raises risk for its customers, and weakens its reputation, market share and credibility.  That doesn’t mean all risk is bad, but it does mean no product team’s risk should be taken lightly. For mutual fund companies, it’s the CEO’s job to give his fund managers autonomy, but to make sure they’re conforming to a standard of rational risk management.  Because all those funds carry the same brand, and many of them serve the same investors. The same goes for Microsoft, its product portfolio, its executive ranks and its product managers.

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• What's New in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2?

  - by Fat Bloke

  A year is a long time in the IT industry. Since the last VirtualBox feature release, which was a little over a year ago, we've seen: new releases of cool new operating systems, such as Windows 8, ChromeOS, and Mountain Lion; we've seen a myriad of new Linux releases from big Enterprise class distributions like Oracle 6.3, to accessible desktop distros like Ubuntu 12.04 and Fedora 17; and we've also seen the spec of a typical PC or laptop double in power. All of these events have influenced our new VirtualBox version which we're releasing today. Here's how... Powerful hosts  One of the trends we've seen is that as the average host platform becomes more powerful, our users are consistently running more and more vm's. Some of our users have large libraries of vm's of various vintages, whilst others have groups of vm's that are run together as an assembly of the various tiers in a multi-tiered software solution, for example, a database tier, middleware tier, and front-ends.  So we're pleased to unveil a more powerful VirtualBox Manager to address the needs of these users: VM Groups Groups allow you to organize your VM library in a sensible way, e.g.  by platform type, by project, by version, by whatever. To create groups you can drag one VM onto another or select one or more VM's and choose Machine...Group from the menu bar. You can expand and collapse groups to save screen real estate, and you can Enter and Leave a group (think iPad navigation here) by using the right and left arrow keys when groups are selected. But groups are more than passive folders, because you can now also perform operations on groups, rather than all the individual VMs. So if you have a multi-tiered solution you can start the whole stack up with just one click. Autostart Many VirtualBox users run dedicated services in their VMs, for example, running a Wiki. With these types of VM workloads, you really want the VM start up when the host machine boots up. So with 4.2 we've introduced a cross-platform Auto-start mechanism to allow you to treat VMs as host services. Headless VM Launching With VM's such as web servers, wikis, and other types of server-class workloads, the Console of the VM is pretty much redundant. For some time now VirtualBox has offered a separate launch mechanism for these VM's, namely the command-line interface commands VBoxHeadless or VBoxManage startvm ... --type headless commands. But with 4.2 we also allow you launch headless VMs from the Manager. Simply hold down Shift when launching the VM from the Manager.  It's that easy. But how do you stop a headless VM? Well, with 4.2 we allow you to Close the VM from the Manager. (BTW best to use the ACPI Shutdown method which allows the guest VM to close down gracefully.) Easy VM Creation For our expert users, the  New VM Wizard was a little tiresome, so now there's a faster 2-click VM creation mode. Just Hide the description when creating a new VM. Powerful VMs  As the hosts have become more powerful, so are the guests that are running inside them. Here are some of the 4.2 features to accommodate them: Virtual Network Interface Cards  With 4.2, it's now possible to create VMs with up to 36 NICs, when using the ICH9 chipset emulation. But with great power comes great responsibility (didn't Obi-Wan say something similar?), and so we have also introduced bandwidth limiting to prevent a rogue VM stealing the whole pipe. VLAN tagging Some of our users leverage VLANs extensively so we've enhanced the E1000 NICs to support this.  Processor Performance If you are running a CPU which supports Nested Paging (aka EPT in the Intel world) such as most of the Core i5 and i7 CPUs, or are running an AMD Bulldozer or later, you should see some performance improvements from our work with these processors. And while we're talking Processors, we've added support for some of the more modern VIA CPUs too. Powerful Automation Because VirtualBox runs atop a fully blown operating system, it makes sense to leverage the capabilities of the host to run scripts that can drive the guest VMs. Guest Automation was introduced in a prior release but with 4.2 we've revamped the APIs to allow a richer and more powerful set of operations to be executed by the guest. Check out the IGuest APIs in the VirtualBox Programming Guide and Reference (SDK). Powerful Platforms  All the hardcore engineering that has gone into 4.2 has been done for a purpose and that is to deliver a fast and powerful engine that can run almost any x86 OS because of the integrity of the virtualization. So we're pleased to add support for these platforms: Mac OS X "Mountain Lion"  Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 Ubuntu 12.04 (“Precise Pangolin”) Fedora 17 Oracle Linux 6.3  Here's the proof: We don't have time to go into the myriad of smaller improvements such as support for burning audio CDs from a guest, bi-directional clipboard control,  drag-and-drop of files into Linux guests, etc. so we'll leave that as an exercise for the user as soon as you've downloaded from the Oracle or community site and taken a peek at the User Guide. So all in all, a pretty solid release, one that we hope you'll enjoy discovering. - FB 

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• Dissertation about website and database security - in need of some pointers

  - by ClarkeyBoy

  Hi, I am on my dissertation in my final year at university at the moment. One of the areas I need to research is security - for both websites and for databases. I currently have sections on the following: Website Form security - such as data validation. This section is more about preventing errors made by legitimate users as much as possible rather than stopping hackers, for example comparing a field to a regular expression and giving them meaningful feedback on any errors which did occur so as to stop it happening again. Constraints. For example if a value must be true or false then use a checkbox. If it is likely to be one of several values then use a dropdown or a set of radio boxes, and so on. If the value is unpredictable then use regular expressions to limit what characters they are allowed to enter, and to restrict the length of the string, and sometimes to limit the format (such as for dates / times, post codes and so on). Sometimes you can limit permissions to the form. This is on the occasion that you know exactly who (whether it be peoples names or a group of people - such as administrators or employees) is going to need access to the form. Restricting permissions will stop members of the public from being able to access the form. Symbols or strings which could be used maliciously or cause the website to act incorrectly (such as the script tag) should be filtered out or html encoded. Captcha images can be used to prevent automated systems from filling in and submitting the form. There are some hacks for file uploads - such as using double extensions - which can allow hackers to upload malicious files. Databases (this is nowhere near done yet but the sections I have planned are listed below) SQL statements vs stored procedures Throwing an error when one of the variables contains particular characters or groups of characters (I cant remember what characters they are, but I have seen a message thrown back at me before where I have tried to enter html or something into a text area). SQL Injection - and ways around it, with some examples. Does anyone have any hints and tips on where I could go for some decent, reliable information either about these areas or about other areas of security that I could cover? Thanks in advance. Regards, Richard PS I am a complete newbie when it comes to security, so please be patient with me. If any of the information I have put down is wrong or could be sub-sectioned then please feel free to say so.

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• Best ASP.NET E-Commerce Framework (aspDotNetStoreFront, AbleCommerce, BVCommerce, MediaChase,...)

  - by EfficionDave

  I need a full-featured asp.net E-Commerce solution for a project. It needs to be easily extensible as I need to extend it to integrate with a custom Flash based personalization engine. It should also have a great administrative back-end that handles inventory tracking, report, labels, shipping, ... so that the client can really use it as the basis for their business. I've used quite a few different E-Commerce systems including OSCommerce, Zen Cart, Catalook, and eTailer. While I was impressed with Zen Cart and eTailer, this project is big enough that I want to try a more serious, commercial offering. I'm particularly interested in thoughts on aspdotnetstorefront, BVCommerce, AbleCommerce, and MediaChase. [UPDATE] I've done quite a bit of evaluation since I posted this question and will give some of my findings below: BVCommerce - The price point is nice, the product seems fairly well regarded, and I've heard good things about customizing/extending it, it just doesn't seem like it's going to meet my needs as an Top Tier ECommerce solution. After viewing the tutorial videos, the Admin interface just seems too basic and outdated. aspDotNetStorefront - The integration with DotNetNuke was it's biggest selling point for me but after reading peoples opinions, it's integration seems quite weak. It's sounds like there's a significant learning curve and the architecture just doesn't sound like it's as clean as it should be. AbleCommerce - After a rather thorough evaluation, I have selected AbleCommerce for at least my next project. The Admin interface is beautiful and has a nice list of features. The E-Commerce portion of the user side is very well done, highly skin-able (using Master Pages and a couple other techniques), and the checkout workflow has all the features I need while still being very clean. Source to the API can be bought for $500 but you generally won't need it. There are some 3rd party modules available but there's not currently a large market for these. The biggest glaring weakness of AbleCommerce I've found is their CMS capabilities are very limited and not at all well suited for a non-technical user to make most site content updates. But I have a good solution for that that I plan adapting into AbleCommerce. They will automatically generate a site for you to play with to your heart's content for 30 days. It is defniitely worth checking out.

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• Delphi SOAP Envelope and WCF

  - by Chris

  Hi all, I am working on a system that provides a soap interface. One of the systems that are going to use the interface is coded in Delphi 7. The web service is developed with WCF, basic http binding, SOAP 1.1. If I use SOAP UI (JAVA), the service works properly. But Delphi seems to do special things here ;) This is how the message looks like in SOAP UI: <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ser="http://services.xxx.de/xxx"> <soapenv:Header/> <soapenv:Body> <ser:GetCustomer> <!--Optional:--> <ser:GetCustomerRequest> <!-- this is a data contract --> <ser:Id>?</ser:Id> </ser:GetCustomerRequest> </ser:GetCustomer> </soapenv:Body> </soapenv:Envelope> I am not a delphi developer , but I developed a simple test client to see what's going wrong. This what Delphi sends as a SOAP envelope. <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"> <SOAP-ENV:Body SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:NS2="http://services.xxx.de/xxx"> <NS1:GetCustomer xmlns:NS1="http://services.xxx.de/xxx"> <GetCustomerRequest href="#1"/> </NS1:GetCustomer> <NS2:GetCustomerRequest id="1" xsi:type="NS2:GetCustomerRequest"> <Id xsi:type="xsd:int">253</Id> </NS2:GetCustomerRequest> </SOAP-ENV:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> WCF throws an error that is in German language... ;) Es wurde das Endelement "Body" aus Namespace "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" erwartet. Gefunden wurde "Element "NS2:GetCustomerRequest" aus Namespace "http://services.xxx.de/xxx"". Zeile 1, Position 599. Means something like The Body was expected. But instead the Element "NS2:GetCustomerReques" was found. Now my questions is: Can I somehow change the way Delphi creates the envelope? Or are the ways to make WCF work with such message formats? Any help is greatly appreciated!

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• List of freely available programming books

  - by Karan Bhangui

  I'm trying to amass a list of programming books with opensource licenses, like Creative Commons, GPL, etc. The books can be about a particular programming language or about computers in general. Hoping you guys could help: Languages BASH Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide (An in-depth exploration of the art of shell scripting) C The C book C++ Thinking in C++ C++ Annotations How to Think Like a Computer Scientist C# .NET Book Zero: What the C or C++ Programmer Needs to Know About C# and the .NET Framework Illustrated C# 2008 (Dead Link) Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in C# Threading in C# Common Lisp Practical Common Lisp On Lisp Java Thinking in Java How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Java Thin-Client Programming JavaScript Eloquent JavaScript Haskell Real world Haskell Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! Objective-C The Objective-C Programming Language Perl Extreme Perl (license not specified - home page is saying "freely available") The Mason Book (Open Publication License) Practical mod_perl (CreativeCommons Attribution Share-Alike License) Higher-Order Perl Learning Perl the Hard Way PHP Practical PHP Programming Zend Framework: Survive the Deep End PowerShell Mastering PowerShell Prolog Building Expert Systems in Prolog Adventure in Prolog Prolog Programming A First Course Logic, Programming and Prolog (2ed) Introduction to Prolog for Mathematicians Learn Prolog Now! Natural Language Processing Techniques in Prolog Python Dive Into Python Dive Into Python 3 How to Think Like a Computer Scientist A Byte of Python Python for Fun Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python Ruby Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book SQL Practical PostgreSQL x86 assembly Paul Carter's tutorial Lua Programming In Lua (for v5 but still largely relevant) Algorithms and Data Structures Algorithms Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java Planning Algorithms Frameworks/Projects The Django Book The Pylons Book Introduction to Design Patterns in C++ with Qt 4 (Open Publication License) Version control The SVN Book Mercurial: The Definitive Guide Pro Git UNIX / Linux The Art of Unix Programming Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition Others Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs The Little Book of Semaphores Mathematical Logic - an Introduction An Introduction to the Theory of Computation Developers Developers Developers Developers Linkers and loaders Beej's Guide to Network Programming Maven: The Definitive Guide I will expand on this list as I get comments or when I think of more :D Related: Programming texts and reference material for my Kindle What are some good free programming books? Can anyone recommend a free software engineering book? Edit: Oh I didn't notice the community wiki feature. Feel free to edit your suggestions right in!

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• Storing objects in the array

  - by Ockonal

  Hello, I want to save boost signals objects in the map (association: signal name ? signal object). The signals signature is different, so the second type of map should be boost::any. map<string, any> mSignalAssociation; The question is how to store objects without defining type of new signal signature? typedef boost::signals2::signal<void (int KeyCode)> sigKeyPressed; mSignalAssociation.insert(make_pair("KeyPressed", sigKeyPressed())); // This is what I need: passing object without type definition mSignalAssociation["KeyPressed"] = (typename boost::signals2::signal<void (int KeyCode)>()); // One more trying which won't work. And I don't want use this sigKeyPressed mKeyPressed; mSignalAssociation["KeyPressed"] = mKeyPressed; All this tryings throw the error: /usr/include/boost/noncopyable.hpp: In copy constructor ‘boost::signals2::signal_base::signal_base(const boost::signals2::signal_base&)’: In file included from /usr/include/boost/signals2/detail/signals_common.hpp:17:0, /usr/include/boost/noncopyable.hpp:27:7: error: ‘boost::noncopyable_::noncopyable::noncopyable(const boost::noncopyable_::noncopyable&)’ is private /usr/include/boost/signals2/signal_base.hpp:22:5: error: within this context ---------- /usr/include/boost/signals2/detail/signal_template.hpp: In copy constructor ‘boost::signals2::signal1<void, int&, boost::signals2::optional_last_value<void>, int, std::less<int>, boost::function<void(int)>, boost::function<void(const boost::signals2::connection&, int)>, boost::signals2::mutex>::signal1(const boost::signals2::signal1<void, int, boost::signals2::optional_last_value<void>, int, std::less<int>, boost::function<void(int)>, boost::function<void(const boost::signals2::connection&, int)>, boost::signals2::mutex>&)’: In file included from /usr/include/boost/preprocessor/iteration/detail/iter/forward1.hpp:52:0, /usr/include/boost/signals2/detail/signal_template.hpp:578:5: note: synthesized method ‘boost::signals2::signal_base::signal_base(const boost::signals2::signal_base&)’ first required here from /usr/include/boost/signals2.hpp:16, --------- /usr/include/boost/signals2/preprocessed_signal.hpp: In copy constructor ‘boost::signals2::signal<void(int)>::signal(const boost::signals2::signal<void(int)>&)’: In file included from /usr/include/boost/signals2/signal.hpp:36:0, /usr/include/boost/signals2/preprocessed_signal.hpp:42:5: note: synthesized method ‘boost::signals2::signal1<void, int, boost::signals2::optional_last_value<void>, int, std::less<int>, boost::function<void(int)>, boost::function<void(const boost::signals2::connection&, int)>, boost::signals2::mutex>::signal1(const boost::signals2::signal1<void, int, boost::signals2::optional_last_value<void>, int, std::less<int>, boost::function<void(int)>, boost::function<void(const boost::signals2::connection&, int)>, boost::signals2::mutex>&)’ first required here from /home/ockonal/Workspace/Projects/Pseudoform-2/include/Core/Systems.hpp:6,

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• PHP5.3 is not working with MySQL5.1 IIS7 Times out

  - by Thorn007

  I have set up PHP5.3, MySQL5.1, and IIS7 on Window 7 but php doesn't want to work with MySQL. I'm assuming it is a configuration error or an incomplete install on my part. MySQL5.1 is working PHP5.3 is working, phpinfo() shows info and that i have enabled MySQL IIS is setup and using fastCgiModule to run PHP IIS registers php.ini updates port 3306 is firewall free and open to the world php.ini is configured correctly I have added c:\php to the Windows systems PATH In the past I remember moving a file, libmysql.dll, to System32 but I doesn't look like that come with php5.3.1, as the driver comes built in now http://us3.php.net/manual/en/mysqlnd.install.php. (This has been giving me so much trouble I have been documenting my findings on my blog as http://inteldesigner.com/2010/code/having-problems-getting-php5-3-to-work-with-mysql5-1 ) NEED: I need to install PHP manually, don't want to use the quick installer or an older version I need to get PHP5.3 to work with MySQL5.1 so i can install Wordpress2.9 and Drupal7a Any links or suggestion would be great, I have already done everything on the iis web site, nothing is working. I'm guessing they have not updated for new software. BUGS/SOLUTION: The solution is here: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50172 thanks go to don.raman on the iis.net forums http://forums.iis.net/p/1164911/1933894.aspx SYMPTOMS: The php function mysql_connect() in conjunction with php5.3 locks up sever and returns error 500. (IPv6 is the problem see above link) TEST CODE: <?php $con = mysql_connect("localhost","root","***"); if (!$con) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); } // some code mysql_close($con); ?> ERRORS: From Browser: HTTP Error 500.0 - Internal Server Error C:\php\php-cgi.exe - The FastCGI process exceeded configured activity timeout When i run php -f c:\public_html\index.php from the command line i got: PHP Warning: mysql_connect(): [2002] A connection attempt failed because the co nnected party did not (trying to connect via tcp://localhost:3306) in C:\public _html\index.php on line 10 Warning: mysql_connect(): [2002] A connection attempt failed because the connect ed party did not (trying to connect via tcp://localhost:3306) in C:\public_html \index.php on line 10 PHP Warning: mysql_connect(): A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connectio n failed because connected host has failed to respond. in C:\public_html\index.php on line 10 Warning: mysql_connect(): A connection attempt failed because the connected part y did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection fai led because connected host has failed to respond. in C:\public_html\index.php on line 10 Could not connect: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did n ot properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed bec ause connected host has failed to respond. C:\Users\Kevin>

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• Color Theory: How to convert Munsell HVC to RGB/HSB/HSL

  - by Ian Boyd

  I'm looking at at document that describes the standard colors used in dentistry to describe the color of a tooth. They quote hue, value, chroma values, and indicate they are from the 1905 Munsell description of color: The system of colour notation developed by A. H. Munsell in 1905 identifies colour in terms of three attributes: HUE, VALUE (Brightness) and CHROMA (saturation) [15] HUE (H): Munsell defined hue as the quality by which we distinguish one colour from another. He selected five principle colours: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple; and five intermediate colours: yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple. These were placed around a colour circle at equal points and the colours in between these points are a mixture of the two, in favour of the nearer point/colour (see Fig 1.). VALUE (V): This notation indicates the lightness or darkness of a colour in relation to a neutral grey scale, which extends from absolute black (value symbol 0) to absolute white (value symbol 10). This is essentially how ‘bright’ the colour is. CHROMA (C): This indicates the degree of divergence of a given hue from a neutral grey of the same value. The scale of chroma extends from 0 for a neutral grey to 10, 12, 14 or farther, depending upon the strength (saturation) of the sample to be evaluated. There are various systems for categorising colour, the Vita system is most commonly used in Dentistry. This uses the letters A, B, C and D to notate the hue (colour) of the tooth. The chroma and value are both indicated by a value from 1 to 4. A1 being lighter than A4, but A4 being more saturated than A1. If placed in order of value, i.e. brightness, the order from brightest to darkest would be: A1, B1, B2, A2, A3, D2, C1, B3, D3, D4, A3.5, B4, C2, A4, C3, C4 The exact values of Hue, Value and Chroma for each of the shades is shown below (16) So my question is, can anyone convert Munsell HVC into RGB, HSB or HSL? Hue Value (Brightness) Chroma(Saturation) === ================== ================== 4.5 7.80 1.7 2.4 7.45 2.6 1.3 7.40 2.9 1.6 7.05 3.2 1.6 6.70 3.1 5.1 7.75 1.6 4.3 7.50 2.2 2.3 7.25 3.2 2.4 7.00 3.2 4.3 7.30 1.6 2.8 6.90 2.3 2.6 6.70 2.3 1.6 6.30 2.9 3.0 7.35 1.8 1.8 7.10 2.3 3.7 7.05 2.4 They say that Value(Brightness) varies from 0..10, which is fine. So i take 7.05 to mean 70.5%. But what is Hue measured in? i'm used to hue being measured in degrees (0..360). But the values i see would all be red - when they should be more yellow, or brown. Finally, it says that Choma/Saturation can range from 0..10 ...or even higher - which makes it sound like an arbitrary scale. So can anyone convert Munsell HVC to HSB or HSL, or better yet, RGB?

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• Hooking DirectX EndScene from an injected DLL

  - by Etan

  I want to detour EndScene from an arbitrary DirectX 9 application to create a small overlay. As an example, you could take the frame counter overlay of FRAPS, which is shown in games when activated. I know the following methods to do this: Creating a new d3d9.dll, which is then copied to the games path. Since the current folder is searched first, before going to system32 etc., my modified DLL gets loaded, executing my additional code. Downside: You have to put it there before you start the game. Same as the first method, but replacing the DLL in system32 directly. Downside: You cannot add game specific code. You cannot exclude applications where you don't want your DLL to be loaded. Getting the EndScene offset directly from the DLL using tools like IDA Pro 4.9 Free. Since the DLL gets loaded as is, you can just add this offset to the DLL starting address, when it is mapped to the game, to get the actual offset, and then hook it. Downside: The offset is not the same on every system. Hooking Direct3DCreate9 to get the D3D9, then hooking D3D9-CreateDevice to get the device pointer, and then hooking Device-EndScene through the virtual table. Downside: The DLL cannot be injected, when the process is already running. You have to start the process with the CREATE_SUSPENDED flag to hook the initial Direct3DCreate9. Creating a new Device in a new window, as soon as the DLL gets injected. Then, getting the EndScene offset from this device and hooking it, resulting in a hook for the device which is used by the game. Downside: as of some information I have read, creating a second device may interfere with the existing device, and it may bug with windowed vs. fullscreen mode etc. Same as the third method. However, you'll do a pattern scan to get EndScene. Downside: doesn't look that reliable. How can I hook EndScene from an injected DLL, which may be loaded when the game is already running, without having to deal with different d3d9.dll's on other systems, and with a method which is reliable? How does FRAPS for example perform it's DirectX hooks? The DLL should not apply to all games, just to specific processes where I inject it via CreateRemoteThread.

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• Xuggle codec identification fail

  - by Thiago

  Hi there, I'm trying to run the following Xuggle code: public static boolean convert(String stream) throws IOException, InterruptedException { IMediaReader reader = ToolFactory.makeReader(stream + ".flv"); IMediaWriter writer = ToolFactory.makeWriter(stream + ".mp3", reader); reader.addListener(writer); while (reader.readPacket() != null) ; return true; } Where stream is the file path. But I'm getting the following exception: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: could not find input codec id at com.xuggle.xuggler.IContainerFormat.establishOutputCodecId(IContainerFormat.java:393) at com.xuggle.xuggler.IContainerFormat.establishOutputCodecId(IContainerFormat.java:327) at com.xuggle.xuggler.IContainerFormat.establishOutputCodecId(IContainerFormat.java:300) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaWriter.addStreamFromContainer(MediaWriter.java:1141) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaWriter.getStream(MediaWriter.java:1046) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaWriter.encodeAudio(MediaWriter.java:837) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaWriter.onAudioSamples(MediaWriter.java:1448) at com.xuggle.mediatool.AMediaToolMixin.onAudioSamples(AMediaToolMixin.java:89) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaReader.dispatchAudioSamples(MediaReader.java:628) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaReader.decodeAudio(MediaReader.java:555) at com.xuggle.mediatool.MediaReader.readPacket(MediaReader.java:469) at <package_name>MediaFile.convert(MediaFile.java:66) at <package_name>.MediaFileTest.shouldConvertExistingFLV(MediaFileTest.java:32) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source) at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod$1.runReflectiveCall(FrameworkMethod.java:44) at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:15) at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod.invokeExplosively(FrameworkMethod.java:41) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.InvokeMethod.evaluate(InvokeMethod.java:20) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunBefores.evaluate(RunBefores.java:28) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunAfters.evaluate(RunAfters.java:31) at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:73) at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:46) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:180) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:41) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:173) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunBefores.evaluate(RunBefores.java:28) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunAfters.evaluate(RunAfters.java:31) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:220) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestReference.run(JUnit4TestReference.java:46) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:467) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:683) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:390) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:197) The unit test is the following: @Test public void shouldConvertExistingFLV() throws IOException, InterruptedException { String str = "C:\Program Files\Wowza Media Systems\Wowza Media Server 2\content\Extremists"; //"c:/temp/corneta.flv" boolean result = MediaFile.convert(str); assertTrue(result); } So, why can't he find the codec, since I'm testing for a simple flv to mp3 conversion?

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• Crawling engine architecture - Java/ Perl integration

  - by Bigtwinz

  Hi all, I am looking to develop a management and administration solution around our webcrawling perl scripts. Basically, right now our scripts are saved in SVN and are manually kicked off by SysAdmin/devs etc. Everytime we need to retrieve data from new sources we have to create a ticket with business instructions and goals. As you can imagine, not an optimal solution. There are 3 consistent themes with this system: the retrieval of data has a "conceptual structure" for lack of a better phrase i.e. the retrieval of information follows a particular path we are only looking for very specific information so we dont have to really worry about extensive crawling for awhile (think thousands-tens of thousands of pages vs millions) crawls are url-based instead of site-based. As I enhance this alpha version to a more production-level beta I am looking to add automation and management of the retrieval of data. Additionally our other systems are Java (which I'm more proficient in) and I'd like to compartmentalize the perl aspects so we dont have to lean heavily on outside help. I've evaluated the usual suspects Nutch, Droid etc but the time spent on modifying those frameworks to suit our specific information retrieval cant be justified. So I'd like your thoughts regarding the following architecture. I want to create a solution which use Java as the interface for managing and execution of the perl scripts use Java for configuration and data access stick with perl for retrieval An example use case would be a data analyst delivers us a requirement for crawling perl developer creates the required script and uses this webapp to submit the script (which gets saved to the filesystem) the script gets kicked off from the webapp with specific parameters .... Webapp should be able to create multiple threads of the perl script to initiate multiple crawlers. So questions are what do you think how solid is integration between Java and Perl specifically from calling perl from java has someone used such a system which actually is part perl repository The goal really is to not have a whole bunch of unorganized perl scripts and put some management and organization on our information retrieval. Also, I know I can use perl do do the web part of what we want - but as I mentioned before - trying to keep perl focused. But it seems assbackwards I'm not adverse to making it an all perl solution. Open to any all suggestions and opinions. Thanks

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• Entrepreneur Needs Programmers, Architects, or Engineers?

  - by brand-newbie

  Hi guys (Ladies included). I posted on a related site, but THIS is the place to be. I want to build a specialized website. I am an entrepreneur and refining valuations now for venture capitalsists: i.e., determining how much cash I will need. I need help in understanding what human resources I need (i.e., Software Programmers, Architects, Engineers, etc.)??? Trust me, I have read most--if not all--of the threads here on the subject, and I can tell you I am no closer to the answer than ever. Here's my technology problem: The website will include (2) main components: a search engine (web crawler)...and a very large database. The search engine will not be a competitor to google, obviously; however, it "will" require bots to scour the web. The website will be, basically, a statistical database....where users should be able to pull up any statistic from "numerous" fields. Like any entrepreneur with a web-based vision, I'm "hoping" to get 100+ million registered users eventually. However, practically, we will start as small as feasible. As regards the technology (database architecture, servers, etc.), I do want quality, quality, quality. My priorities are speed, and the capaility to be scalable...so that if I "did" get globally large, we could do it without having to re-engineer anything. In other words, I want the back-end and the "infrastructure" to be scalable and professional....with emphasis on quality. I am not an IT professional. Although I've built several Joomla-based websites, I'm just a rookie who's only used minor javascript coding to modify a few plug-ins and components. The business I'm trying to create requires specialization and experts. I want to define the problem and let a capable team create the final product, and I will stay totally hands off. So who do you guys suggest I hire to run this thing? A software engineer? I was thinking I would need a "database engineer," a "systems security engineer", and maybe 2 or 3 "programmers" for the search engine. Also a web designer...and maybe a part-time graphic designer...everyone working under a single software engineer. What do you guys think? Who should I hire?...I REALLY need help from some people in the industry (YOU guys) on this. Is this project do-able in 6 months? If so, how many people will I need? Who exactly needs to head up this thing?...Senior software engineer, an embedded engineer, a CC++ engineer, a java engineer, a database engineer? And do I build this thing is Ruby or Java?

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• practical security ramifications of increasing WCF clock skew to more than an hour

  - by Andrew Patterson

  I have written a WCF service that returns 'semi-private' data concerning peoples name, addresses and phone numbers. By semi-private, I mean that there is a username and password to access the data, and the data is meant to be secured in transit. However, IMHO noone is going to expend any energy trying to obtain the data, as it is mostly available in the public phone book anyway etc. At some level, the security is a bit of security 'theatre' to tick some boxes imposed on us by government entities. The client end of the service is an application which is given out to registered 'users' to run within their own IT setups. We have no control over the IT of the users - and in fact they often tell us to 'go jump' if we put too many requirements on their systems. One problem we have been encountering is numerous users that have system clocks that are not accurate. This can either be caused by a genuine slow/fast clocks, or more than likely a timezone or daylight savings zone error (putting their machine an hour off the 'real' time). A feature of the WCF bindings we are using is that they rely on the notion of time to detect replay attacks etc. <wsHttpBinding> <binding name="normalWsBinding" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="655360"> <reliableSession enabled="false" /> <security mode="Message"> <message clientCredentialType="UserName" negotiateServiceCredential="false" algorithmSuite="Default" establishSecurityContext="false" /> </security> </binding> </wsHttpBinding> The inaccurate client clocks cause security exceptions to be thrown and unhappy users. Other than suggesting users correct their clocks, we know that we can increase the clock skew of the security bindings. http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/26/changing-the-default-clock-skew-in-wcf/ My question is, what are the real practical security ramifications of increasing the skew to say 2 hours? If an attacker can perform some sort of replay attack, why would a clock skew window of 5 minutes be necessarily safer than 2 hours? I presume performing any attack with security mode of 'message' requires more than just capturing some data at a proxy and sending the data back in again to 'replay' the call? In a situation like mine where data is only 'read' by the users, are there indeed any security ramifications at all to allowing 'replay' attacks?

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• Daylight saving time and Timezone best practices

  - by Oded

  I am hoping to make this question and the answers to it the definitive guide to dealing with daylight saving time, in particular for dealing with the actual change overs. If you have anything to add, please do Many systems are dependent on keeping accurate time, the problem is with changes to time due to daylight savings - moving the clock forward or backwards. For instance, one has business rules in an order taking system that depend on the time of the order - if the clock changes, the rules might not be as clear. How should the time of the order be persisted? There is of course an endless number of scenarios - this one is simply an illustrative one. How have you dealt with the daylight saving issue? What assumptions are part of your solution? (looking for context here) As important, if not more so: What did you try that did not work? Why did it not work? I would be interested in programming, OS, data persistence and other pertinent aspects of the issue. General answers are great, but I would also like to see details especially if they are only available on one platform. Summary of answers and other data: (please add yours) Do: Always persist time according to a unified standard that is not affected by daylight savings. GMT and UTC have been mentioned by different people. Include the local time offset (including DST offset) in stored timestamps. Remember that DST offsets are not always an integer number of hours (e.g. Indian Standard Time is UTC+05:30). If using Java, use JodaTime. - http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/ Create a table TZOffsets with three columns: RegionClassId, StartDateTime, and OffsetMinutes (int, in minutes). See answer Check if your DBMS needs to be shutdown during transition. Business rules should always work on civil time. Internally, keep timestamps in something like civil-time-seconds-from-epoch. See answer Only convert to local times at the last possible moment. Don't: Do not use javascript date and time calculations in web apps unless you ABSOLUTELY have to. Testing: When testing make sure you test countries in the Western and Eastern hemispheres, with both DST in progress and not and a country that does not use DST (6 in total). Reference: Olson database, aka Tz_database - ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub Sources for Time Zone and DST - http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm ISO format (ISO 8601) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 Mapping between Olson database and Windows TimeZone Ids, from the Unicode Consortium - http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/windows_tzid.html TimeZone page on WikiPedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database StackOverflow questions tagged dst - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dst StackOverflow questions tagged timezone - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/timezone Other: Lobby your representative to end the abomination that is DST. We can always hope...

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• How to Practice Unix Programming in C?

  - by danben

  After five years of professional Java (and to a lesser extent, Python) programming and slowly feeling my CS education slip away, I decided I wanted to broaden my horizons / general usefulness to the world and do something that feels more (to me) like I really have an influence over the machine. I chose to learn C and Unix programming since I feel like that is where many of the most interesting problems are. My end goal is to be able to do this professionally, if for no other reason than the fact that I have to spend 40-50 hours per week on work that pays the bills, so it may as well also be the type of coding I want to get better at. Of course, you don't get hired to do things you haven't dont before, so for now I am ramping up on my own. To this end, I started with K&R, which was a great resource in part due to the exercises spread throughout each chapter. After that I moved on to Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, followed by ten chapters of Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. When I am done with this book, I will read Unix Network Programming. What I'm missing in the Stevens books is the lack of programming problems; they mainly document functionality and provide examples, with a few end-of-chapter questions following. I feel that I would benefit much more from being challenged to use the knowledge in each chapter ala K&R. I could write some test program for each function, but this is a less desirable method as (1) I would probably be less motivated than if I were rising to some external challenge, and (2) I will naturally only think to use the function in the ways that have already occurred to me. So, I'd like to get some recommendations on how to practice. Obviously, my first choice would be to find some resource that has Unix programming challenges. I have also considered finding and attempting to contribute to some open source C project, but this is a bit daunting as there would be some overhead in learning to use the software, then learning the codebase. The only open-source C project I can think of that I use regularly is Python, and I'm not sure how easy that would be to get started on. That said, I'm open to all kinds of suggestions as there are likely things I haven't even thought of.

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• What do you expect from a package manager for Emacs

  - by tarsius

  Although several hundred Emacs Lisp libraries exist GNU Emacs does not have an (internal) package manager. I guess that most users would agree that it is currently rather inconvenient to find, install and especially keep up-to-date Emacs Lisp libraries. These pages make life a bit easier Emacs Lisp List - Problem: I see dead people (links). Emacswiki - Problem: May contain traces of nuts (malicious code). These are some package managers XEmacs package manager package.el - ELPA pases install.el install-elisp.el plugin.el use-package.el jem-pkg.el epkg/elm - the one I am working. And this are some packages that provide functionality that might be useful in a package manager ell.el - Browse the Emacs Lisp List genauto.el - helps generate autoloads for your elisp packages date-calc.el - date calculation and parsing routines strptime.el - partial implementation of POSIX date and time parsing wikirel.el - Visit relevant pages on the Emacs Wiki loadhist.el, lib-requires.el, elisp-depend.el - Commands to list Emacs Lisp library dependencies. project-root.el - Define a project root and take actions based upon it So I would like to know from you what you consider important/unimportant/supplementary... in a package manager for Emacs. Some ideas Many packages (incorporate the Emacs Lisp List and other lists of libraries). Only packages that have been tested. Support for more than one package archive (so people can choose between many/tested packages). Dependency calculated based on required features only. Dependencies take particular versions into account. Only use versions that have been released upstream. Use versions from version control systems if available. Packages are categorized. Packages can be uninstalled and updated not only installed. Support creating fork of upstream version of packages. Support publishing these forks. Support choosing a fork. After installation packages are activated. Generate autoloads. Integration with Emacswiki (see wikirel.el). Users can tag, comment ... packages and share that information. Only FSF-assigned/GPL/FOSS software or don't care about license. Package manager should be integrated in Emacs. Support contacting author. Lots of metadata. Suggest alternatives before installing a particular package. Some discussions about the subject at hand emacs-devel 20080801 comp.emacs 20021121 RationalElispPackaging I am hoping for these kinds of answers Pointers to more implementations, discussions etc. Lengthy descriptions of a set of features that make up your ideal package manager. Descriptions of one particular disired/undisired feature. This has the advantage that the regular voting mechanism allows us to see what features are most welcomed. Feel free to elaborate on my ideas from above. Surprise me.

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• Personal Project - Next practical language/tech to learn

  - by Paul Nathan

  I'm working on a personal project doing some finance analysis. It's a totally new field for me, and I'm really having fun with it so far, plus working in the high-level language arena is a great break from my embedded systems daytime work. I have a MySQL backend on a non-local server with a pile of stock data. My task now is to do some analysis of the stocks and produce something approximating a useful result. There are a couple technical difficulties. (1) I have a lot of records. To be precise, I believe I'm near 100K records right now, and this number grows by 6.1K each weekday. I need to create a way to rummage through these fields and do data analysis - based on a given computation, go look at this other set. Fine and dandy, nothing too outre. But this means I could really use a straightforward API for talking to MySQL. (2) Ideally, it runs on OS X 10.4.11. No Windows/Linux machine at home. (3) I can use PHP, C++, Perl, etc. I even have an R installation. I'm pretty flexible with stuff, so long as it runs on OS X. (Lots of options here, pick water, H20, or dihydrogen monoxide ;-) ) (4)Lack of hassle. While I like clever and fun ways of doing things, I'm trying to get some analysis done, not spend ten hours doing installation work and scratching my head figuring out a theoretical syntax question needed to spout out "hello world". What's the question? I'd like to dig into something different than my usual PHP/C++/C toolset. I'm looking for recommendations for languages/technologies that will assist me and meet the above requirements. In particular, I've heard a lot of buzz about F# and Python on SO. I've used CLISP for small problems before, and kinda liked it. I'm seeking opinions about those in particular. edit:since I rent the DB server and have a limited amount of CPU time online, I'm trying to do the analysis on a local machine.

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• How to merge a "branch" that isn't really a branch (wasn't created by an svn copy)

  - by MatrixFrog

  I'm working on a team with lots of people who are pretty unfamiliar with the concepts of version control systems, and are just kind of doing whatever seems to work, by trial and error. Someone created a "branch" from the trunk that is not ancestrally related to the trunk. My guess is it went something like this: They created a folder in branches. They checked out all the code from the trunk to somewhere on their desktop. They added all that code to the newly created folder as though it was a bunch of brand new files. So the repository isn't aware that all that code is actually just a copy of the trunk. When I look at the history of that branch in TortoiseSVN, and uncheck the "Stop on copy/rename" box, there is no revision that has the trunk (or any other path) under the "Copy from path" column. Then they made lots of changes on their "branch". Meanwhile, others were making lots of changes on the trunk. We tried to do a merge and of course it doesn't work. Because, the trunk and the fake branch are not ancestrally related. I can see only two ways to resolve this: Go through the logs on the "branch", look at every change that was made, and manually apply each change to the trunk. Go through the logs on the trunk, look at every change that was made between revision 540 (when the "branch" was created) and HEAD, and manually apply each change to the "branch". This involves 7 revisions one way or 11 revisions the other way, so neither one is really that terrible. But is there any way to cause the repository to "realize" that the branch really IS ancestrally related even though it was created incorrectly, so that we can take advantage of the built-in merging functionality in Eclipse/TortoiseSVN? (You may be wondering: Why did your company hire these people and allow them to access the SVN repository without making sure they knew how to use it properly first?! We didn't -- this is a school assignment, which is a collaboration between two different classes -- the ones in the lower class were given a very quick hand-wavey "overview" of SVN which didn't really teach them anything. I've asked everyone in the group to please PLEASE read the svn book, and I'll make sure we (the slightly more experienced half of the team) keep a close eye on the repository to ensure this doesn't happen again.)

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• Good Secure Backups Developers at Home

  - by slashmais

  What is a good, secure, method to do backups, for programmers who do research & development at home and cannot afford to lose any work? Conditions: The backups must ALWAYS be within reasonably easy reach. Internet connection cannot be guaranteed to be always available. The solution must be either FREE or priced within reason, and subject to 2 above. Status Report This is for now only considering free options. The following open-source projects are suggested in the answers (here & elsewhere): BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, WinXX and MacOSX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. Storebackup is a backup utility that stores files on other disks. mybackware: These scripts were developed to create SQL dump files for basic disaster recovery of small MySQL installations. Bacula is [...] to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. In technical terms, it is a network based backup program. AutoDL 2 and Sec-Bk: AutoDL 2 is a scalable transport independant automated file transfer system. It is suitable for uploading files from a staging server to every server on a production server farm [...] Sec-Bk is a set of simple utilities to securely back up files to a remote location, even a public storage location. rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems. rbme: Using rsync for backups [...] you get perpetual incremental backups that appear as full backups (for each day) and thus allow easy restore or further copying to tape etc. Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. [...] uses librsync, [for] incremental archives Other Possibilities: Using a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) such as Git(/Easy Git), Bazaar, Mercurial answers the need to have the backup available locally. Use free online storage space as a remote backup, e.g.: compress your work/backup directory and mail it to your gmail account. Strategies See crazyscot's answer

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