Search Results

Search found 11219 results on 449 pages for 'developer skills'.

Page 263/449 | < Previous Page | 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270  | Next Page >

• Real-time Big Data Analytics is a reality for StubHub with Oracle Advanced Analytics

  - by Mark Hornick

  What can you use for a comprehensive platform for real-time analytics? How can you process big data volumes for near-real-time recommendations and dramatically reduce fraud? Learn in this video what Stubhub achieved with Oracle R Enterprise from the Oracle Advanced Analytics option to Oracle Database, and read more on their story here. Advanced analytics solutions that impact the bottom line of a business are challenging due to the range of skills and individuals involved in realizing such solutions. While we hear a lot about the role of the data scientist, that role is but one piece of the puzzle. Advanced analytics solutions also have an operationalization aspect that also requires close proximity to where the transactional activity occurs. The data scientist needs access to the right data with which to model the business problem. This involves IT for data collection, management, and administration, as well as ensuring zero downtime (a website needs to be up 24x7). This also involves working with the data scientist to keep predictive models refreshed with the latest scripts. Integrating advanced analytics solutions into enterprise apps involves not just generating predictions, but supporting the whole life-cycle from data collection, to model building, model assessment, and then outcome assessment and feedback to the model building process again. Application and web interface designers need to take into account how end users will see and use the advanced analytics results, e.g., supporting operations staff that need to handle the potentially fraudulent transactions. As just described, advanced analytics projects can be "complicated" from just a human perspective. The extent to which software can simplify the interactions among users and systems will increase the likelihood of project success. The ability to quickly operationalize advanced analytics projects and demonstrate measurable value, means the difference between a successful project and just a nice research report. By standardizing on Oracle Database and SQL invocation of R, along with in-database modeling as found in Oracle Advanced Analytics, expedient model deployment and zero downtime for refreshing models becomes a reality. Meanwhile, data scientists are also able to explore leading edge techniques available in open source. The Oracle solution propels the entire organization forward to realize the value of advanced analytics.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... Supported files: tasks.data (v1.3.6 client)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30322.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Notepad (Visual C++ 2008): An notepad written in c that can save in a rich text file format.Wallpaper Rotator: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5 This version includes the following improvements: Saving the choice of "Random Order (Shuffle Mode)" Updating the configu...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterPHPExcelFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightN2 CMS

  Read the article

• Voxel Face Crawling (Mesh simplification, possibly using greedy)

  - by Tim Winter

  This is in regards to a Minecraft-like terrain engine. I store blocks in chunks (16x256x16 blocks in a chunk). When I generate a chunk, I use multiple procedural techniques to set the terrain and to place objects. While generating, I keep one 1D array for the full chunk (solid or not) and a separate 1D array of solid blocks. After generation, I iterate through the solid blocks checking their neighbors so I only generate block faces that don't have solid neighbors. I store which faces to generate in their own list (that's 6 lists, one per possible face). When rendering a chunk, I render all lists in the camera's current chunk and only the lists facing the camera in all other chunks. Using a 2D atlas with this little shader trick Andrew Russell suggested, I want to merge similar faces together completely. That is, if they are in the same list (same normal), are adjacent to each other, have the same light level, etc. My assumption would be to have each of the 6 lists sorted by the axis they rest on, then by the other two axes (the list for the top of a block would be sorted by it's Y value, then X, then Z). With this alone, I could quite easily merge strips of faces, but I'm looking to merge more than just strips together when possible. I've read up on this greedy meshing algorithm, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding it. To even use it, I would think I'd need to perform a type of flood-fill per sorted list to get the groups of merge-able faces. Then, per group, perform the greedy algorithm. It all sounds awfully expensive if I would ever want dynamic terrain/lighting after initial generation. So, my question: To perform merging of faces as described (ignoring whether it's a bad idea for dynamic terrain/lighting), is there perhaps an algorithm that is simpler to implement? I would also quite happily accept an answer that walks me through the greedy algorithm in a much simpler way (a link or explanation). I don't mind a slight performance decrease if it's easier to implement or even if it's only a little better than just doing strips. I worry that most algorithms focus on triangles rather than quads and using a 2D atlas the way I am, I don't know that I could implement something triangle based with my current skills. PS: I already frustum cull per chunk and as described, I also cull faces between solid blocks. I don't occlusion cull yet and may never.

  Read the article

• 14+ WordPress Portfolio Themes

  - by Edward

  There are various portfolio themes for WordPress out there, with this collection we are trying to help you choose the best one. These themes can be used to create any type of personal, photography, art or corporate portfolio. Display 3 in 1 Display 3 in 1 – Business & Portfolio WordPress Theme. Features a fantastic 3D Image slideshow that can be controlled from your backend with a custom tool. The Theme has a huge wordpress custom backend (8 additional Admin Pages) that make customization of the Theme easy for those who dont know much about coding or wordpress. Price: $40 View Demo Download DeepFocus Tempting features such as automatic separation of blog and portfolio content by template, publishing of most important information on homepage, styles to choose from and many more such features. It also provides for page templates for blog, portfolio, blog archive, tags etc. It has the best feature that helps you to manage everything from one place. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download SimplePress Simple, yet awesome. One of the best portfolio theme. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download Graphix Graphix is one of best word press portfolio themes. It is most suited to aspiring designers, developers, artists and photographers who’d like a framework theme, which has a great-looking portfolio with a feature-rich blog. It has theme option page, 5-color style, SEO option, featured content blocks, drop down multi-level menu, social profile link custom widgets, custom post, custom page template etc. Price: $69 Single & $149 Developer Package View Demo Download Bizznizz It boasts of many features such as custom homepage, custom post types, custom widgets, portfolio templates, alternative styles and many more. View Demo Download Showtime Ultimate WordPress Theme for you to create your web portfolio, It has 3 different styles for you to choose from. Price: $40 View Demo Download Montana WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme Montana Theme – WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme, best suited for creative studios to showcase design, photography, illustration, paintings and art. Price: $30 View Demo Download OverALL OverALL Premium WordPress Blog & Portfolio Theme, is low priced & has amazing tons of features. Price: $17 View Demo Download Habitat Habitat – Blog and Portfolio Theme. Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script (each entry supports multiple images or a video) Multiple Featured Images for each post to generate individual Slideshows per Post, or the option to directly embed video content from youtube, vimeo, hulu etc. Price: $35 View Demo Download Fresh Folio Fresh Folio from WooThemes, can be used as both portfolio and a premium WordPress theme. The theme is a remix of the Fresh News Theme and Proud Folio Theme which combines all the best elements of the respective blog and portfolio style themes. View Demo Download Fresh Folio Features: Can be used to create an impressive portfolio. 7 diverse theme styles to choose from (default, blue, red, grunge light, grunge floral, antique, blue creamer, nightlife) The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content, making this an amazing theme for aspiring designers, developers, artists, photographers etc. Unique page templates types for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme Optional Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images Includes Widget enabled Sidebars. eGallery eGallery is a theme made to transform your wordpress blog into a fully functional online portfolio. Theme is perfectly designed to emphasize the artwork you choose to showcase. The design has been greatly enhanced using javascript, and is easy to implement. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download ProudFolio ProudFolio is a portfolio premium WordPress theme from Woo Themes. The theme is for designers, developers, artists and photographers who would like a showcase theme which would depict as a portfolio and also serves a purpose of blog. ProudFolio puts a strong emphasis on the portfolio pieces, allowing for decent-sized thumbnails, huge fullscreen views via Lightbox, and full details on the single page. The theme file also contains a choice of three different background images and color schemes. Price: $70 Single $150 Developer License View Demo Download Features: The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content. An unique homepage layout, which publishes only the most important information; Unique page templates for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme; Built-in video panel, which you can use to publish any web-based Flash videos; Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images; Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery; Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments; Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide; Pretty drop down navigation everywhere; and Widget Enabled Sidebars. Porftolio WordPress Theme A FREE wordpress theme designed for web portfolios and (for now) just for web portfolios. It is coming with an Administrative Panel from where you can edit the head quote text, you can edit all theme colors, font families, font sizes and you can fill a curriculum vitae and display it into a special page. Theme demo and download can be found here Viz | Biz Viz | Biz is a premium WordPress photo gallery and portfolio theme designed specifically for photographers, graphic designers and web designers who want to display their creative work online, market their services, as well as have a typical text blog, using the power and flexibility of WordPress. It is priced for $79.95. Theme Features: Premium quality portfolio template Custom logo uploader to replace the standard graphic with your own unique look from the WP Dashboard Integrated blog component (front images are custom fields and thumbnails, but you can also have a typical blog) Four tabbed feature areas (About Me, Services, Recent Posts, and Tags) Two home page feature photos (You choose which photos to feature using a WP category) Manage your online portfolio through the WordPress CMS Crop two sizes of your work: One for the front page thumbnails and another full size version and upload to WP Search engine optimized. Related posts:14 WordPress Photo Blog & Portfolio Themes 6 PhotoBlog Portfolio WordPress Themes Professional WordPress Business Themes

  Read the article

• Harness MySQL's Continued Performance Tuning Improvements

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  To fully harness the continued improvements in performance tuning you get with MySQL, take the MySQL Performance Tuning course. This 4 day class teaches you practical, safe, highly efficient ways to optimize performance for the MySQL Server. You will learn the skills needed to use tools for monitoring, evaluating and tuning.  You can take this course in the following three ways: Training-on-Demand: Follow this course at your own pace and from your own desk with streaming video of instructor delivery and booking time to follow hands-on exercises at your own convenience. Live-Virtual: Attend a live instructor-led event from your own desk. Choose from the numerous events on the schedule. In-Class:  Travel to an education center to follow this class. A sample of events on the schedule is shown below:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Tokyo, Japan  19 November 2012  Japanese  Mechelen, Belgium  4 February 2013  English  London, England  19 November 2012  English  Budapest, Hungary  21 May 2013  Hungarian  Milan, Italy  14 January 2013  Italian  Rome, Italy  3 December 2012  Italian  Riga, Latvia  10 December 2012  Latvian  Amsterdam, Netherlands  7 January 2013  Dutch  Nieuwegein, Netherlands  26 November 2012  Dutch  Warsaw, Poland  3 December 2012  Polish  Lisbon, Portugal  4 February 2013  European Portugese  Porto, Portugal  4 February 2013  European Portugese  Barcelona, Spain  25 March 2013  Spanish  Madrid, Spain  17 December 2012  Spanish  Sydney, Australia  26 November 2012  English  Edmonton, Canada  10 December 2012  English  Montreal, Canada  26 November 2012  English  Ottawa, Canada  26 November 2012  English  Toronto, Canada  26 November 2012  English  Vancouver, Canada  10 December 2012  English  Sao Paolo, Brazil  26 November 2012  Brazilan Portugese For more information on this class or to know more about other courses on the authentic MySQL curriculum. see http://oracle.com/education/mysql. Note, many organizations deploy both Oracle Database and MySQL side by side to serve different needs, and as a database professional you can find training courses on both topics at Oracle University! Check out the upcoming Oracle Database training courses and MySQL training courses. Even if you're only managing Oracle Databases at this point of time, getting familiar with MySQL will broaden your career path with growing job demand.

  Read the article

• Oracle User Productivity Kit Translation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Oracle's customers just love the User Productivity Kit (UPK). I hear only great things about it from our international customers at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board meetings too. The UPK is the perfect solution for enterprise applications training needs (I previously reviewed a fine book about UPK btw). One question I am often asked is how source content created using the UPK can be translated into another language. I spoke with Peter Maravelias, Principal Product Strategy Manager for UPK about this recently. UPK is already optimized for easy source-target translation already. There is even a solution for re-recording demos. Here's what you can do to get your source content into another language: Use UPK's ability to automatically translate events and actions. UPK comes with XML templates that allow you to accomplish this in 21 languages with a simple publishing action switch. These templates even deal with the tricky business of using gender-based translations. Spanish localization template sample Japanese localization template sample Use the Import and Export localization features to export additional custom content in a format like XLIFF, easily handled by translation tools. You could also export and import in Word format. Re-record the sound (audio) files that go with the recordings, one per screen. UPK's granular approach to the sound files means that timing isn't an option. Retiming demos isn't required. A tip here with sound files and XLFF-exported custom content is to facilitate translation context by avoiding explicit references to actions going on in the screen recordings. A text based storyboard with screenshots accompanying the sound files should also be provided to the translators. Provide a glossary of terms too. Use the re-record option in UPK to record any demo from a translated application. This will allow all the translated UI labels to be automatically captured. You may be required to resize any action events here due to text expansion issues. Of course, you will need translated data in the translated application too, so plan for this in advance. However, source-target language skills aren't required for the re-recording. The UPK Player itself, of course, is also available from Oracle along with content and doc in 21 languages. The Developer and Setup is also translated in a smaller number of languages. Check the Oracle UPK website for latest details. UPK is a super solution for global enterprise applications training deployments allowing source content to be translated into multiple languages easily. See this post on the UPK blog for more insight too!

  Read the article

• Which techniques to study?

  - by Djentleman

  Just to give you some background info, I'm studying a programming major at a tertiary level and am in my third year, so I'm not a newbie off the street. However, I am still quite new to game programming as a subset of programming. One of my personal projects for next semester is to design and create a 2D platformer game with emphasis on procedural generation and "neato" effects (think metroidvania). I've written up a list of some techniques to help me improve my personal skills (using XNA for the time being). The list is as follows: QuadTrees: Build a basic program in XNA that moves basic 2D sprites (circles and squares) around a set path and speed and changes their colour when they collide. Add functionality to add and delete objects of different sizes (select a direction and speed when adding and just drag and drop them in). Particles: Build a basic program in XNA in which you can select different colours and create particle effects of those colours on screen by clicking and dragging the mouse around (simple particles emerging from where the mouse is clicked). Add functionality where you can change the amount of particles to be drawn and the speed at which they travel and when they expire. Possibly implement gravity and wind after part 3 is complete. Physics: Build a basic program in XNA where you have a ball in a set 2D environment, a wind slider, and a gravity slider (can go to negative for reverse gravity). You can click to drag the ball around and release to throw it and, depending on what you do, the ball interacts with the environment. Implement other shapes afterwards. Random 2D terrain generation: Build a basic program in XNA that randomly generates terrain (including hills, caves, etc) created from 2D tiles. Add functionality that draws the tiles from a tileset and places different tiles depending on where they lie on the y-axis (dirt on top, then rock, then lava, etc). Randomised objects: Build a basic program in XNA that, when a button is clicked, displays a randomised item sprite based on parameters (type, colour, etc) with the images pulled from tilesets. Add the ability to save the item as an object, which stores it in a side-pane where it can be selected for viewing. Movement: Build a basic program in XNA where you can move an object around in an environment (tile-based) with a camera that pans with it. No gravity. Implement gravity and wind, allow the character to jump and fall with some basic platforms. So my question is this: Are there any other commonly used techniques that I should research, and can I get some suggestions as to the effectiveness of the techniques I've chosen to work on (e.g., don't do QuadTree stuff because [insert reason here], or, do [insert technique here] before you start working on particles because [insert reason here])? I hope this is clear enough and please let me know if I can further clarify anything!

  Read the article

• Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business - Q&A from the Webcast

  - by [email protected]

  A few weeks ago, Vince Casarez and I presented with KMWorld on the Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business. It was an enjoyable, interactive webcast in which Vince and I discussed the ways Enterprise 2.0 can transform your business and more importantly, highlighted key customer examples of how to do so. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here. We had a lot of audience participation in some of the polls we conducted and in the Q&A session. We weren't able to address all of the questions during the broadcast, so we attempted to answer them here: Q: Which area within your firm focuses on Web 2.0? Meaning, do you find new departments developing just to manage the web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) user experience or are you structuring current departments? A: There are three distinct efforts within Oracle. The first is around delivery of these Web 2.0 services for enterprise deployments. This is the focus of the WebCenter team. The second effort is injecting these Web 2.0 services into use cases that drive the different enterprise applications. This effort is focused on how to manage these external services and bring them into a cohesive flow for marketing programs, customer care, and purchasing. The third effort is how we consume these services internally to enhance Oracle's business delivery. It leverages the technologies and use cases of the first two but also pushes the envelope with regards to future directions of these other two areas. Q: In a business, Web 2.0 is mostly like action logs. How can we leverage the official process practice versus the logs of a recent action? Example: a system configuration modified last night on a call out versus the official practice that everybody would use in the morning.A: The key thing to remember is that most Web 2.0 actions / activity streams today are based on collaboration and communication type actions. At least with public social sites like Facebook and Twitter. What we're delivering as part of the WebCenter Suite are not just these types of activities but also enterprise application activities. These enterprise application activities come from different application modules: purchasing, HR, order entry, sales opportunity, etc. The actions within these systems are normally tied to a business object or process: purchase order/customer, employee or department, customer and supplier, customer and product, respectively. Therefore, the activities or "logs" as you name them are able to be "typed" so that as a viewer, you can filter or decide to see only certain types of information. In your example, you could have a view that only showed you recent "configuration" changes and this could be right next to a view that showed off the items to be watched every morning. Q: It's great to hear about customers using the software but is there any plan for future webinars to show what the products/installs look like? That would be very helpful.A: We don't have a webinar planned to show off the install process. However, we have a viewlet that's posted on Oracle Technology Network. You can see it here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/testcontent/wcs-install-098014.htmlAnd we've got excellent documentation that walks you through the steps here:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/install.1111/e12001/install.htmAnd there's a whole set of demos and examples of what WebCenter can do at this URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/release11-demos-097468.html Q: How do you anticipate managing metadata across the enterprise to make content findable?A: We need to first make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word like "metadata". Here's why...  For a developer, metadata means information that describes key elements of the portal or application and what the portal or application can do. For content systems, metadata means key terms that provide a taxonomy or folksonomy about the information that is being indexed, ordered, and managed. For business intelligence systems, metadata means key terms that provide labels to groups of data that most non-mathematicians need to understand. And for SOA, metadata means labels for parts of the processes that business owners should understand that connect development terminology. There are also additional requirements for metadata to be available to the team building these new solutions as well as requirements to make this metadata available to the running system. These requirements are often separated by "design time" and "run time" respectively. So clearly, a general goal of managing metadata across the enterprise is very challenging. We've invested a huge amount of resources around Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) to be able to provide a more generic system for all of these elements. No other vendor has anything like this technology foundation in their products. This provides a huge benefit to our customers as they will now be able to find content, processes, people, and information from a common set of search interfaces with consistent enterprise wide results. Q: Can you give your definition of terms as to document and content, please?A: Content applies to a broad category of information from Word documents, presentations and reports through attachments to invoices and/or purchase orders. Content is essentially any type of digital asset including images, video, and voice. A document is just one type of content. Q: Do you have special integration tools to realize an interaction between UCM and WebCenter Spaces/Services?A: Yes, we've dedicated a whole team of engineers to exploit the key features of Oracle UCM within WebCenter.  While ensuring that WebCenter can connect to other non-Oracle systems, we've made sure that with the combined set of Oracle technology, no other solution can match the combined power and integration.  This is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy which is to provide best in class capabilities for Content and Portals.  When combined together, the synergy between the two products enables users to quickly add capabilities when they are needed.  For example, simple document sharing is part of the combined product offering, but if legal discovery or archiving is required, Oracle UCM product includes these capabilities that can be quickly added.  There's no need to move content around or add another system to support this, it's just a feature that gets turned on within Oracle UCM. Q: All customers have some interaction with their applications and have many older versions, how do you see some of these new Enterprise 2.0 capabilities adding value to existing enterprise application deployments?A: Just as Service Oriented Architectures allowed for connecting the processes of different applications systems to work together, there's a need for a similar approach with regards to these enterprise 2.0 capabilities. Oracle WebCenter is built on a core architecture that allows for SOA of these Enterprise 2.0 services so that one set of scalable services can be used and integrated directly into any type of application. In this way, users can get immediate value out of the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities without having to wait for the next major release or upgrade. These centrally managed WebCenter services expose a set of standard interfaces that make it extremely easy to add them into existing applications no matter what technology the application has been implemented. Q: We've heard about Oracle Next Generation applications called "Fusion Applications", can you tell me how all this works together?A: Oracle WebCenter powers the core collaboration and social computing services found within Fusion Applications. It is the core user experience technology for how all the application screens have been implemented. And the core concept of task flows allows for all the Fusion Applications modules to be adaptable and composable by business users and IT without needing to be a professional developer. Oracle WebCenter is at the heart of the new Fusion Applications. In addition, the same patterns and technologies are now being added to the existing applications including JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, and eBusiness Suite. The core technology enables all these customers to have a much smoother upgrade path to Fusion Applications. They get immediate benefits of injecting new user interactions into their existing applications without having to completely move to Fusion Applications. And then when the time comes, their users will already be well versed in how the new capabilities work. Q: Does any of this work with non Oracle software? Other databases? Other application servers? etc.A: We have made sure that Oracle WebCenter delivers the broadest set of development choices so that no matter what technology you developers are using, WebCenter capabilities can be quickly and easily added to the site or application. In addition, we have certified Oracle WebCenter to run against non-Oracle databases like DB2 and SQLServer. We have stated plans for certification against MySQL as well. Later in CY 2011, Oracle will provide certification on non-Oracle application servers such as WebSphere and JBoss. Q: How do we balance User and IT requirements in regards to Enterprise 2.0 technologies?A: Wrong decisions are often made because employee knowledge is not tapped efficiently and opportunities to innovate are often missed because the right people do not work together. Collaboration amongst workers in the right business context is critical for success. While standalone Enterprise 2.0 technologies can improve collaboration for collaboration's sake, using social collaboration tools in the context of business applications and processes will improve business responsiveness and lead companies to a more competitive position. As these systems become more mission critical it is essential that they maintain the highest level of performance and availability while scaling to support larger communities. Q: What are the ways in which Enterprise 2.0 can improve business responsiveness?A: With a wide range of Enterprise 2.0 tools in the marketplace, CIOs need to deploy solutions that will meet the requirements from users as well as address the requirements from IT. Workers want a next-generation user experience that is personalized and aggregates their daily tools and tasks, while IT needs to ensure the solution is secure, scalable, flexible, reliable and easily integrated with existing systems. An open and integrated approach to deploying portals, content management, and collaboration can enhance your business by addressing both the needs of knowledge workers for better information and the IT mandate to conserve resources by simplifying, consolidating and centralizing infrastructure and administration.  

  Read the article

• Character Stats and Power

  - by Stephen Furlani

  I'm making an RPG game system and I'm having a hard time deciding on doing detailed or abstract character statistics. These statistics define the character's natural - not learned - abilities. For example: Mass Effect: 0 (None that I can see) X20 (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery): 1 "STAT" Diablo: 4 "Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Vitality" Pendragon: 5 "SIZ, STR, DEX, CON, APP" Dungeons & Dragons (3.x, 4e): 6 "Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha" Fallout 3: 7 "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." RIFTS: 8 "IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, Spd" Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st ed?): 12-ish "WS, BS, S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel, A, Mag, IP, FP" HERO (5th ed): 14 "Str, Dex, Con, Body, Int, Ego, Pre, Com, PD, ED, Spd, Rec, END, STUN" The more stats, the more complex and detailed your character becomes. This comes with a trade-off however, because you usually only have limited resources to describe your character. D&D made this infamous with the whole min/max-ing thing where strong characters were typically not also smart. But also, a character with a high Str typically also has high Con, Defenses, Hit Points/Health. Without high numbers in all those other stats, they might as well not be strong since they wouldn't hold up well in hand-to-hand combat. So things like that force trade-offs within the category of strength. So my original (now rejected) idea was to force players into deciding between offensive and defensive stats: Might / Body Dexterity / Speed Wit / Wisdom Heart Soul But this left some stat's without "opposites" (or opposites that were easily defined). I'm leaning more towards the following: Body (Physical Prowess) Mind (Mental Prowess) Heart (Social Prowess) Soul (Spiritual Prowess) This will define a character with just 4 numbers. Everything else gets based off of these numbers, which means they're pretty important. There won't, however, be ways of describing characters who are fast, but not strong or smart, but absent minded. Instead of defining the character with these numbers, they'll be detailing their character by buying skills and powers like these: Quickness Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Dodging. for a character that wants to be faster, or the following for a big, tough character Body Building Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Lifting, Pushing, or Throwing objects. [EDIT - removed subjectiveness] So my actual questions is what are some pitfalls with a small stat list and a large amount of descriptive powers? Is this more difficult to port cross-platform (pen&paper, PC) for example? Are there examples of this being done well/poorly? Thanks,

  Read the article

• NYC Silverlight FireStarter - June 5th 2010 at the NYC Microsoft Office

  - by Sam Abraham

  On Saturday June 5th, 2010, I spent my Saturday morning at the NYC Silverlight FireStarter. Presenting was Peter Laudati from Microsoft and Jason Beres, Matt Van Horn and Todd Snyder from Infragistics. I watched the Simulcast for the morning sessions as I was tied up with some work, but ended up finally making it to the Microsoft Office and had the opportunity to attend the last hour of the event in person.   For me, the quality of the Simulcast was as good as in-person attendance so far as sound/video quality and the interaction with speakers. In the background was a screen with tweets from remote attendees asking questions or commenting on the presentations. Presenters did periodically stop to answer the tweeted questions as well as questions from attendees. Only thing I missed was getting my hands on some of that swag that was (literally) flying in the air at the event floor.   Upon my arrival at the Microsoft Office Location in NYC, I spoke with Rachel Appel and Peter Laudati asking for permission to take a few photos to record the outstanding effort that took place in putting this event together. Both agreed and I started with putting my photography skills to work.   You can always gauge the quality of an event with the number of its attendees who opt to stay till the last minute as well as the level of interaction of the audience with the speaker. With most of the FireStarter attendees remaining till the very end of the talk, and with the many questions that were asked, one can simply judge the event as a success as per my aforementioned criteria.   Evaluation forms were passed around and Peter strongly encouraged the audience to openly speak their mind as they record their comments. I didn't get to submit my evaluation as I was busy recording the event in photos, so here it goes: I believe that lots of hard work was put into making this event a reality. Quality of speakers, topics and level of Geekiness at the event was outstanding.  Overall, aside from a minor issue with Lunch delivery time, this event was of high quality and I am very sure everyone's evaluation will be in line with my analysis of it being a great success. Below are a few photos of the event.   --Sam Abraham Site Director - West Palm Beach .Net User Group www.Fladotnet.com     NYC Silverlight FireStarter Speakers - From Left to right: Peter Laudati, Todd Snyder, Matt Van Horn & Jason Beres   As jason wasn't quiet visible in the above photo, a closeup was taken (It was Jason's birthday and he had to leave a bit early, so the Infagisticts team thought outside the box...)     Full Room - That was at the last hour of the event   Another view of full room   Discussions during the break   End-of-event Raffle

  Read the article

• OTN Latinoamérica Tour 2012

  - by Dana Singleterry

  Better late than never. Sorry for the delay on getting this content up for all of you and thanks again for your attendance. A number of excellent questions came out of the sessions I delivered and herein I'm providing you with the content, in pdf format, for those sessions. I'm also providing pointers to Forms to ADF integration/migration as well as some details around OAF as used in E-Business Suite and ADF. Here's the sessions delivered by location. Click on any of the links to download the session content in pdf format. Montevideo Uruguay: Is Oracle ADF Simpler than Oracle Forms? Understanding the Fusion Development Platform Building Web Data Dashboards Without Coding Buenos Aires, Argentina: Is Oracle ADF Simpler than Oracle Forms? Developing Cross Device Mobile Applications Sao Paulo, Brazil Understanding the Fusion Development Platform Is Oracle ADF Simpler than Oracle Forms? A brief note on Form Integration & Migration: Does your organization have an Oracle Forms application that you'd like to migrate to ADF? Or, perhaps you're an Oracle Forms Developer and want to modernize your application development skills? If so, you've come to the right place! This section will strive to answer common questions that arise as you move from Forms to ADF. Our Oracle Forms Statement of Direction points out that Oracle is committed to the long-term support of Oracle Forms and Reports. However, many customers feel they are outgrowing their Forms applications. Users are demanding more sophisticated and interactive users interfaces. Executives are requiring SOA-enabled applications that integrate with peripheral services. Development leads are encouraging a more modern approach to application development, including adherence to design patterns like MVC. So even as Oracle still supports Forms, the list of reasons to move off of it is becoming more compelling and is only gaining further momentum by the fact that Oracle's own Fusion Applications are using ADF. Developers and organizations looking to align with both the technology stack and look-and-feel of Fusion Applications are choosing ADF, and thus reaping the benefits of years of best practices in enterprise application development that are baked into the ADF framework. So, if you decide to migrate off of Forms for any of these reasons, ADF is the way to go. Grant Ronald has published a video of our position on the subject, along with an ODTUG article explaining our direction. These materials explain that there are other migration tools/frameworks/paths, but the best choice is usually to follow Gartner's recommendation that if you are going to migrate off of Oracle Forms, ADF is the least risky and least costly migration path. Please visit the Oracle Forms page here. For details around OAF as used in E-Business Suite (EBS) and when to use ADF with EBS you can review the following blogs from Shay Shmeltzer. To ADF or to OAF? or Can I use ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite?

  Read the article

• Massive Silverlight Giveaway! DevExpress , Syncfusion, Crypto Obfuscator and SL Spy!

  - by mbcrump

  Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2)  ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: DevExpress Silverlight Controls – Over 50+ Silverlight Controls Syncfusion User Interface Edition - Create stunning line of business silverlight applications with a wide range of components including a high performance grid, docking manager, chart, gauge, scheduler and much more. Crypto Obfuscator – Works for all .NET including Silverlight/Windows Phone 7. Silverlight Spy – provides a license EVERY month for this giveaway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of one of the products listed above! 4 winners will be announced on April 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. – Use Google Reader, email or whatever is best for you.  Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump . Register here: http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit each of the vendors sites because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DevExpress Silverlight Controls Let’s take a quick look at some of the software that is provided in this giveaway. Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark for the DevExpress Silverlight Controls: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. Great Video Tutorials of the Silverlight Controls are here. One thing that I liked about the DevExpress is how easy it was to find demos of each control. After you install the controls the following Program Group appears complete with “demos” that include full-source.   So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. The Book – Very rich animation between switching pages. Very easy to add your own images and custom text. The Menu – This is another control that just looked great. You can easily add images to the menu items with a few lines of XAML. The Window / Dialog Box – You can use this control to make a very beautiful “Wizard” to help your users navigate between pages. This is useful in setup or installation. Calculator – This would be useful for any type of Banking app. Also a first that I’ve seen from a 3rd party Control company. DatePicker – This controls feels a lot smoother than the one provided by Microsoft. It also provides the ability to “Clear” the selection. Overall the DevExpress Silverlight Controls feature a lot of quality controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. If you win the contest you can simply enter your registration key and continue using the product without reinstalling. Syncfusion User Interface Edition Before we get started with the Syncfusion User Interface Edition, here is a couple of links to bookmark. The Live Demos can be found here. You can download a demo of it now at http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evalstart. After you install the Syncfusion, you can view the dashboard to run locally installed samples. You may also download the documentation to your local machine if needed. Since the name of the package is “User Interface Edition”, I decided to share several samples that struck me as “awesome”. Dashboard Gauges – I was very impressed with the various gauges they have included. The digital clock also looks very impressive. Diagram – The diagrams are also very easy to build. In the sample project below you can drag/drop the shapes onto the content pane. More complex lines like the Bezier lines are also easy to create using Syncfusion. Scheduling – Another strong component was the Scheduling with built-in support for Themes. Tools – If all of that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a nice pack of essential tools. Syncfusion has a nice variety of Silverlight Controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. Crypto Obfuscator The following feature set is what is important to me in an Obfuscator since I am a Silverlight/WP7 Developer: And thankfully this is what you get in Crypto Obfuscator. You can download a trial version right now if you want to go ahead and play with it. Let’s spend a few moments taking a look at the application. After you have installed Crypto Obfuscator you will see the following screen: After you click on Assemblies you have the option to add your .XAP file in: I went ahead and loaded my .xap file from a Silverlight Application. At this point, you can simply save your project and hit “Obfuscate” and your done. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings if you don’t want too. Of course, you can change the settings and add obfuscation rules, watermarks and signing if you wish.  After Obfuscation, it looks like this in .NET Reflector: I was trying to browse through methods and it actually crashed Reflector. This confirms the level of protection the obfuscator is providing. If this were a commercial application that my team built, I would have a huge smile on my face right now. Crypto Obfuscator is a great product and I hope you will spend the time learning more about it. Silverlight Spy Silverlight Spy is a runtime inspector tool that will tell you pretty much everything that is going on with the application. Basically, you give it a URL that contains a Silverlight application and you can explore the element tree, events, xaml and so much more. This has already been reviewed on MichaelCrump.net. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win one of the four prizes available! Subscribe to my feed

  Read the article

• More Great Improvements to the Windows Azure Management Portal

  - by ScottGu

  Over the last 3 weeks we’ve released a number of enhancements to the new Windows Azure Management Portal.  These new capabilities include: Localization Support for 6 languages Operation Log Support Support for SQL Database Metrics Virtual Machine Enhancements (quick create Windows + Linux VMs) Web Site Enhancements (support for creating sites in all regions, private github repo deployment) Cloud Service Improvements (deploy from storage account, configuration support of dedicated cache) Media Service Enhancements (upload, encode, publish, stream all from within the portal) Virtual Networking Usability Enhancements Custom CNAME support with Storage Accounts All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately.  Below are more details on them: Localization Support The Windows Azure Portal now supports 6 languages – English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. You can easily switch between languages by clicking on the Avatar bar on the top right corner of the Portal: Selecting a different language will automatically refresh the UI within the portal in the selected language: Operation Log Support The Windows Azure Portal now supports the ability for administrators to review the “operation logs” of the services they manage – making it easy to see exactly what management operations were performed on them.  You can query for these by selecting the “Settings” tab within the Portal and then choosing the “Operation Logs” tab within it.  This displays a filter UI that enables you to query for operations by date and time: As of the most recent release we now show logs for all operations performed on Cloud Services and Storage Accounts.  You can click on any operation in the list and click the “Details” button in the command bar to retrieve detailed status about it.  This now makes it possible to retrieve details about every management operation performed. In future updates you’ll see us extend the operation log capability to apply to all Windows Azure Services – which will enable great post-mortem and audit support. Support for SQL Database Metrics You can now monitor the number of successful connections, failed connections and deadlocks in your SQL databases using the new “Dashboard” view provided on each SQL Database resource: Additionally, if the database is added as a “linked resource” to a Web Site or Cloud Service, monitoring metrics for the linked SQL database are shown along with the Web Site or Cloud Service metrics in the dashboard. This helps with viewing and managing aggregated information across both resources in your application. Enhancements to Virtual Machines The most recent Windows Azure Portal release brings with it some nice usability improvements to Virtual Machines: Integrated Quick Create experience for Windows and Linux VMs Creating a new Windows or Linux VM is now easy using the new “Quick Create” experience in the Portal: In addition to Windows VM templates you can also now select Linux image templates in the quick create UI: This makes it incredibly easy to create a new Virtual Machine in only a few seconds. Enhancements to Web Sites Prior to this past month’s release, users were forced to choose a single geographical region when creating their first site.  After that, subsequent sites could only be created in that same region.  This restriction has now been removed, and you can now create sites in any region at any time and have up to 10 free sites in each supported region: One of the new regions we’ve recently opened up is the “East Asia” region.  This allows you to now deploy sites to North America, Europe and Asia simultaneously.  Private GitHub Repository Support This past week we also enabled Git based continuous deployment support for Web Sites from private GitHub and BitBucket repositories (previous to this you could only enable this with public repositories).  Enhancements to Cloud Services Experience The most recent Windows Azure Portal release brings with it some nice usability improvements to Cloud Services: Deploy a Cloud Service from a Windows Azure Storage Account The Windows Azure Portal now supports deploying an application package and configuration file stored in a blob container in Windows Azure Storage. The ability to upload an application package from storage is available when you custom create, or upload to, or update a cloud service deployment. To upload an application package and configuration, create a Cloud Service, then select the file upload dialog, and choose to upload from a Windows Azure Storage Account: To upload an application package from storage, click the “FROM STORAGE” button and select the application package and configuration file to use from the new blob storage explorer in the portal. Configure Windows Azure Caching in a caching enabled cloud service If you have deployed the new dedicated cache within a cloud service role, you can also now configure the cache settings in the portal by navigating to the configuration tab of for your Cloud Service deployment. The configuration experience is similar to the one in Visual Studio when you create a cloud service and add a caching role.  The portal now allows you to add or remove named caches and change the settings for the named caches – all from within the Portal and without needing to redeploy your application. Enhancements to Media Services You can now upload, encode, publish, and play your video content directly from within the Windows Azure Portal.  This makes it incredibly easy to get started with Windows Azure Media Services and perform common tasks without having to write any code. Simply navigate to your media service and then click on the “Content” tab.  All of the media content within your media service account will be listed here: Clicking the “upload” button within the portal now allows you to upload a media file directly from your computer: This will cause the video file you chose from your local file-system to be uploaded into Windows Azure.  Once uploaded, you can select the file within the content tab of the Portal and click the “Encode” button to transcode it into different streaming formats: The portal includes a number of pre-set encoding formats that you can easily convert media content into: Once you select an encoding and click the ok button, Windows Azure Media Services will kick off an encoding job that will happen in the cloud (no need for you to stand-up or configure a custom encoding server).  When it’s finished, you can select the video in the “Content” tab and then click PUBLISH in the command bar to setup an origin streaming end-point to it: Once the media file is published you can point apps against the public URL and play the content using Windows Azure Media Services – no need to setup or run your own streaming server.  You can also now select the file and click the “Play” button in the command bar to play it using the streaming endpoint directly within the Portal: This makes it incredibly easy to try out and use Windows Azure Media Services and test out an end-to-end workflow without having to write any code.  Once you test things out you can of course automate it using script or code – providing you with an incredibly powerful Cloud Media platform that you can use. Enhancements to Virtual Network Experience Over the last few months, we have received feedback on the complexity of the Virtual Network creation experience. With these most recent Portal updates, we have added a Quick Create experience that makes the creation experience very simple. All that an administrator now needs to do is to provide a VNET name, choose an address space and the size of the VNET address space. They no longer need to understand the intricacies of the CIDR format or walk through a 4-page wizard or create a VNET / subnet. This makes creating virtual networks really simple: The portal also now has a “Register DNS Server” task that makes it easy to register DNS servers and associate them with a virtual network. Enhancements to Storage Experience The portal now lets you register custom domain names for your Windows Azure Storage Accounts.  To enable this, select a storage resource and then go to the CONFIGURE tab for a storage account, and then click MANAGE DOMAIN on the command bar: Clicking “Manage Domain” will bring up a dialog that allows you to register any CNAME you want: Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. One of the other cool features that is now live within the portal is our new Windows Azure Store – which makes it incredibly easy to try and purchase developer services from a variety of partners.  It is an incredibly awesome new capability – and something I’ll be doing a dedicated post about shortly. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Windows File/Folder and Share Permissions – Notes from the Field #029

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Note from Pinal]: This is a 29th episode of Notes from the Field series. Security is the task which we should give it to the experts. If there is a small overlook or misstep, there are good chances that security of the organization is compromised. This is very true, but there are always devils’s advocates who believe everyone should know the security. As a DBA and Administrator, I often see people not taking interest in the Windows Security hiding behind the reason of not expert of Windows Server. We all often miss the important mission statement for the success of any organization – Teamwork. In this blog post Brian tells the story in very interesting lucid language. Read On! In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Brian Kelley explains a very crucial issue DBAs and Developer faces on their production server. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. Read the experience of Brian in his own words. When I talk security among database professionals, I find that most have at least a working knowledge of how to apply security within a database. When I talk with DBAs in particular, I find that most have at least a working knowledge of security at the server level if we’re speaking of SQL Server. One area I see continually that is weak is in the area of Windows file/folder (NTFS) and share permissions. The typical response is, “I’m a database developer and the Windows system administrator is responsible for that.” That may very well be true – the system administrator may have the primary responsibility and accountability for file/folder and share security for the server. However, if you’re involved in the typical activities surrounding databases and moving data around, you should know these permissions, too. Otherwise, you could be setting yourself up where someone is able to get to data he or she shouldn’t, or you could be opening the door where human error puts bad data in your production system. File/Folder Permission Basics: I wrote about file/folder permissions a few years ago to give the basic permissions that are most often seen. Here’s what you must know as a minimum at the file/folder level: Read - Allows you to read the contents of the file or folder. Having read permissions allows you to copy the file or folder. Write  – Again, as the name implies, it allows you to write to the file or folder. This doesn’t include the ability to delete, however, nothing stops a person with this access from writing an empty file. Delete - Allows the file/folder to be deleted. If you overwrite files, you may need this permission. Modify - Allows read, write, and delete. Full Control - Same as modify + the ability to assign permissions. File/Folder permissions aggregate, unless there is a DENY (where it trumps, just like within SQL Server), meaning if a person is in one group that gives Read and antoher group that gives Write, that person has both Read and Write permissions. As you might expect me to say, always apply the Principle of Least Privilege. This likely means that any additional permission you might add does not need Full Control. Share Permission Basics: At the share level, here are the permissions. Read - Allows you to read the contents on the share. Change - Allows you to read, write, and delete contents on the share. Full control - Change + the ability to modify permissions. Like with file/folder permissions, these permissions aggregate, and DENY trumps. So What Access Does a Person / Process Have? Figuring out what someone or some process has depends on how the location is being accessed: Access comes through the share (\\ServerName\Share) – a combination of permissions is considered. Access is through a drive letter (C:\, E:\, S:\, etc.) – only the file/folder permissions are considered. The only complicated one here is access through the share. Here’s what Windows does: Figures out what the aggregated permissions are at the file/folder level. Figures out what the aggregated permissions are at the share level. Takes the most restrictive of the two sets of permissions. You can test this by granting Full Control over a folder (this is likely already in place for the Users local group) and then setting up a share. Give only Read access through the share, and that includes to Administrators (if you’re creating a share, likely you have membership in the Administrators group). Try to read a file through the share. Now try to modify it. The most restrictive permission is the Share level permissions. It’s set to only allow Read. Therefore, if you come through the share, it’s the most restrictive. Does This Knowledge Really Help Me? In my experience, it does. I’ve seen cases where sensitive files were accessible by every authenticated user through a share. Auditors, as you might expect, have a real problem with that. I’ve also seen cases where files to be imported as part of the nightly processing were overwritten by files intended from development. And I’ve seen cases where a process can’t get to the files it needs for a process because someone changed the permissions. If you know file/folder and share permissions, you can spot and correct these types of security flaws. Given that there are a lot of database professionals that don’t understand these permissions, if you know it, you set yourself apart. And if you’re able to help on critical processes, you begin to set yourself up as a linchpin (link to .pdf) for your organization. If you want to get started with performance tuning and database security with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

  Read the article

• 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.

  Read the article

• What do you do when you encounter an idiotic interview question?

  - by Senthil

  I was interviewing with a "too proud of my java skills"-looking person. He asked me "What is your knowledge on Java IO classes.. say.. hash maps?" He asked me to write a piece of java code on paper - instantiate a class and call one of the instance's methods. When I was done, he said my program wouldn't run. After 5 minutes of serious thinking, I gave up and asked why. He said I didn't write a main function so it wouldn't run. ON PAPER. [I am too furious to continue with the stupidity...] Believe me it wasn't trick questions or a psychic or anger management evaluation thing. I can tell from his face, he was proud of these questions. That "developer" was supposed to "judge" the candidates. I can think of several things: Hit him with a chair (which I so desperately wanted to) and walk out. Simply walk out. Ridicule him saying he didn't make sense. Politely let him know that he didn't make sense and go on to try and answer the questions. Don't tell him anything, but simply go on to try and answer the questions. So far, I have tried just 4 and 5. It hasn't helped. Unfortunately many candidates seem to do the same and remain polite but this lets these kind of "developers" just keep ascending up the corporate ladder, gradually getting the capacity to pi** off more and more people. How do you handle these interviewers without bursting your veins? What is the proper way to handle this, yet maintain your reputation if other potential employers were to ever get to know what happened here? Is there anything you can do or should you even try to fix this? P.S. Let me admit that my anger has been amplified many times by the facts: He was smiling like you wouldn't believe. I got so many (20 or so) calls from that company the day before, asking me to come to the interview, that I couldn't do any work that day. I wasted a paid day off.

  Read the article

• Oracle Linux Training Across Five Continents

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  The Oracle Linux System Administration course, a top selling course, provides you with a broad selection of key competencies you need to be a great Linux system administrator. And you can now take this course from your desk or in classrooms across all five contents. You can take this 5-day instructor-led course through the follow delivery methods: Training-on-Demand: Start training within 24 hours of registering. You following lecture material at your own pace via streaming video and book time on a lab environment to suit your schedule. Live-Virtual Event: Follow a live event from your own desk, no travel required. You can choose from a selection of events on the schedule to suit a different time zones. In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this course. Below is a selection of the in-class events already on the schedule. AFRICA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Nairobi, Kenya  13 October 2014  English  Johannesburg, South Africa  24 November 2014  English AMERICA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Mississauga, Canada  27 October 2014  English  Chicago, IL, United States  13 October 2014  English  Roseville, MN, United States  13 October 2014  English ASIA  Location  Date  Delivery  Jakarta, Indonesia  20 October 2014  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  25 August 2014  English  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  8 December 2014  English  Istanbul, Turkey  10 November 2014  Turkish   Dubai, United Arab Emirates  4 January 2015  English AUSTRALIA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Canberra, Australia  20 October 2014  English  Melbourne, Australia  20 October 2014  English EUROPE  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Paris, France  6 October 2014  French  Milan, Italy  20 October 2014  Italian  Rome, Italy  8 September 2014  Italian  Bucharest, Romania  27 October 2014  Romanian  Madrid, Spain  1 September 2014  Spanish The Oracle Linux System Administration course is the recommended training course to prepare for you for the Oracle Linux 5 & 6 System Administrator OCA certification exam. Those who have acquired the skills provided in the Oracle Linux System Administration course, can advance their learning by taking the Oracle Linux Advanced Administration course. You can take this 5-day instructor led course as a live-virtual event or an in-class event. Below is a selection of the in-class events on the schedule:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Jakarta, Indonesia  27 October 2014  English  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  6 October 2014  English  Bangkok, Thailand  20 October 2014  English  Belmont, CA, United States  15 September 2014  English For information on the Oracle Linux curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux.

  Read the article

• To Serve Man?

  - by Dave Convery

  Since the announcement of Windows 8 and its 'Metro' interface, the .NET community has wondered if the skills they've spent so long developing might be swept aside,in favour of HTML5 and JavaScript. Mercifully, that only seems to be true of SilverLight (as Simon Cooper points out), but it did leave me thinking how easy it is to impose a technology upon people without directly serving their needs. Case in point: QR codes. Once, probably, benign in purpose, they seem to have become a marketer's tool for determining when someone has engaged with an advert in the real world, with the same certainty as is possible online. Nobody really wants to use QR codes - it's far too much hassle. But advertisers want that data - they want to know that someone actually read their billboard / poster / cereal box, and so this flawed technology is suddenly everywhere, providing little to no value to the people who are actually meant to use it. What about 3D cinema? Profits from the film industry have been steadily increasing throughout the period that digital piracy and mass sharing has been possible, yet the industry cinema chains have forced 3D films upon a broadly uninterested audience, as a way of providing more purpose to going to a cinema, rather than watching it at home. Despite advances in digital projection, 3D cinema is scarcely more immersive to us than were William Castle's hoary old tricks of skeletons on wires and buzzing chairs were to our grandparents. iTunes - originally just a piece of software that catalogued and ripped music for you, but which is now multi-purpose bloatware; a massive, system-hogging behemoth. If it was being built for the people that used it, it would have been split into three or more separate pieces of software long ago. But as bloatware, it serves Apple primarily rather than us, stuffed with Music, Video, Various stores and phone / iPad management all bolted into one. Why? It's because, that way, you're more likely to bump into something you want to buy. You can't even buy a new laptop without finding that a significant chunk of your hard drive has been sold to 'select partners' - advertisers, suppliers of virus-busting software, and endless bloatware-flogging pop-ups that make using a new laptop without reformatting the hard drive like stepping back in time. The product you want is not the one you paid for. This is without even looking at services like Facebook and Klout, who provide a notional service with the intention of slurping up as much data about you as possible (in Klout's case, whether you create an account with them or not). What technologies do you find annoying or intrusive, and who benefits from keeping them around?

  Read the article

• Developing a Cost Model for Cloud Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows Azure and SQL Azure are located here, and are more accurate than anything you will see in this post: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/  When writing software that is run on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering like Windows Azure / SQL Azure, one of the questions you must answer is how much the system will cost. I will not discuss the comparisons between on-premise costs (which are nigh impossible to calculate accurately) versus cloud costs, but instead focus on creating a general model for estimating costs for a given application. You should be aware that there are (at this writing) two billing mechanisms for Windows and SQL Azure: “Pay-as-you-go” or consumption, and “Subscription” or commitment. Conceptually, you can consider the former a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan, where you pay by the unit used (at a slightly higher rate) and the latter as a standard cell phone plan where you commit to a contract and thus pay lower rates. In this post I’ll stick with the pay-as-you-go mechanism for simplicity, which should be the maximum cost you would pay. From there you may be able to get a lower cost if you use the other mechanism. In any case, the model you create should hold. Developing a good cost model is essential. As a developer or architect, you’ll most certainly be asked how much something will cost, and you need to have a reliable way to estimate that. Businesses and Organizations have been used to paying for servers, software licenses, and other infrastructure as an up-front cost, and power, people to the systems and so on as an ongoing (and sometimes not factored) cost. When presented with a new paradigm like distributed computing, they may not understand the true cost/value proposition, and that’s where the architect and developer can guide the conversation to make a choice based on features of the application versus the true costs. The two big buckets of use-types for these applications are customer-based and steady-state. In the customer-based use type, each successful use of the program results in a sale or income for your organization. Perhaps you’ve written an application that provides the spot-price of foo, and your customer pays for the use of that application. In that case, once you’ve estimated your cost for a successful traversal of the application, you can build that into the price you charge the user. It’s a standard restaurant model, where the price of the meal is determined by the cost of making it, plus any profit you can make. In the second use-type, the application will be used by a more-or-less constant number of processes or users and no direct revenue is attached to the system. A typical example is a customer-tracking system used by the employees within your company. In this case, the cost model is often created “in reverse” - meaning that you pilot the application, monitor the use (and costs) and that cost is held steady. This is where the comparison with an on-premise system becomes necessary, even though it is more difficult to estimate those on-premise true costs. For instance, do you know exactly how much cost the air conditioning is because you have a team of system administrators? This may sound trivial, but that, along with the insurance for the building, the wiring, and every other part of the system is in fact a cost to the business. There are three primary methods that I’ve been successful with in estimating the cost. None are perfect, all are demand-driven. The general process is to lay out a matrix of: components units cost per unit and then multiply that times the usage of the system, based on which components you use in the program. That sounds a bit simplistic, but using those metrics in a calculation becomes more detailed. In all of the methods that follow, you need to know your application. The components for a PaaS include computing instances, storage, transactions, bandwidth and in the case of SQL Azure, database size. In most cases, architects start with the first model and progress through the other methods to gain accuracy. Simple Estimation The simplest way to calculate costs is to architect the application (even UML or on-paper, no coding involved) and then estimate which of the components you’ll use, and how much of each will be used. Microsoft provides two tools to do this - one is a simple slider-application located here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/  The other is a tool you download to create an “Return on Investment” (ROI) spreadsheet, which has the advantage of leading you through various questions to estimate what you plan to use, located here: https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=176318219048082115  You can also just create a spreadsheet yourself with a structure like this: Program Element Azure Component Unit of Measure Cost Per Unit Estimated Use of Component Total Cost Per Component Cumulative Cost               Of course, the consideration with this model is that it is difficult to predict a system that is not running or hasn’t even been developed. Which brings us to the next model type. Measure and Project A more accurate model is to actually write the code for the application, using the Software Development Kit (SDK) which can run entirely disconnected from Azure. The code should be instrumented to estimate the use of the application components, logging to a local file on the development system. A series of unit and integration tests should be run, which will create load on the test system. You can use standard development concepts to track this usage, and even use Windows Performance Monitor counters. The best place to start with this method is to use the Windows Azure Diagnostics subsystem in your code, which you can read more about here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sumitm/archive/2009/11/18/introducing-windows-azure-diagnostics.aspx This set of API’s greatly simplifies tracking the application, and in fact you can use this information for more than just a cost model. After you have the tracking logs, you can plug the numbers into ay of the tools above, which should give a representative cost or in some cases a unit cost. The consideration with this model is that the SDK fabric is not a one-to-one comparison with performance on the actual Windows Azure fabric. Those differences are usually smaller, but they do need to be considered. Also, you may not be able to accurately predict the load on the system, which might lead to an architectural change, which changes the model. This leads us to the next, most accurate method for a cost model. Sample and Estimate Using standard statistical and other predictive math, once the application is deployed you will get a bill each month from Microsoft for your Azure usage. The bill is quite detailed, and you can export the data from it to do analysis, and using methods like regression and so on project out into the future what the costs will be. I normally advise that the architect also extrapolate a unit cost from those metrics as well. This is the information that should be reported back to the executives that pay the bills: the past cost, future projected costs, and unit cost “per click” or “per transaction”, as your case warrants. The challenge here is in the model itself - statistical methods are not foolproof, and the larger the sample (in this case I recommend the entire population, not a smaller sample) is key. References and Tools Articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patrick_butler_monterde/archive/2010/02/10/windows-azure-billing-overview.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg213848.aspx http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/06/05/azure-faq-how-much-will-it-cost-me-to-run-my-application-on-windows-azure/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnalioto/archive/2010/08/25/10054193.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/02/08/qampa-how-can-i-calculate-the-tco-and-roi-when.aspx   Other Tools: http://cloud-assessment.com/ http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud_tools

  Read the article

• My Reference for Amy Lewis

  - by Denise McInerney

  The 2013 election campaign for the PASS Board of Directors is underway. There are seven qualified candidates running this year. They all offer a wealth of experience volunteering for PASS and the SQL Server community. One of these candidates, Amy Lewis, asked me to write a reference for her to include on her candidate application. I have a lot of experience working with Amy and was pleased to provide this reference: I enthusiastically support Amy Lewis as a candidate for the PASS Board of Directors. I have known and worked with Amy in various PASS' volunteer capacities for years, starting when we were both leaders of SIGs (the precursors to the Virtual Chapters.) In that time I have seen Amy grow as a leader, taking on increasing responsibility and developing her leadership skills in the process. From the Program Committee to the BI Virtual Chapter to her local user group's SQL Saturday Amy has demonstrated a capacity to organize and lead volunteers. A successful leader delivers results, and does so in a way that encourages and empowers the people she is working with; Amy embodies this leadership style. As Director for Virtual Chapters I have most recently worked with Amy in her capacity of DW/BI VC Leader. This VC is one of our largest and most active, and Amy's leadership is a key contribution to that success. I was pleased to see that Amy was also thinking about succession and prepared other volunteers to take over the chapter leadership. Amy has shown an understanding of PASS' strategic goals and has focused her volunteer efforts to help us reach those goals. For the past couple of years we have been trying to expand PASS reach and relevance to SQL communities around the world. The VCs are a key vehicle for this expansion. Amy embraced this idea and organized the VC to engage volunteers in Europe & Australia and provide content that could reach SQL professionals in those regions. A second key strategy for PASS is expanding into the data analytics space. Again Amy rose to the occasion helping to shape the program for our first Business Analytics Conference and leveraging the BI VC to promote the event. By all measures I think Amy is prepared to serve on the Board and contribute in a positive way.

  Read the article

• Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

  - by Roger Brinkley

  A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received. You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview. Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can make with developers. These are long term connections, because I know that once that relationship is established it will lead to another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you hi". Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2 hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting.  I delivered one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my talk had inspired them. FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row. FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or 3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real impact. And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story that illustrates this. Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her to marry me. We're getting married next Spring." Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact. Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.

  Read the article

• Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

  - by jasont

  If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are:   Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots!   So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify.   Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct.   IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more.   Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

  Read the article

• SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2. The Awesome Returns.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Two years ago 59 SQL Server MVP's came together and helped make one of the best book on SQL Server out there. Each chapter was written by an MVP about a part of SQL Server they loved working with. This resulted in superb quality content and excellent ratings from the readers. To top it off all earnings went to a good cause, the War Child International organization. That book was SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. This year 63 SQL Server MVPs, me included, decided it was time do repeat the success of the first book. Let me introduce you the: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2 The topics in 60 chapters are grouped in 5 groups: Architecture, Database Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, Business Intelligence. They represent over 1000 years of daily experience in various areas of SQL Server. I have contributed chapter 28 in Database Development group titled Getting asynchronous with Service Broker. In it I show you the Service Broker template you can use for secure communication between two or more SQL server instances for whatever purpose you may have. If you haven't heard of Service Broker it's a part of the database engine that enables you to do completely async operations in the database itself or between databases and instances. The official release of the book will be next week at PASS where there will be 2 slots where most of the authors will be there signing the books you bring. This is also a great opportunity to meet everyone and ask about any problems you may have. So definitely come say hi. Again we decided on a charity that will be supported by this book. It's called Operation Smile. They provide free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. You can also help them by donating. You can preorder it on at Manning Publications website or on Amazon. By having it you not only get to learn a lot, improve your skills and have fun but you also help a child have a normal life. If that's not a good cause then I don't know what it is.

  Read the article

• Three Ways to Take Official MySQL for Database Administrators course

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  The MySQL for Database Administrators course is a 5 day course that teaches the key skills essential for MySQL Database Administrators. You can take this course in one of the following three ways: Training on Demand: Get Instructor-led training within 24 hours through streaming-video from your desk. Live Virtual Class: Live instructor-led training from your desk. Over 1000! LVC events on the schedule for the MySQL for Database Administrator course. In Class: See below for a selection of locations where you can take this training For more information on this course or teaching schedule, go to the Oracle University portal and click on MySQL or search under your country/location. A selection of the In-Class schedule for the MySQL for Database Administrator course:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Mechelen, Belgium  10 Sept 2012  English  Prague, Czech Republic  27 Aug 2012  Czech  Nice, France  24 Sept 2012  French  Paris, France  24 Sept 2012  French  Strasbourg, France  10 Sept 2012  French  Dresden, Germany  20 Aug 2012  German  Gummersbach, Germany  27 Aug 2012  German  Hamburg, Germany  23 July 2012  German  Munich, Germany  16 July 2012  German  Munster, Germany  6 Aug 2012  German  Stuttgart, Germany  9 July 2012  German  London, Great Britan  9 July 2012  English  Belfast, Ireland  27 Aug 2012  English  Rome, Italy  30 July 2012  Italian  Windhof, Luxembourg  26 Nov 2012  English  Nieuwegein, Netherlands  1 Oct 2012  English  Oslo, Norway  10 Sept 2012  English  Warsaw, Poland  9 July 2012  Polish  Lisbon, Portugal  3 Sept 2012  European Portugese  Madrid, Spain  25 Jun 2012  Spanish  Baden Dattwil, Switzerland  19 Nov 2012  German  Zurick, Switzerland  8 Aug 2012  German  Istanbul, Turkey  27 Aug 2012  Turkish  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  25 Jul 2012  English  Singapore  16 July 2012  English  Brisbane, Australia  30 July 2012  English  Bangkok, Thailand  30 July 2012  Thai  Edmonton, Canada  10 Sept 2012  English  Vancouver, Canada  10 Sept 2012  English  Ottawa, Canada  30 July 2012  English  Toronto, Canada  30 July 2012  English  Montreal, Canada  30 July 2012  English  Mexico City, Mexico  25 Jun 2012  Spanish With these three delivery options and an impressive LVC and In-Class schedule you should find an event to suit your needs. If you are interested in another date or location you can register your interest on the Oracle University portal.

  Read the article

• Basic web architecture : Perl -> PHP

  - by Sunny Jim

  This is an architecture question. If there is a better forum, please redirect me. Apologies in advance. Essentially every website is built around a relational database, right? When a user uploads form data, that data is stored in a table. The problem is that the table structure(s) need to be modified whenever the website form is modified. Although I understand that modern web frameworks work around this problem by automatically building forms based on the table structure. For the last 20 years, I have been building websites using Perl. When I first encountered this problem, the easiest solution was to save serialized Perl objects as data BLOBS. After XML's introduction, this solution worked even better because XML is so effective for representing arbitrary data. This approach is consistent with the original Perl principles of Hubris, Laziness, and Impatience and I'm pretty committed to it. Obviously, the biggest drawback is that this solution locks me into the Perl interpreter. So instead, I've just completed a prototype of a universal RDB table. The prototype is written in Perl but porting it to PHP will be a good chance to develop those skills. The principal is based on the XML::Dumper module, which converts arbitrary Perl data structures into uniform XML. With my approach, each XML node is stored as a table record. I underestimated this undertaking and rolled something up myself. But the effort allows me to discuss the basic design instead of implementation details. As mentioned, I'm pretty committed to this approach of using flexible data structures. It's been successfully deployed on many websites, large, and complex. But are there any drawbacks I've overlooked? I rolled my own. Are other people taking a similar approach to their data? What kinds of solutions are available? I have not abandoned my dream of eventually contributing something useful to the worldwide community. In order to proceed, the next step would be peer review. How does one pursue that effort? Thanks! -Jim

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270  | Next Page >