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  • Vernon's book Implementing DDD and modeling of underlying concepts

    - by EdvRusj
    Following questions all refer to examples presented in Implementing DDD In article we can see from Figure 6 that both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of Banking Account BA 1. On page 64 author gives an example of a publishing organization, where the life-cycle of a book goes through several stages ( proposing a book, editorial process, translation of the book ... ) and at each of those stages this book has a different definition. Each stage of the book is defined in a different Bounded Context, but do all these different definitions still represent the same underlying concept of a Book, just like both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of a BA? 2. a) I understand why User shouldn't exist in Collaboration Context ( CC ), but instead should be defined within Identity and Access Context IAC ( page 65 ). But still, do User ( IAC ), Moderator ( CC ), Author ( CC ),Owner ( CC ) and Participant ( CC ) all represent different aspects of the same underlying concept? b) If yes, then this means that CC contains several model elements ( Moderator, Author, Owner and Participant ), each representing different aspect of the same underlying concept ( just like both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of a BA ). But isn't this considered a duplication of concepts ( Evan's book, page 339 ), since several model elements in CC represent the same underlying concept? c) If Moderator, Author ... don't represent the same underlying concept, then what underlying concept does each represent? 3. In an e-commerce system, the term Customer has multiple meanings ( page 49 ): When user is browsing the Catalog, Customer has different meaning than when user is placing an Order. But do these two different definitions of a Customer represent the same underlying concept, just like both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of a BA? thanks

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  • PCI Compliance Book Suggestion

    - by Joel Weise
    I am always looking for good books on security, compliance and of course, PCI.  Here is one I think you will find very useful. "PCI Compliance, Third Edition: Understand and Implement Effective PCI Data Security Standard Compliance" by Branden Williams and Anton Chuvakin.  [Fair disclosure - Branden and I work together on the Information Systems Security Association Journal's editorial board.]   The primary reason I like this book is that the authors take a holistic architectural approach to PCI compliance and that to me is the most safe and sane way to approach PCI.  Using such an architectural approach to PCI is, in my humble opinion, the underlying intent of PCI.  Don't create a checklist of the PCI DSS and then map a solution to each.  That is a recipe for disaster.  Instead, look at how the different components and their configurations work together in a synergistic fashion.  In short, create a security architecture and governance framework (the ISO 27000 series is a good place to start) that begins with an evaluation of the requirements laid down in the PCI DSS, as well as your other applicable compliance, business and technical requirements.  By developing an integrated security architecture you should be able to not only address current requirements, but also be in a position to quickly address future ones as well.

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  • Design pattern for parsing data that will be grouped to two different ways and flipped

    - by lewisblackfan
    I'm looking for an easily maintainable and extendable design model for a script to parse an excel workbook into two separate workbooks after pulling data from other locations like the command line, and a database. The high level details are as follows. I need to parse an excel workbook containing a sheet that lists unique question names, the only reliable information that can be parsed from the question name is the book code that identifies the title and edition of the textbook the question is associated with, the rest of the question name is not standardized well enough to be reliably parsed by computer. The general form of the question name is best described by the following regular expression. '^(\w+)\s(\w{1,2})\.(\w{1,2})\.(\w{1,3})\.(\w{1,3}\.)*$' The first sub-pattern is the book code, the second sub-pattern is 90% of the time the chapter, and the rest of the sub-patterns could be section, problem type, problem number, or question type information. There is no simple logic, at least not one I can find. There will be a minimum of three other columns in this spreadsheet; one column will be the chapter the question is associated with, the second will be the section within the chapter the question is associated with, and the third will be some kind of asset indicated by a uniform resource locator. 1 | 1 | qname1 | url | description | url | description ... 1 | 1 | qname2 | url | description 1 | 1 | qname3 | url | description | url | description | url | The asset can be indicated by a full or partial uniform resource locator, the partial url will need to be completed before it can be fed into the application. There theoretically could be no limit to the number of asset columns, the assets will be grouped in columns by type. Some times additional data will have to be retrieved from a database or combined with the book code before the asset url is complete and can be understood by the application that will be using the asset. The type is an abstraction, there are eight types right now, each with their own logic in how the uniform resource locator is handled and or completed, and I have to add a new type and its logic every three or four months. For each asset url there is the possibility of a description column, a character string for display in the application, but not always. (I've already worked out validating the description text, and squashing MSs obscure code page down to something 7-bit ascii can handle.) Now that all the details are filled-in I can get to the actual problem of parsing the file. I need to split the information in this excel workbook into two separate workbooks. The first workbook will group all the questions by section in rows. With the first cell being the section doublet and the rest of the cells in the row are the question names. 1.1 | qname1 | qname2 | qname3 | qname4 | 1.2 | qname1 | qname2 | qname3 | 1.3 | qname1 | qname2 | qname3 | qname4 | qname5 There is no set number of questions for each section as you can see from the above example. The second workbook is more complicated, there is one row per asset, and question names that have more than one asset will be duplicated. There will be four or five columns on this sheet. The first is the question name for the asset, the second is a media type used to select the correct icon for the asset in the application, the third is string representing the asset type, the four is the full and complete uniform resource locator for the asset, and the fifth columns is the optional text description for the asset. q1 | mtype1 | atype1 | url | description q1 | mtype2 | atype2 | url | description q1 | mtype2 | atype3 | url | description q2 | mtype1 | atype1 | url | description q2 | mtype2 | atype3 | url | description For the original six types I did have a script that parsed the source excel workbook into the other two excel workbooks, and I was able to add two more types until I ran aground on the implementation of the ninth type and tenth types. What broke my script was the fact that the ninth type is actually a sub-type of one of the original six, but with entirely different logic, and my mostly procedural script could not accommodate without duplicating a lot of code. I also had a lot of bugs in the script and will be writing the test first on this time around. I'm stuck with the format for the resulting two workbooks, this script is glue code, development went ahead with the project without bothering to get a complete spec from the sponsor. I work for the same company as the developers but in the editorial department, editorial is co-sponsor of the project, and am expected to fix pesky details like this (I'm foaming at the mouth as I type this). I've tried factories, I've tried different object models, but each resulting workbook is so different when I find a design that works for generating one workbook the code is not really usable for generating the other. What I would really like are ideas about a maintainable and extensible design for parsing the source workbook into both workbooks with maximum code reuse, and or sympathy.

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  • Ripping a CD to mp3 in C# - third party component or api out there?

    - by Jonathan Williamson
    We're working on a project that requires the ripping of audio tracks from CDs to MP3s (ideally also retrieving the track information from CDDB or similar). More background information: Various music labels send us CDs of music which we then deliver to people via an online delivery system. We're looking at automating the process of converting those CDs into MP3s with full track information where possible. We want to produce a simple desktop application that allows a member of editorial staff to setup the information about the new music we receive. To streamline the process we'd like to include the ripping of the audio and retrieval of the track information.

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  • best way to filter out non-representational elements

    - by nonano
    Hi there, I am using phpQuery in order to apply some twaks to editorial content. As its syntax is the same as jQuery, I consider this a dom scripting issue. To get rid of elements which are not representing anything, but wrapping other stuff (like the div in <div><p>blah</p></div> I came up with this selector: ['div:not([align][class][id][style][title][dir][lang][onclick][ondblclick][onmousedown] [onmouseup][onmouseover][onmousemove][onmouseout][onkeypress][onkeydown][onkeyup])'] which looks quite monstrous for a selector simply aming on Divs which just do not have any (valid) attribute. I guess there must be a more straight-forward way to accomplish that, right? Edit: Oh, and I just noticed that it even doesn't do wat I intended to ...

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  • A Plea for Plain English

    - by Tony Davis
    The English language has, within a lifetime, emerged as the ubiquitous 'international language' of scientific, political and technical communication. On the one hand, learning a single, common language, International English, has made it much easier to participate in and adopt new technologies; on the other hand it must be exasperating to have to use English at international conferences, or on community sites, when your own language has a long tradition of scientific and technical usage. It is also hard to master the subtleties of using a foreign language to explain advanced ideas. This requires English speakers to be more considerate in their writing. Even if you’re used to speaking English, you may be brought up short by this sort of verbiage… "Business Intelligence delivering actionable insights is becoming more critical in the enterprise, and these insights require large data volumes for trending and forecasting" It takes some imagination to appreciate the added hassle in working out what it means, when English is a language you only use at work. Try, just to get a vague feel for it, using Google Translate to translate it from English to Chinese and back again. "Providing actionable business intelligence point of view is becoming more and more and more business critical, and requires that these insights and projected trends in large amounts of data" Not easy eh? If you normally use a different language, you will need to pause for thought before finally working out that it really means … "Every Business Intelligence solution must be able to help companies to make decisions. In order to detect current trends, and accurately predict future ones, we need to analyze large volumes of data" Surely, it is simple politeness for English speakers to stop peppering their writing with a twisted vocabulary that renders it inaccessible to everyone else. It isn’t just the problem of writers who use long words to give added dignity to their prose. It is the use of Colloquial English. This changes and evolves at a dizzying rate, adding new terms and idioms almost daily; it is almost a new and separate language. By contrast, ‘International English', is gradually evolving separately, at its own, more sedate, pace. As such, all native English speakers need to make an effort to learn, and use it, switching from casual colloquial patter into a simpler form of communication that can be widely understood by different cultures, even if it gives you less credibility on the street. Simple-Talk is based, at least in part, on the idea that technical articles can be written simply and clearly in a form of English that can be easily understood internationally, and that they can be written, with a little editorial help, by anyone, and read by anyone, regardless of their native language. Cheers, Tony.

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  • Fair Comments

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

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  • Java Spotlight Episode 85: Migrating from Spring to JavaEE 6

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Interview with Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker on migrating from Spring to JavaEE 6. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel is Arun Gupta, Java EE Guy. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Transactional Interceptors in Java EE 7 Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd on Oracle Cloud Duke’s Choice Award submissions open until June 15 Registration for the 2012 JVM Lanugage Summit now open Events June 11-14, Cloud Computing Expo, New York City June 12, Boulder JUG June 13, Denver JUG June 13, Eclipse Juno DemoCamp, Redwoood Shore June 13, JUG Münster June 14, Java Klassentreffen, Vienna, Austria June 18-20, QCon, New York City June 20, 1871, Chicago June 26-28, Jazoon, Zurich, Switzerland July 5, Java Forum, Stuttgart, Germany July 30-August 1, JVM Language Summit, Santa Clara Feature InterviewBert Ertman is a Fellow at Luminis in the Netherlands. Next to his customer assignments he is responsible for stimulating innovation, knowledge sharing, coaching, technology choices and presales activities. Besides his day job he is a Java User Group leader for NLJUG, the Dutch Java User Group. A frequent speaker on Enterprise Java and Software Architecture related topics at international conferences (e.g. Devoxx, JavaOne, etc) as well as an author and member of the editorial advisory board for Dutch software development magazine: Java Magazine. In 2008, Bert was honored by being awarded the coveted title of Java Champion by an international panel of Java leaders and luminaries. Paul Bakker is senior software engineer at Luminis Technologies where he works on the Amdatu platform, an open source, service-oriented application platform for web applications. He has a background as trainer where he teached various Java related subjects. Paul is also a regular speaker on conferences and author for the Dutch Java Magazine.TutorialsPart 1: http://howtojboss.com/2012/04/17/article-series-migrating-spring-applications-to-java-ee-6-part-1/Part 2: http://howtojboss.com/2012/04/17/article-series-migrating-spring-applications-to-java-ee-6-part-2/Part 3: http://howtojboss.com/2012/05/10/article-series-migrating-from-spring-to-java-ee-6-part-3/   Mail Bag What’s Cool Sang Shin in EE team @larryellison JavaOne content selection is almost complete-Notifications coming soon

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  • Keep taking the tablets

    - by Roger Hart
    A guest editorial for the SimpleTalk newsletter. So why would Red Gate build an Ipad Game? Is it just because tablet devices are exciting and cool? Ok, maybe a little. Mostly, it was seeing that the best existing tablet and smartphone apps do simple, intuitive things, using simple intuitive interfaces to solve single problems. That's pretty close to what we call our own "intuitively simple" approach to software. Tablets and mobile could be fantastic for us, if we can identify those problems that a tablet device can solve. How do you create THE next tool for a completely new technology? We're glad we don't face that problem every day, but it's pretty exciting when we do. We figure we should learn by doing. We created "MobileFoo" (a Red Gate Company) , we picked up some shiny Apple tech, and got to grips with Objective C, and life in the App Store ecosystem. The result so far is an iPad game: Stacks and Heaps It's Rob and Marine's spin on Snakes and Ladders. Instead of snakes we have unhandled exceptions, a blue screen of death, and other hazards. We wanted something compellingly geeky on mobile, and we're pretty sure we've got it. It's trudging through App Store approval as we speak. but if you want to get an idea of what it is like to switch from .net to Objective C, take a look at Rob's post Android and iOS is quite a culture-change for Windows developers. So to give them a feel for the problems real users might have, we needed some real users - we offered our colleagues subsidised tablets. The only conditions were that they get used at work, and we get the feedback. Seeing tablets around the office is starting to give us some data points: Is typing the bottleneck? Will tablets ever cut it as text-entry devices, and could we fix it? Is mobile working held up by the pain of connecting to work LANs? How about security? Multi-tasking will let tablets do more. They're small, easy to use, almost instant to switch on, and connect by Wi Fi. There's plenty on that list to make a sysadmin twitchy. We'll find out as people spend more time working with these devices, and we'd love to hear what you think about tablet devices too. (comments are filtered, what with the spam)

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  • A Slice of Raspberry Pi

    - by Phil Factor
    Guest editorial for the ITPro/SysAdmin newsletter The Raspberry Pi Foundation has done a superb design job on their new $35 network-enabled Linux computer. This tiny machine, incorporating an ARM processor on a Broadcom BCM2835 multimedia chip, aims to put the fun back into learning computing. The public response has been overwhelmingly positive.Note that aim: "…to put the fun back". Education in Information Technology is in dire straits. It always has been, but seems to have deteriorated further still, even in the face of improved provision of equipment.In many countries, the government controls the curriculum. It predicted a shortage in office-based IT skills, and so geared the ICT curriculum toward mind-numbing training in word-processing and spreadsheet skills. Instead, the shortage has turned out to be in people with an engineering-mindset, who can solve problems with whatever technologies are available and learn new techniques quickly, in a rapidly-changing field.In retrospect, the assumption that specific training was required rather than an education was an idiotic response to the arrival of mainstream information technology. As a result, ICT became a disaster area, which discouraged a generation of youngsters from a career in IT, and thereby led directly to the shortage of people with the skills that are required to exploit the potential of Information Technology..Raspberry Pi aims to reverse the trend. This is a rig that is geared to fast graphics in high resolution. It is no toy. It should be a superb games machine. However, the use of Fedora, Debian, or Arch Linux ARM shows the more serious educational intent behind the Foundation's work. It looks like it will even do some office work too!So, get hold of any power supply that provides a 5VDC source at the required 700mA; an old Blackberry charger will do or, alternatively, it will run off four AA cells. You'll need a USB hub to support the mouse and keyboard, and maybe a hard drive. You'll want a DVI monitor (with audio out) or TV (sound and video). You'll also need to be able to cope with wired Ethernet 10/100, if you want networking.With this lot assembled, stick the paraphernalia on the back of the HDTV with Blu Tack, get a nice keyboard, and you have a classy Linux-based home computer. The major cost is in the T.V and the keyboard. If you're not already writing software for this platform, then maybe, at a time when some countries are talking of orders in the millions, you should consider it.

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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Hitachi Data Systems

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter Watch this Webcast to see a live demo on how HDS creates multilingual content for their 35+ regional websites  Solution SummaryHitachi Data Systems (HDS) provides mid-range and high-end storage systems, software and services. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. HDS is based in Santa Clara, California, and has over 5,300 employees in more then 100 countries and regions. HDS's main objectives were to provide a consistent message across all their sites, to maintain a tight governance structure across their messages and related content, expand the use of the existing content management systems and implement a centralized translation management system. HDS implemented a global web content management system based on Oracle WebCenter Content and integrated the Lingotek translation management system to manage their multilingual content. The implemented solution provides each Geo with the ability to expand their web offering to meet local market needs, while staying aligned with the Corporate Web Guidelines Company OverviewHitachi Data Systems (HDS) provides mid-range and high-end storage systems, software and services. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. and part of the Hitachi Information Systems & Telecommunications Division. The company sells through direct and indirect channels in more than 170 countries and regions. Its customers include of 50 percent of the Fortune 100 companies. HDS is based in Santa Clara California and has over 5,300 employees in more than 100 countries and regions. Business ChallengesHDS has over 35 global websites and the lack of global web capabilities led to inconsistency of messaging, slower time to market and failed to address local language needs. There was an extensive operational overhead due to manual and redundant processes. Translation efforts where superficial, inconsistent and wasteful and the lack of translation automation tools discouraged localization.  HDS's main objectives were to provide a consistent message across all their sites, to maintain a tight governance structure across their messages and related content, expand the use of the existing content management systems and implement a centralized translation management system. Solution DeployedHDS implemented a global web content management system based on Oracle WebCenter Content. The solution supports decentralized publishing for their 35+ global sites to address local market needs while ensuring editorial and brand review trough embedded review processes. They integrated the Lingotek translation management system into Oracle WebCenter Content to manage their multilingual content. Business Results Provides each Geo with the ability to expand their web offering to meet local market needs, while staying aligned with the Corporate Web Guidelines Enables end-to-end content lifecycle management across multiple languages Leverage translation memory for reuse and consistency Reduce time to market with central repository of translated content Additional Information HDS Webcast Oracle WebCenter Content Lingotek website

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  • Hadoop, NOSQL, and the Relational Model

    - by Phil Factor
    (Guest Editorial for the IT Pro/SysAdmin Newsletter)Whereas Relational Databases fit the world of commerce like a glove, it is useless to pretend that they are a perfect fit for all human endeavours. Although, with SQL Server, we’ve made great strides with indexing text, in processing spatial data and processing markup, there is still a problem in dealing efficiently with large volumes of ephemeral semi-structured data. Key-value stores such as Cassandra, Project Voldemort, and Riak are of great value for ephemeral data, and seem of equal value as a data-feed that provides aggregations to an RDBMS. However, the Document databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB are ideal for semi-structured data for which no fixed schema exists; analytics and logging are obvious examples. NoSQL products, such as MongoDB, tackle the semi-structured data problem with panache. MongoDB is designed with a simple document-oriented data model that scales horizontally across multiple servers. It doesn’t impose a schema, and relies on the application to enforce the data structure. This is another take on the old ‘EAV’ problem (where you don’t know in advance all the attributes of a particular entity) It uses a clever replica set design that allows automatic failover, and uses journaling for data durability. It allows indexing and ad-hoc querying. However, for SQL Server users, the obvious choice for handling semi-structured data is Apache Hadoop. There will soon be an ODBC Driver for Apache Hive .and an Add-in for Excel. Additionally, there are now two Hadoop-based connectors for SQL Server; the Apache Hadoop connector for SQL Server 2008 R2, and the SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) connector. We can connect to Hadoop process the semi-structured data and then store it in SQL Server. For one steeped in the culture of Relational SQL Databases, I might be expected to throw up my hands in the air in a gesture of contempt for a technology that was, judging by the overblown journalism on the subject, about to make my own profession as archaic as the Saggar makers bottom knocker (a potter’s assistant who helped the saggar maker to make the bottom of the saggar by placing clay in a metal hoop and bashing it). However, on the contrary, I find that I'm delighted with the advances made by the NoSQL databases in the past few years. Having the flow of ideas from the NoSQL providers will knock any trace of complacency out of the providers of Relational Databases and inspire them into back-fitting some features, such as horizontal scaling, with sharding and automatic failover into SQL-based RDBMSs. It will do the breed a power of good to benefit from all this lateral thinking.

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  • The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Create Phase

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
     Originally posted by John Brunswick. In this installment of our Minimalist Approach to Content Governance we finally get to the fun part of the content creation process! Once the content requester has addressed the items outlined in the Request Phase it is time to setup and begin the production of content.   For this to be done correctly it is important the the content be assigned appropriate workflow and security information. As in our prior phase, let's take a look at what can be done to streamline this process - as contributors are focused on getting information to their end users as quickly as possible. This often means that details around how to ensure that the materials are properly managed can be overlooked, but fortunately there are some techniques that leverage our content management system's native capabilities to automatically take care of some of the details. 1. Determine Access Why - Even if content is not something that needs to restricted due to security reasons, it is helpful to apply access rights so that the content ends up being visible only to users that it relates to. This will greatly improve user experience. For instance, if your team is working on a group project many of your fellow company employees do not need to see the content that is being worked on for that project. How - Make use of native content features that allow propagation of security and meta data from parent folders within your content system that have been setup for your particular effort. This makes it painless to enforce security, as well as meta data policies for even the most unorganized users. The default settings at a parent level can be set once the content creation request has been accepted and a location in the content management system is assigned for your specific project. Impact - Users can find information will less effort, as they will only be exposed to what they need for their work and can leverage advanced search features to take advantage of meta data assigned to content. The combination of default security and meta data will also help in running reports against the content in the Manage and Retire stages that we will discuss in the next 2 posts. 2. Assign Workflow (optional depending on nature of content) Why - Every case for workflow is going to be a bit different, but it generally involves ensuring that content conforms to management, legal and or editorial requirements. How - Oracle's Universal Content Management offers two ways of helping to workflow content without much effort. Workflow can be applied to content based on Criteria acting on meta data or explicitly assigned to content with a Basic workflow. Impact - Any content that needs additional attention before release is addressed, allowing users to comment and version until a suitable result is reached. By using inheritance from parent folders within the content management system content can automatically be given the right security, meta data and workflow information for a particular project's content. This relieves the burden of doing this for every piece of content from management teams and content contributors. We will cover more about the management phase within the content lifecycle in our next installment.

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  • Developing a Support Plan for Cloud Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as "Step 1, then Step 2" because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple "template" solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single way of doing things, that's not really viable. The same holds true for support. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the term "cloud", and would rather use the tem "Distributed Computing". That being said, more people understand the former, so I'll just use that for now. What I mean by Distributed Computing is leveraging another system or setup to perform all or some of a computing function. If this definition holds true, then you're essentially creating a partnership with a vendor to run some of your IT - whether that be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, or more often, a mix. In your on-premises systems, you're the first and sometimes only line of support. That changes when you bring in a Cloud vendor. For Windows Azure, we have plans for support that you can pay for if you like. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/plans/ You're not off the hook entirely, however. You still need to create a plan to support your users in their applications, especially for the parts you control. The last thing they want to hear is "That's vendor X's problem - you'll have to call them." I find that this is often the last thing the architects think about in a solution. It's fine to put off the support question prior to deployment, but I would hold off on calling it "production" until you have that plan in place. There are lots of examples, like this one: http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/customer.html some of which are technology-specific. Once again, this is an "it depends" kind of approach. While it would be nice if there was just something in a box we could buy, it just doesn't work that way in a hybrid system. You have to know your options and apply them appropriately.

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  • Developing a Support Plan for Cloud Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as "Step 1, then Step 2" because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple "template" solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single way of doing things, that's not really viable. The same holds true for support. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the term "cloud", and would rather use the tem "Distributed Computing". That being said, more people understand the former, so I'll just use that for now. What I mean by Distributed Computing is leveraging another system or setup to perform all or some of a computing function. If this definition holds true, then you're essentially creating a partnership with a vendor to run some of your IT - whether that be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, or more often, a mix. In your on-premises systems, you're the first and sometimes only line of support. That changes when you bring in a Cloud vendor. For Windows Azure, we have plans for support that you can pay for if you like. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/plans/ You're not off the hook entirely, however. You still need to create a plan to support your users in their applications, especially for the parts you control. The last thing they want to hear is "That's vendor X's problem - you'll have to call them." I find that this is often the last thing the architects think about in a solution. It's fine to put off the support question prior to deployment, but I would hold off on calling it "production" until you have that plan in place. There are lots of examples, like this one: http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/customer.html some of which are technology-specific. Once again, this is an "it depends" kind of approach. While it would be nice if there was just something in a box we could buy, it just doesn't work that way in a hybrid system. You have to know your options and apply them appropriately.

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  • Fusion Middleware Newsletter - October Edition is Now Out

    - by Tanu Sood
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} From the latest Oracle Fusion Middleware product releases to the Oracle AppAdvantage use case on Cloud and On-Premise Integration to the very latest in Developer corner and more, the October edition of Oracle Fusion Middleware is chock full of information. Catch the latest edition to learn about the highlights in the latest releases for Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Data Integrator 12c; and Oracle WebCenter. While there, don’t miss the latest news and upcoming events for Oracle Fusion Middleware and Developers. Find out who we have in the Team Spotlight this edition and watch the latest customer success stories across the portfolio. Did we miss anything? Would you like to hear more about a particular topic? Let us know. Simply drop us a comment and we’d be sure to discuss that in our next editorial meeting. In the meantime, grab a coffee and enjoy the October edition of the newsletter.

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  • Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – book review

    - by DigiMortal
       Writing code that is easy read and test is not something that is easy to achieve. Unfortunately there are still way too much programming students who write awful spaghetti after graduating. But there is one really good book that helps you raise your code to new level – your code will be also communication tool for you and your fellow programmers. “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin is excellent book that helps you start writing the easily readable code. Of course, you are the one who has to learn and practice but using this book you have very good guide that keeps you going to right direction. You can start writing better code while you read this book and you can do it right in your current projects – you don’t have to create new guestbook or some other simple application to start practicing. Take the project you are working on and start making it better! My special thanks to Robert C. Martin I want to say my special thanks to Robert C. Martin for this book. There are many books that teach you different stuff and usually you have markable learning curve to go before you start getting results. There are many books that show you the direction to go and then leave you alone figuring out how to achieve all that stuff you just read about. Clean Code gives you a lot more – the mental tools to use so you can go your way to clean code being sure you will be soon there. I am reading books as much as I have time for it. Clean Code is top-level book for developers who have to write working code. Before anything else take Clean Code and read it. You will never regret your decision. I promise. Fragment of editorial review “Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft. Readers will come away from this book understanding How to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.” Table of contents Clean code Meaningful names Functions Comments Formatting Objects and data structures Error handling Boundaries Unit tests Classes Systems Emergence Concurrency Successive refinement JUnit internals Refactoring SerialDate Smells and heuristics A Concurrency II org.jfree.date.SerialDate Cross references of heuristics Epilogue Index

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  • iPad Impressions

    - by Aaron Lazenby
    So, I spent some quality time with my new iPad on Saturday. Here are things I like/don't like: -- Don't like that it has to sync with iTunes before you use it: I was traveling and left my laptop at home thinking I'd use this iPad thing instead. But the first thing it asked me to do is connect it to a laptop. Ugh. Had to borrow my mother-in-law's MacBook Pro just to get the iPad rolling. -- Like that magazines and newspapers are forever changed: And I think for the better...it's why I bought this thing in the first place. I spent significant time with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and Popular Science on the iPad. Sliding stories around, jumping from section to section, enlarging images = all excellent experiences. Actually prefer iPad magazine to print, which will require a major shift in editorial strategy, summed up by Popular Science's Mark Jannot in his editor's note "What defines a magazine? Curated expertise--not paper." -- Don't like the screwy human factors: I actually enjoy the virtual keyboard (although I think I'm in the minority), but you have to hunch over to look down at what you're typing. Bad technology ergonomics have already jacked my body in various ways. The iPad just introduced a new one.-- Like the multitouch: In fact, it's awesome. Hands down. Probably will have the most lasting impact on the personal computing industry as a whole.   -- Don't like that it's heavy: If you plan to read in bed, you'd better double up on the creatine and curls. Holding this thing up on your own gets pretty uncomfortable. -- Like the Netfilx app: I wanted to watch "The Big Lebowski," so I did. That is all. -- Don't like that people feel 3G is necessary: For $30 a month? Please. I'm already accustomed to limiting my laptop internet use to readily available free wi-fi. Why do I expect anything different with the iPad? Most anyplace I have time to sit and read/use a computer (cafe, airport, you house, library, etc.) has free wi-fi. I can live without web surfing in your car. That's what the iPhone is for. -- Don't like that not everyone was ready in day one: I'm looking at you Facebook. No iPad app for launch? Lame. iPhone apps scaled-up to work on the iPad look grainy and cheap. Not a quality befitting this beautiful $700 piece of glass.Verdict: I'm bringing it to COLLABORATE 08 and seeing if I can go the whole week using only the iPad. If I can trade this thing for my laptop, I know it's a winner. For now, I'm enjoying Popular Science.

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  • Application Performance Episode 2: Announcing the Judges!

    - by Michaela Murray
    The story so far… We’re writing a new book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it! If you work with ASP.NET applications, and have top tips, hard-won lessons, or sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing performance problems, we want to hear from you! And if your app uses SQL Server, even better – interaction with the database is critical to application performance, so we’re looking for database top tips too. There’s a Microsoft Surface apiece for the person who comes up with the best tip for SQL Server and the best tip for .NET. Of course, if your suggestion is selected for the book, you’ll get full credit, by name, Twitter handle, GitHub repository, or whatever you like. To get involved, just email your nuggets of performance wisdom to [email protected] – there are examples of what we’re looking for and full competition details at Application Performance: The Best of the Web. Enter the judges… As mentioned in my last blogpost, we have a mystery panel of celebrity judges lined up to select the prize-winning performance pointers. We’re now ready to reveal their secret identities! Judging your ASP.NET  tips will be: Jean-Phillippe Gouigoux, MCTS/MCPD Enterprise Architect and MVP Connected System Developer. He’s a board member at French software company MGDIS, and teaches algorithms, security, software tests, and ALM at the Université de Bretagne Sud. Jean-Philippe also lectures at IT conferences and writes articles for programming magazines. His book Practical Performance Profiling is published by Simple-Talk. Nik Molnar,  a New Yorker, ASP Insider, and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source ASP.NET diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Florida, Nik specializes in web development, building scalable, client-centric solutions. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife, speaking at conferences, and working on other open source projects. Mitchel Sellers, Microsoft C# and DotNetNuke MVP. Mitchel is an experienced software architect, business leader, public speaker, and educator. He works with companies across the globe, as CEO of IowaComputerGurus Inc. Mitchel writes technical articles for online and print publications and is the author of Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming. He frequently answers questions on StackOverflow and MSDN and is an active participant in the .NET and DotNetNuke communities. Clive Tong, Software Engineer at Red Gate. In previous roles, Clive spent a lot of time working with Common LISP and enthusing about functional languages, and he’s worked with managed languages since before his first real job (which was a long time ago). Long convinced of the productivity benefits of managed languages, Clive is very interested in getting good runtime performance to keep managed languages practical for real-world development. And our trio of SQL Server specialists, ready to select your top suggestion, are (drumroll): Rodney Landrum, a SQL Server MVP who writes regularly about Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. He’s authored SQL Server Tacklebox, three Reporting Services books, and contributes regularly to SQLServerCentral, SQL Server Magazine, and Simple–Talk. His day job involves overseeing a large SQL Server infrastructure in Orlando. Grant Fritchey, Product Evangelist at Red Gate and SQL Server MVP. In an IT career spanning more than 20 years, Grant has written VB, VB.NET, C#, and Java. He’s been working with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant volunteers with the Editorial Committee at PASS and has written books for Apress and Simple-Talk. Jonathan Allen, leader and founder of the PASS SQL South West user group. He’s been working with SQL Server since 1999 and enjoys performance tuning, development, and using SQL Server for business solutions. He’s spoken at SQLBits and SQL in the City, as well as local user groups across the UK. He’s also a moderator at ask.sqlservercentral.com.

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  • Using Live Data in Database Development Work

    - by Phil Factor
    Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk Newsletter... in which Phil Factor reacts with some exasperation when coming across a report that a majority of companies were still using financial and personal data for both developing and testing database applications. If you routinely test your development work using real production data that contains personal or financial information, you are probably being irresponsible, and at worst, risking a heavy financial penalty for your company. Surprisingly, over 80% of financial companies still do this. Plenty of data breaches and fraud have happened from the use of real data for testing, and a data breach is a nightmare for any organisation that suffers one. The cost of each data breach averages out at around $7.2 million in the US in notification, escalation, credit monitoring, fines, litigation, legal costs, and lost business due to customer churn, £1.9 million in the UK. 70% of data breaches are done from within the organisation. Real data can be exploited in a number of ways for malicious or criminal purposes. It isn't just the obvious use of items such as name and address, date of birth, social security number, and credit card and bank account numbers: Data can be exploited in many subtle ways, so there are excellent reasons to ensure that a high priority is given to the detection and prevention of any data breaches. You'll never successfully guess all the ways that real data can be exploited maliciously, or the ease with which it can be accessed. It would be silly to argue that developers never need access to a copy of the database containing live data. Developers sometimes need to track a bug that can only be replicated on the data from the live database. However, it has to be done in a very restrictive harness. The law makes no distinction between development and production databases when a data breach occurs, so the data has to be held with all appropriate security measures in place. In Europe, the use of personal data for testing requires the explicit consent of the people whose data is being held. There are federal standards such as GLBA, PCI DSS and HIPAA, and most US States have privacy legislation. The task of ensuring compliance and tight security in such circumstances is an expensive and time-consuming overhead. The developer is likely to suffer investigation if a data breach occurs, even if the company manages to stay in business. Ironically, the use of copies of live data isn't usually the most effective way to develop or test your data. Data is usually time-specific and isn't usually current by the time it is used for testing, Existing data doesn't help much for new functionality, and every time the data is refreshed from production, any test data is likely to be overwritten. Also, it is not always going to test all the 'edge' conditions that are likely to flush out bugs. You still have the task of simulating the dynamics of actual usage of the database, and here you have no alternative to creating 'spoofed' data. Because of the complexities of relational data, It used to be that there was no realistic alternative to developing and testing with live data. However, this is no longer the case. Real data can be obfuscated, or it can be created entirely from scratch. The latter process used to be impractical, now that there are plenty of third-party tools to choose from. The process of obfuscation isn't risk free. The process must access the live data, and the success of the obfuscation process has to be carefully monitored. Database data security isn't an exciting topic to you or I, but to a hacker it can be an all-consuming obsession, especially if there is financial or political gain involved. This is not the sort of adversary one would wish for and it is far better to accept, and work with, security restrictions that exist for using live data in database development work, especially when the tools exist to create large realistic database test data that can be better for several aspects of testing.

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  • Normalisation and 'Anima notitia copia' (Soul of the Database)

    - by Phil Factor
    (A Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk) The other day, I was staring  at the sys.syslanguages  table in SQL Server with slightly-raised eyebrows . I’d just been reading Chris Date’s  interesting book ‘SQL and Relational Theory’. He’d made the point that you’re not necessarily doing relational database operations by using a SQL Database product.  The same general point was recently made by Dino Esposito about ASP.NET MVC.  The use of ASP.NET MVC doesn’t guarantee you a good application design: It merely makes it possible to test it. The way I’d describe the sentiment in both cases is ‘you can hit someone over the head with a frying-pan but you can’t call it cooking’. SQL enables you to create relational databases. However,  even if it smells bad, it is no crime to do hideously un-relational things with a SQL Database just so long as it’s necessary and you can tell the difference; not only that but also only if you’re aware of the risks and implications. Naturally, I’ve never knowingly created a database that Codd would have frowned at, but around the edges are interfaces and data feeds I’ve written  that have caused hissy fits amongst the Normalisation fundamentalists. Part of the problem for those who agonise about such things  is the misinterpretation of Atomicity.  An atomic value is one for which, in the strange virtual universe you are creating in your database, you don’t have any interest in any of its component parts.  If you aren’t interested in the electrons, neutrinos,  muons,  or  taus, then  an atom is ..er.. atomic. In the same way, if you are passed a JSON string or XML, and required to store it in a database, then all you need to do is to ask yourself, in your role as Anima notitia copia (Soul of the database) ‘have I any interest in the contents of this item of information?’.  If the answer is ‘No!’, or ‘nequequam! Then it is an atomic value, however complex it may be.  After all, you would never have the urge to store the pixels of images individually, under the misguided idea that these are the atomic values would you?  I would, of course,  ask the ‘Anima notitia copia’ rather than the application developers, since there may be more than one application, and the applications developers may be designing the application in the absence of full domain knowledge, (‘or by the seat of the pants’ as the technical term used to be). If, on the other hand, the answer is ‘sure, and we want to index the XML column’, then we may be in for some heavy XML-shredding sessions to get to store the ‘atomic’ values and ensure future harmony as the application develops. I went back to looking at the sys.syslanguages table. It has a months column with the months in a delimited list January,February,March,April,May,June,July,August,September,October,November,December This is an ordered list. Wicked? I seem to remember that this value, like shortmonths and days, is treated as a ‘thing’. It is merely passed off to an external  C++ routine in order to format a date in a particular language, and never accessed directly within the database. As far as the database is concerned, it is an atomic value.  There is more to normalisation than meets the eye.

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  • How the SPARC T4 Processor Optimizes Throughput Capacity: A Case Study

    - by Ruud
    This white paper demonstrates the architected latency hiding features of Oracle’s UltraSPARC T2+ and SPARC T4 processors That is the first sentence from this technical white paper, but what does it exactly mean? Let's consider a very simple example, the computation of a = b + c. This boils down to the following (pseudo-assembler) instructions that need to be executed: load @b, r1 load @c, r2 add r1,r2,r3 store r3, @a The first two instructions load variables b and c from an address in memory (here symbolized by @b and @c respectively). These values go into registers r1 and r2. The third instruction adds the values in r1 and r2. The result goes into register r3. The fourth instruction stores the contents of r3 into the memory address symbolized by @a. If we're lucky, both b and c are in a nearby cache and the load instructions only take a few processor cycles to execute. That is the good case, but what if b or c, or both, have to come from very far away? Perhaps both of them are in the main memory and then it easily takes hundreds of cycles for the values to arrive in the registers. Meanwhile the processor is doing nothing and simply waits for the data to arrive. Actually, it does something. It burns cycles while waiting. That is a waste of time and energy. Why not use these cycles to execute instructions from another application or thread in case of a parallel program? That is exactly what latency hiding on the SPARC T-Series processors does. It is a hardware feature totally transparent to the user and application. As soon as there is a delay in the execution, the hardware uses these otherwise idle cycles to execute instructions from another process. As a result, the throughput capacity of the system improves because idle cycles are no longer wasted and therefore more jobs can be run per unit of time. This feature has been in the SPARC T-series from the beginning, so why this paper? The difference with previous publications on this topic is in the amount of detail given. How this all works under the hood is fully explained using two example programs. Starting from the assembly language instructions, it is demonstrated in what way these programs execute. To really see what is happening we go down to the processor pipeline level, where the gaps in the execution are, and show in what way these idle cycles are filled by other copies of the same program running simultaneously. Both the SPARC T4 as well as the older UltraSPARC T2+ processor are covered. You may wonder why the UltraSPARC T2+ is included. The focus of this work is on the SPARC T4 processor, but to explain the basic concept of latency hiding at this very low level, we start with the UltraSPARC T2+ processor because it is architecturally a much simpler design. From the single issue, in-order pipelines of this processor we then shift gears and cover how this all works on the much more advanced dual issue, out-of-order architecture of the T4. The analysis and performance experiments have been conducted on both processors. The results depend on the processor, but in all cases the theoretical estimates are confirmed by the experiments. If you're interested to read a lot more about this and find out how things really work under the hood, you can download a copy of the paper here. A paper like this could not have been produced without the help of several other people. I want to thank the co-author of this paper, Jared Smolens, for his very valuable contributions and our highly inspiring discussions. I'm also indebted to Thomas Nau (Ulm University, Germany), Shane Sigler and Mark Woodyard (both at Oracle) for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Karen Perkins (Perkins Technical Writing and Editing) and Rick Ramsey at Oracle were very helpful in providing editorial and publishing assistance.

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  • Sitting Pretty

    - by Phil Factor
    Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk IT Pro newsletter'DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed' I dislike the term 'avatar', when used to describe a portrait photograph. An avatar, in the sense of a picture, is merely the depiction of one's role-play alter-ego, often a ridiculous bronze-age deity. However, professional image is important. The choice and creation of online photos has an effect on the way your message is received and it is important to get that right. It is fine to use that photo of you after ten lagers on holiday in an Ibiza nightclub, but what works on Facebook looks hilarious on LinkedIn. My splendid photograph that I use online was done by a professional photographer at great expense and I've never had the slightest twinge of regret when I remember how much I paid for it. It is me, but a more pensive and dignified edition, oozing trust and wisdom. One gasps at the magical skill that a professional photographer can conjure up, without digital manipulation, to make the best of a derisory noggin (ed: slang for a head). Even if he had offered to depict me as a semi-naked, muscle-bound, sword-wielding hero, I'd have demurred. No, any professional person needs a carefully cultivated image that looks right. I'd never thought of using that profile shot, though I couldn't help noticing the photographer flinch slightly when he first caught sight of my face. There is a problem with using an avatar. The use of a single image doesn't express the appropriate emotion. At the moment, it is weird to see someone with a laughing portrait writing something solemn. A neutral cast to the face, somewhat like a passport photo, is probably the best compromise. Actually, the same is true of a working life in IT. One of the first skills I learned was not to laugh at managers, but, instead, to develop a facial expression that promoted a sense of keenness, energy and respect. Every profession has its own preferred facial cast. A neighbour of mine has the natural gift of a face that displays barely repressed grief. Though he is characteristically cheerful, he earns a remarkable income as a pallbearer. DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed. With an appropriate avatar, you could do away with a lot of the need for 'smilies' to give clues as to the meaning of what you've written on forums and blogs. If you had a set of avatars, showing the full gamut of human emotions expressible in writing: Rage, fear, reproach, joy, ebullience, apprehension, exasperation, dissembly, irony, pathos, euphoria, remorse and so on. It would be quite a drop-down list on forums, but given the vast prairies of space on the average hard drive, who cares? It would cut down on the number of spats in Forums just as long as one picks the right avatar. As an unreconstructed geek, I find it hard to admit to the value of image in the workplace, but it is true. Just as we use professionals to tidy up and order our CVs and job applications, we should employ experts to enhance our professional image. After all you don't perform surgery or dentistry on yourself do you?

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  • Concurrent Affairs

    - by Tony Davis
    I once wrote an editorial, multi-core mania, on the conundrum of ever-increasing numbers of processor cores, but without the concurrent programming techniques to get anywhere near exploiting their performance potential. I came to the.controversial.conclusion that, while the problem loomed for all procedural languages, it was not a big issue for the vast majority of programmers. Two years later, I still think most programmers don't concern themselves overly with this issue, but I do think that's a bigger problem than I originally implied. Firstly, is the performance boost from writing code that can fully exploit all available cores worth the cost of the additional programming complexity? Right now, with quad-core processors that, at best, can make our programs four times faster, the answer is still no for many applications. But what happens in a few years, as the number of cores grows to 100 or even 1000? At this point, it becomes very hard to ignore the potential gains from exploiting concurrency. Possibly, I was optimistic to assume that, by the time we have 100-core processors, and most applications really needed to exploit them, some technology would be around to allow us to do so with relative ease. The ideal solution would be one that allows programmers to forget about the problem, in much the same way that garbage collection removed the need to worry too much about memory allocation. From all I can find on the topic, though, there is only a remote likelihood that we'll ever have a compiler that takes a program written in a single-threaded style and "auto-magically" converts it into an efficient, correct, multi-threaded program. At the same time, it seems clear that what is currently the most common solution, multi-threaded programming with shared memory, is unsustainable. As soon as a piece of state can be changed by a different thread of execution, the potential number of execution paths through your program grows exponentially with the number of threads. If you have two threads, each executing n instructions, then there are 2^n possible "interleavings" of those instructions. Of course, many of those interleavings will have identical behavior, but several won't. Not only does this make understanding how a program works an order of magnitude harder, but it will also result in irreproducible, non-deterministic, bugs. And of course, the problem will be many times worse when you have a hundred or a thousand threads. So what is the answer? All of the possible alternatives require a change in the way we write programs and, currently, seem to be plagued by performance issues. Software transactional memory (STM) applies the ideas of database transactions, and optimistic concurrency control, to memory. However, working out how to break down your program into sufficiently small transactions, so as to avoid contention issues, isn't easy. Another approach is concurrency with actors, where instead of having threads share memory, each thread runs in complete isolation, and communicates with others by passing messages. It simplifies concurrent programs but still has performance issues, if the threads need to operate on the same large piece of data. There are doubtless other possible solutions that I haven't mentioned, and I would love to know to what extent you, as a developer, are considering the problem of multi-core concurrency, what solution you currently favor, and why. Cheers, Tony.

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  • Will IntelliTrace(tm) (historical debugging) be available for unmanaged c++ in future versions of Vi

    - by Tim
    I love the idea of historical debugging in VS 2010. However, I am really disappointed that unmanaged C++ is left out. IntelliTrace supports debugging Visual Basic and C# applications that use .NET version 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, or 4. You can debug most applications, including applications that were created by using ASP.NET, Windows Forms, WPF, Windows Workflow, and WCF. IntelliTrace does not support debugging C++, script, or other languages. Debugging of F# applications is supported on an experimental basis. (editorial) [This is really poor support in my opinion. .NET is less in need of this assistance than unmanaged c++. I an getting a little tired of the status of plain old C++ and its second-class status in the MS tools world. Yes, I realize it is probably WAAY easier to implement this with .NET and MS are pushing .NET as the future, and yes, I know that C++ is an "old" language, but that does not diminish the fact that there are lots of C++ apps out there and there will continue to be more apps built with C++. I sincerely hope MS has not dropped C++ as a supported developer tool/language- that would be a shame.] Does anyone know if there are plans for it to support C++?

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