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• Handy SQL Server Functions Series (HSSFS) Part 2.0 - Prelude to Parsing Patterns Properly

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  In Part 1 of the series I wrote about 2 lesser-known and somewhat undocumented functions. In this part, I'm going to cover some familiar string functions like Substring(), Parsename(), Patindex(), and Charindex() and delve into their strengths and weaknesses. I'm also splitting this part up into sub-parts to help focus on a particular technique and/or problem with the technique, hence the Part 2.0. Consider this a composite post, or com-post, if you will. (It may just turn out to be a pile of sh_t after all) I'll be using a contrived example, perhaps the most frustratingly useful, or usefully frustrating, function in SQL Server: @@VERSION. Contrived, because there are better ways to get the information (which I'll cover later); frustrating, because of the way Microsoft formatted the value; and useful because it does have 1 or 2 bits of information not found elsewhere. First let's take a look at the output of @@VERSION: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2 2010 15:53:02 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 <X86> (Build 2600: Service Pack 3) There are 4 lines, with lines 2-4 indented with a tab character.  In case your browser (or this blog software) doesn't show it correctly, I gave each line a different color.  While this PRINTs nicely, if you SELECT @@VERSION in grid mode it all runs together because it ignores carriage return/line feed (CR/LF) characters.  Not fatal, but annoying. Note that @@VERSION's output will vary depending on edition and version of SQL Server, and also the OS it's installed on.  Despite the differences, the output is laid out the same way and the relevant pieces are in the same order. I'll be using the following view for Parts 2.1 onward, so we have a nice collection of @@VERSION information: create view version(SQLVersion,VersionString) AS ( select 2000, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 8.00.2055 (Intel X86) Dec 16 2008 19:46:53 Copyright (c) 1988-2003 Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 (Build 2600: Service Pack 3)' union all select 2005, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.4053.00 (Intel X86) May 26 2009 14:24:20 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 (Build 2600: Service Pack 3)' union all select 2008, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2 2010 15:53:02 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 <X86> (Build 2600: Service Pack 3)' union all select 2005, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.3080.00 (Intel X86) Sep 6 2009 01:43:32 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2)' union all select 2008, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 2010 15:48:46 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7600: ) (Hypervisor)' union all select 2008, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 2010 15:48:46 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Express Edition with Advanced Services (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7600: ) (Hypervisor)' ) Feel free to add your own @@VERSION info if it's not already there. In Part 2.1 I'll focus on extracting the SQL Server version number (10.50.1600.1 in first example) and the Edition (Developer), but will have a solution that works with all versions.  Stay tuned!

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• Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer

  - by dsimcha

  I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed by people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify: (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives. (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation. (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and "real", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays. (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code. (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible. (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C. (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages. (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding. (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type. (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures. (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell. (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose langauges, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have one script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to "clean up" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction.

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• How-to enable user session time out warning (JDev 11.1.1.4)

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.1.4 contains a new session time-out warning functionality. Quoting the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework11g Release 1 (11.1.1.4.0) documentatiom http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/web.1111/b31973/ap_config.htm#BABFIGBA "When a request is sent to the server, a session timeout value is written to the page and the session timeout warning interval is defined by the context parameter  oracle.adf.view.rich.sessionHandling.WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT. The user is given the opportunity to extend the session in a warning dialog, and a notification is sent when the session has expired and the page is refreshed. Depending on the application security configuration, the user may be redirected to the log in page when the session expires. Use the oracle.adf.view.rich.sessionHandling.WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT context parameter to set the number of seconds prior to the session time out when a warning dialog is displayed. If the value of WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT is less than 120 seconds, if client state saving is used for the page, or if the session has been invalidated, the feature is disabled. The session time-out value it taken directly from the session. Example A-3 shows configuration of the warning dialog to display at 120 seconds before the time-out of the session. Example A-3 Configuration of Session Time-out Warning <context-param>    <param-name>        oracle.adf.view.rich.sessionHandling.WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT   </param-name>    <param-value>120</param-value> </context-param> The default value of this parameter is 120 seconds. To prevent notification of the user too frequently when the session time-out is set too short, the actual value of WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT is determined dynamically, where the session time-out must be more than 2 minutes or the feature is disabled.

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• What is the right way to process inconsistent data files?

  - by Tahabi

  I'm working at a company that uses Excel files to store product data, specifically, test results from products before they are shipped out. There are a few thousand spreadsheets with anywhere from 50-100 relevant data points per file. Over the years, the schema for the spreadsheets has changed significantly, but not unidirectionally - in the sense that, changes often get reverted and then re-added in the space of a few dozen to few hundred files. My project is to convert about 8000 of these spreadsheets into a database that can be queried. I'm using MongoDB to deal with the inconsistency in the data, and Python. My question is, what is the "right" or canonical way to deal with the huge variance in my source files? I've written a data structure which stores the data I want for the latest template, which will be the final template used going forward, but that only helps for a few hundred files historically. Brute-forcing a solution would mean writing similar data structures for each version/template - which means potentially writing hundreds of schemas with dozens of fields each. This seems very inefficient, especially when sometimes a change in the template is as little as moving a single line of data one row down or splitting what used to be one data field into two data fields. A slightly more elegant solution I have in mind would be writing schemas for all the variants I can find for pre-defined groups in the source files, and then writing a function to match a particular series of files with a series of variants that matches that set of files. This is because, more often that not, most of the file will remain consistent over a long period, only marred by one or two errant sections, but inside the period, which section is inconsistent, is inconsistent. For example, say a file has four sections with three data fields, which is represented by four Python dictionaries with three keys each. For files 7000-7250, sections 1-3 will be consistent, but section 4 will be shifted one row down. For files 7251-7500, 1-3 are consistent, section 4 is one row down, but a section five appears. For files 7501-7635, sections 1 and 3 will be consistent, but section 2 will have five data fields instead of three, section five disappears, and section 4 is still shifted down one row. For files 7636-7800, section 1 is consistent, section 4 gets shifted back up, section 2 returns to three cells, but section 3 is removed entirely. Files 7800-8000 have everything in order. The proposed function would take the file number and match it to a dictionary representing the data mappings for different variants of each section. For example, a section_four_variants dictionary might have two members, one for the shifted-down version, and one for the normal version, a section_two_variants might have three and five field members, etc. The script would then read the matchings, load the correct mapping, extract the data, and insert it into the database. Is this an accepted/right way to go about solving this problem? Should I structure things differently? I don't know what to search Google for either to see what other solutions might be, though I believe the problem lies in the domain of ETL processing. I also have no formal CS training aside from what I've taught myself over the years. If this is not the right forum for this question, please tell me where to move it, if at all. Any help is most appreciated. Thank you.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 01, 2010 -- #874

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Alan Beasley and Michael Washington, Miroslav Miroslavov, Max Paulousky, Teresa and Ronald Burger, Laurent Duveau, Tim Heuer, Jeff Brand, Mike Snow, and John Papa. Shoutouts: To pay homage to the Advanced Options button in Expression Blend, Adam Kinney posted: Expression Blend Advanced Options square wallpaper SilverLaw stood his drag and drop ripple on it's head for this one: Silver Soccer - A Case Study for the Flexible Surface Effect (Silverlight 4) From SilverlightCream.com: Expression Blend DataStore - A Powerful Tool For Designers Michael Washington dug into the documentation and with some Microsoft assistance has figured out how to use the SetDataStoreAction in SketchFlow... good tutorial and a game to demonstrate it's use. Windows Phone 7 View Model Style Video Player Alan Beasley and Michael Washington teamed up again to produce a ViewModel-Style Video Player for WP7 ... very nice interface I might add... very detailed tutorial and all the code... oh, and did you notice it uses MVVMLight... on WP7? ... just thought I'd mention that :) Navigation in 3D world of 2D objects In part 7 of the CompleteIT code explenation, Miroslav Miroslavov is discussing some of the very cool animation they did... 3D, moving camera... cool stuff! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his Silverlight 4 and SEO series up. In part 2 he's discussing sitemaps and html content providing. He also has good links showing where to submit your sitemaps and information. Mousin’ down the PathListBox Teresa and Ronald Burger (not sure which) has a post up about the PathListBox and how they drew the path that they ended up using, and the code used to enable animation. Dynamically apply and change Theme with the Silverlight Toolkit We've all had fun playing with themes, but Laurent Duveau has an example up of letting your users change the theme at run-time. Microsoft Translator client library for Silverlight Tim Heuer has been playing with the Microsoft Translator for Silverlight and he has a "Works on My Machine" license on what he's making available .. but considering his access to resources... I'd say go for it :) Custom Per-Page Transitions in Windows Phone 7 Jeff Brand has a follow-on to his other WP7 post about page transitions and is now discussing per-page transitions Silverlight Tip of the Day #26 – Changing the Startup Class Mike Snow's latest 'tip' is a little more involved than a tip ... changing the startup class and actually removing (in his example), the page and app classes... code and xaml! I've seen this before but never explained as clean... fun stuff. Behaviors in Blend 4 (Silverlight TV #30) Episode 30 of Silverlight TV (now a tag at Silverlight Cream) finds John Papa talking to Adam Kinney about Behaviors in Blend 4... not only using them but creating a custom one. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• C# 5 Async, Part 2: Asynchrony Today

  - by Reed

  The .NET Framework has always supported asynchronous operations.  However, different mechanisms for supporting exist throughout the framework.  While there are at least three separate asynchronous patterns used through the framework, only the latest is directly usable with the new Visual Studio Async CTP.  Before delving into details on the new features, I will talk about existing asynchronous code, and demonstrate how to adapt it for use with the new pattern. The first asynchronous pattern used in the .NET framework was the Asynchronous Programming Model (APM).  This pattern was based around callbacks.  A method is used to start the operation.  It typically is named as BeginSomeOperation.  This method is passed a callback defined as an AsyncCallback, and returns an object that implements IAsyncResult.  Later, the IAsyncResult is used in a call to a method named EndSomeOperation, which blocks until completion and returns the value normally directly returned from the synchronous version of the operation.  Often, the EndSomeOperation call would be called from the callback function passed, which allows you to write code that never blocks. While this pattern works perfectly to prevent blocking, it can make quite confusing code, and be difficult to implement.  For example, the sample code provided for FileStream’s BeginRead/EndRead methods is not simple to understand.  In addition, implementing your own asynchronous methods requires creating an entire class just to implement the IAsyncResult. Given the complexity of the APM, other options have been introduced in later versions of the framework.  The next major pattern introduced was the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern (EAP).  This provides a simpler pattern for asynchronous operations.  It works by providing a method typically named SomeOperationAsync, which signals its completion via an event typically named SomeOperationCompleted. The EAP provides a simpler model for asynchronous programming.  It is much easier to understand and use, and far simpler to implement.  Instead of requiring a custom class and callbacks, the standard event mechanism in C# is used directly.  For example, the WebClient class uses this extensively.  A method is used, such as DownloadDataAsync, and the results are returned via the DownloadDataCompleted event. While the EAP is far simpler to understand and use than the APM, it is still not ideal.  By separating your code into method calls and event handlers, the logic of your program gets more complex.  It also typically loses the ability to block until the result is received, which is often useful.  Blocking often requires writing the code to block by hand, which is error prone and adds complexity. As a result, .NET 4 introduced a third major pattern for asynchronous programming.  The Task<T> class introduced a new, simpler concept for asynchrony.  Task and Task<T> effectively represent an operation that will complete at some point in the future.  This is a perfect model for thinking about asynchronous code, and is the preferred model for all new code going forward.  Task and Task<T> provide all of the advantages of both the APM and the EAP models – you have the ability to block on results (via Task.Wait() or Task<T>.Result), and you can stay completely asynchronous via the use of Task Continuations.  In addition, the Task class provides a new model for task composition and error and cancelation handling.  This is a far superior option to the previous asynchronous patterns. The Visual Studio Async CTP extends the Task based asynchronous model, allowing it to be used in a much simpler manner.  However, it requires the use of Task and Task<T> for all operations.

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• Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

  - by Chris Smith

  I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

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• Recent improvements in Console Performance

  - by loren.konkus

  Recently, the WebLogic Server development and support organizations have worked with a number of customers to quantify and improve the performance of the Administration Console in large, distributed configurations where there is significant latency in the communications between the administration server and managed servers. These improvements fall into two categories: Constraining the amount of time that the Console stalls waiting for communication Reducing and streamlining the amount of data required for an update A few releases ago, we added support for a configurable domain-wide mbean "Invocation Timeout" value on the Console's configuration: general, advanced section for a domain. The default value for this setting is 0, which means wait indefinitely and was chosen for compatibility with the behavior of previous releases. This configuration setting applies to all mbean communications between the admin server and managed servers, and is the first line of defense against being blocked by a stalled or completely overloaded managed server. Each site should choose an appropriate timeout value for their environment and network latency. In the next release of WebLogic Server, we've added an additional console preference, "Management Operation Timeout", to the Console's shared preference page. This setting further constrains how long certain console pages will wait for slowly responding servers before returning partial results. While not all Console pages support this yet, key pages such as the Servers Configuration and Control table pages and the Deployments Control pages have been updated to support this. For example, if a user requests a Servers Table page and a Management Operation Timeout occurs, the table is displayed with both local configuration and remote runtime information from the responding managed servers and only local configuration information for servers that did not yet respond. This means that a troublesome managed server does not impede your ability to manage your domain using the Console. To support these changes, these Console pages have been re-written to use the Work Management feature of WebLogic Server to interact with each server or deployment concurrently, which further improves the responsiveness of these pages. The basic algorithm for these pages is: For each configuration mbean (ie, Servers) populate rows with configuration attributes from the fast, local mbean server Find a WorkManager For each server, Create a Work instance to obtain runtime mbean attributes for the server Schedule Work instance in the WorkManager Call WorkManager.waitForAll to wait WorkItems to finish, constrained by Management Operation Timeout For each WorkItem, if the runtime information obtained was not complete, add a message indicating which server has incomplete data Display collected data in table In addition to these changes to constrain how long the console waits for communication, a number of other changes have been made to reduce the amount and scope of managed server interactions for key pages. For example, in previous releases the Deployments Control table looked at the status of a deployment on every managed server, even those servers that the deployment was not currently targeted on. (This was done to handle an edge case where a deployment's target configuration was changed while it remained running on previously targeted servers.) We decided supporting that edge case did not warrant the performance impact for all, and instead only look at the status of a deployment on the servers it is targeted to. Comprehensive status continues to be available if a user clicks on the 'status' field for a deployment. Finally, changes have been made to the System Status portlet to reduce its impact on Console page display times. Obtaining health information for this display requires several mbean interactions with managed servers. In previous releases, this mbean interaction occurred with every display, and any delay or impediment in these interactions was reflected in the display time for every page. To reduce this impact, we've made several changes in this portlet: Using Work Management to obtain health concurrently Applying the operation timeout configuration to constrain how long we will wait Caching health information to reduce the cost during rapid navigation from page to page and only obtaining new health information if the previous information is over 30 seconds old. Eliminating heath collection if this portlet is minimized. Together, these Console changes have resulted in significant performance improvements for the customers with large configurations and high latency that we have worked with during their development, and some lesser performance improvements for those with small configurations and very fast networks. These changes will be included in the 11g Rel 1 patch set 2 (10.3.3.0) release of WebLogic Server.

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• Is inconsistent formatting a sign of a sloppy programmer?

  - by dreza

  I understand that everyone has their own style of programming and that you should be able to read other people's styles and accept it for what it is. However, would one be considered a sloppy programmer if one's style of coding was inconsistent across whatever standard they were working against? Some example of inconsistencies might be: Sometimes naming private variables with _ and sometimes not Sometimes having varying indentations within code blocks Not aligning braces up i.e. same column if using start using new line style Spacing not always consistent around operators i.e. p=p+1, p+=1 vs other times p =p+1 or p = p + 1 etc Is this even something that as a programmer I should be concerned with addressing? Or is it such a minor nit picking thing that at the end of the day I should just not worry about it and worry about what the end user sees and whether the code works rather than how it looks while working? Is it sloppy programming or just over obsessive nit picking? EDIT: After some excellent comments I realized I may have left out some information in my question. This question came about after reviewing another colleagues code check-in and noticing some of these things and then realizing that I've seen these kind of in-consistencies in previous check-ins. It then got me thinking about my code and whether I do the same things and noticed that I typically don't etc I'm not suggesting his technique is either bad or good in this question or whether his way of doing things is right or wrong. EDIT: To answer some queries to some more good feed back. The specific instance this review occurred in was using Visual Studio 2010 and programming in c# so I don't think the editor would cause any issues. In fact it should only help I would hope. Sorry if I left that piece of info out and it effects any current answers. I was trying to be a bit more generic in understanding if this would be considered sloppy etc. And to add an even more specific example of a code piece I saw during reading of the check-in: foreach(var block in Blocks) { // .. some other code in here foreach(var movement in movements) { movement.Moved.Zero(); } // the un-formatted brace } Such a minor thing I know, but many small things add up(???), and I did have to double glance at the code at the time to see where everything lined up I guess. Please note this code was formatted appropriately before this check-in. EDIT: After reading some great answers and varying thoughts, the summary I've taken from this was. It's not necessarily a sign of a sloppy programmer however as programmers we have a duty (to ourselves and other programmers) to make the code as readable as possible to assist in further ongoing development. However it can hint at inadequacies which is something that is only possible to review on a case by case (person by person) basis. There are many reasons why this might occur. They should be taken in context and worked through with the person/people involved if reasonable. We have a duty to try and help all programmers become better programmers! In the good old days when development was done using good old notepad (or other simple text editing tool) this occurred much more frequently. However we have the assistance of modern IDE's now so although we shouldn't necessarily become OTT about this, it should still probably be addressed to some degree. We as programmers vary in our standards, styles and approaches to solutions. However it seems that in general we all take PRIDE in our work and as a trait it is something that can stand programmers apart. Making something to the best of our abilities both internal (code) and external (end user result) goes along way to giving us that big fat pat on the back that we may not go looking for but swells our heart with pride. And finally to quote CrazyEddie from his post below. Don't sweat the small stuff

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• Thoughts on my new template language/HTML generator?

  - by Ralph

  I guess I should have pre-faced this with: Yes, I know there is no need for a new templating language, but I want to make a new one anyway, because I'm a fool. That aside, how can I improve my language: Let's start with an example: using "html5" using "extratags" html { head { title "Ordering Notice" jsinclude "jquery.js" } body { h1 "Ordering Notice" p "Dear @name," p "Thanks for placing your order with @company. It's scheduled to ship on {@ship_date|dateformat}." p "Here are the items you've ordered:" table { tr { th "name" th "price" } for(@item in @item_list) { tr { td @item.name td @item.price } } } if(@ordered_warranty) p "Your warranty information will be included in the packaging." p(class="footer") { "Sincerely," br @company } } } The "using" keyword indicates which tags to use. "html5" might include all the html5 standard tags, but your tags names wouldn't have to be based on their HTML counter-parts at all if you didn't want to. The "extratags" library for example might add an extra tag, called "jsinclude" which gets replaced with something like <script type="text/javascript" src="@content"></script> Tags can be optionally be followed by an opening brace. They will automatically be closed at the closing brace. If no brace is used, they will be closed after taking one element. Variables are prefixed with the @ symbol. They may be used inside double-quoted strings. I think I'll use single-quotes to indicate "no variable substitution" like PHP does. Filter functions can be applied to variables like @variable|filter. Arguments can be passed to the filter @variable|filter:@arg1,arg2="y" Attributes can be passed to tags by including them in (), like p(class="classname"). You will also be able to include partial templates like: for(@item in @item_list) include("item_partial", item=@item) Something like that I'm thinking. The first argument will be the name of the template file, and subsequent ones will be named arguments where @item gets the variable name "item" inside that template. I also want to have a collection version like RoR has, so you don't even have to write the loop. Thoughts on this and exact syntax would be helpful :) Some questions: Which symbol should I use to prefix variables? @ (like Razor), $ (like PHP), or something else? Should the @ symbol be necessary in "for" and "if" statements? It's kind of implied that those are variables. Tags and controls (like if,for) presently have the exact same syntax. Should I do something to differentiate the two? If so, what? This would make it more clear that the "tag" isn't behaving like just a normal tag that will get replaced with content, but controls the flow. Also, it would allow name-reuse. Do you like the attribute syntax? (round brackets) How should I do template inheritance/layouts? In Django, the first line of the file has to include the layout file, and then you delimit blocks of code which get stuffed into that layout. In CakePHP, it's kind of backwards, you specify the layout in the controller.view function, the layout gets a special $content_for_layout variable, and then the entire template gets stuffed into that, and you don't need to delimit any blocks of code. I guess Django's is a little more powerful because you can have multiple code blocks, but it makes your templates more verbose... trying to decide what approach to take Filtered variables inside quotes: "xxx {@var|filter} yyy" "xxx @{var|filter} yyy" "xxx @var|filter yyy" i.e, @ inside, @ outside, or no braces at all. I think no-braces might cause problems, especially when you try adding arguments, like @var|filter:arg="x", then the quotes would get confused. But perhaps a braceless version could work for when there are no quotes...? Still, which option for braces, first or second? I think the first one might be better because then we're consistent... the @ is always nudged up against the variable. I'll add more questions in a few minutes, once I get some feedback.

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database – Day 14 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (Yesterday’s post) Document Databases (Yesterday’s post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Today’s post) Spatial Databases (Today’s post) Columnar Databases  Relational Database is a row store database or a row oriented database. Columnar databases are column oriented or column store databases. As we discussed earlier in Big Data we have different kinds of data and we need to store different kinds of data in the database. When we have columnar database it is very easy to do so as we can just add a new column to the columnar database. HBase is one of the most popular columnar databases. It uses Hadoop file system and MapReduce for its core data storage. However, remember this is not a good solution for every application. This is particularly good for the database where there is high volume incremental data is gathered and processed. Graph Databases For a highly interconnected data it is suitable to use Graph Database. This database has node relationship structure. Nodes and relationships contain a Key Value Pair where data is stored. The major advantage of this database is that it supports faster navigation among various relationships. For example, Facebook uses a graph database to list and demonstrate various relationships between users. Neo4J is one of the most popular open source graph database. One of the major dis-advantage of the Graph Database is that it is not possible to self-reference (self joins in the RDBMS terms) and there might be real world scenarios where this might be required and graph database does not support it. Spatial Databases  We all use Foursquare, Google+ as well Facebook Check-ins for location aware check-ins. All the location aware applications figure out the position of the phone with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS). Think about it, so many different users at different location in the world and checking-in all together. Additionally, the applications now feature reach and users are demanding more and more information from them, for example like movies, coffee shop or places see. They are all running with the help of Spatial Databases. Spatial data are standardize by the Open Geospatial Consortium known as OGC. Spatial data helps answering many interesting questions like “Distance between two locations, area of interesting places etc.” When we think of it, it is very clear that handing spatial data and returning meaningful result is one big task when there are millions of users moving dynamically from one place to another place & requesting various spatial information. PostGIS/OpenGIS suite is very popular spatial database. It runs as a layer implementation on the RDBMS PostgreSQL. This makes it totally unique as it offers best from both the worlds. Courtesy: mushroom network Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Hive. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SSIS Technique to Remove/Skip Trailer and/or Bad Data Row in a Flat File

  - by Compudicted

  I noticed that the question on how to skip or bypass a trailer record or a badly formatted/empty row in a SSIS package keeps coming back on the MSDN SSIS Forum. I tried to figure out the reason why and after an extensive search inside the forum and outside it on the entire Web (using several search engines) I indeed found that it seems even thought there is a number of posts and articles on the topic none of them are employing the simplest and the most efficient technique. When I say efficient I mean the shortest time to solution for the fellow developers. OK, enough talk. Let’s face the problem: Typically a flat file (e.g. a comma delimited/CSV) needs to be processed (loaded into a database in most cases really). Oftentimes, such an input file is produced by some sort of an out of control, 3-rd party solution and would come in with some garbage characters and/or even malformed/miss-formatted rows. One such example could be this imaginary file: As you can see several rows have no data and there is an occasional garbage character (1, in this example on row #7). Our task is to produce a clean file that will only capture the meaningful data rows. As an aside, our output/target may be a database table, but for the purpose of this exercise we will simply re-format the source. Let’s outline our course of action to start off: Will use SSIS 2005 to create a DFT; The DFT will use a Flat File Source to our input [bad] flat file; We will use a Conditional Split to process the bad input file; and finally Dump the resulting data to a new [clean] file. Well, only four steps, let’s see if it is too much of work. 1: Start the BIDS and add a DFT to the Control Flow designer (I named it Process Dirty File DFT): 2, and 3: I had added the data viewer to just see what I am getting, alas, surprisingly the data issues were not seen it:   What really is the key in the approach it is to properly set the Conditional Split Transformation. Visually it is: and specifically its SSIS Expression LEN([After CS Column 0]) > 1 The point is to employ the right Boolean expression (yes, the Conditional Split accepts only Boolean conditions). For the sake of this post I re-named the Output Name “No Empty Rows”, but by default it will be named Case 1 (remember to drag your first column into the expression area)! You can close your Conditional Split now. The next part will be crucial – consuming the output of our Conditional Split. Last step - #4: Add a Flat File Destination or any other one you need. Click on the Conditional Split and choose the green arrow to drop onto the target. When you do so make sure you choose the No Empty Rows output and NOT the Conditional Split Default Output. Make the necessary mappings. At this point your package must look like: As the last step will run our package to examine the produced output file. F5: and… it looks great!

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• #OOW 2012: Big Data and The Social Revolution

  - by Eric Bezille

  As what was saying Cognizant CSO Malcolm Frank about the "Futur of Work", and how the Business should prepare in the face of the new generation  not only of devices and "internet of things" but also due to their users ("The Millennials"), moving from "consumers" to "prosumers" :  we are at a turning point today which is bringing us to the next IT Architecture Wave. So this is no more just about putting Big Data, Social Networks and Customer Experience (CxM) on top of old existing processes, it is about embracing the next curve, by identifying what processes need to be improve, but also and more importantly what processes are obsolete and need to be get ride of, and new processes put in place. It is about managing both the hierarchical and structured Enterprise and its social connections and influencers inside and outside of the Enterprise. And this does apply everywhere, up to the Utilities and Smart Grids, where it is no more just about delivering (faster) the same old 300 reports that have grown over time with those new technologies but to understand what need to be looked at, in real-time, down to an hand full relevant reports with the KPI relevant to the business. It is about how IT can anticipate the next wave, and is able to answers Business questions, and give those capabilities in real-time right at the hand of the decision makers... This is the turning curve, where IT is really moving from the past decade "Cost Center" to "Value for the Business", as Corporate Stakeholders will be able to touch the value directly at the tip of their fingers. It is all about making Data Driven Strategic decisions, encompassed and enriched by ALL the Data, and connected to customers/prosumers influencers. This brings to stakeholders the ability to make informed decisions on question like : “What would be the best Olympic Gold winner to represent my automotive brand ?”... in a few clicks and in real-time, based on social media analysis (twitter, Facebook, Google+...) and connections link to my Enterprise data. A true example demonstrated by Larry Ellison in real-time during his yesterday’s key notes, where “Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together” is not only about extreme performances but also solutions that Business can touch thanks to well integrated Customer eXperience Management and Social Networking : bringing the capabilities to IT to move to the IT Architecture Next wave. An example, illustrated also todays in 2 others sessions, that I had the opportunity to attend. The first session bringing the “Internet of Things” in Oil&Gaz into actionable decisions thanks to Complex Event Processing capturing sensors data with the ready to run IT infrastructure leveraging Exalogic for the CEP side, Exadata for the enrich datasets and Exalytics to provide the informed decision interface up to end-user. The second session showing Real Time Decision engine in action for ACCOR hotels, with Eric Wyttynck, VP eCommerce, and his Technical Director Pascal Massenet. I have to close my post here, as I have to go to run our practical hands-on lab, cooked with Olivier Canonge, Christophe Pauliat and Simon Coter, illustrating in practice the Oracle Infrastructure Private Cloud recently announced last Sunday by Larry, and developed through many examples this morning by John Folwer. John also announced today Solaris 11.1 with a range of network innovation and virtualization at the OS level, as well as many optimizations for applications, like for Oracle RAC, with the introduction of the lock manager inside Solaris Kernel. Last but not least, he introduced Xsigo Datacenter Fabric for highly simplified networks and storage virtualization for your Cloud Infrastructure. Hoping you will get ready to jump on the next wave, we are here to help...

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• forEach and Facelets - a bugfarm just waiting for harvest

  - by Duncan Mills

  An issue that I've encountered before and saw again today seems worthy of a little write-up. It's all to do with a subtle yet highly important difference in behaviour between JSF 2 running with JSP and running on Facelets (.jsf pages). The incident I saw today can be seen as a report on the ADF EMG bugzilla (Issue 53) and in a blog posting by Ulrich Gerkmann-Bartels who reported the issue to the EMG. Ulrich's issue nicely shows how tricky this particular gochya can be. On the surface, the problem is squarely the fault of MDS but underneath MDS is, in fact, innocent. To summarize the problem in a simpler testcase than Ulrich's example, here's a simple fragment of code: <af:forEach var="item" items="#{itemList.items}"> <af:commandLink id="cl1" text="#{item.label}" action="#{item.doAction}"  partialSubmit="true"/> </af:forEach> Looks innocent enough right? We see a bunch of links printed out, great. The issue here though is the id attribute. Logically you can kind of see the problem. The forEach loop is creating (presumably) multiple instances of the commandLink, but only one id is specified - cl1. We know that IDs have to be unique within a JSF component tree, so that must be a bad thing?  The problem is that JSF under JSP implements some hacks when the component tree is generated to transparently fix this problem for you. Behind the scenes it ensures that each instance really does have a unique id. Really nice of it to do so, thank you very much. However, (you could see this coming), the same is not true when running with Facelets  (this is under 11.1.2.n)  in that case, what you put for the id is what you get, and JSF does not mess around in the background for you. So you end up with a component tree that contains duplicate ids which are only created at runtime.  So subtle chaos can ensue.  The symptoms are wide and varied, from something pretty obscure such as the combination Ulrich uncovered, to something as frustrating as your ActionListener just not being triggered. And yes I've wasted hours on just such an issue.  The Solution  Once you're aware of this one it's really simple to fix it, there are two options: Remove the id attribute on components that will cause some kind of submission within the forEach loop altogether and let JSF do the right thing in generating them. Then you'll be assured of uniqueness. Use the var attribute of the loop to generate a unique id for each child instance.  for example in the above case: <af:commandLink id="cl1_#{item.index}" ... />.  So one to watch out for in your upgrades to JSF 2 and one perhaps, for your coding standards today to prepare you for. For completeness, here's the reference to the underlying JSF issue that's at the heart of this: JAVASERVERFACES-1527

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• Azure Mobile Services: lessons learned

  - by svdoever

  When I first started using Azure Mobile Services I thought of it as a nice way to: authenticate my users - login using Twitter, Google, Facebook, Windows Live create tables, and use the client code to create the columns in the table because that is not possible in the Azure Mobile Services UI run some Javascript code on the table crud actions (Insert, Update, Delete, Read) schedule a Javascript to run any 15 or more minutes I had no idea of the magic that was happening inside… where is the data stored? Is it a kind of big table, are relationships between tables possible? those Javascripts on the table crud actions, is that interpreted, what is that exactly? After working for some time with Azure Mobile Services I became a lot wiser: Those tables are just normal tables in an Azure SQL Server 2012 Creating the table columns through client code sucks, at least from my Javascript code, because the columns are deducted from the sent JSON data, and a datetime field is sent as string in JSON, so a string type column is created instead of a datetime column You can connect with SQL Management Studio to the Azure SQL Server, and although you can’t manage your columns through the SQL Management Studio UI, it is possible to just run SQL scripts to drop and create tables and indices When you create a table through SQL script, add the table with the same name in the Azure Mobile Services UI to hook it up and be able to access the table through the provided abstraction layer You can also go to the SQL Database through the Azure Mobile Services UI, and from there get in a web based SQL management studio where you can create columns and manage your data The table crud scripts and the scheduler scripts are full blown node.js scripts, introducing a lot of power with great performance The web based script editor is really powerful, I do most of my editing currently in the editor which has syntax highlighting and code completing. While editing the code JsHint is used for script validation. The documentation on Azure Mobile Services is… suboptimal. It is such a pity that there is no way to comment on it so the community could fill in the missing holes, like which node modules are already loaded, and which modules are available on Azure Mobile Services. Soon I was hacking away on Azure Mobile Services, creating my own database tables through script, and abusing the read script of an empty table named query to implement my own set of “services”. The latest updates to Azure Mobile Services described in the following posts added some great new features like creating web API’s, use shared code from your scripts, command line tools for managing Azure Mobile Services (upload and download scripts for example), support for node modules and git support: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/06/14/windows-azure-major-updates-for-mobile-backend-development.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/carlosfigueira/archive/2013/06/14/custom-apis-in-azure-mobile-services.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/carlosfigueira/archive/2013/06/19/custom-api-in-azure-mobile-services-client-sdks.aspx In the mean time I rewrote all my “service-like” table scripts to API scripts, which works like a breeze. Bad thing with the current state of Azure Mobile Services is that the git support is not working if you are a co-administrator of your Azure subscription, and not and administrator (as in my case). Another bad thing is that Cross Origin Request Sharing (CORS) is not supported for the API yet, so no go yet from the browser client for API’s, which is my case. See http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/2b79c5ea-d187-4c2b-823a-3f3e0559829d/known-limitations-for-source-control-and-custom-api-features for more on these and other limitations. In his talk at Build 2013 Josh Twist showed that there is a work-around for accessing shared script code from the table scripts as well (another limitation mentioned in the post above). I could not find that code in the Votabl2 code example from the presentation at https://github.com/joshtwist/votabl2, but we can grab it from the presentation when it comes online on Channel9. By the way: you can always express your needs and ideas at http://mobileservices.uservoice.com, that’s the place they are listening to (I hope!).

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• SQL SERVER – Renaming Index – Index Naming Conventions

  - by pinaldave

  If you are regular reader of this blog, you must be aware of that there are two kinds of blog posts 1) I share what I learn recently 2) I share what I learn and request your participation. Today’s blog post is where I need your opinion to make this blog post a good reference for future. Background Story Recently I came across system where users have changed the name of the few of the table to match their new standard naming convention. The name of the table should be self explanatory and they should have explain their purpose without either opening it or reading documentations. Well, not every time this is possible but again this should be the goal of any database modeler. Well, I no way encourage the name of the tables to be too long like ‘ContainsDetailsofNewInvoices’. May be the name of the table should be ‘Invoices’ and table should contain a column with New/Processed bit filed to indicate if the invoice is processed or not (if necessary). Coming back to original story, the database had several tables of which the name were changed. Story Continues… To continue the story let me take simple example. There was a table with the name  ’ReceivedInvoices’, it was changed to new name as ‘TblInvoices’. As per their new naming standard they had to prefix every talbe with the words ‘Tbl’ and prefix every view with the letters ‘Vw’. Personally I do not see any need of the prefix but again, that issue is not here to discuss.  Now after changing the name of the table they faced very interesting situation. They had few indexes on the table which had name of the table. Let us take an example. Old Name of Table: ReceivedInvoice Old Name of Index: Index_ReceivedInvoice1 Here is the new names New Name of Table: TblInvoices New Name of Index: ??? Well, their dilemma was what should be the new naming convention of the Indexes. Here is a quick proposal of the Index naming convention. Do let me know your opinion. If Index is Primary Clustered Index: PK_TableName If Index is  Non-clustered Index: IX_TableName_ColumnName1_ColumnName2… If Index is Unique Non-clustered Index: UX_TableName_ColumnName1_ColumnName2… If Index is Columnstore Non-clustered Index: CL_TableName Here ColumnName is the column on which index is created. As there can be only one Primary Key Index and Columnstore Index per table, they do not require ColumnName in the name of the index. The purpose of this new naming convention is to increase readability. When any user come across this index, without opening their properties or definition, user can will know the details of the index. T-SQL script to Rename Indexes Here is quick T-SQL script to rename Indexes EXEC sp_rename N'SchemaName.TableName.IndexName', N'New_IndexName', N'INDEX'; GO Your Contribute Please Well, the organization has already defined above four guidelines, personally I follow very similar guidelines too. I have seen many variations like adding prefixes CL for Clustered Index and NCL for Non-clustered Index. I have often seen many not using UX prefix for Unique Index but rather use generic IX prefix only. Now do you think if they have missed anything in the coding standard. Is NCI and CI prefixed required to additionally describe the index names. I have once received suggestion to even add fill factor in the index name – which I do not recommend at all. What do you think should be ideal name of the index, so it explains all the most important properties? Additionally, you are welcome to vote if you believe changing the name of index is just waste of time and energy.  Note: The purpose of the blog post is to encourage all to participate with their ideas. I will write follow up blog posts in future compiling all the suggestions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Subterranean IL: Compiling C# exception handlers

  - by Simon Cooper

  An exception handler in C# combines the IL catch and finally exception handling clauses into a single try statement: try { Console.WriteLine("Try block") // ... } catch (IOException) { Console.WriteLine("IOException catch") // ... } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine("Exception catch") // ... } finally { Console.WriteLine("Finally block") // ... } How does this get compiled into IL? Initial implementation If you remember from my earlier post, finally clauses must be specified with their own .try clause. So, for the initial implementation, we take the try/catch/finally, and simply split it up into two .try clauses (I have to use label syntax for this): StartTry: ldstr "Try block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndTry: StartIOECatch: ldstr "IOException catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndIOECatch: StartECatch: ldstr "Exception catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndECatch: StartFinally: ldstr "Finally block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... endfinally EndFinally: End: // ... .try StartTry to EndTry catch [mscorlib]System.IO.IOException handler StartIOECatch to EndIOECatch catch [mscorlib]System.Exception handler StartECatch to EndECatch .try StartTry to EndTry finally handler StartFinally to EndFinally However, the resulting program isn't verifiable, and doesn't run: [IL]: Error: Shared try has finally or fault handler. Nested try blocks What's with the verification error? Well, it's a condition of IL verification that all exception handling regions (try, catch, filter, finally, fault) of a single .try clause have to be completely contained within any outer exception region, and they can't overlap with any other exception handling clause. In other words, IL exception handling clauses must to be representable in the scoped syntax, and in this example, we're overlapping catch and finally clauses. Not only is this example not verifiable, it isn't semantically correct. The finally handler is specified round the .try. What happens if you were able to run this code, and an exception was thrown? Program execution enters top of try block, and exception is thrown within it CLR searches for an exception handler, finds catch Because control flow is leaving .try, finally block is run The catch block is run leave.s End inside the catch handler branches to End label. We're actually running the finally before the catch! What we do about it What we actually need to do is put the catch clauses inside the finally clause, as this will ensure the finally gets executed at the correct time (this time using scoped syntax): .try { .try { ldstr "Try block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.IO.IOException { ldstr "IOException catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { ldstr "Exception catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } } finally { ldstr "Finally block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... endfinally } End: ret Returning from methods There is a further semantic mismatch that the C# compiler has to deal with; in C#, you are allowed to return from within an exception handling block: public int HandleMethod() { try { // ... return 0; } catch (Exception) { // ... return -1; } } However, you can't ret inside an exception handling block in IL. So the C# compiler does a leave.s to a ret outside the exception handling area, loading/storing any return value to a local variable along the way (as leave.s clears the stack): .method public instance int32 HandleMethod() { .locals init ( int32 retVal ) .try { // ... ldc.i4.0 stloc.0 leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { // ... ldc.i4.m1 stloc.0 leave.s End } End: ldloc.0 ret } Conclusion As you can see, the C# compiler has quite a few hoops to jump through to translate C# code into semantically-correct IL, and hides the numerous conditions on IL exception handling blocks from the C# programmer. Next up: catch-all blocks, and how the runtime deals with non-Exception exceptions.

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• 45 minutes to talk about C# [closed]

  - by Philip

  I have the opportunity to give a 45 minute talk on C# in the theory of programming languages class I'm taking. The college teaches Java almost exclusively, so that's what all the students are most familiar with. (There's a little C, assembly, Prolog and LISP as well.) I decide what to talk about. It seems to me the best approach is to focus on a few of the big, obvious differences between C# and Java. I don't intend it to be a recommendation to use C# -- there are reasons to use each, mostly because of their ecosystems. So I want to focus on C# as a language. I don't want to go too fast and end up listing a whole bunch of features without showing their usefulness. My current plan is this: Functions as first class objects. This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest differences between C# and Java. The professor briefly mentioned this notion and showed a LISP example, but many of the students have probably never used it. I can show real world examples where it's made my code more readable. Lambda expressions as concise syntax for anonymous functions. Obviously with examples to show how this is useful. The real hit-home examples will be at the end when it's combined with the rest. I don't see an advantage to first showing the old delegate syntax and then replacing it with lambdas -- most of us won't have ever seen delegates anyway so it would just be confusing. The yield keyword and how it's different from returning an array. I have the impression that a lot of C# developers aren't familiar with how to use this. It will likely be very foreign to Java developers. I have some examples from my own work where it was really useful, such as iterating over a tree traversal, or iterating over neighbors in a graph where the neighbors aren't stored in memory. In both cases, doing it in Java would likely mean returning a complete list -- with yield I can stop iterating if I find what I want early on, without using memory for superfluous lists or arrays. Extension methods as a way to write implementation on interfaces. We'll all be familiar with how interfaces don't allow method implementation, and how this leads to code duplication. I'll show a specific example of this and how the extension method can solve the problem. Demonstrate how the above can be combined by implementing some simple Linq methods and using them. Where, Select, First, maybe more depending on how much time is left. Ideas on which ones might 'hit home' the best? There are other things I could talk about such as generics, value types, properties and more. I haven't yet though of good ways to incorporate these. In the case of generics and value types, the advantages might not be obvious or as relevant. Properties are obviously useful, particularly since we're taught strict JavaBeans here, but I don't know if I could integrate it with the "path to Linq" discussion above without it feeling tacked on. So I'm looking for thoughts on how to talk about C#, and what to talk about. Even minor details. I'm sure there are more experienced C# developers than me here who have good insight about what's really important in the language, and what would miss the point.

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• Sneak Peak: Social Developer Program at JavaOne

  - by Mike Stiles

  By guest blogger Roland Smart We're just days away from what is gunning to be the most exciting installment of OpenWorld to date, so how about an exciting sneak peak at the very first Social Developer Program? If your first thought is, "What's a social developer?" you're not alone. It’s an emerging term and one we think will gain prominence as social experiences become more prevalent in enterprise applications. For those who keep an eye on the ever-evolving Facebook platform, you'll recall that they recently rebranded their PDC (preferred developer consultant) group as the PMD (preferred marketing developer), signaling the importance of development resources inside the marketing organization to unlock the potential of social. The marketing developer they're referring to could be considered a social developer in a broader context. While it's true social has really blossomed in the marketing context and CMOs are winning more and more technical resources, social is starting to work its way more deeply into the enterprise with the help of developers that work outside marketing. Developers, like the rest of us, have fallen in "like" with social functionality and are starting to imagine how social can transform enterprise applications in the way it has consumer-facing experiences. The thesis of my presentation is that social developers will take many pages from the marketing playbook as they apply social inside the enterprise. To support this argument, lets walk through a range of enterprise applications and explore how consumer-facing social experiences might be interpreted in this context. Here's one example of how a social experience could be integrated into a sales enablement application. As a marketer, I spend a great deal of time collaborating with my sales colleagues, so I have good insight into their working process. While at Involver, we grew our sales team quickly, and it became evident some of our processes broke with scale. For example, we used to have weekly team meetings at which we'd discuss what was working and what wasn't from a messaging perspective. One aspect of these sessions focused on "objections" and "responses," where the salespeople would walk through common objections to purchasing and share appropriate responses. We tried to map each context to best answers and we'd capture these on a wiki page. As our team grew, however, participation at scale just wasn't tenable, and our wiki pages quickly lost their freshness. Imagine giving salespeople a place where they could submit common objections and responses for their colleagues to see, sort, comment on, and vote on. What you'd get is an up-to-date and relevant repository of information. And, if you supported an application like this with a social graph, it would be possible to make good recommendations to individual sales people about the objections they'd likely hear based on vertical, product, region or other graph data. Taking it even further, you could build in a badging/game element to reward those salespeople who participate the most. Both these examples are based on proven models at work inside consumer-facing applications. If you want to learn about how HR, Operations, Product Development and Customer Support can leverage social experiences, you’re welcome to join us at JavaOne or join our Social Developer Community to find some of the presentations after OpenWorld.

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• CacheAdapter 2.4 – Bug fixes and minor functional update

  - by Glav

  Note: If you are unfamiliar with the CacheAdapter library and what it does, you can read all about its awesome ability to utilise memory, Asp.Net Web, Windows Azure AppFabric and memcached caching implementations via a single unified, simple to use API from here and here.. The CacheAdapter library is receiving an update to version 2.4 and is currently available on Nuget here. Update: The CacheAdapter has actualy just had a minor revision to 2.4.1. This significantly increases the performance and reliability in memcached scenario under more extreme loads. General to moderate usage wont see any noticeable difference though. Bugs This latest version fixes a big that is only present in the memcached implementation and is only seen in rare, intermittent times (making i particularly hard to find). The bug is where a cache node would be removed from the farm when errors in deserialization of cached objects would occur due to serialised data not being read from the stream in entirety. The code also contains enhancements to better surface serialization exceptions to aid in the debugging process. This is also specifically targeted at the memcached implementation. This is important when moving from something like memory or Asp.Web caching mechanisms to memcached where the serialization rules are not as lenient. There are a few other minor bug fixes, code cleanup and a little refactoring. Minor feature addition In addition to this bug fix, many people have asked for a single setting to either enable or disable the cache.In this version, you can disable the cache by setting the IsCacheEnabled flag to false in the application configuration file. Something like the example below: <Glav.CacheAdapter.MainConfig> <setting name="CacheToUse" serializeAs="String"> <value>memcached</value> </setting> <setting name="DistributedCacheServers" serializeAs="String"> <value>localhost:11211</value> </setting> <setting name="IsCacheEnabled" serializeAs="String"> <value>False</value> </setting> </Glav.CacheAdapter.MainConfig> Your reasons to use this feature may vary (perhaps some performance testing or problem diagnosis). At any rate, disabling the cache will cause every attempt to retrieve data from the cache, resulting in a cache miss and returning null. If you are using the ICacheProvider with the delegate/Func<T> syntax to populate the cache, this delegate method will get executed every single time. For example, when the cache is disabled, the following delegate/Func<T> code will be executed every time: var data1 = cacheProvider.Get<SomeData>("cache-key", DateTime.Now.AddHours(1), () => { // With the cache disabled, this data access code is executed every attempt to // get this data via the CacheProvider. var someData = new SomeData() { SomeText = "cache example1", SomeNumber = 1 }; return someData; }); One final note: If you access the cache directly via the ICache instance, instead of the higher level ICacheProvider API, you bypass this setting and still access the underlying cache implementation. Only the ICacheProvider instance observes the IsCacheEnabled setting. Thanks to those individuals who have used this library and provided feedback. Ifyou have any suggestions or ideas, please submit them to the issue register on bitbucket (which is where you can grab all the source code from too)

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• Resolve SRs Faster Using RDA - Find the Right Profile

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  Introduction Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is an excellent command-line data collection tool that can aid troubleshooting / problem solving. The tool covers the majority of Oracle's vast product range, and its data collection capability is comprehensive. RDA collects data about the operating system and environment, including environment variable, kernel settings network o/s performance o/s patches and much more the Oracle Products installed, including patches logs and debug metrics configuration and much more In effect, RDA can obtain a snapshot of an Oracle Product and its environment. Oracle Support encourages the use of RDA because it greatly reduces service request resolution time by minimizing the number of requests from Oracle Support for more information. RDA is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible; it does not modify systems in any way. It collects useful data for Oracle Support only and a security filter is provided if required. Find and Use the Right RDA Profile One problem of any tool / utility, which covers a large range of products, is knowing how to target it against only the products you wish to troubleshoot. RDA does not have a GUI. Nor does RDA have an intelligent mechanism for detecting and automatically collecting data only for those Oracle products installed. Instead, you have to tell RDA what to do. There is a mind boggling large number of RDA data collection modules which you can configure RDA to use. It is easier, however, to setup RDA to use a "Profile". A profile consists of a list of data collection modules and predefined settings. As such profiles can be used to diagnose a problem with a particular product or combination of products. How to run RDA with a profile? ( <rda> represents the command you selected to run RDA (for example, rda.pl, rda.cmd, rda.sh, and perl rda.pl).) 1. Use the embedded spreadsheet to find the RDA profile which is appropriate for your problem / chosen Oracle Fusion Middleware products. 2. Use the following command to perform the setup <rda> -S -p <profile_name>  3. Run the data collection <rda> Run the data collection. If you want to perform setup and run in one go, then use a command such as the following: <rda> -vnSCRP -p <profile name> For more information, refer to: Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Profile Manual Pages [ID 391983.1] Additional Hints / Tips: 1. Be careful! Profile names are case sensitive.2. When profiles are not used, RDA considers all existing modules by default. For example, if you have downloaded RDA for the first time and run the command <rda> -S you will see prompts for every RDA collection module many of which will be of no interest to you. Also, you may, in your haste to work through all the questions, forget to say "Yes" to the collection of data that is pertinent to your particular problem or product. Profiles avoid such tedium and help ensure the right data is collected at the first time of asking.

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• Authenticating your windows domain users in the cloud

  - by cibrax

  Moving to the cloud can represent a big challenge for many organizations when it comes to reusing existing infrastructure. For applications that drive existing business processes in the organization, reusing IT assets like active directory represent good part of that challenge. For example, a new web mobile application that sales representatives can use for interacting with an existing CRM system in the organization. In the case of Windows Azure, the Access Control Service (ACS) already provides some integration with ADFS through WS-Federation. That means any organization can create a new trust relationship between the STS running in the ACS and the STS running in ADFS. As the following image illustrates, the ADFS running in the organization should be somehow exposed out of network boundaries to talk to the ACS. This is usually accomplish through an ADFS proxy running in a DMZ. This is the official story for authenticating existing domain users with the ACS.  Getting an ADFS up and running in the organization, which talks to a proxy and also trust the ACS could represent a painful experience. It basically requires  advance knowledge of ADSF and exhaustive testing to get everything right.  However, if you want to get an infrastructure ready for authenticating your domain users in the cloud in a matter of minutes, you will probably want to take a look at the sample I wrote for talking to an existing Active Directory using a regular WCF service through the Service Bus Relay Binding. You can use the WCF ability for self hosting the authentication service within a any program running in the domain (a Windows service typically). The service will not require opening any port as it is opening an outbound connection to the cloud through the Relay Service. In addition, the service will be protected from being invoked by any unauthorized party with the ACS, which will act as a firewall between any client and the service. In that way, we can get a very safe solution up and running almost immediately. To make the solution even more convenient, I implemented an STS in the cloud that internally invokes the service running on premises for authenticating the users. Any existing web application in the cloud can just establish a trust relationship with this STS, and authenticate the users via WS-Federation passive profile with regular http calls, which makes this very attractive for web mobile for example. This is how the WCF service running on premises looks like, [ServiceBehavior(Namespace = "http://agilesight.com/active_directory/agent")] public class ProxyService : IAuthenticationService { IUserFinder userFinder; IUserAuthenticator userAuthenticator;   public ProxyService() : this(new UserFinder(), new UserAuthenticator()) { }   public ProxyService(IUserFinder userFinder, IUserAuthenticator userAuthenticator) { this.userFinder = userFinder; this.userAuthenticator = userAuthenticator; }   public AuthenticationResponse Authenticate(AuthenticationRequest request) { if (userAuthenticator.Authenticate(request.Username, request.Password)) { return new AuthenticationResponse { Result = true, Attributes = this.userFinder.GetAttributes(request.Username) }; }   return new AuthenticationResponse { Result = false }; } } Two external dependencies are used by this service for authenticating users (IUserAuthenticator) and for retrieving user attributes from the user’s directory (IUserFinder). The UserAuthenticator implementation is just a wrapper around the LogonUser Win Api. The UserFinder implementation relies on Directory Services in .NET for searching the user attributes in an existing directory service like Active Directory or the local user store. public UserAttribute[] GetAttributes(string username) { var attributes = new List<UserAttribute>();   var identity = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(new PrincipalContext(this.contextType, this.server, this.container), IdentityType.SamAccountName, username); if (identity != null) { var groups = identity.GetGroups(); foreach(var group in groups) { attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "Group", Value = group.Name }); } if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(identity.DisplayName)) attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "DisplayName", Value = identity.DisplayName }); if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(identity.EmailAddress)) attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "EmailAddress", Value = identity.EmailAddress }); }   return attributes.ToArray(); } As you can see, the code is simple and uses all the existing infrastructure in Azure to simplify a problem that looks very complex at first glance with ADFS. All the source code for this sample is available to download (or change) in this GitHub repository, https://github.com/AgileSight/ActiveDirectoryForCloud

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• SQL SERVER – Finding Different ColumnName From Almost Identitical Tables

  - by pinaldave

  I have mentioned earlier on this blog that I love social media – Facebook and Twitter. I receive so many interesting questions that sometimes I wonder how come I never faced them in my real life scenario. Well, let us see one of the similar situation. Here is one of the questions which I received on my social media handle. “Pinal, I have a large database. I did not develop this database but I have inherited this database. In our database we have many tables but all the tables are in pairs. We have one archive table and one current table. Now here is interesting situation. For a while due to some reason our organization has stopped paying attention to archive data. We did not archive anything for a while. If this was not enough we  even changed the schema of current table but did not change the corresponding archive table. This is now becoming a huge huge problem. We know for sure that in current table we have added few column but we do not know which ones. Is there any way we can figure out what are the new column added in the current table and does not exist in the archive tables? We cannot use any third party tool. Would you please guide us?” Well here is the interesting example of how we can use sys.column catalogue views and get the details of the newly added column. I have previously written about EXCEPT over here which is very similar to MINUS of Oracle. In following example we are going to create two tables. One of the tables has extra column. In our resultset we will get the name of the extra column as we are comparing the catalogue view of the column name. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO CREATE TABLE ArchiveTable (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(10), Col2 VARCHAR(100), Col3 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE CurrentTable (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(10), Col2 VARCHAR(100), Col3 VARCHAR(100), ExtraCol INT); GO -- Columns in ArchiveTable but not in CurrentTable SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'ArchiveTable' EXCEPT SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'CurrentTable' GO -- Columns in CurrentTable but not in ArchiveTable SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'CurrentTable' EXCEPT SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'ArchiveTable' GO DROP TABLE ArchiveTable; DROP TABLE CurrentTable; GO The above query will return us following result. I hope this solves the problems. It is not the most elegant solution ever possible but it works. Here is the puzzle back to you – what native T-SQL solution would you have provided in this situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL System Table, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Bitmap font rendering, UV generation and vertex placement

  - by jack

  I am generating a bitmap, however, I am not sure on how to render the UV's and placement. I had a thread like this once before, but it was too loosely worded as to what I was looking to do. What I am doing right now is creating a large 1024x1024 image with characters evenly placed every 64 pixels. Here is an example of what I mean. I then save the bitmap X/Y information to a file (which is all multiples of 64). However, I am not sure how to properly use this information and bitmap to render. This falls into two different categories, UV generation and kerning. Now I believe I know how to do both of these, however, when I attempt to couple them together I will get horrendous results. For example, I am trying to render two different text arrays, "123" and "njfb". While ignoring the texture quality (I will be increasing the texture to provide more detail once I fix this issue), here is what it looks like when I try to render them. http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/599/badfontrendering.png Now for the algorithm. I am doing my letter placement with both GetABCWidth and GetKerningPairs. I am using GetABCWidth for the width of the characters, then I am getting the kerning information for adjust the characters. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can implement my own bitmap font renderer? I am trying to do this without using external libraries such as angel bitmap tool or freetype. I also want to stick to the way the bitmap font sheet is generated so I can do extra effects in the future. Rendering Algorithm for(U32 c = 0, vertexID = 0, i = 0; c < numberOfCharacters; ++c, vertexID += 4, i += 6) { ObtainCharInformation(fontName, m_Text[c]); letterWidth = (charInfo.A + charInfo.B + charInfo.C) * scale; if(c != 0) { DWORD BytesReq = GetGlyphOutlineW(dc, m_Text[c], GGO_GRAY8_BITMAP, &gm, 0, 0, &mat); U8 * glyphImg= new U8[BytesReq]; DWORD r = GetGlyphOutlineW(dc, m_Text[c], GGO_GRAY8_BITMAP, &gm, BytesReq, glyphImg, &mat); for (int k=0; k<nKerningPairs; k++) { if ((kerningpairs[k].wFirst == previousCharIndex) && (kerningpairs[k].wSecond == m_Text[c])) { letterBottomLeftX += (kerningpairs[k].iKernAmount * scale); break; } } letterBottomLeftX -= (gm.gmCellIncX * scale); } SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX, 0.0f, zFight, vertexID); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX, letterHeight, zFight, vertexID + 1); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX + letterWidth, letterHeight, zFight, vertexID + 2); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX + letterWidth, 0.0f, zFight, vertexID + 3); zFight -= 0.001f; float BottomLeftX = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapXOrigin) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float BottomLeftY = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapYOrigin + charInfo.charBitmapHeight) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopLeftX = BottomLeftX; float TopLeftY = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapYOrigin) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopRightX = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapXOrigin + charInfo.B - charInfo.C) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopRightY = TopLeftY; float BottomRightX = TopRightX; float BottomRightY = BottomLeftY; SetTextureCoordinate(TopLeftX, TopLeftY, vertexID + 1); SetTextureCoordinate(BottomLeftX, BottomLeftY, vertexID + 0); SetTextureCoordinate(BottomRightX, BottomRightY, vertexID + 3); SetTextureCoordinate(TopRightX, TopRightY, vertexID + 2); /// index setting letterBottomLeftX += letterWidth; previousCharIndex = m_Text[c]; }

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• Moving monarchs and dragons: migrating the JDK bugs to JIRA

  - by darcy

  Among insects, monarch butterflies and dragonflies have the longest migrations; migrating JDK bugs involves a long journey as well! As previously announced by Mark back in March, we've been working according to a revised plan to transition the JDK bug management from Sun's legacy system to initially an Oracle-internal JIRA instance which is afterward made visible and usable externally. I've been busily working on this project for the last few months and the team has made good progress on many aspects of the effort: JDK bugs will be imported into JIRA regardless of age; bugs will also be imported regardless of state, including closed bugs. Consequently, the JDK bug project will start pre-populated with over 100,000 existing bugs, some dating all the way back to 1994. This will allow a continuity of information and allow new issues to be linked to old ones. Using a custom import process, the Sun bug numbers will be preserved in JIRA. For example, the Sun bug with bug number 4040458 will become "JDK-4040458" in JIRA. In JIRA the project name, "JDK" in our case, is part of the bug's identifier. Bugs created after the JIRA migration will be numbered starting at 8000000; bugs imported from the legacy system have numbers ranging between 1000000 and 79999999. We're working with the bugs.sun.com team to try to maintain continuity of the ability to both read JDK bug information as well as to file new incidents. At least for now, the overall architecture of bugs.sun.com will be the same as it is today: it will be a gateway bridging to an Oracle-internal system, but the internal system will change to JIRA from the legacy database. Generally we are aiming to preserve the visibility of bugs currently viewable on bugs.sun.com; however, bugs in areas not related to the JDK will not be visible after the transition to JIRA. New incoming incidents will be sent to a separate JIRA project for initial triage before possibly being moved into the JDK project. JDK bug management leans heavily on being able to track the state of bugs in multiple releases, especially to coordinate delivering synchronized security releases (known as CPUs, critital patch updates, in Oracle parlance). For a security release, it is common for half a dozen or more release trains to be affected (for example, JDK 5, JDK 6 update, OpenJDK 6, JDK 7 update, JDK 8, virtual releases for HotSpot express, etc.). We've determined we need to track at least the tuple of (release, responsible engineer/assignee for the release, status in the release) for the release trains a fix is going into. To do this in JIRA, we are creating a separate port/backport issue type along with a custom link type to allow the multiple release information to be easily grouped and presented together. The Sun legacy system had a three-level classification scheme, product, category, and subcategory. Out of the box, JIRA only has a one-level classification, component. We've implemented a custom second-level classification, subcomponent. As part of the bug migration we've taken the opportunity to think about how bugs should be grouped under a two-level system and we'll the new system will be simpler and more regular. The main top-level components of the JDK product will include: core-libs client-libs deploy install security-libs other-libs tools hotspot For the libs areas, the primary name of the subcomportment will be the package of the API in question. In the core-libs component, there will be subcomponents like: java.lang java.lang.class_loading java.math java.util java.util:i18n In the tools component, subcomponents will primarily correspond to command names in $JDK/bin like, jar, javac, and javap. The first several bulk imports of the JDK bugs into JIRA have gone well and we're continuing to refine the import to have greater fidelity to the current data, including by reconstructing information not brought over in a structured fashion during the previous large JDK bug system migration back in 2004. We don't currently have a firm timeline of when the new system will be usable externally, but as it becomes available, I'll share further information in follow-up blog posts.

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