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• Why no more macro languages?

  - by Muhammad Alkarouri

  In this answer to a previous question of mine about scripting languages suitability as shells, DigitalRoss identifies the difference between the macro languages and the "parsed typed" languages in terms of string treatment as the main reason that scripting languages are not suitable for shell purposes. Macro languages include nroff and m4 for example. What are the design decisions (or compromises) needed to create a macro programming language? And why are most of the mainstream languages parsed rather than macro? This very similar question (and the accepted answer) covers fairly well why the parsed typed languages, take C for example, suffer from the use of macros. I believe my question here covers different grounds: Macro languages or those working on a textual level are not wholly failures. Arguably, they include bash, Tcl and other shell languages. And they work in a specific niche such as shells as explained in my links above. Even m4 had a fairly long time of success, and some of the web template languages can be regarded as macro languages. It is quite possible that macros and parsed typing do not go well together and that is why macros "break" common languages. In the answer to the linked question, a macro like #define TWO 1+1 would have been covered by the common rules of the language rather than conflicting with those of the host language. And issues like "macros are not typed" and "code doesn't compile" are not relevant in the context of a language designed as untyped and interpreted with little concern for efficiency. The question about the design decisions needed to create a macro language pertain to a hobby project which I am currently working on on designing a new shell. Taking the previous question in context would clarify the difference between adding macros to a parsed language and my objective. I hope the clarification shows that the question linked doesn't cover this question, which is two parts: If I want to create a macro language (for a shell or a web template, for example), what limitations and compromises (and guidelines, if exist) need to be done? (Probably answerable by a link or reference) Why have no macro languages succeed in becoming mainstream except in particular niches? What makes typed languages successful in large programming, while "stringly-typed" languages succeed in shells and one-liner like environments?

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Filtering option list values based on security in UCM

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  Fellow UCM blog writer John Sim recently posted a comment asking about filtering values based on the user's security. I had never dug into that detail before, but thought I would take a look. It ended up being tricker then I originally thought and required a bit of insider knowledge, so I thought I would share. The first step is to create the option list table in Configuration Manager. You want to define the column for the option list value and any other columns desired. You then want to have a column which will store the security attribute to apply to the option list value. In this example, we'll name the column 'dGroupName'. Next step is to create a View based on the new table. For the Internal and Visible column, you can select the option list column name. Then click on the Security tab, uncheck the 'Publish view data' checkbox and select the 'Use standard document security' radio button. Click on the 'Edit Values...' button and add the values for the option list. In the dGroupName field, enter the Security Group (or Account if you use Accounts for security) to apply to that value. Create the custom metadata field and apply the View just created. The next step requires file system access to the server. Open the file [ucm directory]\data\schema\views\[view name].hda in a text editor. Below the line '@Properties LocalData', add the line: schSecurityImplementorColumnMap=dGroupName:dSecurityGroup The 'dGroupName' value designates the column in the table which stores the security value. 'dSecurityGroup' indicates the type of security to check against. It would be 'dDocAccount' if using Accounts. Save the file and restart UCM. Now when a user goes to the check-in page, they will only see the options for which they have read and write privileges to the associated Security Group. And on the Search page, they will see the options for which they have just read access. One thing to note is if a value that a user normally can't view on Check-in or Search is applied to a document, but the document is viewable by the user, the user will be able to see the value on the Content Information screen.

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• BPM ADF Task forms. Checking whether the current user is in a BPM Swimlane

  - by Christopher Karl Chan

  @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --Focus So this blog entry will focus on BPM Swimlane roles and users from a ADF context. So we have an ADF Task Details Form and we are in the process of making it richer and dynamic in functionality. A common requirement could be to dynamically show different areas based on the user logged into the workspace. Perhaps even we want to know even what swim-lane role the user belongs to. It is is a little bit harder to achieve then one thinks unless you know the trick. The Challenge The tricky part here is that the ADF Task Details Form is in fact part of a separate J2EE application to the main workspace. So if you try to use Java or Expression Language to get the logged in user you will only find anonymous and none of the BPM Roles you will be expecting. So what to do? The Magic First add the BC4J Security library to your view project. Then Restart JDeveloper. Now find the web.xml file in the view project of your ADF Task Details Application and look for the JpsFilter section. Then add in the following section. <init-param> <param-name>application.name</param-name> <param-value>OracleBPMProcessRolesApp</param-value></init-param> This will link your application to that of the BPM workspace. Then in your dynamic part of your ADF form you can now check whether the user logged into the BPM Workspace belongs in a BPM swim-lane in any BPM process. The best way to do this is by using expression language in the JSF page itself. Here I am simply changing the rendered flag to either true or false and thereby hiding or showing a section. Perhaps you are re-using the same form for a task in an approver swim-lane and ordinary user swimlane. So we only want the approver to see this field. So call the built in function to check if the user is a member of the BPM swim-lane role. The name of the role must be of the syntax BPMProject.RoleName <af:outputText value="This will only be rendered when the user is part of the BPM Swimlane Role rendered="#{securityContext.userInRole['BPMProjectName.Rolename']}"/> Now you must redeploy your ADF Task Form project Now (in the image above) the text will ONLY get rendered in the Task Details Form only if the user logged into the workspace is a member of the swimlane Unsecure of the BPM project SimpleTask

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• Process Rules!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  One of the key components of a process is “Business Rule”. Business rule takes many forms inside your process definition and in a way is a manifestation of your company’s business policy. Business rules inside the process are used for policy enforcement, governance, decision management, operations efficiency etc. Following are some basic types of rules that can be a part of your process. 1. Process conditions:  These are defined as the process gateways that determine a path process will take depending on the process parameters. For Example, if discount >10% go to approval path : if discount < 10% auto-approve order. 2. Data rules: These business rules are defined as facts in decision table or knowledge base. The process captures all required parameters and submits those to RETE based rules engine. Rules engine processes the data and returns the result back. For example, rules determining your insurance eligibility. 3. Event rules: Here the system is monitoring the various events and events patterns that are emerging inside the process or external to the process. You can define actions or alerts to be triggered when a certain pattern of events emerges over a specified time period. Such types of rules need Complex Event Processing and are used in applications like Credit Card Fraud detection or Utility Demand Response. 4. User Interface Rules: In order to add dynamic behavior to UI or to keep users from making mistakes and enforcing policy, another mechanism available is UI rules. They are evaluated as the end user is filling out the web forms. These may include enabling and disabling of UI as per business policy. An example could be, if the age of a user is less than 13 years, disable credit card field and enable parental approval required checkbox. Your process may include many of such rule types. Oracle OpenWorld provides a unique opportunity to listen to Oracle Business Process Management Experts and Customers.  We will discuss business rules during various sessions in Oracle OpenWorld. Two of the sessions specifically focused on business rules are listed below: Accelerating an Implementation of Complex Worldwide Business Approval Rules Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM Moscone South – 305 Oracle Business Rules Use Cases Design and Testing Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3   Oracle Business Process Management Track covers a variety of topics, and speakers covering technology, methodology and best practices. You can see the list of Business process Management sessions here. Come back to this blog for more coverage from Oracle OpenWorld!

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• What source code organization approach helps improve modularity and API/Implementation separation?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  Few languages are as restrictive as Java with file naming standards and project structure. In that language, the file name must match the public class declared in the file, and the file must live in a directory structure matching the class package. I have mixed feelings about that approach. While I never have to guess where a file lives, there's still a lot of empty directories and artificial constraints. There's several languages that define everything about a class in one file, at least by convention. C#, Python (I think), Ruby, Erlang, etc. The commonality in most these languages is that they are object oriented, although that statement can probably be rebuffed (there is one non-OO language in the list already). Finally, there's quite a few languages mostly in the C family that have a separate header and implementation file. For C I think this makes sense, because it is one of the few ways to separate the API interface from implementations. With C it seems that feature is used to promote modularity. Yet, with C++ the way header and implementation files are split seems rather forced. You don't get the same clean API separation that you do with C, and you are forced to include some private details in the header you would rather keep only in the implementation. There's quite a few languages that have a concept that overlaps with interfaces like Java, C#, Go, etc. Some languages use what feels like a hack to provide the same concept like C# using pure virtual abstract classes. Still others don't really have an interface concept and rely on "duck" typing--for example Ruby. Ruby has modules, but those are more along the lines of mixing in behaviors to a class than they are for defining how to interact with a class. In OO terms, interfaces are a powerful way to provide separation between an API client and an API implementation. So to hurry up and ask the question, from a personal experience point of view: Does separation of header and implementation help you write more modular code, or does it get in the way? (it helps to specify the language you are referring to) Does the strict file name to class name scheme of Java help maintainability, or is it unnecessary structure for structure's sake? What would you propose to promote good API/Implementation separation and project maintenance, how would you prefer to do it?

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• Organizing Git repositories with common nested sub-modules

  - by André Caron

  I'm a big fan of Git sub-modules. I like to be able to track a dependency along with its version, so that you can roll-back to a previous version of your project and have the corresponding version of the dependency to build safely and cleanly. Moreover, it's easier to release our libraries as open source projects as the history for libraries is separate from that of the applications that depend on them (and which are not going to be open sourced). I'm setting up workflow for multiple projects at work, and I was wondering how it would be if we took this approach a bit of an extreme instead of having a single monolithic project. I quickly realized there is a potential can of worms in really using sub-modules. Supposing a pair of applications: studio and player, and dependent libraries core, graph and network, where dependencies are as follows: core is standalone graph depends on core (sub-module at ./libs/core) network depdends on core (sub-module at ./libs/core) studio depends on graph and network (sub-modules at ./libs/graph and ./libs/network) player depends on graph and network (sub-modules at ./libs/graph and ./libs/network) Suppose that we're using CMake and that each of these projects has unit tests and all the works. Each project (including studio and player) must be able to be compiled standalone to perform code metrics, unit testing, etc. The thing is, a recursive git submodule fetch, then you get the following directory structure: studio/ studio/libs/ (sub-module depth: 1) studio/libs/graph/ studio/libs/graph/libs/ (sub-module depth: 2) studio/libs/graph/libs/core/ studio/libs/network/ studio/libs/network/libs/ (sub-module depth: 2) studio/libs/network/libs/core/ Notice that core is cloned twice in the studio project. Aside from this wasting disk space, I have a build system problem because I'm building core twice and I potentially get two different versions of core. Question How do I organize sub-modules so that I get the versioned dependency and standalone build without getting multiple copies of common nested sub-modules? Possible solution If the the library dependency is somewhat of a suggestion (i.e. in a "known to work with version X" or "only version X is officially supported" fashion) and potential dependent applications or libraries are responsible for building with whatever version they like, then I could imagine the following scenario: Have the build system for graph and network tell them where to find core (e.g. via a compiler include path). Define two build targets, "standalone" and "dependency", where "standalone" is based on "dependency" and adds the include path to point to the local core sub-module. Introduce an extra dependency: studio on core. Then, studio builds core, sets the include path to its own copy of the core sub-module, then builds graph and network in "dependency" mode. The resulting folder structure looks like: studio/ studio/libs/ (sub-module depth: 1) studio/libs/core/ studio/libs/graph/ studio/libs/graph/libs/ (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched) studio/libs/network/ studio/libs/network/libs/ (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched) However, this requires some build system magic (I'm pretty confident this can be done with CMake) and a bit of manual work on the part of version updates (updating graph might also require updating core and network to get a compatible version of core in all projects). Any thoughts on this?

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• SQL SERVER – QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON/OFF Explanation and Example – Question on Real World Usage

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is a follow up blog post of SQL SERVER – QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON/OFF and ANSI_NULL ON/OFF Explanation. I wrote that blog six years ago and I had plans that I will write a follow up blog post of the same. Today, when I was going over my to-do list and I was surprised that I had an item there which was six years old and I never got to do that. In the earlier blog post I wrote about exploitation of the Quoted Identifier and ANSI Null. In this blog post we will see a quick example of Quoted Identifier. However, before we continue this blog post, let us see a refresh what both of Quoted Identifider do. QUOTED IDENTIFIER ON/OFF This option specifies the setting for use of double quotes. When this is on, double quotation mark is used as part of the SQL Server identifier (object name). This can be useful in situations in which identifiers are also SQL Server reserved words. In simple words when we have QUOTED IDENTIFIER ON, anything which is wrapped in double quotes becomes an object. E.g. -- The following will work SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE DATABASE "Test1" GO -- The following will throw an error about Incorrect syntax near 'Test2'. SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF GO CREATE DATABASE "Test2" GO This feature is particularly helpful when we are working with reserved keywords in SQL Server. For example if you have to create a database with the name VARCHAR or INT or DATABASE you may want to put double quotes around your database name and turn on quoted identifiers to create a database with the such name. Personally, I do not think so anybody will ever create a database with the reserve keywords intentionally, as it will just lead to confusion. Here is another example to give you further clarity about how Quoted Idenifier setting works with SELECT statement. -- The following will throw an error about Invalid column name 'Column'. SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO SELECT "Column" GO -- The following will work SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF GO SELECT "Column" GO Personally, I always use the following method to create database as it works irrespective of what is the quoted identifier’s status. It always creates objects with my desire name whenever I would like to create. CREATE DATABASE [Test3] I believe the future of the quoted identifier on or off is useful in the real world when we have script generated from another database where this setting was ON and we have to now execute the same script again in our environment again. Question to you - I personally have never used this feature as I mentioned earlier. I believe this feature is there to support the scripts which are generated in another SQL Database or generate the script for other database. Do you have a real world scenario where we need to turn on or off Quoted Identifiers. Click to Download Scripts Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Is there a better term than "smoothness" or "granularity" to describe this language feature?

  - by Chris

  One of the best things about programming is the abundance of different languages. There are general purpose languages like C++ and Java, as well as little languages like XSLT and AWK. When comparing languages, people often use things like speed, power, expressiveness, and portability as the important distinguishing features. There is one characteristic of languages I consider to be important that, so far, I haven't heard [or been able to come up with] a good term for: how well a language scales from writing tiny programs to writing huge programs. Some languages make it easy and painless to write programs that only require a few lines of code, e.g. task automation. But those languages often don't have enough power to solve large problems, e.g. GUI programming. Conversely, languages that are powerful enough for big problems often require far too much overhead for small problems. This characteristic is important because problems that look small at first frequently grow in scope in unexpected ways. If a programmer chooses a language appropriate only for small tasks, scope changes can require rewriting code from scratch in a new language. And if the programmer chooses a language with lots of overhead and friction to solve a problem that stays small, it will be harder for other people to use and understand than necessary. Rewriting code that works fine is the single most wasteful thing a programmer can do with their time, but using a bazooka to kill a mosquito instead of a flyswatter isn't good either. Here are some of the ways this characteristic presents itself. Can be used interactively - there is some environment where programmers can enter commands one by one Requires no more than one file - neither project files nor makefiles are required for running in batch mode Can easily split code across multiple files - files can refeence each other, or there is some support for modules Has good support for data structures - supports structures like arrays, lists, and especially classes Supports a wide variety of features - features like networking, serialization, XML, and database connectivity are supported by standard libraries Here's my take on how C#, Python, and shell scripting measure up. Python scores highest. Feature C# Python shell scripting --------------- --------- --------- --------------- Interactive poor strong strong One file poor strong strong Multiple files strong strong moderate Data structures strong strong poor Features strong strong strong Is there a term that captures this idea? If not, what term should I use? Here are some candidates. Scalability - already used to decribe language performance, so it's not a good idea to overload it in the context of language syntax Granularity - expresses the idea of being good just for big tasks versus being good for big and small tasks, but doesn't express anything about data structures Smoothness - expresses the idea of low friction, but doesn't express anything about strength of data structures or features Note: Some of these properties are more correctly described as belonging to a compiler or IDE than the language itself. Please consider these tools collectively as the language environment. My question is about how easy or difficult languages are to use, which depends on the environment as well as the language.

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• Ubuntu won't display netbook's native resolution

  - by Daniel

  FYI: My Netbook model is HP Mini 210-1004sa, which comes with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150, and has a display 10.1" Active Matrix Colour TFT 1024 x 600. I recently removed Windows 7 Starter from my netbook, and replaced it with Ubuntu 12.10. The problem is the OS doesn't seem to recognise the native display resolution of 1024x600 i.e. the bottom bits of Ubuntu is hidden beneath the screen & the only 2 available resolutions are: the default 1024x768 and 800x600. I've also thought about replacing Ubuntu with Lubuntu or Puppy Linux, as the system does run a bit slow, but I can't, as then I won't be able to access the taskbar and application menu which will be hidden beneath the screen. Only Ubuntu with Unity is currently usable, as the Unity Launcher is visible enough. I was able to define a custom resolution 1024x600 using the Q&A: How set my monitor resolution? but when I set that resolution, there appears a black band at the top of the screen and the desktop area is lowered, with bits of it hidden beneath the screen. I tried leaving it at this new resolution and restarting the system to see if the black band would disappear & the display will fit correctly, but it gets reset to 1024x768 at startup and displays following error: Could not apply the stored configuration for monitors none of the selected modes were compatible with the possible modes: Trying modes for CRTC 63 CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) Trying modes for CRTC 64 CRTC 64: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1)

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• User connection management in Reporting Services configuration

  - by Testas

  IT professionals will use Reporting Services Configuration Manager to perform post installation tasks for SQL Server Reporting Services. Introduced in SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services Configuration Manager provides an intuitive interface to perform tasks including specifying the report server database, report manager url, and indeed one of the first post installation tasks that should be performed is backing up the encryption keys that are used to protect the sensitive information within the rdl files.  Many of the options that are selected within Reporting Services Configuration Manager are written to a number of configuration files including the rsreportserver.config file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Report Server InstanceName\Reporting Services\ReportServer folder.When opening this file you will notice that there are more configuration settings within the rsreportserver.config file than is available through the Reporting Services Configuration Manager Interface. As a result there are additional configuration options that can be defined within this file.  A customer was having a problem performing stress tests against a new Report Server that would be going live for an enterprise reporting system. One aspect of the stress test was to fire 50 connections from a single user account. When performing the stress test an error described that the maximum active request had been exceeded. Within the rsreportserver.config, there is a key that is added to the file:  <Add Key=”MaxActiveReqForOneUser” Value=”20”/>  Changing the value from 20 to 50 accommodated the needs of the stress test, however, a wider question should be asked pertaining to this setting when implementing Reporting Services to a production environment. Within an intranet environment, the default setting is appropriate when network bandwidth is high, users are known and demand for reports is particularly high from a group of users.  However, when deploying a Reporting Server solution to an extranet, or the internet, you may want to consider reducing this setting to reduce to scope of connections that can be acquired by a single user and placing unnecessary pressure on the report server. I do hope that Reporting Services Configuration Manager evolves to include an advanced page that includes an intuitive interface to change configuration settings such as the MaxActiveReqForOneUser, and also configure rendering and data extensions and define secure connection levels to the report server. All these options can be configured within the rsreportserver.config file, and these are setting that customers would like to see in Reporting Services Configuration Manager in the future.   If you think that the SQL community would benefit from this addition, you can vote on it at Microsoft Connect  https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/565575/extending-reporting-services-configuration-manager-rscm    

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• Windows Azure Diagnostics: Next to Useless?

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  To quote my good friend Christian: “Tracing is probably one of the most discussed topics in the Windows Azure world. Not because it is freaking cool – but because it can be very tedious and partly massively counter-intuitive.” <rant> The .NET Framework has this wonderful facility called TraceSource. You define a named trace and route that to a configurable listener. This gives you a lot of flexibility – you can create a single trace file – or multiple ones. There is even nice tooling around that. SvcTraceViewer from the SDK let’s you open the XML trace files – you can filter and sort by trace source and event type, aggreate multiple files…blablabla. Just what you would expect from a decent tracing infrastructure. Now comes Windows Azure. I was already were grateful that starting with the SDK 1.2 we finally had a way to do tracing and diagnostics in the cloud (kudos!). But the way the Azure DiagnosticMonitor is currently implemented – could be called flawed. The Azure SDK provides a DiagnosticsMonitorTraceListener – which is the right way to go. The only problem is, that way this works is, that all traces (from all sources) get written to an ETW trace. Then the DiagMon listens to these traces and copies them periodically to your storage account. So far so good. But guess what happens to your nice trace files: the trace source names get “lost”. They appear in your message text at the end. So much for filtering and sorting and aggregating (regex #fail or #win??). Every trace line becomes an entry in a Azure Storage Table – the svclog format is gone. So much for the existing tooling. To solve that problem, one workaround was to write your own trace listener (!) that creates svclog files inside of local storage and use the DiagMon to copy those. Christian has a blog post about that. OK done that. Now it turns out that this mechanism does not work anymore in 1.3 with FullIIS (see here). Quoting: “Some IIS 7.0 logs not collected due to permissions issues...The root cause to both of these issues is the permissions on the log files.” And the workaround: “To read the files yourself, log on to the instance with a remote desktop connection.” Now then have fun with your multi-instance deployments…. </rant>

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• Spotlight on RIVA: CRM integration for Oracle CRM on Demand and Microsoft Exchange

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Introducing Riva from Omni - an Oracle ISV partner specializing in Enterprise Management and Integration Solutions Riva delivers advanced, server-side integration for Oracle CRM On Demand and Microsoft Exchange or even Novell GroupWise. Riva allows Oracle customers to go beyond the standard Outlook plug-in to deliver additional value for the end user as they interact between Outlook and CRM On Demand. Riva syncs CRM On Demand to ALL Exchange mail apps, not just Windows Outlook.  So, whether customers are using Outlook 2010, Outlook Web Access (web client), Outlook 2011 for Mac, Apple Mail, Outlook on Citrix  or a mobile device, Riva's got them covered. There are no plug-ins to be installed, configured, managed and maintained on users' desktops, laptops as Riva delivers Server-side synchronisation for CRMOD and Exchange. The automation of CRM and Outlook integration will remove the reliance upon users to synchronise between the two with Riva handling this process. Riva allows administrators to define sync policies and apply them to individuals or groups of users depending on their sync requirements. Administrators will be able to determine and manage the exposure of the most pertinent detail to be synchronised between Outlook and CRM On Demand. Custom and organic contact filtering for large deployments i.e. Based on ownership, groupings and contact frequency, filters can be applied on what contact records are shared with the users. Riva provides the capability to synchronise CRM and Outlook beyond Contacts, Calendar entries and Email. The synchronisation can be extended to cater for  opportunities, quotes and custom objects for example within the Outlook interface. Riva SmartConvert Folders can automate the creation of opportunities and associated contacts for example if they don't already exist. This can facilitate a reduction in manual detail entry through quick association whilst also benefiting user adoption. From a mobile perspective, Riva allows users to view and manage their CRM On Demand contacts, calendar, tasks, opportunities and cases from iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.  Again, there are no mobile apps or additional plugins to install, configure or manage. We sync CRM On Demand to Exchange.  Because the mobile device is connected to an Exchange mailbox, the information automatically syncs down to the native address book, calendar and mail apps on the smartphone or tablet. Riva Datasheet for CRM On Demand Riva Brochure – Oracle CRM On Demand  Technical Knowledgebase & Riva Trial  http://kb.omni-ts.com/47/ Comparison to Outlook Plug-ins Riva Diagram – Riva Comparison with Outlook Plug-ins Contact: Wolfgang Berger - [email protected]

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• What's Old is New Again

  - by David Dorf

  Last night I told my son he could stream music to his tablet "from the cloud" (in this case, the Amazon Cloud).  He paused, then said, "what is the cloud?"  I replied, "a bunch of servers connected to the internet."  Apparently he had visions of something much more magnificent.  Another similar term is "big data."  These marketing terms help to quickly convey topics but are oversimplifications that are open to many interpretations.  At their core, those terms a shiny packages holding recycled ideas. I see many headlines declaring big data changes everything, but it doesn't.  Savvy retailers have been dealing with large volumes of data since the electronic cash register was invented.  But the there have a been a few changes to the landscape that make big data a topic of conversation: 1. Computing power has caught up to storage volumes. Its now possible to more thoroughly analyze the copious volumes of data retailers have been squirreling away.  CPUs are faster, sold state drives more plentiful, and new ways to store and search data are available.  My iPhone is more power than the computer used in the Apollo mission to the moon. 2. Unstructured data is everywhere.  The Web used to be where retailers published product information, but now users are generating the bulk of the content in the form of comments, videos, and "likes."  The variety of information available to retailers is huge, and it meaning difficult to discern. 3. Everything is connected.  Looking at a report from my router, there are no less than 20 active devices on my home network.  We can track the location of mobile phones, tag products with RFID, and set our thermostats (I love my Nest) from a thousand miles away.  Not only is there more data, but its arriving at higher velocity. Careful readers will note the three Vs that help define so-called big data: volume, variety, and velocity. We now have more volume, more variety, and more velocity and different technologies to deal with them.  But at the heart, the objectives are still the same: Informed decisions Accurate forecasts Improved optimizations So don't let the term "big data" throw you off the scent.  Retailers still need to execute on the basics.  But do take a fresh look at the data that's available and the new technologies to process it.  The landscape will continue to change and agile organizations will always be reevaluating their approaches.  You can just add some more weapons to the arsenal.

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• Selectively Exposing Functionallity in .Net

  - by David V. Corbin

  Any developer should be aware of the principles of encapsulation, cross-tier isolation, and cross-functional separation of concerns. However, it seems the few take the time to consider the adage of "minimal yet complete"1 when developing the software. Consider the exposure of "business objects" to the user interface. Some common situations occur: Accessing a given element requires a compound set of calls that do not "make sense" to the User Interface. More information than absolutely required is exposed to the user interface It would be much cleaner if a custom interface was provided that exposed exactly (and only) the information that is required by the consumer. Achieving this using conventional techniques would require the creation (and maintenance!) of custom classes to filter and transpose the information into the ideal format. Determining the ROI on this approach can be very difficult to ascertain, and as a result it is often ignored completely. There is another approach, which is largely made practical by virtual of the Action and Func delegates. From a callers point of view, the following two samples can be used interchangeably:     interface ISomeInterface     {         void SampleMethod1(string param);         string SamepleMethod2(string param);     }       class ISomeInterface     {         public Action<string> SampleMethod1 {get; }         public Func<string,string> SamepleMethod2 {get; }     }   The capabilities this simple changes enable are significant (and remember it does not cange the syntax at the call site): The delegates can be initialized to directly call the proper method of any target class. The delegates can be dynamically updated based on the current state. The "interface" can NOT be cast to the concrete class (which often exposes more functionallity). This patterns By limiting the interface to the exact functionallity required, the reduced surface area will typically result in lower development, testing and maintenance costs. We are currently in the process of posting a project on CodePlex which illustrates this (and many other) techniques which have proven helpful in creating robust yet flexible solutions that are highly efficient2 and maintainable. This post will be updated as soon as the project is published. 1) Credit: Scott  Meyers, Effective C++, Addison-Wesley 1992 2) For those who read my previous post on performance it should be noted that the use of delegates is on the same order of magnitude (actually a tiny amount faster) as conventional interfaces.

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• Databases and Beer

  - by Johnm

  It is a bit of a no-brainer: Include the word "beer" in a subject line of an e-mail or blog post title and you can be certain that it will be read. While there are times this practice might be a ploy to increase readership, it is not the case for this blog post. There is inspiration that can be drawn from other industries to which we, as database professionals, can apply in our industry. In this post I will highlight one of my favorite participants of the brewing industry. The Boston Beer Company started in the 1970s in Boston, Massachusetts. Others may be more familiar with this company through their Samuel Adams Boston Lager and other various seasonal beers. I am continually inspired by their commitment to mastery of the brewing process to which they evangelize frequently in their commercials. They also are continually in pursuit of pushing the boundaries of beer as we know it while working within traditional constraints. A recent example of this is their collaboration with Weihenstephan Brewery of Munich, Germany to produce the soon to be released Infinium beer. This beer, while brewed as an ale, is touted as something closer to something like Champaign - all while complying with the Reinheitsgebot. The Reinheitsgebot is also known as the "German Beer Purity Law" which was originated in 1516. This law states that beer is to consist of water, barley, hops and yeast. That's it. Quite a limiting constraint indeed. and yet, The Boston Beer Company pushed forward. Much like the process of brewing, the discipline of database design and architecture is one that is continually in process and driven by the pursuit of mastery. While we do not have purity laws to constrain us, we have many other types: best practices, company policies, government regulations, security and budgets. Through our fellow comrades, we discuss the challenges and constraints in which we operate. We boil down the principles and theories that define our profession. We reassemble these into something that is complementary to the business needs that we must fulfill. As a result, it is not uncommon to see something amazingly innovative in a small business who is pushing the boundaries of their database well beyond its intended state. It is equally common to see innovation in the use of features available in the more advanced features of databases that are found in large businesses. The tag line for The Boston Beer Company is: "Take Pride In Your Beer.", I would like to offer an alternative and say "Take Pride In Your Database." So, As you pour your next Boston Lager into a frosted glass, consider those who spend their lives mastering the craft of brewing and strive to interject their spirit into everything that you do as a database professional. Cheers!

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• 0xC0017011 and other error messages - what is the error message text?

  Recently there was a bug raised against BIDS Helper which originated in my Expression Editor control. Thankfully the person that raised it kindly included a screenshot, so I had the error code (HRESULT 0xC0017011) and a stack trace that pointed the finger firmly at my control, but no error message text. The code itself looked fine so I searched on the error code but got no results. I’d expected to get a hit from Books Online with the Integration Services Error and Message Reference topic at the very least, but no joy. There is however a more accurate and definitive reference, namely the header file that defines all these codes dtsmsg.h which you can find at- C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\SDK\Include\dtsmsg.h Looking the code up in the header file gave me a much more useful error message. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // The parameter is sensitive // // MessageId: DTS_E_SENSITIVEPARAMVALUENOTALLOWED // // MessageText: // // Accessing value of the parameter variable for the sensitive parameter "%1!s!" is not allowed. Verify that the variable is used properly and that it protects the sensitive information. // #define DTS_E_SENSITIVEPARAMVALUENOTALLOWED ((HRESULT)0xC0017011L) Unfortunately I’d forgotten all about this. By the time I had remembered about it, the person who raised the issue had managed to narrow it down to something to do with having  sensitive parameter. Putting that together with the error message I’d finally found, a quick poke around in the code and I found the new GetSensitiveValue method which seemed to do the trick. The HResult fields are also listed online but it only shows the short error message, and it doesn’t include that all so important HRESULT value itself. So let this be a lesson to you (and me!), if you need to check  SSIS error go straight to the horses mouth - dtsmsg.h. This is particularly true when working with early builds, or CTP releases when we expect the documentation to be a bit behind. There is also a programmatic approach to getting better SSIS error messages. I should to take another look at the error handling in the control, or the way it is hosted in BIDS Helper. I suspect that if I use an implementation of Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.Wrapper.IDTSInfoEvents100 I could catch the error itself and get the full error message text which I could then report back. This would obviously be a better user experience and also make it easier to diagnose any issues like this in the future. See ExprssionEvaluator.cs for an example of this in use in the Expression Editor control.

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• Diving into Scala with Cay Horstmann

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  A new interview with Java Champion Cay Horstmann, now up on otn/java, titled  "Diving into Scala: A Conversation with Java Champion Cay Horstmann," explores Horstmann's ideas about Scala as reflected in his much lauded new book,  Scala for the Impatient.  None other than Martin Odersky, the inventor of Scala, called it "a joy to read" and the "best introduction to Scala". Odersky was so enthused by the book that he asked Horstmann if the first section could be made available as a free download on the Typesafe Website, something Horstmann graciously assented to. Horstmann acknowledges that some aspects of Scala are very complex, but he encourages developers to simply stay away from those parts of the language. He points to several ways Java developers can benefit from Scala: "For example," he says, " you can write classes with less boilerplate, file and XML handling is more concise, and you can replace tedious loops over collections with more elegant constructs. Typically, programmers at this level report that they write about half the number of lines of code in Scala that they would in Java, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Another entry point can be if you want to use a Scala-based framework such as Akka or Play; you can use these with Java, but the Scala API is more enjoyable. " Horstmann observes that developers can do fine with Scala without grasping the theory behind it. He argues that most of us learn best through examples and not through trying to comprehend abstract theories. He also believes that Scala is the most attractive choice for developers who want to move beyond Java and C++.  When asked about other choices, he comments: "Clojure is pretty nice, but I found its Lisp syntax a bit off-putting, and it seems very focused on software transactional memory, which isn't all that useful to me. And it's not statically typed. I wanted to like Groovy, but it really bothers me that the semantics seems under-defined and in flux. And it's not statically typed. Yes, there is Groovy++, but that's in even sketchier shape. There are a couple of contenders such as Kotlin and Ceylon, but so far they aren't real. So, if you want to do work with a statically typed language on the JVM that exists today, Scala is simply the pragmatic choice. It's a good thing that it's such a nice choice." Learn more about Scala by going to the interview here.

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• WebLogic Server Weekly for March 26th, 2012: WLS 1211 Update, Java 7 Certification, Galleria, WebLogic for DBAs, REST and Enterprise Architecture, Singleton Services

  - by Steve Button

  WebLogic Server 12c Certified with Java 7 for Production Use WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.1) has been certified with JDK 7 for development usage since December and we have now completed JDK 7 certification for use with production systems. In doing so, we have updated the WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.1) distributions incorporating fixes associated with JDK 7 support as well as some bundled patches that address several issues that have been discovered since the initial release. These updated distributions are available for download from OTN and will be beneficial for all WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.1) users in general. What's New Release Notes Download Here! Updated Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.1.0 distribution Never one to miss a trick, Markus Eisele was one of the first to notice the WebLogic Server 12c update and post a blog about it. Sources told me that as of Friday last week you have an updated version of WebLogic Server 12c on OTN. http://blog.eisele.net/2012/03/updated-oracle-weblogic-server-12110.html Using WebLogic Server 12c with Java 7 - Video To illustrate the use of Java 7 with WebLogic Server 12c, I put together a screen cam showing the creation of a domain using Java 7 and then build and deploy a simple web application that uses Java 7 syntax to show it working. Ireland OUG Presentation: WebLogic for DBAs Simon Haslam posted his slides from a presentation he gave Dublin on 21/3/12 at the OUG Ireland conference. In this presentation, he explains the core concepts and ideas behind WebLogic Server, walks through an installation and offers some tips and common gotcha's to avoid. Simon also covers some aspects of installing and use Enterprise Manager 12c. Note: I usually install the JVM and use the generic .jar installer rather than using an installer bundled with a JVM. http://www.slideshare.net/Veriton/weblogic-for-dbas-10h Slightly Retro: Jeff West on Enterprise Architecure and REST In this weeks flashback, we look at Jeff West's blog from early 2011 where he provides some thoughtful opinions on enterprise architecture and innovation, then jumps into his views on REST. After I progressed in my career and did more team-leading and architecture type roles I was ‘educated’ on what it meant to have Asynchronous and Long-Running processes as part of your Enterprise Application architecture. If I had a synchronous process then I needed a thread available to service the request and then provide the response. https://blogs.oracle.com/jeffwest/entry/weblogic_integration_wli_web_services_and_soap_and_rest_part_1 Starting Managed Servers without an Administration Server using Node Manager and WLST Blogger weblogic-tips shows how to start a managed server without going through the Administration Server, using the Node Manager and WLST. Connect WLST to a Node Manager by entering the nmConnect command. http://www.weblogic-tips.com/2012/02/18/starting-managed-servers-without-an-administration-server-using-node-manager-and-wlst/ Using WebLogic Server Singleton Services WebLogic Server has supported the notion of a Singleton Service for a number of releases, in which WebLogic Server will maintain a single instance of a configured singleton service on one managed server within a cluster. This blog demonstrates how the singleton service can be accessed and used from applications deployed on the cluster. http://buttso.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/weblogic-server-singleton-services.html

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• In a multidisciplinary team, how much should each member's skills overlap?

  - by spade78

  I've been working in embedded software development for this small startup and our team is pretty small: about 3-4 people. We're responsible for all engineering which involves an RF device controlled by an embedded microcontroller that connects to a PC host which runs some sort of data collection and analysis software. I have come to develop these two guidelines when I work with my colleagues: Define a clear separation of responsibilities and make sure each person's contribution to the final product doesn't overlap. Don't assume your colleagues know everything about their responsibilities. I assume there is some sort of technology that I will need to be competent at to properly interface with the work of my colleagues. The first point is pretty easy for us. I do firmware, one guy does the RF, another does the PC software, and the last does the DSP work. Nothing overlaps in terms of two people's work being mixed into the final product. For that to happen, one guy has to hand off work to another guy who will vet it and integrate it himself. The second point is the heart of my question. I've learned the hard way not to trust the knowledge of my colleagues absolutley no matter how many years experience they claim to have. At least not until they've demonstrated it to me a couple of times. So given that whenever I develop a piece of firmware, if it interfaces with some technology that I don't know then I'll try to learn it and develop a piece of test code that helps me understand what they're doing. That way if my piece of the product comes into conflict with another piece then I have some knowledge about possible causes. For example, the PC guy has started implementing his GUI's in .NET WPF (C#) and using LibUSBdotNET for USB access. So I've been learning C# and the .NET USB library that he uses and I build a little console app to help me understand how that USB library works. Now all this takes extra time and energy but I feel it's justified as it gives me a foothold to confront integration problems. Also I like learning this new stuff so I don't mind. On the other hand I can see how this can turn into a time synch for work that won't make it into the final product and may never turn into a problem. So how much experience/skills overlap do you expect in your teammates relative to your own skills? Does this issue go away as the teams get bigger and more diverse?

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• When to use SOAP over REST

  So, how does REST based services differ from SOAP based services, and when should you use SOAP? Representational State Transfer (REST) implements the standard HTTP/HTTPS as an interface allowing clients to obtain access to resources based on requested URIs. An example of a URI may look like this http://mydomain.com/service/method?parameter=var1&parameter=var2. It is important to note that REST based services are stateless because http/https is natively stateless. One of the many benefits for implementing HTTP/HTTPS as an interface is can be found in caching. Caching can be done on a web service much like caching is done on requested web pages. Caching allows for reduced web server processing and increased response times because content is already processed and stored for immediate access. Typical actions performed by REST based services include generic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) operations and operations that do not require state. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) on the other hand uses a generic interface in order to transport messages. Unlike REST, SOAP can use HTTP/HTTPS, SMTP, JMS, or any other standard transport protocols. Furthermore, SOAP utilizes XML in the following ways: Define a message Defines how a message is to be processed Defines the encoding of a message Lays out procedure calls and responses As REST aligns more with a Resource View, SOAP aligns more with a Method View in that business logic is exposed as methods typically through SOAP web service because they can retain state. In addition, SOAP requests are not cached therefore every request will be processed by the server. As stated before Soap does retain state and this gives it a special advantage over REST for services that need to preform transactions where multiple calls to a service are need in order to complete a task. Additionally, SOAP is more ideal for enterprise level services that implement standard exchange formats in the form of contracts due to the fact that REST does not currently support this. A real world example of where SOAP is preferred over REST can be seen in the banking industry where money is transferred from one account to another. SOAP would allow a bank to perform a transaction on an account and if the transaction failed, SOAP would automatically retry the transaction ensuring that the request was completed. Unfortunately, with REST, failed service calls must be handled manually by the requesting application. References: Francia, S. (2010). SOAP vs. REST. Retrieved 11 20, 2011, from spf13: http://spf13.com/post/soap-vs-rest Rozlog, M. (2010). REST and SOAP: When Should I Use Each (or Both)? Retrieved 11 20, 2011, from Infoq.com: http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-soap-when-to-use-each

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• Library to fake intermittent failures according to tester-defined policy?

  - by crosstalk

  I'm looking for a library that I can use to help mock a program component that works only intermittently - usually, it works fine, but sometimes it fails. For example, suppose I need to read data from a file, and my program has to avoid crashing or hanging when a read fails due to a disk head crash. I'd like to model that by having a mock data reader function that returns mock data 90% of the time, but hangs or returns garbage otherwise. Or, if I'm stress-testing my full program, I could turn on debugging code in my real data reader module to make it return real data 90% of the time and hang otherwise. Now, obviously, in this particular example I could just code up my mock manually to test against a random() routine. However, I was looking for a system that allows implementing any failure policy I want, including: Fail randomly 10% of the time Succeed 10 times, fail 4 times, repeat Fail semi-randomly, such that one failure tends to be followed by a burst of more failures Any policy the tester wants to define Furthermore, I'd like to be able to change the failure policy at runtime, using either code internal to the program under test, or external knobs or switches (though the latter can be implemented with the former). In pig-Java, I'd envision a FailureFaker interface like so: interface FailureFaker { /** Return true if and only if the mocked operation succeeded. Implementors should override this method with versions consistent with their failure policy. */ public boolean attempt(); } And each failure policy would be a class implementing FailureFaker; for example there would be a PatternFailureFaker that would succeed N times, then fail M times, then repeat, and a AlwaysFailFailureFaker that I'd use temporarily when I need to simulate, say, someone removing the external hard drive my data was on. The policy could then be used (and changed) in my mock object code like so: class MyMockComponent { FailureFaker faker; public void doSomething() { if (faker.attempt()) { // ... } else { throw new RuntimeException(); } } void setFailurePolicy (FailureFaker policy) { this.faker = policy; } } Now, this seems like something that would be part of a mocking library, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's been done before. (In fact, I got the idea from Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code, where he discusses this exact idea on pages 228-231, saying that such facilities were common in Microsoft code of that early-90's era.) However, I'm only familiar with EasyMock and jMockit for Java, and neither AFAIK have this function, or something similar with different syntax. Hence, the question: Do such libraries as I've described above exist? If they do, where have you found them useful? If you haven't found them useful, why not?

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• C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism

  - by Daniel Moth

  At AMD's Fusion conference Herb Sutter announced in his keynote session a technology that our team has been working on that we call C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) and during the keynote I showed a brief demo of an app built with our technology. After the keynote, I go deeper into the technology in my breakout session. If you read both those abstracts, you'll get some information about what C++ AMP is, without being too explicit since we published the abstracts before the technology was announced. You can find the official online announcement at Soma's blog post. Here, I just wanted to capture the key points about C++ AMP that can serve as an introduction and an FAQ. So, in no particular order… C++ AMP lowers the barrier to entry for heterogeneous hardware programmability and brings performance to the mainstream, without sacrificing developer productivity or solution portability. is designed not only to help you address today's massively parallel hardware (i.e. GPUs and APUs), but it also future proofs your code investments with a forward looking design. is part of Visual C++. You don't need to use a different compiler or learn different syntax. is modern C++. Not C or some other derivative. is integrated and supported fully in Visual Studio vNext. Editing, building, debugging, profiling and all the other goodness of Visual Studio work well with C++ AMP. provides an STL-like library as part of the existing concurrency namespace and delivered in the new amp.h header file. makes it extremely easy to work with large multi-dimensional data on heterogeneous hardware; in a manner that exposes parallelization. introduces only one core C++ language extension. builds on DirectX (and DirectCompute in particular) which offers a great hardware abstraction layer that is ubiquitous and reliable. The architecture is such, that this point can be thought of as an implementation detail that does not surface to the API layer. Stay tuned on my blog for more over the coming months where I will switch from just talking about C++ AMP to showing you how to use the API with code examples… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• What are the arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?

  - by smarmy53

  I have been assigned the task of implementing a Domain Specific Language for a tool that may become quite important for the company. The language is simple but not trivial, it already allows nested loops, string concatenation, etc. and it is practically sure that other constructs will be added as the project advances. I know by experience that writing a lexer/parser by hand -unless the grammar is trivial- is a time consuming and error prone process. So I was left with two options: a parser generator à la yacc or a combinator library like Parsec. The former was good as well but I picked the latter for various reasons, and implemented the solution in a functional language. The result is pretty spectacular to my eyes, the code is very concise, elegant and readable/fluent. I concede it may look a bit weird if you never programmed in anything other than java/c#, but then this would be true of anything not written in java/c#. At some point however, I've been literally attacked by a co-worker. After a quick glance at my screen he declared that the code is uncomprehensible and that I should not reinvent parsing but just use a stack and String.Split like everybody does. He made a lot of noise, and I could not convince him, partially because I've been taken by surprise and had no clear explanation, partially because his opinion was immutable (no pun intended). I even offered to explain him the language, but to no avail. I'm positive the discussion is going to re-surface in front of management, so I'm preparing some solid arguments. These are the first few reasons that come to my mind to avoid a String.Split-based solution: you need lot of ifs to handle special cases and things quickly spiral out of control lots of hardcoded array indexes makes maintenance painful extremely difficult to handle things like a function call as a method argument (ex. add( (add a, b), c) very difficult to provide meaningful error messages in case of syntax errors (very likely to happen) I'm all for simplicity, clarity and avoiding unnecessary smart-cryptic stuff, but I also believe it's a mistake to dumb down every part of the codebase so that even a burger flipper can understand it. It's the same argument I hear for not using interfaces, not adopting separation of concerns, copying-pasting code around, etc. A minimum of technical competence and willingness to learn is required to work on a software project after all. (I won't use this argument as it will probably sound offensive, and starting a war is not going to help anybody) What are your favorite arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?* *of course if you can convince me he's right I'll be perfectly happy as well

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• Difference between the terms Material & Effect

  - by codey

  I'm making an effect system right now (I think, because it may be a material system... or both!). The effects system follows the common (e.g. COLLADA, DirectX) effect framework abstraction of Effects have Techniques, Techniques have Passes, Passes have States & Shader Programs. An effect, according to COLLADA, defines the equations necessary for the visual appearance of geometry and screen-space image processing. Keeping with the abstraction, effects contain techniques. Each effect can contain one or many techniques (i.e. ways to generate the effect), each of which describes a different method for rendering that effect. The technique could be relate to quality (e.g. high precision, high LOD, etc.), or in-game-situation (e.g. night/day, power-up-mode, etc.). Techniques hold a description of the textures, samplers, shaders, parameters, & passes necessary for rendering this effect using one method. Some algorithms require several passes to render the effect. Pipeline descriptions are broken into an ordered collection of Pass objects. A pass provides a static declaration of all the render states, shaders, & settings for "one rendering pipeline" (i.e. one pass). Meshes usually contain a series of materials that define the model. According to the COLLADA spec (again), a material instantiates an effect, fills its parameters with values, & selects a technique. But I see material defined differently in other places, such as just the Lambert, Blinn, Phong "material types/shaded surfaces", or as Metal, Plastic, Wood, etc. In game dev forums, people often talk about implementing a "material/effect system". Is the material not an instance of an effect? Ergo, if I had effect objects, stored in a collection, & each effect instance object with there own parameter setting, then there is no need for the concept of a material... Or am I interpreting it wrong? Please help by contributing your interpretations as I want to be clear on a distinction (if any), & don't want to miss out on the concept of a material if it should be implemented to follow the abstraction of the DirectX FX framework & COLLADA definitions closely.

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