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• Free tools versus paid tools.

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  We live in a strange world. Information should be free. Tools should be free. Software should be free (and I mean free as in free beer, not as in free speech). Of course, since I make my living (and pay my mortgage) by writing software I tend to disagree. Or rather: I want to get paid for the things I do in the daytime. Next to that I also spend time on projects I feel are valuable for the community, which I do for free. The reason I can do that is because I get paid enough in the daytime to afford that time. It gives me a good feeling, I help others and it’s fun to do. But the baseline is: I get paid to write software. I am sure this goes for a lot of other developers. We get paid for what we do during the daytime and spend our free time giving back. So why does everyone always make a fuzz when a company suddenly starts to charge for software? To me, this seems like a very reasonable decision. Companies need money: they have staff to pay, buildings to rent, coffee to buy, etc. All of this doesn’t come free so it makes sense that they charge their customers for the things they produce. I know there’s a very big Open Source market out there, where companies give away (parts of) their software and get revenue out of the services they provide. But this doesn’t work if your product doesn’t need services. If you build a great tool that is very easy to use, and you give it away for free you won’t get any money by selling services that no user of your tool really needs. So what do you do? You charge money for your tool. It’s either that or stop developing the tool and turn to other, more profitable projects. Like it or not, that’s simple economics at work. You have something other people want, so you charge them for it. This week it was announced that what I believe is the most used tool for .net developers (besides Visual Studio of course),namely Red Gates .net reflector, will stop being a free tool. They will charge you $35 for the next version. Suddenly twitter was on fire and everyone was mad about it. But why? The tool is downloaded by so many developers that it must be valuable to them. I know of no serious .net developer who hasn’t got it on his or her machine. So apparently the tool gives them something they need. So why do they expect it to be free? There are developers out there maintaining and extending the tool, building new and better versions of it. And the price? $35 doesn’t seem much. If I think of the time the tool saved me the 35 dollars were earned back in a day. If by spending this amount of money I can rely on great software that helps me do my job better and faster, I have no problems by spending it. I know that there is a great team behind it, (the Red Gate tools are a must have when developing SQL systems, for instance), and I do believe they are in their right to charge this. So.. there you have it. This is of course, my opinion. You may think otherwise. Please let me know in the comments what you think! Tags van Technorati: redgate,reflector,opensource

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• How to move complete SharePoint Server 2007 from one box to another

  - by DipeshBhanani

  It was time of my first onsite client assignment on SharePoint. Client had one server production environment. They wanted to upgrade the topology with completely new SharePoint Farm of three servers. So, the task was to move whole MOSS 2007 stuff to the new server environment without impacting data. The last three scary words “… without impacting data…” were actually putting pressure on my head. Moreover SSP was required to move because additional information has been added for users apart from AD import.   I thought I had to do only backup and restore. It appeared pretty easy at first thought. Just because of these damn scary words, I thought to check out on internet for guidance related to this scenario. I couldn’t get anything except general guidance of moving server on Microsoft TechNet site. I promised myself for starting blogs with this post if I would be successful in this task. Well, I took long time to write this but finally made it. I hope it will be useful to all guys looking for SharePoint server movement.   Before beginning restoration, make sure that, there is no difference in versions of SharePoint at source and destination server. Also check whether the state of SharePoint Installation at the time of backup and restore is same or not. (E.g. SharePoint related service packs and patches if any)   The main tasks of the server movement are as follow:   Backup all the databases Install and configure SharePoint on new environment Deploy all solution (WSP Files) globally to destination server- for installing features attached to the solutions Install all the custom features Deploy/Copy custom pages/files which are added to the “12Hive” folder later Restore SSP Restore My Site Restore other web application   Tasks 3 to 5 are for making sure that we have configured the environment well enough for the web application to be restored successfully. The main and complex task was restoring SSP. I have started restoring SSP through Central Admin. After a while, the restoration status was updated to “unsuccessful”. “Damn it, what went wrong?” I thought looking at the error detail down the page. I couldn’t remember the error message but I had corrected and restored it again.   Actually once you fail restoring SSP, until and unless you don’t clean all related stuff well, your restoration will be failed again and again. I wanted to find the actual reason. So cleaned, restored, cleaned, restored… I had tried almost 5-6 times and finally, I succeeded. I had realized how pleasant it is, to see the word “Successful” on the screen. Without wasting your much time to read, let me write all the detailed steps of restoring SSP:   Delete the SSP through following STSADM command. stsadm -o deletessp -title <SSP name> -deletedatabases -force e.g.: stsadm -o deletessp -title SharedServices1 -deletedatabases –force Check and delete the web application associated with SSP if it exists. Remove Link from Check and remove “Alternate Access Mapping” associated with SSP if it exists. Check and delete IIS site as well as application pool associated with SSP if it exists. Stop following services: ·         Office SharePoint Server Search ·         Windows SharePoint Services Search ·         Windows SharePoint Services Help Search Delete all the databases associated/related to SSP from SQL Server. Reset IIS. Start again following services: ·         Office SharePoint Server Search ·         Windows SharePoint Services Search ·         Windows SharePoint Services Help Search Restore the new SSP.   After the SSP restoration, all other stuffs had completed very smoothly without any more issues. I did few modifications to sites for change of server name and finally, the new environment was ready.

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• Welcome 2011

  - by PSteele

  About this time last year, I wrote a blog post about how January of 2010 was almost over and I hadn’t done a single blog post.  Ugh…  History repeats itself. 2010 in Review If I look back at 2010, it was a great year in terms of technology and development: Visited Redmond to attend the MVP Summit in February.  Had a great time with the MS product teams and got to connect with some really smart people. Continued my work on Visual Studio Magazine’s “C# Corner” column.  About mid-year, the column changed from an every-other-month print column to an every-other-month print column along with bi-monthly web-only articles.  Needless to say, this kept me even busier and away from my blog. Participated in another GiveCamp!  Thanks to the wonderful leadership of Michael Eaton and all of his minions, GiveCamp 2010 was another great success.  Planning for GiveCamp 2011 will be starting soon… I switched to DVCS full time.  After years of being a loyal SVN user, I got bit by the DVCS bug.  I played around with both Mercurial and Git and finally settled on Mercurial.  It’s seamless integration with Windows Explorer along with it’s wealth of plugins made me fall in love.  I can’t imagine going back and using a centralized version control system. Continued to work with the awesome group of talent at SRT Solutions.  Very proud that SRT won it’s third consecutive FastTrack award! Jumped off the BlackBerry train and enjoying the smooth ride of Android.  It was time to replace the old BlackBerry Storm so I did some research and settled on the Motorola DroidX.  I couldn’t be happier.  Android is a slick OS and the DroidX is a sweet piece of hardware.  Been dabbling in some Android development with both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA (I like IntelliJ IDEA a lot better!).   2011 Plans On January 1st I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from the Microsoft MVP program letting me know that I had received the MVP award again for my community work in 2010.  I’m honored and humbled to be recognized by Microsoft as well as my peers! I’ll continue to do some Android development.  I’m currently working on a simple app to get me feet wet.  It may even makes it’s way into the Android Market. I’ve got a project that could really benefit from WPF so I’ll be diving into WPF this year.  I’ve played around with WPF a bit in the past – simple demos and learning exercises – but this will give me a chance to build an entire application in WPF.  I’m looking forward to the increased freedom that a WPF UI should give me. I plan on blogging a lot more in 2011! Technorati Tags: Android,MVP,Mercurial,WPF,SRT,GiveCamp

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• SQL SERVER – Select the Most Optimal Backup Methods for Server

  - by pinaldave

  Backup and Restore are very interesting concepts and one should be very much with the concept if you are dealing with production database. One never knows when a natural disaster or user error will surface and the first thing everybody wants is to get back on point in time when things were all fine. Well, in this article I have attempted to answer a few of the common questions related to Backup methodology. How to Select a SQL Server Backup Type In order to select a proper SQL Server backup type, a SQL Server administrator needs to understand the difference between the major backup types clearly. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let me offer it to you below. Select a Recovery Model First The very first question that you should ask yourself is: Can I afford to lose at least a little (15 min, 1 hour, 1 day) worth of data? Resist the temptation to save it all as it comes with the overhead – majority of businesses outside finances can actually afford to lose a bit of data. If your answer is YES, I can afford to lose some data – select a SIMPLE (default) recovery model in the properties of your database, otherwise you need to select a FULL recovery model. The additional advantage of the Full recovery model is that it allows you to restore the data to a specific point in time vs to only last backup time in the Simple recovery model, but it exceeds the scope of this article Backups in SIMPLE Recovery Model In SIMPLE recovery model you can select to do just Full backups or Full + Differential. Full Backup This is the simplest type of backup that contains all information needed to restore the database and should be your first choice. It is often sufficient for small databases, but note that it makes a big impact on the performance of your database Full + Differential Backup After Full, Differential backup picks up all of the changes since the last Full backup. This means if you made Full, Diff, Diff backup – the last Diff backup contains all of the changes and you don’t need the previous Differential backup. Differential backup is obviously smaller and carries less performance overhead Backups in FULL Recovery Model In FULL recovery model you can select Full + Transaction Log or Full + Differential + Transaction Log backup. You have to create Transaction Log backup, because at that time the log is being truncated. Otherwise your Transaction Log will grow uncontrollably. Full + Transaction Log Backup You would always need to perform a Full backup first. Then a series of Transaction log backup. Note that (in contrast to Differential) you need ALL transactions to log since the last Full of Diff backup to properly restore. Transaction log backups have the smallest performance overhead and can be performed often. Full + Differential + Transaction Log Backup If you want to ease the performance overhead on your server, you can replace some of the Full backup in the previous scenario with Differential. You restore scenario would start from Full, then the Last Differential, then all of the remaining transactions log backups Typical backup Scenarios You may say “Well, it is all nice – give me the examples now”. As you may already know, my favorite SQL backup software is SQLBackupAndFTP. If you go to Advanced Backup Schedule form in this program and click “Load a typical backup plan…” link, it will give you these scenarios that I think are quite common – see the image below. The Simplest Way to Schedule SQL Backups I hate to repeat myself, but backup scheduling in SQL agent leaves a lot to be desired. I do not know the simple way to schedule your SQL server backups than in SQLBackupAndFTP – see the image below. The whole backup scheduling with compression, encryption and upload to a Network Folder / HDD / NAS Drive / FTP / Dropbox / Google Drive / Amazon S3 takes just a few minutes – see my previous post for the review. Final Words This post offered an explanation for major backup types only. For more complicated scenarios or to research other options as usually go to MSDN. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Tweaking Remote Control (In-Kernel LIRC)

  - by Geoff

  I've recently rebuilt my MythTV box using Mythbuntu 12.04, to take advantage of newer hardware (Ivy Bridge). On my previous build I used lirc to manage the remote, i.e. the mapping of key codes - keypresses - application keys; it was quite a journey to learn it all, and I ended up fairly comfortable with how it all worked. What I have: I have a cheap Chinavasion remote and USB dongle, which I've found several articles on; these largely revolve around working with XBMC (interesting, but I don't think directly applicable) and also around getting a Harmony remote to work (it's a Chinavasion CVSB-983 - very useful, since I needed this to get my Harmony 900 working). Mythbuntu 12.04 64-bit MythTV 0.25 (likely irrelevant) How it is right now When I plug this in, it 'just works'. Which is great, except that Ubuntu uses it natively, and prevents some of the button presses from getting through to Myth. For example, I can send a button from the remote that equates to Ctrl-Alt-A (which I assume Ubuntu isn't interested in), and then trap that in Mythfrontend, but the remote's Play button is caught by Ubuntu (which displays a large circle with a line though it, as there's no media player loaded). I understand that this is because lirc is merged into the kernel now, and I like that. What I've done so far: Found the device using lsusb: $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 004: ID 073a:2230 Chaplet Systems, Inc. infrared dongle for remote Found the event device number: $ cat /proc/bus/input/devices I: Bus=0003 Vendor=073a Product=2230 Version=0110 N: Name="HID 073a:2230" P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2/input0 S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/input/input5 U: Uniq= H: Handlers=sysrq kbd mouse1 event5 js0 B: PROP=0 B: EV=10001f B: KEY=4c37fff072ff32d bf54445600000000 ffffffffff 30c100b17c007 ffa67bfad951dfff febeffdfffefffff fffffffffffffffe B: REL=343 B: ABS=100030000 B: MSC=10 Tested the input with evtest (I pressed Play): $ sudo evtest /dev/input/event5 Input driver version is 1.0.1 Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x73a product 0x2230 version 0x110 Input device name: "HID 073a:2230" Supported events: Event type 0 (EV_SYN) Event type 1 (EV_KEY) Event code 1 (KEY_ESC) Event code 2 (KEY_1) Event code 3 (KEY_2) Event code 4 (KEY_3) Event code 5 (KEY_4) Event code 6 (KEY_5) Event code 7 (KEY_6) <------------snipped lots of 'Event code' lines------------> Testing ... (interrupt to exit) Event: time 1336435683.230656, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1336435683.246648, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c00cd Event: time 1336435683.246652, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 164 (KEY_PLAYPAUSE), value 0 Event: time 1336435683.246655, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Tested showkey, again for the Play key: $ sudo showkey -s kb mode was RAW [ if you are trying this under X, it might not work since the X server is also reading /dev/console ] press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)... 0xe0 0x22 0xe0 0xa2 What I want: I'd like a way to scan the incoming button presses, if the above method isn't correct. I'd like to either remap each button press to something that Ubuntu/Unity will ignore, or even better pass the keypress directly to Myth (I suspect this later is only possible with lirc, but I could be wrong). I would really like to do this with the in-kernel drivers, i.e. without explicitly loading lirc; if that's the way the world is going, I'd rather find a way to map the current behaviour to what I want, rather than forcing the 'old' arrangement of loading lirc outside the kernel. Learning something new is also worthwhile! My guess: I'm assuming that this will require using setkeycodes, but have had trouble finding enough information to configure this. Any help greatly appreciated!

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• SQL SERVER – BACKUPIO, BACKUPBUFFER – Wait Type – Day 14 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Backup is the most important task for any database admin. Your data is at risk if you are not performing database backup. Honestly, I have seen many DBAs who know how to take backups but do not know how to restore it. (Sigh!) In this blog post we are going to discuss about one of my real experiences with one of my clients – BACKUPIO. When I started to deal with it, I really had no idea how to fix the issue. However, after fixing it at two places, I think I know why this is happening but at the same time, I am not sure the fix is the best solution. The reality is that the fix is not a solution but a workaround (which is not optimal, but get your things done). From Book On-Line: BACKUPIO Occurs when a backup task is waiting for data, or is waiting for a buffer in which to store data. This type is not typical, except when a task is waiting for a tape mount. BACKUPBUFFER Occurs when a backup task is waiting for data, or is waiting for a buffer in which to store data. This type is not typical, except when a task is waiting for a tape mount. BACKUPIO and BACKUPBUFFER Explanation: This wait stats will occur when you are taking the backup on the tape or any other extremely slow backup system. Reducing BACKUPIO and BACKUPBUFFER wait: In my recent consultancy, backup on tape was very slow probably because the tape system was very old. During the time when I explained this wait type reason in the consultancy, the owners immediately decided to replace the tape drive with an alternate system. They had a small SAN enclosure not being used on side, which they decided to re-purpose. After a week, I had received an email from their DBA, saying that the wait stats have reduced drastically. At another location, my client was using a third party tool (please don’t ask me the name of the tool) to take backup. This tool was compressing the backup along with taking backup. I have had a very good experience with this tool almost all the time except this one sparse experience. When I tried to take backup using the native SQL Server compressed backup, there was a very small value on this wait type and the backup was much faster. However, when I attempted with the third party backup tool, this value was very high again and was taking much more time. The third party tool had many other features but the client was not using these features. We end up using the native SQL Server Compressed backup and it worked very well. If I get to see this higher in my future consultancy, I will try to understand this wait type much more in detail and so probably I would able to come to some solid solution. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• Oracle Data Integration 12c: Perspectives of Industry Experts, Customers and Partners

  - by Irem Radzik

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 As you may have seen from our recent blog posts on Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, we are very excited to share with you the great new features the 12c release brings to Oracle’s data integration solutions. And, fortunately we are not alone in this sentiment. Since the press announcement October 17th, which incorporates our customers' and experts' testimonials, we have seen positive comments in leading technology publications and social media as well. Here are some examples: In CIO and PCWorld you can find Joab Jackson’s article, Oracle Data Integrator 12c ready for real-time analysis, where wrote about the tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate . He noted “Heeding the call from enterprise customers who clamor for more immediacy in their data-driven reports, Oracle has updated its data-integration software portfolio so that it can more rapidly deliver data to data warehouses and analysis applications.” Integration Developer News’ Vance McCarthy wrote the article Oracle Ships ‘Future Proofs’ Integration Tools for Traditional, Cloud, Big Data, Real-Time Projects and mentioned that “Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c sport a wide range of improvements to let devs more easily deliver data integration for cloud, analytics, big data and other new projects that leverage multiple datasets for business.“ InformationWeek’s Doug Henschen gave a great overview to several key features including the new flow-based UI in Oracle Data Integrator. Doug said “Oracle Data Integrator 12c introduces a complete makeover of the job-building experience, while real-time oriented GoldenGate 12c introduces performance gains “. In Database Trends and Applications’ article Oracle Strengthens Data Integration with Release of Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c highlighted the productivity aspect of the new solution with his remarks: “tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training”. We are also thrilled about what our customers and partners have to say about our products and the new release. And we are equally excited to share those perspectives with you in our upcoming launch video webcast on November 12th. SolarWorld Industries America’s Senior Database Manager, Russ Toyama will join our executives in our studio in Redwood Shores to discuss GoldenGate’s core benefits and the new release, while Surren Partharb, CTO of Strategic Technology Services for BT, and Mark Rittman, CTO of Rittman Mead, will provide their comments via the interviews conducted in the UK. This interactive panel discussion in the video webcast will unveil the new release with the expertise of our development executives and the great insight from our customers and partners. In addition, our product experts will be available online to answer chat questions. This is really a great opportunity to learn how Oracle's data integration offering has changed the integration and replication technology space with the new release, and established itself as the new leader. If you have not registered for this free event yet, you can do so via this link. We will run the live event at 8am PT/4pm GMT, followed by a replay of the event with live chat for Q&A  at 10am PT/6pm GMT. The replay will be available on-demand for those who register but cannot attend either session on November 12th. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Oracle OpenWorld Update: Demo Pods and Hands-on Labs

  - by Doug Reid

  0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* 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-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:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Less than one week away until the start of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and the Data Integration Solutions team is ready to go!  We have an exciting line up for you this year which we have summarized for you in the Oracle OpenWorld Focus on Data Integration Solutions document. In past posts we have discussed session themes and our customer panel, but today I would like to summarize our Hands-on Labs and Demo Pods that we have available for attendees. For Oracle GoldenGate Hands-On Labs we have two labs that we are running this year. Deep Dive into Oracle GoldenGate Thursday October 4th at 11:15AM in the Marriott Marquis Salon 1/2 Oracle GoldenGate provides real-time log-based change data capture and delivery between heterogeneous systems. It enables cost-effective, low-impact, real-time data integration and continuous availability solutions. This session covers Oracle GoldenGate 11g’s internal product architecture and includes a hands-on lab that covers configuration examples for target database instantiation and real-time change data capture and delivery. The participants will configure Oracle GoldenGate to instantiate a secondary database that can be used for disaster recovery or a reporting instance. Come learn how easy it is to use and how this can be a very valuable and easy technology solution for your organization. Introduction to Oracle GoldenGate Veridata Wednesday October 3rd 10:15AM in the Marriott Marquis Sales 1/2 Oracle GoldenGate Veridata compares one set of data with another and identifies data that is out of synchronization. In this hands-on lab, you will be introduced to the key features of this product. Using the Oracle GoldenGate Veridata Web client, you will have the opportunity to configure comparison objects and rules, initiate a comparison, review the status and output of a comparison, and review out-of-sync data. As a bonus this year, we have recorded the labs and made them available on youtube.com/oraclegoldengate. These will be available the day of the labs. Our demo pods are an opportunity for attendees to see our products but more so to meet the product management and development teams. I would like to point out that we have two Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 demo pods, one in the database camp and the other in the middleware camp. The one in the middleware camp will be focused on all platforms while the one in the database camp will have a focus on the Oracle platform. The other two I would like to point out are the Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate and the Oracle Enterprise Manager demo pods; both of these pods will focus on methods to monitor GoldenGate but the OEM demo pod will have a specific focus on the Oracle GoldenGate Management Pack plug-in for OEM. Below is a list of our demo pods and their locations. Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate for End-to-End Visibility Moscone South, Right - S-241 Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate for Oracle Applications Moscone South, Right - S-240 Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 New Features Moscone South, Right - S-239 Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2: Real-Time, Transactional Database Replication     Moscone South, Left - S-027 Oracle GoldenGate Veridata and Adapters Moscone South, Right - S-242 Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Left - S-040 Keep tuned to our blog during the show for news and highlights from the Data Integration Solutions team. See you there.

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• Looking under the hood of SSRS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  SSRS is a powerful tool, but there is very little available to measure it’s performance or view the SSRS execution log or catalog in detail.  Here are a few simple queries that will give you insight to the system that you never had before.   ACTIVE REPORTS:  Have you ever seen your SQL Server performance take a nose dive due to a long-running report?  If the SPID is executing under a generic Report ID, or it is a scheduled job, you may have no way to tell which report is killing your server.  Running this query will show you which reports are executing at a given time, and WHO is executing them.   USE ReportServerNative SELECT runningjobs.computername,             runningjobs.requestname,              runningjobs.startdate,             users.username,             Datediff(s,runningjobs.startdate, Getdate()) / 60 AS    'Active Minutes' FROM runningjobs INNER JOIN users ON runningjobs.userid = users.userid ORDER BY runningjobs.startdate               SSRS CATALOG:  We have all asked “What was the last thing that changed”, or better yet, “Who in the world did that!”.  Here is a query that will show all of the reports in your SSRS catalog, when they were created and changed, and by who.           USE ReportServerNative SELECT DISTINCT catalog.PATH,                            catalog.name,                            users.username AS [Created By],                             catalog.creationdate,                            users_1.username AS [Modified By],                            catalog.modifieddate FROM catalog         INNER JOIN users ON catalog.createdbyid = users.userid  INNER JOIN users AS users_1 ON catalog.modifiedbyid = users_1.userid INNER JOIN executionlogstorage ON catalog.itemid = executionlogstorage.reportid WHERE ( catalog.name <> '' )               SSRS EXECUTION LOG:  Sometimes we need to know what was happening on the SSRS report server at a given time in the past.  This query will help you do just that.  You will need to set the timestart and timeend in the WHERE clause to suit your needs.         USE ReportServerNative SELECT catalog.name AS report,        executionlogstorage.username AS [User],        executionlogstorage.timestart,        executionlogstorage.timeend,         Datediff(mi,e.timestart,e.timeend) AS ‘Time In Minutes',        catalog.modifieddate AS [Report Last Modified],        users.username FROM   catalog  (nolock)        INNER JOIN executionlogstorage e (nolock)          ON catalog.itemid = executionlogstorage.reportid        INNER JOIN users (nolock)          ON catalog.modifiedbyid = users.userid WHERE  executionlogstorage.timestart >= Dateadd(s, -1, '03/31/2012')        AND executionlogstorage.timeend <= Dateadd(DAY, 1, '04/02/2012')      LONG RUNNING REPORTS:  This query will show the longest running reports over a given time period.  Note that the “>5” in the WHERE clause sets the report threshold at 5 minutes, so anything that ran less than 5 minutes will not appear in the result set.  Adjust the threshold and start/end times to your liking.  With this information in hand, you can better optimize your system by tweaking the longest running reports first.         USE ReportServerNative SELECT executionlogstorage.instancename,        catalog.PATH,        catalog.name,        executionlogstorage.username,        executionlogstorage.timestart,        executionlogstorage.timeend,        Datediff(mi, e.timestart, e.timeend) AS 'Minutes',        executionlogstorage.timedataretrieval,        executionlogstorage.timeprocessing,        executionlogstorage.timerendering,        executionlogstorage.[RowCount],        users_1.username        AS createdby,        CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), catalog.creationdate, 101)        AS 'Creation Date',        users.username        AS modifiedby,        CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), catalog.modifieddate, 101)        AS 'Modified Date' FROM   executionlogstorage e         INNER JOIN catalog          ON executionlogstorage.reportid = catalog.itemid        INNER JOIN users          ON catalog.modifiedbyid = users.userid        INNER JOIN users AS users_1          ON catalog.createdbyid = users_1.userid WHERE  ( e.timestart > '03/31/2012' )        AND ( e.timestart <= '04/02/2012' )        AND  Datediff(mi, e.timestart, e.timeend) > 5        AND catalog.name <> '' ORDER  BY 'Minutes' DESC        I have used these queries to build SSRS reports that I can refer to quickly, and export to Excel if I need to report or quantify my findings.  I encourage you to look at the data in the ReportServerNative database on your report server to understand the queries and create some of your own.  For instance, you may want a query to determine which reports are using which shared data sources.  Work smarter, not harder!

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• What is the SharePoint Action Framework and Why do I need it ?

  - by SAF

  For those out there that are a little curious as to whether SAF is any use to your organisation, please read this FAQ.  What is SAF ? SAF is free to use. SAF is the "SharePoint Action Framework", it was built by myself and Hugo (plus a few others along the way). SAF is written entirely in C# code available from : http://saf.codeplex.com.   SAF is a way to automate SharePoint configuration changes. An Action is a command/class/task/script written in C# that performs a unit of execution against SharePoint such as "CreateWeb"  or "AddLookupColumn". A SAF Macro is collection of one or more Actions. SAF Macro can be run from Msbuild, a Feature, StsAdm or common plain old .Net code. Parameters can be passed to a Macro at run-time from a variety of sources such as "Environment Variable", "*.config", "Msbuild Properties", Feature Properties, command line args, .net code. SAF emits lots of trace statements at run-time, these can be viewed using "DebugView". One Action can pass parameters to another Action. Parameters can be set using Expression Syntax such as "DateTime.Now".  You should consider SAF is you suffer from one of the following symptoms... "Our developers write lots of code to deploy changes at release time - it's always rushed" "I don't want my developers shelling out to Powershell or Stsadm from a Feature". "We have loads of Console applications now, I have lost track of where they are, or what they do" "We seem to be writing similar scripts against SharePoint in lots of ways, testing is hard". "My scripts often have lots of errors - they are done at the last minute". "When something goes wrong - I have no idea what went wrong or how to solve it". "Our Features get stuck and bomb out half way through - there no way to roll them back". "We have tons of Features now - I can't keep track". "We deploy Features to run one-off tasks" "We have a library of reusable scripts, but, we can only run it in one way, sometimes we want to run it from MSbuild and a Feature". "I want to automate the deployment of changes to our development environment". "I would like to run a housekeeping task on a scheduled basis"   So I like the sound of SAF - what's the problems ?  Realistically, there are few things that need to be considered: Someone on your team will need to spend a day or 2 understanding SAF and deciding exactly how you want to use it. I would suggest a Tech Lead, SysAdm or SP Architect will need to download it, try out the examples, look through the unit tests. Ask us questions. Although, SAF can be downloaded and set to go in a few minutes, you will still need to address issues such as - "Do you want to execute your Macros in MsBuild or from a Feature ?" You will need to decide who is going to do your deployments - is it each developer to themself, or do you require a dedicated Build Manager ? As most environments (Dev, QA, Live etc) require different settings (e.g. Urls, Database names, accounts etc), you will more than likely want to define these and set a properties file up for each environment. (These can then be injected into Saf at run-time). There may be no Action to solve your particular problem. If this is the case, suggest it to us - we can try and write it, or write it yourself. It's very easy to write a new Action - we have an approach to easily unit test it, document it and author it. For example, I wrote one to deploy  a WSP in 2 hours the other day. Alternatively, Saf can also call Stsadm commands and Powershell scripts.   Anyway, I do hope this helps! If you still need help, or a quick start, we can also offer consultancy around SAF. If you want to know more give us a call or drop an email to [email protected]

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• Professional Developers, may I join you?

  - by Ben

  I currently work in technical support for a software/hardware company and for the most part it's a good job, but it's feeling more and more like I'm getting 'stuck' here. No raises in the 5 years I've been here, and lately there seems to be more hiring from the outside than promotion from within. The work I do is more technical than end-user support, as we deal primarily with our field technicians who have a little more technical skill than the general user base. As a result I get into much more technical support issues... often tracking down bugs in our software, finding performance bottlenecks in our database schema, etc. The work I'm most proud of are the development projects I've come up with on my own, and worked on during lunch breaks and slow periods in Support. Over the years I've written a number of useful utilities for the company. Diagnostic type applications that several departments use and appreciate. These include apps that simulate our various hardware devices, log file analysis, time-saving utilities for our work processes, etc. My best projects have been the hardware simulation programs, which are the type of thing we probably wouldn't have put a full-time developer on had anyone thought to do it, but they've ended up being popular and useful enough to be used by development, QA, R&D, and Support. They allow us to interface our software with simulated hardware, rather than clutter up our work areas with bulky, hard to acquire equipment. Since starting here my life has moved forward (married, kid, one more on the way), but it feels like my career has not. I still earn what I earned walking in the door my first day. Company budget is tight, bonuses have gone down, and no raises or cost of living / inflation adjustments either. As the sole source of income for my family I feel I need to do more, and I'd like to have a more active role in creating something at work, not just cleaning up other people's mistakes. I enjoy technical work, and I think development is the next logical step in my career. I'd like to bring some "legitimacy" to my part-time development work, and make myself a more skilled and valuable employee. Ultimately if this can help me better support my family, that would be ideal. Can I make the jump to professional developer? I have an engineering degree, but no formal education in computer science. I write WinForms apps using the .NET framework, do some freelance web development, have volunteered to write software for a nonprofit, and have started experimenting with programming microcontrollers. I enjoy learning new things in the limited free time I have available. I think I have the aptitude to take on a development role, even in an 'apprentice' capacity if such an option is possible. Have any of you moved into development like this? Do any of you developers have any advice or cautionary tales? Are there better career options I haven't thought of? I welcome any and all related comments and thank you in advance for posting them.

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• How should an object that uses composition set its composed components?

  - by Casey

  After struggling with various problems and reading up on component-based systems and reading Bob Nystrom's excellent book "Game Programming Patterns" and in particular the chapter on Components I determined that this is a horrible idea: //Class intended to be inherited by all objects. Engine uses Objects exclusively. class Object : public IUpdatable, public IDrawable { public: Object(); Object(const Object& other); Object& operator=(const Object& rhs); virtual ~Object() =0; virtual void SetBody(const RigidBodyDef& body); virtual const RigidBody* GetBody() const; virtual RigidBody* GetBody(); //Inherited from IUpdatable virtual void Update(double deltaTime); //Inherited from IDrawable virtual void Draw(BITMAP* dest); protected: private: }; I'm attempting to refactor it into a more manageable system. Mr. Nystrom uses the constructor to set the individual components; CHANGING these components at run-time is impossible. It's intended to be derived and be used in derivative classes or factory methods where their constructors do not change at run-time. i.e. his Bjorne object is just a call to a factory method with a specific call to the GameObject constructor. Is this a good idea? Should the object have a default constructor and setters to facilitate run-time changes or no default constructor without setters and instead use a factory method? Given: class Object { public: //...See below for constructor implementation concerns. Object(const Object& other); Object& operator=(const Object& rhs); virtual ~Object() =0; //See below for Setter concerns IUpdatable* GetUpdater(); IDrawable* GetRenderer(); protected: IUpdatable* _updater; IDrawable* _renderer; private: }; Should the components be read-only and passed in to the constructor via: class Object { public: //No default constructor. Object(IUpdatable* updater, IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... }; or Should a default constructor be provided and then the components can be set at run-time? class Object { public: Object(); //... SetUpdater(IUpdater* updater); SetRenderer(IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... }; or both? class Object { public: Object(); Object(IUpdater* updater, IDrawable* renderer); //... SetUpdater(IUpdater* updater); SetRenderer(IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... };

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• What is the best Broadphase Interface for moving spheres?

  - by Molmasepic

  As of now I am working on optimizing the performance of the physics and collision, and as of now I am having some slowdowns on my other computers from my main. I have well over 3000 btSphereShape Rigidbodies and 2/3 of them do not move at all, but I am noticing(by the profile below) that collision is taking a bit of time to maneuver. Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds. % cumulative self self total time seconds seconds calls ms/call ms/call name 10.09 0.65 0.65 SphereTriangleDetector::collide(btVector3 const&, btVector3&, btVector3&, float&, float&, float) 7.61 1.14 0.49 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::processCollision(btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btDispatcherInfo const&, btManifoldResult*) 5.59 1.50 0.36 btConvexTriangleCallback::processTriangle(btVector3*, int, int) 5.43 1.85 0.35 btQuantizedBvh::reportAabbOverlappingNodex(btNodeOverlapCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const 4.97 2.17 0.32 btBvhTriangleMeshShape::processAllTriangles(btTriangleCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const::MyNodeOverlapCallback::processNode(int, int) 4.19 2.44 0.27 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowGeneric(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 4.04 2.70 0.26 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowLowerLimit(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 3.73 2.94 0.24 Ogre::OctreeSceneManager::walkOctree(Ogre::OctreeCamera*, Ogre::RenderQueue*, Ogre::Octree*, Ogre::VisibleObjectsBoundsInfo*, bool, bool) 3.42 3.16 0.22 btTriangleShape::getVertex(int, btVector3&) const 2.48 3.32 0.16 Ogre::Frustum::isVisible(Ogre::AxisAlignedBox const&, Ogre::FrustumPlane*) const 2.33 3.47 0.15 1246357 0.00 0.00 Gorilla::Layer::setVisible(bool) 2.33 3.62 0.15 SphereTriangleDetector::getClosestPoints(btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::ClosestPointInput const&, btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::Result&, btIDebugDraw*, bool) 1.86 3.74 0.12 btCollisionDispatcher::findAlgorithm(btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btPersistentManifold*) 1.86 3.86 0.12 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::setupContactConstraint(btSolverConstraint&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btManifoldPoint&, btContactSolverInfo const&, btVector3&, float&, float&, btVector3&, btVector3&) 1.71 3.97 0.11 btTriangleShape::getEdge(int, btVector3&, btVector3&) const 1.55 4.07 0.10 _Unwind_SjLj_Register 1.55 4.17 0.10 _Unwind_SjLj_Unregister 1.55 4.27 0.10 Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::updateBufferResources(char const*, Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::BufferResources*) 1.40 4.36 0.09 btManifoldResult::addContactPoint(btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&, float) 1.40 4.45 0.09 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::setupFrictionConstraint(btSolverConstraint&, btVector3 const&, btRigidBody*, btRigidBody*, btManifoldPoint&, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, float, float, float) 1.24 4.53 0.08 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::convertContact(btPersistentManifold*, btContactSolverInfo const&) 1.09 4.60 0.07 408760 0.00 0.00 Living::MapHide() 1.09 4.67 0.07 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::~btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm() 1.09 4.74 0.07 inflate_fast EDIT: Updated to show current Profile. I have only listed the functions using over 1% time from the many functions that are being used. Another thing is that each monster has a certain area that they stay in and are only active when a player is in said area. I was wondering if maybe there is a way to deactivate the non-active monsters from bullet(reactivating once in the area again) or maybe theres a different broadphase interface that I should use. The current BPI is btDbvtBroadphase. EDIT: Here is the Profile on the other computer(the top one is my main) Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds. % cumulative self self total time seconds seconds calls ms/call ms/call name 12.18 1.19 1.19 SphereTriangleDetector::collide(btVector3 const&, btVector3&, btVector3&, float&, float&, float) 6.76 1.85 0.66 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::processCollision(btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btDispatcherInfo const&, btManifoldResult*) 5.83 2.42 0.57 btQuantizedBvh::reportAabbOverlappingNodex(btNodeOverlapCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const 5.12 2.92 0.50 btConvexTriangleCallback::processTriangle(btVector3*, int, int) 4.61 3.37 0.45 btTriangleShape::getVertex(int, btVector3&) const 4.09 3.77 0.40 _Unwind_SjLj_Register 3.48 4.11 0.34 btBvhTriangleMeshShape::processAllTriangles(btTriangleCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const::MyNodeOverlapCallback::processNode(int, int) 2.46 4.35 0.24 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowLowerLimit(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 2.15 4.56 0.21 _Unwind_SjLj_Unregister 2.15 4.77 0.21 SphereTriangleDetector::getClosestPoints(btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::ClosestPointInput const&, btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::Result&, btIDebugDraw*, bool) 1.84 4.95 0.18 btTriangleShape::getEdge(int, btVector3&, btVector3&) const 1.64 5.11 0.16 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowGeneric(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 1.54 5.26 0.15 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::setupContactConstraint(btSolverConstraint&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btManifoldPoint&, btContactSolverInfo const&, btVector3&, float&, float&, btVector3&, btVector3&) 1.43 5.40 0.14 Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::updateBufferResources(char const*, Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::BufferResources*) 1.33 5.53 0.13 btManifoldResult::addContactPoint(btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&, float) 1.13 5.64 0.11 btRigidBody::predictIntegratedTransform(float, btTransform&) 1.13 5.75 0.11 btTriangleIndexVertexArray::getLockedReadOnlyVertexIndexBase(unsigned char const**, int&, PHY_ScalarType&, int&, unsigned char const**, int&, int&, PHY_ScalarType&, int) const 1.02 5.85 0.10 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::CreateFunc::CreateCollisionAlgorithm(btCollisionAlgorithmConstructionInfo&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*) 1.02 5.95 0.10 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm(btPersistentManifold*, btCollisionAlgorithmConstructionInfo const&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, bool) Edited same as other Profile.

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• Get Your Enterprise Working With Oracle On Track Communication 1.0

  - by Josh Lannin

  The On Track Development team is very pleased to announce that today On Track is available for our customers to download and evaluate.  To learn more about what On Track does start with our whitepaper and datasheet.   If you are a developer, take a look at our documentation and samples posted to our OTN page. For this first blog post, I’ll be speaking to several notable points about our product. Graceful Escalation via Conversations: On Track addresses the “Collaboration Problem” through a single guiding principle – graceful escalation – within the construct of a Conversation. In On Track, collaboration is based on a context (called a “Conversation”) that gracefully escalates in form, structure, and content, as dictated by the particular needs of a given collaboration.  Within that context, On Track provides a rich set of tools to choose from.  These tools provide for communication, coordination, content management, organization, decision making, and analysis -- all essential aspects of collaboration, but not all of them are essential all of the time.  Every collaborative interaction will evolve differently.  Some will evolve to represent work spreading over the course of years and involving a large, distributed team, while others may involve few people and not evolve at all.  Regardless, all collaborative contexts are built from the same parts, utilize the same concepts, and start the same way.  The principle of graceful escalation is that you only use the tools and structure you need; so you only incur the complexity you need. Purposeful Collaboration: Through application integration, On Track Conversations bring enterprise application users the communication and collaboration capabilities required to complete business process.  By association with specific processes or business objects conversations extend the possible interactions and broaden participation to internal or external non-application users and provide a sophisticated interaction experience, all the while enhancing the data set within the owning application.  Purposeful collaboration not only needs to happen in the context of applications, it must support a full range of real-time and long-running interactions to provide the greatest value. Multi Client, Multi Modal: This On Track 1.0 product release includes the same day availability of  multiple clients, including iPhone and iPad applications which are now available on the Apple Store, a fully capable and accessible Outlook Add-In, along with our browser web client.  With each client we have sought to leverage the strengths of each unique device- our iPhone client supports picture and voice posts, the iPad is optimized for meeting room situations and document viewing, and our Outlook add-in allows you to take emails in context and bring them into On Track.  In addition to supporting a diverse array of clients, On Track provides a unified multi modal experience support starting with basic messages moving through to integrated documents with live annotations, snapshots, application sharing, and voice. Next Generation Web Architecture: We believe On Track will help move the bar higher for what users can expect from all web applications, most notably ones that involve real-time activity.  On Track is built from the ground up with an innovative, real-time architecture that leverages the extensive push capabilities of our server.  Whether you are receiving a new message, viewing where crowds of people are collaborating, or doing live annotation on a document with a set of people, that information comes to you immediately without refreshes or moving back and forth between pages.  We’ve leveraged this core architecture across the product experience and raised the user experience bar for this type of application.  As well these capabilities are based on open standards and protocols, and are fully extensible by anyone- enabling sophisticated integrations to be created with a wide variety of both legacy and next-generation applications. Agile Product Development: As a product team we operate using continuous feedback and modified agile development methodologies.  We have thousands of active internal Oracle users who have helped pilot our product for critical business functions, and the On Track product development team uses our product as our primary vehicle for all our collaboration.  Additionally we been working with early access customers who are adopting our technology and providing us valuable feedback - which our process has rapidly realized in improvements to our software.  On Track agility extends to our server as well, which is built to scale, and is very simple to install and configure. We are pleased to make this product announcement and encourage you to join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, as well as checking back here for the latest product information.

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• Graduate Life in Oracle by Ramakrishna Nalabothula

  - by david.talamelli

  Preparation for the BIG interview: I prepared in both technical and logical aspects to face the Oracle Interview. I had to cover almost all main areas in technical and many types of problems in logical areas. We attended mock- interviews and written tests at our college, browsed websites and communities. Having started with such a rigorous preparation before Oracle visited the college; it was possible for me to make it into the list of final selection. I put in a big effort to reach this position and I am very happy to achieve this. Why I chose Oracle: Oracle is one of the best technology providers and has a large customer base. I think it is not an easy job to offer services to that many customers. So, the company needs young and dynamic people and I wanted to be one among them. This gave me spirit and led me to walk into Oracle. I am working on different technologies and learning something new in the field. Having many customers is challenging Oracle and my work is challenging me. I am confident enough that customers to both me and Oracle will never lose their faith. Learning at Oracle: The style of learning is good and never resembles a classroom session in a college. It is always fun to learn here. There is no exam to track the performance. There is enough time until we completely learn it. There is no concept of stiff competition. Peers help through KT (Knowledge Transfers) and there are good resources in the Oracle to learn. People are always there to direct you to those. There are lots of opportunities for Web learning too! My Work Area: My team gives me a great opportunity to offer service to the entire product. There were no situations when I got tense with my work or targets and deliverables. I work with a Global Team and my manager is based in the UK. I have a lot of freedom and flexibility. I use the work from home option in case of any disturbances in the city or due to personal problems. I have a weekly meeting with my manager and use Instant Messenger for status updates. My manager plans very well to give me enough time to complete tasks. I have good coordination from the team towards our deadlines. My work has also brought me close to many people across various technology and product teams. I am glad to make many friends across Oracle. I am enjoying my time and work here. I cover all the major activities in the team. I am thankful to everyone from the Development and Quality Assurance Team to have high confidence in me by assigning such big responsibilities. Primary tasks are maintaining the environments that are very unstable at times. This really requires big time and effort to trace the root causes. I am working and still learning on all these areas. The happiest thing is I got chances to travel to USA & UK for training and for supporting a few customer demo projects. I have got to explore more across two countries and got sponsored to visit the places around due to Oracle's policies. I am very much thankful for these what I have from Oracle and for the cooperation there from other colleagues. Fun at Work: Oracle has a club from Employees to conduct games and events. I had an opportunity to participate in competitions, tournaments inside Oracle and Inter-Corporate for all games. I thank Oracle for providing me all these opportunities and I would like to extend my thanks to Senior Management for their confidence in me. I thank Oracle HR Recruiting Team too for selecting me into Oracle and giving me this opportunity to share my experience and feelings. Ramakrishna Nalabothula

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• JavaOne Latin America 2012 Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  JavaOne Latin America 2012 was held at the Transamerica Expo Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil on December 4-6. The conference was a resounding success with a great vibe, excellent technical content and numerous world class speakers. Some notable local and international speakers included Bruno Souza, Yara Senger, Mattias Karlsson, Vinicius Senger, Heather Vancura, Tori Wieldt, Arun Gupta, Jim Weaver, Stephen Chin, Simon Ritter and Henrik Stahl. Topics covered included the JCP/JUGs, Java SE 7, HTML 5/WebSocket, CDI, Java EE 6, Java EE 7, JSF 2.2, JMS 2, JAX-RS 2, Arquillian and JavaFX. Bruno Borges and I manned the GlassFish booth at the Java Pavilion on Tuesday and Webnesday. The booth traffic was decent and not too hectic. We met a number of GlassFish adopters including perhaps one of the largest GlassFish deployments in Brazil as well as some folks migrating to Java EE from Spring. We invited them to share their stories with us. We also talked with some key members of the local Java community. Tuesday evening we had the GlassFish party at the Tribeca Pub. The party was definitely a hit and we could have used a larger venue (this was the first time we had the GlassFish party in Brazil). Along with GlassFish enthusiasts, a number of Java community leaders were there. We met some of the same folks again at the JUG leader's party on Wednesday evening. On Thursday Arun Gupta, Bruno Borges and I ran a hands-on-lab on JAX-RS, WebSocket and Server-Sent Events (SSE) titled "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". This is the same Java EE 7 lab run at JavaOne San Francisco. The lab provides developers a first hand glipse of how an HTML 5 powered Java EE application might look like. We had an overflow crowd for the lab (at one point we had about twenty people standing) and the lab went very well. The slides for the lab are here: Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket from Reza Rahman The actual contents for the lab is available here. Give me a shout if you need help getting it up and running. I gave two solo talks following the lab. The first was on JMS 2 titled "What’s New in Java Message Service 2". This was essentially the same talk given by JMS 2 specification lead Nigel Deakin at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JMS 2 simplified API, JMSContext injection, delivery delays, asynchronous send, JMS resource definition in Java EE 7, standardized configuration for JMS MDBs in EJB 3.2, mandatory JCA pluggability and the like. The session went very well, there was good Q & A and someone even told me this was the best session of the conference! The slides for the talk are here: What’s New in Java Message Service 2 from Reza Rahman My last talk for the conference was on JAX-RS 2 in the keynote hall. Titled "JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API" this was basically the same talk given by the specification leads Santiago Pericas-Geertsen and Marek Potociar at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JAX-RS 2 client API, asyncronous processing, filters/interceptors, hypermedia support, server-side content negotiation and the like. The talk went very well and I got a few very kind complements afterwards. The slides for the talk are here: JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API from Reza Rahman On a more personal note, Sao Paulo has always had a special place in my heart as the incubating city for Sepultura and Soulfy -- two of my most favorite heavy metal musical groups of all time! Consequently, the city has a perpertually alive and kicking metal scene pretty much any given day of the week. This time I got to check out a solid performance by local metal gig Republica at the legendary Manifesto Bar. I also wanted to see a Dio Tribute at the Blackmore but ran out of time and energy... Overall I enjoyed the conference/Sao Paulo and look forward to going to Brazil again next year!

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• SQL SERVER – Monitoring SQL Server Database Transaction Log Space Growth – DBCC SQLPERF(logspace) – Puzzle for You

  - by pinaldave

  First of all – if you are going to say this is very old subject, I agree this is very (very) old subject. I believe in earlier time we used to have this only option to monitor Log Space. As new version of SQL Server released we all equipped with DMV, Performance Counters, Extended Events and much more new enhancements. However, during all this year, I have always used DBCC SQLPERF(logspace) to get the details of the logs. It may be because when I started my career I remember this command and it did what I wanted all the time. Recently I have received interesting question and I thought, I should request your help. However, before I request your help, let us see traditional usage of DBCC SQLPERF(logspace). Every time I have to get the details of the log I ran following script. Additionally, I liked to store the details of the when the log file snapshot was taken as well so I can go back and know the status log file growth. This gives me a fair estimation when the log file was growing. CREATE TABLE dbo.logSpaceUsage ( id INT IDENTITY (1,1), logDate DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), databaseName SYSNAME, logSize DECIMAL(18,5), logSpaceUsed DECIMAL(18,5), [status] INT ) GO INSERT INTO dbo.logSpaceUsage (databaseName, logSize, logSpaceUsed, [status]) EXEC ('DBCC SQLPERF(logspace)') GO SELECT * FROM dbo.logSpaceUsage GO I used to record the details of log file growth every hour of the day and then we used to plot charts using reporting services (and excel in much earlier times). Well, if you look at the script above it is very simple script. Now here is the puzzle for you. Puzzle 1: Write a script based on a table which gives you the time period when there was highest growth based on the data stored in the table. Puzzle 2: Write a script based on a table which gives you the amount of the log file growth from the beginning of the table to the latest recording of the data. You may have to run above script at some interval to get the various data samples of the log file to answer above puzzles. To make things simple, I am giving you sample script with expected answers listed below for both of the puzzle. Here is the sample query for puzzle: -- This is sample query for puzzle CREATE TABLE dbo.logSpaceUsage ( id INT IDENTITY (1,1), logDate DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), databaseName SYSNAME, logSize DECIMAL(18,5), logSpaceUsed DECIMAL(18,5), [status] INT ) GO INSERT INTO dbo.logSpaceUsage (databaseName, logDate, logSize, logSpaceUsed, [status]) SELECT 'SampleDB1', '2012-07-01 7:00:00.000', 5, 10, 0 UNION ALL SELECT 'SampleDB1', '2012-07-01 9:00:00.000', 16, 10, 0 UNION ALL SELECT 'SampleDB1', '2012-07-01 11:00:00.000', 9, 10, 0 UNION ALL SELECT 'SampleDB1', '2012-07-01 14:00:00.000', 18, 10, 0 UNION ALL SELECT 'SampleDB3', '2012-06-01 7:00:00.000', 5, 10, 0 UNION ALL SELECT 'SampleDB3', '2012-06-04 7:00:00.000', 15, 10, 0 UNION ALL SELECT 'SampleDB3', '2012-06-09 7:00:00.000', 25, 10, 0 GO Expected Result of Puzzle 1 You will notice that there are two entries for database SampleDB3 as there were two instances of the log file grows with the same value. Expected Result of Puzzle 2 Well, please a comment with valid answer and I will post valid answers with due credit next week. Not to mention that winners will get a surprise gift from me. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: DBCC

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• SQL Saturday 27 (Portland, Oregon)

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m sitting in the Seattle airport, waiting for my flight to Silicon Valley California for the SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Event. By some quirk of nature, they are asking me to Emcee the event – but that’s another post entirely.   I’m reflecting on the SQL Saturday 27 event that was just held in Portland, Oregon this last Saturday. These are not Microsoft-sponsored events – it’s truly the community at work. Think of a big user-group meeting – I mean REALLY big – held in a central location, like at a college (as ours was) or some larger, inexpensive venue like that. Everyone there is volunteering – it’s my own money and time to drive several hours to a hotel for the night, feed myself and present. It’s their own time and money for the folks that organize the event – unless a vendor or two steps in to help. It’s their own time and money for the attendees to drive a long way, spend the night and their Saturday to listen to the speakers. Why do all this?   Because everybody benefits. Every speaker learns something new, meets new people, and reaches a new audience. Every volunteer does the same. And the attendees? Well, it’s pretty obvious what they get. A 7Am to 10PM extravaganza of knowledge from every corner of the product. In fact, this year the Portland group hooked up with the CodeCamp folks and held a combined event. We had over 850 people, and I had everyone from data professionals to developers in my sessions.   So I’ll take this opportunity to do two things: to say “thank you” to all of the folks who attended, from those who spoke to those who worked and those who came to listen, and to challenge you to attend the next SQL Saturday anywhere near you. You can find the list here: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/. Don’t see anything in your area? Start one! The PASS folks have a package that will show you how. Sure, it’s a big job, but the key is to get as many people helping you as possible. Even if you have only a few dozen folks show up the first time, no worries. The first events I presented at had about 20 in the room. But not this week.   See you at the Launch Event if you’re near the San Francisco area tomorrow, and see you at the Redmond SQL Saturday and TechEd if not.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Unity GUI not in build, but works fine in editor

  - by Darren

  I have: GUITexture attached to an object A script that has GUIStyles created for the Textfield and Buttons that are created in OnGUI(). This script is attached to the same object in number 1 3 GUIText objects each separate from the above. A script that enables the GUITexture and the script in number 1 and 2 respectively This is how it is supposed to work: When I cross the finish line, number 4 script enables number 1 GUITexture component and number 2 script component. The script component uses one of number 3's GUIText objects to show you your best lap time, and also makes a GUI.Textfield for name entry and 2 GUI.Buttons for "Submit" and "Skip". If you hit "Submit" the script will submit the time. No matter which button you press, The remaining 2 GUIText objects from number 3 will show you the top 10 best times. For some reason, when I run it in editor, everything works 100%, but when I'm in different kinds of builds, the results vary. When I am in a webplayer, The GUITexture and the textfield and buttons appear, but the textfield and buttons are plain and have no evidence of GUIStyles. When I click one of the buttons, the score gets submitted but I do not get the fastest times showing. When I am in a standalone build, the GUITexture shows up, but nothing else does. If I remove the GUIStyle parameter of the GUI.Textfield and GUI.Button, they show up. Why am I getting these variations and how can I fix it? Code below: void Start () { Names.text = ""; Times.text = ""; YourBestTime.text = "Your Best Lap: " + bestTime + "\nEnter your name:"; //StartCoroutine(GetTimes("Test")); } void Update() { if (!ShowButtons && !GettingTimes) { StartCoroutine(GetTimes()); GettingTimes = true; } } IEnumerator GetTimes () { Debug.Log("Getting times"); YourBestTime.text = "Loading Best Lap Times"; WWW times_get = new WWW(GetTimesUrl); yield return times_get; WWW names_get = new WWW(GetNamesUrl); yield return names_get; if(times_get.error != null || names_get.error != null) { print("There was an error retrieiving the data: " + names_get.error + times_get.error); } else { Times.text = times_get.text; Names.text = names_get.text; YourBestTime.text = "Your Best Lap: " + bestTime; } } IEnumerator PostLapTime (string Name, string LapTime) { string hash= MD5.Md5Sum(Name + LapTime + secretKey); string bestTime_url = SubmitTimeUrl + "&Name=" + WWW.EscapeURL(Name) + "&LapTime=" + LapTime + "&hash=" + hash; Debug.Log (bestTime_url); // Post the URL to the site and create a download object to get the result. WWW hs_post = new WWW(bestTime_url); //label = "Submitting..."; yield return hs_post; // Wait until the download is done if (hs_post.error != null) { print("There was an error posting the lap time: " + hs_post.error); //label = "Error: " + hs_post.error; //show = false; } else { Debug.Log("Posted: " + hs_post.text); ShowButtons = false; PostingTime = false; } } void OnGUI() { if (ShowButtons) { //makes text box nameString = GUI.TextField( new Rect((Screen.width/2)-111, (Screen.height/2)-130, 222, 25), nameString, 20, TextboxStyle); if (GUI.Button( new Rect( (Screen.width/2-74.0f), (Screen.height/2)- 90, 64, 32), "Submit", ButtonStyle)) { //SUBMIT TIME if (nameString == "") { nameString = "Player"; } if (!PostingTime) { StartCoroutine(PostLapTime(nameString, bestTime)); PostingTime = true; } } else if (GUI.Button( new Rect( (Screen.width/2+10.0f), (Screen.height/2)- 90, 64, 32), "Skip", ButtonStyle)) { ShowButtons = false; } } } }

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• Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

  - by Jeff

  Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

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• Wisdom Lies in Collaborative Power and Intelligence

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  By Alakh Verma, Director, Platform Technology Solutions   In my recent blog posts, I shared insights on Predictive Analytics (Will Predictive Analytics at 'Speed of Thoughts' Help Businesses?), Real Time Decisions (How critical are Real Time decisions in business today?) and their significance in our lives in general and in businesses today. In the current business paradigm shift- with evolutionary social business, it is paramount that businesses look for wisdom in collaborative power and intelligence and equip their employees with the tools to engage with one another. There is an old time saying that 5 sticks tied together are stronger and unable to break as opposed to an individual stick. We have recently witnessed the power of ordinary people uniting together and fought collaboratively using Facebook and Twitter to topple down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. And an India one man’s (Anna Hazare) campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support. As anyone who has worked in a sizeable organization knows, there is no guarantee that the organization as a whole will perform efficiently and achieve its goals, even if each employee is individually efficient and every team has a high level of productivity. To achieve enterprise productivity, it is necessary not only for individuals and groups to “do things right” by working productively but also for the enterprise as a whole to “do the right things” - form the right teams, make the right decisions, allocate resources correctly, and effectively coordinate activities across the entire organization. Most organizations fall short of the optimal level of enterprise productivity because of one or more of these reasons, all at a great cost to the business.  They are disconnected from themselves with various parts of the organization unintentionally working at cross-purposes with each other.  Information that exists is not getting shared or reused.  Human talent is not being applied where it is most needed.  The same problems are being solved repeatedly by multiple groups. Intelligent collaboration through automated business processes has the ability to alter the course of any important business activity, with a potentially dramatic impact on the financial performance of the business. Whether it is a simple email exchange, a physical or virtual meeting, a task force, or a large-scale project, the activity is inherently collaborative.  In fact, collaboration can be defined as the work that takes place among people when a business process is not pre-determining how the work should take place. Collaboration is many things: information sharing, brainstorming, problem solving, best practice negotiation, innovation, coordination of activity, alignment of purpose, and so forth.  Collaboration is the “white space” between the business processes; it is the glue that holds an organization together, and the lubricant that allows the machinery to keep running.  Real time search and collaborative capabilities of the right people with the right content supported by defined processes will provide unparallel wisdom in the organization in the most competitive business environment today. Interestingly, technologies such as Oracle WebCenter offer these capabilities in our Web based business transactions and compliment in the overall collaborative intelligence and power to truly transform organizations to social businesses. Looking to learn more about engaging your employees to collaborate together and providing a complete user experience for your customers? You won't want to miss our webcast today! Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

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• How Do You Actually Model Data?

  Since the 1970’s Developers, Analysts and DBAs have been able to represent concepts and relations in the form of data through the use of generic symbols.  But what is data modeling?  The first time I actually heard this term I could not understand why anyone would want to display a computer on a fashion show runway. Hey, what do you expect? At that time I was a freshman in community college, and obviously this was a long time ago.  I have since had the chance to learn what data modeling truly is through using it. Data modeling is a process of breaking down information and/or requirements in to common categories called objects. Once objects start being defined then relationships start to form based on dependencies found amongst other existing objects.  Currently, there are several tools on the market that help data designer actually map out objects and their relationships through the use of symbols and lines.  These diagrams allow for designs to be review from several perspectives so that designers can ensure that they have the optimal data design for their project and that the design is flexible enough to allow for potential changes and/or extension in the future. Additionally these basic models can always be further refined to show different levels of details depending on the target audience through the use of three different types of models. Conceptual Data Model(CDM)Conceptual Data Models include all key entities and relationships giving a viewer a high level understanding of attributes. Conceptual data model are created by gathering and analyzing information from various sources pertaining to a project during the typical planning phase of a project. Logical Data Model (LDM)Logical Data Models are conceptual data models that have been expanded to include implementation details pertaining to the data that it will store. Additionally, this model typically represents an origination’s business requirements and business rules by defining various attribute data types and relationships regarding each entity. This additional information can be directly translated to the Physical Data Model which reduces the actual time need to implement it. Physical Data Model(PDMs)Physical Data Model are transformed Logical Data Models that include the necessary tables, columns, relationships, database properties for the creation of a database. This model also allows for considerations regarding performance, indexing and denormalization that are applied through database rules, data integrity. Further expanding on why we actually use models in modern application/database development can be seen in the benefits that data modeling provides for data modelers and projects themselves, Benefits of Data Modeling according to Applied Information Science Abstraction that allows data designers remove concepts and ideas form hard facts in the form of data. This gives the data designers the ability to express general concepts and/or ideas in a generic form through the use of symbols to represent data items and the relationships between the items. Transparency through the use of data models allows complex ideas to be translated in to simple symbols so that the concept can be understood by all viewpoints and limits the amount of confusion and misunderstanding. Effectiveness in regards to tuning a model for acceptable performance while maintaining affordable operational costs. In addition it allows systems to be built on a solid foundation in terms of data. I shudder at the thought of a world without data modeling, think about it? Data is everywhere in our lives. Data modeling allows for optimizing a design for performance and the reduction of duplication. If one was to design a database without data modeling then I would think that the first things to get impacted would be database performance due to poorly designed database and there would be greater chances of unnecessary data duplication that would also play in to the excessive query times because unneeded records would need to be processed. You could say that a data designer designing a database is like a box of chocolates. You will never know what kind of database you will get until after it is built.

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• Acceptance tests done first...how can this be accomplished?

  - by Crazy Eddie

  The basic gist of most Agile methods is that a feature is not "done" until it's been developed, tested, and in many cases released. This is supposed to happen in quick turnaround chunks of time such as "Sprints" in the Scrum process. A common part of Agile is also TDD, which states that tests are done first. My team works on a GUI program that does a lot of specific drawing and such. In order to provide tests, the testing team needs to be able to work with something that at least attempts to perform the things they are trying to test. We've found no way around this problem. I can very much see where they are coming from because if I was trying to write software that targeted some basically mysterious interface I'd have a very hard time. Although we have behavior fairly well specified, the exact process of interacting with various UI elements when it comes to automation seems to be too unique to a feature to allow testers to write automated scripts to drive something that does not exist. Even if we could, a lot of things end up turning up later as having been missing from the specification. One thing we considered doing was having the testers write test "scripts" that are more like a set of steps that must be performed, as described from a use-case perspective, so that they can be "automated" by a human being. This can then be performed by the developer(s) writing the feature and/or verified by someone else. When the testers later get an opportunity they automate the "script" for regression purposes mainly. This didn't end up catching on in the team though. The testing part of the team is actually falling behind us by quite a margin. This is one reason why the apparently extra time of developing a "script" for a human being to perform just did not happen....they're under a crunch to keep up with us developers. If we waited for them, we'd get nothing done. It's not their fault really, they're a bottle neck but they're doing what they should be and working as fast as possible. The process itself seems to be set up against them. Very often we end up having to go back a month or more in what we've done to fix bugs that the testers have finally gotten to checking. It's an ugly truth that I'd like to do something about. So what do other teams do to solve this fail cascade? How can we get testers ahead of us and how can we make it so that there's actually time for them to write tests for the features we do in a sprint without making us sit and twiddle our thumbs in the meantime? As it's currently going, in order to get a feature "done", using agile definitions, would be to have developers work for 1 week, then testers work the second week, and developers hopefully being able to fix all the bugs they come up with in the last couple days. That's just not going to happen, even if I agreed it was a reasonable solution. I need better ideas...

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• Clever memory usage through the years

  - by Ben Emmett

  A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

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• The inevitable Hello World post!

  - by brendonpage

  Greetings to anyone reading this! This is my first of hopefully many posts. I would like to use this post to introduce myself and to let you know what to expect from this blog in future. Okay so a bit about myself. In case you missed the name of this blog, my name is Brendon Page! I am a Software Developer from South Africa and work for a small company who’s main focus is producing software for the kitchen cupboard industry, although from time to time we do produce custom solutions for other industries. I work in a small team of 3, including myself, and am fortunate enough to work from home! I have been involved in IT since 1996, which is when I got my first PC, and started working as a junior programmer in 2003. Outside of work I enjoy playing squash, PC Games and of course LANing with my friends. If I get any free time between all of that I will usually dedicate some of it to a personal project, these are mainly prototypes for an idea I have had or for something that could be useful at work. I was in 2 minds on whether to include a photo of myself. The reason for this was because while I was looking for a suitable photo to use, it dawned on me how much time I dedicate to pulling funny faces in photos! I also realized how little I shave, which I blame completely on working form home. So after much debate here I am, funny face, beard and all!   Now that you know a bit about me lets move onto what expect from this blog. I work predominantly with Microsoft technologies so most if not all of my posts will be related to something Microsoft. Since most of my job entails Software Development you can expect a lot of posts which will deal with the .NET Framework. I am currently working on a large Silverlight project, so my first few posts will be targeted at in that direction. I will be striving to make the content of my posts as useful as possible from both an explanation and code perspective, I aim to include a working solution for every post, which I will put up on my skydrive for download. Here is what I have planned for my next few posts: Where did my session variables go?  Here I will take you through the lessons I learnt the hard way about the ASP.NET session. I am not going to go into to much depth in this post, as there is already a lot of information available on it. I mainly want to cover it in an effort to keep the scope creep of my posts to a minimum, some the solutions I upload will use it and I would like to have a post that I can reference to explain why I am doing something a certain way. Uploading files through SIlverlight Again there is a lot of existing information on this topic, so I wont be going into to much depth, but I will be using the solution from this as a base for my next post. Generating and Displaying DeepZoom images dynamically in Silverlight Well the title pretty much speaks for it’s self on this one. As I mentioned I will be building off the solution that I create in my ‘Uploading files through Silverlight’ post. Securing DeepZoom images using a custom implementation of the MultiScaleTileSource In this post I will look at the privacy issue surrounding the default usage of DeepZoom images in Silverlight and how to overcome it. This makes the use of DeepZoom in privacy conscious applications more viable. Thanks to anyone who actually read this post! I look forward to producing more which will hopefully be helpful to you.

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