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  • Thank You for a Great Welcome for Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2

    - by Irem Radzik
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Yesterday morning we had two launch webcasts for Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2. I had the pleasure to present, as well as moderate the Q&A panels in both of these webcasts. Both events had hundreds of live attendees, sending us over 150 questions. Even though we left 30 minutes for Q&A, it was not nearly enough time to address for all the insightful questions our audience sent. Our product management team and I really appreciate the interaction we had yesterday and we are starting to respond back with outstanding questions today. Oracle GoldenGate’s new release launch also had great welcome from the media. You can find the links for various articles on the new release below: ITBusinessEdge Oracle Embraces Cross-Platform Data Integration Information Week: Oracle Real-Time Advance Taps Compressed Data Integration Developer News, Oracle GoldenGate Adds Deeper Oracle Integration, Extends Real-Time Performance CIO, Oracle GoldenGate Buddies Up with Sibling Software DBTA, Real-Time Data Integration: Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2 Now Available CBR Oracle unveils GoldenGate 11g Release 2 real-time data integration application In this blog, I want to address some of the frequently asked questions that came up during the webcasts. You can find the top questions and their answers along with related resources below. We will continue to address frequently asked questions via future blogs. Q: Will the new Integrated Capture for Oracle Database replace the Classic Capture? If not, which one do I use when? A: No, Classic Capture will be around for long time. Core platform specific features, bug fixes, and patches will be available for both Capture processes.Oracle Database specific features will be only available in the Integrated Capture. The Integrated Capture for Oracle Database is an option for users that need to capture data from compressed tables or need support for XML data types, XA on RAC. Users who don’t leverage these features should continue to use our Classic Capture. For more information on Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2 I recommend to check out the White paper: Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 New Features as well as other technical white papers we have on OTN.                                                         For those of you coming to OpenWorld, please attend the related session: Extracting Data in Oracle GoldenGate Integrated Capture Mode, Monday Oct 1st 1:45pm Moscone South – 102 to learn more about this new feature. Q: What is new in Conflict Detection and Resolution? And how does it work? A: There are now pre-built functions to identify the conditions under which an error occurs and how to handle the record when the condition occurs. Error conditions handled include inserts into a target table where the row already exists, updates or deletes to target table rows that exist, but the original source data (before columns) do not match the existing data in the target row, and updates or deletes where the row does not exist in the target database table.Foreach of these conditions a method to handle the error is specified.  Please check out our recent blog on this topic and the White paper: Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 New Features white paper.  Also, for those attending OpenWorld please attend the session: Best Practices for Conflict Detection and Resolution in Oracle GoldenGate for Active/Active-  Wednesday Oct 3rd  3:30pm Mascone 3000 Q: Does Oracle GoldenGate Veridata and the Management Pack require additional licenses, or is it incorporated with the GoldenGate license? A: Oracle GoldenGate Veridata and Oracle Management Pack for Oracle GoldenGate are additional products and require separate licenses. Please check out Oracle's price list here. Q: Does GoldenGate - Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in require additional license? A: Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in is included in the Oracle Management Pack for Oracle GoldenGate license, which is separate from Oracle GoldenGate license. There is no separate license for the Enterprise Manager Plug-in by itself. Oracle GoldenGate Monitor, Oracle GoldenGate Director, and Enterprise Manager Plug-in are included in the Management Pack for Oracle GoldenGate license. Please check out Management Pack for Oracle GoldenGate data sheet for more info on this product bundle. Q: Is Oracle GoldenGate replacing Oracle Streams product? A: Oracle GoldenGate is the strategic data replication product. Therefore, Oracle Streams will continue to be supported, but will not be actively enhanced. Rather, the best elements of Oracle Streams will be added to Oracle GoldenGate. Conflict management is one of them and with the latest release Oracle GoldenGate has a more advanced conflict management offering. Current customers depending on Oracle Streams will continue to be fully supported. Q: How is Oracle GoldenGate different than Oracle Data Integrator? A: Oracle Data Integrator is designed for fast bulk data movement and transformation between heterogeneous systems, while GoldenGate is designed for real-time movement of transactions between heterogeneous systems. These two products are completely complementary where GoldenGate provides low-impact real-time change data capture and delivery to a staging area on the target. And Oracle Data Integrator transforms this data and loads the DW tables. In fact, Oracle Data Integrator integrates with GoldenGate to use GoldenGate’s Capture process as one option for its CDC mechanism. We have several customers that deployed GoldenGate and ODI together to feed real-time data to their data warehousing solutions. Please also check out Oracle Data Integrator Changed Data Capture with Oracle GoldenGate Data Sheet (PDF). Thank you again very much for welcoming Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2 and stay in touch with us for more exciting news, updates, and events.

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  • More Great Improvements to the Windows Azure Management Portal

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

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  • Announcing: Great Improvements to Windows Azure Web Sites

    - by ScottGu
    I’m excited to announce some great improvements to the Windows Azure Web Sites capability we first introduced earlier this summer.  Today’s improvements include: a new low-cost shared mode scaling option, support for custom domains with shared and reserved mode web-sites using both CNAME and A-Records (the later enabling naked domains), continuous deployment support using both CodePlex and GitHub, and FastCGI extensibility.  All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. New “Shared” Scaling Tier Windows Azure allows you to deploy and host up to 10 web-sites in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment. You can start out developing and testing web sites at no cost using this free shared mode, and it supports the ability to run web sites that serve up to 165MB/day of content (5GB/month).  All of the capabilities we introduced in June with this free tier remain the same with today’s update. Starting with today’s release, you can now elastically scale up your web-site beyond this capability using a new low-cost “shared” option (which we are introducing today) as well as using a “reserved instance” option (which we’ve supported since June).  Scaling to either of these modes is easy.  Simply click on the “scale” tab of your web-site within the Windows Azure Portal, choose the scaling option you want to use with it, and then click the “save” button.  Changes take only seconds to apply and do not require any code to be changed, nor the app to be redeployed: Below are some more details on the new “shared” option, as well as the existing “reserved” option: Shared Mode With today’s release we are introducing a new low-cost “shared” scaling mode for Windows Azure Web Sites.  A web-site running in shared mode is deployed in a shared/multi-tenant hosting environment.  Unlike the free tier, though, a web-site in shared mode has no quotas/upper-limit around the amount of bandwidth it can serve.  The first 5 GB/month of bandwidth you serve with a shared web-site is free, and then you pay the standard “pay as you go” Windows Azure outbound bandwidth rate for outbound bandwidth above 5 GB. A web-site running in shared mode also now supports the ability to map multiple custom DNS domain names, using both CNAMEs and A-records, to it.  The new A-record support we are introducing with today’s release provides the ability for you to support “naked domains” with your web-sites (e.g. http://microsoft.com in addition to http://www.microsoft.com).  We will also in the future enable SNI based SSL as a built-in feature with shared mode web-sites (this functionality isn’t supported with today’s release – but will be coming later this year to both the shared and reserved tiers). You pay for a shared mode web-site using the standard “pay as you go” model that we support with other features of Windows Azure (meaning no up-front costs, and you pay only for the hours that the feature is enabled).  A web-site running in shared mode costs only 1.3 cents/hr during the preview (so on average $9.36/month). Reserved Instance Mode In addition to running sites in shared mode, we also support scaling them to run within a reserved instance mode.  When running in reserved instance mode your sites are guaranteed to run isolated within your own Small, Medium or Large VM (meaning no other customers run within it).  You can run any number of web-sites within a VM, and there are no quotas on CPU or memory limits. You can run your sites using either a single reserved instance VM, or scale up to have multiple instances of them (e.g. 2 medium sized VMs, etc).  Scaling up or down is easy – just select the “reserved” instance VM within the “scale” tab of the Windows Azure Portal, choose the VM size you want, the number of instances of it you want to run, and then click save.  Changes take effect in seconds: Unlike shared mode, there is no per-site cost when running in reserved mode.  Instead you pay only for the reserved instance VMs you use – and you can run any number of web-sites you want within them at no extra cost (e.g. you could run a single site within a reserved instance VM or 100 web-sites within it for the same cost).  Reserved instance VMs start at 8 cents/hr for a small reserved VM.  Elastic Scale-up/down Windows Azure Web Sites allows you to scale-up or down your capacity within seconds.  This allows you to deploy a site using the shared mode option to begin with, and then dynamically scale up to the reserved mode option only when you need to – without you having to change any code or redeploy your application. If your site traffic starts to drop off, you can scale back down the number of reserved instances you are using, or scale down to the shared mode tier – all within seconds and without having to change code, redeploy, or adjust DNS mappings.  You can also use the “Dashboard” view within the Windows Azure Portal to easily monitor your site’s load in real-time (it shows not only requests/sec and bandwidth but also stats like CPU and memory usage). Because of Windows Azure’s “pay as you go” pricing model, you only pay for the compute capacity you use in a given hour.  So if your site is running most of the month in shared mode (at 1.3 cents/hr), but there is a weekend when it gets really popular and you decide to scale it up into reserved mode to have it run in your own dedicated VM (at 8 cents/hr), you only have to pay the additional pennies/hr for the hours it is running in the reserved mode.  There is no upfront cost you need to pay to enable this, and once you scale back down to shared mode you return to the 1.3 cents/hr rate.  This makes it super flexible and cost effective. Improved Custom Domain Support Web sites running in either “shared” or “reserved” mode support the ability to associate custom host names to them (e.g. www.mysitename.com).  You can associate multiple custom domains to each Windows Azure Web Site.  With today’s release we are introducing support for A-Records (a big ask by many users). With the A-Record support, you can now associate ‘naked’ domains to your Windows Azure Web Sites – meaning instead of having to use www.mysitename.com you can instead just have mysitename.com (with no sub-name prefix).  Because you can map multiple domains to a single site, you can optionally enable both a www and naked domain for a site (and then use a URL rewrite rule/redirect to avoid SEO problems). We’ve also enhanced the UI for managing custom domains within the Windows Azure Portal as part of today’s release.  Clicking the “Manage Domains” button in the tray at the bottom of the portal now brings up custom UI that makes it easy to manage/configure them: As part of this update we’ve also made it significantly smoother/easier to validate ownership of custom domains, and made it easier to switch existing sites/domains to Windows Azure Web Sites with no downtime. Continuous Deployment Support with Git and CodePlex or GitHub One of the more popular features we released earlier this summer was support for publishing web sites directly to Windows Azure using source control systems like TFS and Git.  This provides a really powerful way to manage your application deployments using source control.  It is really easy to enable this from a website’s dashboard page: The TFS option we shipped earlier this summer provides a very rich continuous deployment solution that enables you to automate builds and run unit tests every time you check in your web-site, and then if they are successful automatically publish to Azure. With today’s release we are expanding our Git support to also enable continuous deployment scenarios and integrate with projects hosted on CodePlex and GitHub.  This support is enabled with all web-sites (including those using the “free” scaling mode). Starting today, when you choose the “Set up Git publishing” link on a website’s “Dashboard” page you’ll see two additional options show up when Git based publishing is enabled for the web-site: You can click on either the “Deploy from my CodePlex project” link or “Deploy from my GitHub project” link to walkthrough a simple workflow to configure a connection between your website and a source repository you host on CodePlex or GitHub.  Once this connection is established, CodePlex or GitHub will automatically notify Windows Azure every time a checkin occurs.  This will then cause Windows Azure to pull the source and compile/deploy the new version of your app automatically.  The below two videos walkthrough how easy this is to enable this workflow and deploy both an initial app and then make a change to it: Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and CodePlex (2 minutes) Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and GitHub (2 minutes) This approach enables a really clean continuous deployment workflow, and makes it much easier to support a team development environment using Git: Note: today’s release supports establishing connections with public GitHub/CodePlex repositories.  Support for private repositories will be enabled in a few weeks. Support for multiple branches Previously, we only supported deploying from the git ‘master’ branch.  Often, though, developers want to deploy from alternate branches (e.g. a staging or future branch). This is now a supported scenario – both with standalone git based projects, as well as ones linked to CodePlex or GitHub.  This enables a variety of useful scenarios.  For example, you can now have two web-sites - a “live” and “staging” version – both linked to the same repository on CodePlex or GitHub.  You can configure one of the web-sites to always pull whatever is in the master branch, and the other to pull what is in the staging branch.  This enables a really clean way to enable final testing of your site before it goes live. This 1 minute video demonstrates how to configure which branch to use with a web-site. Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming in the weeks ahead – including support for the recent Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 releases (we will enable new web and worker role images with Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 next month).  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as these new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Were you a good programmer when you first left university?

    - by dustyprogrammer
    I recently graduated, from university. I have since then joined a development team where I am by far the least experienced developer, with maybe with a couple work terms under my belt, meanwhile the rest of the team is rocking 5-10 years experience. I am/was a very good student and a pretty good programmer when it came to bottled assignments and tests. I have worked on some projects with success. But now I working with a much bigger code-base, and the learning curve is much higher... I was wondering how many other developers started out their careers in teams and left like they sucked. When does this change? How can I speed up the process? My seniors are helping me but I want to be great and show my value now. I don't to start a flame war, this is just a question I have been having and I was hoping to get some advice from other experienced developers, as well as other beginners like me.

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  • Hard Copies VS Soft Copies

    - by Garet Claborn
    Where do you draw the line and say, "OK, I'm actually going to print out this piece of code, spec, formula, or other info and carry it around but these pieces can stay on disk." Well, more importantly why do you draw the line there? I've encountered this a number of times and have some sort of vague conceptions beyond "oh now I'm REALLY stuck, better print this out." I've also found some quicksheets of basic specs to be handy. Really though, I have no particular logic behind what is useful to physically have available in the design and development process. I have a great pile of 'stuff' papers that seemed at least partially relevant at the time, but I only really use about a third of them ever and often end up wishing I had different info on hand. Edit: So this is what I'm hearing in a nutshell: Major parts of the design pattern Common, fairly static and prominently useful code (reference or specs) Some representation of data useful in collaborating or sharing with team Extreme cases of tough problem solving Overwhelmingly,almost never print anything.

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  • Great library of ASP.NET videos – Pluralsight!

    - by hajan
    I have been subscribed to the Pluralsight website and of course since ASP.NET is my favorite development technology, I passed throughout few series of videos related to ASP.NET. You have list of ASP.NET galleries from Fundamentals to Advanced topics including the latest features of ASP.NET 4.0, ASP.NET Ajax, ASP.NET MVC etc. Most of the speakers are either Microsoft MVPs or known technology experts! I was really curious to see the way they have organized the entire course materials, and trust me, I was quite amazed. I saw the ASP.NET 4.0 video series to confirm my knowledge and some other video series regarding general software development concepts, design patterns etc. I would like to point out if anyone of you is interested to get FREE 1-week .NET training pass in the Pluralsight library, please CONTACT ME, write your name and email and include the purpose of the message in the content. I hope you will find this useful. Regards, Hajan

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  • Here’s 6 Great Tricks for Windows 8 that You Probably Don’t Know

    - by Chris Hoffman
    We’ve covered a lot of tips, tricks, and tweaks for Windows 8, but there are still a few more. From bypassing the lock screen to instantly taking and saving screenshots, here are a few more hidden options and keyboard shortcuts. Whether you love Windows 8, hate it, or just wish Metro would go away, these options will help you make Windows 8 work the way you want it to. How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 2 How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 1 What’s the Difference Between Sleep and Hibernate in Windows?

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  • Great Customer Service Example

    - by MightyZot
    A few days ago I wrote about what I consider a poor customer service interaction with TiVo, a company that I have been faithful to for the past 12 years or so. In that post I talked about how they helped me, but I felt like I was doing something wrong at the end of the call – when in reality I was just following through with an offer that TiVo made possible through my cable company. Today I had a wonderful customer service interaction with American Express, another company that I have been loyal to for many years.(I am a Gold Card member.) I like my Amex card because I can use it for big purchases and it forces me to pay them off at the end of the month. Well, the reality is that I’m not always so good at doing that, so sometimes my payments are over a couple of months.  :) A few days ago I received an email from “American Express” fraud detection. The email stated that I should call a toll free number and have the last four digits of my card handy. I grew up during the BBS era with some creative and somewhat mischievous friends. I’ve learned to be extremely cautious with regard to my online life! So, I did what you would expect…I sent them a nice reply that said “Go screw yourself.” For the past couple of days someone has been trying to call me and I assumed it was the same prankster trying to get the last four digits of my card. The last caller left a message indicating that they were from American Express and they wanted to talk to me about my card. After looking up their customer service numbers on the www.americanexpress.com web site, I called and was put through to the fraud detection group. The rep explained that there were some charges on my wife’s card that did not fit our purchase profile. She went through each charge and, for the most part, they looked like charges my wife may have made. My wife had asked to use the card for some Christmas shopping during the same timeframe as the charges. The American Express rep very politely explained that these looked out of character to her. She continued through the charges. She listed a charge for $160 – at this point my adrenaline started kicking in. My wife said she was going to charge about $25 or $30 dollars, not $160. Next, the rep listed a charge for over $1200. Uh oh!! Now I know that my account has been compromised. I informed the rep that we definitely did not make those charges. She replied with, “that’s ok Mr Pope, we declined those charges as well as some others.” We went through the pending charges and there were a couple more that were questionable. The rep very patiently waited while I called my wife on my office phone to verify the charges. Sure enough, my wife had not ordered anything from Netflix or purchased anything with Yahoo Wallet! “No problem Mr Pope, we will remove those charges as well.” “We are going to cancel your wife’s card and send her a new one. She will receive it by 7pm tomorrow via Federal Express. Please watch your statements over the next couple of months. If you notice anything fishy, give us a call and we will take care of it for you.” (Wow, I’m thinking to myself!) “Is there anything else I can help you with Mr Pope?” “Nope, thank you very much for catching this so early and declining those charges!”, I said smiling. Apparently she could hear me smiling on the other end of the phone line because she replied with “keep smiling Mr Pope and have a good rest of your week.” Now THAT’s customer service!  Thank you American Express!!! I shall remain an ever faithful customer. Interesting…

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  • 10 Great Free Icon Packs To Theme Your Android Phone

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Android allows you to customize your home screen, adding widgets, arranging shortcuts and folders, choosing a background, and even replacing the included launcher entirely. You can install icon packs to theme your app icons, too. Third-party launchers use standard app icons by default, but they don’t have to. You can install icon packs that third-party launchers will use in place of standard app icons. How to Use Icon Packs To use icon packs, you’ll need to use a third-party launcher that supports them, such as Nova, Apex, ADW, Go Launcher, Holo Launcher, or Action Launcher Pro. Once you’re using a third-party launcher, you can install an icon pack and go into your launcher’s settings. You’ll find an option that allows you to choose between the icon packs you’ve installed. Many of these icon packs also include wallpapers, which you can set in the normal way. MIUI 5 Icons This icon pack offers over 1900 free icons that are similar to the icons used by the MIUi ROM developed by China’s Xiaomi Tech. The large list of icons is a big plus — this pack will give the majority of your app icons a very slick, consistent look. DCikonZ Theme DCikonZ is a free icon theme that includes a whopping 4000+ icons with a consistent look. This icon theme stands out not just because it’s huge, but also for offering for going in its own direction and avoiding the super-simple, flat look many icon packs use. Holo Icons Holo Icons replaces many app icons with simple, consistent-looking that match Google’s Holo style. If you’re a fan of Android’s Holo look, give it a try. It even tweaks many of the icons from Google’s own apps to make them look more consistent. Square Icon Pack Square Icon Pack turns your icons into simple squares. Even Google Chrome becomes an orb instead of a square. This makes every icon a consistent size and offers a unique look. The icons here almost look a bit like the small-size tiles available on Windows Phone and Windows 8.1. The free version doesn’t offer as many icons as the paid version, but it does offer icons for many popular apps. Rounded Want rounded icons instead? Try the Rounded icon theme, which offers simple rounded icons. The developer says they’re inspired by the consistently round icons used on Mozilla’s Firefox OS. Crumbled Icon Pack Crumbled Icon Pack applies an effect that makes icons look as if they’r crumbling. Rather than theming individual icons, Crumbled Icon Pack adds an effect to every app icon on your device. This means that all your app icons will be themed and consistent. Dainty Icon Pack Is your Android home screen too colorful? Dainty Icon Pack offers simple, gray-on-white icons for over 1200 apps. It’d be ideal over a simple background. The contrast may be a bit low here with the gray-on-white, but it’s otherwise very slick. Simplex Icons Simplex Icons offers more contrast, with black-on-gray icons. This icon pack could simplify busy home screens, allowing photographic wallpapers to come through. Min Icon Set Min attempts to go as minimal as possible, offering simple white icons for over 570 apps. It would be ideal over a simple wallpaper with app names hidden in your launcher, offering a calming, minimal home screen. For apps it doesn’t recognize, it will enclose part of the app’s icon in a white circle. Elegance Elegance goes in another direction entirely, offering icons that incorporate more details and gradients rather than going for minimalism. Its over 1200 icons offer another good option for people who aren’t into the minimal, flat look. Icon pack designers generally have to create and include their own icons to replace icons associated with specific apps, so you’ll probably find a few of your app icons aren’t replaced with most of these themes. Of course, a standard Android phone without an icon pack doesn’t have consistent icons, either. Even if all the icons in your app drawer aren’t themed, the few app icons you have on your home screen will be if you use widely used apps.     

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  • Using modproxy to get around China's Great Firewall

    - by Yau Leung
    I'm using WIX service and I like it very much. However, one big problem is that some of my colleagues are in China but their IP is blocked. I'm wondering if modproxy can help me. I would like to setup a clean server (not blocked by the stupid Chinese government). Pointed the DNS cname to it and have modproxy get the page in background and send the page to viewers in China. Will it work? If yes, can anyone post any examples? Thanks a million

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  • A Great Keyword Research Tip - How to Do the Right Keyword Research

    There are many different kinds of affiliate marketing advice being thrown out by different Internet marketing experts. They claim that it will lead to affiliate success. Most will say that an appropriate website for a certain target market would do the trick. The usual barometer, of course, is the Google ranking (these show the website traffic)-however, these hardly translate to a high amount of sales.

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  • Simon Sabin has a great discount for the SQL Server Masterclass

    - by Testas
    Check out Simons blog post to get a discount of £100 for this event http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/archive/2010/05/14/paul-and-kimberly-are-coming-the-uk.aspx   Remember as well  Pencil the 17th June in your diary, send an email [email protected] with the title of Masterclass in the subject line. On Friday 25th May we will draw out a name and the winner will have free entrance to a must see seminar on SQL Server from two of the industry’s leading experts. Thanks Chris

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  • Four Great Ways to Speed Up Your Website Speed

    As a webpage developer, you should already notice that page loading time is becoming more and more important than ever before. It is quite usual that visitors will not turn away from your webpage if it cost them more than half a minute to get access to your website. What's more, the faster your pages load, the more likely the search engines will be index deeper into your websites pages and give your website a better search engine ranking.

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  • Search Engine Optimization For Great Search Engine Placement!

    Do you do enough search engine optimization to get the search engine placement that you want for the keywords that you want to rank for? If not then read on and I will give you information that you need to know to start getting those rankings that you want, and start receiving traffic! There are a few things I will be going over in this article.

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  • Iron Speed Designer 7.0 - the great gets greater!

    - by GGBlogger
    For Immediate Release Iron Speed, Inc. Kelly Fisher +1 (408) 228-3436 [email protected] http://www.ironspeed.com       Iron Speed Version 7.0 Generates SharePoint Applications New! Support for Microsoft SharePoint speeds application generation and deployment   San Jose, CA – June 8, 2010. Software development tools-maker Iron Speed, Inc. released Iron Speed Designer Version 7.0, the latest version of its popular Web 2.0 application generator. Iron Speed Designer generates rich, interactive database and reporting applications for .NET, Microsoft SharePoint and the Cloud.    In addition to .NET applications, Iron Speed Designer V7.0 generates database-driven SharePoint applications. The ability to quickly create database-driven applications for SharePoint eliminates a lot of work, helping IT departments generate productivity-enhancing applications in just a few hours.  Generated applications include integrated SharePoint application security and use SharePoint master pages.    “It’s virtually impossible to build database-driven application in SharePoint by hand. Iron Speed Designer V7.0 not only makes this possible, the tool makes it easy.” – Razi Mohiuddin, President, Iron Speed, Inc.     Integrated SharePoint application security Generated applications include integrated SharePoint application security. SharePoint sites and their groups are used to retrieve security roles. Iron Speed Designer validates the user against a Microsoft SharePoint server on your network by retrieving the logged in user’s credentials from the SharePoint Context.    “The Iron Speed Designer generated application integrates seamlessly with SharePoint security, removing the hassle of designing, testing and approving your own security layer.” -Michael Landi, Solutions Architect, Light Speed Solutions     SharePoint Solution Packages Iron Speed Designer V7.0 creates SharePoint Solution Packages (WSPs) for easy application deployment. Using the Deployment Wizard, a single application WSP is created and can be deployed to your SharePoint server.   “Iron Speed Designer is the first product on the market that allows easy and painless deployment of database-driven .NET web applications inside the SharePoint environment.” -Bryan Patrick, Developer, Pseudo Consulting     SharePoint master pages and themes In V7.0, generated applications use SharePoint master pages and contain the same content as other SharePoint pages. Generated applications use the current SharePoint color scheme and display standard SharePoint navigation controls on each page.   “Iron Speed Designer preserves the look and feel of the SharePoint environment in deployed database applications without additional hand-coding.” -Kirill Dmitriev, Software Developer, Iron Speed, Inc.     Iron Speed Designer Version 7.0 System Requirements Iron Speed Designer Version 7.0 runs on Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 and 2008. It generates .NET Web applications for Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Access and MySQL. These applications may be deployed on any machine running the .NET Framework. Iron Speed Designer supports Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS3). Find complete information about Iron Speed Designer Version 7.0 at www.ironspeed.com.     About Iron Speed, Inc. Iron Speed is the leader in enterprise-class application generation. Our software development tools generate database and reporting applications in significantly less time and cost than hand-coding. Our flagship product, Iron Speed Designer, is the fastest way to deliver applications for the Microsoft .NET and software-as-a-service cloud computing environments.   With products built on decades of experience in enterprise application development and large-scale e-commerce systems, Iron Speed products eliminate the need for developers to choose between "full featured" and "on schedule."   Founded in 1999, Iron Speed is well funded with a capital base of over $20M and strategic investors that include Arrow Electronics and Avnet, as well as executives from AMD, Excelan, Onsale, and Oracle. The company is based in San Jose, Calif., and is located online at www.ironspeed.com.

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  • Integrating Social, Marketing, and Loyalty to Deliver Great Customer Experiences

    - by Charles Knapp
    Eighty nine percent of consumers quit a brand after one bad experience. With the high cost of acquiring new customers, what can brand leaders do? At the Loyalty World Conference this week in London, global business leaders such as the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s shared the latest in how to retain customers and boost advocacy. Melissa Boxer and Sundar Swaminathan of Oracle shared that by taking an outside-in approach, you can deliver a differentiated, loyalty-building experience throughout the customer lifecycle, from researching and selecting through to using and recommending. To transform customer experiences, you need to integrate your brand’s social, marketing, and loyalty functions from the commonplace silos. Three key strategies: Know more and understand, unifying and capturing insights across touch points to better understand who to serve, how to serve, and when to serve.  Connect and engage across social and traditional channels, empowering a relationship ecosystem between social communities, customers, and employees. Make the personalized experience easy and rewarding. Visit us on twitter.com/oraclecrm to learn more useful highlights from the #lwconf conference.

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  • Great ADF Content at Collaborate 12

    - by Shay Shmeltzer
    If you are attending the Collaborate 12 conference this month in Las Vegas and you are interested in Oracle ADF you are going to be very busy. There are more than 20 sessions covering ADF and a special Wednesday ADF Enterprise Methodology Group event focused on ADF. Session range from how to get started to deep technical dives and real world war stories of customers and their implementations. Also don't forget to drop by the Oracle ADF booth at the Oracle Demoground and say hello. Here is a quick list of session that list ADF as a keyword in their content: Sun. Apr. 22 9613 A Fusion Approach to Building Unified and Scalable Applications With Rich User Experience 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Mon. Apr. 23 669 Fusion DBA Boot Camp: Tailoring Your Application to Customer Needs in a Upgrade-safe Way - Support in ADF and Fusion Apps 9:45 am - 10:45 am Mon. Apr. 23 438 Oracle Fusion Applications Security 9:45 am - 10:45 am Mon. Apr. 23 176 How to get started with Oracle ADF 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm Mon. Apr. 23 330 Fusion DBA Boot Camp: Implementing Self-Service Portals for Partners/Distributors Using EBS/WebCenter/Fusion Technologies 1:15 pm - 2:15 pm Mon. Apr. 23 288 Working with Portlets in ADF and Webcenter 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Tue. Apr. 24 503 Who’s Converting My Portal? 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Tue. Apr. 24 9370 Coexistence of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Applications: Platform Perspective 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 647 Developing Custom BI Solutions - OBIEE vs. Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) 9:30 am - 10:30 am Wed. Apr. 25 173 ADF: A Path to the Future for Dinosaur Nerds 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 581 How Will You Build Your Next System? 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 10351 Integrating CRM On Demand With the E-Business Suite to Supercharge Your Sales Team 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 9348 Mobile,ADF, Coherence and Live Data Streaming? A Herbalife Case Study 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 566 Getting Started with ADF 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 775 WebCenter Portal Template Design and Development Best Practices 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 791 Surfacing Oracle Social Network into Your Business Applications 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 9407 The Latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release User Interface and Usability Enhancements 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 100080 Extending JD Edwards with Oracle ADF and Oracle SOA Suite 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 172 JDeveloper ADF and the Oracle database – friends not foes 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 595 Achieving Real-Time Social Collaboration in WebCenter 11g 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Wed. Apr. 25 164 ADF + Faces: Do I Have to Write ANY Java code? 4:15 pm - 5:15 pm Thu. Apr. 26 257 Mobile App Development with Oracle ADF Mobile: develop once and for all 8:30 am - 9:30 am Thu. Apr. 26 177 Understanding Oracle ADF and its role in Oracle Fusion Middleware 9:45 am - 10:45 am Thu. Apr. 26 523 Making Next-Generation Mobile Apps With The Latest ADF Mobile Tools 9:45 am - 10:45 am Thu. Apr. 26 356 ADF Integration with WebCenter Content 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

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  • Great Debugging skills weak problem solving

    - by Mahmoud
    For the 5 years I worked for various companies, I worked in large software like computer vision kits, embedded, games. I found myself very good at debuggins skills, I've even found and fixed bugs in frameworks and I solved them. The problem is that I'm very weak at problem solving. I got interview with Qualcomm, and they said you're fine at software, but you have a limited problem solving, I also had the same results with Google. I'm very bad at solving puzzles and brain teasers. During the interviews I solve all of the software related problems on the blackboard, but when I went to the GM and face math problems and probabilities, I struggle. How can I improve my problem solving skills? Edit Some of the problems: A cake that is cut from anywhere and needs just one cut to halved in equal. I told him cut it horizontally, he said No, consider it as a 2D Problem!. Consider a concenteric 3 circles, each one can get a color, but not matched with the other circle, how many blobs you can make out of those circles ? this was with the GM ( Augmented Reality SDK) Consider a train, an infinite one, and you looked at the window, and there are two cars, one big, and one small, what is the probability of having only a big car, I said 50%, he said, what if that two cars you dont know their length, and you want to get the probability of getting the biggest one, I struggled, didn't solve it... I was really exahusted after long day of interviews prob of having a number divisible by 5 in numbers from 1 to 100.. struggled!! All coding questions I solved them like reverse a string, detect a cycle in a linked list,..etc.

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  • The Great Ball Contraption: A Massive Automated LEGO Construction

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    This massive LEGO construction combines 17 distinct modules into a lengthy factory-like conveyance system for five hundred LEGO balls. The variety and creativity of the methods employed is, dare we say, dazzling. Slotted robotic arms? Screw lifts? Handshake object transfers? Catapults that shoot baskets? The sheer number of creative and novel solutions LEGO builder Akiyuky employs to move the balls through his machine left us mesmerized for the whole seven minute video. Akiyuky’s LEGO Blog (Google Translate Interpreted)[via Make] How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using?

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  • Great Blog Comments

    - by Paul Sorensen
    Just a quick note to let you know that in the interest of keeping the most useful content available here on the Oracle Certification Blog, we do moderate the comments. We welcome (and encourage dialog, questions, comments, etc) here on the topics at hand. We'll never 'censor' out a comment just because we don't like it - in fact, this is how we often learn ways in which we can do better. But of course we will filter out the typical list like anyone else: crude/offensive remarks, foul language, reference to illegal activity, etc. We will also often redirect any customer-service type inquiries to [email protected] where they can best be handled.Also, if you have a question of a general nature, please research it on the Oracle Certification website first. We often won't respond to questions asking such as "tell me how to get 11g ocp", as we've already made sure that you have that kind of information available. Now if we've inadvertently 'hidden' something on our site (gulp), then fair enough - please let us know that you're having a hard time finding it and we'll be sure to try and "unbury it" ;-)Additionally, you may have more of an 'opinion' type question, such as "should I do 'x' certification or 'y' certification." For these, we highly recommend checking on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Certification Forum, where you can engage in peer-to-peer discussions, share techniques, advice and best practices with others in the field.In the meantime, please continue to share your thoughts, ideas, opinions, tech tips etc - we look forward to seeing them and passing them wherever we can!QUICK LINKS:Oracle Certification WebsiteEmail - Customer ServiceOracle Technology Network (OTN) Certification Forum

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  • Same Great Insights, New Location

    - by Brian Dayton
    With Spring, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, comes a little house cleaning.   Going forward the writers of this blog will now be posting to http://blogs.oracle.com/applications/   If you've been following Linda Fishman Hoyle's Yak About Apps blog she can now be found at http://blogs.oracle.com/lindafishman/  Thanks for following us.  

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  • Great Expectations - Fusion HCM Highlights at OOW

    - by Kathryn Perry
    A guest post by Lisa Conley, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Fusion HCM, Oracle Applications Development Oracle Open World is just around the corner! There's always so much to see and do and learn at the conference so I want to share some of the 'don't miss' Fusion HCM highlights with you. (Use this tool to search by session number to get a full description.) For starters, we have several customers who will be sharing their Fusion HCM implementation stories. We'll kick off these presentations with a customer panel at 12:15 on Monday in Moscone West 2005 (CON9420). You'll hear from Zillow, the Gerson Lehrman Group, UBS, and ConAgra about their experiences with our products. Oracle partners MarketSphere (CON8581) and eVerge (CON3800) have implemented Fusion HCM themselves and and will talk about how they'll use their experiences to help customers with their implementations (both are in Moscone West 2006). Beth Correa, CEO of Official Payroll Advisor, will highlight her favorite things about Oracle Fusion HCM Payroll on Tuesday at 11:45 in Moscone West 2006 (CON6691). And you'll get to hear from customers again when they speak with Steve Miranda in his Oracle Applications: Strategic Directions and Recommendations session on Tuesday at 1:15 in Moscone West 2002/2004 (CON11434). To bring it all together for you, we've listed all your Fusion HCM opportunities to learn and interact in this Focus On Document. I am really looking forward to the sessions on Human Capital Management in the Cloud. The Oracle Cloud combines the multiple product offerings into a single environment that leverages a common technology infrastructure enabling users to focus on their business - not the business of managing environments. On Tuesday at 10:15 in Moscone West 2002/2004, there is a General Session entitled the Future of Oracle HCM -- Strategy and Roadmap (GEN9505). This will touch on all product lines. Fusion HCM will be highlighted in Gretchen Alarcon's Oracle HCM: Overview, Strategy, Customer Experiences, and Roadmap session on Monday at 12:15 in Moscone West 2005 (CON9410). Also on Tuesday at 1:15 in Moscone West 2006, is a session focused on Talent Management and how you can try out these new products, co-existing with your current product set (CON9430). This is important in that you can test the waters before diving in. ConAgra will be sharing their experience in this session as well.  And of course, if you want to have a personal demonstration, please come by the Oracle DEMOgrounds in West Exhibition Hall Level 1 or the Oracle Cloud Services Lounge at Moscone West Level 3 where our Oracle HCM Cloud Services experts will be ready to answer your questions. I hope you have a wonderful week in San Francisco.Lisa ConleyPrincipal Product Strategy Manager, Fusion HCMApplications DevelopmentOracle Corporation

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  • The Great Divorce

    - by BlackRabbitCoder
    I have a confession to make: I've been in an abusive relationship for more than 17 years now.  Yes, I am not ashamed to admit it, but I'm finally doing something about it. I met her in college, she was new and sexy and amazingly fast -- and I'd never met anything like her before.  Her style and her power captivated me and I couldn't wait to learn more about her.  I took a chance on her, and though I learned a lot from her -- and will always be grateful for my time with her -- I think it's time to move on. Her name was C++, and she so outshone my previous love, C, that any thoughts of going back evaporated in the heat of this new romance.  She promised me she'd be gentle and not hurt me the way C did.  She promised me she'd clean-up after herself better than C did.  She promised me she'd be less enigmatic and easier to keep happy than C was.  But I was deceived.  Oh sure, as far as truth goes, it wasn't a complete lie.  To some extent she was more fun, more powerful, safer, and easier to maintain.  But it just wasn't good enough -- or at least it's not good enough now. I loved C++, some part of me still does, it's my first-love of programming languages and I recognize its raw power, its blazing speed, and its improvements over its predecessor.  But with today's hardware, at speeds we could only dream to conceive of twenty years ago, that need for speed -- at the cost of all else -- has died, and that has left my feelings for C++ moribund. If I ever need to write an operating system or a device driver, then I might need that speed.  But 99% of the time I don't.  I'm a business-type programmer and chances are 90% of you are too, and even the ones who need speed at all costs may be surprised by how much you sacrifice for that.   That's not to say that I don't want my software to perform, and it's not to say that in the business world we don't care about speed or that our job is somehow less difficult or technical.  There's many times we write programs to handle millions of real-time updates or handle thousands of financial transactions or tracking trading algorithms where every second counts.  But if I choose to write my code in C++ purely for speed chances are I'll never notice the speed increase -- and equally true chances are it will be far more prone to crash and far less easy to maintain.  Nearly without fail, it's the macro-optimizations you need, not the micro-optimizations.  If I choose to write a O(n2) algorithm when I could have used a O(n) algorithm -- that can kill me.  If I choose to go to the database to load a piece of unchanging data every time instead of caching it on first load -- that too can kill me.  And if I cross the network multiple times for pieces of data instead of getting it all at once -- yes that can also kill me.  But choosing an overly powerful and dangerous mid-level language to squeeze out every last drop of performance will realistically not make stock orders process any faster, and more likely than not open up the system to more risk of crashes and resource leaks. And that's when my love for C++ began to die.  When I noticed that I didn't need that speed anymore.  That that speed was really kind of a lie.  Sure, I can be super efficient and pack bits in a byte instead of using separate boolean values.  Sure, I can use an unsigned char instead of an int.  But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter as much as you think it does.  The key is maintainability, and that's where C++ failed me.  I like to tell the other developers I work with that there's two levels of correctness in coding: Is it immediately correct? Will it stay correct? That is, you can hack together any piece of code and make it correct to satisfy a task at hand, but if a new developer can't come in tomorrow and make a fairly significant change to it without jeopardizing that correctness, it won't stay correct. Some people laugh at me when I say I now prefer maintainability over speed.  But that is exactly the point.  If you focus solely on speed you tend to produce code that is much harder to maintain over the long hall, and that's a load of technical debt most shops can't afford to carry and end up completely scrapping code before it's time.  When good code is written well for maintainability, though, it can be correct both now and in the future. And you know the best part is?  My new love is nearly as fast as C++, and in some cases even faster -- and better than that, I know C# will treat me right.  Her creators have poured hundreds of thousands of hours of time into making her the sexy beast she is today.  They made her easy to understand and not an enigmatic mess.  They made her consistent and not moody and amorphous.  And they made her perform as fast as I care to go by optimizing her both at compile time and a run-time. Her code is so elegant and easy on the eyes that I'm not worried where she will run to or what she'll pull behind my back.  She is powerful enough to handle all my tasks, fast enough to execute them with blazing speed, maintainable enough so that I can rely on even fairly new peers to modify my work, and rich enough to allow me to satisfy any need.  C# doesn't ask me to clean up her messes!  She cleans up after herself and she tries to make my life easier for me by taking on most of those optimization tasks C++ asked me to take upon myself.  Now, there are many of you who would say that I am the cause of my own grief, that it was my fault C++ didn't behave because I didn't pay enough attention to her.  That I alone caused the pain she inflicted on me.  And to some extent, you have a point.  But she was so high maintenance, requiring me to know every twist and turn of her vast and unrestrained power that any wrong term or bout of forgetfulness was met with painful reminders that she wasn't going to watch my back when I made a mistake.  But C#, she loves me when I'm good, and she loves me when I'm bad, and together we make beautiful code that is both fast and safe. So that's why I'm leaving C++ behind.  She says she's changing for me, but I have no interest in what C++0x may bring.  Oh, I'll still keep in touch, and maybe I'll see her now and again when she brings her problems to my door and asks for some attention -- for I always have a soft spot for her, you see.  But she's out of my house now.  I have three kids and a dog and a cat, and all require me to clean up after them, why should I have to clean up after my programming language as well?

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