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• Compute directional light frustum from view furstum points and light direction

  - by Fabian

  I'm working on a friends engine project and my task is to construct a new frustum from the light direction that overlaps the view frustum and possible shadow casters. The project already has a function that creates a frustum for this but its way to big and includes way to many casters (shadows) which can't be seen in the view frustum. Now the only parameter of this function are the normalized light direction vector and a view class which lets me extract the 8 view frustum points in world space. I don't have any additional infos about the scene. I have read some of the related Questions here but non seem to fit very well to my problem as they often just point to cascaded shadow maps. Sadly i can't use DX or openGl functions directly because this engine has a dedicated math library. From what i've read so far the steps are: Transform view frustum points into light space and find min/max x and y values (or sometimes minima and maxima of all three axis) and create a AABB using the min/max vectors. But what comes after this step? How do i transform this new AABB back to world space? What i've done so far: CVector3 Points[8], MinLight = CVector3(FLT_MAX), MaxLight = CVector3(FLT_MAX); for(int i = 0; i<8;++i){ Points[i] = Points[i] * WorldToShadowMapMatrix; MinLight = Math::Min(Points[i],MinLight); MaxLight = Math::Max(Points[i],MaxLight); } AABox box(MinLight,MaxLight); I don't think this is the right way to do it. The near plain probably has to extend into the direction of the light source to include potentional shadow casters. I've read the Microsoft article about cascaded shadow maps http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee416307%28v=vs.85%29.aspx which also includes some sample code. But they seem to use the scenes AABB to determine the near and far plane which I can't since i cant access this information from the funtion I'm working in. Could you guys please link some example code which shows the calculation of such frustum? Thanks in advance! Additional questio: is there a way to construct a WorldToFrustum matrix that represents the above transformation?

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• PASS: Bylaw Changes

  - by Bill Graziano

  While you’re reading this, a post should be going up on the PASS blog on the plans to change our bylaws.  You should be able to find our old bylaws, our proposed bylaws and a red-lined version of the changes.  We plan to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that point we’ll decide whether to vote on these changes or take other action. The executive summary is that we’re adding a restriction to prevent more than two people from the same company on the Board and eliminating the Board’s Officer Appointment Committee to have Officers directly elected by the Board.  This second change better matches how officer elections have been conducted in the past. The Gritty Details Our scope was to change bylaws to match how PASS actually works and tackle a limited set of issues.  Changing the bylaws is hard.  We’ve been working on these changes since the March board meeting last year.  At that meeting we met and talked through the issues we wanted to address.  In years past the Board has tried to come up with language and then we’ve discussed and negotiated to get to the result.  In March, we gave HQ guidance on what we wanted and asked them to come up with a starting point.  Hannes worked on building us an initial set of changes that we could work our way through.  Discussing changes like this over email is difficult wasn’t very productive.  We do a much better job on this at the in-person Board meetings.  Unfortunately there are only 2 or 3 of those a year. In August we met in Nashville and spent time discussing the changes.  That was also the day after we released the slate for the 2010 election. The discussion around that colored what we talked about in terms of these changes.  We talked very briefly at the Summit and again reviewed and revised the changes at the Board meeting in January.  This is the result of those changes and discussions. We made numerous small changes to clean up language and make wording more clear.  We also made two big changes. Director Employment Restrictions The first is that only two people from the same company can serve on the Board at the same time.  The actual language in section VI.3 reads: A maximum of two (2) Directors who are employed by, or who are joint owners or partners in, the same for-profit venture, company, organization, or other legal entity, may concurrently serve on the PASS Board of Directors at any time. The definition of “employed” is at the sole discretion of the Board. And what a mess this turns out to be in practice.  Our membership is a hodgepodge of interlocking relationships.  Let’s say three Board members get together and start a blog service for SQL Server bloggers.  It’s technically for-profit.  Let’s assume it makes $8 in the first year.  Does that trigger this clause?  (Technically yes.)  We had a horrible time trying to write language that covered everything.  All the sample bylaws that we found were just as vague as this. That led to the third clause in this section.  The first sentence reads: The Board of Directors reserves the right, strictly on a case-by-case basis, to overrule the requirements of Section VI.3 by majority decision for any single Director’s conflict of employment. We needed some way to handle the trivial issues and exercise some judgment.  It seems like a public vote is the best way.  This discloses the relationship and gets each Board member on record on the issue.   In practice I think this clause will rarely be used.  I think this entire section will only be invoked for actual employment issues and not for small side projects.  In either case we have the mechanisms in place to handle it in a public, transparent way. That’s the first and third clauses.  The second clause says that if your situation changes and you fall afoul of this restriction you need to notify the Board.  The clause further states that if this new job means a Board members violates the “two-per-company” rule the Board may request their resignation.  The Board can also  allow the person to continue serving with a majority vote.  I think this will also take some judgment.  Consider a person switching jobs that leads to three people from the same company.  I’m very likely to ask for someone to resign if all three are two weeks into a two year term.  I’m unlikely to ask anyone to resign if one is two weeks away from ending their term.  In either case, the decision will be a public vote that we can be held accountable for. One concern that was raised was whether this would affect someone choosing to accept a job.  I think that’s a choice for them to make.  PASS is clearly stating its intent that only two directors from any one organization should serve at any time.  Once these bylaws are approved, this policy should not come as a surprise to any potential or current Board members considering a job change.  This clause isn’t perfect.  The biggest hole is business relationships that aren’t defined above.  Let’s say that two employees from company “X” serve on the Board.  What happens if I accept a full-time consulting contract with that company?  Let’s assume I’m working directly for one of the two existing Board members.  That doesn’t violate section VI.3.  But I think it’s clearly the kind of relationship we’d like to prevent.  Unfortunately that was even harder to write than what we have now.  I fully expect that in the next revision of the bylaws we’ll address this.  It just didn’t make it into this one. Officer Elections The officer election process received a slightly different rewrite.  Our goal was to codify in the bylaws the actual process we used to elect the officers.  The officers are the President, Executive Vice-President (EVP) and Vice-President of Marketing.  The Immediate Past President (IPP) is also an officer but isn’t elected.  The IPP serves in that role for two years after completing their term as President.  We do that for continuity’s sake.  Some organizations have a President-elect that serves for one or two years.  The group that founded PASS chose to have an IPP. When I started on the Board, the Nominating Committee (NomCom) selected the slate for the at-large directors and the slate for the officers.  There was always one candidate for each officer position.  It wasn’t really an election so much as the NomCom decided who the next person would be for each officer position.  Behind the scenes the Board worked to select the best people for the role. In June 2009 that process was changed to bring it line with what actually happens.  An Officer Appointment Committee was created that was a subset of the Board.  That committee would take time to interview the candidates and present a slate to the Board for approval.  The majority vote of the Board would determine the officers for the next two years.  In practice the Board itself interviewed the candidates and conducted the elections.  That means it was time to change the bylaws again. Section VII.2 and VII.3 spell out the process used to select the officers.  We use the phrase “Officer Appointment” to separate it from the Director election but the end result is that the Board elects the officers.  Section VII.3 starts: Officers shall be appointed bi-annually by a majority of all the voting members of the Board of Directors. Everything else revolves around that sentence.  We use the word appoint but they truly are elected.  There are details in the bylaws for term limits, minimum requirements for President (1 prior term as an officer), tie breakers and filling vacancies. In practice we will have an election for President, then an election for EVP and then an election for VP Marketing.  That means that losing candidates will be able to fall down the ladder and run for the next open position.  Another point to note is that officers aren’t at-large directors.  That means if a current sitting officer loses all three elections they are off the Board.  Having Board member votes public will help with the transparency of this approach. This process has a number of positive and negatives.  The biggest concern I expect to hear is that our members don’t directly choose the officers.  I’m going to try and list all the positives and negatives of this approach. Many non-profits value continuity and are slower to change than a business.  On the plus side this promotes that.  On the negative side this promotes that.  If we change too slowly the members complain that we aren’t responsive.  If we change too quickly we make mistakes and fail at various things.  We’ve been criticized for both of those lately so I’m not entirely sure where to draw the line.  My rough assumption to this point is that we’re going too slow on governance and too quickly on becoming “more than a Summit.”  This approach creates competition in the officer elections.  If you are an at-large director there is no consequence to losing an election.  If you are an officer the only way to stay on the Board is to win an officer election or an at-large election.  If you are an officer and lose an election you can always run for the next office down.  This makes it very easy for multiple people to contest an election. There is value in a person moving through the officer positions up to the Presidency.  Having the Board select the officers promotes this.  The down side is that it takes a LOT of time to get to the Presidency.  We’ve had good people struggle with burnout.  We’ve had lots of discussion around this.  The process as we’ve described it here makes it possible for someone to move quickly through the ranks but doesn’t prevent people from working their way up through each role. We talked long and hard about having the officers elected by the members.  We had a self-imposed deadline to complete these changes prior to elections this summer. The other challenge was that our original goal was to make the bylaws reflect our actual process rather than create a new one.  I believe we accomplished this goal. We ran out of time to consider this option in the detail it needs.  Having member elections for officers needs a number of problems solved.  We would need a way for candidates to fall through the election.  This is what promotes competition.  Without this few people would risk an election and we’ll be back to one candidate per slot.  We need to do this without having multiple elections.  We may be able to copy what other organizations are doing but I was surprised at how little I could find on other organizations.  We also need a way for people that lose an officer election to win an at-large election.  Otherwise we’ll have very little competition for officers. This brings me to an area that I think we as a Board haven’t done a good job.  We haven’t built a strong process to tell you who is doing a good job and who isn’t.  This is a double-edged sword.  I don’t want to highlight Board members that are failing.  That’s not a good way to get people to volunteer and run for the Board.  But I also need a way let the members make an informed choice about who is doing a good job and would make a good officer.  Encouraging Board members to blog, publishing minutes and making votes public helps in that regard but isn’t the final answer.  I don’t know what the final answer is yet.  I do know that the Board members themselves are uniquely positioned to know which other Board members are doing good work.  They know who speaks up in meetings, who works to build consensus, who has good ideas and who works with the members.  What I Could Do Better I’ve learned a lot writing this about how we communicated with our members.  The next time we revise the bylaws I’d do a few things differently.  The biggest change would be to provide better documentation.  The March 2009 minutes provide a very detailed look into what changes we wanted to make to the bylaws.  Looking back, I’m a little surprised at how closely they matched our final changes and covered the various arguments.  If you just read those you’d get 90% of what we eventually changed.  Nearly everything else was just details around implementation.  I’d also consider publishing a scope document defining exactly what we were doing any why.  I think it really helped that we had a limited, defined goal in mind.  I don’t think we did a good job communicating that goal outside the meeting minutes though. That said, I wish I’d blogged more after the August and January meeting.  I think it would have helped more people to know that this change was coming and to be ready for it. Conclusion These changes address two big concerns that the Board had.  First, it prevents a single organization from dominating the Board.  Second, it codifies and clearly spells out how officers are elected.  This is the process that was previously followed but it was somewhat murky.  These changes bring clarity to this and clearly explain the process the Board will follow. We’re going to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that time we’ll decide whether to approve these changes.  I’m also assuming that we’ll start another round of changes in the next year or two.  Are there other issues in the bylaws that we should tackle in the future?

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• Announcing the New Virtual Briefing Center

  - by Theresa Hickman

  Do you want to hear about real-world customer success stories? Or listen to Oracle Application leaders discuss the value in the latest releases of Oracle Application products? Do you want one place to download up-to-date content, including white papers, podcasts, webcasts and presentations? Did you miss the Virtual Trade Show at the beginning of 2011? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the Virtual Briefing Center is the place to get up-to-date Oracle product information for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Fusion, Siebel and Hyperion across multiple product areas from financials, procurement, supply chain, CRM, Performance Management, and more. Every month we will have "Monthly Spotlights" to showcase new content. The following lists the upcoming live webcasts in July 2011: Weds. July 6, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. PST/12:00 p.m. EST: Hear about Amway’s upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 and how they stabilized financial modules, especially the month-end close processes. Thurs. July 14, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. PST/12:00 p.m. EST: Hear West Corporation share their PeopleSoft 9.1 upgrade, resulting in improved self-service, more robust reporting capabilities and new workflow and processes. Thurs. July 21, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. PST/12:00 p.m. EST: Learn how MFlex improved their operations, saved manpower and reduced time to close with their upgrade to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0. Thurs. July 28, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. PST/12:00 p.m. EST: IEEE discusses their upgrade to Siebel 8.1 using open web service architecture for faster SOA enablement allowing them to scale their membership capacity by 250%. If you cannot attend any of the above live events, that's OK because each of the webcasts in this series will be recorded and available on demand. And for you Financials folks who may have missed the webcasts from the Virtual Trade Show earlier this year, you can view them on demand by Visiting the Resource Library: Planning Your Successful Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite Financials 12.1. In this session, Bryant and Stratton College talk about their upgrade. Planning Your Successful Upgrade to PeopleSoft Financials 9.1. In this session, the University of Central Florida share their upgrade story. Fusion Financials: The New Standard for Finance. In this session, Terrance Wampler, the VP of Financial Application Strategy discusses the business value of Oracle's next generation financial applications and how customers can take advantage of Fusion Financials alongside their existing investments. What are you waiting for? Register now!

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• Strengthening code with possibly useless exception handling

  - by rdurand

  Is it a good practice to implement useless exception handling, just in case another part of the code is not coded correctly? Basic example A simple one, so I don't loose everybody :). Let's say I'm writing an app that will display a person's information (name, address, etc.), the data being extracted from a database. Let's say I'm the one coding the UI part, and someone else is writing the DB query code. Now imagine that the specifications of your app say that if the person's information is incomplete (let's say, the name is missing in the database), the person coding the query should handle this by returning "NA" for the missing field. What if the query is poorly coded and doesn't handle this case? What if the guy who wrote the query handles you an incomplete result, and when you try to display the informations, everything crashes, because your code isn't prepared to display empty stuff? This example is very basic. I believe most of you will say "it's not your problem, you're not responsible for this crash". But, it's still your part of the code which is crashing. Another example Let's say now I'm the one writing the query. The specifications don't say the same as above, but that the guy writing the "insert" query should make sure all the fields are complete when adding a person to the database to avoid inserting incomplete information. Should I protect my "select" query to make sure I give the UI guy complete informations? The questions What if the specifications don't explicitly say "this guy is the one in charge of handling this situation"? What if a third person implements another query (similar to the first one, but on another DB) and uses your UI code to display it, but doesn't handle this case in his code? Should I do what's necessary to prevent a possible crash, even if I'm not the one supposed to handle the bad case? I'm not looking for an answer like "(s)he's the one responsible for the crash", as I'm not solving a conflict here, I'd like to know, should I protect my code against situations it's not my responsibility to handle? Here, a simple "if empty do something" would suffice. In general, this question tackles redundant exception handling. I'm asking it because when I work alone on a project, I may code 2-3 times a similar exception handling in successive functions, "just in case" I did something wrong and let a bad case come through.

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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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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for July 3, 2013

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Industrial SOA Chapter 5: Enterprise Service Bus Enterprise Service Bus, the fifth and latest addition to the Industrial SOA article series, answers some of the most important questions surrounding the use of an ESB. Industrial SOA Chapter 4: SOA Maturity The fourth article in the Industrial SOA series, SOA Maturity offers "an exploration of the fundamentals of applying a factory approach to modern service-oriented software development." Using the Exalytics Summary Advisor and Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6.4 | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's post revisits "the use of the Summary Advisor, with my BI Apps installation bumped-up to version 7.9.6.4, and the Exalytics environment patched up to 11.1.1.6.9, the latest patch release we’ve applied to that environment." Part 1 - 12c Database and WLS - Overview | Steve Felts Steve Felts shares a handy table that "maps the Oracle 12c Database features supported with various combinations of currently available WLS releases, 11g and 12c Drivers, and 11g and 12c Databases." Developers WebCast: Deploy Highly-Available Custom Services on Your Data Grid Products - July 11 Oracle Coherence Sr. Architect Brian Oliver hosts this free July 11 webcast for developers to show you how to "create and deploy customized, highly-available services for your data grid, and how real-time data processing will allow you to provide unmatched end-user experiences." A checklist for OIM go live | Daniel Gralewski FMW A-Team solution architect Daniel Gralewski's list is intended to complement Oracle Identity Manager. His post "provides tips on a few topics that are not part of the documentation." How Many ODI Master Repositories Should We Have? | Christophe Dupupet FMW solution architect Christophe Dupupet provides a simple along with best practices for the architecture of ODI repositories in a corporate environment. Distinguish EA from enterprise wide solution architecture | John Wu My buddy Tony Meyer, who did a great presentation recently at the Cleveland-area Enterprise Architect / Solution Architect Meet-up, recommends this Toolbox article by John Wu. YouTube: Oracle Fusion Applications Developer Tips If you work with Fusion Applications you'll want to check out the tips and tricks for building extensions, customizations, and integrations now available on the new Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer Relations YouTube channel. The CX Factor: Wooing and wowing customers in the digital age "There was a time when 'customer experience' was limited to what happened to you when you walked into a store, restaurant, or other place of business or when you called a business on the telephone. But that was back when you could still smoke on airplanes." Thought for the Day "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.' " — Dave Barry (Born July 3, 1947) Source: brainyquote.com

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• Travelling MVP #2: Community event at Bucharest, Romania

  - by DigiMortal

  My second trip was to DevReach with two stops. My first stop was at Bucharest where I met with my friend Dimitar Georgiev who is one of authors of Gym Realm service. Romanian MVP Andrei Ignat was our host there and organized meeting with local community guys. With me – it was first time in my life – was one more guy from Estonia visiting DevReach and he made the whole trip with me. Bucharest We arrived to Bucharest 29.09 at night. We stayed at Hotel Michelangelo. It’s small hotel with nice rooms, free WiFi and very good service. Although my room was on the first floor there was no street noise. We visited one restaurant that offers national cuisine and it was really great. Next day we went out with local guys and had some beers in “old town”. Bucharest “old town” is nice and cozy. There are many bars open and I am sure everybody will find there some very okay place. After supper we visited one warm karaoke bar where we had beers with local guys. Andrei Ignat – karaoke star Agu Suur and Andrei Ion Rinea enjoying karaoke and tequila Community event Next day we had community event. I made my session about ASP.NET Web API and Dimitar told about how to port ASP.NET web applications to cloud environment. Sessions were held at study class of one local company. Dimitar Georgiev speaking about porting web apps to Windows Azure. As it was usual community evening and not some bigger event there were about 12 guys attending from Bucharest. There were both IT-PROs and developers and one nice thing about Bucharest community is that they are listening to you very well and they ask questions if something is unclear or if you slide over from topic they are interested in. Okay, we tried to keep up good tempo so people stay awake and I think we succeeded. After sessions we went all together to local Piranha pub that was near event venue. We had some beers with local guys and talked with them on different technology topics. It was another good and interesting evening at Bucharest. I want to go back there for sure. As it was my first trip to Bucharest and mostly I gathered experiences I think my next community trip there will be way stronger. I take it as a challenge. Plus – I have there some new friends and I want to meet them too – be it community event or not. :)

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• SQL SERVER – Storing 64-bit Unsigned Integer Value in Database

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is a very interesting question I received in an email just another day. Some questions just are so good that it makes me wonder how come I have not faced it first hand. Anyway here is the question - “Pinal, I am migrating my database from MySQL to SQL Server and I have faced unique situation. I have been using Unsigned 64-bit integer in MySQL but when I try to migrate that column to SQL Server, I am facing an issue as there is no datatype which I find appropriate for my column. It is now too late to change the datatype and I need immediate solution. One chain of thought was to change the data type of the column from Unsigned 64-bit (BIGINT) to VARCHAR(n) but that will just change the data type for me such that I will face quite a lot of performance related issues in future. In SQL Server we also have the BIGINT data type but that is Signed 64-bit datatype. BIGINT datatype in SQL Server have range of -2^63 (-9,223,372,036,854,775,808) to 2^63-1 (9,223,372,036,854,775,807). However, my digit is much larger than this number. Is there anyway, I can store my big 64-bit Unsigned Integer without loosing much of the performance of by converting it to VARCHAR.” Very interesting question, for the sake of the argument, we can ask user that there should be no need of such a big number or if you are taking about identity column I really doubt that if your table will grow beyond this table. Here the real question which I found interesting was how to store 64-bit unsigned integer value in SQL Server without converting it to String data type. After thinking a bit, I found a fairly simple answer. I can use NUMERIC data type. I can use NUMERIC(20) datatype for 64-bit unsigned integer value, NUMERIC(10) datatype for 32-bit unsigned integer value and NUMERIC(5) datatype for 16-bit unsigned integer value. Numeric datatype supports 38 maximum of 38 precision. Now here is another thing to keep in mind. Using NUMERIC datatype will indeed accept the 64-bit unsigned integer but in future if you try to enter negative value, it will also allow the same. Hence, you will need to put any additional constraint over column to only accept positive integer there. Here is another big concern, SQL Server will store the number as numeric and will treat that as a positive integer for all the practical purpose. You will have to write in your application logic to interpret that as a 64-bit Unsigned Integer. On another side if you are using unsigned integers in your application, there are good chance that you already have logic taking care of the same. 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: SQL Datatype

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• Dawn of the Enterprise Social Developer

  - by Mike Stiles

  Social is not just for poking friends, posting videos of cats playing pianos, or even just for brand marketing anymore. It has become a key form of communication internally and externally across every area of the enterprise. As a Java developer, are you positioning yourself for the integration of social into enterprise business systems that’s on the near horizon? Because it’s the work you do and the applications you build that will influence what the social-enabled enterprise is going to look like and how it’s going to operate. But as a social developer, step one is wrapping your arms around all the things that are possible. Traditionally, the best exploration, brainstorming and innovation come from collaborating with other developers. That’s how the big questions can be hashed (or hacked) out. Is Java the best social development environment? If not, what is? What’s already being done in terms of application integration? The JavaOne Social Developer Program will offer up a series of talks and events on those very issues Tuesday, October 2 at the San Francisco Hilton. If you’re interested in embarking on this newest frontier of enterprise social development, you can connect with others who are thinking the same thing and get moving on your first project.Talks will include: Emergence Of The Social EnterpriseExtending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business ProcessesIntro to Open Graph and Facebook's APIs Building the Next Wave of Social Commerce Platforms Social Data and the Enterprise LinkedIn: A Professional Network Built with Java Technologies and Agile Practice Social Developer Hackathon In addition to these learning and discussion opportunities, you might consider joining the new Oracle Social Developer Community (OSDC), where the interaction and collaboration can continue indefinitely. It doesn’t take a lot of tea leaf reading to know that the cloud will house the enterprise technology of the future, and social (as well as the rich data it brings) is going to be a major part of that as social integrates across every business function as there’s proven value for consumer facing initiatives. The next phase of social development is going to involve combining enterprise data from multiple sources, new and existing, social and traditional, in order to tell compelling and usable stories. And social is coming to the enterprise quickly, meaning you as a development leader should seek to understand not just what's worked on the consumer side, but what aspects of those successes can be applied inside the organization. Get educated, get connected, and consider registering for this forward-looking event now to get started with enterprise social development.

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• Silverlight Cream for December 08, 2010 -- #1005

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Peter Kuhn, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Mike Taulty(-2-, -3-), Kunal Chowdhury, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger, Beth Massi(-2-, -3-)/ Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 1)" Mike Taulty WP7: "WP7: Glossy text block custom control" Martin Krüger Lightswitch: "How to Create a Screen with Multiple Search Parameters in LightSwitch" Beth Massi From SilverlightCream.com: Requirements of and pitfalls in Windows Phone 7 serialization Peter Kuhn discusses Data Contract Serializer issuses on WP7 and how to work around them. Managed implementation of CRC32 and MD5 algorithms updated; new release of ComputeFileHashes for Silverlight, WPF, and the command-line! David Anson ties up some loose ends from a prior post on hash functions, and updates his CRC32 and MD5 algorithms. Windows Phone From Scratch #9 – Visual State Jesse Liberty's latest Windows Phone from Scratch tutorial up... and is on the Visual State... he extends a Button and codes up the State Transitions. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 1) Mike Taulty has taken the time to rebuild the PDC2010 Silverlight App that folks wanted the source for... and he's taking multiple posts to explain the heck out of it. This first one is mostly infrastructure. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 2) In the 2nd post of the series, Mike Taulty is handling the In/Out of Browser business because he eventually is going to be going OOB. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 3) Part 3 finds Mike Taulty delving into WCF Data Services and getting some data on the screen. Paginating Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury continues with his investigation of the PagedCollectionView with this post on Pagination of your data. Old School Silverlight Effects If you haven't seen Jeremy Likness' 'Old School' Effects page yet, go just for the entertainment... you'll find yourself hanging around for the code :) WP7: Glossy text block custom control Martin Krüger's latest post is a very cool custom control for WP7 that displays Glossy text... it ain't Metro, but it looks pretty nice... some of it almost like etched text. How to Create a Screen with Multiple Search Parameters in LightSwitch Looks like Beth Massi got a few Lightswitch posts in while I wasn't looking. First up is this one on a multiple-parameter search screen. Adding Static Images and Logos to LightSwitch Applications In the 2nd post, Beth Massi shows how to add your own static images and logos to Lightswitch apps... in response to reader questions. Getting the Most out of LightSwitch Summary Properties In her latest post, Beth Massi explains what Summary Properties are in Lightswitch and how to use them to get the best results for your users. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• ArchBeat Top 10 for November 18-24, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of November 18-24, 2012. One-Stop Shop for over 200 On-Demand Oracle Webcasts Webcasts can be a great way to get information about Oracle products without having to go cross-eyed reading yet another document off your computer screen. Oracle's new Webcast Center offers selectable filtering to make it easy to get to the information you want. Yes, you have to register to gain access, but that process is quick, and with over 200 webcasts to choose from you know you'll find useful content. Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS 5 introduces BPEL with conditional correlation for aggregation scenarios | Lucas Jellema An extensive, detailed technical post from Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema. Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 Released | Anthony Shorten Principal Product Manager Anthony Shorten shares an overview of the changes implemented in the new release. Fault Handling and Prevention - Part 1 | Guido Schmutz and Ronald van Luttikhuizen In this technical article, part one of a four part series, Oracle ACE Directors Guido Schmutz and Ronald van Luttikhuizen guide you through an introduction to fault handling in a service-oriented environment using Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus. Oracle BPM Process Accelerators and process excellence | Andrew Richards "Process Accelerators are ready-to-deploy solutions based on best practices to simplify process management requirements," says Capgemini's Andrew Richards. "They are considered to be 'product grade,' meaning they have been designed; engineered, documented and tested by Oracle themselves to a level that they can be deployed as-is for a solution to a problem or extended as appropriate for a particular scenario." Videos: Getting Started with Java Embedded | The Java Source Interested in Java Embedded? You'll want to check out these videos provided Tori Weildt, including interviews with Oracle's James Allen and Kevin Smith, recorded at ARM TechCon. JPA SQL and Fetching tuning ( EclipseLink ) | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond's post illustrates how to "use the department and employee entity of the HR Oracle demo schema to explain the JPA options you have to control the SQL statements and the JPA relation Fetching." Devoxx 2012 Trip Report - clouds and sunshine | Markus Eisele Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele shares an extensive and entertaining account of his experience at Devoxx 2012. Towards Ultra-Reusability for ADF - Adaptive Bindings | Duncan Mills "The task flow mechanism embodies one of the key value propositions of the ADF Framework," says Duncan Mills. "However, what if we could do more? How could we make task flows even more re-usable than they are today?" As you might expect, Duncan has answers for those questions. Java Specification Requests in Numbers | Markus Eisele Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele shares some interesting data culled from the Java Community Process site. Thought for the Day "You can't have great software without a great team, and most software teams behave like dysfunctional families." — Jim McCarthy Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group Next Meeting July 21, 2011

  - by csoto

  Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011 Time: 4:30pm - 8:15pm ET (note that Parking at 475 Sansome Closes at 8:30pm) Where: Oracle Office, 475 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA Google Map We will be providing snacks and beverages. Register! - Registration is required for building security. Presentation Line Up:? 5:10pm - Batch Processing Using Coherence in Oracle Group Policy Administration - Paul Cleary, Oracle Oracle Insurance Policy Administration (OIPA) is a flexible, rules-based policy administration solution that provides full record keeping for all policy lifecycle transactions. One component of OIPA is Cycle processing, which is the batch processing of pending insurance transactions. This presentation introduces OIPA and Cycle processing, describing the unique challenges of processing a high volume of transactions within strict time windows. It then reviews how OIPA uses Oracle Coherence and the Processing Pattern to meet these challenges, describing implementation specifics that highlight the simplicity and robustness of the Processing Pattern. 6:10pm - Secure, Optimize, and Load Balance Coherence with F5 - Chris Akker, F5 F5 Networks, Inc., the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, helps the world’s largest enterprises and service providers realize the full value of virtualization, cloud computing, and on-demand IT. Recently, F5 and Oracle partnered to deliver a novel solution that integrates Oracle Coherence 3.7 with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). This session will introduce F5 and how you can leverage BIG-IP LTM to secure, optimize, and load balance application traffic generated from Coherence*Extend clients across any number of servers in a cluster and to hardware-accelerate CPU-intensive SSL encryption. 7:10pm - Using Oracle Coherence to Enable Database Partitioning and DC Level Fault Tolerance - Alexei Ragozin, Independent Consultant and Brian Oliver, Oracle Partitioning is a very powerful technique for scaling database centric applications. One tricky part of partitioned architecture is routing of requests to the right database. The routing layer (routing table) should know the right database instance for each attribute which may be used for routing (e.g. account id, login, email, etc): it should be fast, it should fault tolerant and it should scale. All the above makes Oracle Coherence a natural choice for implementing such routing tables in partitioned architectures. This presentation will cover synchronization of the grid with multiple databases, conflict resolution, cross cluster replication and other aspects related to implementing robust partitioned architecture. Additional Info:?? - Download Past Presentations: The presentations from the previous meetings of the BACSIG are available for download here. Click on the presentation titles to download the PDF files. - Join the Coherence online community on our Oracle Coherence Users Group on LinkedIn. - Contact BACSIG with any comments, questions, presentation proposals and content suggestions.

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• Why a graduate program in South Africa?

  - by anca.rosu

  South Africa, like many other countries, is desperate for skills. Good, solid, technical skills – together with a get-up-and-go attitude – and the desire to work for a world-class organization that is leading the way! In addition, we have made a commitment in South Africa that we need to transform our organization and develop and empower Black individuals who historically have not had the opportunity to participate in the global economy. It is through this investment in our country's people that we contribute to the development of a nation capable of competing on the global stage. This makes for an exciting recipe! We have: Plenty of young and talented individuals who are eager to get stuck in and learn. Formal, recognized qualifications that form the basis for further development. A huge big global organization – Oracle – that is committed to developing these graduates and giving them an opportunity that is out of this world! Mix the above ‘ingredients’ together Tackle and remove potential “lumps & bumps” along the way as we learn and grow together Nurture and care for each other in a warm but tough environment What have we achieved? In most cases, the outcome is an awesome bunch of new talent that is well equipped to face the IT world. Where we have the opportunity and suitable headcount available to employ these graduates at Oracle we snap them up – alternatively our business partners and customers are always eager to recruit Oracle graduates into their organizations! These individuals go through real-life work place experience whilst at Oracle. In some cases they get to travel internationally. The excitement and buzz gets into their system and their blood becomes truly RED! Oracle RED! This is valuable talent and expertise to have in our eco-system and it’s an exciting program to be a part of not only as a graduate but as an Oracle employee too!   If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Technorati Tags: South Africa,technical skills,graduate program,opportunity,global organization,new talent

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• how to update child records when updating the Master table using Linq [closed]

  - by user20358

  I currently use a general repositry class that can update only a single table like so public abstract class MyRepository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class { protected IObjectSet<T> _objectSet; protected ObjectContext _context; public MyRepository(ObjectContext Context) { _objectSet = Context.CreateObjectSet<T>(); _context = Context; } public IQueryable<T> GetAll() { return _objectSet.AsQueryable(); } public IQueryable<T> Find(Expression<Func<T, bool>> filter) { return _objectSet.Where(filter); } public void Add(T entity) { _objectSet.AddObject(entity); _context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, System.Data.EntityState.Added); _context.SaveChanges(); } public void Update(T entity) { _context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, System.Data.EntityState.Modified); _context.SaveChanges(); } public void Delete(T entity) { _objectSet.Attach(entity); _context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, System.Data.EntityState.Deleted); _objectSet.DeleteObject(entity); _context.SaveChanges(); } } For every table class generated by my EDMX designer I create another class like this public class CustomerRepo : MyRepository<Customer> { public CustomerRepo (ObjectContext context) : base(context) { } } for any updates that I need to make to a particular table I do this: Customer CustomerObj = new Customer(); CustomerObj.Prop1 = ... CustomerObj.Prop2 = ... CustomerObj.Prop3 = ... CustomerRepo.Update(CustomerObj); This works perfectly well when I am updating just to the specific table called Customer. Now if I need to also update each row of another table which is a child of Customer called Orders what changes do I need to make to the class MyRepository. Orders table will have multiple records for a Customer record and multiple fields too, say for example Field1, Field2, Field3. So my questions are: 1.) If I only need to update Field1 of the Orders table for some rows based on a condition and Field2 for some other rows based on a different condition then what changes I need to do? 2.) If there is no such condition and all child rows need to be updated with the same value for all rows then what changes do I need to do? Thanks for taking the time. Look forward to your inputs...

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• links for 2011-02-08

  - by Bob Rhubart

  When It Comes to Data Integration, Oracle Is the Right Choice (tags: ping.fm) When It Comes to Data Integration, Oracle Is the Right Choice (tags: ping.fm) Webcast: Webcast: Deploy Oracle VM Templates for Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications. Feb 15. Event Date: 02/15/2011 9:00am PT / Noon ET. Featured Speakers: Adam Hawley (Oracle Senior Director, Product Management, Virtualization), Ivo Dujmovic (Oracle Director, Technology Integration), Greg Kelly (Oracle Product Strategy Manager - PeopleTools). (tags: oracle virtualization peoplesoft) Webcast: Managing Oracle Exadata with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. Ask Oracle experts questions and learn firsthand how to efficiently manage all stages of Oracle Exadata’s lifecycle, from testing to deployment. (tags: oracle exalogic enterprisemanager) Arthur Cole: Winning the Consolidated Data Center Future | ITBusinessEdge.com "According to InformationWeek, the amount of data under management is increasing by about 20 percent per year, with some organizations having to deal with 50 percent or more. That means capacity needs to double every two or three years." - Arthur Cole (tags: dataconsolidation enterprisearchitecture) Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products (Telecommunications Architecture Corner) Raul Goycoolea's post examines "how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry." (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture) Richard Veryard on Architecture: What is an EA vendor? "Even some people who insist that enterprise architecture shouldn't be thought of as merely software architecture seem to think that 'tools' only means 'software tools.'" - Richard Veryard (tags: enterprisearchitecture) MDM for Tax Authorities (Oracle Master Data Management) "Tax Authorities face a multitude of IT challenges," says David Butler. "Compounding these issues is the fact that the IT architectures in operation at most revenue and collections agencies are very complex." (tags: oracle otn MDM ITarchitecture) Bernard Golden: How Cloud Computing Changes IT Staffs | CIO.com | CIO.com "Enterprise architects become more important" tops Bernard's list of changes. (tags: cloudcomputing staffing cio enterprisearchitecture) Martijn Linssen: Social Enterprise Magic Quadrant "Revolutions usually go wrong, where evolutions usually go right." - Martijn Linssen (tags: socialcomputing enterprise2.0) Why Do IT Roles Fail? | CIO "The roles that come up most often are the ones that are not directly building or maintaining systems. These include architecture, planning, vendor management, relationship management, PMO, and security." - Marc Cecere (tags: softwarearchitecture technologyroles) We're Hiring! - Server and Desktop Virtualization Product Management (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) Adam Hawley with information on an opportunity for qualified job seekers. (tags: oracle otn employment virtualization)

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• Don't Miss At Devoxx!!!

  - by Yolande Poirier

  Come by IoT Hack Fest which starts with the session: kickstart your Raspberry Pi and/or Leap Motion project, part II on Tuesday from 9:30am to 12:00pm to learn how to start a project with the Raspberry Pi and Leap Motion. In the afternoon, you can still join a project and create your own project with the help of experts on Raspberry Pi, Leap Motion and other boards.  At the Oracle booth, Java experts will be available  to answer your  questions and demo the new features of the Java Platform, including Java Embedded, JavaFX, Java SE and Java EE. This year, the chess game that was first demoed at JavaOne keynotes last September will be showcased at Devoxx.  Duke is coming to Devoxx this year. You can get your picture taken with Duke on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (Nov. 12-14) from 12:00 to 18:00 Beer bash will be Tuesday from 17:30-19:30 and Wednesday/Thursday from 18:00 to 20:00 at the booth. Oracle is raffling off five Raspberry Pi's and a number of books every day. Make sure to stop by and get your badge scanned to enter the raffle. Raffles are Tuesday at 19:15 and Wednesday/Thursday at 19:45 at the Oracle booth.  The main conference sessions from Oracle Java experts are:  Wednesday 13 November Beyond Beauty: JavaFX, Parallax, Touch, Raspberry Pi, Gyroscopes, and Much More Angela Caicedo, Senior Member, Technical Staff, Oracle Room 7, 12:00–13:00 Lambda: A Peek Under the Hood, Brian Goetz, Software Architect, Oracle Room 8, 12:00–13:00 In Full Flow: Java 8 Lambdas in the Stream, Paul Sandoz, Software Developer, Oracle Room 8, 14:00–15:00 The Modular Java Platform and Project Jigsaw, Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect, Java Platform Group, Oracle, Room 8, 15:10–16:10 The Curious Case of JavaScript on the JVM, Attila Szegedi, Principal Member, Technical Staff, Oracle, Room 5, 16:40–17:40 Is It a Car? Is It a Computer? No, It’s a Raspberry Pi JavaFX Informatics System. Simon Ritter, Principal Technology Evangelist, Oracle Room 7, 16:40–17:40 Thursday 14 November Java EE 7: What’s New in the Java EE Platform Linda DeMichiel, Consulting Member, Technical Staff, Oracle, Room 8, 10:50–11:50 Java Microbenchmark Harness: The Lesser of the Two Evils, Aleksey Shipilev, Principal Member, Technical Staff, Oracle. Room 6, 14:00–15:00 Practical Restful Persistence, Shaun Smith, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Room 8, 17:50–18:50 Friday 15 November Avatar.js, Server-Side JavaScript on the Java Platform, Jean-Francois Denise, Software Developer, Oracle Room 8, 11:50–12:50

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• Certification Notes: 70-583 Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  It’s time for another certification, and we’ve just release the 70-583 exam on Windows Azure. I’ve blogged my “study plans” here before on other certifications, so I thought I would do the same for this one. I’ll also need to take exam 70-513 and 70-516; but I’ll post my notes on those separately. None of these are “brain dumps” or any questions from the actual tests - just the books, links and notes I have from my studies. I’ll update these references as I’m studying, so bookmark this site and watch my Twitter and Facebook posts for when I’ll update them, or just subscribe to the RSS feed. A “Green” color on the check-block means I’ve done that part so far, red means I haven’t. First, I need to refresh my memory on some basic coding, so along with the Azure-specific information I’m reading the following general programming books: Introducing Microsoft .NET (Pro-Developer): http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Microsoft-Pro-Developer-David-Platt/dp/0735619182/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296339237&sr=1-1 Head First C#, 2E: A Learner's Guide to Real-World Programming with Visual C# and .NET: http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-2E-Real-World-Programming/dp/1449380344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296339176&sr=8-1 Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step : http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-2008-Step/dp/0735624305/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296339208&sr=1-1 c The first place to start is at the official site for the certification. That’s here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-583&Locale=en-us c On that page you’ll find several resources, and the first you should follow is the “Save to my learning” so you have a place to track everything. Then click the “Related Learning Plans” link and follow the videos and read the documentation in each of those bullets. There are six areas on the learning plan that you should focus on - make sure you open the learning plan to drill into the specifics. c Designing Data Storage Architecture (18%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Optimizing Data Access and Messaging (17%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing the Application Architecture (19%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Preparing for Application and Service Deployment (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Investigating and Analyzing Applications (16%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing Integrated Solutions (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes:

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• TypeScript first impressions

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Anders published a video of his new project today, which aims at creating a superset of JavaScript, that compiles down to regular current JavaScript. Anders is a tremendously clever guy, and it always shows in his work. There is much to like in the enterprise (good code completion, refactoring and adoption of the module pattern instead of namespaces to name three), but a few things made me rise an eyebrow. First, there is no mention of CoffeeScript or Dart, but he does talk briefly about Script# and GWT. This is probably because the target audience seems to be the same as the audience for the latter two, i.e. developers who are more comfortable with statically-typed languages such as C# and Java than dynamic languages such as JavaScript. I don’t think he’s aiming at JavaScript developers. Classes and interfaces, although well executed, are not especially appealing. Second, as any code generation tool (and this is true of CoffeeScript as well), you’d better like the generated code. I didn’t, unfortunately. The code that I saw is not the code I would have written. What’s more, I didn’t always find the TypeScript code especially more expressive than what it gets compiled to. I also have a few questions. Is it possible to duck-type interfaces? For example, if I have an IPoint2D interface with x and y coordinates, can I pass any object that has x and y into a function that expects IPoint2D or do I need to necessarily create a class that implements that interface, and new up an instance that explicitly declares its contract? The appeal of dynamic languages is the ability to make objects as you go. This needs to be kept intact. More technical: why are generated variables and functions prefixed with _ rather than the $ that the EcmaScript spec recommends for machine-generated variables? In conclusion, while this is a good contribution to the set of ideas around JavaScript evolution, I don’t expect a lot of adoption outside of the devoted Microsoft developers, but maybe some influence on the language itself. But I’m often wrong. I would certainly not use it because I disagree with the central motivation for doing this: Anders explicitly says he built this because “writing application-scale JavaScript is hard”. I would restate that “writing application-scale JavaScript is hard for people who are used to statically-typed languages”. The community has built a set of good practices over the last few years that do scale quite well, and many people are successfully developing and maintaining impressive applications directly in JavaScript. You can play with TypeScript here: http://www.typescriptlang.org

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• How can story and gameplay be artfully merged?

  - by NauticalMile

  Let me give some context. Three of my friends and I have a pretty good game idea cooking. It's based off of a prototype I made that's evolving into a cool game mechanic. The mechanic itself is a toy that's fun on its own, but we haven't designed any puzzles around it yet. We have a design document going, and we are answering a lot of questions about what's in the game. It's become clear early on that everyone (including myself) likes the characters and the story a lot. Considering what our favorite games are, this is unsurprising. A story driven game makes sense to me. I like the emphasis that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year-Door, Portal 2, and Tomb Raider place on story, and I imagine our game will have a similar feel (lots of dialogue, plot twists, lovable characters). However, one team member raised this point in the design doc: I am feeling like [fleshing out the story] is our biggest hurdle right now for making more design decisions - like more specific decisions about levels etc. Is this true? I am uncertain about working on the story extensively before gameplay, and my uneasiness was reinforced when I read this question about story vs. gameplay. What I want to say is: "Let's continue to work on the story, but also start brainstorming and prototyping abstract puzzles and combat sequences, and we'll creatively match them together later." Is this a reasonable approach? If so, how much of the development of these elements should be done independently? Should I try and create a whole bunch of puzzles while my other teammates focus on story and aesthetics? Then when we have a lot of story and game 'chunks' we can match them with eachother to build something meaningful. Or should we focus on iterating individual levels as distinct units where puzzles, story, etc... are designed together? Or maybe we need to put our excitement about the story on hold and just focus on gameplay. Is there another approach to design that we can take? Am I missing something crucial? I have discussed story and gameplay because they seem the most likely to be at odds with each other, but we also have to consider user interface, music, art direction, etc... Can we design these independently as well?

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• How important is knowing functionality before coding?

  - by minusSeven

  I work for a software development company where the development work have been off shored to us. The on shore team handle the support and talk directly to the clients. We never talk to the clients directly we just talk people from the on shore team who talk directly to the clients. When requirements come, on shore team talk to the clients and make requirement documents and informs us. We make design documents after studying the requirements (we follow traditional waterfall model ). But there is one problem in the whole process: nobody in the either off-shore or on-shore understand the functionality of the application completely. We just know its a big complex web app handling complex order processing, catalog management, campaign management and other activities. We struggle with the design document as the requirements would not be clear. It then goes into a series of questions/answers back and forth between the on shore team,off shore team and clients. We would often be told to understand functionality from the code. But that's usually not feasible as the code base is huge and even understanding a simple menu item take days if not weeks. We tried telling the clients to give us knowledge transfer about the application but to no avail. Our manager would often tell us to start coding even if the design document is not complete or requirements not clear. We would start by coding part of the requirement that seems clear and wait for the rest. This usually would delay the deployment by a month. In extreme cases we would have very low errors in the development and production but the clients would say that's not what they asked. That would start a blame game and a series of change requests and we would end up developing something very different. My question is how would you do development work if you don't know the functionality of the app fully? UPDATE About development methodology it isn't really my choice and I am not my team's lead It is the way it began. I tried to tell people about the advantages of agile but to no avail. Besides I don't think my team has the necessary mindset to work in AGILE environment.

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• Oracle at ASMC PDI 2012

  - by jeffrey.waterman

  Recently, I had the pleasure of representing Oracle at the American Society of Military Comptrollers National Professional Development Institute (PDI).  The PDI is the premier training event for resource managers in the Department of Defense and US Coast Guard.  Each year they assemble top presenters and key note speakers to convey their experiences and share the upcoming goals and vision for the Defense Department's financial and resource management community.  This year, the common themes were centered around 'auditability' and 'efficiency'.   What is auditability?  There were many definitions/themes tossed around, but to summarize my notes, it boiled down to:- the proper tracking of funds- audit readiness- proper controls- proper documentation There were sessions regarding entire programs focused on the need for auditability.  For example, FIAR: Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (http://comptroller.defense.gov/fiar/index.html)   The FIAR stresses the "...improve(ment of) the Department's financial processes, controls and information." The entire conference, one set of solutions kept popping into my head around, "how can Oracle's solutions assist the Department of Defense", or any other Federal Agency, improve their financial processes and controls?   One answer came to mind:  Oracle Governance, Risk, and Compliance Management. Commonly referred to as "GRC". Let me summarize the main components around Oracle's GRC solution: GRC Manager: This solution is the central repository for documenting business processes, policies, and established controls.  All identified risks and issues are documented within the repository as well as action plans necessary for mitigation. GRC Controls:  This solution consists of a set of tools which are embedded with your ERP (financial, human resource, supply chain, etc.) applications to detect, prevent, and/or enforce the policies and procedures established by your Agency.  Components of the solution include:- Application Access Control Governor: a robust tool for managing application roles and responsibilities; simplify segregation of duty maintenance- Configuration Controls Governor: complete audit trail for changes made to configurations- Transactions Control Governor: track violations of internal controls; alert management to suspicious activities; be warned when high dollar transactions are occurring on an irregular basis; - Preventative Controls Governor: prevent sensitive information from being viewed by unauthorized parties; enforce field, block, and form change control If you are in the financial or resource management community and are concerned about auditability within your organization I suggest you follow up this post by reading about Oracle's GRC solutions.  www.oracle.com/grc Please feel free to follow up with thought and questions in the comments section below.  Also, if you have a topic you would like addressed in this blog, just drop me a note at [email protected]  or leave the suggestion in the comment section as well. Thank you for reading.

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• Does Your Customer Engagement Create an Ah Feeling?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need. No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this “ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense for brands.1 Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it? Toyota is a great example of using smart assistance technology to understand customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy. Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com, part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors, all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25% of chat sessions into product orders. Photobox, the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15% increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders from newly referred customers.

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• Can I prevent an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE command to a specific device at boot?

  - by Brian Spisak

  This is related to a previous question related to installation that is now resolved. I'm opening a new question, because I still need to get my DVD drive working. Problem: Failed boot when my ASUS DRW-24B1/ST DVD drive is attached to my asmedia ASM1061. Symptom: ata8.00: exception Emask 0x52 Sact 0x0 SErr 0xffffffff action 0xe frozen ata8: SError: { blah blah } ata8.00: failed command: IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE ata8.00: cmd blah blah res blah blah (ATA bus error) ata8.00: status: { DRDY } ata8: hard resetting link Background: The ASM1061 is a PCIe to SATA bridge providing 2 x 6Gb/s ports and is supposed to be fully compliant to SATA specs. I just discovered in the fine print of my ASUS P8Z77-V pro motherboard that "These SATA ports are for data hard drivers only. ATAPI devices are not supported." However, I have already installed Windows 7 using this drive and I can run the Ubuntu 12.04 installer from it as well. The only time I have a problem is during Ubuntu boot when it tries an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE which seems to be an ATAPI command. I can't simply switch this device to another SATA port because they are already allocated to other devices. (My chipset's 2 x 6Gb/s are connected to my boot SSD and a fast HDD while the 4 x 3Gb/s ports are running a RAID 5 array.) If this can't be fixed or worked around, I suppose I'll have to go buy SATA add-in card. Blech. Thoughts: If indeed this is a device specific issue (that it doesn't support ATAPI discovery) then I can't expect - is it udev? - to work with it. But, it seems that Windows and even the Ubuntu installer work just fine. So why does udev have a problem? At the end of the day, it would be nice to have the DVD working under Ubuntu, but I can live without it. But, as this is a dual-boot machine, I can't physically disconnect it because I want it to work with Windows. (And physically disconnecting it every time I want to boot Ubuntu is NOT an option. ;-) Questions: Should this be considered a bug? My feelings are that if it works with other OS that it should probably work with Ubuntu as well. How can I work around this problem? I have a limited knowledge of linux internals, but it seems I should be able to somehow tell udev (or whatever is doing the discovery) to ignore that device. Is there a way?

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• Cannot boot into system after deleting partition

  - by Clayton

  Okay...so this was kind of a stupid thing for me to do now that I think back on it. I was experiencing a ton of lag and not as much memory that I could use after installing Ubuntu 12.04. So after remembering I had installed multiple server versions of Ubuntu 12.04 by mistake, I went into Disk Management and proceeded to delete each and every one. Everything went fine. Up until this week, I have not experienced any problems. But starting yesterday I began to get lag just as I had before, and nothing fixed the problem. I decided to remove the Ubuntu partition, since I was also experiencing a visual error when given the option to select one to boot(the screen doesn't come up at all, and I recieved a monitor resolution error instead, but could still access both Windows and Ubuntu via arrow keys). After deleting the Ubuntu partition, so that I could see if running just Windows would fix the problem, I proceeded with what I was doing, installing a few programs that were not tied to my prediciment in any way. Upon rebooting my desktop, however, I recieved the following error: error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue> Hoping I could boot into Ubuntu via a pendrive and possibly backup my important files and wipe the hard drive to start fresh, I installed Ubuntu 13.04, but even that does not boot. Instead, I get this message on a terminal screen: SYSLINUX 4.06. EDD 4.06-pre1 Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H. Peter Anvin et al ERROR: No configuration file found No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found! boot: So more or less, my desktop is screwed. I need to be able to get to the files inside because of my job as an artist, as well as retrieve my documents for my stories stored on Windows. Once I can succeed in solving this once and for all, I know for a fact I will stick to Ubuntu only, and install what is required to be able to run any Windows applications I used to use or need to use. I would rather not reformat the hard drive, and if I need to, it is a last resort. And I doubt I can use a Windows Recovery Disk to get my files back, as my mom has thrown out a lot of the installation disks and paperwork I would need to even follow through with that. :\ Keep in mind that I am a novice/newbie when it comes to Linux, but am hoping ot become better at it as time goes by. I appreciate any help you guys can give me. This will probably be the last time I attempt to do anything that could risk the well-being of my PC. (I've also looked through various questions on the site and tested a lot of the solutions. None seem to have worked.)

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• How to do geometric projection shadows?

  - by John Murdoch

  I have decided that since my game world is mostly flat I don't need better shadows than geometric projections - at least for now. The only problem is I don't even know how to do those properly - that is to produce a 4x4 matrix which would render shadows for my objects (that is, I guess, project them on a horizontal XZ plane). I would like a light source at infinity (e.g., the sun at some point in the sky) and thus parallel projection. My current code does something that looks almost right for small flying objects, but actually is a very rude approximation, as it doesn't project the objects onto the ground, but simply moves them there (I think). Also it always wrongly assumes the sun is always on the zenith (projecting straight down). Gdx.gl20.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); Gdx.gl20.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); //shells shellTexture.bind(); shader.begin(); for (ShellState state : shellStates.values()) { transform.set(camera.combined); transform.mul(state.transform); shader.setUniformMatrix("u_worldView", transform); shader.setUniformi("u_texture", 0); shellMesh.render(shader, GL10.GL_TRIANGLES); } shader.end(); // shadows shader.begin(); for (ShellState state : shellStates.values()) { transform.set(camera.combined); m4.set(state.transform); state.transform.getTranslation(v3); m4.translate(0, -v3.y + 0.5f, 0); // TODO HACK: + 0.5f is a hack to ensure the shadow appears above the ground; this is overall a hack as we are just moving the shell to the surface instead of projecting it on the surface! transform.mul(m4); shader.setUniformMatrix("u_worldView", transform); shader.setUniformi("u_texture", 0); // TODO: make shadow black somehow shellMesh.render(shader, GL10.GL_TRIANGLES); } shader.end(); Gdx.gl.glDisable(GL10.GL_BLEND); So my questions are: a) What is the proper way to produce a Matrix4 to pass to openGL which would render the shadows for my objects? b) I am supposed to use another fragment shader for the shadows which would paint them in semi-transparent grey, correct? c) The limitation of this simplistic approach is that whenever there is some object on the ground (it is not flat) the shadows will not be drawn, correct? d) Do I need to add something very small to the y (up) coordinate to avoid z-fighting with ground textures? Or is the fact they will be semi-transparent enough to resolve that problem?

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