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• Upgrades in 5 Easy Pieces

  - by Anne R.

  Even though there are a few select tasks that I have to do once or twice a year, I can’t remember how to do them! Or where to find the bits and pieces to complete the task. So I love it when someone consolidates everything under one spot. That’s what the CRM On Demand team has done with the upgrade information. Specifically, they have: Provided a “one-stop” area for managing upgrades at your company. Broken down the upgrade process into 5 (yes, 5) steps. Explained when and how to perform each step with dates specific to your pod. Included details about each step, visible by expanding the step. Translated the steps into 11 languages. Added a list of release-specific resources with links from the page. Now, just head for the Training and Support portal, click the Release Info tab, and walk through the “5 Essential Steps to a Successful Upgrade.” Before you continue, though, select your language from the drop-down list on the Release Info page. CRM On Demand now has the upgrade steps translated into 11 languages. On the Step page, you can expand each section in sequence and follow the more detailed instructions that appear. This will ensure that you’ve covered all your bases for each upgrade. Here’s a shortened version of the information that you’ll find: 1. Verify your Primary Contact Information. Have you checked your primary contact information to make sure you’re being notified of all upgrade information? Or do you want more users to receive upgrade announcements? This section provides you with the navigation path to do that in CRM On Demand. 2. Review your Key Upgrade Dates. If you expand this step, a nice table appears with your critical dates for the various milestones. IMPORTANT: When your CRM On Demand pod has been officially added to the upgrade schedule, closer to the release date itself, this table will display your specific timetable. 3. Migrate your Customizations from the Staging Environment before the Snapshot Date. Oracle refreshes the Staging data with a copy of your Production data made on the Production Snapshot Date. So this section lists considerations relevant to this step. It also reminds you of the 2-week period when you should not be making any changes in your Staging environment.   4. Conduct your Upgrade Validation on the Staging Environment. When the Customer Validation Testing period begins, you need to log in to your Staging Environment to validate that your key business processes and customizations continue to behave as expected. If your company utilizes Web Services, Web Links, Web Applets or Workflow, focus on testing these first. You generally have about two weeks for testing. If you run into problems during this time, follow the instructions shown in this section for logging a service request. It describes exactly how to fill out the fields in the SR for the fastest resolution. 5. Conduct "White Glove" Testing in your Upgraded Production Environment. Before users start using the upgrade, you should access a few tabs and reports. Doing this actually warms up the cache so that frequently used pages and reports will come up at normal speed on Monday morning, when users log in to the upgraded system. Resources listed under this step help you in further preparing for the upgrade. Now there’s also a new Documentation section on the right with links to these release-specific resources.   Very nice, I commented, when discussing these improvements with the “responsible party.” She confirmed that, yes, they tried to consolidate the upgrade information, translate it for better communication, simplify it into 5 easy pieces, and drive admins responsible for handling upgrades to this one site instead of sending out elaborate emails. Yes, I just love it when someone practically reaches out and holds my hand through a process. Next best thing to a wizard!

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• Enterprise Integration: Can Companies Afford It?

  - by Ralph Wheaton

  Each year, my company holds a global sales conference where employees and partners from around the world some together to collaborate, share knowledge and ideas and learn about future plans.  As a member of the professional services division, several of us had been asked to make a presentation, an elevator pitch in 3 minutes or less that relates to a success we have worked on or directly relates to our tag (that is, our primary technology focus).  Mine happens to be Enterprise Integration as it relates Business Intelligence.  I found it rather difficult to present that pitch in a short amount of time and had to pare it down.  At any rate, in just a little over 3 minutes, this is the presentation I submitted.  Here is a link to the full presentation video in WMV format.   Many companies today subscribe to a buy versus build mentality in an attempt to drive down costs and improve time to implementation. Sometimes this makes sense, especially as it relates to specialized software or software that performs a small number of tasks extremely well. However, if not carefully considered or planned out, this oftentimes leads to multiple disparate systems with silos of data or multiple versions of the same data. For instance, client data (contact information, addresses, phone numbers, opportunities, sales) stored in your CRM system may not play well with Accounts Receivables. Employee data may be stored across multiple systems such as HR, Time Entry and Payroll. Other data (such as member data) may not originate internally, but be provided by multiple outside sources in multiple formats. And to top it all off, some data may have to be manually entered into multiple systems to keep it all synchronized. When left to grow out of control like this, overall performance is lacking, stability is questionable and maintenance is frequent and costly. Worse yet, in many cases, this topology, this hodgepodge of data creates a reporting nightmare. Decision makers are forced to try to put together pieces of the puzzle attempting to find the information they need, wading through multiple systems to find what they think is the single version of the truth. More often than not, they find they are missing pieces, pieces that may be crucial to growing the business rather than closing the business. across applications. Master data owners are defined to establish single sources of data (such as the CRM system owns client data). Other systems subscribe to the master data and changes are replicated to subscribers as they are made. This can be one way (no changes are allowed on the subscriber systems) or bi-directional. But at all times, the master data owner is current or up to date. And all data, whether internal or external, use the same processes and methods to move data from one place to another, leveraging the same validations, lookups and transformations enterprise wide, eliminating inconsistencies and siloed data. Once implemented, an enterprise integration solution improves performance and stability by reducing the number of moving parts and eliminating inconsistent data. Overall maintenance costs are mitigated by reducing touch points or the number of places that require modification when a business rule is changed or another data element is added. Most importantly, however, now decision makers can easily extract and piece together the information they need to grow their business, improve customer satisfaction and so on. So, in implementing an enterprise integration solution, companies can position themselves for the future, allowing for easy transition to data marts, data warehousing and, ultimately, business intelligence. Along this path, companies can achieve growth in size, intelligence and complexity. Truly, the question is not can companies afford to implement an enterprise integration solution, but can they afford not to.   Ralph Wheaton Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Microsoft Certified Professional Developer Microsoft VTS-P BizTalk, .Net

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• How to explain pointers to a Java/VB programmer

  - by Skeith

  I am writing a game and my friend has offered to help me as it is a RPG and will take a long time to do the "scripting" bit of the game. The problem is IMO he's not that good a programmer :( (add flame war here). He has only programmed in Java and VB and keeps saying really stupid things to me like "Why don't you drag and drop an onClick event" to design my UI when I'm using DirectX. I tried explaining pointers to him but his response was, if it's just a variable that holds a memory address, why don't you just use an int? I create an instance of an attack class and give the creature a pointer to it so if several creatures use the same attack there is only one instance of it. He keeps saying why not put if statements in the creature class for every attack class and set true for the ones that are there. He has programmed mainly in VB and a little in Java just to learn OOP. How can I explain advanced C++ concepts like pointers and memory management to him? He just doesn't understand there are no super functions like form.show in C++.

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• Alternatives to a leveling system

  - by Bane

  I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with: Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D (<canvas>) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity?

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• Why would Copying a Large Image to the Clipboard Freeze a Computer?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  Sometimes, something really odd happens when using our computers that makes no sense at all…such as copying a simple image to the clipboard and the computer freezing up because of it. An image is an image, right? Today’s SuperUser post has the answer to a puzzled reader’s dilemna. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Original image courtesy of Wikimedia. The Question SuperUser reader Joban Dhillon wants to know why copying an image to the clipboard on his computer freezes it up: I was messing around with some height map images and found this one: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Srtm_ramp2.world.21600×10800.jpg) The image is 21,600*10,800 pixels in size. When I right click and select “Copy Image” in my browser (I am using Google Chrome), it slows down my computer until it freezes. After that I must restart. I am curious about why this happens. I presume it is the size of the image, although it is only about 6 MB when saved to my computer. I am also using Windows 8.1 Why would a simple image freeze Joban’s computer up after copying it to the clipboard? The Answer SuperUser contributor Mokubai has the answer for us: “Copy Image” is copying the raw image data, rather than the image file itself, to your clipboard. The raw image data will be 21,600 x 10,800 x 3 (24 bit image) = 699,840,000 bytes of data. That is approximately 700 MB of data your browser is trying to copy to the clipboard. JPEG compresses the raw data using a lossy algorithm and can get pretty good compression. Hence the compressed file is only 6 MB. The reason it makes your computer slow is that it is probably filling your memory up with at least the 700 MB of image data that your browser is using to show you the image, another 700 MB (along with whatever overhead the clipboard incurs) to store it on the clipboard, and a not insignificant amount of processing power to convert the image into a format that can be stored on the clipboard. Chances are that if you have less than 4 GB of physical RAM, then those copies of the image data are forcing your computer to page memory out to the swap file in an attempt to fulfil both memory demands at the same time. This will cause programs and disk access to be sluggish as they use the disk and try to use the data that may have just been paged out. In short: Do not use the clipboard for huge images unless you have a lot of memory and a bit of time to spare. Like pretty graphs? This is what happens when I load that image in Google Chrome, then copy it to the clipboard on my machine with 12 GB of RAM: It starts off at the lower point using 2.8 GB of RAM, loading the image punches it up to 3.6 GB (approximately the 700 MB), then copying it to the clipboard spikes way up there at 6.3 GB of RAM before settling back down at the 4.5-ish you would expect to see for a program and two copies of a rather large image. That is a whopping 3.7 GB of image data being worked on at the peak, which is probably the initial image, a reserved quantity for the clipboard, and perhaps a couple of conversion buffers. That is enough to bring any machine with less than 8 GB of RAM to its knees. Strangely, doing the same thing in Firefox just copies the image file rather than the image data (without the scary memory surge). Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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• Naming a class that decides to retrieve things from cache or a service + architecture evaluation

  - by Thomas Stock

  Hi, I'm a junior developer and I'm working on a pet project that I want to learn as much as possible from. I have the following scenario: There's a WCF service that I use to retrieve and update data, lets say Cars. So it's called CarWCFService and has a GetCars(), SaveCar(), ... . It implements interface ICarService. This isn't the Actual WCF service but more like a wrapper around it. Upon retrieving data from the service, I want to store them in local memory, as cache. I have made a class for this called CarCacheService which also implements interface ICarService. (I will explain later why it implements ICarService) I don't want client code to be calling these implementations. Instead, I want to create a third implementation for ICarService that tries to read from the CarCacheService before calling the WCFCarService, stores retrieved data in the CarCacheService, etc. 3 questions: How do I name this third class? I was thinking about something as simple as CarService. This does not really says what the service does exactly, tho. Is the naming for the other classes good? Would this naming and architecture be obvious for future programmers? This is my biggest concern. Does this architecture make sense? The reason that I implement ICarService on the CarCacheService is mainly because it allows me to fake the WCFService while debugging. I can store dummy data in a CarCacheService instance and pass it to the CarService, together with an(other) empty CarCacheService. If I made CacheCarService and WCFService public I could let client code decide if they want to drop the caching and just work directly on the WCFService.

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• The problems with Avoiding Smurf Naming classes with namespaces

  - by Daniel Koverman

  I pulled the term smurf naming from here (number 21). To save anyone not familiar the trouble, Smurf naming is the act of prefixing a bunch of related classes, variables, etc with a common prefix so you end up with "a SmurfAccountView passes a SmurfAccountDTO to the SmurfAccountController", etc. The solution I've generally heard to this is to make a smurf namespace and drop the smurf prefixes. This has generally served me well, but I'm running into two problems. I'm working with a library with a Configuration class. It could have been called WartmongerConfiguration but it's in the Wartmonger namespace, so it's just called Configuration. I likewise have a Configuration class which could be called SmurfConfiguration, but it is in the Smurf namespace so that would be redundant. There are places in my code where Smurf.Configuration appears alongside Wartmonger.Configuration and typing out fully qualified names is clunky and makes the code less readable. It would be nicer to deal with a SmurfConfiguration and (if it was my code and not a library) WartmongerConfiguration. I have a class called Service in my Smurf namespace which could have been called SmurfService. Service is a facade on top of a complex Smurf library which runs Smurf jobs. SmurfService seems like a better name because Service without the Smurf prefix is so incredibly generic. I can accept that SmurfService was already a generic, useless name and taking away smurf merely made this more apparent. But it could have been named Runner, Launcher, etc and it would still "feel better" to me as SmurfLauncher because I don't know what a Launcher does, but I know what a SmurfLauncher does. You could argue that what a Smurf.Launcher does should be just as apparent as a Smurf.SmurfLauncher, but I could see `Smurf.Launcher being some kind of class related to setup rather than a class that launches smurfs. If there is an open and shut way to deal with either of these that would be great. If not, what are some common practices to mitigate their annoyance?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 31, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 31, 2011Popular ReleasesMVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 0.8: Fixed the following bugs: *Variable name error in the jvascript file that prevented the use of the deleted item template of the Datagrid *Now after the changes applied to an item of the DataGrid are cancelled all input fields are reset to the very initial value they had. *Other minor bugs. Added: *This version is available both for MVC2, and MVC 3. The MVC 3 version has a release number of 0.85. This way one can install both version. *Client Validation support has been added to all control...Office Web.UI: Beta preview (Source): This is the first Beta. it includes full source code and all available controls. Some designers are not ready, and some features are not finalized allready (missing properties, draft styles) ThanksASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.2: This release brings some new controls (part of Office Web.UI). A few bugs are fixed and it includes the "auto resize" feature as you resize the window. (It can cause an infinite loop when the window is too reduced, it's why this release is not marked as "stable"). I will release more versions 2.3, 2.4... until V3 which will be the official launch of Office Web.UI. Both products will evolve at the same speed. Thanks.Barcode Rendering Framework: 2.1.1.0: Final release for VS2008 Finally fixed bugs with code 128 symbology.HERB.IQ: HERB.IQ.UPGRADE.0.5.3.exe: HERB.IQ.UPGRADE.0.5.3.exexUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7: xUnit.net release 1.7Build #1540 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision) Ad...DoddleReport - Automatic HTML/Excel/PDF Reporting: DoddleReport 1.0: DoddleReport will add automatic tabular-based reporting (HTML/PDF/Excel/etc) for any LINQ Query, IEnumerable, DataTable or SharePoint List For SharePoint integration please click Here PDF Reporting has been placed into a separate assembly because it requies AbcPdf http://www.websupergoo.com/download.htmSpark View Engine: Spark v1.5: Release Notes There have been a lot of minor changes going on since version 1.1, but most important to note are the major changes which include: Support for HTML5 "section" tag. Spark has now renamed its own section tag to "segment" instead to avoid clashes. You can still use "section" in a Spark sense for legacy support by specifying ParseSectionAsSegment = true if needed while you transition Bindings - this is a massive feature that further simplifies your views by giving you a powerful ...Marr DataMapper: Marr DataMapper 1.0.0 beta: First release.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...Squiggle - A Free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 2.5 Beta: In this release following are the new features: Localization: Support for Arabic, French, German and Chinese (Simplified) Bridge: Connect two Squiggle nets across the WAN or different subnets Aliases: Special codes with special meaning can be embedded in message like (version),(datetime),(time),(date),(you),(me) Commands: cls, /exit, /offline, /online, /busy, /away, /main Sound notifications: Get audio alerts on contact online, message received, buzz Broadcast for group: You can ri...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654mojoPortal: 2.3.6.1: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Parallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++: Drop 6 - Chapters 4 and 5: This is Drop 6. It includes: Drafts of the Preface, Introduction, Chapters 2-7, Appendix B & C and the glossary Sample code for chapters 2-7 and Appendix A & B. The new material we'd like feedback on is: Chapter 4 - Parallel Aggregation Chapter 5 - Futures The source code requires Visual Studio 2010 in order to run. There is a known bug in the A-Dash sample when the user attempts to cancel a parallel calculation. We are working to fix this.NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.160: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release improves NodeXL's Twitter and Pajek features. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file in Windows Explorer and select "Extract All." Close Ex...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.0 CTP: Files in this downloadkooboo_CMS.zip: The kooboo application files Content_DBProvider.zip: Additional content database implementation of MSSQL, RavenDB and SQLCE. Default is XML based database. To use them, copy the related dlls into web root bin folder and remove old content provider dlls. Content provider has the name like "Kooboo.CMS.Content.Persistence.SQLServer.dll" View_Engines.zip: Supports of Razor, webform and NVelocity view engine. Copy the dlls into web root bin folder to enable...UOB & ME: UOB ME 2.6: UOB ME 2.6????: ???? V1.0: ???? V1.0 ??New ProjectsAuto Complete Control for ASP.NET: Autocomplete Control is a fully functional ASP.NET control for word suggestions and autocomplete. We had been using Ajax Control Toolkit AutoComplete Extender in our projects before, but we have needed some extra features and functionalities.Cours ESIEE: MAJ des cours ESIEE depuis la plateforme Icampus et autres documentsEngineering World Expenses: Demo expenses application for Engineering World 2011Entity Framework / Linq to Sql Poco Code Generator: Poco Orm data access layer (Dto) code generator for Entity Framework and Linq to Sql. Customizable code generation via simple templating system. Utilizes Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in order for application parts to dynamically composed and plug-able.linqish.py: Python module for manipulating iterables. An implementation of the .Net Framework's Linq to Objects for Python.Machinekey setter: This code sample is Windows Azure SDK 1.3 custom plugin. This sample do working at set custom key to machinekey of web.config file in your WebRole.MapReduce.NET: MapReduce.NET intends to implement the original paper proposed by Google on MapReduce.Marr DataMapper: Marr DataMapper provides a fast and easy to use wrapper around ADO.NET that enables you to focus more on your data access queries without having to write plumbing code. Load one-to-one, one-to-many, and hierarchical entity models with ease. No special base class required.Orchard Silverlight: Orchard module enabling embedding Silverlight applications and creating Silverlight-based content.RouteMagic: Library of useful routing helpers and classes.Smart Skelta Utilites: Smart Skelta Utilies will provide utilties like Visual Studio 2008 Skelta Starter Kit(Project Templates and Project Item Templates),Code Snippets for Skelta Components,Skleta Attachment Extracter Web based Logger,Skelta Server utility and others for skelta based development.Solfix: Solfix is a programming language tbat is work-in-progress, but it has a lot of functionality! You can make applications for console to windows applications. The main point of Solfix is to make coding easier and less time than before.SQLite Manager: A minimal manage for sqlite databases.State Search: StateSearch provides state search algoritms such as A*, IDA*, BestFirst, etc to solve problems such as puzzles and/or path searchingTable Check Custom Field Type: SharePoint Custom Field Type for displaying a list of values with checkboxes and people editors.testsgb: testWindows Phone 7 Extension Framework: An extension method framework for Windows Phone 7 to make your code more fluent and adding a lot of common functions you don't need to reproduce.

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• New Rapid Install StartCD 12.2.0.48 for EBS 12.2 Now Available

  - by Max Arderius

  A new Rapid Install startCD (Patch 18086193) for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 is now available. We recommend that all EBS customers installing or upgrading to EBS 12.2 use this latest update. The startCD updates are distributed to customers via My Oracle Support Patch which can be uncompressed on top of any previous 12.2 startCD under the main staging area. This patch replaces any previous startCDs. What's New in This Update? This new startCD version 12.2.0.48 includes important fixes for multi-node Installs, RAC, pre-install checks, platform specific issues, and upgrade scenario failures: 18703814 - QREP:122:RI:ISSUE WITH CHECKOS.CMD 18689527 - QREP:122:RI:ISSUE WITH FNDCORE.DLL SHIPPED AS PART OF R122 PACKAGE 18548485 - QREP1224:4:JAR SIGNER ISSUE DUE TO THE RI UPGRADE AUTOCONFIG CHANGES 18535812 - QREP:1220.48_4: 12.2.0 UPGRADE FILE SYSTEM LAY OUT IS AFFECTING THE DB TABLES 18507545 - WIN: UNABLE TO LAY DOWN FS PRIOR TO 12.2 UPGRADE WITHOUT AFFECTING RUNNING DB 18476041 - UNABLE TO LAY DOWN FS PRIOR TO 12.2 UPGRADE WITHOUT AFFECTING PRODUCTION DB 18459887 - R12.2 INSTALLATION FAILURE - OPMNCTL: NOT FOUND 18436053 - START CD 48_4 - ISSUES WITH TEMP SPACE CHECK 18424747 - QREP1224.3:ADD SERVER BROWSE BUTTON NOT WORKING 18421132 - *RW-50010: ERROR: - SCRIPT HAS RETURNED AN ERROR: 1 18403700 - QREP122.48:RI:UPGRADE RI PRECHECK HUNG IN SPLIT TIER APPS NODE ( NO SILENT ) 18383075 - ADD VERBOSE OPTION TO RAC VALIDATION 18363584 - UPTAKE INSTALL SCRIPTS FOR XB48_4 18336093 - QREP:122:RI:PATCH FS ADMIN SERVICE RUNNING AFTER RI UPGRADE CONFIGURE MODE 18320278 - QREP:1224.3:PLATFORM SPECIFIC SYNTAX ERRORS WITH DATE COMMAND IN DB CHECKER 18314643 - DISABLE SID=DB_NAME FOR RI UPGRADE FLOW IN RAC 18298977 - RI: EXCEPTION WHILE CLICKING RAC NODES BUTTON ON A NON-RAC SERVER 18286816 - QREP122:STARTCD48_3:TRAVERSING FROM VISION PASSW SCREEN TO PROD 18286371 - QREP122:STARTCD48_3:AMBIGUOUS MESSAGE DURING STAGE AREA CHECK ON HP 18275403 - QREP122:48:RI UPGRADE WITH EOH POST CHECKS HANGS IN SPLIT TIER DB NODE 18270631 - QREP122.48:MULTI-NODE RI USING NON-DEFAULT PASSWORDS NOT WORKING 18266046 - QREP122:48:RI NOT ALLOWING TO IGNORE THE RAC PRE-CHECK FAILURE 18242201 - UPTAKE TXK INSTALL SCRIPTS AND PLATFORMS.ZIP INTO STARTCD XB48_3 18236428 - QREP122.47:RI UPGRADE EXISTING OH FOR NON-DEFAULT APPS PASSWORD NOT WORKING 18220640 - INCONSISTENT DATABASE PORTS DURING EBS 12.2 INSTALLATION FOR STARTCD 12.2.0.47 18138796 - QREP122:47:RI 10.1.2 TECHSTACK NOT WORKING IF WE RUN RI FROM NEW STARTCD LOC 18138396 - TST1220: CONTROL FILE NAMING IN RAPID INSTALL SEEMS TO HAVE ISSUES 18124144 - IMPROVE HANDLING ERRORS FOUND IN CLUVFY LOG DURING PREINSTALL CHECKS 18111361 - VALIDATE ASM DB DATA FILES PATH AS +<DATA GROUP>/<PATH> 18102504 - QREP1220.47_5: UNZIP PANEL DOES NOT CREATE THE CORRECT STAGE 18083342 - 12.2 UPGRADE JAVA.NET.BINDEXCEPTION: CANNOT ASSIGN REQUESTED ADDRESS 18082140 - QREP122:47:RAC DB VALIDATION IS FAILS WITH EXIT STATUS IS 6 18062350 - 12.2.3 UPG: 12.2.0 INSTALLATION LOGS 18050840 - RI: UPGRADE WITH EXISTING RAC OH:SECONDARY DB NODE NAME IS BLANK 18049813 - RAC LOV DEFAULTS NOT SAVED UNLESS "SELECT" IS CLICKED 18003592 - TST1220:ADDITIONAL FREE SPACE CHECK FOR RI NEEDS TO BE CHECKED 17981471 - REMOVE ASM SPACE CHECK FROM RACVALIDATIONS.SH 17942179 - R12.2 INSTALL FAILING AT ADRUN11G.SH WITH ERRORS RW-50004 & RW-50010 17893583 - QREP1220.47:VALIDATION OF O.S IN RAPIDWIZ IN THE DB NODE CONFIGURATION SCREEN 17886258 - CLEANUP FND_NODES DURING UPGRADE FLOW 17858010 - RI POST INSTALL CHECKS (SSH VERIFICATION) STEP IS FAILING 17799807 - GEOHR: 12.2.0 - ERRORS IN RAPIDWIZ AND ADCONFIG LOGS 17786162 - QREP1223.4:RI:SERVICE_NAMES IS PRINTED AS SERVICE_NAME IN RI SCREEN 17782455 - RI: CONFIRM DEFAULT APPS PASSWORD IN SILENT MODE KICKOFF 17778130 - RI:ADMIN SERVER TO BE UP ON PRIMARY MID-TIER IN MULTI-NODE UPGRADE FS CREATION 17773989 - UN-SUPPORTED PLATFORM SHOWS 32 BIT AS HARD-CODED 17772655 - RELEVANT MESSAGE DURING THE RAPDIWIZ -TECHSTACK 17759279 - VERIFICATION PANEL DOES NOT EXPAND TECHNOLOGY STACK 17759183 - BUILDSTAGE SCRIPT MENU NEEDS TO BE ADJUSTED 17737186 - DATABASE PRE-REQ CHECK INCORRECTLY REPORTS SUCCESS ON AIX 17708082 - 12.2 INSTALLATION - OS PRE-REQUISITES CHECK 17701676 - TST122: GENERATE WRONG S_DBSID FOR PATCH FILE SYSTEM AT PHASE PREPARE 17630972 - /TMP PRE-REQ INSTALLATION CHECK 17617245 - 12.2 VISION INSTALL FAILS ON AIX 17603342 - OMCS: DB STAGING COMPLAINS WHILE MOVING IT TO FINAL LOCATION 17591171 - OMCS: DB STAGING FAILS WITH FRESH INSTALL R12.2 17588765 - CHECKER VERSION AND PLUGIN VERSION 17561747 - BUILDSTAGE.SH FAILS WITH ERROR WHEN STAGE HOSTED ON 32BIT LINUX 17539198 - RAPID INSTALL NEEDS TO IGNORE NON-REQUIRED STAGE ELEMENTS 17272808 - APPS USERS THAT HAVE DEFAULT PASSWORD AFTER 12.2 RAPID INSTALL References 12.2 Documentation Library 1581299.1 : EBS 12.2 Product Information Center 1320300.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Release Notes, Release 12.2 1606170.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack and Applications DBA Release Notes for Release 12.2.3 1624423.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack and Applications DBA Release Notes for R12.TXK.C.Delta.4 and R12.AD.C.Delta.4 1594274.1 : Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2: Consolidated List of Patches and Technology Bug Fixes Related Articles Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Now Available startCD options to install Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2

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• Dissing Architects, or "What's wrong with the coffee?"

  - by Bob Rhubart

  In my conversations with people in architect roles, tales of animosity, disrespect, and outright hostility aren't uncommon. And it's clear that in more than a few organizations architects regularly face a tough uphill climb. For architects with the requisite combination of technical, organizational, and people skills, that rough treatment is grossly undeserved. But tales of unqualified people in positions up and down the IT food chain are also easy to come by. So what's the other side of the architect story? Are some architects tarnishing the role and making life miserable for their more qualified colleagues? The various quotes included below were culled from a variety of sources. The criticism is harsh, and the people behind these quotes clearly have issues with architects. Still, whether based on mere opinion or actual experience, the comments shed some light on behaviors that should raise red flags for anyone pursuing a career as an architect. If you're an architect, and you've ever noticed that your coffee tastes like window cleaner, or your car is repeatedly keyed, or no one ever holds the elevator for you, maybe you need to do a little soul searching... Those Who Can, Code; Those Who Can't, Architect | Joe Winchester [May 18, 2007] "At the moment there seems to be an extremely unhealthy obsession in software with the concept of architecture. A colleague of mine, a recent graduate, told me he wished to become a software architect. He was drawn to the glamour of being able to come up with grandiose ideas - sweeping generalized designs, creating presentations to audiences of acronym addicts, writing esoteric academic papers, speaking at conferences attended by headless engineers on company expense accounts hungrily seeking out this year's grail, and creating e-mails with huge cc lists from people whose signature footer is more interesting than the content. I tried to re-orient him into actually doing some coding, to join a team that has a good product and keen users both of whom are pushing requirements forward, to no avail. Somehow the lure of being an architecture astronaut was too strong and I lost him to the dark side." Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You | Joel Spolsky [April 21, 2001] "It's very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won't stop thinking about Architecture. They're astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don't know how they're breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don't contribute to the bottom line. Remember that the architecture people are solving problems that they think they can solve, not problems which are useful to solve." Non Coding Architects Suck | Richard Henderson [May 24, 2010] "If a guy with a badge saying 'system architect' looks blank on low-level issues then he is not an architect, he is a business-analyst who went on a course. He will probably wax lyrical on all things high-level and 'important.' He will produce lovely object hierarchies without a clue to implementation. He will have a moustache and play golf." Architects Play Golf | Sunir Shah [August 15, 2012] "Often arrogant architects are difficult to get a hold of during the implementation phase because they no longer feel the need to stick around. Especially around midnight when most of the poor sob [sic] developers are still banging away. After all, they've already solved the problem--the rest is just an implementation exercise." Engineer vs Architect(Part of a discussion on the IT Architect Network Group on LinkedIn) "[An] architect spends his time producing white papers full of acronyms he does not understand but that impress his boss [while the] engineer keeps his head down and does the actual job." Architects Don't Code | [Author Unknown] "Faulty belief: System Architects don't need to code anymore. They know what they are talking about by virtue of the fact that they are System Architects."

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• How to Set Ubuntu 12.04 to it's factory settings like when u first installed it?

  - by Cameron

  Well, this is a simple answered question, from the title, but my real problem is hard af. I have set ubuntu to use root, then it wouldn't let me log into the admin account only root and guest I deleted the admin account, remade another, then attempted to disable root account. This failed - I messed up the password, the original password was "root" I also didn't set a password for my new admin account, so It says it has one, whats the default password for it? I can't moderate my ubuntu system at all now. I have tried to drop to cmd shell thing, it asks for the root password, i type 'root' and any other possible passwords, it doesn't work. To reset ubuntu to factory settings i have found that i could enter the following code: sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh -a sudo Requires admin password, that I cant find out without root password and I don;t know. My goal is to try to fix this without remaking a bootable usb for ubuntu, because I lost the one i made for this. so If i can't, please say so. If you can help thanks!

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• yet another question about migrating to Java

  - by aloneguid

  Hi, There are plenty similar questions, but maybe responses to this one will save a developer's life :) I want to migrate to Java. The reasons are very clear: all the .NET vacancies are client and windows oriented (Silverlight developer, ASP.NET developer, WPF developer etc.) and none of them are any interest to me. I worked with .NET since it's beginning as our company decided to invest in .NET having C++ stack and all the natual problems, so I was just blindly following and actually enjoyed it as the products were mostly server oriented with mixed C++/C# code. Today I have beforementioned problem - can't find an inspiring job. I'd rather kill myself than start working on a Silverlight or WPF project. Searching Java vacancies shows promising results, however they all require a huge java-related technology stack and experience. The question is is there any chance to find a job quickly and without dramatic salary drop (I know that Java guys are usually better paid, so there must be a kind of a credit) and if not, how must time and effort does it take to migrate (my .NET knowledge mostly includes server-oriented technologies like NHibernate, WCF, threading, sockets, ASP.NET web services, Enterprise Library, NInject etc etc etc, and (still) some C++ leftovers). Thanks!

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• yet another question about migrating to Java

  - by aloneguid

  Hi, There are plenty similar questions, but maybe responses to this one will save a developer's life :) I want to migrate to Java. The reasons are very clear: all the .NET vacancies are client and windows oriented (Silverlight developer, ASP.NET developer, WPF developer etc.) and none of them are any interest to me. I worked with .NET since it's beginning as our company decided to invest in .NET having C++ stack and all the natual problems, so I was just blindly following and actually enjoyed it as the products were mostly server oriented with mixed C++/C# code. Today I have beforementioned problem - can't find an inspiring job. I'd rather kill myself than start working on a Silverlight or WPF project. Searching Java vacancies shows promising results, however they all require a huge java-related technology stack and experience. The question is is there any chance to find a job quickly and without dramatic salary drop (I know that Java guys are usually better paid, so there must be a kind of a credit) and if not, how must time and effort does it take to migrate (my .NET knowledge mostly includes server-oriented technologies like NHibernate, WCF, threading, sockets, ASP.NET web services, Enterprise Library, NInject etc etc etc, and (still) some C++ leftovers). Thanks!

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• Powershell: Install-dotNET4 function

  - by marc dekeyser

  This function will download and install ,NET 4.0. It uses the Get-Framework-Versions function to determine if the installation is necessary or not. Internet Connectivity will be required as the script auto downloads the setup file (and sleeps for 360 seconds... I had a function in there to monitor for install completion at first, turns out the setup file spawns so many childprocesses the function just got confused and locked up -_-)Alternatively you could drop the installation file in the folder specified on the $folderPath variable too. That will skip the download and use the file. This function easily adapts in to other versions f.e. I use it for Powershell 3 installs as well!Function install-dotNet4 () {    if(($InstalledDotNET -eq "4.0") -or ($InstalledDotNET -eq "4.0c")){        write-host ".NET 4.0 Framework is already installed" -foregroundcolor Green    } else{            #set a var for the folder you are looking for        $folderPath = 'C:\Temp'        #Check if folder exists, if not, create it        if (Test-Path $folderpath){            Write-Host "The folder $folderPath exists." -ForeGroundColor Green        } else{            Write-Host "The folder $folderPath does not exist, creating..." -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Red            New-Item $folderpath -type directory | Out-Null            Write-Host " - done!" -ForegroundColor Green        }        # Check if file exists, if not, download it        $file = $folderPath+"\dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe"        if (Test-Path $file){            write-host "The file $file exists." -ForeGroundColor Green        } else {            #Download Microsoft .Net 4.0 Framework            Write-Host "Downloading Microsoft .Net 4.0 Framework..." -nonewline -ForeGroundColor DarkYellow            $clnt = New-Object System.Net.WebClient            $url = "http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/A/95A9616B-7A37-4AF6-BC36-D6EA96C8DAAE/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe"            $clnt.DownloadFile($url,$file)            Write-Host " - done!" -ForegroundColor Green        }        #Install Microsoft .Net Framework        Write-Host "Installing Microsoft .Net Framework..." -nonewline -ForegroundColor DarkYellow        $dotNET4 = $folderPath+"\dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe /quiet /norestart"        Invoke-Expression $dotNET4        write-host " - done!" -ForegroundColor Green        start-sleep -seconds 360    }}

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• Ranking hit after WP site migration

  - by Ben

  I migrated my site from its old domain over a month ago. I followed WMT completely, including 301 redirects from every existing URL to the new domain, and then submitting a change of address. Traffic continued as normal, but then a few days after submitting the change of address traffic plummeted to about 20-30% of what it was previously. Most of my traffic come from organic search, and I can see that for the keywords I had targeted before and performed well with and am now ranking much much lower for. In some cases for low competition keywords I've only lost a few places, for higher competition terms I have really suffered. This has started to pick up a bit (one of my keywords I have risen from 195 to 100 in the last week), but it seems to be a very slow process. How seamless is this process normally? I was under the impression that this would not affect my rankings too severely, but it has now been a month since the move and recovery seems to be very slow, if at all. Is it likely that I've missed something? The only change is that I have moved what was the home page to be more of a sub-page, and now in its place is a magazine-style home page. I understand that links to the old site will now be pointing to the latter which means that rankings for some keywords attributed to the old home page will take a hit, but even on other pages that seem to fit in exactly the same page structure as the previous site I have seen a drop in rankings. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• What are the boundaries of the product owner in scrum?

  - by Saeed Neamati

  In another question, I asked about why I feel scrum turns active developers into passive developers, and it seems that the overall problem is not scrumy (related to scrum), and rather it's related to the bad implementation of scrum. So, here I have some questions about the scope of the responsibilities of PO (product owner) and the limitations he/she shouldn't pass. Should PO interfere the UI design, when there are designers at work in scrum team? (an example of this which has happened to us, is to replace checkboxes with a drop down list with two items, namely, yes and no; or to make some boxes larger, or to left-align some content instead of centering them on the page, or stuff like that). If yeah, to what extent? Colors? Layout? Should PO interfere in Design and architecture of coding? This hasn't happened to us yet, but I'm really curious about the boundaries. For example does PO has the right to change the platform (moving from ASP.NET MVC to PHP, or something like that), or choosing the count of servers (tier architecture), etc. Should PO interfere in validation mechanisms? For example, this field should be required, or we don't need to get this piece of information from user. Sometimes, analyzers and designers confirm that something can be handled behind the scene, like extracting the user profile info from another source, instead of asking for it in UI. How granular could/should PO get into the analysis and design? For example, a user story might be: "As a customer, I'd like to be able to buy new domains online". However, scrum team can implement this user story in a wizard of five steps, or in one single page. To which level PO should monitor, or govern, or supervise the technical analysis, design, and implementation? I asked these questions to judge whether our implementation is right or wrong?

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• The New OEPE 12.1.1.2 is Out - ADF Development and More

  - by Juan Camilo Ruiz

  Yes you are reading it right. Having announced just last week the general availability of our OEPE release 12.1.1.1.1 which includes support for developing applications to the Oracle Cloud. Today we are happy to announce the release of OEPE 12c (12.1.1.2) which includes various improvements for Webservices policies and security, and new features for implementing ADF applications in Eclipse Juno (3.8.1 and 4.2.1) as well as, bug fixes for other areas of the product - all of the above on top of Oracle Cloud support from the previous release. Many of the new features on this release have been added based on the feedback that we got from the ADF community, so, many thanks to you all and please, keep them coming! The main new features for this release are: ADF Bindings support on Taskflow activities on the diagram. Support for multi-node tree component bidings. Automatic ID generation for ADF Faces components. Support drag-n-drop of components and bindings into the page outline in addition to the regular jsp editor. Improved Webservices policies and security.  You can download the new versión from here. Remenber that you can send us your feedback or post your questions on our forum on OTN The OEPE Team. 

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• CRM Evolution 2014: Mediocrity is the New Horrible in Customer Service

  - by Tuula Fai

  "Mediocrity is the new horrible in customer service," Blair McHaney, Gold's Gym Almost everyone knows that customers' expectations have risen. But, after listening to two days of presentations at CRM Evolution, I think it’s more accurate to say that customers' expectations have skyrocketed. Fortunately, most companies have gotten the message and are taking their customer service to a higher level. For those who've been hesitant to 'boldly go where their customer service organization has not gone before,' take heart. I’ve got some statistics that will encourage you to take those first few steps. Why should I change? By engaging customers online, ancestry.com achieved a 99.5% customer satisfaction score (CSAT) while improving retention and saving millions on greater efficiency, including a 38%-50% drop in inbound calls and emails.1 By empowering employees to delight customers, Gold’s Gym achieved a 77.5% Net Promoter Score (NPS) and 22% customer churn rate. No small feat when you consider the industry averages are 40% NPS and 45% churn.2 By adapting quickly to social media, brands like Verizon have benefited from social community members spending 2.5x-10x more than average customers.3 ‘The fierce urgency of now’ is upon us in customer service. You can take your customer service to a higher level! To find out more, click here CRM Evolution Customer Service Experience Footnotes: 1. Arvindh Balakrishnan, Is Your Customer Service Modern?2. Blair McHaney, Wire Your Organization with Customer Feedback3. Becky Carroll, The Power of Communities for Improving the Service Experience and Building Advocates

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• Dynamic/Adaptive RLE

  - by Lucius

  So, I'm developing a 2D, tile based game and a map maker thingy - all in Java. The problem is that recently I've been having some memory issues when about 4 maps are loaded. Each one of these maps are composed of 128x128 tiles and have 4 layers (for details and stuff). I already spent a good amount of time searching for solutions and the best thing I found was run-length enconding (RLE). It seems easy enough to use with static data, but is there a way to use it with data that is constantly changing, without a big drop in performance? In my maps, supposing I'm compressing the columns, I would have 128 rows, each with some amount of data (hopefully less than it would be without RLE). Whenever I change a tile, that whole row would have to be checked and I'm affraid that would slow down too much the production (and I'm in a somewhat tight schedule). Well, worst case scenario I work on each map individually, and save them using RLE, but it would be really nice if I could avoind that. EDIT: What I'm currently using to store the data for the tiles is a 2D array of HashMaps that use the layer as key and store the id of the tile in that position - like this: private HashMap< Integer, Integer [][]

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• WebLogic Server–Use the Execution Context ID in Applications–Lessons From Hansel and Gretel

  - by james.bayer

  I learned a neat trick this week.  Don’t let your breadcrumbs go to waste like Hansel and Gretel did!  Keep track of the code path, logs and errors for each request as they flow through the system.  Earlier this week an OTN forum post in the WLS – General category by Oracle Ace John Stegeman asked a question how to retrieve the Execution Context ID so that it could be used on an error page that a user could provide to a help desk or use to check with application administrators so they could look up what went wrong.  What is the Execution Context ID (ECID)?  Fusion Middleware injects an ECID as a request enters the system and it says with the request as it flows from Oracle HTTP Server to Oracle Web Cache to multiple WebLogic Servers to the Oracle Database. It’s a way to uniquely identify a request across tiers.  According to the documentation it’s: The value of the ECID is a unique identifier that can be used to correlate individual events as being part of the same request execution flow. For example, events that are identified as being related to a particular request typically have the same ECID value.  The format of the ECID string itself is determined by an internal mechanism that is subject to change; therefore, you should not have or place any dependencies on that format. The novel idea that I see John had was to extend this concept beyond the diagnostic information that is captured by Fusion Middleware.  Why not also use this identifier in your logs and errors so you can correlate even more information together!  Your logging might already identify the user, so why not identify the request so you filter down even more.  All you need to do inside of WebLogic Server to get ahold of this information is invoke DiagnosticConextHelper: weblogic.diagnostics.context.DiagnosticContextHelper.getContextId() This class has other helpful methods to see other values tracked by the diagnostics framework too.  This way I can see even more detail and get information across tiers. In performance profiling, this can be very handy to track down where time is being spent in code.  I’ve blogged and made videos about this before.  JRockit Flight Recorder can use the WLDF Diagnostic Volume in WLS 10.3.3+ to automatically capture and correlate lots of helpful information for each request without installing any special agents and with the out-of-the-box JRockit and WLS settings!  You can see here how information is displayed in JRockit Flight Recorder about a single request as it calls a Servlet, which calls an EJB, which gets a DB connection, which starts a transaction, etc.  You can get timings around everything and even see the SQL that is used. http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/web.1111/e13714/using_flightrecorder.htm#WLDFC480 Recent versions of the WLS console also are able to visualize this data too, so it works with other JVMs besides JRockit when you turn on WLDF instrumentation. I wrote a little sample application that verified to myself that the ECID did actually cross JVM boundaries.  I invoked a Servlet in one JVM, which acted as an EJB client to Stateless Session Bean running in another JVM.  Each call returned the same ECID.  You need to turn on WLDF Instrumentation for this to work otherwise the framework returns null.  I’m glad John put me on to this API as I have some interesting ideas on how to correlate some information together.

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• Professional Developers, may I join you?

  - by Ben

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

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• Why do some bad websites rank well?

  - by BradB

  Consider the following scenario: you are pitching SEO/Website Optimisation to a prospective client and you explain to them the importance of great copy and content, how acquiring links (ethically) can increase page rank, why the quality of the HTML build matters (H1, H2 tags, w3c validation etc), why keyword research is beneficial, you may drop in a few Google Webmaster Guideline or Matt Cutts references to back up your claims and rubbish the "back hat" approach as being no longer effective for good measure. Your advice is ethical and in the eyes of best practices, spot on. Then, the client points out to you some of their long established competitors on Google and you see these competitor websites ranking in the top spots (1 to 3) for medium to highly competitive search phrases that your client wants to compete for. These websites totally contradict your ethical approach and pretty much violate every best practice previously noted. They even out perform other "white hat" competitors who are in accordance with the above guidelines. I experienced this today. One of these well ranking websites had: About six microsites with more or less the same copy and a slightly varied layout Little or not textual content I would almost say duplicate content across the sites, but there was so little of it it could barely qualify for being duplicate All the content in Flash (with a music track that kicked in on each page load, not so much of an SEO issue - but it helps paint the picture) Keyword stuffing behind the Flash file with a bunch of black text on black background in the style of keyword 1 keyword 2,keyword1,keyword 2,keyword 2 keyword 3 and so on... The exact keyword stuffed combination present on every page of the website A bunch of clearly self made links from poor quality forums and directories with little or no Page Rank Links exchanged across the microsites How do you explain your way out of this when this hard evidence is sat in front of you undermining your great pitch?

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• My First Iteration Zero

  - by onefloridacoder

  I recently watched a web cast that covered the idea of planning from the concept stage to the product backlog.  It was the first content I had seen related to Iteration Zero and it made a lot of sense from a planning and engagement perspective where the customer is concerned.  It illuminated some of the problems I’ve experienced with getting a large project of the ground.  The idea behind this is to just figure out get everyone to understand what needs to be constructed and to build the initial feature set from a *very* high level.  Once that happens other parts of the high level construction start to take place.  You end up with a feature list that describes what the business wants the system to do, and what it potentially may (or may not) interact with.  Low tech tools are used to create UI mockups that can be used as a starting point for some of the key UI pieces. Toward the end of the webcast they speaker introduced something that was new to me.  He referred to it as an executable skeleton or the steel thread.  The idea with this part of the webcast was to describe walking through the different mocked layers of the application.  Not all layers and collaborators are involved at this stage since it’s Iteration Zero, and each layer is either hard-coded or completely mocked to provide a 35K foot view of how the different layers layers work together.  So imagine two actors on each side of a layer diagram and the flow goes down from the upper left side down through a a consumer, thorough a service layer and then back up the service layer to the destination/actor. I would imagine much could be discussed moving through new/planned or existing/legacy layers, or a little of both to see what’s implied by the current high-level design. One part of the web cast has the business and design team creating the product box (think of your favorite cereal or toy box) with all of the features and even pictures laid out on the outside of the box.  The notion here is that if you handed this box to someone and told them your system was inside they would have an understanding of what the system would be able to do, or the features it could provide.    One of the interesting parts of the webcast was where the speaker described that he worked with a couple of groups in the same room and each group came up with a different product box – the point is that each group had a different idea of what the system was supposed to do.  At this point of the project I thought that to be valuable considering my experience has been that historically this has taken longer than a week to realize that the business unit and design teams see the high level solution differently.  Once my box is finished I plan on moving to the next stage of solution definition which is to plan the UI for this small application using Excel, to map out the UI elements.  I’m my own customer so it feels like cheating, but taking these slow deliberate steps have already provided a few learning opportunities.    So I resist the urge to load all of my user stories into my newly installed VS2010  TFS project and try to reduce or add to, the number of user stories and/or refine the high level estimates I’ve come up with so far.

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• Collision Resolution

  - by ultifinitus

  Hey all, I'm making a simple side-scrolling game, and I would appreciate some input! My collision detection system is a simple bounding box detection, so it's really easy to implement. However my collision resolution is ridiculous! Currently I have a little formula like this: if (colliding(firstObject,secondObject)) firstObject.resolve_collision(yAxisOffset); if (colliding(firstObject,secondObject)) firstObject.resolve_collision(xAxisOffset); where yAxisOffset is only set if the first object's previous y position was outside the second object's collision frame, respectively xAxisOffset as well. Now this is working great, in general. However there is a single problem. When I have a stack of objects and I push the first object against that stack, the first object get's "stuck," on the stack. What's I think is happening is the object's collision system checks and resolves for collisions based on creation time, so If I check one axis, then the other, the object will "sink" object directly along the checking axis. This sinking action causes the collision detection routine to think there's a gap between our position and the other object's position, and when I finally check the object that I've already sunk into, my object's position is resolved to it's original position... All this is great, and I'm sure if I bang my head against a wall long enough i'll come up with a working algorithm, but I'd rather not =). So what in the heck do you think I should do? How could I change my collision resolution system to fix this? Here's the program (temporary link, not sure how long it'll last) (notes: arrow keys to navigate, click to drop block, x to jump) I'd appreciate any help you can offer!

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• hProduct-microformats not work in google

  - by silverfox

  I'm trying to work with hProduct was testing tool for google microformats (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets), but it is not recognizing the data: does not recognize the photo does not recognize the price does not recognize the category only recognizes the rating HTML: <div class="hproduct"> <span class="brand">ACME</span> <span class="fn">Executive Anvil</span> <img class="photo" src="http://microformats.org/wiki/skins/Microformats/images/logo.gif" /> <span class="review hreview-aggregate"> Average rating: <span class="rating">4.4</span>, based on <span class="count">89 </span> reviews </span> Regular price: $179.99 Sale: $<span class="price">119.99</span> (Sale ends 5 November!) <span class="description">Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business traveler looking for something to drop from a height.</span> Category: <span class="category"> <span class="value-title" title="Hardware > Tools > Anvils">Anvils</span> </span> </div> and still shows this warning: waring: In order to generate a preview with rich snippets, either price or review or availability needs to be present. I used google's own example: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=186036 I also tested the microformas.org: http://microformats.org/wiki/google-rich-snippets-examples

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