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• Memory Efficient Windows SOA Server

  - by Antony Reynolds

  Installing a Memory Efficient SOA Suite 11.1.1.6 on Windows Server Well 11.1.1.6 is now available for download so I thought I would build a Windows Server environment to run it.  I will minimize the memory footprint of the installation by putting all functionality into the Admin Server of the SOA Suite domain. Required Software 64-bit JDK SOA Suite If you want 64-bit then choose “Generic” rather than “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” This has links to all the required software. If you choose “Generic” then the Repository Creation Utility link does not show, you still need this so change the platform to “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” to get the software. Similarly if you need a database then you need to change the platform to get the link to XE for Windows or Linux. If possible I recommend installing a 64-bit JDK as this allows you to assign more memory to individual JVMs. Windows XE will work, but it is better if you can use a full Oracle database because of the limitations on XE that sometimes cause it to run out of space with large or multiple SOA deployments. Installation Steps The following flow chart outlines the steps required in installing and configuring SOA Suite. The steps in the diagram are explained below. 64-bit? Is a 64-bit installation required?  The Windows & Linux installers will install 32-bit versions of the Sun JDK and JRockit.  A separate JDK must be installed for 64-bit. Install 64-bit JDK The 64-bit JDK can be either Hotspot or JRockit.  You can choose either JDK 1.7 or 1.6. Install WebLogic If you are using 64-bit then install WebLogic using “java –jar wls1036_generic.jar”.  Make sure you include Coherence in the installation, the easiest way to do this is to accept the “Typical” installation. SOA Suite Required? If you are not installing SOA Suite then you can jump straight ahead and create a WebLogic domain. Install SOA Suite Run the SOA Suite installer and point it at the existing Middleware Home created for WebLogic.  Note to run the SOA installer on Windows the user must have admin privileges.  I also found that on Windows Server 2008R2 I had to start the installer from a command prompt with administrative privileges, granting it privileges when it ran caused it to ignore the jreLoc parameter. Database Available? Do you have access to a database into which you can install the SOA schema.  SOA Suite requires access to an Oracle database (it is supported on other databases but I would always use an oracle database). Install Database I use an 11gR2 Oracle database to avoid XE limitations.  Make sure that you set the database character set to be unicode (AL32UTF8).  I also disabled the new security settings because they get in the way for a developer database.  Don’t forget to check that number of processes is at least 150 and number of sessions is not set, or is set to at least 200 (in the DB init parameters). Run RCU The SOA Suite database schemas are created by running the Repository Creation Utility.  Install the “SOA and BPM Infrastructure” component to support SOA Suite.  If you keep the schema prefix as “DEV” then the config wizard is easier to complete. Run Config Wizard The Config wizard creates the domain which hosts the WebLogic server instances.  To get a minimum footprint SOA installation choose the “Oracle Enterprise Manager” and “Oracle SOA Suite for developers” products.  All other required products will be automatically selected. The “for developers” installs target the appropriate components at the AdminServer rather than creating a separate managed server to house them.  This reduces the number of JVMs required to run the system and hence the amount of memory required.  This is not suitable for anything other than a developer environment as it mixes the admin and runtime functions together in a single server.  It also takes a long time to load all the required modules, making start up a slow process. If it exists I would recommend running the config wizard found in the “oracle_common/common/bin” directory under the middleware home.  This should have access to all the templates, including SOA. If you also want to run BAM in the same JVM as everything else then you need to “Select Optional Configuration” for “Managed Servers, Clusters and Machines”. To target BAM at the AdminServer delete the “bam_server1” managed server that is created by default.  This will result in BAM being targeted at the AdminServer. Installation Issues I had a few problems when I came to test everything in my mega-JVM. Following applications were not targeted and so I needed to target them at the AdminServer: b2bui composer Healthcare UI FMW Welcome Page Application (11.1.0.0.0) How Memory Efficient is It? On a Windows 2008R2 Server running under VirtualBox I was able to bring up both the 11gR2 database and SOA/BPM/BAM in 3G memory.  I allocated a minimum 512M to the PermGen and a minimum of 1.5G for the heap.  The setting from setSOADomainEnv are shown below: set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=%DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=%PORT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m I arrived at these numbers by monitoring JVM memory usage in JConsole. Task Manager showed total system memory usage at 2.9G – just below the 3G I allocated to the VM. Performance is not stellar but it runs and I could run JDeveloper alongside it on my 8G laptop, so in that sense it was a result!

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• Dynamic Bursting ... no really!

  - by Tim Dexter

  If any of you have seen me or my colleagues present BI Publisher to you then we have hopefully mentioned 'bursting.' You may have even seen a demo where we talk about being able to take a batch of data, say invoices. Then split them by some criteria, say customer id; format them with a template; generate the output and then deliver the documents to the recipients with a click. We and especially I, always say this can be completely dynamic! By this I mean, that you could store customer preferences in a database. What layout would each customer like; what output format they would like and how they would like the document delivered. We (I) talk a good talk, but typically don't do the walk in a demo. We hard code everything in the bursting query or bursting control file to get the concept across. But no more peeps! I have finally put together a dynamic bursting demo! Its been minutes in the making but its been tough to find those minutes! Read on ... It's nothing amazing in terms of making the burst dynamic. I created a CUSTOMER_PREFS table with some simple UI in an APEX application so that I can maintain their requirements. In EBS you have descriptive flexfields that could do the same thing or probably even 'contact' fields to store most of the info. Here's my table structure: Name                           Type ------------------------------ -------- CUSTOMER_ID                    NUMBER(6) TEMPLATE_TYPE                  VARCHAR2(20) TEMPLATE_NAME                  VARCHAR2(120) OUTPUT_FORMAT                  VARCHAR2(20) DELIVERY_CHANNEL               VARCHAR2(50) EMAIL                          VARCHAR2(255) FAX                            VARCHAR2(20) ATTACH                         VARCHAR2(20) FILE_LOC                       VARCHAR2(255) Simple enough right? Just need CUSTOMER_ID as the key for the bursting engine to join it to the customer data at burst time. I have not covered the full delivery options, just email, fax and file location. Remember, its a demo people :0) However the principal is exactly the same for each delivery type. They each have a set of attributes that need to be provided and you will need to handle that in your bursting query. On a side note, in EBS, you use a bursting control file, you can apply the same principals that I'm laying out here you just need to get the customer bursting info into the XML data stream so that you can refer to it in the control file using XPATH expressions. Next, we need to look up what attributes or parameters are required for each delivery method. that can be found in the documentation here.  Now we know the combinations of parameters and delivery methods we can construct the query using a series a decode statements: select distinct cp.customer_id "KEY", cp.template_name TEMPLATE, cp.template_type TEMPLATE_FORMAT, 'en-US' LOCALE, cp.output_format OUTPUT_FORMAT, 'false' SAVE_FORMAT, cp.delivery_channel DEL_CHANNEL, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE', cp.file_loc , 'EMAIL', cp.email , 'FAX', cp.fax) PARAMETER1, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE', c.cust_last_name||'_orders.pdf' ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX', 'faxserver.com') PARAMETER2, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX', null) PARAMETER3, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','Your current orders' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER4, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','Please find attached a copy of your current orders with BI Publisher, Inc' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER5, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','false' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER6, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER7 from cust_prefs cp, customers c, orders_view ov where cp.customer_id = c.customer_id and cp.customer_id = ov.customer_id order by cp.customer_id Pretty straightforward, just need to test, test, test, the query and ensure it's bringing back the correct data based on each customers preferences. Notice the NULL values for parameters that are not relevant for a given delivery channel. You should end up with bursting control data that the bursting engine can use:  Now, your users can run the burst and documents will be formatted, generated and delivered based on the customer prefs. If you're interested in the example, I have used the sample OE schema data for the base report. The report files and CUST_PREFS table are zipped up here. The zip contains the data model (.xdmz), the report and templates (.xdoz) and the sql scripts to create and load data to the CUST_PREFS table.  Once you load the report into the catalog, you'll need to create the OE data connection and point the data model at it. You'll probably need to re-point the report to the data model too. Happy Bursting!

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• OS Analytics with Oracle Enterprise Manager (by Eran Steiner)

  - by Zeynep Koch

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center provides a feature called "OS Analytics". This feature allows you to get a better understanding of how the Operating System is being utilized. You can research the historical usage as well as real time data. This post will show how you can benefit from OS Analytics and how it works behind the scenes. The recording of our call to discuss this blog is available here: https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/ldr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=71517797&rKey=4ec9d4a3508564b3Download the presentation here See also: Blog about Alert Monitoring and Problem Notification Blog about Using Operational Profiles to Install Packages and other content Here is quick summary of what you can do with OS Analytics in Ops Center: View historical charts and real time value of CPU, memory, network and disk utilization Find the top CPU and Memory processes in real time or at a certain historical day Determine proper monitoring thresholds based on historical data Drill down into a process details Where to start To start with OS Analytics, choose the OS asset in the tree and click the Analytics tab. You can see the CPU utilization, Memory utilization and Network utilization, along with the current real time top 5 processes in each category (click the image to see a larger version):  In the above screen, you can click each of the top 5 processes to see a more detailed view of that process. Here is an example of one of the processes: One of the cool things is that you can see the process tree for this process along with some port binding and open file descriptors. Next, click the "Processes" tab to see real time information of all the processes on the machine: An interesting column is the "Target" column. If you configured Ops Center to work with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, then the two products will talk to each other and Ops Center will display the correlated target from Cloud Control in this table. If you are only using Ops Center - this column will remain empty. The "Threshold" tab is particularly helpful - you can view historical trends of different monitored values and based on the graph - determine what the monitoring values should be: You can ask Ops Center to suggest monitoring levels based on the historical values or you can set your own. The different colors in the graph represent the current set levels: Red for critical, Yellow for warning and Blue for Information, allowing you to quickly see how they're positioned against real data. It's important to note that when looking at longer periods, Ops Center smooths out the data and uses averages. So when looking at values such as CPU Usage, try shorter time frames which are more detailed, such as one hour or one day. Applying new monitoring values When first applying new values to monitored attributes - a popup will come up asking if it's OK to get you out of the current Monitoring Policy. This is OK if you want to either have custom monitoring for a specific machine, or if you want to use this current machine as a "Gold image" and extract a Monitoring Policy from it. You can later apply the new Monitoring Policy to other machines and also set it as a default Monitoring Profile. Once you're done with applying the different monitoring values, you can review and change them in the "Monitoring" tab. You can also click the "Extract a Monitoring Policy" in the actions pane on the right to save all the new values to a new Monitoring Policy, which can then be found under "Plan Management" -> "Monitoring Policies". Visiting the past Under the "History" tab you can "go back in time". This is very helpful when you know that a machine was busy a few hours ago (perhaps in the middle of the night?), but you were not around to take a look at it in real time. Here's a view into yesterday's data on one of the machines: You can see an interesting CPU spike happening at around 3:30 am along with some memory use. In the bottom table you can see the top 5 CPU and Memory consumers at the requested time. Very quickly you can see that this spike is related to the Solaris 11 IPS repository synchronization process using the "pkgrecv" command. The "time machine" doesn't stop here - you can also view historical data to determine which of the zones was the busiest at a given time: Under the hood The data collected is stored on each of the agents under /var/opt/sun/xvm/analytics/historical/ An "os.zip" file exists for the main OS. Inside you will find many small text files, named after the Epoch time stamp in which they were taken If you have any zones, there will be a file called "guests.zip" containing the same small files for all the zones, as well as a folder with the name of the zone along with "os.zip" in it If this is the Enterprise Controller or the Proxy Controller, you will have folders called "proxy" and "sat" in which you will find the "os.zip" for that controller The actual script collecting the data can be viewed for debugging purposes as well: On Linux, the location is: /opt/sun/xvmoc/private/os_analytics/collect If you would like to redirect all the standard error into a file for debugging, touch the following file and the output will go into it: # touch /tmp/.collect.stderr   The temporary data is collected under /var/opt/sun/xvm/analytics/.collectdb until it is zipped. If you would like to review the properties for the Analytics, you can view those per each agent in /opt/sun/n1gc/lib/XVM.properties. Find the section "Analytics configurable properties for OS and VSC" to view the Analytics specific values. I hope you find this helpful! Please post questions in the comments below. Eran Steiner

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• Cross-language Extension Method Calling

  - by Tom Hines

  Extension methods are a concise way of binding functions to particular types. In my last post, I showed how Extension methods can be created in the .NET 2.0 environment. In this post, I discuss calling the extensions from other languages. Most of the differences I find between the Dot Net languages are mainly syntax.  The declaration of Extensions is no exception.  There is, however, a distinct difference with the framework accepting excensions made with C++ that differs from C# and VB.  When calling the C++ extension from C#, the compiler will SOMETIMES say there is no definition for DoCPP with the error: 'string' does not contain a definition for 'DoCPP' and no extension method 'DoCPP' accepting a first argument of type 'string' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) If I recompile, the error goes away. The strangest problem with calling the C++ extension from C# is that I first must make SOME type of reference to the class BEFORE using the extension or it will not be recognized at all.  So, if I first call the DoCPP() as a static method, the extension works fine later.  If I make a dummy instantiation of the class, it works.  If I have no forward reference of the class, I get the same error as before and recompiling does not fix it.  It seems as if this none of this is supposed to work across the languages. I have made a few work-arounds to get the examples to compile and run. Note the following examples: Extension in C# using System; namespace Extension_CS {    public static class CExtension_CS    {  //in C#, the "this" keyword is the key.       public static void DoCS(this string str)       {          Console.WriteLine("CS\t{0:G}\tCS", str);       }    } } Extension in C++ /****************************************************************************\  * Here is the C++ implementation.  It is the least elegant and most quirky,  * but it works. \****************************************************************************/ #pragma once using namespace System; using namespace System::Runtime::CompilerServices;     //<-Essential // Reference: System.Core.dll //<- Essential namespace Extension_CPP {        public ref class CExtension_CPP        {        public:               [Extension] // or [ExtensionAttribute] /* either works */               static void DoCPP(String^ str)               {                      Console::WriteLine("C++\t{0:G}\tC++", str);               }        }; } Extension in VB ' Here is the VB implementation.  This is not as elegant as the C#, but it's ' functional. Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices ' Public Module modExtension_VB 'Extension methods can be defined only in modules.    <Extension()> _       Public Sub DoVB(ByVal str As String)       Console.WriteLine("VB" & Chr(9) & "{0:G}" & Chr(9) & "VB", str)    End Sub End Module   Calling program in C# /******************************************************************************\  * Main calling program  * Intellisense and VS2008 complain about the CPP implementation, but with a  * little duct-tape, it works just fine. \******************************************************************************/ using System; using Extension_CPP; using Extension_CS; using Extension_VB; // vitual namespace namespace TestExtensions {    public static class CTestExtensions    {       /**********************************************************************\        * For some reason, this needs a direct reference into the C++ version        * even though it does nothing than add a null reference.        * The constructor provides the fake usage to please the compiler.       \**********************************************************************/       private static CExtension_CPP x = null;   // <-DUCT_TAPE!       static CTestExtensions()       {          // Fake usage to stop compiler from complaining          if (null != x) {} // <-DUCT_TAPE       }       static void Main(string[] args)       {          string strData = "from C#";          strData.DoCPP();          strData.DoCS();          strData.DoVB();       }    } }   Calling program in VB  Imports Extension_CPP Imports Extension_CS Imports Extension_VB Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices Module TestExtensions_VB    <Extension()> _       Public Sub DoCPP(ByVal str As String)       'Framework does not treat this as an extension, so use the static       CExtension_CPP.DoCPP(str)    End Sub    Sub Main()       Dim strData As String = "from VB"       strData.DoCS()       strData.DoVB()       strData.DoCPP() 'fake    End Sub End Module  Calling program in C++ // TestExtensions_CPP.cpp : main project file. #include "stdafx.h" using namespace System; using namespace Extension_CPP; using namespace Extension_CS; using namespace Extension_VB; void main(void) {        /*******************************************************\         * Extension methods are called like static methods         * when called from C++.  There may be a difference in         * syntax when calling the VB extension as VB Extensions         * are embedded in Modules instead of classes        \*******************************************************/     String^ strData = "from C++";     CExtension_CPP::DoCPP(strData);     CExtension_CS::DoCS(strData);     modExtension_VB::DoVB(strData); //since Extensions go in Modules }

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• Making your WCF Web Apis to speak in multiple languages

  - by cibrax

  One of the key aspects of how the web works today is content negotiation. The idea of content negotiation is based on the fact that a single resource can have multiple representations, so user agents (or clients) and servers can work together to chose one of them. The http specification defines several “Accept” headers that a client can use to negotiate content with a server, and among all those, there is one for restricting the set of natural languages that are preferred as a response to a request, “Accept-Language”. For example, a client can specify “es” in this header for specifying that he prefers to receive the content in spanish or “en” in english. However, there are certain scenarios where the “Accept-Language” header is just not enough, and you might want to have a way to pass the “accepted” language as part of the resource url as an extension. For example, http://localhost/ProductCatalog/Products/1.es” returns all the descriptions for the product with id “1” in spanish. This is useful for scenarios in which you want to embed the link somewhere, such a document, an email or a page.  Supporting both scenarios, the header and the url extension, is really simple in the new WCF programming model. You only need to provide a processor implementation for any of them. Let’s say I have a resource implementation as part of a product catalog I want to expose with the WCF web apis. [ServiceContract][Export]public class ProductResource{ IProductRepository repository;  [ImportingConstructor] public ProductResource(IProductRepository repository) { this.repository = repository; }  [WebGet(UriTemplate = "{id}")] public Product Get(string id, HttpResponseMessage response) { var product = repository.GetById(int.Parse(id)); if (product == null) { response.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.NotFound; response.Content = new StringContent(Messages.OrderNotFound); }  return product; }} The Get method implementation in this resource assumes the desired culture will be attached to the current thread (Thread.CurrentThread.Culture). Another option is to pass the desired culture as an additional argument in the method, so my processor implementation will handle both options. This method is also using an auto-generated class for handling string resources, Messages, which is available in the different cultures that the service implementation supports. For example, Messages.resx contains “OrderNotFound”: “Order Not Found” Messages.es.resx contains “OrderNotFound”: “No se encontro orden” The processor implementation bellow tackles the first scenario, in which the desired language is passed as part of the “Accept-Language” header. public class CultureProcessor : Processor<HttpRequestMessage, CultureInfo>{ string defaultLanguage = null;  public CultureProcessor(string defaultLanguage = "en") { this.defaultLanguage = defaultLanguage; this.InArguments[0].Name = HttpPipelineFormatter.ArgumentHttpRequestMessage; this.OutArguments[0].Name = "culture"; }  public override ProcessorResult<CultureInfo> OnExecute(HttpRequestMessage request) { CultureInfo culture = null; if (request.Headers.AcceptLanguage.Count > 0) { var language = request.Headers.AcceptLanguage.First().Value; culture = new CultureInfo(language); } else { culture = new CultureInfo(defaultLanguage); }  Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = culture; Messages.Culture = culture;  return new ProcessorResult<CultureInfo> { Output = culture }; }}   As you can see, the processor initializes a new CultureInfo instance with the value provided in the “Accept-Language” header, and set that instance to the current thread and the auto-generated resource class with all the messages. In addition, the CultureInfo instance is returned as an output argument called “culture”, making possible to receive that argument in any method implementation   The following code shows the implementation of the processor for handling languages as url extensions.   public class CultureExtensionProcessor : Processor<HttpRequestMessage, Uri>{ public CultureExtensionProcessor() { this.OutArguments[0].Name = HttpPipelineFormatter.ArgumentUri; }  public override ProcessorResult<Uri> OnExecute(HttpRequestMessage httpRequestMessage) { var requestUri = httpRequestMessage.RequestUri.OriginalString;  var extensionPosition = requestUri.LastIndexOf(".");  if (extensionPosition > -1) { var extension = requestUri.Substring(extensionPosition + 1);  var query = httpRequestMessage.RequestUri.Query;  requestUri = string.Format("{0}?{1}", requestUri.Substring(0, extensionPosition), query); ;  var uri = new Uri(requestUri);  httpRequestMessage.Headers.AcceptLanguage.Clear();  httpRequestMessage.Headers.AcceptLanguage.Add(new StringWithQualityHeaderValue(extension));  var result = new ProcessorResult<Uri>();  result.Output = uri;  return result; }  return new ProcessorResult<Uri>(); }} The last step is to inject both processors as part of the service configuration as it is shown bellow, public void RegisterRequestProcessorsForOperation(HttpOperationDescription operation, IList<Processor> processors, MediaTypeProcessorMode mode){ processors.Insert(0, new CultureExtensionProcessor()); processors.Add(new CultureProcessor());} Once you configured the two processors in the pipeline, your service will start speaking different languages :). Note: Url extensions don’t seem to be working in the current bits when you are using Url extensions in a base address. As far as I could see, ASP.NET intercepts the request first and tries to route the request to a registered ASP.NET Http Handler with that extension. For example, “http://localhost/ProductCatalog/products.es” does not work, but “http://localhost/ProductCatalog/products/1.es” does.

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• Working with Reporting Services Filters–Part 1

  - by smisner

  There are two ways that you can filter data in Reporting Services. The first way, which usually provides a faster performance, is to use query parameters to apply a filter using the WHERE clause in a SQL statement. In that case, the structure of the filter depends upon the syntax recognized by the source database. Another way to filter data in Reporting Services is to apply a filter to a dataset, data region, or a group. Using this latter method, you can even apply multiple filters. However, the use of filter operators or the setup of multiple filters is not always obvious, so in this series of posts, I'll provide some more information about the configuration of filters. First, why not use query parameters exclusively for filtering? Here are a few reasons: You might want to apply a filter to part of the report, but not all of the report. Your dataset might retrieve data from a stored procedure, and doesn't allow you to pass a query parameter for filtering purposes. Your report might be set up as a snapshot on the report server and, in that case, cannot be dynamically filtered based on a query parameter. Next, let's look at how to set up a report filter in general. The process is the same whether you are applying the filter to a dataset, data region, or a group. When you go to the Filters page in the Properties dialog box for whichever of these items you selected (dataset, data region, group), you click the Add button to create a new filter. The interface looks like this: The Expression field is usually a field in the dataset, so to make it easier for you to make a selection,the drop-down list displays all of the current dataset fields. But notice the expression button to the right, which means that you can set up any type of expression-not just a dataset field. To the right of the expression button, you'll find a data type drop-down list. It's important to specify the correct data type for the field or expression you're using. Now for the operators. Here's a list of the options that you have: This Operator Performs This Action =, <>, >, >=, <, <=, Like Compares expression to value Top N, Bottom N Compares expression to Top (Bottom) set of N values (N = integer) Top %, Bottom % Compares expression to Top (Bottom) N percent of values (N = integer or float) Between Determines whether expression is between two values, inclusive In Determines whether expression is found in list of values Last, the Value is what you're comparing to the expression using the operator. The construction of a filter using some operators (=, <>, >, etc.) is fairly simple. If my dataset (for AdventureWorks data) has a Category field, and I have a parameter that prompts the user for a single category, I can set up a filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [Category] Text = [@Category] But if I set the parameter to accept multiple values, I need to change the operator from = to In, just as I would have to do if I were using a query parameter. The parameter expression, [@Category], which translates to =Parameters!Category.Value, doesn’t need to change because it represents an array as soon as I change the parameter to allow multiple values. The “In” operator requires an array. With that in mind, let’s consider a variation on Value. Let’s say that I have a parameter that prompts the user for a particular year – and for simplicity’s sake, this parameter only allows a single value, and I have an expression that evaluates the previous year based on the user’s selection. Then I want to use these two values in two separate filters with an OR condition. That is, I want to filter either by the year selected OR by the year that was computed. If I create two filters, one for each year (as shown below), then the report will only display results if BOTH filter conditions are met – which would never be true. Expression Data Type Operator Value [CalendarYear] Integer = [@Year] [CalendarYear] Integer = =Parameters!Year.Value-1 To handle this scenario, we need to create a single filter that uses the “In” operator, and then set up the Value expression as an array. To create an array, we use the Split function after creating a string that concatenates the two values (highlighted in yellow) as shown below. Expression Data Type Operator Value =Cstr(Fields!CalendarYear.Value) Text In =Split( CStr(Parameters!Year.Value) + ”,” + CStr(Parameters!Year.Value-1) , “,”) Note that in this case, I had to apply a string conversion on the year integer so that I could concatenate the parameter selection with the calculated year. Pay attention to the second argument of the Split function—you must use a comma delimiter for the result to work correctly with the In operator. I also had to change the Expression value from [CalendarYear] (or =Fields!CalendarYear.Value) so that the expression would return a string that I could compare with the values in the string array. More fun with filter expressions in future posts!

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• Basic shadow mapping fails on NVIDIA card?

  - by James

  Recently I switched from an AMD Radeon HD 6870 card to an (MSI) NVIDIA GTX 670 for performance reasons. I found however that my implementation of shadow mapping in all my applications failed. In a very simple shadow POC project the problem appears to be that the scene being drawn never results in a draw to the depth map and as a result the entire depth map is just infinity, 1.0 (Reading directly from the depth component after draw (glReadPixels) shows every pixel is infinity (1.0), replacing the depth comparison in the shader with a comparison of the depth from the shadow map with 1.0 shadows the entire scene, and writing random values to the depth map and then not calling glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT) results in a random noisy pattern on the scene elements - from which we can infer that the uploading of the depth texture and comparison within the shader are functioning perfectly.) Since the problem appears almost certainly to be in the depth render, this is the code for that: const int s_res = 1024; GLuint shadowMap_tex; GLuint shadowMap_prog; GLint sm_attr_coord3d; GLint sm_uniform_mvp; GLuint fbo_handle; GLuint renderBuffer; bool isMappingShad = false; //The scene consists of a plane with box above it GLfloat scene[] = { -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 1.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, -10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.5, 0.5, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, ... }; //Initialize the stuff used by the shadow map generator int initShadowMap() { //Initialize the shadowMap shader program if (create_program("shadow.v.glsl", "shadow.f.glsl", shadowMap_prog) != 1) return -1; const char* attribute_name = "coord3d"; sm_attr_coord3d = glGetAttribLocation(shadowMap_prog, attribute_name); if (sm_attr_coord3d == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind attribute %s\n", attribute_name); return 0; } const char* uniform_name = "mvp"; sm_uniform_mvp = glGetUniformLocation(shadowMap_prog, uniform_name); if (sm_uniform_mvp == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind uniform %s\n", uniform_name); return 0; } //Create a framebuffer glGenFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); //Create render buffer glGenRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); //Setup the shadow texture glGenTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, s_res, s_res, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT, NULL); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); return 0; } //Delete stuff void dnitShadowMap() { //Delete everything glDeleteFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glDeleteRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glDeleteTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glDeleteProgram(shadowMap_prog); } int loadSMap() { //Bind MVP stuff glm::mat4 view = glm::lookAt(glm::vec3(10.0, 10.0, 5.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 1.0, 0.0)); glm::mat4 projection = glm::ortho<float>(-10,10,-8,8,-10,40); glm::mat4 mvp = projection * view; glm::mat4 biasMatrix( 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0 ); glm::mat4 lsMVP = biasMatrix * mvp; //Upload light source matrix to the main shader programs glUniformMatrix4fv(uniform_ls_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(lsMVP)); glUseProgram(shadowMap_prog); glUniformMatrix4fv(sm_uniform_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(mvp)); //Draw to the framebuffer (with depth buffer only draw) glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); glReadBuffer(GL_NONE); GLenum result = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER); if (GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE != result) { printf("ERROR: Framebuffer is not complete.\n"); return -1; } //Draw shadow scene printf("Creating shadow buffers..\n"); int ticks = SDL_GetTicks(); glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Wipe the depth buffer glViewport(0, 0, s_res, s_res); isMappingShad = true; //DRAW glEnableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); glVertexAttribPointer(sm_attr_coord3d, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 5*4, scene); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 14*3); glDisableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); isMappingShad = false; glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0); printf("Render Sbuf in %dms (GLerr: %d)\n", SDL_GetTicks() - ticks, glGetError()); return 0; } This is the full code for the POC shadow mapping project (C++) (Requires SDL 1.2, SDL-image 1.2, GLEW (1.5) and GLM development headers.) initShadowMap is called, followed by loadSMap, the scene is drawn from the camera POV and then dnitShadowMap is called. I followed this tutorial originally (Along with another more comprehensive tutorial which has disappeared as this guy re-configured his site but used to be here (404).) I've ensured that the scene is visible (as can be seen within the full project) to the light source (which uses an orthogonal projection matrix.) Shader utilities function fine in non-shadow-mapped projects. I should also note that at no point is the GL error state set. What am I doing wrong here and why did this not cause problems on my AMD card? (System: Ubuntu 12.04, Linux 3.2.0-49-generic, 64 bit, with the nvidia-experimental-310 driver package. All other games are functioning fine so it's most likely not a card/driver issue.)

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• Answers to “What source control system do you use?” (and some winners)

  - by jamiet

  About a month ago I posed a question here on my blog SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff) in which I asked SQL Server developers to answer the following questions: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? I had some really great responses (I highly recommend going and reading them). I promised that the five best, most thought-provoking, responses (as determined by me) would win one of five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect; here are the five that I chose (note that if you responded but did not leave a means of getting in touch then you weren’t considered for one of the prizes – sorry): In general, I don't think the management overhead and licensing cost associated with TFS is worthwhile if all you're doing is using source control. To get value from TFS, at a minimum you need to be using team build, and possibly other stuff as well, such as the sharepoint integration. If that's all you need, then svn with Tortoise would be my first choice. If you want to add build automation later, you can do this with cruisecontrol (is it still called that?), JetBrains, etc. For a long time I thought that Redgate's claims about "bridging the SSMS-VS divide" were a load of hot air, since in my experience anyone who knew what they were doing was using Visual Studio, in particular SSDT and its predecessors. However, on a recent client I was putting in source control for the first time, and I discovered that the "divide" really does exist. That client has ended up using svn with Redgate SQL Source Control, with no build automation, but with scope to add it in the future. Gavin Campbell I think putting the DB under source control is a great idea.  I have issues with the earlier versions of SQL Source Control in that it provides little help in versioning the DB. I think the latest version merges SQL Compare and SQL Source Control together.  Which is how it should have been all along. Sure I have the DB scripts in SVN, but I can't automate DB builds and changes without more tools.  Frankly I'm surprised databases don't have some sort of versioning built into them. Nick Portelli Source control has been immensely useful and saved me from a lot of rework on more than one occasion.  I have learned that you have to be extremely careful checking in data.  Our system is internal only so during the system production run once a week, if there is a problem that I can fix easily(for example, a control table points to a file in the wrong environment), I'll do it directly in production so the run can continue as soon as possible since we have a specified time window.  We do full test runs to minimize this but it has come up once or twice.  We use Red-Gate source control to "push" from the test environment to the production environment.  There have been a couple of occasions where the test environment with the wrong setting was pushed back over the production environment because the change was made only in production.  Gotta keep an eye on that. Alan Dykes Goodness is it manual.  And can be extremely painful at times.  Not only are we running thin, we are constrained on the tools we can get ($$ must mean free).  Certainly no excuse, and a great opportunity to improve my skills by learning new things.  But...  Getting buy in a on a proven process or methodology is hard, takes time, and diverts us from development.  If SQL Source Control is easy to use and proven oh boy could you get some serious fans around here!  Seriously though, as the "accidental dba" of this shop any new ideas / easy to implement tools can make a world of difference in productivity and most importantly accuracy.  Manual = bad. :) John Hennesey (who left his email address) The one thing I would love to know more about is the unique challenges of working with databases as source code - you can store scripts, but are they written as deployment scripts with all the logic about how to apply them to an existing DB? Where is that baseline DB? Where's the data? How does a team share the data and the code? It's a real challenge. Merrill Aldrich Congratulations to the five of you. Red Gate will be in touch with you soon about your free licenses. Thank you to all those that responded. And again, go and check out all the responses – those above are only small proportion from what is a very interesting comment thread. @Jamiet

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• Write your Tests in RSpec with IronRuby

  - by kazimanzurrashid

  [Note: This is not a continuation of my previous post, treat it as an experiment out in the wild. ] Lets consider the following class, a fictitious Fund Transfer Service: public class FundTransferService : IFundTransferService { private readonly ICurrencyConvertionService currencyConvertionService; public FundTransferService(ICurrencyConvertionService currencyConvertionService) { this.currencyConvertionService = currencyConvertionService; } public void Transfer(Account fromAccount, Account toAccount, decimal amount) { decimal convertionRate = currencyConvertionService.GetConvertionRate(fromAccount.Currency, toAccount.Currency); decimal convertedAmount = convertionRate * amount; fromAccount.Withdraw(amount); toAccount.Deposit(convertedAmount); } } public class Account { public Account(string currency, decimal balance) { Currency = currency; Balance = balance; } public string Currency { get; private set; } public decimal Balance { get; private set; } public void Deposit(decimal amount) { Balance += amount; } public void Withdraw(decimal amount) { Balance -= amount; } } We can write the spec with MSpec + Moq like the following: public class When_fund_is_transferred { const decimal ConvertionRate = 1.029m; const decimal TransferAmount = 10.0m; const decimal InitialBalance = 100.0m; static Account fromAccount; static Account toAccount; static FundTransferService fundTransferService; Establish context = () => { fromAccount = new Account("USD", InitialBalance); toAccount = new Account("CAD", InitialBalance); var currencyConvertionService = new Moq.Mock<ICurrencyConvertionService>(); currencyConvertionService.Setup(ccv => ccv.GetConvertionRate(Moq.It.IsAny<string>(), Moq.It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(ConvertionRate); fundTransferService = new FundTransferService(currencyConvertionService.Object); }; Because of = () => { fundTransferService.Transfer(fromAccount, toAccount, TransferAmount); }; It should_decrease_from_account_balance = () => { fromAccount.Balance.ShouldBeLessThan(InitialBalance); }; It should_increase_to_account_balance = () => { toAccount.Balance.ShouldBeGreaterThan(InitialBalance); }; } and if you run the spec it will give you a nice little output like the following: When fund is transferred » should decrease from account balance » should increase to account balance 2 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, took 1.14 seconds (MSpec). Now, lets see how we can write exact spec in RSpec. require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../FundTransfer/bin/Debug/FundTransfer" require "spec" require "caricature" describe "When fund is transferred" do Convertion_Rate = 1.029 Transfer_Amount = 10.0 Initial_Balance = 100.0 before(:all) do @from_account = FundTransfer::Account.new("USD", Initial_Balance) @to_account = FundTransfer::Account.new("CAD", Initial_Balance) currency_convertion_service = Caricature::Isolation.for(FundTransfer::ICurrencyConvertionService) currency_convertion_service.when_receiving(:get_convertion_rate).with(:any, :any).return(Convertion_Rate) fund_transfer_service = FundTransfer::FundTransferService.new(currency_convertion_service) fund_transfer_service.transfer(@from_account, @to_account, Transfer_Amount) end it "should decrease from account balance" do @from_account.balance.should be < Initial_Balance end it "should increase to account balance" do @to_account.balance.should be > Initial_Balance end end I think the above code is self explanatory, treat the require(line 1- 4) statements as the add reference of our visual studio projects, we are adding all the required libraries with this statement. Next, the describe which is a RSpec keyword. The before does exactly the same as NUnit's Setup or MsTest’s TestInitialize attribute, but in the above we are using before(:all) which acts as ClassInitialize of MsTest, that means it will be executed only once before all the test methods. In the before(:all) we are first instantiating the from and to accounts, it is same as creating with the full name (including namespace)  like fromAccount = new FundTransfer.Account(.., ..), next, we are creating a mock object of ICurrencyConvertionService, check that for creating the mock we are not using the Moq like the MSpec version. This is somewhat an interesting issue of IronRuby or maybe the DLR, it seems that it is not possible to use the lambda expression that most of the mocking tools uses in arrange phase in Iron Ruby, like: currencyConvertionService.Setup(ccv => ccv.GetConvertionRate(Moq.It.IsAny<string>(), Moq.It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(ConvertionRate); But the good news is, there is already an excellent mocking tool called Caricature written completely in IronRuby which we can use to mock the .NET classes. May be all the mocking tool providers should give some thought to add the support for the DLR, so that we can use the tool that we are already familiar with. I think the rest of the code is too simple, so I am skipping the explanation. Now, the last thing, how we are going to run it with RSpec, lets first install the required gems. Open you command prompt and type the following: igem sources -a http://gems.github.com This will add the GitHub as gem source. Next type: igem install uuidtools caricature rspec and at last we have to create a batch file so that we can execute it in the Notepad++, create a batch like in the IronRuby bin directory like my previous post and put the following in that batch file: @echo off cls call spec %1 --format specdoc pause Next, add a run menu and shortcut in the Notepad++ like my previous post. Now when we run it it will show the following output: When fund is transferred - should decrease from account balance - should increase to account balance Finished in 0.332042 seconds 2 examples, 0 failures Press any key to continue . . . You will complete code of this post in the bottom. That's it for today. Download: RSpecIntegration.zip

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• HPCM 11.1.2.2.x - How to find data in an HPCM Standard Costing database

  - by Jane Story

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When working with a Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM) Standard Costing application, there can often be a requirement to check data or allocated results using reporting tools e.g Smartview. To do this, you are retrieving data directly from the Essbase databases related to your HPCM model. For information, running reports is covered in Chapter 9 of the HPCM User documentation. The aim of this blog is to provide a quick guide to finding this data for reporting in the HPCM generated Essbase database in v11.1.2.2.x of HPCM. In order to retrieve data from an HPCM generated Essbase database, it is important to understand each of the following dimensions in the Essbase database and where data is located within them: Measures dimension – identifies Measures AllocationType dimension – identifies Direct Allocation Data or Genealogy Allocation data Point Of View (POV) dimensions – there must be at least one, maximum of four. Business dimensions: Stage Business dimensions – these will be identified by the Stage prefix. Intra-Stage dimension – these will be identified by the _Intra suffix. Essbase outlines and reporting is explained in the documentation here:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_user/ch09s02.html For additional details on reporting measures, please review this section of the documentation:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_user/apas03.html Reporting requirements in HPCM quite often start with identifying non balanced items in the Stage Balancing report. The following documentation link provides help with identifying some of the items within the Stage Balancing report:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_user/generatestagebalancing.html The following are some types of data upon which you may want to report: Stage Data: Direct Input Assigned Input Data Assigned Output Data Idle Cost/Revenue Unassigned Cost/Revenue Over Driven Cost/Revenue Direct Allocation Data Genealogy Allocation Data Stage Data Stage Data consists of: Direct Input i.e. input data, the starting point of your allocation e.g. in Stage 1 Assigned Input Data i.e. the cost/revenue received from a prior stage (i.e. stage 2 and higher). Assigned Output Data i.e. for each stage, the data that will be assigned forward is assigned post stage data. Reporting on this data is explained in the documentation here:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_user/ch09s03.html Dimension Selection Measures Direct Input: CostInput RevenueInput Assigned Input (from previous stages): CostReceivedPriorStage RevenueReceivedPriorStage Assigned Output (to subsequent stages): CostAssignedPostStage RevenueAssignedPostStage AllocationType DirectAllocation POV One member from each POV dimension Stage Business Dimensions Any members for the stage business dimensions for the stage you wish to see the Stage data for. All other Dimensions NoMember Idle/Unassigned/OverDriven To view Idle, Unassigned or Overdriven Costs/Revenue, first select which stage for which you want to view this data. If multiple Stages have unassigned/idle, resolve the earliest first and re-run the calculation as differences in early stages will create unassigned/idle in later stages. Dimension Selection Measures Idle: IdleCost IdleRevenue Unassigned: UnAssignedCost UnAssignedRevenue Overdriven: OverDrivenCost OverDrivenRevenue AllocationType DirectAllocation POV One member from each POV dimension Dimensions in the Stage with Unassigned/ Idle/OverDriven Cost All the Stage Business dimensions in the Stage with Unassigned/Idle/Overdriven. Zoom in on each dimension to find the individual members to find which members have Unassigned/Idle/OverDriven data. All other Dimensions NoMember Direct Allocation Data Direct allocation data shows the data received by a destination intersection from a source intersection where a direct assignment(s) exists. Reporting on direct allocation data is explained in the documentation here:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_user/ch09s04.html You would select the following to report direct allocation data Dimension Selection Measures CostReceivedPriorStage AllocationType DirectAllocation POV One member from each POV dimension Stage Business Dimensions Any members for the SOURCE stage business dimensions and the DESTINATION stage business dimensions for the direct allocations for the stage you wish to report on. All other Dimensions NoMember Genealogy Allocation Data Genealogy allocation data shows the indirect data relationships between stages. Genealogy calculations run in the HPCM Reporting database only. Reporting on genealogy data is explained in the documentation here:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_user/ch09s05.html Dimension Selection Measures CostReceivedPriorStage AllocationType GenealogyAllocation (IndirectAllocation in 11.1.2.1 and prior versions) POV One member from each POV dimension Stage Business Dimensions Any stage business dimension members from the STARTING stage in Genealogy Any stage business dimension members from the INTERMEDIATE stage(s) in Genealogy Any stage business dimension members from the ENDING stage in Genealogy All other Dimensions NoMember Notes If you still don’t see data after checking the above, please check the following Check the calculation has been run. Here are couple of indicators that might help them with that. Note the size of essbase cube before and after calculations ensure that a calculation was run against the database you are examing. Export the essbase data to a text file to confirm that some data exists. Examine the date and time on task area to see when, if any, calculations were run and what choices were used (e.g. Genealogy choices) If data does not exist in places where they are expecting, it could be that No calculations/genealogy were run No calculations were successfully run The model/data at feeder location were either absent or incompatible, resulting in no allocation e.g no driver data. Smartview Invocation from HPCM From version 11.1.2.2.350 of HPCM (this version will be GA shortly), it is possible to directly invoke Smartview from HPCM. There is guided navigation before the Smartview invocation and it is then possible to see the selected value(s) in SmartView. Click to Download HPCM 11.1.2.2.x - How to find data in an HPCM Standard Costing database (Right click or option-click the link and choose "Save As..." to download this pdf file)

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• Delving into design patterns, and what that means for the Oracle user experience

  - by Kathy.Miedema

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience George Hackman, Senior Director, Applications User Experiences The Oracle Applications User Experience team has some exciting things happening around Fusion Applications design patterns. Because we’re hoping to have some new offerings soon (stay tuned with VoX to see what’s in the pipeline around Fusion Applications design patterns), now is a good time to talk more about what design patterns can do for the individual user as well as the entire company. George Hackman, Senior Director of Operations User Experience, says the first thing to note is that user experience is not just about the user interface. It’s about understanding how people do things, observing them, and then finding the patterns that emerge. The Applications UX team develops those patterns and then builds them into Oracle applications. What emerges, Hackman says, is a consistent, efficient user experience that promotes a productive workplace. Creating design patterns What is a design pattern in the context of enterprise software? “Every day, people use technology to get things done,” Hackman says. “They navigate a virtual world that reaches from enterprise to consumer apps, and from desktop to mobile. This virtual world is constantly under construction. New areas are being developed and old areas are being redone. As this world is being built and remodeled, efficient pathways and practices emerge. “Oracle's user experience team watches users navigate this world. We measure their productivity and ask them about their satisfaction. We take the most efficient, most productive pathways from the enterprise and consumer world and turn them into Oracle's user experience patterns.” Hackman describes the process as combining all of the best practices from every part of a user’s world. Members of the user experience team observe, analyze, design, prototype, and measure each work task to find the best possible pattern for a particular work flow. As the team builds the patterns, “we make sure they are fully buildable using Oracle technology,” Hackman said. “So customers know they can use these patterns. There’s no need to make something up from scratch, not knowing whether you can even build it.” Hackman says that creating something on a computer is a good example of a user experience pattern. “People are creating things all the time,” he says. “On the consumer side, they are creating documents. On the enterprise side, they are creating expense reports. On a mobile phone, they are creating contacts. They are using different apps like iPhone or Facebook or Gmail or Oracle software, all doing this creation process.” The Applications UX team starts their process by observing how people might create something. “We observe people creating things. We see the patterns, we analyze and document, then we apply them to our products. It might be different from phone to web browser, but we have these design patterns that create a consistent experience across platforms, and across products, too. The result for customers Oracle constantly improves its part of the virtual world, Hackman said. New products are created and existing products are upgraded. Because Oracle builds user experience design patterns, Oracle's virtual world becomes both more powerful and more familiar at the same time. Because of design patterns, users can navigate with ease as they embrace the latest technology – because it behaves the way they expect it to. This means less training and faster adoption for individual users, and more productivity for the business as a whole. Hackman said Oracle gives customers and partners access to design patterns so that they can build in the virtual world using the same best practices. Customers and partners can extend applications with a user experience that is comfortable and familiar to their users. For businesses that are integrating different Oracle applications, design patterns are key. The user experience created in E-Business Suite should be similar to the user experience in Fusion Applications, Hackman said. If a user is transitioning from one application to the other, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to do their work. With design patterns, it isn’t. “Oracle user experience patterns are the building blocks for the virtual world that ensure productivity, consistency and user satisfaction,” Hackman said. “They are built for the enterprise, but incorporate the best practices from across the virtual world. They empower productivity and facilitate social interaction. When you build with patterns, you get all the end-user benefits of less training / retraining from the finished product. You also get faster / cheaper development.” What’s coming? You can already access design patterns to help you build Dashboards with OBIEE here. And we promised you at the beginning that we had something in the pipeline on Fusion Applications design patterns. Look for the announcement about when they are available here on VoX.

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• Tuning Red Gate: #4 of Some

  - by Grant Fritchey

  First time connecting to these servers directly (keys to the kingdom, bwa-ha-ha-ha. oh, excuse me), so I'm going to take a look at the server properties, just to see if there are any issues there. Max memory is set, cool, first possible silly mistake clear. In fact, these look to be nicely set up. Oh, I'd like to see the ANSI Standards set by default, but it's not a big deal. The default location for database data is the F:\ drive, where I saw all the activity last time. Cool, the people maintaining the servers in our company listen, parallelism threshold is set to 35 and optimize for ad hoc is enabled. No shocks, no surprises. The basic setup is appropriate. On to the problem database. Nothing wrong in the properties. The database is in SIMPLE recovery, but I think it's a reporting system, so no worries there. Again, I'd prefer to see the ANSI settings for connections, but that's the worst thing I can see. Time to look at the queries, tables, indexes and statistics because all the information I've collected over the last several days suggests that we're not looking at a systemic problem (except possibly not enough memory), but at the traditional tuning issues. I just want to note that, I started looking at the system, not the queries. So should you when tuning your environment. I know, from the data collected through SQL Monitor, what my top poor performing queries are, and the most frequently called, etc. I'm starting with the most frequently called. I'm going to get the execution plan for this thing out of the cache (although, with the cache dumping constantly, I might not get it). And it's not there. Called 1.3 million times over the last 3 days, but it's not in cache. Wow. OK. I'll see what's in cache for this database: SELECT  deqs.creation_time,         deqs.execution_count,         deqs.max_logical_reads,         deqs.max_elapsed_time,         deqs.total_logical_reads,         deqs.total_elapsed_time,         deqp.query_plan,         SUBSTRING(dest.text, (deqs.statement_start_offset / 2) + 1,                   (deqs.statement_end_offset - deqs.statement_start_offset) / 2                   + 1) AS QueryStatement FROM    sys.dm_exec_query_stats AS deqs         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) AS dest         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(deqs.plan_handle) AS deqp WHERE   dest.dbid = DB_ID('Warehouse') AND deqs.statement_end_offset > 0 AND deqs.statement_start_offset > 0 ORDER BY deqs.max_logical_reads DESC ; And looking at the most expensive operation, we have our first bad boy: Multiple table scans against very large sets of data and a sort operation. a sort operation? It's an insert. Oh, I see, the table is a heap, so it's doing an insert, then sorting the data and then inserting into the primary key. First question, why isn't this a clustered index? Let's look at some more of the queries. The next one is deceiving. Here's the query plan: You're thinking to yourself, what's the big deal? Well, what if I told you that this thing had 8036318 reads? I know, you're looking at skinny little pipes. Know why? Table variable. Estimated number of rows = 1. Actual number of rows. well, I'm betting several more than one considering it's read 8 MILLION pages off the disk in a single execution. We have a serious and real tuning candidate. Oh, and I missed this, it's loading the table variable from a user defined function. Let me check, let me check. YES! A multi-statement table valued user defined function. And another tuning opportunity. This one's a beauty, seriously. Did I also mention that they're doing a hash against all the columns in the physical table. I'm sure that won't lead to scans of a 500,000 row table, no, not at all. OK. I lied. Of course it is. At least it's on the top part of the Loop which means the scan is only executed once. I just did a cursory check on the next several poor performers. all calling the UDF. I think I found a big tuning opportunity. At this point, I'm typing up internal emails for the company. Someone just had their baby called ugly. In addition to a series of suggested changes that we need to implement, I'm also apologizing for being such an unkind monster as to question whether that third eye & those flippers belong on such an otherwise lovely child.

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• How to Secure a Data Role by Multiple Business Units

  - by Elie Wazen

  In this post we will see how a Role can be data secured by multiple Business Units (BUs).  Separate Data Roles are generally created for each BU if a corresponding data template generates roles on the basis of the BU dimension. The advantage of creating a policy with a rule that includes multiple BUs is that while mapping these roles in HCM Role Provisioning Rules, fewer number of entires need to be made. This could facilitate maintenance for enterprises with a large number of Business Units. Note: The example below applies as well if the securing entity is Inventory Organization. Let us take for example the case of a user provisioned with the "Accounts Payable Manager - Vision Operations" Data Role in Fusion Applications. This user will be able to access Invoices in Vision Operations but will not be able to see Invoices in Vision Germany. Figure 1. A User with a Data Role restricting them to Data from BU: Vision Operations With the role granted above, this is what the user will see when they attempt to select Business Units while searching for AP Invoices. Figure 2.The List Of Values of Business Units is limited to single one. This is the effect of the Data Role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 1 In order to create a data role that secures by multiple BUs,  we need to start by creating a condition that groups those Business Units we want to include in that data role. This is accomplished by creating a new condition against the BU View .  That Condition will later be used to create a data policy for our newly created Role.  The BU View is a Database resource and  is accessed from APM as seen in the search below Figure 3.Viewing a Database Resource in APM The next step is create a new condition,  in which we define a sql predicate that includes 2 BUs ( The ids below refer to Vision Operations and Vision Germany).  At this point we have simply created a standalone condition.  We have not used this condition yet, and security is therefore not affected. Figure 4. Custom Role that inherits the Purchase Order Overview Duty We are now ready to create our Data Policy.  in APM, we search for our newly Created Role and Navigate to “Find Global Policies”.  we query the Role we want to secure and navigate to view its global policies. Figure 5. The Job Role we plan on securing We can see that the role was not defined with a Data Policy . So will create one that uses the condition we created earlier.   Figure 6. Creating a New Data Policy In the General Information tab, we have to specify the DB Resource that the Security Policy applies to:  In our case this is the BU View Figure 7. Data Policy Definition - Selection of the DB Resource we will secure by In the Rules Tab, we  make the rule applicable to multiple values of the DB Resource we selected in the previous tab.  This is where we associate the condition we created against the BU view to this data policy by entering the Condition name in the Condition field Figure 8. Data Policy Rule The last step of Defining the Data Policy, consists of  explicitly selecting  the Actions that are goverened by this Data Policy.  In this case for example we select the Actions displayed below in the right pane. Once the record is saved , we are ready to use our newly secured Data Role. Figure 9. Data Policy Actions We can now see a new Data Policy associated with our Role.  Figure 10. Role is now secured by a Data Policy We now Assign that new Role to the User.  Of course this does not have to be done in OIM and can be done using a Provisioning Rule in HCM. Figure 11. Role assigned to the User who previously was granted the Vision Ops secured role. Once that user accesses the Invoices Workarea this is what they see: In the image below the LOV of Business Unit returns the two values defined in our data policy namely: Vision Operations and Vision Germany Figure 12. The List Of Values of Business Units now includes the two we included in our data policy. This is the effect of the data role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 11

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• Superpower Your Touchpad Computer with Scrybe

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you looking for a way to help your Touchpad computer make you more productive?  Here’s a quick look at Scrybe, a new application from Synaptics that lets you superpower it. Touchpad devices have become increasingly more interesting as they’ve included support for multi-touch gestures.  Scrybe takes it to the next level and lets you use your touchpad as an application launcher.  You can launch any application, website, or complete many common commands on your computer with a simple gesture.  Scrybe works with most modern Synaptics touchpads, which are standard on most laptops and netbooks.  It is optimized for newer multi-touch touchpads, but can also work with standard single-touch touchpads.  It works on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, so chances are it will work with your laptop or netbook. Get Started With Scrybe Head over to the Scrybe website and download the latest version (link below).  You are asked to enter your email address, name, and information about your computer…but you actually only have to enter your email address.  Click Download when finished. Run the installer when it’s download.  It will automatically download the latest Synaptics driver for your touchpad and any other components needed for Scrybe.  Note that the Scrybe installer will ask to install the Yahoo! toolbar, so uncheck this to avoid adding this worthless browser toolbar. Using Scrybe To open an application or website with a gesture, press 3 fingers on your touchpad at once, or if your touchpad doesn’t support multi-touch gestures, then press Ctrl+Alt and press 1 finger on your touchpad.  This will open the Scrype input pane; start drawing a gesture, and you’ll see it on the grey square.  The input pane shows some default gestures you can try. Here we drew an “M”, which opens our default Music player.  As soon as you finish the gesture and lift up your finger, Scrybe will open the application or website you selected. A notification balloon will let you know what gesture was preformed. When you’re entering your gesture, the input pane will show white “ink”.  The “ink” will turn blue if the command is recognized, but will turn red if it isn’t.  If Scrybe doesn’t recognize your command, press 3 fingers and try again. Scrybe Control Panel You can open the Scrybe Control panel to enter or change commands by entering a box-like gesture, or right-clicking the Scrybe icon in your system tray and selecting “Scrybe Control Panel”. Scrybe has many pre-configured gestures that you can preview and even practice. All of the gestures in the Popular tab are preset and cannot be changed.  However, the ones in the favorites tab can be edited.  Select the gesture you wish to edit, and click the gear icon to change it.  Here we changed the email gesture to open Hotmail instead of the default Yahoo Mail. Scrybe can also help you perform many common Windows commands such as Copy and Undo.  Select the Tools tab to see all of these commands.   Scrybe has many settings you may wish to change.  Select the Preferences button in the Control Panel to change these.  Here’s some of the settings we changed. Uncheck “Display a message” to turn off the tooltip notifications when you enter a gesture Uncheck “Show symbol hints” to turn off the sidebar on the input pane Select the search engine you want to open with the Search Gesture.  The default is Yahoo, but you can choose your favorite. Adding a new Scrybe Gesture The default Scrybe options are useful, but the best part is that you can assign gestures to your own programs or websites.  Open the Scrybe control panel, and click the plus sign on the bottom left corner.  Enter a name for your gesture, and then choose if it is for a website or an application. If you want the gesture to open a website, enter the address in the box. Alternately, if you want your gesture to open an application, select Launch Application and then either enter the path to the application, or click the button beside the Launch field and browse to it. Now click the down arrow on the blue box and choose one of the gestures for your application or website. Your new gesture will show up under the Favorites tab in the Scrybe control panel, and you can use it whenever you want from Scrybe, or practice the gesture by selecting the Practice button. Conclusion If you enjoy multi-touch gestures, you may find Scrybe very useful on your laptop or netbook.  Scrybe recognizes gestures fairly easily, even if you don’t enter them perfectly correctly.  Just like pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scroll, Scrybe can quickly become something you miss on other laptops. Download Scrybe (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing Firefox Scrolling Problems with Dell Synaptics TouchpadRemove Synaptics Touchpad Icon from System TrayRoll Back Troublesome Device Drivers in Windows VistaChange Your Computer Name in Windows 7 or VistaLet Somebody Use Your Computer Without Logging Off in Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• Bring Office 2003 Menus Back to 2010 with UBitMenu

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you having trouble getting used to the Ribbon interface in Office 2010?  Here’s how you can roll back the clock a bit and bring back the familiar menus and toolbars from 2003. The Office 2007 Ribbon was both praised and criticized.  While many users felt they were more productive with the new interface, others felt frustrated searching for commands they had memorized in older versions of Office.  Now, with Office 2010, the ribbon interface has been brought to every app in the Office suite, and is integrated into many newer programs from Microsoft. If you’re moving from Office 2003, using UBitMenu allows you to add the old familiar menus back along with the new Ribbon interface for an easier learning curve. Also, with the customizability of Office 2010, we can strip away the extra Ribbon tabs to make it more like 2003. Get the 2003 Menus and Toolbars Back in Office 2010 Download UBitMenu (link below), and install as normal.  Make sure all of your Office programs are closed during the installation.  This handy utility is very small, and installed amazingly quick. Open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint and there’s now a new Menu tab beside Home in the Ribbon.  Now you can access all of your favorite old Office commands in the familiar menus, and access many of the newer Office features such as SmartArt.   Here’s a close-up of the toolbar.  Notice that the layout is very similar to that of Word 2003. You can access all of the new Transitions in PowerPoint 2010 from the menu bar.   The menu in Excel even included support for the new PivotTable and PivotCharts Wizard. One problem we noticed was that the toolbars were condensed to a drop-down menu if the Office window was less than 870px wide.  This may be a frustration to users with low-resolution displays, and you might want to use the Office Apps maximized. Get Rid of the Ribbon Now that you’ve got the old menus back, you can get rid of the extra ribbon tabs if you’d like.  Office 2010 lets you customize your ribbon and remove tabs, so let’s get rid of all the other tabs except for our new Menu tab.  In our example we’re using Word, but you can do it in Excel or PowerPoint the same way. Click the File tab and select Options. Alternately, in the Menu tab, select Tools and then Word Options. Select Customize Ribbon on the left sidebar, then uncheck the boxes beside all the ribbon tabs you want to hide on the right.  Click Ok when you’re finished. While you’re at it, you can change the default color scheme as well. Note: The color change will automatically change the color scheme in all of the Office apps, so you’ll only need to do that once. Now the ribbon only has 2 tabs…the File tab for the new Backstage View, and the UBitMenu tab we just installed.  It almost has the appearance Word 2003, but with the new features of Word 2010!  You’ll need to repeat these steps in Excel and PowerPoint if you want to customize their ribbon the same.   Conclusion If you’ve been having a hard time getting used to Office 2010, UBitMenu is a great way to get familiar with the new interface, or simply stay productive with your old tricks.  We do wish it supported the other Office applications like OneNote and Outlook. That doesn’t make it a deal breaker though, it can make the learning curve easier in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. UBitMenu is free for personal use, and available at a very reasonable price for businesses. If you’re using Office 2007 and not a fan of the Ribbon, UBitMenu works for it as well. Download UBitMenu Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Bring Back the Old Menus in Office 2007Upgrade Office 2003 to 2010 on XP or Run them Side by SideHow to Find Office 2003 Commands in Office 2010Make Word 2007 Always Save in Word 2003 FormatMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets

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• Record Screen Activity with CamStudio

  - by Asian Angel

  Sometimes a visual demonstration works much better than a list of instructions. If you need to make a demo video for family and/or friends then you might want to have a look at CamStudio. Using CamStudio To get properly set up you will need to install two different files (the main program followed by the codec). Once that is done you are ready to get started. When you start the program you will see a surprisingly small window. Notice the highlighted Record to text…it serves as a visual indicator for the video type selected for recording. Before you start creating a video it would be a good idea to look through some of the settings. The first one to look at is the region or area that you want to record. Next you will want to look through the video options since these will affect the quality and final size of your video files. The default setting for quality is 70…adjust that to the level that best suits your needs. Note: For our example we maxed out the various video settings for best quality. On our system Microsoft Video 1 was listed as the default compressor but as you can see there were other options available. You can configure the settings for the compressor you want to use if desired. Keep in mind that each compressor will have unique settings of their own, so if you change it, be certain to go back and check. We decided to use the CamStudio Lossless Codec for our example (it gave the best results while trying the software). Going back to the main window you can toggle back and forth between .avi and .swf output using the last button. Once you are satisfied with the settings click on the red record button to start. If you need to pause while recording or stop recording click on the system tray icon and select the appropriate command. When you are finished recording, you will be presented with the save file window. Browse for the desired save location and name your new file. Once you have saved the file the movie player window will automatically open so that you view your new video. Our sample video shown here is at 50% of original size so may look slightly “gritty”. The detail was much better at 100%. If you decide to record and save as .swf the process will be identical to recording in .avi format until the movie player window opens. At that time the conversion process from .avi to .swf will begin. When complete you will have a new flash video and html file that goes with it. Depending on which browser you have set as default, you may run into a small problem when the preview for your new .swf file tries to open. There is a small bug in the generated html file. You can use this work-around or… Just open the .swf file directly in your favorite browser. Conclusion CamStudio may not produce the highest quality videos, but it’s free and does a very nice job nonetheless. If you are working on a tight budget or only need to make an occasional video then CamStudio is a very sensible choice. Links Download CamStudio Stable Version & CamStudio Codec *Download links are approximately half-way down the page. Download CamStudio Stable Version & CamStudio Codec at SourceForge *Beta version also available here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7How To Copy a DVD with VLC 1.0ALLCapture 3.0 [Review]Listen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureGeek Reviews: Play And Record Internet Radio With Screamer Radio TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate

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• Online Password Security Tactics

  - by BuckWoody

  Recently two more large databases were attacked and compromised, one at the popular Gawker Media sites and the other at McDonald’s. Every time this kind of thing happens (which is FAR too often) it should remind the technical professional to ensure that they secure their systems correctly. If you write software that stores passwords, it should be heavily encrypted, and not human-readable in any storage. I advocate a different store for the login and password, so that if one is compromised, the other is not. I also advocate that you set a bit flag when a user changes their password, and send out a reminder to change passwords if that bit isn’t changed every three or six months.    But this post is about the *other* side – what to do to secure your own passwords, especially those you use online, either in a cloud service or at a provider. While you’re not in control of these breaches, there are some things you can do to help protect yourself. Most of these are obvious, but they contain a few little twists that make the process easier.   Use Complex Passwords This is easily stated, and probably one of the most un-heeded piece of advice. There are three main concepts here: ·         Don’t use a dictionary-based word ·         Use mixed case ·         Use punctuation, special characters and so on   So this: password Isn’t nearly as safe as this: P@ssw03d   Of course, this only helps if the site that stores your password encrypts it. Gawker does, so theoretically if you had the second password you’re in better shape, at least, than the first. Dictionary words are quickly broken, regardless of the encryption, so the more unusual characters you use, and the farther away from the dictionary words you get, the better.   Of course, this doesn’t help, not even a little, if the site stores the passwords in clear text, or the key to their encryption is broken. In that case…   Use a Different Password at Every Site What? I have hundreds of sites! Are you kidding me? Nope – I’m not. If you use the same password at every site, when a site gets attacked, the attacker will store your name and password value for attacks at other sites. So the only safe thing to do is to use different names or passwords (or both) at each site. Of course, most sites use your e-mail as a username, so you’re kind of hosed there. So even though you have hundreds of sites you visit, you need to have at least a different password at each site.   But it’s easier than you think – if you use an algorithm.   What I’m describing is to pick a “root” password, and then modify that based on the site or purpose. That way, if the site is compromised, you can still use that root password for the other sites.   Let’s take that second password: P@ssw03d   And now you can append, prepend or intersperse that password with other characters to make it unique to the site. That way you can easily remember the root password, but make it unique to the site. For instance, perhaps you read a lot of information on Gawker – how about these:   P@ssw03dRead ReadP@ssw03d PR@esasdw03d   If you have lots of sites, tracking even this can be difficult, so I recommend you use password software such as Password Safe or some other tool to have a secure database of your passwords at each site. DO NOT store this on the web. DO NOT use an Office document (Microsoft or otherwise) that is “encrypted” – the encryption office automation packages use is very trivial, and easily broken. A quick web search for tools to do that should show you how bad a choice this is.   Change Your Password on a Schedule I know. It’s a real pain. And it doesn’t seem worth it…until your account gets hacked. A quick note here – whenever a site gets hacked (and I find out about it) I change the password at that site immediately (or quit doing business with them) and then change the root password on every site, as quickly as I can.   If you follow the tip above, it’s not as hard. Just add another number, year, month, day, something like that into the mix. It’s not unlike making a Primary Key in an RDBMS.   P@ssw03dRead10242010   Change the site, and then update your password database. I do this about once a month, on the first or last day, during staff meetings. (J)   If you have other tips, post them here. We can all learn from each other on this.

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• Trace File Source Adapter

  The Trace File Source adapter is a useful addition to your SSIS toolbox.  It allows you to read 2005 and 2008 profiler traces stored as .trc files and read them into the Data Flow.  From there you can perform filtering and analysis using the power of SSIS. There is no need for a SQL Server connection this just uses the trace file. Example Usages Cache warming for SQL Server Analysis Services Reading the flight recorder Find out the longest running queries on a server Analyze statements for CPU, memory by user or some other criteria you choose Properties The Trace File Source adapter has two properties, both of which combine to control the source trace file that is read at runtime. SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 trace files are supported for both the Database Engine (SQL Server) and Analysis Services. The properties are managed by the Editor form or can be set directly from the Properties Grid in Visual Studio. Property Type Description AccessMode Enumeration This property determines how the Filename property is interpreted. The values available are: DirectInput Variable Filename String This property holds the path for trace file to load (*.trc). The value is either a full path, or the name of a variable which contains the full path to the trace file, depending on the AccessMode property. Trace Column Definition Hopefully the majority of you can skip this section entirely, but if you encounter some problems processing a trace file this may explain it and allow you to fix the problem. The component is built upon the trace management API provided by Microsoft. Unfortunately API methods that expose the schema of a trace file have known issues and are unreliable, put simply the data often differs from what was specified. To overcome these limitations the component uses  some simple XML files. These files enable the trace column data types and sizing attributes to be overridden. For example SQL Server Profiler or TMO generated structures define EventClass as an integer, but the real value is a string. TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml  - SQL Server Database Engine Trace Columns TraceDataColumnsAS.xml    - SQL Server Analysis Services Trace Columns The files can be found in the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents folder, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml" If at runtime the component encounters a type conversion or sizing error it is most likely due to a discrepancy between the column definition as reported by the API and the actual value encountered. Whilst most common issues have already been fixed through these files we have implemented specific exception traps to direct you to the files to enable you to fix any further issues due to different usage or data scenarios that we have not tested. An example error that you can fix through these files is shown below. Buffer exception writing value to column 'Column Name'. The string value is 999 characters in length, the column is only 111. Columns can be overridden by the TraceDataColumns XML files in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml". Installation The component is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. Finally you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Trace File Source transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations. Please note that the Microsoft Trace classes used in the component are not supported on 64-bit platforms. To use the Trace File Source on a 64-bit host you need to ensure you have the 32-bit (x86) tools available, and the way you execute your package is setup to use them, please see the help topic 64-bit Considerations for Integration Services for more details. Downloads Trace Sources for SQL Server 2005 -- Trace Sources for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.382 - SQL Sever 2008 public release. (9 Apr 2009) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.321 - SQL Server 2005 public release. (18 Nov 2008) -- Screenshots

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Software as a Service (SaaS)

  - by Clint Edmonson

  The cloud was tailor built for aspiring companies to create innovative internet based applications and solutions. Whether you’re a garage startup with very little capital or a Fortune 1000 company, the ability to quickly setup, deliver, and iterate on new products is key to capturing market and mind share. And if you can capture that share and go viral, having resiliency and infinite scale at your finger tips is great peace of mind. Drivers Cost avoidance Time to market Scalability Solution Here’s a sketch of how a basic Software as a Service solution might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this hosts the core web application. Each web role will host an instance of the software and as the user base grows, additional roles can be spun up to meet demand. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model provides extensibility to hook into other industry specific identity providers as well. Databases – nearly every modern SaaS application is backed by a relational database for its core operational data. If the solution is sold to organizations, there’s a good chance multi-tenancy will be needed. An emerging best practice for SaaS applications is to stand up separate SQL Azure database instances for each tenant’s proprietary data to ensure isolation from other tenants. Worker Role – this is the best place to handle autonomous background processing such as data aggregation, billing through external services, and other specialized tasks that can be performed asynchronously. Placing these tasks in a worker role frees the web roles to focus completely on user interaction and data input and provides finer grained control over the system’s scalability and throughput. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Blobs (optional) – depending on the nature of the software, users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Training & Examples These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and examples where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition (eBook) This book demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud using the latest versions of the Windows Azure Platform and tools. The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Fabrikam Shipping (SaaS reference application) This is a full end to end sample scenario which demonstrates how to use the Windows Azure platform for exposing an application as a service. We developed this demo just as you would: we had an existing on-premises sample, Fabrikam Shipping, and we wanted to see what it would take to transform it in a full subscription based solution. The demo you find here is the result of that investigation See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including more links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Backup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus Webstorage

  - by Mysticgeek

  Windows Home Server lets you backup machines on your network easily. But what about backing up the server data? Today we take a look at ASUS WebStorage for Windows Home Server, which provides you with secure off-site backup for WHS. To use the ASUS WebStorage service you’ll need to sign up for a free account. It offers 1GB of free storage, then you can purchase an unlimited backup package for $39.99 for a year subscription. Note: They also offer online storage for individual PCs as well. Install ASUS WebStorage for WHS Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over the WHSConnectorSetup2.2.4.088.msi file (link below) then close out of the folder. Now launch Windows Home Server Console from one of the computers on your network, click Settings, then Add-ins. Under Available Add-ins click the Available tab and you’ll see the Asus WebStorage installer file we just copied over. Click the Install button. Installation kicks off and when it’s complete, you’ll need to close out of the console and reconnect. Using ASUS WebStorage WHS Connector  When you reconnect to WHS Console, scroll over to the ASUS WebStorage icon and click on Settings. Now log into your ASUS account… Now select the folders you want to backup to the WebStorage service. Select the radio button next to Enable to initialize the backup process… The backup process begins. You can change which folders are backed up simply by disabling the backup process, uncheck the folder(s), then enable the backup again. ASUS WebStorage Site After you have files backed up to the ASUS site, log into your account, and your presented with an overview of the amount of storage you’re using. It also shows what type of files are taking certain amounts of space.   You can browse through your backed up files and folders. It allows you to share and sync backed up data as well. Navigate to the file you want and you can easily download it by clicking on it, or share it out by clicking the share link below it. If you choose to share it, you’re provided with a link to the file to send out to other users.   Conclusion Users of Windows Home Server have been looking for an inexpensive cloud backup solution for quite some time. There are services such as JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala…etc. These services probably do a better job, but can start getting expensive once you start uploading a GBs of data. Another disappointment of ASUS WebStorage is you can only backup your WHS shares (from what we’ve been able to determine), it’s an “all or nothing” type of thing. You cannot go in and select individual files and folders. The initial upload speeds can be a bit slow as well, although that might have something to do with limited upload speeds on the DSL connection we used to test it. Retrieving your data from the ASUS site is a breeze though, and all the data files are organized quite well. The WHS Addin is very easy to install and use. If you’re looking for an off-site solution to backup your WHS data, you can test out ASUS WebStorage for free with a 1GB limit. This is good for testing the service and it might be exactly what you’re looking for. Other users may want a more advanced solution like KeepVault or CloudBerry…which is a front end for Amazon S3 storage. Download ASUS WebStorage WHS Addin Other WHS Offsite Backup Solutions CloudBerry, JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• IBM "per core" comparisons for SPECjEnterprise2010

  - by jhenning

  I recently stumbled upon a blog entry from Roman Kharkovski (an IBM employee) comparing some SPECjEnterprise2010 results for IBM vs. Oracle. Mr. Kharkovski's blog claims that SPARC delivers half the transactions per core vs. POWER7. Prior to any argument, I should say that my predisposition is to like Mr. Kharkovski, because he says that his blog is intended to be factual; that the intent is to try to avoid marketing hype and FUD tactic; and mostly because he features a picture of himself wearing a bike helmet (me too). Therefore, in a spirit of technical argument, rather than FUD fight, there are a few areas in his comparison that should be discussed. Scaling is not free For any benchmark, if a small system scores 13k using quantity R1 of some resource, and a big system scores 57k using quantity R2 of that resource, then, sure, it's tempting to divide: is  13k/R1 > 57k/R2 ? It is tempting, but not necessarily educational. The problem is that scaling is not free. Building big systems is harder than building small systems. Scoring  13k/R1  on a little system provides no guarantee whatsoever that one can sustain that ratio when attempting to handle more than 4 times as many users. Choosing the denominator radically changes the picture When ratios are used, one can vastly manipulate appearances by the choice of denominator. In this case, lots of choices are available for the resource to be compared (R1 and R2 above). IBM chooses to put cores in the denominator. Mr. Kharkovski provides some reasons for that choice in his blog entry. And yet, it should be noted that the very concept of a core is: arbitrary: not necessarily comparable across vendors; fluid: modern chips shift chip resources in response to load; and invisible: unless you have a microscope, you can't see it. By contrast, one can actually see processor chips with the naked eye, and they are a bit easier to count. If we put chips in the denominator instead of cores, we get: 13161.07 EjOPS / 4 chips = 3290 EjOPS per chip for IBM vs 57422.17 EjOPS / 16 chips = 3588 EjOPS per chip for Oracle The choice of denominator makes all the difference in the appearance. Speaking for myself, dividing by chips just seems to make more sense, because: I can see chips and count them; and I can accurately compare the number of chips in my system to the count in some other vendor's system; and Tthe probability of being able to continue to accurately count them over the next 10 years of microprocessor development seems higher than the probability of being able to accurately and comparably count "cores". SPEC Fair use requirements Speaking as an individual, not speaking for SPEC and not speaking for my employer, I wonder whether Mr. Kharkovski's blog article, taken as a whole, meets the requirements of the SPEC Fair Use rule www.spec.org/fairuse.html section I.D.2. For example, Mr. Kharkovski's footnote (1) begins Results from http://www.spec.org as of 04/04/2013 Oracle SUN SPARC T5-8 449 EjOPS/core SPECjEnterprise2010 (Oracle's WLS best SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS/core result on SPARC). IBM Power730 823 EjOPS/core (World Record SPECjEnterprise2010 EJOPS/core result) The questionable tactic, from a Fair Use point of view, is that there is no such metric at the designated location. At www.spec.org, You can find the SPEC metric 57422.17 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS for Oracle and You can also find the SPEC metric 13161.07 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS for IBM. Despite the implication of the footnote, you will not find any mention of 449 nor anything that says 823. SPEC says that you can, under its fair use rule, derive your own values; but it emphasizes: "The context must not give the appearance that SPEC has created or endorsed the derived value." Substantiation and transparency Although SPEC disclaims responsibility for non-SPEC information (section I.E), it says that non-SPEC data and methods should be accurate, should be explained, should be substantiated. Unfortunately, it is difficult or impossible for the reader to independently verify the pricing: Were like units compared to like (e.g. list price to list price)? Were all components (hw, sw, support) included? Were all fees included? Note that when tpc.org shows IBM pricing, there are often items such as "PROCESSOR ACTIVATION" and "MEMORY ACTIVATION". Without the transparency of a detailed breakdown, the pricing claims are questionable. T5 claim for "Fastest Processor" Mr. Kharkovski several times questions Oracle's claim for fastest processor, writing You see, when you publish industry benchmarks, people may actually compare your results to other vendor's results. Well, as we performance people always say, "it depends". If you believe in performance-per-core as the primary way of looking at the world, then yes, the POWER7+ is impressive, spending its chip resources to support up to 32 threads (8 cores x 4 threads). Or, it just might be useful to consider performance-per-chip. Each SPARC T5 chip allows 128 hardware threads to be simultaneously executing (16 cores x 8 threads). The Industry Standard Benchmark that focuses specifically on processor chip performance is SPEC CPU2006. For this very well known and popular benchmark, SPARC T5: provides better performance than both POWER7 and POWER7+, for 1 chip vs. 1 chip, for 8 chip vs. 8 chip, for integer (SPECint_rate2006) and floating point (SPECfp_rate2006), for Peak tuning and for Base tuning. For example, at the 8-chip level, integer throughput (SPECint_rate2006) is: 3750 for SPARC 2170 for POWER7+. You can find the details at the March 2013 BestPerf CPU2006 page SPEC is a trademark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, www.spec.org. The two specific results quoted for SPECjEnterprise2010 are posted at the URLs linked from the discussion. Results for SPEC CPU2006 were verified at spec.org 1 July 2013, and can be rechecked here.

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• SQLCMD Mode: give it one more chance

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    - Click on me. Choose me. - asked one forgotten feature when some bored DBA was purposelessly wondering through the Management Studio menu at the end of her long and busy working day. - Why would I use you? I have heard of no one who does. What are you for? - perplexedly wondered aged and wise DBA. At least that DBA thought she was aged and wise though each day tried to prove to her that she wasn't. - I know you. You are quite lazy. Why would you do additional clicks to move from window to window? From Tool to tool ? This is irritating, isn't it? I can run windows system commands, sql statements and much more from the same script, from the same query window! - I have all my tools that I‘m used to, I have Management Studio, Cmd, Powershell. They can do anything for me. I don’t need additional tools. - I promise you, you will like me. – the thing continued to whine . - All right, show me. – she gave up. It’s always this way, she thought sadly, - easier to agree than to explain why you don’t want. - Enable me and then think about anything that you always couldn’t do through the management studio and had to use other tools. - Ok. Google for me the list of greatest features of SQL SERVER 2012. - Well... I’m not sure... Think about something else. - Ok, here is something easy for you. I want to check if file folder exists or if file is there. Though, I can easily do this using xp_cmdshell … - This is easy for me. – rejoiced the feature. By the way, having the items of the menu talking to you usually means you should stop working and go home. Or drink coffee. Or both. Well, aged and wise dba wasn’t thinking about the weirdness of the situation at that moment. - After enabling me, – said unfairly forgotten feature (it was thinking of itself in such manner) – after enabling me you can use all command line commands in the same management studio query window by adding two exclamation marks !! at the beginning of the script line to denote that you want to use cmd command: -Just keep in mind that when using this feature, you are actually running the commands ON YOUR computer and not on SQL server that query window is connected to. This is main difference from using xp_cmdshell which is executing commands on sql server itself. Bottomline, use UNC path instead of local path. - Look, there are much more than that. - The SQLCMD feature was getting exited.- You can get IP of your servers, create, rename and drop folders. You can see the contents of any file anywhere and even start different tools from the same query window: Not so aged and wise DBA was getting interested: - I also want to run different scripts on different servers without changing connection of the query window. - Sure, sure! Another great feature that CMDmode is providing us with and giving more power to querying. Use “:” to use additional features, like :connect that allows you to change connection: - Now imagine, you have one script where you have all your changes, like creating staging table on the DWH staging server, adding fact table to DWH itself and updating stored procedures in the server where reporting database is located. - Now, give me more challenges! - Script out a list of stored procedures into the text files. - You can do it easily by using command :out which will write the query results into the specified text file. The output can be the code of the stored procedure or any data. Actually this is the same as changing the query output into the file instead of the grid. - Now, take all of the scripts and run all of them, one by one, on the different server.  - Easily - Come on... I’m sure that you can not... -Why not? Naturally, I can do it using :r commant which is opening a script and executing it. Look, I can also use :setvar command to define an environment variable in SQLCMD mode. Just note that you have to leave the empty string between :r commands, otherwise it’s not working although I have no idea why. - Wow.- She was really impressed. - Ok, I’ll go to try all those… -Wait, wait! I know how to google the SQL SERVER features for you! This example will open chrome explorer with search results for the “SQL server 2012 top features” ( change the path to suit your PC): “Well, this can be probably useful stuff, maybe this feature is really unfairly forgotten”, thought the DBA while going through the dark empty parking lot to her lonely car. “As someone really wise once said: “It is what we think we know that keeps us from learning. Learn, unlearn and relearn”.

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• 2D Selective Gaussian Blur

  - by Joshua Thomas

  I am attempting to use Gaussian blur on a 2D platform game, selectively blurring specific types of platforms with different amounts. I am currently just messing around with simple test code, trying to get it to work correctly. What I need to eventually do is create three separate render targets, leave one normal, blur one slightly, and blur the last heavily, then recombine on the screen. Where I am now is I have successfully drawn into a new render target and performed the gaussian blur on it, but when I draw it back to the screen everything is purple aside from the platforms I drew to the target. This is my .fx file: #define RADIUS 7 #define KERNEL_SIZE (RADIUS * 2 + 1) //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // Globals. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- float weights[KERNEL_SIZE]; float2 offsets[KERNEL_SIZE]; //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // Textures. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- texture colorMapTexture; sampler2D colorMap = sampler_state { Texture = <colorMapTexture>; MipFilter = Linear; MinFilter = Linear; MagFilter = Linear; }; //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // Pixel Shaders. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- float4 PS_GaussianBlur(float2 texCoord : TEXCOORD) : COLOR0 { float4 color = float4(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); for (int i = 0; i < KERNEL_SIZE; ++i) color += tex2D(colorMap, texCoord + offsets[i]) * weights[i]; return color; } //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // Techniques. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- technique GaussianBlur { pass { PixelShader = compile ps_2_0 PS_GaussianBlur(); } } This is the code I'm using for the gaussian blur: public Texture2D PerformGaussianBlur(Texture2D srcTexture, RenderTarget2D renderTarget1, RenderTarget2D renderTarget2, SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { if (effect == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("GaussianBlur.fx effect not loaded."); Texture2D outputTexture = null; Rectangle srcRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, srcTexture.Width, srcTexture.Height); Rectangle destRect1 = new Rectangle(0, 0, renderTarget1.Width, renderTarget1.Height); Rectangle destRect2 = new Rectangle(0, 0, renderTarget2.Width, renderTarget2.Height); // Perform horizontal Gaussian blur. game.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(renderTarget1); effect.CurrentTechnique = effect.Techniques["GaussianBlur"]; effect.Parameters["weights"].SetValue(kernel); effect.Parameters["colorMapTexture"].SetValue(srcTexture); effect.Parameters["offsets"].SetValue(offsetsHoriz); spriteBatch.Begin(0, BlendState.Opaque, null, null, null, effect); spriteBatch.Draw(srcTexture, destRect1, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); // Perform vertical Gaussian blur. game.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(renderTarget2); outputTexture = (Texture2D)renderTarget1; effect.Parameters["colorMapTexture"].SetValue(outputTexture); effect.Parameters["offsets"].SetValue(offsetsVert); spriteBatch.Begin(0, BlendState.Opaque, null, null, null, effect); spriteBatch.Draw(outputTexture, destRect2, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); // Return the Gaussian blurred texture. game.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); outputTexture = (Texture2D)renderTarget2; return outputTexture; } And this is the draw method affected: public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { device.SetRenderTarget(maxBlur); spriteBatch.Begin(); foreach (Brick brick in blueBricks) brick.Draw(spriteBatch); spriteBatch.End(); blue = gBlur.PerformGaussianBlur((Texture2D) maxBlur, helperTarget, maxBlur, spriteBatch); spriteBatch.Begin(); device.SetRenderTarget(null); foreach (Brick brick in redBricks) brick.Draw(spriteBatch); foreach (Brick brick in greenBricks) brick.Draw(spriteBatch); spriteBatch.Draw(blue, new Rectangle(0, 0, blue.Width, blue.Height), Color.White); foreach (Brick brick in purpleBricks) brick.Draw(spriteBatch); spriteBatch.End(); } I'm sorry about the massive brick of text and images(or not....new user, I tried, it said no), but I wanted to get my problem across clearly as I have been searching for an answer to this for quite a while now. As a side note, I have seen the bloom sample. Very well commented, but overly complicated since it deals in 3D; I was unable to take what I needed to learn form it. Thanks for any and all help.

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• How to Use RDA to Generate WLS Thread Dumps At Specified Intervals?

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  Introduction There are many ways to generate a thread dump of a WebLogic Managed Server. For example, take a look at: Taking Thread Dumps - [an excellent blog post on the Middleware Magic site]or  Different ways to take thread dumps in WebLogic Server (Document 1098691.1) There is another method - use Remote Diagnostic Agent! The solution described below is not documented, but it is relatively straightforward to execute. One advantage of using RDA to collect the thread dumps is RDA will also collect configuration, log files, network, system, performance information at the same time. Instructions 1. Not familiar with Remote Diagnostic Agent? Take a look at my previous blog "Resolve SRs Faster Using RDA - Find the Right Profile" 2. Choose a profile, which includes the WebLogic Server data collection modules (for example the profile "WebLogicServer"). At RDA setup time you should see the prompt below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- S301WLS: Collects Oracle WebLogic Server Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Enter the location of the directory where the domains to analyze are located (For example in UNIX, <BEA Home>/user_projects/domains or <Middleware Home>/user_projects/domains) Hit 'Return' to accept the default (/oracle/11AS/Middleware/user_projects/domains) > For a successful WLS connection, ensure that the domain Admin Server is up and running. Data Collection Type:   1  Collect for a single server (offline mode)   2  Collect for a single server (using WLS connection)   3  Collect for multiple servers (using WLS connection) Enter the item number Hit 'Return' to accept the default (1) > 2 Choose option 2 or 3. Note: Collect for a single server or multiple servers using WLS connection means that RDA will attempt to connect to execute online WLST commands against the targeted server(s). The thread dumps are collected using the WLST function - "threadDumps()". If WLST cannot connect to the managed server, RDA will proceed to collect other data and ignore the request to collect thread dumps. If in the final output you see no Thread Dump menu item, then it's likely that the managed server is in a state which prevents new connections to it. If faced with this scenario, you would have to employ alternative methods for collecting thread dumps. 3. The RDA setup will create a setup.cfg file in the RDA_HOME directory. Open this file in an editor. You will find the following parameters which govern the number of thread dumps and thread dump interval. #N.Number of thread dumps to capture WREQ_THREAD_DUMP=10 #N.Thread dump interval WREQ_THREAD_DUMP_INTERVAL=5000 The example lines above show the default settings. In other words, RDA will collect 10 thread dumps at 5000 millisecond (5 second) intervals. You may want to change this to something like: #N.Number of thread dumps to capture WREQ_THREAD_DUMP=10 #N.Thread dump interval WREQ_THREAD_DUMP_INTERVAL=30000 However, bear in mind, that such change will increase the total amount of time it takes for RDA to complete its run. 4. Once you are happy with the setup.cfg, run RDA. RDA will collect, render, generate and package all files in the output directory. 5. For ease of viewing, open up the RDA Start html file - "xxxx__start.htm". The thread dumps can be found under the WLST Collections for the target managed server(s). See screenshots belowScreenshot 1:RDA Start Page - Main Index Screenshot 2: Managed Server Sub Index Screenshot 3: WLST Collections Screenshot 4: Thread Dump Page - List of dump file links Screenshot 5: Thread Dump Dat File Link Additional Comment: A) You can view the thread dump files within the RDA Start Page framework, but most likely you will want to download the dat files for in-depth analysis via thread dump analysis tools such as: Thread Dump Analyzer -  Samurai - a GUI based tail , thread dump analysis tool If you are new to thread dump analysis - take a look at this recorded Support Advisor Webcast  Oracle WebLogic Server: Diagnosing Performance Issues through Java Thread Dumps[Slidedeck from webcast in PDF format]B) I have logged a couple of enhancement requests for the RDA Development Team to consider: Add timestamp to dump file links, dat filename and at the top of the body of the dat file Package the individual thread dumps in a zip so all dump files can be conveniently downloaded in one go.

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• Extending Blend for Visual Studio 2013

  - by Chris Skardon

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cskardon/archive/2013/11/01/extending-blend-for-visual-studio-2013.aspxSo, I got a comment yesterday on my post about Extending Blend 4 and Blend for Visual Studio 2012 asking if I knew how to get it working for Blend for Visual Studio 2013.. My initial thoughts were, just change the location to get the blend dlls from Visual Studio 11.0 to 12.0 and you’re all set, so I went to do that, only to discover that the dlls I normally reference, well – they don’t exist. So… I’ve made a presumption that the actual process of using MEF etc is still the same. I was wrong. So, the route to discovery – required DotPeek and opening a few of blends dlls.. Browsing through the Blend install directory (./Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0/Blend/) I notice the .addin files: So I decide to peek into the SketchFlow dll, then promptly remember SketchFlow is quite a big thing, and hunting through there is not ideal, luckily there is another dll using an .addin file, ‘Microsoft.Expression.Importers.Host’, so we’ll go for that instead. We can see it’s still using the ‘IPackage’ formula, but where is that sucker? Well, we just press F12 on the ‘IPackage’ bit and DotPeek takes us there, with a very handy comment at the top: // Type: Microsoft.Expression.Framework.IPackage // Assembly: Microsoft.Expression.Framework, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a // MVID: E092EA54-4941-463C-BD74-283FD36478E2 // Assembly location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend\Microsoft.Expression.Framework.dll Now we know where the IPackage interface is defined, so let’s just try writing a control. Last time I did a separate dll for the control, this time I’m not, but it still works if you want to do it that way. Let’s build a control! STEP 1 Create a new WPF application Naming doesn’t matter any more! I have gone with ‘Hello2013’ (see what I did there?) STEP 2 Delete: App.Config App.xaml MainWindow.xaml We won’t be needing them STEP 3 Change your application to be a Class Library instead. (You might also want to delete the ‘vshost’ stuff in your output directory now, as they only exist for hosting the WPF app, and just cause clutter) STEP 4 Add a reference to the ‘Microsoft.Expression.Framework.dll’ (which you can find in ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend’ – that’s Program Files (x86) if you’re on an x64 machine!). STEP 5 Add a User Control, I’m going with ‘Hello2013Control’, and following from last time, it’s just a TextBlock in a Grid: <UserControl x:Class="Hello2013.Hello2013Control" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300"> <Grid> <TextBlock>Hello Blend for VS 2013</TextBlock> </Grid> </UserControl> STEP 6 Add a class to load the package – I’ve called it – yes you guessed – Hello2013Package, which will look like this: namespace Hello2013 { using Microsoft.Expression.Framework; using Microsoft.Expression.Framework.UserInterface; public class Hello2013Package : IPackage { private Hello2013Control _hello2013Control; private IWindowService _windowService; public void Load(IServices services) { _windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); Initialize(); } private void Initialize() { _hello2013Control = new Hello2013Control(); if (_windowService.PaletteRegistry["HelloPanel"] == null) _windowService.RegisterPalette("HelloPanel", _hello2013Control, "Hello Window"); } public void Unload(){} } } You might note that compared to the 2012 version we’re no longer [Exporting(typeof(IPackage))]. The file you create in STEP 7 covers this for us. STEP 7 Add a new file called: ‘<PROJECT_OUTPUT_NAME>.addin’ – in reality you can call it anything and it’ll still read it in just fine, it’s just nicer if it all matches up, so I have ‘Hello2013.addin’. Content wise, we need to have: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <AddIn AssemblyFile="Hello2013.dll" /> obviously, replacing ‘Hello2013.dll’ with whatever your dll is called. STEP 8 We set the ‘addin’ file to be copied to the output directory: STEP 9 Build! STEP 10 Go to your output directory (./bin/debug) and copy the 3 files (Hello2013.dll, Hello2013.pdb, Hello2013.addin) and then paste into the ‘Addins’ folder in your Blend directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend\Addins) STEP 11 Start Blend for Visual Studio 2013 STEP 12 Go to the ‘Window’ menu and select ‘Hello Window’ STEP 13 Marvel at your new control! Feel free to email me / comment with any problems!

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