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• 24 Hours of PASS: Whine, Whine, Whine

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  24 Hours of Pass (or 24HOP) is a great program offered by PASS to provide free, online training for anyone who wants to learn more about SQL Server.  They routinely have the best SQL Server presenters available for these sessions, and attract hundreds, perhaps even a thousand attendees from around the world.  This is definitely one of the best things they've started doing in the past few years, and every session I've attended has been excellent. So why am I so grumpy about it? I'm not really, pretty much everything here is a minor annoyance that I can deal with.  However since they're so minor they seem to be things that can be easily corrected and would make the process much better. First off, this is my biggest gripe, the registration page: https://www323.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000181573/Registration.aspx?pageName=lj6378f4fhf5hpdm What grinds my gears about this?  I have to scroll alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way to bottom to actually register for the sessions.  This wouldn't be so bad except all the details of the session, including the presenter, is in a separate list at the top.  Both lists contain info the other does not, and scrolling between them to determine "Should I make time to listen to this?  Who is speaking at this time anyway?" is really unnecessary. My preference would be to keep the top list and add the checkboxes and schedule info in separate columns.  This is a full-width design, so there's plenty of space for this data, which is pretty small anyway.  The other huge benefit is halving the size of the page, which improves performance and lowers bandwidth usage considerably.  And if you know HTML/ASP.Net, and you view the page source, you can find PLENTY of other things that can be reduced even further.  (not just viewstate) One nice thing that PASS does is send iCal reminders to your email address so you can accept them to your calendar.  Again, they leave off the presenter in the appointment details, while still duplicating the meeting title in the body.  Sometimes I make decisions based on speaker rather than content (Natalie Portman is reading the Yellow Pages??? I'M THERE!) and having the speaker in the iCal is helpful. Next minor annoyances are the necessity for providing a company name, and the survey questions.  I know PASS needs to market themselves effectively, and they need information to do that, and since this is a free event it's really not worth complaining about, but why ask the survey question twice? (once at registration, once again when joining the LiveMeeting)  Same thing for the company name.  All of this should be tied to email address, so that's all I should need to enter when joining the LiveMeeting. The last one is also minor, but it irks me in this day and age of multiple browsers and the decline of Internet Explorer as a dominant platform.  The registration page was originally created in Visual Studio 2003, and has a lot of IE-specific crud representative of the browser situation of 2003. (IE5 references? really? and is the aforementioned viewstate big enough?)  This causes some grief with other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and sometimes IE8 or 9.  And don't get me started on using the page on a Mac or in Safari. My main point is that PASS is an international organization, welcoming everyone from all levels of SQL Server proficiency, and in that spirit I think it would help to accommodate a wider range of browser software, especially since the registration page is extremely simple.  I recognize that this page is not hosted on the PASS website and may be maintained by some division of Microsoft, but to me that's even worse if MS can't update their own pages.  They've deprecated IE6, so they don't need to maintain support on their own websites anymore. OK, I'll shut up now. #sqlpass #24HOP

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• Measuring Code Quality

  - by DotNetBlues

  Several months back, I was tasked with measuring the quality of code in my organization. Foolishly, I said, "No problem." I figured that Visual Studio has a built-in code metrics tool (Analyze -> Calculate Code Metrics) and that would be a fine place to start with. I was right, but also very wrong. The Visual Studio calculates five primary metrics: Maintainability Index, Cyclomatic Complexity, Depth of Inheritance, Class Coupling, and Lines of Code. The first two are figured at the method level, the second at (primarily) the class level, and the last is a simple count. The first question any reasonable person should ask is "Which one do I look at first?" The first question any manager is going to ask is, "What one number tells me about the whole application?" My answer to both, in a way, was "Maintainability Index." Why? Because each of the other numbers represent one element of quality while MI is a composite number that includes Cyclomatic Complexity. I'd be lying if I said no consideration was given to the fact that it was abstract enough that it's harder for some surly developer (I've been known to resemble that remark) to start arguing why a high coupling or inheritance is no big deal or how complex requirements are to blame for complex code. I should also note that I don't think there is one magic bullet metric that will tell you objectively how good a code base is. There are a ton of different metrics out there, and each one was created for a specific purpose in mind and has a pet theory behind it. When you've got a group of developers who aren't accustomed to measuring code quality, picking a 0-100 scale, non-controversial metric that can be easily generated by tools you already own really isn't a bad place to start. That sort of answers the question a developer would ask, but what about the management question; how do you dashboard this stuff when Visual Studio doesn't roll up the numbers to the solution level? Since VS does roll up the MI to the project level, I thought I could just figure out what sort of weighting Microsoft used to roll method scores up to the class level and then to the namespace and project levels. I was a bit surprised by the answer: there is no weighting. That means that a class with one 1300 line method (which will score a 0 MI) and one empty constructor (which will score a 100 MI) will have an overall MI of a respectable 50. Throw in a couple of DTOs that are nothing more than getters and setters (which tend to score 95 or better) and the project ends up looking really, really healthy. The next poor bastard who has to work on the application is probably not going to be singing the praises of its maintainability, though. For the record, that 1300 line method isn't a hypothetical, either. So, what does one do with that? Well, I decided to weight the average by the Lines of Code per method. For our above example, the formula for the class's MI becomes ((1300 * 0) + (1 * 100))/1301 = .077, rounded to 0. Sounds about right. Continue the pattern for namespace, project, solution, and even multi-solution application MI scores. This can be done relatively easily by using the "export to Excel" button and running a quick formula against the data. On the short list of follow-up questions would be, "How do I improve my application's score?" That's an answer for another time, though.

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• Change the Way Google Search Results Display in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default look for search results at Google? If you want a different and customized pleasing look for them, then join us as we look at the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Note: User Style Scripts & User Scripts can be added to most browsers but we are using Firefox & the Greasemonkey extension for our example here. Before Here is the standard look for search results at Google…not bad but it really does not stand out that well either. Installing the User Script You may be asking yourself what makes this particular user script different from others. Take a look at the list of goodies that you get access to and you will understand: Multiple columns of results Removes “Sponsored Links” Add numbers to the results Auto-load more results Removes web search dialogues Open links in a new tab Favicons GooglePreview Self updating Can be configured from a simple user dialogue To get started click on the Webpage Install Button. Once you click on the Webpage Install Button you will see the following window asking for confirmation to add the user script to Firefox. Click Install to complete the process. GoogleMonkeyR in Action Refreshing the same search page shown above shows a noticeable difference already. The light blue background makes the search results stand out a bit better. This is an improvement from before but you will definitely want to have a look to see just how far you can go… Right click on the Greasemonkey Status Bar Icon, go to User Script Commands, and select GoogleMonkeyR Preferences. Once you have clicked on GoogleMonkeyR Preferences the search page will be shaded out and you will have access to the user script’s preferences. This is where you can really make your search results unique looking! Here are the changes that we started out with… After refreshing our search results things looked even better. A look at the entire page of results with our browser maximized and set for two columns. If you have the Auto load more results Option enabled new results will be added very quickly as you scroll down. Our set of search results after adding Favicons & GooglePreview Images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a more dramatic and pleasing look for the search results at Google then you can not go wrong with the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Change as little or as much as you want to get that perfect look in your browser. Link Install the GoogleMonkeyR User Script Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Firefox Quick Search Use Google’s Beta Search KeysMake Firefox Built-In Search Box Use Google’s Experimental Search KeysMake Firefox Show Google Results for Default Address Bar SearchesCombine Wolfram Alpha & Google Search Results in FirefoxHow To Run 4 Different Google Searches at Once In the Same Tab 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics

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• IIS not starting: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ok, apparently a few people knew about this issue, but it is new to me and has caused me nearly an hour to track down today. What happened is that I’ve been working all day doing some final pre-deployment testing of several tools on my local dev machine. In the process I’ve been starting and stopping several IIS 7 Web sites. At some point I was done and just wanted to start my Default Web Site again and found this  little gem of an error message popping up: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070020) A lot of headless running around ensued after this, trying to figure out why IIS wouldn’t start. Oddly some sites started right up, others didn’t. I killed INetInfo, all worker processes, tried IISReset a million times and even rebooted – all to no avail. What gives? Skype, you evil Bastard! As it turns out the culprit is – drum roll please - Skype!  What, you may ask, does Skype have to do with IIS and Web Requests? It looks like recent versions of Skype have an option to run over Port 80 and 443 to allow running over corporate firewalls. Which is actually a nice feature that lets Skype work just about anywhere. What’s not so cool is that IIS fails to start up when another application is already using the same port that a Web site is mapped to. In the case of my dev site that’d be port 80 and Skype was hogging it. To fix this issue you can stop Skype from using port 80 and 443 which quickly fixes the problem. Or stop Skype. Duh! To permanently fix the problem in Skype find the option on the Options | Connection tab and uncheck the Use port 80/443 option: Oddly I haven’t run into this problem even though my setup hasn’t changed in quite some time. It appears that it’s bad startup timing that causes this problem to occur. Whatever the circumstance was, Skype somehow ended up starting before IIS.  If Skype is started after IIS has started it will automatically opt for other ports and not use port 80 and so there’s no problem. It’s easy to demonstrate this behavior if you’re looking for it: Stop IIS Stop Skype Start Skype and make a test call Start IIS And voila your error is ready for you! This really shouldn’t be a problem except that it would be really nice if IIS could give a more helpful error message when it can fire up a site because a port is blocked. “The process cannot access a file” is really not a very helpful error message in this scenario… I/O port / file ah what the heck it’s all the same to Windows. Right! I’ve run into this situation quite a bit with other, albeit more obvious applications like running Apache on the local machine for testing and then trying to run an IIS application. Same situation,  although it’s been a while – pre IIS 7 and I think previous versions of IIS actually gave more useful error messages for port blockages and that would be helpful. On the way to figuring this out I ran into some pretty humorous forum posts though with people ragging on why the hell you would be running IIS. Or Skype. The misinformed paranoia police out in full force so to say :-). It’ll be nice to start running IIS Express once Visual Studio 2010 SP1 gets released. Anyway, no surprise that Skype didn’t jump out at me as the culprit right away and I was left fumbling for a while until the Internet came to the rescue. I’m not the first to have found this for sure – I posted a message on Twitter and dozens of people replied they’d run into this before as well. Seems worth mentioning again though – since I’m sure to forget that this happened in a year from now when I hit that same error. Maybe I’ll even find this blog post to remind me…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in IIS7  Windows  

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• Inappropriate Updates?

  - by Tony Davis

  A recent Simple-talk article by Kathi Kellenberger dissected the fastest SQL solution, submitted by Peter Larsson as part of Phil Factor's SQL Speed Phreak challenge, to the classic "running total" problem. In its analysis of the code, the article re-ignited a heated debate regarding the techniques that should, and should not, be deemed acceptable in your search for fast SQL code. Peter's code for running total calculation uses a variation of a somewhat contentious technique, sometimes referred to as a "quirky update": SET @Subscribers = Subscribers = @Subscribers + PeopleJoined - PeopleLeft This form of the UPDATE statement, @variable = column = expression, is documented and it allows you to set a variable to the value returned by the expression. Microsoft does not guarantee the order in which rows are updated in this technique because, in relational theory, a table doesn’t have a natural order to its rows and the UPDATE statement has no means of specifying the order. Traditionally, in cases where a specific order is requires, such as for running aggregate calculations, programmers who used the technique have relied on the fact that the UPDATE statement, without the WHERE clause, is executed in the order imposed by the clustered index, or in heap order, if there isn’t one. Peter wasn’t satisfied with this, and so used the ingenious device of assuring the order of the UPDATE by the use of an "ordered CTE", based on an underlying temporary staging table (a heap). However, in either case, the ordering is still not guaranteed and, in addition, would be broken under conditions of parallelism, or partitioning. Many argue, with validity, that this reliance on a given order where none can ever be guaranteed is an abuse of basic relational principles, and so is a bad practice; perhaps even irresponsible. More importantly, Microsoft doesn't wish to support the technique and offers no guarantee that it will always work. If you put it into production and it breaks in a later version, you can't file a bug. As such, many believe that the technique should never be tolerated in a production system, under any circumstances. Is this attitude justified? After all, both forms of the technique, using a clustered index to guarantee the order or using an ordered CTE, have been tested rigorously and are proven to be robust; although not guaranteed by Microsoft, the ordering is reliable, provided none of the conditions that are known to break it are violated. In Peter's particular case, the technique is being applied to a temporary table, where the developer has full control of the data ordering, and indexing, and knows that the table will never be subject to parallelism or partitioning. It might be argued that, in such circumstances, the technique is not really "quirky" at all and to ban it from your systems would server no real purpose other than to deprive yourself of a reliable technique that has uses that extend well beyond the running total calculations. Of course, it is doubly important that such a technique, including its unsupported status and the assumptions that underpin its success, is fully and clearly documented, preferably even when posting it online in a competition or forum post. Ultimately, however, this technique has been available to programmers throughout the time Sybase and SQL Server has existed, and so cannot be lightly cast aside, even if one sympathises with Microsoft for the awkwardness of maintaining an archaic way of doing updates. After all, a Table hint could easily be devised that, if specified in the WITH (<Table_Hint_Limited>) clause, could be used to request the database engine to do the update in the conventional order. Then perhaps everyone would be satisfied. Cheers, Tony.

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• SQLAuthority News – Getting Ready to Learn SQL Server

  - by pinaldave

  If you have read my earlier blog post you must be aware of how I am always eager to learn new things. I have signed up for three days learning course at Koenig Solutions for End to End SQL Server Business Intelligence. You may wonder why I sign up for the course on SQL Server when it seems that I know a lot about it. Well, the belief is incorrect that I know a lot. I think there are plenty of things which I have been dreaming to learn. Why am I learning SQL Server? First of all – I do not know everything and second it is always a good idea to learn more. No matter how old we get or how much we think we know – there are always details which we can learn and refresh few concepts. Learning is never ending process philosophically but it is true as well in reality. SQL Server 2012 is already released earlier this year and there are plenty of enhancements released. Recently I was going over the list of the all the new feature and enhancement and I realized that there few things about SQL Server 2008 R2 I never got a chance to have a hand’s on experience and we have entered into the era of SQL Server 2012. I feel a bit bad about it and I decided to make it a priority for me to learn all the missing experiences. Quick Action – Registration The very same day I called up my friend who owns Koenig Solution and expressed my concern and requested his help. During my early career when I was a SQL Server Trainer, we had some good synergy between us and now they are very successful offshore training company by having a physical location in Delhi,  Goa, Dahradun, Shimla, Goa and Bangalore. I quickly visited their Bangalore Center and paid my fees for learning SQL Server Business Intelligence course. Very next second I got call from my friend suggesting that I learn this course from Delhi instead of Bangalore. As per him I should travel to Delhi and learn the course how other students are learning “Away from Home”. This made sense as I stay in Bangalore and if I return home after a long day of learning, I will be not able to practice for the next day as there will be “sweet distraction” of the family. Well I opted for Delhi. What Registration Fees Included I learned from registration processes that the following were included in the fees. 3 meals every day (hearty breakfast, lunch from premium restaurants and home cooked like dinner) Airport pick up and drop Hotel Stay Internet at hotel and at learning institute Unlimited coffee and snacks at learning institute Printed Learning Material Certification Fees (if applicable) Learning material … And of course classroom training I thought registration process was over when I paid fees. Well, I was in for a very nice surprise. Registration Experience – Bliss! Within few hours I received emails from Center Manager of Delhi with all the necessary details I need to know about my learning experience. The email contained following information in detail and it blew me away. Details of the pick up from airport – driver information Details of Delhi and important information List of all the important people and emergency contact details Internet connection details Detail of the trainer and all the training details and lots of other relevant information Well so far everything looks great. Tomorrow I will reach to Delhi and I will share how things go on. Any suggestion for things to do in Delhi? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• Bose USB audio: crackling popping sound, eventually die

  - by Richard Barrett

  I've been trying to troubleshoot this issue for a while now. Any help would be much appreciated. I'm having trouble getting my Bose "Companion 5 multimedia speakers" working with my installation of Ubuntu 12.04 (link to Bose product here: http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/digital_music_systems/computer_speakers/companion_5/index.jsp ). The issue seems to be low level (not just Ubuntu). What happens: When I boot into Ubuntu, I can get Rhythm box to play ok. However, if I try anything else (an .avi file, a webpage, or Clementine player with mp3 files) I get crackling, popping, or choppy sounds. If I move the mouse around, especially if it seems graphic intensive, the problem gets worse (more crackling noises). The more taxing it appears to be, the more likely it is that the sound will just die altogether until I reboot. For some reason the videos at www.bloomberg.com seem especially bad for it (my sound normally goes dead in under 45 seconds and won't work until reboot). Both my desktop running Ubuntu 12.04 and my laptop (running the same) have the same crackling problem. Troubleshooting so far: A friend of mine who knows linux well tried to solve it for me without any luck. He took pulseaudio out of the equation, but still had the problem just using AlSA. Among the many things he tried was adjusting the latency, but that didn't help either. I've also tried things like adjusting the USB device settings in the config file from -2 to -1 so that it will use my USB sound and I also commented out the lines that would stop that. These don't do anything. (That really seems like it's for someone who is getting no sound at all, so it's not surprising this won't work.) My friend's laptop running his Archlinux could play my Bose USB speakers without any problems. I also tried setting my daemon.conf file to use 6 channels (based on this http://lotphelp.com/lotp/configure-ubuntu-51-surround-sound ) but that didn't work either. I recently used a DVD to boot into Ubuntu Studio 12.04 (because it uses a live audio kernel) and this happened: I got perfect sound for a minute or two When I started moving windows around while sound was playing, the sound died again. Perhaps more interesting: There is a headphone out jack on the Bose system. When I use it, the audio is perfect for all applications (even the deadly bloomberg.com videos with .avi playing at the same time and moving around windows). Also, there is an audio-in jack on the Bose system. I can use a male-to-male mini jack to go from my soundcard's output to the Bose input and then all sound works perfectly. -However, it still requires the Bose to be plugged in to USB, otherwise I lose all sound. Any thoughts? Any suggestions for trouble shooting? (Or any suggestions for somewhere else to post to solve this?) Any logs or other files I can provide to help someone help me work this out? Your help is much appreciated! Rick BTW: I sometimes get people posting responses like "My Bose USB system works great with Ubuntu 12.04," without any more details. Is there anything I should ask such people to narrow down my problem? (It's kind of annoying to hear such a response because it doesn't help solve my problem.)

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• Why I&rsquo;m Getting an iPad

  - by andrewbrust

  I have never purchased an Apple product in my life.  That’s a “true fact.”  And, for that matter, the last Apple product I really wanted was an Apple IIe, back in the 1980s.  I couldn’t afford it though (I was in high school), so I got a Commodore 64 instead…it had the same microprocessor, after all.  If the iPhone were on Verizon, I probably would have picked one up in December, when I got my Droid.  And if the iPod Touch worked with my Napster subscription (which of course it does not, but my Sonos does) I might have picked on of those instead. That’s three strikes, but Apple’s not out.  I’ve decided I want the iPad.  Why?  Well, to start with, my birthday is March 31st…the iPad comes out on April 3rd, and my wife wanted to know what to get me.  Also, my house is a 7-minute walk from the Apple Store on West 14th Street in Manhattan.  This makes it easy to get my pre-ordered device on launch day, and get home quickly with it.  Oh, and I agreed to write an article for Redmond Magazine, the fee for which will pay for the device…that way the birthday present doesn’t have to be an extravagant expense.  Plus, I’m a contrarian, so I want to buy the one device from Apple that the fanboys have actually panned. Think those are bad reasons? How about this: I want to experience iPhone and iPad development and, although my app will probably never hit the App Store and run on the actual device, I still think owning one will help me develop something better.  i want to see if the slate form factor has good business usage scenarios.  I want to see if Business Intelligence technology on a device like this can work.  Imagine a dashboard on this thing. And, for the consumer experience, I really want a touch device on which I can surf the Web while I’m in the kitchen, or on the couch.  I don’t want the small form factor of my phone, I don’t want to use my TV, and I don’t want a keyboard that will get dirty or in my way. I don’t want to watch movies on it (my TV is good for that), so I don’t care that the iPad has a 4:3 screen.  I don’t want to read books on it, so I don’t care that the display is backlit LCD, rather than eInk. But really what I want is to understand, first hand, why people have such brand loyalty to Apple.  I know the big reasons; I’m not detached from society.  But I want to know the subtle points of what Apple does really well, and also what they do poorly.  And I’d like to know, once and for all, if Microsoft can beat Apple, if Microsoft can think the right way to beat Apple and if Microsoft should  even try to beat Apple. I expect to share my thoughts on these questions, as they develop.

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011

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• Acr.ExtDirect &ndash; Part 1 &ndash; Method Resolvers

  - by Allan Ritchie

  One of the most important things of any open source libraries in my opinion is to be as open as possible while avoiding having your library become invasive to your code/business model design.  I personally could never stand marking my business and/or data access code with attributes everywhere.  XML also isn’t really a fav with too many people these days since it comes with a startup performance hit and requires runtime compiling.  I find that there is a whole ton of communication libraries out there currently requiring this (ie. WCF, RIA, etc).  Even though Acr.ExtDirect comes with its own set of attributes, you can piggy-back the [ServiceContract] & [OperationContract] attributes from WCF if you choose.  It goes beyond that though, there are 2 others “out-of-the-box” implementations – Convention based & XML Configuration.    Convention – I don’t actually recommend using this one since it opens up all of your public instance methods to remote execution calls. XML Configuration – This isn’t so bad but requires you enter all of your methods and there operation types into the Castle XML configuration & as I said earlier, XML isn’t the fav these days.   So what are your options if you don’t like attributes, convention, or XML Configuration?  Well, Acr.ExtDirect has its own extension base to give the API a list of methods and components to make available for remote execution.  1: public interface IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type); 4: string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model); 5: string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model); 6: DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method); 7: }   Now to implement our own method resolver:   1: public class TestResolver : IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: #region IDirectMethodResolver Members 4:   5: /// <summary> 6: /// Determine if you are calling a service 7: /// </summary> 8: /// <param name="model"></param> 9: /// <param name="type"></param> 10: /// <returns></returns> 11: public bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type) { 12: return (type.Namespace == "MyBLL.Data"); 13: } 14:   15: /// <summary> 16: /// Return the calling name for the client side 17: /// </summary> 18: /// <param name="model"></param> 19: /// <returns></returns> 20: public string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model) { 21: return model.Name; 22: } 23:   24: public string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model) { 25: switch (model.Name) { 26: case "Products" : 27: return new [] { 28: "GetProducts", 29: "LoadProduct", 30: "Save", 31: "Update" 32: }; 33:   34: case "Categories" : 35: return new [] { 36: "GetProducts" 37: }; 38:   39: default : 40: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid type"); 41: } 42: } 43:   44: public DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method) { 45: if (method.Name.StartsWith("Save") || method.Name.StartsWith("Update")) 46: return DirectMethodType.FormSubmit; 47: 48: else if (method.Name.StartsWith("Load")) 49: return DirectMethodType.FormLoad; 50:   51: else 52: return DirectMethodType.Direct; 53: } 54:   55: #endregion 56: }   And there you have it, your own custom method resolver.  Pretty easy and pretty open ended!

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• SQL SERVER – Clustered Index and Primary Key – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 3 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following datatype is usually NOT the best choice for Primary Key and Clustered Index? a) INT b) BIGINT c) GUID d) SMALLINT Query Hints: BIG HINT POST The clustered index is the placement order of a table’s records in memory pages. When you insert new records, then each record will be inserted into the memory page in the order it belongs. In the figure below we see another new record (Major Disarray) being inserted, in sequence, between Jonny and Rick. Since there is no room in this memory page, some records will need to shift around. The page split occurs when Irenes’ record moves to the second page. Page splits are considered very bad for performance, and there are a number of techniques to reduce, or even eliminate, the risk of page splits. You can create a clustered index on the table on any field you choose. Sometime SQL will create a clustered index for you. Often times the field having the Primary Key makes a great candidate for the clustered index. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 3. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Statistics SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Page Split SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – The Clustered Index – Simple Understanding SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Geography Data Type – Calculating Distance Between Two Points on the Earth SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Sparse Data and Space Used by Sparse Data SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – System and Time Data Types SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Data Row Space Usage and NULL Storage Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• A tiny Utility to recycle an IIS Application Pool

  - by Rick Strahl

  In the last few weeks I've annoyingly been having problems with an area on my Web site. It's basically ancient articles that are using ASP classic pages and for reasons unknown ASP classic locks up on these pages frequently. It's not an individual page, but ALL ASP classic pages lock up. Ah yes, gotta old tech gone bad. It's not super critical since the content is really old, but still a hassle since it's linked content that still gets quite a bit of traffic. When it happens all ASP classic in that AppPool dies. I've been having a hard time tracking this one down - I suspect an errant COM object I have a Web Monitor running on the server that's checking for failures and while the monitor can detect the failures when the timeouts occur, I didn't have a good way to just restart that particular application pool. I started putzing around with PowerShell, but - as so often seems the case - I can never get the PowerShell syntax right - I just don't use it enough and have to dig out cheat sheets etc. In any case, after about 20 minutes of that I decided to just create a small .NET Console Application that does the trick instead, and in a few minutes I had this:using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.DirectoryServices; namespace RecycleApplicationPool { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string appPoolName = "DefaultAppPool"; string machineName = "LOCALHOST"; if (args.Length > 0) appPoolName = args[0]; if (args.Length > 1) machineName = args[1]; string error = null; DirectoryEntry root = null; try { Console.WriteLine("Restarting Application Pool " + appPoolName + " on " + machineName + "..."); root = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://" + machineName + "/W3SVC/AppPools/" +appPoolName); Console.WriteLine(root.InvokeGet("Name")); root.Invoke("Recycle"); Console.WriteLine("Application Pool recycling complete..."); } catch(Exception ex) { error = "Error: Unable to access AppPool: " + ex.Message; } if ( !string.IsNullOrEmpty(error) ) { Console.WriteLine(error); return; } } } } To run in you basically provide the name of the ApplicationPool and optionally a machine name if it's not on the local box. RecyleApplicationPool.exe "WestWindArticles" And off it goes. What's nice about AppPool recycling versus doing a full IISRESET is that it only affects the AppPool, and more importantly AppPool recycles happen in a staggered fashion - the existing instance isn't shut down immediately until requests finish while a new instance is fired up to handle new requests. So, now I can easily plug this Executable into my West Wind Web Monitor as an action to take when the site is not responding or timing out which is a big improvement than hanging for an unspecified amount of time. I'm posting this fairly trivial bit of code just in case somebody (maybe myself a few months down the road) is searching for ApplicationPool recyling code. It's clearly trivial, but I've written batch files for this a bunch of times before and actually having a small utility around without having to worry whether Powershell is installed and configured right is actually an improvement. Next time I think about using PowerShell remind me that it's just easier to just build a small .NET Console app, 'k? :-) Resources Download Executable and VS Project© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in IIS7  .NET  Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Countdown of Top 10 Reasons to Never Ever Use a Pie Chart

  - by Tony Wolfram

    Pie charts are evil. They represent much of what is wrong with the poor design of many websites and software applications. They're also innefective, misleading, and innacurate. Using a pie chart as your graph of choice to visually display important statistics and information demonstrates either a lack of knowledge, laziness, or poor design skills. Figure 1: A floating, tilted, 3D pie chart with shadow trying (poorly)to show usage statistics within a graphics application.   Of course, pie charts in and of themselves are not evil. This blog is really about designers making poor decisions for all the wrong reasons. In order for a pie chart to appear on a web page, somebody chose it over the other alternatives, and probably thought they were doing the right thing. They weren't. Using a pie chart is almost always a bad design decision. Figure 2: Pie Chart from an Oracle Reports User Guide   A pie chart does not do the job of effectively displaying information in an elegant visual form.  Being circular, they use up too much space while not allowing their labels to line up. Bar charts, line charts, and tables do a much better job. Expert designers, statisticians, and business analysts have documented their many failings, and strongly urge software and report designers not to use them. It's obvious to them that the pie chart has too many inherent defects to ever be used effectively. Figure 3: Demonstration of how comparing data between multiple pie charts is difficult.   Yet pie charts are still used frequently in today's software applications, financial reports, and websites, often on the opening page as a symbol of how the data inside is represented. In an attempt to get a flashy colorful graphic to break up boring text, designers will often settle for a pie chart that looks like pac man, a colored spinning wheel, or a 3D floating alien space ship.     Figure 4: Best use of a pie chart I've found yet.   Why is the pie chart so popular? Through its constant use and iconic representation as the classic chart, the idea persists that it must be a good choice, since everyone else is still using it. Like a virus or an urban legend, no amount of vaccine or debunking will slow down the use of pie charts, which seem to be resistant to logic and common sense. Even the new iPad from Apple showcases the pie chart as one of its options.     Figure 5: Screen shot of new iPad showcasing pie charts. Regardless of the futility in trying to rid the planet of this often used poor design choice, I now present to you my top 10 reasons why you should never, ever user a pie chart again.    Number 10 - Pie Charts Just Don't Work When Comparing Data Number 9 - You Have A Better Option: The Sorted Horizontal Bar Chart Number 8 - The Pie Chart is Always Round Number 7 - Some Genius Will Make It 3D Number 6 - Legends and Labels are Hard to Align and Read Number 5 - Nobody Has Ever Made a Critical Decision Using a Pie Chart Number 4 - It Doesn't Scale Well to More Than 2 Items Number 3 - A Pie Chart Causes Distortions and Errors Number 2 - Everyone Else Uses Them: Debunking the "Urban Legend" of Pie Charts Number 1 - Pie Charts Make You Look Stupid and Lazy  

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• Required Parameters [SSIS Denali]

  - by jamiet

  SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) in its 2005 and 2008 incarnations expects you to set a property values within your package at runtime using Configurations. SSIS developers tend to have rather a lot of issues with SSIS configurations; in this blog post I am going to highlight one of those problems and how it has been alleviated in SQL Server code-named Denali.   A configuration is a property path/value pair that exists outside of a package, typically within SQL Server or in a collection of one or more configurations in a file called a .dtsConfig file. Within the package one defines a pointer to a configuration that says to the package “When you execute, go and get a configuration value from this location” and if all goes well the package will fetch that configuration value as it starts to execute and you will see something like the following in your output log: Information: 0x40016041 at Package: The package is attempting to configure from the XML file "C:\Configs\MyConfig.dtsConfig". Unfortunately things DON’T always go well, perhaps the .dtsConfig file is unreachable or the name of the SQL Sever holding the configuration value has been defined incorrectly – any one of a number of things can go wrong. In this circumstance you might see something like the following in your log output instead: Warning: 0x80012014 at Package: The configuration file "C:\Configs\MyConfig.dtsConfig" cannot be found. Check the directory and file name. The problem that I want to draw attention to here though is that your package will ignore the fact it can’t find the configuration and executes anyway. This is really really bad because the package will not be doing what it is supposed to do and worse, if you have not isolated your environments you might not even know about it. Can you imagine a package executing for months and all the while inserting data into the wrong server? Sounds ridiculous but I have absolutely seen this happen and the root cause was that no-one picked up on configuration warnings like the one above. Happily in SSIS code-named Denali this problem has gone away as configurations have been replaced with parameters. Each parameter has a property called ‘Required’: Any parameter with Required=True must have a value passed to it when the package executes. Any attempt to execute the package will result in an error. Here we see that error when attempting to execute using the SSMS UI: and similarly when executing using T-SQL: Error is: Msg 27184, Level 16, State 1, Procedure prepare_execution, Line 112 In order to execute this package, you need to specify values for the required parameters.   As you can see, SSIS code-named Denali has mechanisms built-in to prevent the problem I described at the top of this blog post. Specifying a Parameter required means that any packages in that project cannot execute until a value for the parameter has been supplied. This is a very good thing. I am loathe to make recommendations so early in the development cycle but right now I’m thinking that all Project Parameters should have Required=True, certainly any that are used to define external locations should be anyway. @Jamiet

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Chris Warner

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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• AZURE - Stairway To Heaven

  - by Waclaw Chrabaszcz

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Wchrabaszcz/archive/2014/08/02/azure---stairway-to-heaven.aspx  Before you’ll start reading please start to play this song.   OK boys and girls, time get familiar with clouds. Time to become a meteorologist. To be honest I don’t know how to start. Is cloud better or worse than on campus resources … hmm … it is just different. I think for successful adoption in cloud world IT Dinosaurs need to forget some “Private Cloud” virtualization bad habits, and learn new way of thinking. Take a look: - I don’t need any  tapes or  CDs  (Physical Kingdom of Windows XP and 2000) - I don’t need any locally stored MP3s (CD virtualization :-) - I can just stream music to your computer no matter whether my on-site infrastructure is powered on. Why not to do exactly the same with WebServer, SQL, or just rented for a while Windows server ? Let’s go, to the other side of the mirror. 1st  - register yourself for free one month trial, as happy MSDN subscriber you’ve got monthly budget to spent. In addition in default setting your limit protects you against loosing real money, if your toys will consume too much traffic and space. http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/ Once your account is ready forget WebPortal, we are PowerShell knights. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9811175&clcid=0x409 #Authenticate yourself in Azure Add-AzureAccount #download once your settings file Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile #Import it to your PowerShell Module Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile "C:\Azure\[filename].publishsettings" #validation Get-AzureAccount Get-AzureSubscription #where are Azure datacenters Get-AzureLocation #You will need it Update-Help #storage account is related to physical location, there are two datacenters on each continent, try nearest to you # all your VMs will store VHD files on your storage account #your storage account must be unique globally, so I assume that words account or server are already used New-AzureStorageAccount -StorageAccountName "[YOUR_STORAGE_ACCOUNT]" -Label "AzureTwo" -Location "West Europe" Get-AzureStorageAccount #it looks like you are ready to deploy first VM, what templates we can use Get-AzureVMImage | Select ImageName #what a mess, let’s choose Server 2012 $ImageName = (Get-AzureVMImage)[74].ImageName $cloudSvcName = '[YOUR_STORAGE_ACCOUNT]' $AdminUsername = "[YOUR-ADMIN]" $adminPassword = '[YOUR_PA$$W0RD]' $MediaLocation = "West Europe" $vmnameDC = 'DC01' #burn baby burn !!! $vmDC01 = New-AzureVMConfig -Name $vmnameDC -InstanceSize "Small" -ImageName $ImageName   `     | Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows -Password $adminPassword -AdminUsername $AdminUsername   `     | New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName #ice, ice baby … Get-AzureVM Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -ServiceName "[YOUR_STORAGE_ACCOUNT]" -Name "DC01" -LocalPath "c:\AZURE\DC01.rdp" As you can see it is not just a new-VM, you need to associate your VM with AzureVMConfig (it sets your template), AzureProvisioningConfig (it sets your customizations), and Storage account. In next releases you’ll need to put this machine in specific subnet, attach a HDD and many more. After second reading I found that I am using the same name for STORAGE and SERVICE account, please be aware of it if you need to split these values. Conclusions: - pipe rules ! - at the beginning it is hard to change your mind and agree with fact that it is easier to remove and recreate a VM than move it to different subnet - by default everything is firewalled, limited access to DNS, but NATed outside on custom ports. It is good to check these translations sometimes on the webportal. - if you remove your VMs your harddrives remains on storage and MS will charge you . Remove-AzureVM -DeleteVHD For me AZURE it is a lot of fun, once again I can be newbie and learn every page. For me Azure offers real freedom in deployment of VMs without arguing with NetAdmins, WinAdmins, DBAs, PMs and other Change Managers. Unfortunately soon or later they will come to my haven and change it into …

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• Normalisation and 'Anima notitia copia' (Soul of the Database)

  - by Phil Factor

  (A Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk) The other day, I was staring  at the sys.syslanguages  table in SQL Server with slightly-raised eyebrows . I’d just been reading Chris Date’s  interesting book ‘SQL and Relational Theory’. He’d made the point that you’re not necessarily doing relational database operations by using a SQL Database product.  The same general point was recently made by Dino Esposito about ASP.NET MVC.  The use of ASP.NET MVC doesn’t guarantee you a good application design: It merely makes it possible to test it. The way I’d describe the sentiment in both cases is ‘you can hit someone over the head with a frying-pan but you can’t call it cooking’. SQL enables you to create relational databases. However,  even if it smells bad, it is no crime to do hideously un-relational things with a SQL Database just so long as it’s necessary and you can tell the difference; not only that but also only if you’re aware of the risks and implications. Naturally, I’ve never knowingly created a database that Codd would have frowned at, but around the edges are interfaces and data feeds I’ve written  that have caused hissy fits amongst the Normalisation fundamentalists. Part of the problem for those who agonise about such things  is the misinterpretation of Atomicity.  An atomic value is one for which, in the strange virtual universe you are creating in your database, you don’t have any interest in any of its component parts.  If you aren’t interested in the electrons, neutrinos,  muons,  or  taus, then  an atom is ..er.. atomic. In the same way, if you are passed a JSON string or XML, and required to store it in a database, then all you need to do is to ask yourself, in your role as Anima notitia copia (Soul of the database) ‘have I any interest in the contents of this item of information?’.  If the answer is ‘No!’, or ‘nequequam! Then it is an atomic value, however complex it may be.  After all, you would never have the urge to store the pixels of images individually, under the misguided idea that these are the atomic values would you?  I would, of course,  ask the ‘Anima notitia copia’ rather than the application developers, since there may be more than one application, and the applications developers may be designing the application in the absence of full domain knowledge, (‘or by the seat of the pants’ as the technical term used to be). If, on the other hand, the answer is ‘sure, and we want to index the XML column’, then we may be in for some heavy XML-shredding sessions to get to store the ‘atomic’ values and ensure future harmony as the application develops. I went back to looking at the sys.syslanguages table. It has a months column with the months in a delimited list January,February,March,April,May,June,July,August,September,October,November,December This is an ordered list. Wicked? I seem to remember that this value, like shortmonths and days, is treated as a ‘thing’. It is merely passed off to an external  C++ routine in order to format a date in a particular language, and never accessed directly within the database. As far as the database is concerned, it is an atomic value.  There is more to normalisation than meets the eye.

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• Logging connection strings

  If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft.   Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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• When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

  When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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• Dark Sun Dispatch 001

  - by Chris Williams

  If you aren't into tabletop (aka pen & paper) RPGs, you might as well click to the next post now... Still here? Awesome. I've recently started running a new D&D 4.0 Dark Sun campaign. If you don't know anything about Dark Sun, here's a quick intro: The campaign take place on the world of Athas, formerly a lush green world that is now a desert wasteland. Forests are rare in the extreme, as is water and metal. Coins are made of ceramic and weapons are often made of hardened wood, bone or obsidian. The green age of Athas was centuries ago and the current state was brought about through the reckless use of sorcerous magic. (In this world, you can augment spells by drawing on the life force of the world & people around you. This is called defiling. Preserving magic draws upon the casters life force and does not damage the surrounding world, but it isn't as powerful.) Humans are pretty much unchanged, but the traditional fantasy races have changed quite a bit. Elves don't live in the forest, they are shifty and untrustworthy desert traders known for their ability to run long distances through the wastes. Halflings are not short, fat, pleasant little riverside people. Instead they are bloodthirsty feral cannibals that roam the few remaining forests and ride reptilians beasts akin to raptors. Gnomes are extinct, as are orcs. Dwarves are mostly farmers and gladiators, and live out in the sun instead of staying under the mountains. Goliaths are half-giants, not known for their intellect. Muls are a Dwarf & Human crossbreed that displays the best traits of both races (human height and dwarven stoutness.) Thri-Kreen are sentient mantis people that are extremely fast. Most of the same character classes are available, with a few new twists. There are no divine characters (such as Priests, Paladins, etc) because the gods are gone. Nobody alive today can remember a time when they were still around. Instead, some folks worship the elemental forces (although they don't give out spells.) The cities are all ruled by Sorcerer King tyrants (except one city: Tyr) who are hundreds of years old and still practice defiling magic whenever they please. Serving the Sorcerer Kings are the Templars, who are also defilers and psionicists. Crossing them is as bad, in many cases, as crossing the Kings themselves. Between the cities you have small towns and trading outposts, and mostly barren desert with sometimes 4-5 days on foot between towns and the nearest oasis. Being caught out in the desert without adequate supplies and protection from the elements is pretty much a death sentence for even the toughest heroes. When you add in the natural (and unnatural) predators that roam the wastes, often in packs, most people don't last long alone. In this campaign, the adventure begins in the (small) trading fortress of Altaruk, a couple weeks walking distance from the newly freed city of Tyr. A caravan carrying trade goods from Altaruk has not made it to Tyr and the local merchant house has dispatched the heroes to find out what happened and to retrieve the goods (and drivers) if possible. The unlikely heroes consist of a human shaman, a thri-kreen monk, a human wizard, a kenku assassin and a (void aspect) genasi swordmage. Gathering up supplies and a little liquid courage, they set out into the desert and manage to find the northbound tracks of the wagon. Shortly after finding the tracks, they are ambushed by a pack of silt-runners (small lizard people with very large teeth and poisoned pointy spears.) The party makes short work of the creatures, taking a few minor wounds in the process. Proceeding onward without resting, they find the remains of the wagon and manage to sneak up on a pack of Kruthiks picking through the rubble and spilled goods. Unfortunately, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity and had a hard fight ahead of them. The party defeated the kruthiks, but took heavy damage (and almost lost a couple of their own) in the process. Once the kruthiks were dispatched, they followed a set of tracks further north to a ruined tower...

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• First-Time GLSL Shadow Mapping Problems

  - by Locke

  I'm working on building out a 2.5D engine and having massive problems getting my shadows working. I'm at a point where I'm VERY close. So, let's see a picture to see what I have: As you can see above, the image has lighting -- but the shadow map is displaying incorrectly. The shadow map is shown in the bottom left hand side of the screen as a normal 2D texture, so we can see what it looks like at any given time. If you notice, it appears that the shadows are generating backwards in the wrong direction -- I think. But the problem is a little more deep -- I'm just plotting the shadow onto the screen, which I know is wrong -- I'm ignoring the actual test to see if we NEED to show a shadow. The incoming parameters all appear to be correct -- so there has to be something wrong with my shader code somewhere. Here's what my code looks like: VERTEX: uniform mat4 LightModelViewProjectionMatrix; varying vec3 Normal; // The eye-space normal of the current vertex. varying vec4 LightCoordinate; // The texture coordinate of the light of the current vertex. varying vec3 LightDirection; // The eye-space direction of the light. void main() { Normal = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_Normal); LightDirection = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_LightSource[0].position.xyz); LightCoordinate = LightModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex; LightCoordinate.xy = ( LightCoordinate.xy * 0.5 ) + 0.5; gl_Position = ftransform(); gl_TexCoord[0] = gl_MultiTexCoord0; } FRAGMENT: uniform sampler2D DiffuseMap; uniform sampler2D ShadowMap; varying vec3 Normal; // The eye-space normal of the current vertex. varying vec4 LightCoordinate; // The texture coordinate of the light of the current vertex. varying vec3 LightDirection; // The eye-space direction of the light. void main() { vec4 Texel = texture2D(DiffuseMap, vec2(gl_TexCoord[0])); // Directional lighting //Build ambient lighting vec4 AmbientElement = gl_LightSource[0].ambient; //Build diffuse lighting float Lambert = max(dot(Normal, LightDirection), 0.0); //max(abs(dot(Normal, LightDirection)), 0.0); vec4 DiffuseElement = ( gl_LightSource[0].diffuse * Lambert ); vec4 LightingColor = ( DiffuseElement + AmbientElement ); LightingColor.r = min(LightingColor.r, 1.0); LightingColor.g = min(LightingColor.g, 1.0); LightingColor.b = min(LightingColor.b, 1.0); LightingColor.a = min(LightingColor.a, 1.0); LightingColor *= Texel; //Everything up to this point is PERFECT // Shadow mapping // ------------------------------ vec4 ShadowCoordinate = LightCoordinate / LightCoordinate.w; float DistanceFromLight = texture2D( ShadowMap, ShadowCoordinate.st ).z; float DepthBias = 0.001; float ShadowFactor = 1.0; if( LightCoordinate.w > 0.0 ) { ShadowFactor = DistanceFromLight < ( ShadowCoordinate.z + DepthBias ) ? 0.5 : 1.0; } LightingColor.rgb *= ShadowFactor; //gl_FragColor = LightingColor; //Yes, I know this is wrong, but the line above (gl_FragColor = LightingColor;) produces the wrong effect gl_FragColor = LightingColor * texture2D( ShadowMap, ShadowCoordinate.st ); } I wanted to make sure the coordinates were correct for the shadow map -- so that's why you see it applied to the image as it is below. But the depth for each point seems to be wrong -- the shadows SHOULD be opposite (look at how the image is -- the shaded areas from normal lighting are facing the opposite direction of the shadows). Maybe my matrices are bad or something going in? They're isolated and appear to be correct -- nothing else is going in unusual. When I view from the light's view and get the MVP matrices for it, they're correct. EDIT: Added an image so you can see what happens when I do the correct command at the end of the GLSL: That's the image when the last line is just glFragColor = LightingColor; Maybe someone has some idea of what I screwed up?

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• A view from the call center for the Nashville Flood telethon

  - by Rob Foster

  I want to break away from my usual topic of something technical and talk about what I experienced tonight while working in the call center for the Nashville Flood telethon, which was broadcast on WSMV, CNN, and The Weather Channel.  We started receiving calls about 7pm local time and to be honest, I had no idea what to expect when going into this.  I mean, I'm a pretty good talker, but this is different...We had a good script of what to say and how we were supposed to say it, as well as paper forms and pens that we used to collect information from people who wanted to donate their money to help.  I took my first few calls pretty easily and it went pretty quick and easy.  Everyone was upbeat and happy to be in the call center as well as people happy to be donating money. Pizza, snacks, and soft drinks were flowing well.  Everyone is smiling and happy.  :) About 3 or 4 calls into my night, I got a call from a lady that had lost 2 family members in West Nashville who drowned in the floods.  She was crying when she called and I of course tried to console her.  She told me how bad her situation was, losing family members and much of her neighborhood.  After all this, she still just wanted to help other people.  She was donating all the money that she could to the telethon and I want to share a direct quote from her: "I want to donate this instead of buying flowers for my family members' funeral because people out there need help.". Please let me pause while I get myself together <again>.  That caught me so off guard (and still does). I had kids calling wanting to donate their allowance, open their piggy banks, whatever they could do.  These are kids.  Kids not much older than my boys.  Kids who should be focused on buying the next cool video game or toy or whatever but wanted to do something.  Everyone just seemed to want to help. I took calls from as far away as British Columbia as well and pretty much coast to coast.  how cool is that? Yet another thing that caught me off guard.  This kind lady that called from British Columbia told me how much she loved visiting Nashville and just hated to see this happen.  I belive that she said that she will be attending the CMA Fest this year too.  I was sure to tell her not to cancel her plans!  :) It felt like every call I took (and I took A LOT, as did everyone else) was very personal and heartfelt.  I've never had the privelage to do anything like this and fell lucky to have been able to help out with answering phones and logging donations.  Nashville will bounce back very quickly, people are out there day and night helping each other, and the spirits are very high here.  I hope that one day, my kids read this blog and better understand who they are, where they come from, and what the human spirt is and can be.  I love this city, I love the people here, I love the culture and even more than ever am proud to say that this is me.  This is us.  We are Nashville!

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• 13 Things From the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know

  - by Mike Stiles

  Oracle held its first annual Oracle Social Summit, “The School for the Socially Gifted,” this past week in Las Vegas.  If anyone came to the event uncertain as to why Oracle has such an interest in social, and what its plans for social are, they left with an entirely new vision of where social is headed, and why.For those unable to attend, I was able to keep my MacBook charged just long enough to capture some of the more pertinent takeaways.1. The social enterprise is inevitable.  Social technology is disrupting the hierarchies of big companies.  It’s a revolution in corporate structures, just as it has been in various governments.  It’s not crazy to ask yourself if your CEO is the next Mubarak.  (David Kilpatrick Author of “The Facebook Effect” and founder of the Techonomy Conference) 2. The social enterprise represents collaboration on steroids.  It’s tapping into the power of your people, as opposed to keeping them “in their place.”  3. 1 in every 7 humans on earth is an active Facebook user.  75% have posted a negative comment after a poor customer experience.  The average user will inform 53 people of a bad experience.4. Checking social media is the 2nd biggest use of phones now.  Reading posts from brands is 4th.5. 70% of marketers have little or no understanding of the social conversations happening around their brand.6. Advertising, when done well, is content we care about, preferably informed by those we trust.7. Acquiring low-quality fans through gimmicks, or focusing purely on fan acquisition is a mistake.  And relying purely on organic distribution is a mistake.  (John Yi, Head of Marketing Partnerships – Facebook)8. Using all this newfound data and insight serves to positively affect the customer experience.  It allows organizations to now leverage the investments they’ve made in social up to now.9. Social is not a marketing utopia where everything is free.  It’s pay to play.  The paid component is about driving attention.  10. We are only in the infancy of ad-targeting opportunities in social.  There’s an evolution underway from interest-based targeting to action-based targeting.11. There’s actually very little overlap of the people following you on different social platforms.  Don’t assume it’s the same audience on each.12. People who can create content and who also have an understanding of what drives that content are growing increasingly valuable.13. Oracle Social’s future is enterprise SRM, integrated across marketing, selling, service, HR and every other corner of the organization.And in case you thought those were the only gems to come out of the summit, you may want to keep an eye out for Tuesday’s Social Spotlight, ever so aptly titled “13 More Things from the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know.”

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• SQL SERVER – Puzzle #1 – Querying Pattern Ranges and Wild Cards

  - by Pinal Dave

  Note: Read at the end of the blog post how you can get five Joes 2 Pros Book #1 and a surprise gift. I have been blogging for almost 7 years and every other day I receive questions about Querying Pattern Ranges. The most common way to solve the problem is to use Wild Cards. However, not everyone knows how to use wild card properly. SQL Queries 2012 Joes 2 Pros Volume 1 – The SQL Queries 2012 Hands-On Tutorial for Beginners Book On Amazon | Book On Flipkart Learn SQL Server get all the five parts combo kit Kit on Amazon | Kit on Flipkart Many people know wildcards are great for finding patterns in character data. There are also some special sequences with wildcards that can give you even more power. This series from SQL Queries 2012 Joes 2 Pros® Volume 1 will show you some of these cool tricks. All supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This example is from the SQL 2012 series Volume 1 in the file SQLQueries2012Vol1Chapter2.2Setup.sql. If you need help setting up then look in the “Free Videos” section on Joes2Pros under “Getting Started” called “How to install your labs” Querying Pattern Ranges The % wildcard character represents any number of characters of any length. Let’s find all first names that end in the letter ‘A’. By using the percentage ‘%’ sign with the letter ‘A’, we achieve this goal using the code sample below: SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName LIKE '%A' To find all FirstName values beginning with the letters ‘A’ or ‘B’ we can use two predicates in our WHERE clause, by separating them with the OR statement. Finding names beginning with an ‘A’ or ‘B’ is easy and this works fine until we want a larger range of letters as in the example below for ‘A’ thru ‘K’: SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName LIKE 'A%' OR FirstName LIKE 'B%' OR FirstName LIKE 'C%' OR FirstName LIKE 'D%' OR FirstName LIKE 'E%' OR FirstName LIKE 'F%' OR FirstName LIKE 'G%' OR FirstName LIKE 'H%' OR FirstName LIKE 'I%' OR FirstName LIKE 'J%' OR FirstName LIKE 'K%' The previous query does find FirstName values beginning with the letters ‘A’ thru ‘K’. However, when a query requires a large range of letters, the LIKE operator has an even better option. Since the first letter of the FirstName field can be ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘I’, ‘J’ or ‘K’, simply list all these choices inside a set of square brackets followed by the ‘%’ wildcard, as in the example below: SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName LIKE '[ABCDEFGHIJK]%' A more elegant example of this technique recognizes that all these letters are in a continuous range, so we really only need to list the first and last letter of the range inside the square brackets, followed by the ‘%’ wildcard allowing for any number of characters after the first letter in the range. Note: A predicate that uses a range will not work with the ‘=’ operator (equals sign). It will neither raise an error, nor produce a result set. --Bad query (will not error or return any records) SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName = '[A-K]%' Question: You want to find all first names that start with the letters A-M in your Customer table and end with the letter Z. Which SQL code would you use? a. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE 'm%z' b. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE 'a-m%z' c. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE 'a-m%z' d. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]%z' e. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]z%' f. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]%z' g. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]z%' Contest Leave a valid answer before June 18, 2013 in the comment section. 5 winners will be selected from all the valid answers and will receive Joes 2 Pros Book #1. 1 Lucky person will get a surprise gift from Joes 2 Pros. The contest is open for all the countries where Amazon ships the book (USA, UK, Canada, India and many others). Special Note: Read all the options before you provide valid answer as there is a small trick hidden in answers. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer

  - by dsimcha

  I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed by people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify: (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives. (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation. (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and "real", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays. (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code. (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible. (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C. (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages. (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding. (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type. (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures. (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell. (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose langauges, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have one script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to "clean up" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction.

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