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  • What happened to Alan Cooper's Unified File Model?

    - by PAUL Mansour
    For a long time Alan Cooper (in the 3 versions of his book "About Face") has been promoting a "unified file model" to, among other things, dispense with what he calls the most idiotic message box ever invented - the one the pops up when hit the close button on an app or form saying "Do you want to discard your changes?" I like the idea and his arguments, but also have the knee-jerk reaction against it that most seasoned programmers and users have. While Cooper's book seems quite popular and respected, there is remarkably little discussion of this particular issue on the Web that I can find. Petter Hesselberg, the author of "Programming Industrial Strength Windows" mentions it but that seems about it. I have an opportunity to implement this in the (desktop) project I am working on, but face resistance by customers and co-workers, who are of course familiar with the MS Word and Excel way of doing things. I'm in a position to override their objections, but am not sure if I should. My questions are: Are there any good discussions of this that I have failed to find? Is anyone doing this in their apps? Is it a good idea that it is unfortunately not practical to implement until, say, Microsoft does it?

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  • Excel Help: Userforms

    - by B-Ballerl
    I have developed a macro that does a whole bunch of things for me based on a few things. (Importing files). The file names are dated dd_mm_yyyy and right now I enter them into a sheet where the macro can call the information. Not really wanting this I designed a userform where the user could enter the "dd", "mm", "yyyy" and how many consecutive days of files there were. Ex. Say 28_06_2011.txt 29_06_2011.txt there would be one consecutive day. I want to be able to call the information entered in the user-form (day, month, year, and consecutive days) to use in the macro and have been unsuccessful because I don't know how to call that information. Is it similar to referring to a range in a worksheet? Thanks in Advance for any Help.

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  • Third-party open-source projects in .NET and Ruby and NIH syndrome

    - by Anton Gogolev
    The title might seem to be inflammatory, but it's here to catch your eye after all. I'm a professional .NET developer, but I try to follow other platforms as well. With Ruby being all hyped up (mostly due to Rails, I guess) I cannot help but compare the situation in open-source projects in Ruby and .NET. What I personally find interesting is that .NET developers are for the most part severely suffering from the NIH syndrome and are very hesitant to use someone else's code in pretty much any shape or form. Comparing it with Ruby, I see a striking difference. Folks out there have gems literally for every little piece of functionality imaginable. New projects are popping out left and right and generally are heartily welcomed. On the .NET side we have CodePlex which I personally find to be a place where abandoned projects grow old and eventually get abandoned. Now, there certainly are several well-known and maintained projects, but the number of those pales in comparison with that of Ruby. Granted, NIH on the .NET devs part comes mostly from the fact that there are very few quality .NET projects out there, let alone projects that solve their specific needs, but even if there is such a project, it's often frowned upon and is reinvented in-house. So my question is multi-fold: Do you find my observations anywhere near being correct? If so, what are your thoughts on quality and quantitiy of OSS projects in .NET? Again, if you do agree with my thoughts on "NIH in .NET", what do you think is causing it? And finally, is it Ruby's feature set & community standpoint (dynamic language, strong focus on testing) that allows for such easy integration of third-party code?

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  • XenServer: Editing clone configuration before boot

    - by Jeff Ferland
    Upon cloning a base image, I need to reconfigure basic settings. Regenerating the ssh host key, changing static IP assignments, setting the host name, etc. Because of the network setup, DHCP is not an option. That more or less rules out SSHing in with a predefined key or running a startup script since I can't provide the IP externally. I'd most like to mount the filesystem of the new machine on Dom0, but the lvm volumes are exported and it appears to be Bad Form to import them so the Dom0 machine can see them. What's your best suggestion for altering files in a cloned VM before boot? Must be non-interactive, and I'm going to guess out the gate that scripting access via xe console is not going to work well.

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  • SQL SERVER – Faster SQL Server Databases and Applications – Power and Control with SafePeak Caching Options

    - by Pinal Dave
    Update: This blog post is written based on the SafePeak, which is available for free download. Today, I’d like to examine more closely one of my preferred technologies for accelerating SQL Server databases, SafePeak. Safepeak’s software provides a variety of advanced data caching options, techniques and tools to accelerate the performance and scalability of SQL Server databases and applications. I’d like to look more closely at some of these options, as some of these capabilities could help you address lagging database and performance on your systems. To better understand the available options, it is best to start by understanding the difference between the usual “Basic Caching” vs. SafePeak’s “Dynamic Caching”. Basic Caching Basic Caching (or the stale and static cache) is an ability to put the results from a query into cache for a certain period of time. It is based on TTL, or Time-to-live, and is designed to stay in cache no matter what happens to the data. For example, although the actual data can be modified due to DML commands (update/insert/delete), the cache will still hold the same obsolete query data. Meaning that with the Basic Caching is really static / stale cache.  As you can tell, this approach has its limitations. Dynamic Caching Dynamic Caching (or the non-stale cache) is an ability to put the results from a query into cache while maintaining the cache transaction awareness looking for possible data modifications. The modifications can come as a result of: DML commands (update/insert/delete), indirect modifications due to triggers on other tables, executions of stored procedures with internal DML commands complex cases of stored procedures with multiple levels of internal stored procedures logic. When data modification commands arrive, the caching system identifies the related cache items and evicts them from cache immediately. In the dynamic caching option the TTL setting still exists, although its importance is reduced, since the main factor for cache invalidation (or cache eviction) become the actual data updates commands. Now that we have a basic understanding of the differences between “basic” and “dynamic” caching, let’s dive in deeper. SafePeak: A comprehensive and versatile caching platform SafePeak comes with a wide range of caching options. Some of SafePeak’s caching options are automated, while others require manual configuration. Together they provide a complete solution for IT and Data managers to reach excellent performance acceleration and application scalability for  a wide range of business cases and applications. Automated caching of SQL Queries: Fully/semi-automated caching of all “read” SQL queries, containing any types of data, including Blobs, XMLs, Texts as well as all other standard data types. SafePeak automatically analyzes the incoming queries, categorizes them into SQL Patterns, identifying directly and indirectly accessed tables, views, functions and stored procedures; Automated caching of Stored Procedures: Fully or semi-automated caching of all read” stored procedures, including procedures with complex sub-procedure logic as well as procedures with complex dynamic SQL code. All procedures are analyzed in advance by SafePeak’s  Metadata-Learning process, their SQL schemas are parsed – resulting with a full understanding of the underlying code, objects dependencies (tables, views, functions, sub-procedures) enabling automated or semi-automated (manually review and activate by a mouse-click) cache activation, with full understanding of the transaction logic for cache real-time invalidation; Transaction aware cache: Automated cache awareness for SQL transactions (SQL and in-procs); Dynamic SQL Caching: Procedures with dynamic SQL are pre-parsed, enabling easy cache configuration, eliminating SQL Server load for parsing time and delivering high response time value even in most complicated use-cases; Fully Automated Caching: SQL Patterns (including SQL queries and stored procedures) that are categorized by SafePeak as “read and deterministic” are automatically activated for caching; Semi-Automated Caching: SQL Patterns categorized as “Read and Non deterministic” are patterns of SQL queries and stored procedures that contain reference to non-deterministic functions, like getdate(). Such SQL Patterns are reviewed by the SafePeak administrator and in usually most of them are activated manually for caching (point and click activation); Fully Dynamic Caching: Automated detection of all dependent tables in each SQL Pattern, with automated real-time eviction of the relevant cache items in the event of “write” commands (a DML or a stored procedure) to one of relevant tables. A default setting; Semi Dynamic Caching: A manual cache configuration option enabling reducing the sensitivity of specific SQL Patterns to “write” commands to certain tables/views. An optimization technique relevant for cases when the query data is either known to be static (like archive order details), or when the application sensitivity to fresh data is not critical and can be stale for short period of time (gaining better performance and reduced load); Scheduled Cache Eviction: A manual cache configuration option enabling scheduling SQL Pattern cache eviction based on certain time(s) during a day. A very useful optimization technique when (for example) certain SQL Patterns can be cached but are time sensitive. Example: “select customers that today is their birthday”, an SQL with getdate() function, which can and should be cached, but the data stays relevant only until 00:00 (midnight); Parsing Exceptions Management: Stored procedures that were not fully parsed by SafePeak (due to too complex dynamic SQL or unfamiliar syntax), are signed as “Dynamic Objects” with highest transaction safety settings (such as: Full global cache eviction, DDL Check = lock cache and check for schema changes, and more). The SafePeak solution points the user to the Dynamic Objects that are important for cache effectiveness, provides easy configuration interface, allowing you to improve cache hits and reduce cache global evictions. Usually this is the first configuration in a deployment; Overriding Settings of Stored Procedures: Override the settings of stored procedures (or other object types) for cache optimization. For example, in case a stored procedure SP1 has an “insert” into table T1, it will not be allowed to be cached. However, it is possible that T1 is just a “logging or instrumentation” table left by developers. By overriding the settings a user can allow caching of the problematic stored procedure; Advanced Cache Warm-Up: Creating an XML-based list of queries and stored procedure (with lists of parameters) for periodically automated pre-fetching and caching. An advanced tool allowing you to handle more rare but very performance sensitive queries pre-fetch them into cache allowing high performance for users’ data access; Configuration Driven by Deep SQL Analytics: All SQL queries are continuously logged and analyzed, providing users with deep SQL Analytics and Performance Monitoring. Reduce troubleshooting from days to minutes with database objects and SQL Patterns heat-map. The performance driven configuration helps you to focus on the most important settings that bring you the highest performance gains. Use of SafePeak SQL Analytics allows continuous performance monitoring and analysis, easy identification of bottlenecks of both real-time and historical data; Cloud Ready: Available for instant deployment on Amazon Web Services (AWS). As you can see, there are many options to configure SafePeak’s SQL Server database and application acceleration caching technology to best fit a lot of situations. If you’re not familiar with their technology, they offer free-trial software you can download that comes with a free “help session” to help get you started. You can access the free trial here. Also, SafePeak is available to use on Amazon Cloud. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Introducing the Oracle Parcel Service&ndash;Example/Reference Application

    - by Jeffrey West
    Over the last few weeks the product management team has been working on a webcast series that is airing in EMEA.  It is a 5-episode series where we talk about different features of WebLogic and show how to build applications that take advantage of these features.  Each session is focused at a different layer of the technology stack, and you can find the schedule below. The application we are building in this series is named the ‘Oracle Parcel Service’.  It is an example application and not a product of Oracle by any stretch of the imagination.  Over the next few weeks we will be finalizing the code and will be releasing it for you to check out.  For updates, request membership to the Oracle Parcel Service project on SampleCode.oracle.com: https://www.samplecode.oracle.com/sf/projects/oracle-parcel-svc/. Here are some of the key features that we are highlighting: JPA 2.0 (new in WebLogic 10.3.4) with EclipseLink Coherence TopLink Grid Level 2 cache for JPA JAX-RS (new in WebLogic 10.3.4) 1.0 for RESTful services Lightweight JQuery Web UI for consuming RESTful services JSF 2.0 (new in WebLogic 10.3.4) utilizing PrimeFaces EJB 3.0 Spring-WS Web Services JAX-WS Web Services Spring MDP’s for Event Driven Architectures Java MDB’s for Event Driven Architectures Partitioned Distributed Topics for Event Driven Architectures   Accessing the Code on SampleCode.Oracle.com You will need to log in using your Oracle.com username and password.  If you have not created an account, you will need to do so.  It’s a simple one-page form and we don’t bother you with too many emails.   Please join the project to be kept up to date on changes to the code and new projects.  Joining the project is not required, but very much appreciated. Once you have signed in you should see an icon for accessing the Source Code via Subversion.  You can also download a zip file containing the code.

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  • Order of operations to render VBO to FBO texture and then rendering FBO texture full quad

    - by cyberdemon
    I've just started using OpenGL with C# via the OpenTK library. I've managed to successfully render my game world using VBOs. I now want to create a pixellated affect by rendering the frame to an offscreen FBO with a size half of my GameWindow size and then render that FBO to a full screen quad. I've been looking at the OpenTK example here: http://www.opentk.com/doc/graphics/frame-buffer-objects ...but the result is a black form. I'm not sure which parts of the example code belongs in the OnLoad event and OnRenderFrame. Can someone please tell me if the below code shows the correct order of operations? OnLoad { // VBO. // DataArrayBuffer GenBuffers/BindBuffer/BufferData // ElementArrayBuffer GenBuffers/BindBuffer/BufferData // ColourArrayBuffer GenBuffers/BindBuffer/BufferData // FBO. // ColourTexture GenTextures/BindTexture/TexParameterx4/TexImage2D // Create FBO. // Textures Ext.GenFramebuffers/Ext.BindFramebuffer/Ext.FramebufferTexture2D/Ext.FramebufferRenderbuffer } OnRenderFrame { // Use FBO buffer. Ext.BindFramebuffer(FBO) GL.Clear // Set viewport to FBO dimensions. GL.DrawBuffer((DrawBufferMode)FramebufferAttachment.ColorAttachment0Ext) // Bind VBO arrays. GL.BindBuffer(ColourArrayBuffer) GL.ColorPointer GL.EnableClientState(ColorArray) GL.BindBuffer(DataArrayBuffer) // If world changed GL.BufferData(DataArrayBuffer) GL.VertexPointer GL.EnableClientState(VertexArray) GL.BindBuffer(ElementArrayBuffer) // Render VBO. GL.DrawElements // Bind visible buffer. GL.Ext.BindFramebuffer(0) GL.DrawBuffer(Back) GL.Clear // Set camera to view texture. GL.BindTexture(ColourTexture) // Render FBO texture GL.Begin(Quads) // Draw texture on quad // TexCoord2/Vertex2 GL.End SwapBuffers }

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  • should the same machine key be used in development and production environments?

    - by Henry Troup
    Our production servers all have the same machine key. However, our production and development systems do not have identical machine keys. We get heaps (about one per second) of exceptions of the form System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Padding is invalid and cannot be removed. at System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManagedTransform.DecryptData() at System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManagedTransform.TransformFinalBlock() at System.Security.Cryptography.CryptoStream.FlushFinalBlock() at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.EncryptOrDecryptData() at System.Web.UI.Page.DecryptStringWithIV()... We deploy the code after a build, .cs source is not present on production. aspx files are present on production. (Should I have posted in Stack Overflow? It's not a coding question.) From experimentation, we've found using the dev machine key value causes the exceptions to go away. Does anyone have documentation that I can use with the security team on the need for identical keys at compile and deployment time?

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  • Auto-detect proxy settings on network

    - by Ali Lown
    I am having problems trying to run web browser software on the local network through the proxy. When running off the profile drive which is on a network share, the system is unable to auto-detect proxy settings. When running off the local C drive, the browsers are able to correctly autodetect the settings. The error from the browser is about it being unable to fetch the proxy configuration file. Is this some form of authentication preventing it retreiving the settings when running of the network location? PS. Would this be better off on superuser?

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  • Postfix - How to alias some [email protected] to another user, but only for certain values of "host.com"

    - by Rory McCann
    I have a Postfix email setup. It's handle a few domains (i.e. I have them in my mynetworks in my main.cf). I have a normal unix account and use that to log in, and get my mail. My personal email account is of the form [email protected]. I have a new domain new.com, and I want to forward [email protected] to [email protected], however I don't want to forward [email protected]. Someone has suggested just forwarding all 'info' to 'user', and then using procmail on my user@ account to remove the [email protected] The server is Ubuntu.

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  • Building KPIs to monitor your business Its not really about the Technology

    When I have discussions with people about Business Intelligence, one of the questions the inevitably come up is about building KPIs and how to accomplish that. From a technical level the concept of a KPI is very simple, almost too simple in that it is like the tip of an iceberg floating above the water. The key to that iceberg is not really the tip, but the mass of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the surface upon which the tip sits. The analogy of the iceberg is not meant to indicate that the foundation of the KPI is overly difficult or complex. The disparity in size in meant to indicate that the larger thing that needs to be defined is not the technical tip, but the underlying business definition of what the KPI means. From a technical perspective the KPI consists of primarily the following items: Actual Value This is the actual value data point that is being measured. An example would be something like the amount of sales. Target Value This is the target goal for the KPI. This is a number that can be measured against Actual Value. An example would be $10,000 in monthly sales. Target Indicator Range This is the definition of ranges that define what type of indicator the user will see comparing the Actual Value to the Target Value. Most often this is defined by stoplight, but can be any indicator that is going to show a status in a quick fashion to the user. Typically this would be something like: Red Light = Actual Value more than 5% below target; Yellow Light = Within 5% of target either direction; Green Light = More than 5% higher than Target Value Status\Trend Indicator This is an optional attribute of a KPI that is typically used to show some kind of trend. The vast majority of these indicators are used to show some type of progress against a previous period. As an example, the status indicator might be used to show how the monthly sales compare to last month. With this type of indicator there needs to be not only a definition of what the ranges are for your status indictor, but then also what value the number needs to be compared against. So now we have an idea of what data points a KPI consists of from a technical perspective lets talk a bit about tools. As you can see technically there is not a whole lot to them and the choice of technology is not as important as the definition of the KPIs, which we will get to in a minute. There are many different types of tools in the Microsoft BI stack that you can use to expose your KPI to the business. These include Performance Point, SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Reporting Services. There are pluses and minuses to each technology and the right technology is based a lot on your goals and how you want to deliver the information to the users. Additionally, there are other non-Microsoft tools that can be used to expose KPI indicators to your business users. Regardless of the technology used as your front end, the heavy lifting of KPI is in the business definition of the values and benchmarks for that KPI. The discussion about KPIs is very dependent on the history of an organization and how much they are exposed to the attributes of a KPI. Often times when discussing KPIs with a business contact who has not been exposed to KPIs the discussion tends to also be a session educating the business user about what a KPI is and what goes into the definition of a KPI. The majority of times the business user has an idea of what their actual values are and they have been tracking those numbers for some time, generally in Excel and all manually. So they will know the amount of sales last month along with sales two years ago in the same month. Where the conversation tends to get stuck is when you start discussing what the target value should be. The actual value is answering the What and How much questions. When you are talking about the Target values you are asking the question Is this number good or bad. Typically, the user will know whether or not the value is good or bad, but most of the time they are not able to quantify what is good or bad. Their response is usually something like I just know. Because they have been watching the sales quantity for years now, they can tell you that a 5% decrease in sales this month might actually be a good thing, maybe because the salespeople are all waiting until next month when the new versions come out. It can sometimes be very hard to break the business people of this habit. One of the fears generally is that the status indicator is not subjective. Thus, in the scenario above, the business user is going to be fearful that their boss, just looking at a negative red indicator, is going to haul them out to the woodshed for a bad month. But, on the flip side, if all you are displaying is the amount of sales, only a person with knowledge of last month sales and the target amount for this month would have any idea if $10,000 in sales is good or not. Here is where a key point about KPIs needs to be communicated to both the business user and any user who might be viewing the results of that KPI. The KPI is just one tool that is used to report on business performance. The KPI is meant as a quick indicator of one business statistic. It is not meant to tell the entire story. It does not answer the question Why. Its primary purpose is to objectively and quickly expose an area of the business that might warrant more review. There is always going to be the need to do further analysis on any potential negative or neutral KPI. So, hopefully, once you have convinced your business user to come up with some target numbers and ranges for status indicators, you then need to take the next step and help them answer the Why question. The main question here to ask is, Okay, you see the indicator and you need to discover why the number is what is, where do you go?. The answer is usually a combination of sources. A sales manager might have some of the following items at their disposal (Marketing report showing a decrease in the promotional discounts for the month, Pricing Report showing the reduction of prices of older models, an Inventory Report showing the discontinuation of a particular product line, or a memo showing the ending of a large affiliate partnership. The answers to the question Why are never as simple as a single indicator value. Bring able to quickly get to this information is all about designing how a user accesses the KPIs and then also how easily they can get to the additional information they need. This is where a Dashboard mentality can come in handy. For example, the business user can have a dashboard that shows their KPIs, but also has links to some of the common reports that they run regarding Sales Data. The users boss may have the same KPIs on their dashboard, but instead of links to individual reports they are going to have a link to a status report that was created by the user that pulls together all the data about the KPI in a summary format the users boss can review. So some of the key things to think about when building or evaluating KPIs for your organization: Technology should not be the driving factor KPIs are of little value without some indicator for whether a value is good, bad or neutral. KPIs only give an answer to the Is this number good\bad? question Make sure the ability to drill into the Why of a KPI is close at hand and relevant to the user who is viewing the KPI. The KPI is a key business tool when defined properly to help monitor business performance across the enterprise in an objective and consistent manner. At times it might feel like the process of defining the business aspects of a KPI can sometimes be arduous, the payoff in the end can far outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of going through this process are a better understanding of the key metrics for an organization and the measure of those metrics and a consistent snapshot of business performance that can be utilized across the organization. And I think that these are benefits to any organization regardless of the technology or the implementation.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Design pattern for procedural terrain assets

    - by Alex
    I'm developing a procedural terrain class at the moment and am stuck on the correct design pattern. The terrain is 2D and is constructed from a series of (x,y) points. I currently have a method that just randomly adds points to an array of points to generate a random spread of points. However I need a more elaborate system for generating the terrain. The terrain will be built form a series of re-accuring terrain structures eg. a pit, jump, hill etc. Each structure will have some randomness assigned to it, each height of hill will be random, pit size will be random etc. Each terrain structure will have: A property detailing the number of points making up that structure A method for generating the points (not absolutely necessary) My current thinking is to have a class for each terrain structure, create a fixed amount of terrain elements ahead of the player, loop over these and add the corresponding points to the game. What is the best way to create these procedural terrain structures when they are ultimately just a set of functions for generating terrain elements? Is a class for each terrain element excessive? I'm developing the game for iphone so any objective-c related answers would be welcome.

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  • Executing a Batch file from remote Ax client on an AOS server

    - by Anisha
    Is it possible to execute a batch file on an AOS server from a remote AX client? Answer is yes, provided you have necessary permission for this execution on the server. Please create a batch file on your AOS server. Some thing as below for creating a directory on the server.    Insert a command something like this in a .BAT file (batch file) and place any were on the server.   Mkdir “c:\test”      Copy the following code into your server static method of your class and call this piece of code from a button click on Ax form. Please execute this button click from a remote AX client and see the result . This should execute the batch file on the server and should create a directory called ‘test’ on the root directoryof the server.     server static void AOS_batch_file_create() { boolean b; System.Diagnostics.Process process; System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo; ; b = Global::isRunningOnServer(); infolog.add(0, int2str(b)); new InteropPermission(InteropKind::ClrInterop).assert(); process = new System.Diagnostics.Process(); processStartInfo = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo(); processStartInfo.set_FileName("C:\\create_dir.bat"); // batch file path on the AOS server process.set_StartInfo(processStartInfo); process.Start(); //process.Refresh(); //process.Close(); //process.WaitForExit(); info("Finished"); }

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  • Change Management Software

    - by Andrew
    I manage an 80,000 user CIS application written in Uniface. Every form in the application, and many of its processes, are represented by .frm files. We have hundreds of these files and 5 instances of the application. Instances include multiple production installations which must be kept sync'd. We do not get MD5 from our vendor for files that are released to us as patches. We have been using a spreadsheet to track changes, but this is far from ideal. Is there a commercial application that can be purchased that will allow us to track changes to the instances? Thank you all! EDIT: Patches are released as zip files with either FRM files in them or SQL files or a mix of both. SQL files will contain statements that need to be run in Oracle. Patches are also assigned unique patch numbers.

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  • Email Deliverability on Yahoo is very poor. Any suggestions please?

    - by xarejay28x
    All other ISPs (Google, AOL, Hotmail) are fantastic, hitting 98-100% in the inbox. Yahoo is very random, and lately our deliverability has dropped drastically. All IPs are senders certified by Return Path and supposedly that automatically whitelists our IPs and allows us to send as many emails as we want (from what my boss says). Do I bother with applying to Yahoo's bulk sender form? I run every email campaign through: SpamAssassin (Excellent Scores) Test Accounts (for test deliverability) Old school HTML format I'm running out of ideas and I'm starting to be in the hot seat and I am very fearful for my job position. If you can offer any wise words i will be very grateful. Thank you in advance.

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  • C#: Why Decorate When You Can Intercept

    - by James Michael Hare
    We've all heard of the old Decorator Design Pattern (here) or used it at one time or another either directly or indirectly.  A decorator is a class that wraps a given abstract class or interface and presents the same (or a superset) public interface but "decorated" with additional functionality.   As a really simplistic example, consider the System.IO.BufferedStream, it itself is a descendent of System.IO.Stream and wraps the given stream with buffering logic while still presenting System.IO.Stream's public interface:   1: Stream buffStream = new BufferedStream(rawStream); Now, let's take a look at a custom-code example.  Let's say that we have a class in our data access layer that retrieves a list of products from a database:  1: // a class that handles our CRUD operations for products 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: ... 5:  6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: var results = new List<Product>(); 10:  11: // must create the connection 12: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 13: { 14: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 15: con.Open(); 16:  17: // create the command 18: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 19: { 20: cmd.Connection = con; 21: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 22: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 23:  24: // get a reader and pass back all results 25: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 26: { 27: while(reader.Read()) 28: { 29: results.Add(new Product 30: { 31: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 32: ... 33: }); 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: }            38:  39: return results; 40: } 41: } Yes, you could use EF or any myriad other choices for this sort of thing, but the germaine point is that you have some operation that takes a non-trivial amount of time.  What if, during the production day I notice that my application is performing slowly and I want to see how much of that slowness is in the query versus my code.  Well, I could easily wrap the logic block in a System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch and log the results to log4net or other logging flavor of choice: 1:     // a class that handles our CRUD operations for products 2:     public class ProductDao 3:     { 4:         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(ProductDao)); 5:         ... 6:         7:         // a method that would retrieve all available products 8:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 9:         { 10:             var results = new List<Product>(); 11:             var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 12:             13:             // must create the connection 14:             using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 15:             { 16:                 con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 17:                 18:                 // and all that other DB code... 19:                 ... 20:             } 21:             22:             timer.Stop(); 23:             24:             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000) 25:             { 26:                 _log.WarnFormat("Long query in GetAvailableProducts() took {0} ms", 27:                     timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 28:             } 29:             30:             return results; 31:         } 32:     } In my eye, this is very ugly.  It violates Single Responsibility Principle (SRP), which says that a class should only ever have one responsibility, where responsibility is often defined as a reason to change.  This class (and in particular this method) has two reasons to change: If the method of retrieving products changes. If the method of logging changes. Well, we could “simplify” this using the Decorator Design Pattern (here).  If we followed the pattern to the letter, we'd need to create a base decorator that implements the DAOs public interface and forwards to the wrapped instance.  So let's assume we break out the ProductDAO interface into IProductDAO using your refactoring tool of choice (Resharper is great for this). Now, ProductDao will implement IProductDao and get rid of all logging logic: 1:     public class ProductDao : IProductDao 2:     { 3:         // this reverts back to original version except for the interface added 4:     } 5:  And we create the base Decorator that also implements the interface and forwards all calls: 1:     public class ProductDaoDecorator : IProductDao 2:     { 3:         private readonly IProductDao _wrappedDao; 4:         5:         // constructor takes the dao to wrap 6:         public ProductDaoDecorator(IProductDao wrappedDao) 7:         { 8:             _wrappedDao = wrappedDao; 9:         } 10:         11:         ... 12:         13:         // and then all methods just forward their calls 14:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 15:         { 16:             return _wrappedDao.GetAvailableProducts(); 17:         } 18:     } This defines our base decorator, then we can create decorators that add items of interest, and for any methods we don't decorate, we'll get the default behavior which just forwards the call to the wrapper in the base decorator: 1:     public class TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator : ProductDaoDecorator 2:     { 3:         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator)); 4:         5:         public TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator(IProductDao wrappedDao) : 6:             base(wrappedDao) 7:         { 8:         } 9:         10:         ... 11:         12:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 13:         { 14:             var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 15:             16:             var results = _wrapped.GetAvailableProducts(); 17:             18:             timer.Stop(); 19:             20:             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000) 21:             { 22:                 _log.WarnFormat("Long query in GetAvailableProducts() took {0} ms", 23:                     timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 24:             } 25:             26:             return results; 27:         } 28:     } Well, it's a bit better.  Now the logging is in its own class, and the database logic is in its own class.  But we've essentially multiplied the number of classes.  We now have 3 classes and one interface!  Now if you want to do that same logging decorating on all your DAOs, imagine the code bloat!  Sure, you can simplify and avoid creating the base decorator, or chuck it all and just inherit directly.  But regardless all of these have the problem of tying the logging logic into the code itself. Enter the Interceptors.  Things like this to me are a perfect example of when it's good to write an Interceptor using your class library of choice.  Sure, you could design your own perfectly generic decorator with delegates and all that, but personally I'm a big fan of Castle's Dynamic Proxy (here) which is actually used by many projects including Moq. What DynamicProxy allows you to do is intercept calls into any object by wrapping it with a proxy on the fly that intercepts the method and allows you to add functionality.  Essentially, the code would now look like this using DynamicProxy: 1: // Note: I like hiding DynamicProxy behind the scenes so users 2: // don't have to explicitly add reference to Castle's libraries. 3: public static class TimeThresholdInterceptor 4: { 5: // Our logging handle 6: private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(TimeThresholdInterceptor)); 7:  8: // Handle to Castle's proxy generator 9: private static readonly ProxyGenerator _generator = new ProxyGenerator(); 10:  11: // generic form for those who prefer it 12: public static object Create<TInterface>(object target, TimeSpan threshold) 13: { 14: return Create(typeof(TInterface), target, threshold); 15: } 16:  17: // Form that uses type instead 18: public static object Create(Type interfaceType, object target, TimeSpan threshold) 19: { 20: return _generator.CreateInterfaceProxyWithTarget(interfaceType, target, 21: new TimedThreshold(threshold, level)); 22: } 23:  24: // The interceptor that is created to intercept the interface calls. 25: // Hidden as a private inner class so not exposing Castle libraries. 26: private class TimedThreshold : IInterceptor 27: { 28: // The threshold as a positive timespan that triggers a log message. 29: private readonly TimeSpan _threshold; 30:  31: // interceptor constructor 32: public TimedThreshold(TimeSpan threshold) 33: { 34: _threshold = threshold; 35: } 36:  37: // Intercept functor for each method invokation 38: public void Intercept(IInvocation invocation) 39: { 40: // time the method invocation 41: var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 42:  43: // the Castle magic that tells the method to go ahead 44: invocation.Proceed(); 45:  46: timer.Stop(); 47:  48: // check if threshold is exceeded 49: if (timer.Elapsed > _threshold) 50: { 51: _log.WarnFormat("Long execution in {0} took {1} ms", 52: invocation.Method.Name, 53: timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 54: } 55: } 56: } 57: } Yes, it's a bit longer, but notice that: This class ONLY deals with logging long method calls, no DAO interface leftovers. This class can be used to time ANY class that has an interface or virtual methods. Personally, I like to wrap and hide the usage of DynamicProxy and IInterceptor so that anyone who uses this class doesn't need to know to add a Castle library reference.  As far as they are concerned, they're using my interceptor.  If I change to a new library if a better one comes along, they're insulated. Now, all we have to do to use this is to tell it to wrap our ProductDao and it does the rest: 1: // wraps a new ProductDao with a timing interceptor with a threshold of 5 seconds 2: IProductDao dao = TimeThresholdInterceptor.Create<IProductDao>(new ProductDao(), 5000); Automatic decoration of all methods!  You can even refine the proxy so that it only intercepts certain methods. This is ideal for so many things.  These are just some of the interceptors we've dreamed up and use: Log parameters and returns of methods to XML for auditing. Block invocations to methods and return default value (stubbing). Throw exception if certain methods are called (good for blocking access to deprecated methods). Log entrance and exit of a method and the duration. Log a message if a method takes more than a given time threshold to execute. Whether you use DynamicProxy or some other technology, I hope you see the benefits this adds.  Does it completely eliminate all need for the Decorator pattern?  No, there may still be cases where you want to decorate a particular class with functionality that doesn't apply to the world at large. But for all those cases where you are using Decorator to add functionality that's truly generic.  I strongly suggest you give this a try!

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  • Bone creation in XNA Content Pipeline

    - by cod3monk3y
    I'm trying to manually create a ModelContent instance that includes custom Bone data in a custom ContentProcessor in the XNA Content Pipeline. I can't seem to create or assign manually created bone data due to either private constructors or read-only collections (at every turn). The code I have right now that creates a single triangle ModelContent that I'd like to create a bone for is: MeshContent mc = new MeshContent(); mc.Positions.Add(new Vector3(-10, 0, 0)); mc.Positions.Add(new Vector3(0, 10, 0)); mc.Positions.Add(new Vector3(10, 0, 0)); GeometryContent gc = new GeometryContent(); gc.Indices.AddRange(new int[] { 0, 1, 2 }); gc.Vertices.AddRange(new int[] { 0, 1, 2 }); mc.Geometry.Add(gc); // Create normals MeshHelper.CalculateNormals(mc, true); // finally, convert it to a model ModelContent model = context.Convert<MeshContent, ModelContent>(mc, "ModelProcessor"); The documentation on XNA is amazingly sparse. I've been referencing the class diagrams created by DigitalRune and Sean Hargreaves blog, but I haven't found anything on creating bone content. Once the ModelContent is created, it's not possible to add bones because the Bones collection is read-only. And it seems the only way to create the ModelContent instance is to call the standard ModelProcessor via ContentProcessorContext.Convert. So it's a bit of a catch-22. The BoneContent class has a constructor but no methods except those inherited from NodeContent... though now (true to form) maybe I've realized the solution by asking the question. Should I create a root NodeContent with two children: one MeshContent and one BoneContent as the root of my skeleton; then pass the root NodeContent to ContentProcessorContext.Convert? Off to try that now...

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  • My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

    - by Glav
    There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

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  • Wolfram is out, any alternatives? Or how to go custom?

    - by Patrick
    We were originally planning on using wolfram alpha api for a new project but unfortunately the cost was entirely way to high for what we were using it for. Essentially what we were doing is calculating the nutrition facts for food. (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chicken+breast+with+broccoli). Before taking the step of trying to build something that may work in its place for this use case is there any open source code anywhere that can do this kind of analysis and compile the data? The hardest part in my opinion is what it has for assumptions and where it gets that data to power the calculations. Or another way to put it is, I cannot seem to wrap my head around building something that computes user input to return facts and knowledge. I know if I can convert the user input into some standardized form I can then compare that to a nutrition fact database to pull in the information I need. Does anyone know of any solutions to re-create this or APIs that can provide this kind of analysis? Thanks for any advice. I am trying to figure out if this project is dead in the water before it even starts. This kind of programming is well beyond me so I can only hope for an API, open source, or some kind of analysis engine to interpret user input when I know what kind of data they are entering (measurements and food).

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  • UnicodeEncodeError when uploading files in Django admin

    - by Samuel Linde
    Note: I asked this question on StackOverflow, but I realize this might be a more proper place to ask this kind of question. I'm trying to upload a file called 'Testaråäö.txt' via the Django admin app. I'm running Django 1.3.1 with Gunicorn 0.13.4 and Nginx 0.7.6.7 on a Debian 6 server. Database is PostgreSQL 8.4.9. Other Unicode data is saved to the database with no problem, so I guess the problem must be with the filesystem somehow. I've set http { charset utf-8; } in my nginx.conf. LC_ALL and LANG is set to 'sv_SE.UTF-8'. Running 'locale' verifies this. I even tried setting LC_ALL and LANG in my nginx init script just to make sure locale is set properly. Here's the traceback: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/options.py", line 307, in wrapper return self.admin_site.admin_view(view)(*args, **kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/utils/decorators.py", line 93, in _wrapped_view response = view_func(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/views/decorators/cache.py", line 79, in _wrapped_view_func response = view_func(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/sites.py", line 197, in inner return view(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/srv/django/letebo/app/cms/admin.py", line 81, in change_view return super(PageAdmin, self).change_view(request, obj_id) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/utils/decorators.py", line 28, in _wrapper return bound_func(*args, **kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/utils/decorators.py", line 93, in _wrapped_view response = view_func(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/utils/decorators.py", line 24, in bound_func return func(self, *args2, **kwargs2) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/transaction.py", line 217, in inner res = func(*args, **kwargs) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/options.py", line 985, in change_view self.save_formset(request, form, formset, change=True) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/options.py", line 677, in save_formset formset.save() File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/forms/models.py", line 482, in save return self.save_existing_objects(commit) + self.save_new_objects(commit) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/forms/models.py", line 613, in save_new_objects self.new_objects.append(self.save_new(form, commit=commit)) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/forms/models.py", line 717, in save_new obj.save() File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 460, in save self.save_base(using=using, force_insert=force_insert, force_update=force_update) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 504, in save_base self.save_base(cls=parent, origin=org, using=using) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 543, in save_base for f in meta.local_fields if not isinstance(f, AutoField)] File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/fields/files.py", line 255, in pre_save file.save(file.name, file, save=False) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/fields/files.py", line 92, in save self.name = self.storage.save(name, content) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/files/storage.py", line 48, in save name = self.get_available_name(name) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/files/storage.py", line 74, in get_available_name while self.exists(name): File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/files/storage.py", line 218, in exists return os.path.exists(self.path(name)) File "/srv/.virtualenvs/letebo/lib/python2.6/genericpath.py", line 18, in exists st = os.stat(path) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 52-54: ordinal not in range(128) I tried running Gunicorn with debugging turned on, and the file uploads without any problem at all. I suppose this must mean that the issue is with Nginx. Still beats me where to look, though. Here are the raw response headers from Gunicorn and Nginx, if it makes any sense: Gunicorn: HTTP/1.1 302 FOUND Server: gunicorn/0.13.4 Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:50:27 GMT Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Expires: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:50:27 GMT Vary: Cookie Last-Modified: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:50:27 GMT Location: http://my-server.se:8000/admin/cms/page/15/ Cache-Control: max-age=0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Set-Cookie: messages="yada yada yada"; Path=/ Nginx: HTTP/1.1 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR Server: nginx/0.7.67 Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:50:57 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: close Vary: Cookie 500 UPDATE: Both locale.getpreferredencoding() and sys.getfilesystemencoding() outputs 'UTF-8'. locale.getdefaultlocale() outputs ('sv_SE', 'UTF8'). This seem correct to me, so I'm still not sure why I keep getting these errors.

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  • SQL Monitor Alerts in Outlook Without Configuring Email Settings

    - by Fatherjack
    SQL Monitor is a Red Gate tool that I have a long history with and I have worked closely with the development team from a time before it was called SQL Monitor. It is with that history in mind I am a little disappointed in myself that I have only just found out about a pretty cool feature. Out of the box SQL Monitor keeps itself to itself, it busily goes about watching over your servers, noting down when things look suspicious, change drastically or are just out and out wrong. You have to go into the settings and provide email details (SMTP server, account details etc.) before it starts getting at all intrusive with warning and alerts on the condition of your servers. However, it was after installing the most recent version that I was going through the application screen by screen looking for new and interesting changes that I noticed something that had avoided my attention. On the Alerts tab there is an option in the left hand menu. I don’t know how long ago it appeared or why I have never explored it previously but it appears that you can see your Alerts in the format of an RSS feed. Now when you click that link you are taken to a page that is the raw RSS XML – not too interesting but clearly you can use this in an RSS aggregator. Such as Outlook. Note the URL in the newly opened page take it with you into Outlook. For me it is in the form of http://SQLMonitorServerName/Alerts/Inbox/Feed. Again, this is something that I have only recently noticed – Outlook can aggregate RSS feeds. Down below the Inbox, Drafts folders etc, one up from the bottom is RSS Feeds. If you right click that and choose to Add a feed then you can supply the URL for SQL Monitor Alerts: And there you have it, your SQL Monitor Alerts available in Outlook where you can keep an eye on the number of unread items and pick them off at your convenience.

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  • Random Monday Thoughs

    - by Terry Goldman
    On this Monday morning my thoughts center on why is it so hard to embrace governance, any form of governance for that matter, be it software development governance, SOA governance, data governance, IT governance, so on a so fourth?Most customers that I meet tend to think that they don't need don't need governance as all is good within the enterprise. The question I generally pose to colleges and customers, is you have to think of governance as an insurance policy. Take of instance, if you just bought a new car, perhaps your "dream" car, would you drive it on the open streets without having the car insured? Probably not.Governance is what insurance is to new cars, be it to SOA, IT transformations and software development. Governance is a insurance policy against risk of failure. Now once I put it in this context, ask yourself, does governance have value to your organization? Most people now get it. Once the seed of governance is planted at the executive level of an organization, it becomes a exercise in planting an that idea into key personnel within the organization. Then the justification for governance grows and grows across the enterprise.Thats my food for though in this Monday morning.FYI, stay tuned for an upcoming multi-part article on using Oracle Enterprise Repository to build a Enterprise Continuum as described in TOGAF v9.0.

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  • Database Web Service using Toplink DB Provider

    - by Vishal Jain
    With JDeveloper 11gR2 you can now create database based web services using JAX-WS Provider. The key differences between this and the already existing PL/SQL Web Services support is:Based on JAX-WS ProviderSupports SQL Queries for creating Web ServicesSupports Table CRUD OperationsThis is present as a new option in the New Gallery under 'Web Services'When you invoke the New Gallery option, it present you with three options to choose from:In this entry I will explain the options of creating service based on SQL queries and Table CRUD operations.SQL Query based Service When you select this option, on 'Next' page it asks you for the DB Conn details. You can also choose if you want SOAP 1.1 or 1.2 format. For this example, I will proceed with SOAP 1.1, the default option.On the Next page, you can give the SQL query. The wizard support Bind Variables, so you can parametrize your queries. Give "?" as a input parameter you want to give at runtime, and the "Bind Variables" button will get enabled. Here you can specify the name and type of the variable.Finish the wizard. Now you can test your service in Analyzer:See that the bind variable specified comes as a input parameter in the Analyzer Input Form:CRUD OperationsFor this, At Step 2 of Wizard, select the radio button "Generate Table CRUD Service Provider"At the next step, select the DB Connection and the table for which you want to generate the default set of operations:Finish the Wizard. Now, run the service in Analyzer for a quick check.See that all the basic operations are exposed:

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  • how to change appearance of org-mode files on Github?

    - by Peter Salazar
    Github supports org-mode files, and has a renderer that parses .org files and converts them to HTML form. Headings appear in larger font, text tables are converted to graphical HTML tables, etc. Is there a way to control the way .org files appear on Github? I tried adding some export options in the usual manner #+OPTIONS: H:2 toc:t but the options are not reflected. Is this possible? If not, is there a workaround to display org-mode files through Github?

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  • Thread placement policies on NUMA systems - update

    - by Dave
    In a prior blog entry I noted that Solaris used a "maximum dispersal" placement policy to assign nascent threads to their initial processors. The general idea is that threads should be placed as far away from each other as possible in the resource topology in order to reduce resource contention between concurrently running threads. This policy assumes that resource contention -- pipelines, memory channel contention, destructive interference in the shared caches, etc -- will likely outweigh (a) any potential communication benefits we might achieve by packing our threads more densely onto a subset of the NUMA nodes, and (b) benefits of NUMA affinity between memory allocated by one thread and accessed by other threads. We want our threads spread widely over the system and not packed together. Conceptually, when placing a new thread, the kernel picks the least loaded node NUMA node (the node with lowest aggregate load average), and then the least loaded core on that node, etc. Furthermore, the kernel places threads onto resources -- sockets, cores, pipelines, etc -- without regard to the thread's process membership. That is, initial placement is process-agnostic. Keep reading, though. This description is incorrect. On Solaris 10 on a SPARC T5440 with 4 x T2+ NUMA nodes, if the system is otherwise unloaded and we launch a process that creates 20 compute-bound concurrent threads, then typically we'll see a perfect balance with 5 threads on each node. We see similar behavior on an 8-node x86 x4800 system, where each node has 8 cores and each core is 2-way hyperthreaded. So far so good; this behavior seems in agreement with the policy I described in the 1st paragraph. I recently tried the same experiment on a 4-node T4-4 running Solaris 11. Both the T5440 and T4-4 are 4-node systems that expose 256 logical thread contexts. To my surprise, all 20 threads were placed onto just one NUMA node while the other 3 nodes remained completely idle. I checked the usual suspects such as processor sets inadvertently left around by colleagues, processors left offline, and power management policies, but the system was configured normally. I then launched multiple concurrent instances of the process, and, interestingly, all the threads from the 1st process landed on one node, all the threads from the 2nd process landed on another node, and so on. This happened even if I interleaved thread creating between the processes, so I was relatively sure the effect didn't related to thread creation time, but rather that placement was a function of process membership. I this point I consulted the Solaris sources and talked with folks in the Solaris group. The new Solaris 11 behavior is intentional. The kernel is no longer using a simple maximum dispersal policy, and thread placement is process membership-aware. Now, even if other nodes are completely unloaded, the kernel will still try to pack new threads onto the home lgroup (socket) of the primordial thread until the load average of that node reaches 50%, after which it will pick the next least loaded node as the process's new favorite node for placement. On the T4-4 we have 64 logical thread contexts (strands) per socket (lgroup), so if we launch 48 concurrent threads we will find 32 placed on one node and 16 on some other node. If we launch 64 threads we'll find 32 and 32. That means we can end up with our threads clustered on a small subset of the nodes in a way that's quite different that what we've seen on Solaris 10. So we have a policy that allows process-aware packing but reverts to spreading threads onto other nodes if a node becomes too saturated. It turns out this policy was enabled in Solaris 10, but certain bugs suppressed the mixed packing/spreading behavior. There are configuration variables in /etc/system that allow us to dial the affinity between nascent threads and their primordial thread up and down: see lgrp_expand_proc_thresh, specifically. In the OpenSolaris source code the key routine is mpo_update_tunables(). This method reads the /etc/system variables and sets up some global variables that will subsequently be used by the dispatcher, which calls lgrp_choose() in lgrp.c to place nascent threads. Lgrp_expand_proc_thresh controls how loaded an lgroup must be before we'll consider homing a process's threads to another lgroup. Tune this value lower to have it spread your process's threads out more. To recap, the 'new' policy is as follows. Threads from the same process are packed onto a subset of the strands of a socket (50% for T-series). Once that socket reaches the 50% threshold the kernel then picks another preferred socket for that process. Threads from unrelated processes are spread across sockets. More precisely, different processes may have different preferred sockets (lgroups). Beware that I've simplified and elided details for the purposes of explication. The truth is in the code. Remarks: It's worth noting that initial thread placement is just that. If there's a gross imbalance between the load on different nodes then the kernel will migrate threads to achieve a better and more even distribution over the set of available nodes. Once a thread runs and gains some affinity for a node, however, it becomes "stickier" under the assumption that the thread has residual cache residency on that node, and that memory allocated by that thread resides on that node given the default "first-touch" page-level NUMA allocation policy. Exactly how the various policies interact and which have precedence under what circumstances could the topic of a future blog entry. The scheduler is work-conserving. The x4800 mentioned above is an interesting system. Each of the 8 sockets houses an Intel 7500-series processor. Each processor has 3 coherent QPI links and the system is arranged as a glueless 8-socket twisted ladder "mobius" topology. Nodes are either 1 or 2 hops distant over the QPI links. As an aside the mapping of logical CPUIDs to physical resources is rather interesting on Solaris/x4800. On SPARC/Solaris the CPUID layout is strictly geographic, with the highest order bits identifying the socket, the next lower bits identifying the core within that socket, following by the pipeline (if present) and finally the logical thread context ("strand") on the core. But on Solaris on the x4800 the CPUID layout is as follows. [6:6] identifies the hyperthread on a core; bits [5:3] identify the socket, or package in Intel terminology; bits [2:0] identify the core within a socket. Such low-level details should be of interest only if you're binding threads -- a bad idea, the kernel typically handles placement best -- or if you're writing NUMA-aware code that's aware of the ambient placement and makes decisions accordingly. Solaris introduced the so-called critical-threads mechanism, which is expressed by putting a thread into the FX scheduling class at priority 60. The critical-threads mechanism applies to placement on cores, not on sockets, however. That is, it's an intra-socket policy, not an inter-socket policy. Solaris 11 introduces the Power Aware Dispatcher (PAD) which packs threads instead of spreading them out in an attempt to be able to keep sockets or cores at lower power levels. Maximum dispersal may be good for performance but is anathema to power management. PAD is off by default, but power management polices constitute yet another confounding factor with respect to scheduling and dispatching. If your threads communicate heavily -- one thread reads cache lines last written by some other thread -- then the new dense packing policy may improve performance by reducing traffic on the coherent interconnect. On the other hand if your threads in your process communicate rarely, then it's possible the new packing policy might result on contention on shared computing resources. Unfortunately there's no simple litmus test that says whether packing or spreading is optimal in a given situation. The answer varies by system load, application, number of threads, and platform hardware characteristics. Currently we don't have the necessary tools and sensoria to decide at runtime, so we're reduced to an empirical approach where we run trials and try to decide on a placement policy. The situation is quite frustrating. Relatedly, it's often hard to determine just the right level of concurrency to optimize throughput. (Understanding constructive vs destructive interference in the shared caches would be a good start. We could augment the lines with a small tag field indicating which strand last installed or accessed a line. Given that, we could augment the CPU with performance counters for misses where a thread evicts a line it installed vs misses where a thread displaces a line installed by some other thread.)

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