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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part four: The design

  - by marc dekeyser

  Welcome back to the fourth post in this series! Today we will have a look at what Microsoft recommends as a “private cloud design” and what I will make of it. Whilst my own solution is based of the reference architecture, it is quite different indeed! An important thing to know is that, whilst I am using the private cloud as a reference, I am skipping most of the steps in designing a private cloud. If that is why you are here, please read the links at the end of the article and skim through my own content. A private cloud is much more process driven than just building a virtual infrastructure… The architecture of it all… So imagine for a minute that you have unlimited funds to build this lab of yours… You’d want redundancy on all levels and separation of each network where possible! Unfortunately we don’t have that luxury and, as you saw me hinting at in the previous article, our own design will be more limited but still quite capable! Networking From the networking perspective I will not have a fully redundant network, after all, this is but a lab environment! Thanks to Server 2012 I will be able to use bonding on my NIC’s and use LACP to improve the performance on that part. Storage As I mentioned in the previous article a Synology DS1218+ will be used for iSCSI provisioning. This device has 2 NICs on-board which can be bonded in to one 2 Gbps interface giving me a decent throughput and making the disks the most limiting factor in the storage design. Domain controllers and extra infrastructure Server 2012 completely supports running domain controllers virtualized and has no need to actually have a reachable DC when booting… That being said I need a remote access machine to power on the hosts (I have no need for them running 24/7) and a possible System Center VMM 2012 box (although server 2012 is not supported until SP1 :( ). Undecided on if I am to install those boxes separately or as a virtual machine… Which amounts to… Something like this pretty picture!                   Sources Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions Repository (en-US) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/12131.microsoft-private-cloud-solutions-repository-en-us.aspx Reference  Architecture: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3819.reference-architecture-for-private-cloud.aspx Private Cloud Reference Model: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4399.private-cloud-reference-model.aspx

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• Updating an Entity through a Service

  - by GeorgeK

  I'm separating my software into three main layers (maybe tiers would be a better term): Presentation ('Views') Business logic ('Services' and 'Repositories') Data access ('Entities' (e.g. ActiveRecords)) What do I have now? In Presentation, I use read-only access to Entities, returned from Repositories or Services, to display data. $banks = $banksRegistryService->getBanksRepository()->getBanksByCity( $city ); $banksViewModel = new PaginatedList( $banks ); // some way to display banks; // example, not real code I find this approach quite efficient in terms of performance and code maintanability and still safe as long as all write operations (create, update, delete) are preformed through a Service: namespace Service\BankRegistry; use Service\AbstractDatabaseService; use Service\IBankRegistryService; use Model\BankRegistry\Bank; class Service extends AbstractDatabaseService implements IBankRegistryService { /** * Registers a new Bank * * @param string $name Bank's name * @param string $bik Bank's Identification Code * @param string $correspondent_account Bank's correspondent account * * @return Bank */ public function registerBank( $name, $bik, $correspondent_account ) { $bank = new Bank(); $bank -> setName( $name ) -> setBik( $bik ) -> setCorrespondentAccount( $correspondent_account ); if( null === $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank() ) $this->setDefaultBank( $bank ); $this->getEntityManager()->persist( $bank ); return $bank; } /** * Makes the $bank system's default bank * * @param Bank $bank * @return IBankRegistryService */ public function setDefaultBank( Bank $bank ) { $default_bank = $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank(); if( null !== $default_bank ) $default_bank->setDefault( false ); $bank->setDefault( true ); return $this; } } Where am I stuck? I'm struggling about how to update certain fields in Bank Entity. Bad solution #1: Making a series of setters in Service for each setter in Bank; - seems to be quite reduntant, increases Service interface complexity and proportionally decreases it's simplicity - something to avoid if you care about code maitainability. I try to follow KISS and DRY principles. Bad solution #2: Modifying Bank directly through it's native setters; - really bad. If you'll ever need to move modification into the Service, it will be pain. Business logic should remain in Business logic layer. Plus, there are plans on logging all of the actions and maybe even involve user permissions (perhaps, through decorators) in future, so all modifications should be made only through the Service. Possible good solution: Creating an updateBank( Bank $bank, $array_of_fields_to_update) method; - makes the interface as simple as possible, but there is a problem: one should not try to manually set isDefault flag on a Bank, this operation should be performed through setDefaultBank method. It gets even worse when you have relations that you don't want to be directly modified. Of course, you can just limit the fields that can be modified by this method, but how do you tell method's user what they can and cannot modify? Exceptions?

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• Deferred Shading - Toolkit

  - by AliveDevil

  I recently managed to get some lights rendered in a scene by using a buffer and a for-loop. The problem with this method is the performance drop if more lights are used. I tried to convert Deferred Rendering in XNA4.0 | ROY-T.NL but it is not working, because I am not using any models. I know I have to render color, normals and lights seperate but I don't know how I could get it working. For understanding my structure better I'm using a world-class which holds some chunks. These chunks are loading all vertices from their items. These items have a property which returns the vertices. The item is returning VertexPositionNormalTexture[]. The chunk loads these Vertices and combines them to one large array of VertexPositionNormalTexture via someList.AsParallel().SelectMany(m => m).ToArray()). m is a VertexPositionNormalTexture. someList is List<VertexPositionNormalTexture>. I got my own shader to draw these vertices how I want them to be drawn. The first thing I would try is setting up two RenderTarget2D for rendering the color and normal part. With two different shaders. Than I would have to render the lights and there's the problem: I don't know how. I set up a structure to simplify working with lights but it didn't really help. public struct Light { public Vector3 Position; public Color4 Color; public float Range; public float Intensity; public Light( Vector3 position, Color color, float range, float intensity ) : this() { this.Position = position; this.Color = color; this.Range = range; this.Intensity = intensity; } public float[] Definition { get { return new[] { Position.X, Position.Y, Position.Z, Color.Red, Color.Green, Color.Blue, Intensity, Range }; } } } The next part is equally different because I don't know how to combine the colorMap, normalMap and textureMap to one finalMap. Some information to the system: I'm using SharpDX (Nightly from some months ago) and the SharpDX.Toolkit (I don't want to mess up with Direct3DDevice and similar things). Can someone help me with this problem? If things are missing or I provided insufficient information tell me, I need to get deferred shading working. Things I'm not able to do: create a rendertarget which holds all lights, merge colorMap, normalMap and lightMap to one finalMap and presenting this to the user.

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• TechCast Live: "Java and Oracle, One Year Later" Replay Now Available

  - by Justin Kestelyn

  Earlier this week I had the opportunity to chat with Ajay Patel, Oracle's VP leading the Java Evangelist team, about "the state of the union" wrt Oracle and Java. Take a look: And here are some choice quotes, some paraphrased, as helpfully transcribed by Java evangelist Terrence Barr: "One key thing we have learned ... Java is not just a platform, it is also an ecosystem, and you can't have an ecosystem without a community." "The objectives, strategically [for Java at Oracle] have been pretty clear: How do we drive adoption, how do we build a larger, stronger developer community, how do we really make the platform much more competitive." "It's about transparency, involvement. IBM, RedHat, Apple have all agreed to working with us to make OpenJDK the best platform for open source development ... it is a sign that the community has been waiting to move the Java platform forward." "It's not just about Oracle anymore, it's about Java, the technology, the community, the developer base, and how we work with them to move the innovation forward." "Java is strategic to Oracle, and the community is strategic for Java to be successful ... it is critical to our business." On JavaFX 2.0: "... is coming to beta soon, with a release planned in second half [of 2011] ... will give you a new, high-performance graphics engine, the new API for JavaFX ... you will see a very strong, relevant platform for levering rich media platforms." On the JDK and SE: "... aggressively moving forward, JDK 7 is now code complete ... looking good for getting JDK 7 out by summer as we promised. Started work on JDK 8, Jigsaw and Lambda are moving along nicely, on track for JDK 8 release next year ... good progress." On Java EE and Glassfish: "... Very excited to have Glassfish 3.1 released, with clustering and management capabilities ... working with the JCP to shortly submit a number of JSRs for Java EE 7 ... You'll see Java EE 7 becoming the platform for cloud-based development." "You will see Oracle continue to step up to this role of Java steward, making sure that the language, the technology, the platform ... is competitive, relevant, and widely adopted." Making progress!

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar’s Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a ‘perfect storm’ of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one’s work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven’t far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it’s a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it’s more important not to let such fears lead to writer’s block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn’t always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what’s involved in getting an application that is ‘done’ ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we’d love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to ‘throw your hat into the ring’, drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• Oracle went back to school !....

  - by Cristina Ciocoiu

  I am Georgiana, Contracts Manager for Oracle University and Advanced Customer Services in Romania. I started working for Oracle for 4 years ago as a Contracts Specialist. Two years ago I became a manager of a team of 9 Contracts Specialists. On a sunny day in March some members of my team visited the students of the Academy of Economic Studies, accompanied by Recruitment colleagues. This was part of a new initiative to raise awareness on career opportunities at Oracle. We spent approximately 2 hours illustrating and explaining different aspects of the day-to-day activities of an Oracle Contracts Specialist to the future graduates of the Academy. Role Play Since a role play is worth 1000 job descriptions, the audience witnessed an entertaining performance on the contracting process from the phase of the negotiation with the customer to actual signing of the contract. The main focus was on the role of Contracts Specialist liaising with all the groups involved and ensuring that the contract is compliant with Oracle policies while generating the expected revenue. However, the team took other roles as well i.e. Sales Representative, Customer, Business Approver and Lawyer to demonstrate their role in the process. As each of these roles only have a small slice of the big pie, it is vital to understand what happens before and after you come on stage as a Contract Specialist. Contracts Specialist Being a Contracts Specialist goes beyond simply knowing what policies apply, it means understanding Oracle’s core business model, understanding customers’ requests and addressing them in the most effective way. The job also involves connecting smaller teams that are often geographically dispersed across multiple regions so that they become a bigger, stronger and successful team. You are the expert in this key position that can facilitate the closing of a deal or stop it from happening if the risk is too high. The role play provided insights on both. Why I love this job Events of this kind are sometimes just as useful for the “recruiters” as for the “recruits”. For me, as a presenter, it was an excellent opportunity to think about the many reasons why I love what I do in the Contracts department every day and to share this with the students. I wanted to explain to the audience, who are still considering education and career possibilities, that what we do in Contracts DOES make a difference. You have the power to achieve targets that you did not think reachable before. Working in the dynamic Oracle environment shapes you as a person and there is a lot to take away from this experience. Looking back to my years in the Academy (I graduated from the Academy myself), I wish I could have listened to more people talking about their great jobs and about how I could get there. If those were Oracle people I might have been writing this article sooner. J If you are interested to join the Contracts team please click here for more information or contact lavinia.protopopescu-AT-oracle-DOT-com. You can find all openings in Romania via http://campus.oracle.com

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• New Version Demonstration VM BIC2g 2013-04 Partner Edition

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This Oracle Business Intelligence Linux VM virtual appliance (“BIC2g”) was developed to support Oracle OBI & BI-Apps sales and Oracle partners in product demonstrations, training activities and POC activities. It is available on ftp.oracle.com (see the deployment guide and “BIC2g 2013-04 Partner Edition Readme” pdf from the link below) and is available for OPN member partners. This BIC2g image is based on OBIEE v. 11.1.1.7. with Essbase and Essbase Studio Server started when starting BI. It also contains: Updated BI-Apps Cross Functional Demo (date advanced from 2011 to 2013), including DAC 11.1.1.6.4, Informatica 9.0.1 and is configured for a load against EBS R12. Both the 7.9.6.3 rpd/catalog and the 7.9.6.4 rpd/catalog versions of BI-Apps are provided. Updated integrated Essbase - BI Apps - EBS Demo (date advanced from 2009 to 2013. Re-configured BI Apps Data Sets to remove VPD (simplification) and greatly improved performance. Note that this image is identical to Oracle’s internal BI demonstration image, except that Endeca has been removed pending Endeca latest version availability on OTN. Once it is available on OTN we will provide a replacement that contains Endeca. Some of the screen shots in the “Readme”.pdf shows Endeca, but it is not on this (2013-04) image. The FTP access details and password are shown at the bottom of the page @ BI Solutions Engineering Partner Portal. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• #OOW 2012 @PARIS...talking Oracle and Clouds, and Optimized Datacenter

  - by Eric Bezille

  For those of you who want to get most out of Oracle technologies to evolve your IT to the Next Wave, I encourage you to register to the up coming Oracle Optimized Datacenter event that will take place in Paris on November 28th. You will get the opportunity to exchange with Oracle experts and customers having successfully evolve their IT by leveraging Oracle technologies. You will also get the latest news on some of the Oracle systems announcements made during OOW 2012. During this event we will make an update about Oracle and Clouds, from private to public and hybrid models. So in preparing this session, I thought it was a good start to make a status of Cloud Computing in France, and CIO requirements in particular. Starting in 2009 with the first Cloud Camp in Paris, the market has evolved, but the basics are still the same : think hybrid. From Traditional IT to Clouds One size doesn't fit all, and for big companies having already an IT in place, there will be parts eligible to external (public) cloud, and parts that would be required to stay inside the firewalls, so ability to integrate both side is key.  None the less, one of the major impact of Cloud Computing trend on IT, reported by Forrester, is the pressure it makes on CIO to evolve towards the same model that end-users are now used to in their day to day life, where self-service and flexibility are paramount. This is what is driving IT to transform itself toward "a Global Service Provider", or for some as "IT "is" the Business" (see : Gartner Identifies Four Futures for IT and CIO), and for both models toward a Private Cloud Service Provider. In this journey, there is still a big difference between most of existing external Cloud and a firm IT : the number of applications that a CIO has to manage. Most cloud providers today are overly specialized, but at the end of the day, there are really few business processes that rely on only one application. So CIOs has to combine everything together external and internal. And for the internal parts that they will have to make them evolve to a Private Cloud, the scope can be very large. This will often require CIOs to evolve from their traditional approach to more disruptive ones, the time has come to introduce new standards and processes, if they want to succeed. So let's have a look at the different Cloud models, what type of users they are addressing, what value they bring and most importantly what needs to be done by the  Cloud Provider, and what is left over to the user. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS : what's provided and what needs to be done First of all the Cloud Provider will have to provide all the infrastructure needed to deliver the service. And the more value IT will want to provide, the more IT will have to deliver and integrate : from disks to applications. As we can see in the above picture, providing pure IaaS, left a lot to cover for the end-user, that’s why the end-user targeted by this Cloud Service is IT people. If you want to bring more value to developers, you need to provide to them a development platform ready to use, which is what PaaS is standing for, by providing not only the processors power, storage and OS, but also the Database and Middleware platform. SaaS being the last mile of the Cloud, providing an application ready to use by business users, the remaining part for the end-users being configuring and specifying the application for their specific usage. In addition to that, there are common challenges encompassing all type of Cloud Services : Security : covering all aspect, not only of users management but also data flows and data privacy Charge back : measuring what is used and by whom Application management : providing capabilities not only to deploy, but also to upgrade, from OS for IaaS, Database, and Middleware for PaaS, to a full Business Application for SaaS. Scalability : ability to evolve ALL the components of the Cloud Provider stack as needed Availability : ability to cover “always on” requirements Efficiency : providing a infrastructure that leverage shared resources in an efficient way and still comply to SLA (performances, availability, scalability, and ability to evolve) Automation : providing the orchestration of ALL the components in all service life-cycle (deployment, growth & shrink (elasticity), upgrades,...) Management : providing monitoring, configuring and self-service up to the end-users Oracle Strategy and Clouds For CIOs to succeed in their Private Cloud implementation, means that they encompass all those aspects for each component life-cycle that they selected to build their Cloud. That’s where a multi-vendors layered approach comes short in terms of efficiency. That’s the reason why Oracle focus on taking care of all those aspects directly at Engineering level, to truly provide efficient Cloud Services solutions for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. We are going as far as embedding software functions in hardware (storage, processor level,...) to ensure the best SLA with the highest efficiency. The beauty of it, as we rely on standards, is that the Oracle components that you are running today in-house, are exactly the same that we are using to build Clouds, bringing you flexibility, reversibility and fast path to adoption. With Oracle Engineered Systems (Exadata, Exalogic & SPARC SuperCluster, more specifically, when talking about Cloud), we are delivering all those components hardware and software already engineered together at Oracle factory, with a single pane of glace for the management of ALL the components through Oracle Enterprise Manager, and with high-availability, scalability and ability to evolve by design. To give you a feeling of what does that bring in terms just of implementation project timeline, for example with Oracle SPARC SuperCluster, we have a consistent track of record to have the system plug into existing Datacenter and ready in a week. This includes Oracle Database, OS, virtualization, Database Storage (Exadata Storage Cells in this case), Application Storage, and all network configuration. This strategy enable CIOs to very quickly build Cloud Services, taking out not only the complexity of integrating everything together but also taking out the automation and evolution complexity and cost. I invite you to discuss all those aspect in regards of your particular context face2face on November 28th.

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• Stop trying to be perfect

  - by Kyle Burns

  Yes, Bob is my uncle too.  I also think the points in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship (manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org) are all great.  What amazes me is that tend to confuse the term “well crafted” with “perfect”.  I'm about to say something that will make Quality Assurance managers and many development types as well until you think about it as a craftsman – “Stop trying to be perfect”. Now let me explain what I mean.  Building software, as with building almost anything, often involves a series of trade-offs where either one undesired characteristic is accepted as necessary to achieve another desired one (or maybe stave off one that is even less desirable) or a desirable characteristic is sacrificed for the same reasons.  This implies that perfection itself is unattainable.  What is attainable is “sufficient” and I think that this really goes to the heart both of what people are trying to do with Agile and with the craftsmanship movement.  Simply put, sufficient software drives the greatest business value.   I've been in many meetings where “how can we keep anything from ever going wrong” has become the thing that holds us in analysis paralysis.  I've also been the guy trying way too hard to perfect some function to make sure that every edge case is accounted for.  Somewhere in there, something a drill instructor said while I was in boot camp occurred to me.  In response to being asked a question by another recruit having to do with some edge case (I can barely remember the context), he said “What if grasshoppers had machine guns?  Would the birds still **** with them?”  It sounds funny, but there's a lot of wisdom in those words.   “Sufficient” is different for every situation and it’s important to understand what sufficient means in the context of the work you’re doing.  If I’m writing a timesheet application (and please shoot me if I am), I’m going to have a much higher tolerance for imperfection than if you’re writing software to control life support systems on spacecraft.  I’m also likely to have less need for high volume performance than if you’re writing software to control stock trading transactions.   I’d encourage anyone who has read this far to instead of trying to be perfect, try to create software that is sufficient in every way.  If you’re working to make a component that is sufficient “better”, ask yourself if there is any component left that is not yet sufficient.  If the answer is “yes” you’re working on the wrong thing and need to adjust.  If the answer is “no”, why aren’t you shipping and delivering business value?

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• Why is my dual-boot Ubuntu partition showing up as a peripheral "root.disk"?

  - by Don

  I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04, which I had been booting from a usb key, as a dual-boot on my machine running Windows 7. From what I had read online while researching, I was prepared to have to shrink the Windows partition and all that. But I never had to - it really was just a few clicks here and there and it was installed. I'm still pretty confused about it, but whatever, it worked, and the two peacefully coexist on my machine, and I have broken things to fix before I worry about fixing unbroken things. So yesterday I got it in my head to look at my partitions (I was considering making an all new partition to install the Windows 8 Release Preview). What I saw confused me. Here's a screenshot of the disk utility. At this moment, there is nothing connected to my computer, and nothing in any of the optical drives/ports/card readers/etc. Can you help me figure out what's going on here? Don's Machine is, I believe, my Windows partition - that's the name I assigned my machine from Windows Explorer. PQSERVICE is from what I can find online also Windows, but having to do with backup. And SYSTEM REQUIRED, if I browse it in Ubuntu, is definitely something to do with booting, and I believe it is also Windows'. According to the sizes shown, those three together should use up my 500 GB HD. Then further down, as a "peripheral device", it lists that 31 GB disk. This is obviously my Ubuntu (Model:Linux Loop:root.disk), but why is it showing up as a peripheral? So, to sum up those questions and to add some more random ones I had: Why is Ubuntu showing up as a peripheral device? If the Windows sections take up all 500 GB, where does Ubuntu live? If I renamed the disk partitions, would my life become a nightmare (seriously - can I safely rename them)? Why didn't I have to resize the Windows partition in the first place? Would giving Ubuntu more space improve its performance (it hangs alot)? Is it possible to have a partition for each OS (Windows 7 & 8, Ubuntu), a partition for files, and a separate partition for backups? Is this towards the good or bad idea end of the spectrum? @Elfy, would that explain why it keeps hanging? I guess I'll backup my files, rip it out, and reinstall it correctly later on today.

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• links for 2011-02-21

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Calling all enterprise architects | Enterprise architecture - InfoWorld Nominations are now open for the 2011 InfoWorld Enterprise Architecture Award, honoring companies whose enterprise architecture initiatives made a difference (tags: ping.fm) Red Tape, Part II : OTN Garage "How do you back up all of that storage? Tape: really fast tape. And, lots of it. This creates a whole variety of very interesting challenges today, elevating the topic to – at the very least – glamorous, but I think it qualifies as being downright hot!" - Kemer Thomson (tags: oracle entarch datastorage) The Buttso Blathers: Using Secure Config Files with the WebLogic Maven Plugin "WebLogic Server has long had a mechanism to provide a more secure way of connecting to the Administration Server from client utilities such that the username and password do not need to be specified and therefore can’t be seen from the process list or command shell history." (tags: oracle weblogic) World-class EA | Open Group Blog "World-class Enterprise Architecture is all about creating definitive collateral that defines how the architecture delivers value for societal value." - Mick Adams (tags: enterprisearchitecture entarch opengroup) Enterprise Process Maps: A Process Picture worth a Million Words (Telecommunications Architecture Corner) "Every BPM project (holistic BPM kick-off, enterprise system implementation, Service-oriented Architecture, business process transformation, corporate performance management, etc.) should be begin with a clear understanding of the business environment..." - Raul Goycoolea (tags: oracle otn telecommunications businessprocess entarch bpm) Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: WebCenter PS3 Customization Manager- Long Awaited Feature for MDS Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovski shares "really great news for those of you who are working on MDS personalization and customization support in Oracle Fusion Middleware applications." (tags: oracle otn oracleace webcenter enterprise2.0) Oracle WebCenter: Common User Experience Architecture (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) Kellsey Ruppel describes "how the new release of Oracle WebCenter delivers a Common User Experience Architecture." (tags: oracle otn webcenter enterprise2.0) Java / Oracle SOA blog: Do your SOA deployments & configuration with AIA Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond illustrates the use of the SOA Suite / FMW deployment framework, "one of the Application Integration Architecture (AIA) hidden gems." (tags: oracle oracleace soa otn fusionmiddleware) Enterprise Software Development with Java: Clustering Stateful Session Beans with GlassFish 3.1 Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele describes what he did "to get a Stateful Session Bean failover scenario working with two instances on one node." (tags: oracle otn oracleace glassfish) Enhanced REST Support in Oracle Service Bus 11gR1 (SOA Thinker) Jeff Davies illustrates how to re-implement the REST-ful Products services using query strings for passing parameter information. (tags: oracle otn soa REST)

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• MSFT new trick to promote IE9 by kill IE6 first.

  - by anirudha

  Every developer know every issue on development for IE6 whenever they know things more. they are frustrated whenever they spent time in IE6 for making application cross browser compatible. not long time ago MSFT make a campaign save IE6 you can find the reference http://blogs.msdn.com/b/anna/archive/2009/04/01/save-internet-explorer-6.aspx and the webstite is here http://www.saveie6.com/ well they really make joke see what they write on the page. well why website maked in PHP whenever they can make them in asp.net or any other technology who reflect the Microsoft technology see here  http://www.saveie6.com/compare.php High security (many updates) :- you can find IE6 is how much secure you can also read Wikipedia for know. well i can say IE6 is very easily to hack. wikipedia tell you about that here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6 and for know about the security watch here http://www.google.co.in/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&q=ie6+security+issues Lightweight (no support for silly PNG transparency, etc) :- well they tell PNG silly but tell me about the best format on internet. their is no better option as png or SVG. More screen space thanks to no tabs:-  they tell this nonsense without think anything. if they really care about more screen space why they make tab  in 7,8,9. conclusion:- IE team make a research on how to promote IE9 better then they can beat chrome and Firefox. because IE9 not have anything good like customization , plug-in ,add-ons , personas , themes and many other thing like chrome and Firefox provided perhaps IE is outdated thing even everyone their can writing about these days that IE9 have this, have performance better then this… the main problem in IE is IE6. many developer hate them because many of their time goes for making site cross browser compatible. in 2009 they still have no blah like IE9 who they have today so they make a campaign for save IE6. the list they make is a joke. they show that everything in IE6 is perfect even everyone know the truth. they listed IE6 is high security. in 2011 their is a problem for IE9 promotion called IE6. because developer hate IE6 how they can promote IE9 very well. so destroy IE6 is only option for IE9 make promote better. so you can see they make two different different campaign and both are opposite of other. well  how we can believe in IE9. thanks for reading this post. what you thinking on it. have a idea or feedback reported them.

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• Is Infiniband going to get squeezed by iWARP and external QPI?

  - by andy.grover

  The Inquirer certainly thinks so.However, I'm not so sure it makes sense to compare Infiniband to an as-yet-unannounced optical external QPI. QPI is currently a processor interconnect. CPUs, RAM, and devices connected by it are conceptually part of the same machine -- they run a single OS, for example. They are both "networks" or "fabrics" but they have very different design trade-offs.Another widely-used bus in the system is closer to Infiniband than QPI -- PCI Express. Isn't it more likely that PCIe could take on IB? There are companies already who have solutions that use external PCI Express for cluster interconnect, but these have not gained significant market share. Why would QPI, a technology whose sweet spot is even further from Infiniband's than PCIe, be able to challenge Infiniband? It's hard to speculate without much information, but right now it doesn't seem likely to me.The other prediction made in the article is that Intel's 10GbE iWARP card could squeeze IB on the low end, due to its greater compatibility and lower cost.It's definitely never a good idea to bet against Ethernet when it comes to mass-market, commodity networking. Ethernet will win. 10GbE will win. But, there are now two competing ways to implement the low-latency RDMA Verbs interface on top of Ethernet. iWARP is essentially RDMA over TCP/IP over Ethernet. The new alternative is IBoE (Infiniband over Ethernet, aka RoCEE, aka "Rocky"). This encapsulates the IB packet protocol directly in the Ethernet frame. It loses the layer 3 routability of iWARP, but better maintains software compatibility with existing apps that use IB, and is simpler to implement in both software and hardware. iWARP has a substantial head start, but I believe that IBoE silicon will eventually be cheaper, and more likely to be implemented in commodity Ethernet hardware.I think IBoE is going to take low-end market share from traditional IB, but I think this is a situation IB hardware vendors have no problem accepting. Commoditized IBoE NICs invite greater use of RDMA features, and when higher performance is needed, customers can upgrade to "real" IB, maintaining IB's justification for higher prices. (IB max interconnect speeds have historically been 2-4x higher than Ethernet, and I don't see that changing.)(ObDisclosure: My current employer now sells IB hardware. I previously also worked at Intel. My opinions are my own, duh.)

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• Oracle OpenWorld Call for MDM Papers

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  As the MDM Track owner, I would like to invite everyone to respond to the Oracle OpenWorld (October 2-6, Moscone Center, San Francisco) Call for Papers (https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/portal/cfp/ ). The Call for Papers is open now through Sunday, March 27. This is an outstanding opportunity for organizations familiar with MDM to tell their story to a very large, knowledgeable and intensely interested community. Opportunities for feedback and networking abound.  I would love to see MDM papers on: business drivers; business benefits; quantified ROI stories; business process optimization; implementation styles; implementation lessons learned; using master data as a service; data governance best practices; end-to-end data quality experiences; support for SOA; Chart of Accounts issues fixed; how to leverage reference data; improving EPM and/or BI across the board; operationalizing a data warehouse; support for cloud computing; compliance success stories; architecture, scalability, and mixed workload RAC platform performance examples; industry specific value propositions (Financial Services; Retail, Telecom; Manufacturing, High Tech Manufacturing, Public Sector, Health Care, …); and line of business specific value propositions (CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, …); etc. In fact, given that MDM positively impacts all areas of operations and analytics, there are no limits to the ideas you may have for an OpenWorld presentation. When you follow the submission process, be sure to use “Master Data Management” for either the Primary or Optional track. Add “Master Data Management” as an Optional track if you are adding MDM content to a presentation on one of the following tracks: Agile; Customer Relationship Management, Oracle E-Business Suite, Product Lifecycle Management, Siebel, Sourcing and Procurement, Supply Chain Management, or one of the 18 available industry tracks. If Cloud Computing is included, please add “Cloud Computing” as a Cross-Stream Track. And don’t forget to make “MDM” a Tag, along with Business Intelligence, Cloud, CRM, Data Integration, Data Migration, Data Warehousing, EPM, or Service-Oriented Architecture whenever your content includes these items. I will personally review each submission. I hope you all keep me very busy over the next few weeks.

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• Windows Phone 7 Development Updates &ndash; March 8th 2011

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  Here are the latest update from the Windows Phone 7 Developer Worlds that went live this month. Here are some of the latest numbers: Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 quality apps and games and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps every day. There have been over 1 million downloads of the developers tools for Windows Phone 7. Trial version help you sell more Trials result in higher sales by the numbers: Users like trials  - paid apps with trial functionality are downloaded 70 times more than paid apps that don’t Nearly 1 out of 10 trial apps downloaded convert to a purchase and generate 10 times more revenue on average than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality. Trial downloads convert to paid downloads quickly. More than half of trial downloads that convert to a sale do so within the 1st 24 hours of trial download, and mostly within 2 hours of trial download. Microsoft Ad Control is gaining traction By the numbers - ad supported Windows Phone 7 apps are: Roughly ¼ of all registered U.S. WP7 developers have downloaded the free Ad SDK for Silverlight and XNA Of ad funded apps, over 95 percent use the free Microsoft Advertising Ad Control Monthly impressions from our Ad Exchange has continued to grow by double digits – impressions increased by 376 percent since January Ad Control, the first wave of “How Do I” videos are now available on MSDN: Create an Ad in a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game App Register Ad-Enabled Windows Phone 7 Apps Measure Ad Performance of Windows Phone 7 Apps Boarder International App submission for Free Apps through Yalla Apps As of today you can start submitting your free applications in developer markets that are currently not covered by Microsoft. To submit your Free application if you DO NOT belong to one of the Marketplace supported countries, go to: Yalla Apps Marketplace Policy Updates: Free App Marketplace Submission upped to 100 and other news Microsoft has been revisiting a few of our Marketplace policies based on feedback from developers to reduce friction and cost, word for word: 1. We have raised the limit on the number of certifications that can be performed for FREE apps at no cost to the registered developer from five to 100. This was a common request from developers which we are glad to implement after building alternate methods to ensure that users can find and download high quality apps. 2. We have converted policy 5.6 - related to the inclusion of contact information for support - from a mandatory to an optional policy. This is still a strongly recommended best practice, but we recognized and responded to developer feedback that this policy was creating excessive drag on the certification process for developers without commensurate user benefit for all apps. 3. We also understand the desire for clarification with regard to our policy on applications distributed under open source licenses.  The Marketplace Application Provider Agreement (APA) already permits applications under the BSD, MIT, Apache Software License 2.0 and Microsoft Public License.  We plan to update the APA shortly to clarify that we also permit applications under the Eclipse Public License, the Mozilla Public License and other, similar licenses and we continue to explore the possibility of accommodating additional OSS licenses. Enjoy and happy coding! Official Blog Post for reference.

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• Designing a completely new database/gui solution for my compnay

  - by user1277304

  I'm no expert when it come to everything Visual Studio 2010 and utilizing SQL server 2008. I'm sure some of my personal projects I've built for personal use would get laughed off the face of the planet, but SQLCe has been the solution I was looking for those home type of projects. And they work, flawlessly. Now I feel it's time to step up to the big league. I want to develop a complete, unified and module based solution for my company that I'm working for. We're still using stuff from the 80s for goodness sake! I use Excel and query the ancient database on my own because I can't stand the GUI. Nothing against people of age, but the IDE our programmers are using is from the stone age, and they use APL of all things with it. I've yet to see a radio button control anywhere in the GUI where it would make sense. Anyway, I want to do this right from the ground up. I'm by no means a newbie when it comes to programming in .NET 2010, however, I want the entire solution to be professionally done. I want version control, test projects, project flow, SQL 2008 integration and all the bells and whistles that come with that. I know for a fact that if we had something like that running, not only would development costs and time be slashed four fold, but the possibilities for expansion and performance would sky rocket. (Between the GUI an our DB engine, it can only use ONE CORE! ONE! It's 2012 for goodness sake!) Our business is growing and our current ancient solution just can't keep up, and I'd hate to see our business go down in flames because our programmer is stuck in the 80's and refuses to use anything current. So I ask you guys, the experts and know-it-alls, where do I start? Are there any gems of good books out there in the haystack of all "This for dummies" type of deals? I already have several people backing me in this endeavor, and while it may seem brash to just usurp the current programmers, I'm doing this for the company as a whole.

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• Support ARMv7 instruction set in Windows Embedded Compact applications

  - by Valter Minute

  On of the most interesting new features of Windows Embedded Compact 7 is support for the ARMv5, ARMv6 and ARMv7 instruction sets instead of the ARMv4 “generic” support provided by the previous releases. This means that code build for Windows Embedded Compact 7 can leverage features (like the FPU unit for ARMv6 and v7) and instructions of the recent ARM cores and improve their performances. Those improvements are noticeable in graphics, floating point calculation and data processing. The ARMv7 instruction set is supported by the latest Cortex-A8, A9 and A15 processor families. Those processor are currently used in tablets, smartphones, in-car navigation systems and provide a great amount of processing power and a low amount of electric power making them very interesting for portable device but also for any kind of device that requires a rich user interface, processing power, connectivity and has to keep its power consumption low. The bad news is that the compiler provided with Visual Studio 2008 does not provide support for ARMv7, building native applications using just the ARMv4 instruction set. Porting a Visual Studio “Smart Device” native C/C++ project to Platform Builder is not easy and you’ll lack many of the features that the VS2008 application development environment provides. You’ll also need access to the BSP and OSDesign configuration for your device to be able to build and debug your application inside Platform Builder and this may prevent independent software vendors from using the new compiler to improve their applications performances. Adeneo Embedded now provides a whitepaper and a Visual Studio plug-in that allows usage of the new ARMv7 enabled compiler to build applications inside Visual Studio 2008. I worked on the whitepaper and the tools, with the help of my colleagues and now the results can be downloaded from Adeneo Embedded’s website: http://www.adeneo-embedded.com/OS-Technologies/Windows-Embedded (Click on the “WEC7 ARMv7 Whitepaper tab to access the download links, free registration required) A very basic benchmark showed a very good performance improvement in integer and floating-point operations. Obviously your mileage may vary and we can’t promise the same amount of improvement on any application, but with a small effort on your side (even smaller if you use the plug-in) you can try on your own application. ARMv7 support is provided using Platform Builder’s compiler and VS2008 application debugger is not able to debut ARMv7 code, so you may need to put in place some workaround like keeping ARMv4 code for debugging etc.

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• Pay in the future should make you think in the present

  - by BuckWoody

  Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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• What to use C++ for?

  - by futlib

  I really love C++. However, I'm struggling to find good uses for it lately. It is still the language to use if you're building huge systems with huge performance requirements. Like backend/infrastructure code at Google and Facebook, or high-end games. But I don't get to do stuff like that. It's also a good choice for code that runs close to the hardware. I'd like to do more low-level stuff, but it isn't part of my job, and I can't think of useful private projects that would involve that. Traditionally, C++ was also a good choice for rich client applications, but those are mostly written in C# and Obj-C lately - and aren't really that important anymore, with everything being a web app. Or a mobile app, which are mostly written in Obj-C and Java. And of course, web-based desktop and mobile apps are quite prominent, too. At my job, I work mostly on web applications, using Java, JavaScript and Groovy. Java is a good/popular choice for non-Google-scale backends, Groovy (or Python, or Ruby or Node.js) is pretty good for the server-side of web apps and JavaScript is the only real choice for the client-side. Even the little games I'm writing in my spare time are lately mostly written in JavaScript, so they can run in the browser. So what would you suggest I could use C++ for? I'm aware that this question is very similar. However, I don't want to learn C++, I was a professional C++ programmer for years. I want to keep doing it and find good new use cases for it. I know that I can use C++ for web apps/games. I could even compile C++ to JavaScript with Emscripten. However, it doesn't seem like a good idea. I'm looking for something C++ is really good at to stay competent in the language. If your answer is: Just give up and forget C++, you'll probably never need it again, so be it.

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• Cheating on Technical Debt

  - by Tony Davis

  One bad practice guaranteed to cause dismay amongst your colleagues is passing on technical debt without full disclosure. There could only be two reasons for this. Either the developer or DBA didn’t know the difference between good and bad practices, or concealed the debt. Neither reflects well on their professional competence. Technical debt, or code debt, is a convenient term to cover all the compromises between the ideal solution and the actual solution, reflecting the reality of the pressures of commercial coding. The one time you’re guaranteed to hear one developer, or DBA, pass judgment on another is when he or she inherits their project, and is surprised by the amount of technical debt left lying around in the form of inelegant architecture, incomplete tests, confusing interface design, no documentation, and so on. It is often expedient for a Project Manager to ignore the build-up of technical debt, the cut corners, not-quite-finished features and rushed designs that mean progress is satisfyingly rapid in the short term. It’s far less satisfying for the poor person who inherits the code. Nothing sends a colder chill down the spine than the dawning realization that you’ve inherited a system crippled with performance and functional issues that will take months of pain to fix before you can even begin to make progress on any of the planned new features. It’s often hard to justify this ‘debt paying’ time to the project owners and managers. It just looks as if you are making no progress, in marked contrast to your predecessor. There can be many good reasons for allowing technical debt to build up, at least in the short term. Often, rapid prototyping is essential, there is a temporary shortfall in test resources, or the domain knowledge is incomplete. It may be necessary to hit a specific deadline with a prototype, or proof-of-concept, to explore a possible market opportunity, with planned iterations and refactoring to follow later. However, it is a crime for a developer to build up technical debt without making this clear to the project participants. He or she needs to record it explicitly. A design compromise made in to order to hit a deadline, be it an outright hack, or a decision made without time for rigorous investigation and testing, needs to be documented with the same rigor that one tracks a bug. What’s the best way to do this? Ideally, we’d have some kind of objective assessment of the level of technical debt in a software project, although that smacks of Science Fiction even as I write it. I’d be interested of hear of any methods you’ve used, but I’m sure most teams have to rely simply on the integrity of their colleagues and the clear perceptions of the project manager… Cheers, Tony.

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• Drawing lots of tiles with OpenGL, the modern way

  - by Nic

  I'm working on a small tile/sprite-based PC game with a team of people, and we're running into performance issues. The last time I used OpenGL was around 2004, so I've been teaching myself how to use the core profile, and I'm finding myself a little confused. I need to draw in the neighborhood of 250-750 48x48 tiles to the screen every frame, as well as maybe around 50 sprites. The tiles only change when a new level is loaded, and the sprites are changing all the time. Some of the tiles are made up of four 24x24 pieces, and most (but not all) of the sprites are the same size as the tiles. A lot of the tiles and sprites use alpha blending. Right now I'm doing all of this in immediate mode, which I know is a bad idea. All the same, when one of our team members tries to run it, he gets very bad frame rates (~20-30 fps), and it's much worse when there are more tiles, especially when a lot of those tiles are the kind that are cut into pieces. This all makes me think that the problem is the number of draw calls being made. I've thought of a few possible solutions to this, but I wanted to run them by some people who know what they're talking about so I don't waste my time on something stupid: TILES: When a level is loaded, draw all the tiles once into a frame buffer attached to a big honking texture, and just draw a big rectangle with that texture on it every frame. Put all the tiles into a static vertex buffer when the level is loaded, and draw them that way. I don't know if there's a way to draw objects with different textures with a single call to glDrawElements, or if this is even something I'd want to do. Maybe just put all the tiles into a big giant texture and use funny texture coordinates in the VBO? SPRITES: Draw each sprite with a separate call to glDrawElements. Use a dynamic VBO somehow. Same texture question as number 2 above. Point sprites? This is probably silly. Are any of these ideas sensible? Is there a good implementation somewhere I could look over?

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• What Can We Learn About Software Security by Going to the Gym

  - by Nick Harrison

  There was a recent rash of car break-ins at the gym. Not an epidemic by any stretch, probably 4 or 5, but still... My gym used to allow you to hang your keys from a peg board at the front desk. This way you could come to the gym dressed to work out, lock your valuables in your car, and not have anything to worry about. Ignorance is bliss. The problem was that anyone who wanted to could go pick up your car keys, click the unlock button and find your car. Once there, they could rummage through your stuff and then walk back in and finish their workout as if nothing had happened. The people doing this were a little smatter then the average thief and would swipe some but not all of your cash leaving everything else in place. Most thieves would steal the whole car and be busted more quickly. The victims were unaware that anything had happened for several days. Fortunately, once the victims realized what had happened, the gym was still able to pull security tapes and find out who was misbehaving. All of the bad guys were busted, and everyone can now breathe a sigh of relieve. It is once again safe to go to the gym. Except there was still a fundamental problem. Putting your keys on a peg board by the front door is just asking for bad things to happen. One person got busted exploiting this security flaw. Others can still be exploiting it. In fact, others may well have been exploiting it and simply never got caught. How long would it take you to realize that $10 was missing from your wallet, if everything else was there? How would you even know when it went missing? Would you go to the front desk and even bother to ask them to review security tapes if you were only missing a small amount. Once highlighted, it is easy to see how commonly such vulnerability may have been exploited. So the gym did the very reasonable precaution of removing the peg board. To me the most shocking part of this story is the resulting uproar from gym members losing the convenient key peg. How dare they remove the trusted peg board? How can I work out now, I have to carry my keys from machine to machine? How can I enjoy my workout with this added inconvenience? This all happened a couple of weeks ago, and some people are still complaining. In light of the recent high profile hacking, there are a couple of parallels that can be drawn. Many web sites are riddled with vulnerabilities are crazy and easily exploitable as leaving your car keys by the front door while you work out. No one ever considered thanking the people who were swiping these keys for pointing out the vulnerability. Without a hesitation, they had their gym memberships revoked and are awaiting prosecution. The gym did recognize the vulnerability for what it is, and closed up that attack vector. What can we learn from this? Monitoring and logging will not prevent a crime but they will allow us to identify that a crime took place and may help track down who did it. Once we find a security weakness, we need to eliminate it. We may never identify and eliminate all security weaknesses, but we cannot allow well known vulnerabilities to persist in our system. In our case, we are not likely to meet resistance from end users. We are more likely to meet resistance from stake holders, product owners, keeper of schedules and budgets. We may meet resistance from integration partners, co workers, and third party vendors. Regardless of the source, we will see resistance, but the weakness needs to be dealt with. There is no need to glorify a cracker for bringing to light a security weakness. Regardless of their claimed motives, they are not heroes. There is also no point in wasting time defending weaknesses once they are identified. Deal with the weakness and move on. In may be embarrassing to find security weaknesses in our systems, but it is even more embarrassing to continue ignoring them. Even if it is unpopular, we need to seek out security weaknesses and eliminate them when we find them. http://www.sans.org has put together the Common Weakness Enumeration http://cwe.mitre.org/ which lists out common weaknesses. The site navigation takes a little getting used to, but there is a treasure trove here. Here is the detail page for SQL Injection. It clearly states how this can be exploited, in case anyone doubts that the weakness should be taken seriously, and more importantly how to mitigate the risk.

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• How to handle this unfortunately non hypothetical situation with end-users?

  - by User Smith

  I work in a medium sized company but with a very small IT force. Last year (2011), I wrote an application that is very popular with a large group of end-users. We hit a deadline at the end of last year and some functionality (I will call funcA from now on) was not added into the application that was wanted at the very end. So, this application has been running in live/production since the end of 2011, I might add without issue. Yesterday, a whole group of end-users started complaining that funcA that was never in the application is no longer working. Our priority at this company is that if an application is broken it must be fixed first prior to prioritized projects. I have compared code and queries and there is no difference since 2011, which is proofA. I then was able to get one of the end-users to admit that it never worked proofB, but since then that end-user has went back and said that it was working previously......I believe the horde of end-users has assimilated her. I have also reviewed my notes for this project which has requirements and daily updates regarding the project which specifically states, "funcA not achieved due to time constraints", proofC. I have spoken with many of them and I can see where they could be confused as they are very far from a programming background, but I also know they are intelligent enough to act in a group in order to bypass project prioritization orders in order to get functionality that they want to make their job easier. The worst part is is that now group think is setting in and my boss and the head of IT is actually starting to believe them, even though there is no code or query changes. As far as reviewing the state of the logic it is very cut and dry to the point of if 1 = 1, funcA will not work. So, this is the end of the description of my scenario, but I am trying not to get severally dinged on my performance metrics due to this which would essentially have me moved to fixing a production problem that doesn't exist that will probably take over 1 month. I am looking for direct answers to this question. This question is not for rants, polling, or discussions as this is not the format for StackExchange. Please don't downvote me too terribly it is pretty common on this specific site of stack, I am looking for honest answers to this situation and I couldn't find a forum more appropriate.

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• 6 Ways to Modernize Your Customer Experience

  - by Mike Stiles

  If customers have changed, if the way they research and shop have changed, if their expectations have changed, if their ability to act on dissatisfaction has changed, but your customer experience has NOT changed, what was once “good enough” may now be crippling. Well, the customer has changed, and why wouldn’t they? You’ve probably changed too in your role as consumer. There’s more info available, it’s easier to get, there’s more choice, you’re more mobile, you’re more connected, it’s easier to buy, and yes, it’s easier to switch brands if experiences don’t meet your now higher expectations. Thanks to technological advances, we as marketers can increasingly work borderline miracles. But if we’re still not adamantly adopting customer centricity, and if we aren’t making the customer experience paramount amongst business goals, the tech is wasted. A far more modern customer experience is called for. Here are 6 ways to get there: 1. Modern Marketing: Marketing data is aggregated and targeted to the right customers, who are getting personal, relevant communications. In return, you’re getting insight that finally properly attributes revenue to your marketing efforts. 2. Modern Selling: Demand is being driven across all channels with modern selling tools. Productivity is up thanks to coordinated communication and selling, and performance is ever optimized using powerful analytics. 3. Modern CPQ: You’re cross-selling and upselling more effectively since reps and channel partners have been empowered with the ability to quickly, automatically generate 100% accurate, customer-friendly quotes complete with price controls and automated approvals. 4. Modern Commerce: You’re leveraging data and delivering personalized, targeted digital experiences to everyone. You’re attracting more visitors, and you’re able to scale and keep up with the market and control the experience. 5. Modern Service: You’re better serving your customers by making it easier for them to engage with your brand, plus you’re lowering your costs by increasing agent and tech support efficiencies. 6. Modern Social: You’re getting faster, deeper, more accurate insights from social and turning content around faster, which then goes out to the right people at the right time in the right place. You’ve also gotten proactive in your service, and customers love that. For far too many brands, the buying journey of Need, Research, Select, Buy, Use, Recommend across the multiple connect points of Social, Mobile, Store, Call Center, Site, Ecommerce is a disconnected mess. Oracle’s approach to CX is to connect every interaction your customer has with your brand, avoiding the revenue losses lousy customer experiences bring. How important is the experience to customers? 94% are willing to pay more of their hard-earned money to have better ones, while a meager 1% say they get the good, consistent experiences they expect. Brands, your words aren’t as loud anymore, so your actions as they relate to customer experience are going to have to do the talking. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Julien Tromeur, freeimages.com

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