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• The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

  - by David Dorf

  Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

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• Call For Papers Tips and Tricks

  - by speakjava

  This year's JavaOne session review has just been completed and by now everyone who submitted papers should know whether they were successful or not.  I had the pleasure again this year of leading the review of the 'JavaFX and Rich User Experiences' track.  I thought it would be useful to write up a few comments to help people in future when submitting session proposals, not just for JavaOne, but for any of the many developer conferences that run around the world throughout the year.  This also draws on conversations I recently had with various Java User Group leaders at the Oracle User Group summit in Riga.  Many of these leaders run some of the biggest and most successful Java conferences in Europe. Try to think of a title which will sound interesting.  For example, "Experiences of performance tuning embedded Java for an ARM architecture based single board computer" probably isn't going to get as much attention as "Do you like coffee with your dessert? Java on the Raspberry Pi".  When thinking of the subject and title for your talk try to steer clear of sessions that might be too generic (and so get lost in a group of similar sessions).  Introductory talks are great when the audience is new to a subject, but beware of providing sessions that are too basic when the technology has been around for a while and there are lots of tutorials already available on the web. JavaOne, like many other conferences has a number of fields that need to be filled in when submitting a paper.  Many of these are selected from pull-down lists (like which track the session is applicable to).  Check these lists carefully.  A number of sessions we had needed to be shuffled between tracks when it was thought that the one selected was not appropriate.  We didn't count this against any sessions, but it's always a good idea to try and get the right one from the start, just in case. JavaOne, again like many other conferences, has two fields that describe the session being submitted: abstract and summary.  These are the most critical to a successful submission.  The two fields have different names and that is significant; a frequent mistake people make is to write an abstract for a session and then duplicate it for the summary.  The abstract (at least in the case of JavaOne) is what gets printed in the show guide and is typically what will be used by attendees when deciding what sessions to attend.  This is where you need to sell your session, not just to the reviewers, but also the people who you want in your audience.  Submitting a one line abstract (unless it's a really good one line) is not usually enough to decide whether this is worth investing an hour of conference time.  The abstract typically has a limit of a few hundred characters.  Try to use as many of them as possible to get as much information about your session across.  The summary should be different from the abstract (and don't leave it blank as some people do).  This field is where you can give the reviewers more detail about things like the structure of the talk, possible demonstrations and so on.  As a reviewer I look to this section to help me decide whether the hard-sell of the title and abstract will actually be reflected in the final content.  Try to make this comprehensive, but don't make it excessively long.  When you have to review possibly hundreds of sessions a certain level of conciseness can make life easier for reviewers and help the cause of your session. If you've not made many submissions for talks in the past, or if this is your first, try to give reviewers places to find background on you as a presenter.  Having an active blog and Twitter handle can also help reviewers if they're not sure what your level of expertise is.  Many call-for-papers have places for you to include this type of information.  It's always good to have new and original presenters and presentations for conferences.  Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when you answer the next call-for-papers.

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• Issue 56 - Super Stylesheets Skinning in DotNetNuke 5

  May 2010 Welcome to Issue 56 of DNN Creative Magazine In this issue we show you how to use the powerful new Super Stylesheets skinning feature in DotNetNuke 5. Super Stylesheets are ideal for both beginner and experienced skin designers, they provide skin layouts using CSS. The advantage of Super Stylesheets is that you can easily create a skin layout which works in all browsers without the need to learn complex CSS techniques. They are also very quick to build and you can change a skin layout in a matter of minutes rather than hours. We show you how to build a skin from the very beginning using Super Stylesheets, we show you how to create various skin layouts, as well as multi-layouts. We also show you how to style the skin, how to add tokens such as the logo, menu, login links etc. and walk you through how to create a fully working skin from scratch. Following this we continue the Open Web Studio tutorials, this month we demonstrate how to create an installable DotNetNuke PA module using OWS. This is an essential technique which allows you to package up the OWS applications that you have created and build them into an installable zip package. The zip file is then installable as a standard DotNetNuke module which means you can easily install your OWS applications on other DotNetNuke installations by simply installing them as a standard DotNetNuke module. To finish, we have part six of the "How to Build a News Application with DotNetMushroom Rapid Application Developer (RAD)" article, where we demonstrate how to create a News Carousel using RAD, JQuery and the JCarousel plugin. This issue comes complete with 15 videos. Skinning: Super Stylesheets Skinning in DotNetNuke 5 - DNN Layouts (12 videos - 98mins) Module Development Series: How to Create an Installable DotNetNuke PA Module Using OWS (3 videos - 23mins) How to Implement a News Carousel Using DotNetMushroom RAD and JQuery View issue 56 to download all of the videos in one zip file DNN Creative Magazine for DotNetNuke Web Designers Covering DotNetNuke module video reviews, video tutorials, mp3 interviews, resources and web design tips for working with DotNetNuke. In 56 issues we have created 578 videos!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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• One Year Oracle SocialChat - The Movie

  - by mprove

  Tweet | Like | Watch on Vimeo You’ve just watched – hopefully – my first short movie. Thank you! Here is a bit of the back stage story. About 6 weeks ago colleagues from SNBC (Social Network and Business Collaboration) announced a Social Use Case Competition. It was expected to submit a video of 2 to 5 minutes duration on the Social Enterprise (our internal phrase for Enterprise 2.0). Hmm – I had a few vague ideas, but no script – no actors – no experience in film making. Really the best conditions to try something! I chose our weekly SocialChats as my main topic. But if you don’t do Danish Dogma cinema, you still need a script. Hence I played around with the SocialChat’s archive, and all of a sudden a script and even the actors appeared in front of me. The words that you have just seen are weekly topics. Slightly abridged and rearranged to form a story. Exciting, next phase. How to get it on digital celluloid? I have to confess I am still impressed by epic. (Keep in mind, epic was done in 2004.) And my actors – words – call for a typographic style already. The main part was done over a weekend with Apple Keynote. And I even found a wonderful matching soundtrack among my albums: Didge Goes World by Delago. I picked parts of Second Day and Seventh Day. Literally, the rhythm was set, and I "just" had to complete the movie. Tools used – apart from trial and error: Keynote, Pixelmator, GarageBand, iMovie. Finally I want to mention that I am extremely thankful to BSC Music for granting permissions to use the tracks for this short film! Without this sound it would have been just an ordinary slide show. – Internal note: The next SocialChat is on Death by PowerPoint vs. Presentation Zen. CU this Friday 3pm Greenwich / 7am Pacific.

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• Handy Generic JQuery Functions

  - by Steve Wilkes

  I was a bit of a late-comer to the JQuery party, but now I've been using it for a while it's given me a host of options for adding extra flair to the client side of my applications. Here's a few generic JQuery functions I've written which can be used to add some neat little features to a page. Just call any of them from a document ready function. Apply JQuery Themeroller Styles to all Page Buttons   The JQuery Themeroller is a great tool for creating a theme for a site based on colours and styles for particular page elements. The JQuery.UI library then provides a set of functions which allow you to apply styles to page elements. This function applies a JQuery Themeroller style to all the buttons on a page - as well as any elements which have a button class applied to them - and then makes the mouse pointer turn into a cursor when you mouse over them: function addCursorPointerToButtons() {     $("button, input[type='submit'], input[type='button'], .button") .button().css("cursor", "pointer"); } Automatically Remove the Default Value from a Select Box   Required drop-down select boxes often have a default option which reads 'Please select...' (or something like that), but once someone has selected a value, there's no need to retain that. This function removes the default option from any select boxes on the page which have a data-val-remove-default attribute once one of the non-default options has been chosen: function removeDefaultSelectOptionOnSelect() {     $("select[data-val-remove-default='']").change(function () {         var sel = $(this);         if (sel.val() != "") { sel.children("option[value='']:first").remove(); }     }); } Automatically add a Required Label and Stars to a Form   It's pretty standard to have a little * next to required form field elements. This function adds the text * Required to the top of the first form on the page, and adds *s to any element within the form with the class editor-label and a data-val-required attribute: function addRequiredFieldLabels() {     var elements = $(".editor-label[data-val-required='']");     if (!elements.length) { return; }     var requiredString = "<div class='editor-required-key'>* Required</div>";     var prependString = "<span class='editor-required-label'> * </span>"; var firstFormOnThePage = $("form:first");     if (!firstFormOnThePage.children('div.editor-required-key').length) {         firstFormOnThePage.prepend(requiredString);     }     elements.each(function (index, value) { var formElement = $(this);         if (!formElement.children('span.editor-required-label').length) {             formElement.prepend(prependString);         }     }); } I hope those come in handy :)

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• How can I diagnose/debug "maximum number of clients reached" X errors?

  - by jmtd

  Hi, I'm hitting a problem whereby X prevents processes from creating windows, uttering something like the following into ~/.xsession-errors: cannot open display: :0.0 Maximum number of clients reached Searching around there are lots of examples of people facing this problem, and sometimes people identify which program they are running is using up all the client slots. See e.g. LP 70872 (Firefox), LP 263211 (gnome-screensaver). For what it's worth, I run gnome-terminal, thunderbird, chromium-browser, empathy, tomboy and virtualbox nearly all the time, on top of the normal stuff you get with the GNOME desktop, and occasionally some other bits and pieces. However my question is not "which of my programs is causing this problem" but rather, how can one go about diagnosing this problem? In the above (and other) bugs, forum reports, etc., a number of tools are suggested: xlsclients - lists the client applications for the given display, but I don't think that corresponds to 'X clients' xrestop - a top-style X resources tool, one row per X client. Lots of '' clients, not shown in xlsclients output xwininfo -root -children lists X window objects From what I can gather, the problem might not be too many clients at all, but rather resources kept around in the X server for clients who have long-since detached. But it would also appear that you cannot (easily?) relate X resources back to their client. Can one effectively diagnose this issue once it has started to occur, or is a tedious divide-and-conquer approach for the apps I run the only approach open to me? Update Jan 2011: I think I have resolved this issue. For the benefit of anyone stumbling across this, nautilus and/or compiz or something in that chain of software was segfaulting due to a wallpaper I had. I had chosen an XML file as my wallpaper, which defined a rotating gallery of images. It was hand-made, but based on /usr/share/backgrounds/contest/background-1.xml or similar. Disabling the wallpaper and I have not had a crash since. I'm not marking this as answered yet, since the actual specific problem was not my question, but how to diagnose it was. Unfortunately this was mostly trial-and-error which sucks.

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• Parallel Port Problem in 12.04

  - by Frank Oberle

  I have a “dumb” printer attached to a parallel port in my machine which works fine under the “other” resident operating system (from Redmond) on the same machine. I recently added Ubuntu 12.04 as a dual boot on the machine, but Ubuntu doesn't seem to recognize the parallel port at all. All I need to set up a printer is a really plain-vanilla fixed pitch text-only generic driver, which is present, but no parallel ports show up. (The other printers, all on USB ports, seem to work just fine). Following what appeared to me to be the most reasonable of the many conflicting pieces of advice on the web, here's what I did: I added the following lines to /etc/modules parport_pc ppdev parport Then, after rebooting, I checked to see that the lines were still present, and they were. I ran dmesg | grep par and got the following references in the output that seemed like they might have to do with the parallel port: [ 14.169511] parport_pc 0000:03:07.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 [ 14.169516] PCI parallel port detected: 9710:9805, I/O at 0xce00(0xcd00), IRQ 21 [ 14.169577] parport0: PC-style at 0xce00 (0xcd00), irq 21, using FIFO [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP] [ 14.354254] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). [ 14.571358] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 16.588304] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.588756] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.673679] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1010 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675252] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675716] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.676636] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.677124] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 1545.725328] parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port I have no idea what any of that means, but the line “parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port ” seems unusual. I was still unable to add a printer for my old clunker, so I tried the direct approach, typing echo “Hello” > /dev/lp0 and received a Permission denied message. I then tried echo “Hello” > /dev/parport0 which didn't give me any message at all, but still didn't print anything. Running the command sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel gives the following: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 "unknown" "LPT #1" "" "" Checking the permissions for /dev/parport0, Owner, Group, and Other are all set to read and write. crw-rw---- 1 root lp 6, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/lp0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root lp 99, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/parport0 The output of the command lpinfo -v includes the following line: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 I've read several web postings that seem to suggest this has been a problem for several years, but the bug reports were closed because there wasn't enough information to address the issue (shades of Microsoft!). Any suggestions as to what I might be missing here?

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• Top down space game control problem

  - by Phil

  As the title suggests I'm developing a top down space game. I'm not looking to use newtonian physics with the player controlled ship. I'm trying to achieve a control scheme somewhat similar to that of FlatSpace 2 (awesome game). I can't figure out how to achieve this feeling with keyboard controls as opposed to mouse controls though. Any suggestions? I'm using Unity3d and C# or javaScript (unityScript or whatever is the correct term) works fine if you want to drop some code examples. Edit: Of course I should describe FlatSpace 2's control scheme, sorry. You hold the mouse button down and move the mouse in the direction you want the ship to move in. But it's not the controls I don't know how to do but rather the feeling of a mix of driving a car and flying an aircraft. It's really well made. Youtube link: FlatSpace2 on iPhone I'm not developing an iPhone game but the video shows the principle of the movement style. Edit 2 As there seems to be a slight interest, I'll post the version of the code I've used to continue. It works good enough. Sometimes good enough is sufficient! using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class ShipMovement : MonoBehaviour { public float directionModifier; float shipRotationAngle; public float shipRotationSpeed = 0; public double thrustModifier; public double accelerationModifier; public double shipBaseAcceleration = 0; public Vector2 directionVector; public Vector2 accelerationVector = new Vector2(0,0); public Vector2 frictionVector = new Vector2(0,0); public int shipFriction = 0; public Vector2 shipSpeedVector; public Vector2 shipPositionVector; public Vector2 speedCap = new Vector2(0,0); void Update() { directionModifier = -Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"); shipRotationAngle += ( shipRotationSpeed * directionModifier ) * Time.deltaTime; thrustModifier = Input.GetAxis("Vertical"); accelerationModifier = ( ( shipBaseAcceleration * thrustModifier ) ) * Time.deltaTime; directionVector = new Vector2( Mathf.Cos(shipRotationAngle ), Mathf.Sin(shipRotationAngle) ); //accelerationVector = Vector2(directionVector.x * System.Convert.ToDouble(accelerationModifier), directionVector.y * System.Convert.ToDouble(accelerationModifier)); accelerationVector.x = directionVector.x * (float)accelerationModifier; accelerationVector.y = directionVector.y * (float)accelerationModifier; // Set friction based on how "floaty" controls you want shipSpeedVector.x *= 0.9f; //Use a variable here shipSpeedVector.y *= 0.9f; //<-- as well shipSpeedVector += accelerationVector; shipPositionVector += shipSpeedVector; gameObject.transform.position = new Vector3(shipPositionVector.x, 0, shipPositionVector.y); } }

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• My co-worker has not been doing such a good job for the past decade. What do I do? [closed]

  - by stijn

  Possible Duplicate: How do I approach a coworker about his or her code quality? I started working with him almost a decade ago and back then I had never really programmed before, being a young hardware engineer. Right now however I have made quite some progress in all areas being part of software design and i am much, much more skilled than my co-worker who is 15 years older and has been programming more than twice as long. He is super nice and definitely smart enough, but lately his lack of skill and performance are starting to drag me down because we're more and more working on the same codebase. And soon we are going to do a quite ambitious start from scratch creating a whole new hard/software system. I feel it is time to address all issues now, but i do not know how to start. Here are some of the things that I would like to see him improve on: no consistent usage of style, spaces nor tabs (eg if(something ) a =b ) adds newlines around pieces of code to make it easier to read, then commits those with messages like 'no changes made' overall commit messages are useless and so are most of the comments, if there are any (eg 'remove solves for bug Rik' if Rik reported a bug). There is no function/class documentation. lots of spelling errors, in both English and native language, which sometimes are mixed 6/7/8 level deep deep nesting is no exception, a lot of functions start with one level already like if(ptr!=Null){ even when ptr is the result of allocation via new in the constructor numerous source files have over 10k lines of those lines, a major part is simply a result of copy-pasting functionality instead of using a function. This includes copying comments so we end up with 50 occurrences of var=NULL; //TODO TEST this!!!!!!! another part is hundreds of lines of dead code knows what versioning does, yet comments out old code and places new code underneath it when making changes coding skills are below par, especially for the type of rather high precision applications we do. Yet somehow, after a lot of trying and testing, stuff starts to work. But then breaks again some time later because every change casues a waterfall effect. violates every single item in the C++ FAQ lite, practices every bad practice I can think of still doesn't know how to properly use the debugger, but spends hours inspecting messy logfiles in notepad on a tiny laptop screen. Does not make any adjustments to the settings of the software he uses. Never uses keyboard shortcuts. does not seem to progress or learn new things at all. Work rather slow, mostly due to the lack of planning and incorrect usage of tools. How does one deal with this? For starters, how do I make him aware of all these problems? Should I tell the staff about it? And the next step, how to get him to learn new things and adopt another way of working?

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• Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

  - by jamiet

  Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure SQL Database ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations. To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet

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• BI&EPM in Focus Sep 2012

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

  Customers ·       Iluka Resources Improves Business Insight into Mining Operations Through Significantly Faster, Customized Analyses ·       Waikato Regional Council Consolidates Financial Reports up to 10 Times Faster  ·       Lojas Renner Shortens Budget Consolidation from Three Days to 15 Minutes; Improves Data Quality, and Supports Aggressive Expansion Plans  ·       Link to Complete Archive ·       Profit Magazine article featuring General Dynamics: RECONnomics: Integrate. Innovate. Grow (link) ·       Video: Goodhope Asia Unifies Financial Data with Oracle Hyperion (link)   Enterprise Performance Management ·       Oracle University Training on Demand: 1.     Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting 11.1.2 for Financial Management (link) 2.     Oracle Essbase Bootcamp: On Demand (link) 3.     Oracle Hyperion Planning 11.1.2: Create & Manage Applications On Demand (link)   Business Intelligence ·       Oracle University Training on Demand: 1.     Learn How to Create Analyses, Dashboards with OBI 11g (link) 2.     Build Repositories with Oracle Business Intelligence 11g (link) 3.     Oracle BI Publisher 11g Fundamentals (link) 4.     Oracle BI Applications Courses now available for 7.9.6  (link) 5.     Oracle BI 11g: New Features and Exalytics ·       Oracle Business Intelligence Release 11.1.1.6.2BP, updated information: 1.     Oracle BI Mobile at the Speed of Thought 2.     What's New in Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile 3.     What's New in Oracle Business Intelligence Visualizations 4.     Oracle Business Intelligence on Oracle.com 5.     Download the New Release ·       Discover How to Turn Data into Insight: Big Data Guide : Whitepaper and set of short Videos. ·       New OPN Specialisation Exam for OBI 11g Certification . ·       Lastest BIC2g and Exalytics Demonstration VMs for Partners . ·       New Version 2.3 Oracle Endeca Information Discovery and Server now available . ·       New Oracle BI Publisher 11.1.1.6 Trial Edition Now Available .

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• Using Query Classes With NHibernate

  - by Liam McLennan

  Even when using an ORM, such as NHibernate, the developer still has to decide how to perform queries. The simplest strategy is to get access to an ISession and directly perform a query whenever you need data. The problem is that doing so spreads query logic throughout the entire application – a clear violation of the Single Responsibility Principle. A more advanced strategy is to use Eric Evan’s Repository pattern, thus isolating all query logic within the repository classes. I prefer to use Query Classes. Every query needed by the application is represented by a query class, aka a specification. To perform a query I: Instantiate a new instance of the required query class, providing any data that it needs Pass the instantiated query class to an extension method on NHibernate’s ISession type. To query my database for all people over the age of sixteen looks like this: [Test] public void QueryBySpecification() { var canDriveSpecification = new PeopleOverAgeSpecification(16); var allPeopleOfDrivingAge = session.QueryBySpecification(canDriveSpecification); } To be able to query for people over a certain age I had to create a suitable query class: public class PeopleOverAgeSpecification : Specification<Person> { private readonly int age; public PeopleOverAgeSpecification(int age) { this.age = age; } public override IQueryable<Person> Reduce(IQueryable<Person> collection) { return collection.Where(person => person.Age > age); } public override IQueryable<Person> Sort(IQueryable<Person> collection) { return collection.OrderBy(person => person.Name); } } Finally, the extension method to add QueryBySpecification to ISession: public static class SessionExtensions { public static IEnumerable<T> QueryBySpecification<T>(this ISession session, Specification<T> specification) { return specification.Fetch( specification.Sort( specification.Reduce(session.Query<T>()) ) ); } } The inspiration for this style of data access came from Ayende’s post Do You Need a Framework?. I am sick of working through multiple layers of abstraction that don’t do anything. Have you ever seen code that required a service layer to call a method on a repository, that delegated to a common repository base class that wrapped and ORMs unit of work? I can achieve the same thing with NHibernate’s ISession and a single extension method. If you’re interested you can get the full Query Classes example source from Github.

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• Who Are the BI Users in Your Neighborhood?

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on March 19, 2010 10:52 PM Forrester's Boris Evelson recently wrote a blog titled "Who are the BI Personas?" that I enjoyed for a number of reasons. It's a quick read, easy to grasp and (refreshingly) focuses on the users of technology VS the technology. As Evelson admits, he meant to keep the reference chart at a high-level because there are too many different permutations and additional sub-categories to make such a chart useful. For me, I wouldn't head into the technical permutations but more the contextual use of BI and the issues that users experience. My thoughts brought up more questions than answers such as: Context: - HOW: With the exception of the "Power User" persona--likely some sort of business or operations analyst? - WHEN: Are they using the information to make real-time decisions on the front lines (a customer service manager or shipping/logistics VP) or are they using this information for cumulative analysis and business planning? Or both? - WHERE: What areas of the business are more or less likely to rely on BI across an organization? Human Resources, Operations, Facilities, Finance--- and why are some more prone to use data-driven analysis than others? Issues: - DELAYS & DRAG ON IT?: One of the persona characteristics Evelson calls out is a reliance on IT. Every persona except for the "Power User" has a heavy reliance on IT for support. What business issues or delays does that cause to users? What is the drag on IT resources who could potentially be creating instead of reporting? - HOW MANY CLICKS: If BI is being used within the context of a transaction (sales manager looking for upsell opportunities as an example) is that person getting the information within the context of that action or transaction? Or are they minimizing screens, logging into another application or reporting tool, running queries, etc.? Who are the BI Users in your neighborhood or line of business? Do Evelson's personas resonate--and do the tools that he calls out (he refers to it as "BI Style") resonate with what your personas have or need? Finally, I'm very interested if BI use is viewed as a bolt-on...or an integrated part of your daily enterprise processes?

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• jQuery open and close nested ul nav depending on location

  - by firefusion

  I'm making a sub nav in wordpress and have a nested list style menu. An example of the HTML is below. Whichever is the current item has the li class "current_page_item". I need all child menus collapsed unless there is a current_page_item class on the parent or one of the children. <ul> <li class="current_page_item"><a href="#">Parent Item</a> <ul class="children"> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a> <ul class="children"> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a> <ul class="children"> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a></li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a></li> </ul> This so far, which works but i wonder if it can be improved as there is some flashing open and then closed again.... jQuery('ul.children').slideUp(); jQuery('li.current_page_item ul.children').slideDown('medium'); jQuery('li.current_page_item').parent().slideDown('medium');

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• Should accessible members of an internal class be internal too?

  - by Jeff Mercado

  I'm designing a set of APIs for some applications I'm working on. I want to keep the code style consistent in all the classes I write but I've found that there are a few inconsistencies that I'm introducing and I don't know what the best way to resolve them is. My example here is specific to C# but this would apply to any language with similar mechanisms. There are a few classes that I need for implementation purposes that I don't necessarily want to expose in the API so I make them internal whereever needed. Generally what I would do is design the class as I normally would (e.g., make members public/protected/private where necessary) and change the visibility level of the class itself to internal. So I might have a few classes that look like this: internal interface IMyItem { ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set); } internal class _SmallItem : IMyItem { private readonly /* parameters */; public _SmallItem(/* small item parameters */) { /* ... */ } public ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set) { /* ... */ } } internal abstract class _CompositeItem: IMyItem { private readonly /* parameters */; public _CompositeItem(/* composite item parameters */) { /* ... */ } public abstract object UsefulInformation { get; } protected void HelperMethod(/* parameters */) { /* ... */ } } internal class _BigItem : _CompositeItem { private readonly /* parameters */; public _BigItem(/* big item parameters */) { /* ... */ } public override object UsefulInformation { get { /* ... */ } } public ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set) { /* ... */ } } In another generated class (part of a parser/scanner), there is a structure that contains fields for all possible values it can represent. The class generated is internal too but I have control over the visibility of the members and decided to make them internal as well. internal partial struct ValueType { internal string String; internal ItemSet ItemSet; internal IMyItem MyItem; } internal class TokenValue { internal static int EQ(ItemSetScanner scanner) { /* ... */ } internal static int NAME(ItemSetScanner scanner, string value) { /* ... */ } internal static int VALUE(ItemSetScanner scanner, string value) { /* ... */ } //... } To me, this feels odd because the first set of classes, I didn't necessarily have to make some members public, they very well could have been made internal. internal members of an internal type can only be accessed internally anyway so why make them public? I just don't like the idea that the way I write my classes has to change drastically (i.e., change all uses of public to internal) just because the class is internal. Any thoughts on what I should do here? It makes sense to me that I might want to make some members of a class declared public, internal. But it's less clear to me when the class is declared internal.

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• 3 Incredibly Useful Projects to jump-start your Kinect Development.

  - by mbcrump

  I’ve been playing with the Kinect SDK Beta for the past few days and have noticed a few projects on CodePlex worth checking out. I decided to blog about them to help spread awareness. If you want to learn more about Kinect SDK then you check out my”Busy Developer’s Guide to the Kinect SDK Beta”. Let’s get started:   KinectContrib is a set of VS2010 Templates that will help you get started building a Kinect project very quickly. Once you have it installed you will have the option to select the following Templates: KinectDepth KinectSkeleton KinectVideo Please note that KinectContrib requires the Kinect for Windows SDK beta to be installed. Kinect Templates after installing the Template Pack. The reference to Microsoft.Research.Kinect is added automatically.  Here is a sample of the code for the MainWindow.xaml in the “Video” template: <Window x:Class="KinectVideoApplication1.MainWindow" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="MainWindow" Height="480" Width="640"> <Grid> <Image Name="videoImage"/> </Grid> </Window> and MainWindow.xaml.cs using System; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Imaging; using Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui; namespace KinectVideoApplication1 { public partial class MainWindow : Window { //Instantiate the Kinect runtime. Required to initialize the device. //IMPORTANT NOTE: You can pass the device ID here, in case more than one Kinect device is connected. Runtime runtime = new Runtime(); public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); //Runtime initialization is handled when the window is opened. When the window //is closed, the runtime MUST be unitialized. this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainWindow_Loaded); this.Unloaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainWindow_Unloaded); //Handle the content obtained from the video camera, once received. runtime.VideoFrameReady += new EventHandler<Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.ImageFrameReadyEventArgs>(runtime_VideoFrameReady); } void MainWindow_Unloaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { runtime.Uninitialize(); } void MainWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { //Since only a color video stream is needed, RuntimeOptions.UseColor is used. runtime.Initialize(Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.RuntimeOptions.UseColor); //You can adjust the resolution here. runtime.VideoStream.Open(ImageStreamType.Video, 2, ImageResolution.Resolution640x480, ImageType.Color); } void runtime_VideoFrameReady(object sender, Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.ImageFrameReadyEventArgs e) { PlanarImage image = e.ImageFrame.Image; BitmapSource source = BitmapSource.Create(image.Width, image.Height, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Bgr32, null, image.Bits, image.Width * image.BytesPerPixel); videoImage.Source = source; } } } You will find this template pack is very handy especially for those new to Kinect Development.   Next up is The Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit which contains extension methods and a WPF control to help you develop with the Kinect SDK. After downloading the package simply add a reference to the .dll using either the WPF or WinForms version. Now you will have access to several methods that can help you save an image: (for example) For a full list of extension methods and properties, please visit the site at http://c4fkinect.codeplex.com/. Kinductor – This is a great application for just learning how to use the Kinect SDK. The project uses MVVM Light and is a great start for those looking how to structure their first Kinect Application. Conclusion: Things are already getting easier for those working with the Kinect SDK. I imagine that after a few more months we will see the SDK go out of beta and allow commercial applications to run using it. I am very excited and hope that you continue reading my blog for more Kinect, WPF and Silverlight news.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Changing Silverlight application themes at runtime

  We have received a lot of questions how can the application theme be changed at run time. The most important thing here to mark is that each time the application theme is changed all the controls should be re-drawn. Without going into too much detail, we could explain the application themes as a mechanism to replace the content of the Generic.xaml file in every loaded Telerik assembly at runtime. This does not affect the controls that already have default style applied, hence the need to create new instances. Because in the Silverlight applications the RootVisual cannot be changed at run time, we need a way to reset the application UI. The following code is in App.xaml.cs. private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e)     {           // Before:           // this.RootVisual = new MainPage();            this.RootVisual = new Grid();         this.ResetRootVisual();     }        public void ResetRootVisual()     {         var rootVisual = Application.Current.RootVisual as Grid;         rootVisual.Children.Clear();         rootVisual.Children.Add(new MainPage());     }   In Application_Startup() instead of creating new MainPage UserControl instance as RootVisual, we create a new Grid panel, that will contain the MainPage UserControl. In the ResetRootVisual() method we create the instance of MainPage and add it to the RootVisual panel. Then we have to create a method in the code behind which will set StyleManager.ApplicationTheme and then will call the ResetRootVisual() method: private void ChangeApplicationTheme(Theme theme) {     StyleManager.ApplicationTheme = theme;     (Application.Current as App).ResetRootVisual(); }   Here you can find an example which illustrates the described implementation of a Silverlight theme. For more information please refer to Teleriks online demos for Silverlight, the demos for WPF and help documentation for WPF and help documentation for Silverlight. 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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• New Features Of WordPress 3.3 You Must Know

  - by Gopinath

  After months of beta testing, WordPress 3.3 version is going to be released at the end of this month. There are several new features packed in the new version and few of them are going to excite WordPress admins. In this post we are going to discuss about the exciting new features. 1. Drag and Drop Media Uploads One of the biggest improvements in this version of WordPress is it’s all new media uploader. Now you can upload multiple files by just dragging & dropping, instantly resize  the images and filter files by their type. The media upload sports a brand new look WordPress adopted the Pupload plugin to power its media uploader component and it’s written by the same team who created the popular TinyMCE editor plugin. 2. Improved Admin Bar(Toolbar) The admin bar or newly called toolbar has got handful of makeovers. The not so much used items like Search box and other elements are removed to make sure that the bar is not clumsy. The user menu and the related options are moved to the right like how we see in Google’s user bar. Also there are few changes to the colour of the bar to make it more eye friendly. 3. Fly out Admin Menus All the left side bar menus of WordPress admin are now sports a fly out menu style to save a click. In the previous versions if you want to access a sub menu on the left side bar, you need to first click on the category and then choose the menu item from the expanded list. Now on just mouse over you will see a flyout of menu items. 4. Adaptive Admin – Layout Auto Adjust To Fit Various Devices If you own an iPad or any other so called tablets then you are going to love this feature. The admin site of WordPress has got a lot more friendly with tablets and smartphones. WordPress now auto adjusts layout to fit the device through which you are accessing the admin site.  Accessing admin dashboard on your tablets is going to be more fun. 5. Other Features Now that we have read the most useful 4 features here is a small list of other features that may interest you Nice Tooltips are displayed where ever possible to help the newbies to understand the usage of admin site Responsive Layouts jQuery 1.7 and jQuery UI 1.8.16 are the power horses of WordPress Performance improvements This article titled,New Features Of WordPress 3.3 You Must Know, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Our own Daily WTF

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dvroegop/archive/2014/08/20/our-own-daily-wtf.aspxIf you're a developer, you've probably heard of the website the DailyWTF. If you haven't, head on over to http://www.thedailywtf.com and read. And laugh. I'll wait. Read it? Good. If you're a bit like me probably you've been wondering how on earth some people ever get hired as a software engineer. Most of the stories there seem to weird to be true: no developer would write software like that right? And then you run into a little nugget of code one of your co-workers wrote. And then you realize: "Hey, it happens everywhere!" Look at this piece of art I found in our codebase recently: public static decimal ToDecimal(this string input) {     System.Globalization.CultureInfo cultureInfo = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InstalledUICulture;     var numberFormatInfo = (System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo)cultureInfo.NumberFormat.Clone();     int dotIndex = input.IndexOf(".");     int commaIndex = input.IndexOf(",");     if (dotIndex > commaIndex)         numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ".";     else if (commaIndex > dotIndex)         numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ",";     decimal result;     if (decimal.TryParse(input, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Float, numberFormatInfo, out result))         return result;     else         throw new Exception(string.Format("Invalid input for decimal parsing: {0}. Decimal separator: {1}.", input, numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator)); }  Me and a collegue have been looking long and hard at this and what we concluded was the following: Apparently, we don't trust our users to be able to correctly set the culture in Windows. Users aren't able to determine if they should tell Windows to use a decimal point or a comma to display numbers. So what we've done here is make sure that whatever the user enters, we'll translate that into whatever the user WANTS to enter instead of what he actually did. So if you set your locale to US, since you're a US citizen, but you want to enter the number 12.34 in the Dutch style (because, you know, the Dutch are way cooler with numbers) so you enter 12,34 we will understand this and respect your wishes! Of course, if you change your mind and in the next input field you decide to use the decimal dot again, that's fine with us as well. We will do the hard work. Now, I am all for smart software. Software that can handle all sorts of input the user can think of. But this feels a little uhm, I don't know.. wrong.. Or am I too old fashioned?

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• How to write comments to explain the "why" behind the callback function when the function and parameter names are insufficient for that?

  - by snowmantw

  How should I approach writing comments for callback functions? I want to explain the "why" behind the function when the function and parameter names are insufficient to explain what's going on. I have always wonder why comments like this can be so ordinary in documents of libraries in dynamic languages: /** * cb: callback // where's the arguments & effects? */ func foo( cb ) Maybe the common attitude is "you can look into source code on your own after all" which pushes people into leaving minimalist comments like this. But it seems like there should be a better way to comment callback functions. I've tried to comment callbacks in Haskell way: /** * cb: Int -> Char */ func foo(cb) And to be fair, it's usually neat enough. But it gets into trouble when I need to pass some complex structure. The problem being partly due to the lack of type system: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } // too long... */ func foo(cb) Or I have tried this too: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), * success: () -> Char } // better ? */ func bar(cb) The problem is that you may put the structure in somewhere else, but you must give it a name to reference it. But then when you name a structure you're about to use immediately looks so redundant: // Somewhere else... // ResultCallback: { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } /** * cb: Int -> ResultCallback // better ?? */ func foo(cb) And it bothers me if I follow the Java-doc like commenting style since it still seems incomplete. The comments don't tell you anything that you couldn't immediately see from looking at the function. /** * @param cb {Function} yeah, it's a function, but you told me nothing about it... * @param err {Function} where should I put this callback's argument ?? * Not to mention the err's own arguments... */ func foo(cb) These examples are JavaScript like with generic functions and parameter names, but I've encountered similar problems in other dynamic languages which allow complex callbacks.

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• BI&EPM in Focus November 2012

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

  Customers ·       San Diego Unified School District Harnesses Attendance, Procurement, and Operational Data with Oracle Exalytics, Generating $4.4 Million in Savings ·       NilsonGroup chooses Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine as their solution to access critical data to keep its stores competitive with real-time Mobile BI:  Video ·       Nykredit, in the Danish Financial Sector, describes their experiences from testing the Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine: Video  ·       Sodexo chose Oracle Exalytics as their business analytics platform:  Video ·       AstraZeneca (US, Canada, MedImmune) Improves Insight, Analytics, and Reporting, Enterprisewide with Unified Planning on a Single Platform ·       Experian Consolidates Reporting Systems for One, Global View of Financial Data and Improves Planning for Continued Growth ·       Munchkin Gives its Line of Children’s Products Plenty of Room to Grow in an Upgraded Enterprise Application Environment ·       Top 20 EPM Customer Snapshots, in One Handy Booklet (link) ·       Customer and Partner Successes: Link to Complete Archive Enterprise Performance Management ·       Nov 15: Is Hope and Email the Core of your Reconciliation Process? (link) ·       Replay: Integrated Business Planning, Featuring Leggett & Platt (link) ·       Whitepaper: The New Competitive Advantage - Strategic CIO's Embrace the Cloud (link) ·       Press: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Driving Significant Improvements in Budget Management and Reporting for Public Sector Organizations (link) ·       Enterprise Performance Management Video Feature Overviews, Now Available on YouTube (link) ·       NEW Solution Brief - Oracle Hyperion Planning on the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine (link) ·       For Insurance sector: Datasheet for new release V2.0 - Oracle Quantitative Management and Reporting for Solvency II (link) ·       Whitepaper FSN 2012: Managing Risk and Uncertainty, an Executive's Guide to Integrated Business Planning (link) ·       NEW Datasheet for Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (link) ·       Blog: Planning in the Cloud - For Real Business Intelligence ·       Press: Latest Release of Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine Software Enables Customers to View and Analyze Data at the Speed of Business (link) ·       Press: New Release (11.1.1.6.2BP1) of Oracle Business Intelligence Enables Users to Quickly Access and Analyze Key Business Information, Anytime, Anywhere (link) ·       Mark Hurd Interviewed on USA Today about Big Data & Analytics (link) ·       Whitepaper: Mastering Big Data - CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity (link) ·       Nov 15: Improve Asset Utilization. Achieve Greater Profitability: Oracle Enterprise Asset Management Analytics (link) ·       Replay: Oracle Enterprise Asset Mgmt Analytics and Oracle Manufacturing Analytics (link) ·       Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges (link) ·       Webcast Replay: Overview of Oracle Endeca Informational Discovery (link) ·       OBIEE 11g: Required and Recommended Patches and Patch Sets (link)

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• What Counts for a DBA: Skill

  - by drsql

  “Practice makes perfect:” right? Well, not exactly. The reality of it all is that this saying is an untrustworthy aphorism. I discovered this in my “younger” days when I was a passionate tennis player, practicing and playing 20+ hours a week. No matter what my passion level was, without some serious coaching (and perhaps a change in dietary habits), my skill level was never going to rise to a level where I could make any money at the sport that involved something other than selling tennis balls at a sporting goods store. My game may have improved with all that practice but I had too many bad practices to overcome. Practice by itself merely reinforces what we know and what we can figure out naturally. The truth is actually closer to the expression used by Vince Lombardi: “Perfect practice makes perfect.” So how do you get to become skilled as a DBA if practice alone isn’t sufficient? Hit the Internet and start searching for SQL training and you can find 100 different sites. There are also hundreds of blogs, magazines, books, conferences both onsite and virtual. But then how do you know who is good? Unfortunately often the worst guide can be to find out the experience level of the writer. Some of the best DBAs are frighteningly young, and some got their start back when databases were stored on stacks of paper with little holes in it. As a programmer, is it really so hard to understand normalization? Set based theory? Query optimization? Indexing and performance tuning? The biggest barrier often is previous knowledge, particularly programming skills cultivated before you get started with SQL. In the world of technology, it is pretty rare that a fresh programmer will gravitate to database programming. Database programming is very unsexy work, because without a UI all you have are a bunch of text strings that you could never impress anyone with. Newbies spend most of their time building UIs or apps with procedural code in C# or VB scoring obvious interesting wins. Making matters worse is that SQL programming requires mastery of a much different toolset than most any mainstream programming skill. Instead of controlling everything yourself, most of the really difficult work is done by the internals of the engine (written by other non-relational programmers…we just can’t get away from them.) So is there a golden road to achieving a high skill level? Sadly, with tennis, I am pretty sure I’ll never discover it. However, with programming it seems to boil down to practice in applying the appropriate techniques for whatever type of programming you are doing. Can a C# programmer build a great database? As long as they don’t treat SQL like C#, absolutely. Same goes for a DBA writing C# code. None of this stuff is rocket science, as long as you learn to understand that different types of programming require different skill sets and you as a programmer must recognize the difference between one of the procedural languages and SQL and treat them differently. Skill comes from practicing doing things the right way and making “right” a habit.

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• Extreme Makeover, Phone Edition: Comcasts xfinity

  Mobile Makeover For many companies the first foray into Windows Phone 7 (WP7) may be in porting their existing mobile apps. It is tempting to simply transfer existing functionality, avoiding the additional design costs. Readdressing business needs and taking advantage of the WP7 platform can reduce cost and is essential to a successful re-launch. To better understand the advantage of new development lets examine a conceptual upgrade of Comcasts existing mobile app. Before Comcast has a great mobile app that provides several key features. The ability to browse the lineup using a guide, a client for Comcast email accounts, On Demand gallery, and much more. We will leverage these and build on them using some of the incredible WP7 features.   After With the proliferation of DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) and a variety of media devices (TV, PC, Mobile) content providers are challenged to find creative ways to build their brands. Every client touch point must provide both value added services as well as opportunities for marketing and up-sale; WP7 makes it easy to focus on those opportunities. The new app is an excellent vehicle for presenting Comcasts newly rebranded TV, Voice, and Internet services. These services now fly under the banner of xfinity and have been expanded to provide the best experience for Comcast customers. The Windows Phone 7 app will increase the surface area of this service revolution.   The home menu is simplified and highlights Comcasts Triple Play: Voice, TV, and Internet. The inbox has been replaced with a messages view, and message management is handled by a WP7 hub. The hub presents emails, tweets, and IMs from Comcast and other viewers the user follows on Twitter.  The popular view orders shows based on the users viewing history and current cable package. The first show Glee is both popular and participating in a conceptual co-marketing effort, so it receives prime positioning. The second spot goes to a hit show on a premium channel, in this example HBOs The Pacific, encouraging viewers to upgrade for this premium content. The remaining spots are ordered based on viewing history and popularity. Tapping the play button moves the user to the theatre where they can watch previews or full episodes streaming from Fancast. Tapping an extra presents the user with show details as well as interactive content that may be included as part of co-marketing efforts. Co-Marketing with Dynamic Content The success of Comcasts services are tied to the success of the networks and shows it purveys, making co-marketing efforts essential. In this concept FOX is co-marketing its popular show Glee. A customized panorama is updated with the latest gleeks tweets, streaming HD episodes, and extras featuring photos and video of the cast. If WP7 apps can be dynamically extended with web hosted .xap files, including sandboxed partner experiences would enable interactive features such as the Gleek Peek, in which a viewer can select a character from a panorama to view the actors profile. This dynamic inline experience has a tailored appeal to aspiring creatives and is technically possible with Windows Phone 7.   Summary The conceptual Comcast mobile app for Windows Phone 7 highlights just a few of the incredible experiences and business opportunities that can be unlocked with this latest mobile solution. It is critical that organizations recognize and take full advantage of these new capabilities. Simply porting existing mobile applications does not leverage these powerful tools; re-examining existing applications and upgrading them to Windows Phone 7 will prove essential to the continued growth and success of your brand.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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• Confused about modifying the sprint backlog during a sprint

  - by Maltiriel

  I've been reading a lot about scrum lately, and I've found what seem to me to be conflicting information about whether or not it's ok to change the sprint backlog during a sprint. The Wikipedia article on scrum says it's not ok, and various other articles say this as well. Also my Software Development professor taught the same thing during an overview of scrum. However, I read Scrum and XP from the Trenches and that describes a section for unplanned items on the taskboard. So then I looked up the Scrum Guide and it says that during the sprint "No changes are made that would affect the Sprint Goal" and in the discussion of the Sprint Goal "If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, then they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint." It goes on to say in the discussion of the Sprint Backlog: The Sprint Backlog is a plan with enough detail that changes in progress can be understood in the Daily Scrum. The Development Team modifies Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. This emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal. As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary, they are removed. Only the Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint. The Sprint Backlog is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Development Team plans to accomplish during the Sprint, and it belongs solely to the Development Team. So at this point I'm altogether confused. Thinking about it, it makes more sense to me to take the second approach. The individual, specific items in the backlog don't seem to me to be the most important thing, but rather the sprint goal, so not changing the sprint goal but being able to change the backlog makes sense. For instance if both the product owner and the team thought they were on the same page about a story, but as the sprint progressed they figured out there was a misunderstanding, it seems like it makes sense to change the tasks that make up that story accordingly. Or if there was some story or task that was forgotten about, but is required to reach the sprint goal, I would think it would be best to add the story or task to the backlog during the sprint. However, there are a lot of people who seem quite adamant that any change to the sprint backlog is not ok. Am I misunderstanding that position somehow? Are those folks defining the sprint backlog differently somehow? My understanding of the sprint backlog is that it consists of both the stories and the tasks they're broken down into. Anyway I would really appreciate input on this issue. I'm trying to figure out both what the idealistic scrum approach is to changing the sprint backlog during a sprint, and whether people who use scrum successfully for development allow changing the sprint backlog during a sprint.

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