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• Asp.net Session State Revisited

  - by karan@dotnet

  Every now and then I see doubts and queries which I believe is the most discussed topic in the .net environment - Asp.net Sessions. So what really are they, why are they needed and what does browser and .net do with it. These and some of the other questions I hope to answer with this post. Because of the stateless nature of the HTTP protocol there is always a need of state management in a web application. There are many other ways to store data but I feel Session state is amongst the most powerful one. The ASP.NET session state is a technology that lets you store server-side, user-specific data. Our web applications can then use data to process request from the user for which the session state was instantiated. So when does a session is first created? When we start a asp.net application a non-expiring cookie is created and its called as ASP.NET_SessionId. Basically there are two methods for this depending upon how you configure this setting in your config file. The session ID can be a part of cookie as discussed above(called as ASP.NET_SessionId) or it is embedded in the browser’s URL. For the latter part we have to set cookie-less session in our web.config file. These Session ID’s are 120-bit random number that is represented by 20-character string. The cookie will be alive until you close your browser. If you browse from one app to another within the same domain, then both the apps will use the same session ID to track the session state. Why reuse? so that you don’t have to create a new session ID for each request. One can abandon one particular Session by calling Session.Abandon() which will stop the page processing and clear out the session data. A subsequent page request causes a brand new session object to be instantiated. So what happened to my cookie? Well the session cookie is still there even when one Session.Abandon() is called and another session object is created. The Session.Abandon() lets you clear out your session state without waiting for session timeout. By default, this time-out is a 20-minute sliding expiration. This expiration is refreshed every time that the user makes a request to the Web site and presents the session ID cookie. The Abandon method sets a flag in the session state object that indicates that the session state should be abandoned. If your app does not have global.asax then your session cookie will be killed at the end of each page request. So you need to have a global.asax file and Session_Start() handler to make sure that the session cookie will remain intact once its issued after the first page hit. The runtime invokes global.asax’s Session_OnEnd() when you call Session.Abandon() or the session times out. The session manager stores session data in HttpCache with sliding expiration where this timeout can be configured in the <sessionState> of web.config file. When the timeout is up the HttpCache will remove the session state object. Sometimes we want particular pages not to time out as compared to other pages in our applications. We can handle this in two ways. First, we can set a timer or may be a JavaScript function that refreshes the page after fixed intervals of time. The only thing being the page being cached locally and then the request is not made to the server so to prevent that you can add this to your page: <%@ OutputCache Location="None" VaryByParam="None" %> Second approach is to move your page into its own folder and then add a web.config to that folder to control the timeout. Also not all pages in your application will need access to session state. For those pages that do not, you can indicate that session state is not needed and prevent session data from being fetched from the store in requests to these pages. You can disable the session state at page level like this:<%@ Page EnableSessionState="False" %>tbc…

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• SQLUG Events - London/Edinburgh/Cardiff/Reading - Masterclass, NoSQL, TSQL Gotcha's, Replication, BI

  - by tonyrogerson

  We have acquired two additional tickets to attend the SQL Server Master Class with Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp next Thurs (17th June), for a chance to win these coveted tickets email us ([email protected]) before 9pm this Sunday with the subject "MasterClass" - people previously entered need not worry - your still in with a chance. The winners will be announced Monday morning.As ever plenty going on physically, we've got dates for a stack of events in Manchester and Leeds, I'm looking at Birmingham if anybody has ideas? We are growing our online community with the Cuppa Corner section, to participate online remember to use the #sqlfaq twitter tag; for those wanting to get more involved in presenting and fancy trying it out we are always after people to do 1 - 5 minute SQL nuggets or Cuppa Corners (short presentations) at any of these User Group events - just email us [email protected] removing from this email list? Then just reply with remove please on the subject line.Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal Master Class - Thurs, 17th June - LondonREGISTER NOW AND GET A SECOND REGISTRATION FREE*The top things YOU need to know about managing SQL Server - in one place, on one day - presented by two of the best SQL Server industry trainers!This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance.The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will:>> Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour >> Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data >> Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database >> Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, LondonWhen: Thursday 17th June 2010*REGISTER TODAY AT www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql on the registration form simply quote discount code: BOGOF for both yourself and your colleague and you will save 50% off each registration – that’s a 249 GBP saving! This offer is limited, book early to avoid disappointment.Wed, 23 JunREADINGEvening Meeting, More info and registerIntroduction to NoSQL (Not Only SQL) - Gavin Payne; T-SQL Gotcha's and how to avoid them - Ashwani Roy; Introduction to Recency Frequency - Tony Rogerson; Reporting Services - Tim LeungThu, 24 JunCARDIFFEvening Meeting, More info and registerAlex Whittles of Purple Frog Systems talks about Data warehouse design case studies, Other BI related session TBC Mon, 28 JunEDINBURGHEvening Meeting, More info and registerReplication (Components, Adminstration, Performance and Troubleshooting) - Neil Hambly Server Upgrades (Notes and Best practice from the field) - Satya Jayanty Wed, 14 JulLONDONEvening Meeting, More info and registerMeeting is being sponsored by DBSophic (http://www.dbsophic.com/download), database optimisation software. Physical Join Operators in SQL Server - Ami LevinWorkload Tuning - Ami LevinSQL Server and Disk IO (File Groups/Files, SSD's, Fusion-IO, In-RAM DB's, Fragmentation) - Tony RogersonComplex Event Processing - Allan MitchellMany thanks,Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVPUK SQL Server User Grouphttp://sqlserverfaq.com"

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• LibGDX Box2D Body and Sprite AND DebugRenderer out of sync

  - by Free Lancer

  I am having a couple issues with Box2D bodies. I have a GameObject holding a Sprite and Body. I use a ShapeRenderer to draw an outline of the Body's and Sprite's bounding boxes. I also added a Box2DDebugRenderer to make sure everything's lining up properly. My problem is the Sprite and Body at first overlap perfectly, but as I turn the Body moves a bit off the sprite then comes back when the Car is facing either North or South. Here's an image of what I mean: (Not sure what that line is, first time to show up) BLUE is the Body, RED is the Sprite, PURPLE is the Box2DDebugRenderer. Also, you probably noticed a purple square in the top right corner. Well that's the Car drawn by the Box2D Debug Renderer. I thought it might be the camera but I've been playing with the Cameras for hours and nothing seems to work. All give me weird results. Here's my code: Screen: public void show() { // --------------------- SETUP ALL THE CAMERA STUFF ------------------------------ // battleStage = new Stage( 720, 480, false ); // Setup the camera. In Box2D we operate on a meter scale, pixels won't do it. So we use // an Orthographic camera with a Viewport of 24 meters in width and 16 meters in height. battleStage.setCamera( new OrthographicCamera( CAM_METER_WIDTH, CAM_METER_HEIGHT ) ); battleStage.getCamera().position.set( CAM_METER_WIDTH / 2, CAM_METER_HEIGHT / 2, 0 ); // The Box2D Debug Renderer will handle rendering all physics objects for debugging debugger = new Box2DDebugRenderer( true, true, true, true ); //debugCam = new OrthographicCamera( CAM_METER_WIDTH, CAM_METER_HEIGHT ); } public void render(float delta) { // Update the Physics World, use 1/45 for something around 45 Frames/Second for mobile devices physicsWorld.step( 1/45.0f, 8, 3 ); // 1/45 for devices // Set the Camera matrices and clear the screen Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); battleStage.getCamera().update(); // Draw game objects here battleStage.act(delta); battleStage.draw(); // Again update the Camera matrices and call the debug renderer debugCam.update(); debugger.render( physicsWorld, debugCam.combined); // Vehicle handles its own interaction with the HUD // update all Actors movements in the game Stage hudStage.act( delta ); // Draw each Actor onto the Scene at their new positions hudStage.draw(); } Car: (extends Actor) public Car( Texture texture, float posX, float posY, World world ) { super( "Car" ); mSprite = new Sprite( texture ); mSprite.setSize( WIDTH * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, HEIGHT * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); mSprite.setOrigin( mSprite.getWidth()/2, mSprite.getHeight()/2); // set the origin to be at the center of the body mSprite.setPosition( posX * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, posY * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); // place the car in the center of the game map FixtureDef carFixtureDef = new FixtureDef(); mBody = Physics.createBoxBody( BodyType.DynamicBody, carFixtureDef, mSprite ); } public void draw() { mSprite.setPosition( mBody.getPosition().x * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, mBody.getPosition().y * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); mSprite.setRotation( MathUtils.radiansToDegrees * mBody.getAngle() ); // draw the sprite mSprite.draw( batch ); } Physics: (Create the Body) public static Body createBoxBody( final BodyType pBodyType, final FixtureDef pFixtureDef, Sprite pSprite ) { float pRotation = 0; float pWidth = pSprite.getWidth(); float pHeight = pSprite.getHeight(); final BodyDef boxBodyDef = new BodyDef(); boxBodyDef.type = pBodyType; boxBodyDef.position.x = pSprite.getX() / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxBodyDef.position.y = pSprite.getY() / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; // Temporary Box shape of the Body final PolygonShape boxPoly = new PolygonShape(); final float halfWidth = pWidth * 0.5f / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; final float halfHeight = pHeight * 0.5f / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxPoly.setAsBox( halfWidth, halfHeight ); // set the anchor point to be the center of the sprite pFixtureDef.shape = boxPoly; final Body boxBody = BattleScreen.getPhysicsWorld().createBody(boxBodyDef); boxBody.createFixture(pFixtureDef); } Sorry for all the code and long description but it's hard to pin down what exactly might be causing the problem.

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• about the JOGL 2 problem

  - by Chuchinyi

  Please some help me about the JOGL 2 problem(Sorry for previous error format). I complied JOGL2Template.java ok. but execut it with following error. D:\java\java\jogl>javac JOGL2Template.java <== compile ok D:\java\java\jogl>java JOGL2Template <== execute error Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError at javax.media.opengl.GLProfile.<clinit>(GLProfile.java:1176) at JOGL2Template.<init>(JOGL2Template.java:24) at JOGL2Template.main(JOGL2Template.java:57) Caused by: java.lang.SecurityException: no certificate for gluegen-rt.dll in D:\ java\lib\gluegen-rt-natives-windows-i586.jar at com.jogamp.common.util.JarUtil.validateCertificate(JarUtil.java:350) at com.jogamp.common.util.JarUtil.validateCertificates(JarUtil.java:324) at com.jogamp.common.util.cache.TempJarCache.validateCertificates(TempJa rCache.java:328) at com.jogamp.common.util.cache.TempJarCache.bootstrapNativeLib(TempJarC ache.java:283) at com.jogamp.common.os.Platform$3.run(Platform.java:308) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at com.jogamp.common.os.Platform.loadGlueGenRTImpl(Platform.java:298) at com.jogamp.common.os.Platform.<clinit>(Platform.java:207) ... 3 more there is JOGL2Template.java source code: import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.Frame; import java.awt.event.WindowAdapter; import java.awt.event.WindowEvent; import javax.media.opengl.GLAutoDrawable; import javax.media.opengl.GLCapabilities; import javax.media.opengl.GLEventListener; import javax.media.opengl.GLProfile; import javax.media.opengl.awt.GLCanvas; import com.jogamp.opengl.util.FPSAnimator; import javax.swing.JFrame; /* * JOGL 2.0 Program Template For AWT applications */ public class JOGL2Template extends JFrame implements GLEventListener { private static final int CANVAS_WIDTH = 640; // Width of the drawable private static final int CANVAS_HEIGHT = 480; // Height of the drawable private static final int FPS = 60; // Animator's target frames per second // Constructor to create profile, caps, drawable, animator, and initialize Frame public JOGL2Template() { // Get the default OpenGL profile that best reflect your running platform. GLProfile glp = GLProfile.getDefault(); // Specifies a set of OpenGL capabilities, based on your profile. GLCapabilities caps = new GLCapabilities(glp); // Allocate a GLDrawable, based on your OpenGL capabilities. GLCanvas canvas = new GLCanvas(caps); canvas.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(CANVAS_WIDTH, CANVAS_HEIGHT)); canvas.addGLEventListener(this); // Create a animator that drives canvas' display() at 60 fps. final FPSAnimator animator = new FPSAnimator(canvas, FPS); addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() { // For the close button @Override public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) { // Use a dedicate thread to run the stop() to ensure that the // animator stops before program exits. new Thread() { @Override public void run() { animator.stop(); System.exit(0); } }.start(); } }); add(canvas); pack(); setTitle("OpenGL 2 Test"); setVisible(true); animator.start(); // Start the animator } public static void main(String[] args) { new JOGL2Template(); } @Override public void init(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { // Your OpenGL codes to perform one-time initialization tasks // such as setting up of lights and display lists. } @Override public void display(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { // Your OpenGL graphic rendering codes for each refresh. } @Override public void reshape(GLAutoDrawable drawable, int x, int y, int w, int h) { // Your OpenGL codes to set up the view port, projection mode and view volume. } @Override public void dispose(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { // Hardly used. } }

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• Build Your Own CE6 Kernel

  - by Kate Moss' Big Fan

  The Share Source Program in Windows CE provides many modules in %_WINCEROOT%\Private\ tree, and the kernel is one of them! Although it is not full source of kernel but it is good enough for tracing it, even tweak the kernel. Tracing the kernel and see how it works is lots of fun, but it is fascinated to modify and verify the change you made. So first comes first, where is the source of kernel? It's in your %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ And next question will be "How do I build it?", Some of you may say just "build -c" there and it should be good. If you are the owner of kernel and got full source, that is definitely the right answer, but none of them are applied to our case though. So what should I do? Let's dig deeper into the coreos\nk folder, there are a couples of subfolder, CELOG, KDSTUB, KERNEL and etc. KERNEL\ is the main component of kernel.dll, in the other word, most of the modify to kernel is going to happen here. And the good thing is, you could "build -c" in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ with no error at all. But before doing that, remember to backup eveything you are going to modify, including the source and binaries; remember, this is not something belong to you, and if you didn't restore them back later, it could end up confuse the subsequence QFE updates! Here is the steps Backup the source code, I will suggest the whole %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ Backup the binaries in common\oak\lib\, and again if you are not sure which files, backup the whole %_WINCEROOT%\common\oak\lib\ is the safest way. Do whatever modification you want in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ build -c in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel If everything went well so far, you should get a new nkmain.lib,nkmain.pdb, nkprmain.lib and nkprmain.pdb in %_WINCEROOT%\public\common\oak\lib\%_TGTCPU%\%WINCEDEBUG%\ Basically, you just rebuild your new kernel, the rest is to "blddemo clean -q" to have your new kernel SYSGEN'd and include in your OS Image. Or just "set WINCEREL=1" then "sysgen -p common nk nkprof" and "makeimg" if you can't wait another minutes for "blddemo clean -q" Tat sounds good, but some of you may not like the idea to alter any code in private folder, and not to mention how annoying to backup/restore files every time. Better idea? Yes, Microsoft provides a tool SYSGEN_CAPTURE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee504678.aspx for detail and usage) to creates Sources files for public drivers that you want to modify and build in your platform directory. In fact, not only public drivers, virtually anything in the %_WINCEROOT%\public\<project name>\cesysgen\makefile can be captured, and of course including kernel. So I am going to introduce a second way to build your own kernel by using SYSGEN_CAPTURE tool. Again the steps Create a folder in your BSP for building kernel, says %_TARGETPLATROOT%\SRC\Kernel. Use "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nk" and then you will get a SOURCES.KERN, you could also "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nkprof" to generate profiler enabled kernel. rename the SOURCE.KERN to SOURCES and copy one of the sample makefile into your kernel directory. For example the one in PRIVATE\WINCEOS\COREOS\NK\KERNEL\NKNORMAL. Copy the source files you want to modify from private\winceos\coreos\nk\kernel\ into your kernel directory. Modifying the SOURCES= macro to the source files you addes in step 4. For example, if you copied the vm.c, it is going to be SOURCES=vm.c Refer to the private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\sources.inc and add macro defines and proper include path in your SOURCES file. "set WINCEREL=1", "build -c" in your kernel directory and "makeimg", voila! Here is an example for the MACROS you need to add in x86 Here are the macros for x86 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DIN_KERNEL -DWINCEMACRO -DKERN_CORE # Machine independent defines CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDBGSUPPORT _COREOSROOT=$(_WINCEROOT)\private\winceos\coreos INCLUDES=$(_COREOSROOT)\inc;$(_COREOSROOT)\nk\inc !IFDEF DP_SETTINGS CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDP_SETTINGS=$(DP_SETTINGS) !ENDIF ASM_SAFESEH=1 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -Gs100000 -DENCODE_GS_COOKIE

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• Entity Framework 4, WCF &amp; Lazy Loading Tip

  - by Dane Morgridge

  If you are doing any work with Entity Framework and custom WCF services in EFv1, everything works great.  As soon as you jump to EFv4, you may find yourself getting odd errors that you can’t seem to catch.  The problem is almost always has something to do with the new lazy loading feature in Entity Framework 4.  With Entity Framework 1, you didn’t have lazy loading so this problem didn’t surface.  Assume I have a Person entity and an Address entity where there is a one-to-many relationship between Person and Address (Person has many Addresses). In Entity Framework 1 (or in EFv4 with lazy loading turned off), I would have to load the Address data by hand by either using the Include or Load Method: var people = context.People.Include("Addresses"); or people.Addresses.Load(); Lazy loading works when the first time the Person.Addresses collection is accessed: 1: var people = context.People.ToList(); 2:  3: // only person data is currently in memory 4:  5: foreach(var person in people) 6: { 7: // EF determines that no Address data has been loaded and lazy loads 8: int count = person.Addresses.Count(); 9: } 10:  Lazy loading has the useful (and sometimes not useful) feature of fetching data when requested.  It can make your life easier or it can make it a big pain.  So what does this have to do with WCF?  One word: Serialization. When you need to pass data over the wire with WCF, the data contract is serialized into either XML or binary depending on the binding you are using.  Well, if I am using lazy loading, the Person entity gets serialized and during that process, the Addresses collection is accessed.  When that happens, the Address data is lazy loaded.  Then the Address is serialized, and the Person property is accessed, and then also serialized and then the Addresses collection is accessed.  Now the second time through, lazy loading doesn’t kick in, but you can see the infinite loop caused by this process.  This is a problem with any serialization, but I personally found it trying to use WCF. The fix for this is to simply turn off lazy Loading.  This can be done at each call by using context options: context.ContextOptions.LazyLoadingEnabled = false; Turning lazy loading off will now allow your classes to be serialized properly.  Note, this is if you are using the standard Entity Framework classes.  If you are using POCO,  you will have to do something slightly different.  With POCO, the Entity Framework will create proxy classes by default that allow things like lazy loading to work with POCO.  This proxy basically creates a proxy object that is a full Entity Framework object that sits between the context and the POCO object.  When using POCO with WCF (or any serialization) just turning off lazy loading doesn’t cut it.  You have to turn off the proxy creation to ensure that your classes will serialize properly: context.ContextOptions.ProxyCreationEnabled = false; The nice thing is that you can do this on a call-by-call basis.  If you use a new context for each set of operations (which you should) then you can turn either lazy loading or proxy creation on and off as needed.

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• IIS Logfile Visualization with XNA

  - by BobPalmer

  In my office, I have a wall mounted monitor who's whole purpose in life is to display perfmon stats from our various servers.  And on a fairly regular basis, I have folks walk by asking what the lines mean.    After providing the requisite explaination about CPU utilization, disk I/O bottlenecks, etc. this is usually followed by some blank stares from the user in question, and a distillation of all of our engineering wizardry down to the phrase 'So when the red line goes up that's bad then?'   This of course would not do.  So I talked to my friends and our network admin about an option to show something more eye catching and visual, with which we could catch at a glance a feel for what was up with our site.    He initially pointed me out to a video showing GLTail and Chipmunk done in Ruby.  Realizing this was both awesome, and that I needed an excuse to do something in XNA, I decided to knock out a proof of concept for something very similar, but with a few tweaks.   Here's a link to a video of the current prototype:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM_PWZbtH2I   Essentially this app opens up a log file (even an active one) and begins pulling out the lines of text.  (Here's a good Code Project link that covers how to do tail reading from an active text file: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/tail.aspx).   As new data is added, a bubble is generated in the application - a GET statement comes from the left, and a POST from the right.  I then run it through a series of expression checkers, and based on the kind of statement and the pattern, a bubble of an appropriate color is generated.   For example, if I get a 500, a huge red bubble pops out.  Others are based on the part of the system the page is from - i.e. green bubbles are from our claims management subsystem, and blue bubbles are from the pages our scheduling staff use to schedule patients.  Others include the purple bubbles for security and login, and yellow bubbles for some miscellaneous pages.   The little grey bubbles represent things like images, JS, CSS, etc - and their small size makes them work like grease to keep the larger page bubbles moving.   The app is also smart enough that if it is starting to bog down with handling the physics and interactions, it will suspend new bubbles until enough have dropped off that performance can resume (you can see this slight stuttering in the sample video).   The net result is that anyone will be able to look up on the wall monitor, and instantly get a quick feel for how things are going on the floor.  Website slow?  You can get a feel for both volume and utilized modules with one glance.  Website crashing?  Look for a wall of giant red bubbles.  No activity at all?  Maybe the site is down.  Now couple this with utilization within a farm, and cross referenced with a second app showing the same kind of data from your SQL database...   As for the app itself, it's a windows XNA project with the code in C#.   The physics are handled by the Farseer physicis eingine for XNA (http://www.codeplex.com/FarseerPhysics) which is just pure goodness.  The samples are great, and I had the app up and working in two evenings (half of that was fine tuning, and the other was me coding with a kid in my lap).   My next steps include wiring this to SQL (I have some ideas...), and adding a nice configuration module.  For example, you could use polygons, etc to tie to your regex - or more entertaining things like having a little human ragdoll to represent a user login.     Once that's wrapped up and I have a chance to complete some hardening, I will be releasing the whole thing into the wild as opensource.     Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! -Bob

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• Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Weindows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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• Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review-again.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Windows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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• Lies, damned lies, and statistics Part 2

  - by Maria Colgan

  There was huge interest in our OOW session last year on Managing Optimizer Statistics. It seems statistics and the maintenance of them continues to baffle people. In order to help dispel the mysteries surround statistics management we have created a two part white paper series on Optimizer statistics.  Part one of this series was released in November last years and describes in detail, with worked examples, the different concepts of Optimizer statistics. Today we have published part two of the series, which focuses on the best practices for gathering statistics, and examines specific use cases including, the fears that surround histograms and statistics management of volatile tables like Global Temporary Tables. Here is a quick look at the Introduction and the start of the paper. You can find the full paper here. Happy Reading! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Introduction The Oracle Optimizer examines all of the possible plans for a SQL statement and picks the one with the lowest cost, where cost represents the estimated resource usage for a given plan. In order for the Optimizer to accurately determine the cost for an execution plan it must have information about all of the objects (table and indexes) accessed in the SQL statement as well as information about the system on which the SQL statement will be run. This necessary information is commonly referred to as Optimizer statistics. Understanding and managing Optimizer statistics is key to optimal SQL execution. Knowing when and how to gather statistics in a timely manner is critical to maintaining acceptable performance. This whitepaper is the second of a two part series on Optimizer statistics. The first part of this series, Understanding Optimizer Statistics, focuses on the concepts of statistics and will be referenced several times in this paper as a source of additional information. This paper will discuss in detail, when and how to gather statistics for the most common scenarios seen in an Oracle Database. The topics are · How to gather statistics · When to gather statistics · Improving the efficiency of gathering statistics · When not to gather statistics · Gathering other types of statistics How to gather statistics The preferred method for gathering statistics in Oracle is to use the supplied automatic statistics-gathering job. Automatic statistics gathering job The job collects statistics for all database objects, which are missing statistics or have stale statistics by running an Oracle AutoTask task during a predefined maintenance window. Oracle internally prioritizes the database objects that require statistics, so that those objects, which most need updated statistics, are processed first. The automatic statistics-gathering job uses the DBMS_STATS.GATHER_DATABASE_STATS_JOB_PROC procedure, which uses the same default parameter values as the other DBMS_STATS.GATHER_*_STATS procedures. The defaults are sufficient in most cases. However, it is occasionally necessary to change the default value of one of the statistics gathering parameters, which can be accomplished by using the DBMS_STATS.SET_*_PREF procedures. Parameter values should be changed at the smallest scope possible, ideally on a per-object bases. You can find the full paper here. Happy Reading! +Maria Colgan

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• PPPD Is Locking the Modem and Not Releasing It

  - by Skid

  Got an issue with PPPD on one of our system, we have a PC that is used to talk to remote sites via a dial up connection, the modem can both connect out to the sites and the sites also dial back in. Currently I'm having an issue where some times a site ether dials in or we dial out, and it connects, but then blocks the modem and throws and error to kern.log. Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503745] INFO: task pppd:8142 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503750] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503753] pppd D ffffffff8180cb40 0 8142 1 0x00000000 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503759] ffff8800ac1f5dc8 0000000000000086 ffff8800ac1f5fd8 00000000000137c0 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503765] ffff8800ac1f4010 00000000000137c0 00000000000137c0 00000000000137c0 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503770] ffff8800ac1f5fd8 00000000000137c0 ffffffff81c13020 ffff880135df5b80 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503775] Call Trace: Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503784] [<ffffffff8166ba29>] schedule+0x29/0x70 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503790] [<ffffffff813db005>] tty_ldisc_ref_wait+0x65/0xb0 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503796] [<ffffffff813f3061>] ? uart_ioctl+0xd1/0x1c0 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503801] [<ffffffff81076960>] ? wake_up_bit+0x40/0x40 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503806] [<ffffffff813d3fa0>] tty_ioctl+0x2c0/0x9a0 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503810] [<ffffffff811d0549>] ? fcntl_setlk+0x69/0x200 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503815] [<ffffffff81195f79>] do_vfs_ioctl+0x99/0x330 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503820] [<ffffffff81195212>] ? do_fcntl+0x232/0x410 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503823] [<ffffffff811962b1>] sys_ioctl+0xa1/0xb0 Aug 26 14:23:57 TM-SCADA kernel: [191233.503829] [<ffffffff81674e69>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b The syslog trace stops at "Serial connection established". Aug 28 06:00:03 TM-SCADA pppd[10358]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: abort on (NO CARRIER) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: abort on (NO DIALTONE) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: abort on (ERROR) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: abort on (NO ANSWER) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: abort on (BUSY) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: abort on (Username/Password Incorrect) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: send (atz^M) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: expect (OK) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: atz^M^M Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: OK Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: -- got it Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: send (atx0^M) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: expect (OK) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: ^M Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: atx0^M^M Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: OK Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: -- got it Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: send (atdt0123456789^M) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: expect (CONNECT/ARQ) Aug 28 06:00:04 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: ^M Aug 28 06:00:30 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: atdt0123456789^M^M Aug 28 06:00:30 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: CONNECT/ARQ Aug 28 06:00:30 TM-SCADA chat[10360]: -- got it Aug 28 06:00:30 TM-SCADA pppd[10358]: Serial connection established. I've only found two ways to release the modem in this condition, the first is to turn the modem off and on again, the second is to delete the serial lock file, and then SIGKILL pppd. Now I could write into our software to do the latter if the modem is locked, but I would rather stop it from locking in the first place if at all possible. The reason I put this issue in the askubuntu is because we used to use OpenSuse and never had an issue with it, admittedly that was version 11.2 or earlier so its still and old kernel, but I figured I would ask here first anyway. Any suggestions of places to look would be appreciated.

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• Whether to use UNION or OR in SQL Server Queries

  - by Dinesh Asanka

  Recently I came across with an article on DB2 about using Union instead of OR. So I thought of carrying out a research on SQL Server on what scenarios UNION is optimal in and which scenarios OR would be best. I will analyze this with a few scenarios using samples taken  from the AdventureWorks database Sales.SalesOrderDetail table. Scenario 1: Selecting all columns So we are going to select all columns and you have a non-clustered index on the ProductID column. --Query 1 : OR SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 OR ProductID =709 OR ProductID =998 OR ProductID =875 OR ProductID =976 OR ProductID =874 --Query 2 : UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 709 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 998 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 875 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 976 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 874 So query 1 is using OR and the later is using UNION. Let us analyze the execution plans for these queries. Query 1 Query 2 As expected Query 1 will use Clustered Index Scan but Query 2, uses all sorts of things. In this case, since it is using multiple CPUs you might have CX_PACKET waits as well. Let’s look at the profiler results for these two queries: CPU Reads Duration Row Counts OR 78 1252 389 3854 UNION 250 7495 660 3854 You can see from the above table the UNION query is not performing well as the  OR query though both are retuning same no of rows (3854).These results indicate that, for the above scenario UNION should be used. Scenario 2: Non-Clustered and Clustered Index Columns only --Query 1 : OR SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 OR ProductID =709 OR ProductID =998 OR ProductID =875 OR ProductID =976 OR ProductID =874 GO --Query 2 : UNION SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 UNION SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 709 UNION SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 998 UNION SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 875 UNION SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 976 UNION SELECT ProductID,SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 874 GO So this time, we will be selecting only index columns, which means these queries will avoid a data page lookup. As in the previous case we will analyze the execution plans: Query 1 Query 2 Again, Query 2 is more complex than Query 1. Let us look at the profile analysis: CPU Reads Duration Row Counts OR 0 24 208 3854 UNION 0 38 193 3854 In this analyzis, there is only slight difference between OR and UNION. Scenario 3: Selecting all columns for different fields Up to now, we were using only one column (ProductID) in the where clause.  What if we have two columns for where clauses and let us assume both are covered by non-clustered indexes? --Query 1 : OR SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 OR CarrierTrackingNumber LIKE 'D0B8%' --Query 2 : UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE CarrierTrackingNumber  LIKE 'D0B8%' Query 1 Query 2: As we can see, the query plan for the second query has improved. Let us see the profiler results. CPU Reads Duration Row Counts OR 47 1278 443 1228 UNION 31 1334 400 1228 So in this case too, there is little difference between OR and UNION. Scenario 4: Selecting Clustered index columns for different fields Now let us go only with clustered indexes: --Query 1 : OR SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 OR CarrierTrackingNumber LIKE 'D0B8%' --Query 2 : UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE ProductID = 714 UNION SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE CarrierTrackingNumber  LIKE 'D0B8%' Query 1 Query 2 Now both execution plans are almost identical except is an additional Stream Aggregate is used in the first query. This means UNION has advantage over OR in this scenario. Let us see profiler results for these queries again. CPU Reads Duration Row Counts OR 0 319 366 1228 UNION 0 50 193 1228 Now see the differences, in this scenario UNION has somewhat of an advantage over OR. Conclusion Using UNION or OR depends on the scenario you are faced with. So you need to do your analyzing before selecting the appropriate method. Also, above the four scenarios are not all an exhaustive list of scenarios, I selected those for the broad description purposes only.

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• MacGyver Moments

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Denny Cherry tagged me to write about my best MacGyver Moment.  Usually I ignore blogosphere fluff and just use this space to write what I think is important.  However, #MVP10 just ended and I have a stronger sense of community.  Besides, where else would I mention my second best Macgyver moment was making a BIOS jumper out of a soda can.  Aluminum is conductive and I didn't have any real jumpers lying around. My best moment is probably my entire home computer network.  Every system but one is hand-built, usually cobbled together out of spare parts and 'adapted' from its original purpose. My Primary Domain Controller is a Dell 2300.   The Service Tag indicates it was shipped to the original owner in 1999.  Box has a PERC/1 RAID controller.  I acquired this from a previous employer for $50.  It runs Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.  Does DNS, DHCP, and RADIUS services as a bonus.  RADIUS authentication is used for VPN and Wireless access.  It is nice to sign in once and be done with it. The Secondary Domain Controller is an old desktop.  Dual P-III 933 with some extra drives. My VPN box is a P-II 250 with 384MB of RAM and a 21 GB hard drive.  I did a P-to-V to my Hyper-V box a year or so ago and retired the hardware again.  Dynamic DNS lets me connect no matter how often Comcast shuffles my IP. The Hyper-V box is a desktop system with 8GB RAM and an AMD Athlon 5000+ processor.  Cost me less than $500 to put together nearly two years ago.  I reasoned that if Vista and Windows 2008 were the same code then Vista 64-bit certified meant the drivers for Vista would load into Windows 2008.  Turns out I was right. Later I added three 1TB drives but wasn't too happy with how that turned out.  I recovered two of the drives yesterday and am building an iSCSI storage unit. (Much thanks to Starwind.  Great product).  I am using an old AMD 1.1GhZ box with 1.5 GB RAM (cobbled together from three old PCs) as my storave server.  The Hyper-V box is slated for an OS rebuild to 2008 R2 once I get the storage system worked out.  maybe in a week or two. A couple of DLink Gigabit switches ties everything together. Add in the Vonage box, the three PCs, the Wireless-N Access Point, the two notebooks and the XBox and you have gone from MacGyver to darn near Rube Goldberg. The only thing I really spend money on is power supplies and fans.  I buy top-of-the-line for both. I even pull and crimp my own cables. Oh, and if my kids hose up a PC, I have all of their data on a server elsewhere.  Every PC and laptop is pretty much interchangable for email and basic workstation tasks.  That helps a lot too. Of course I will tag SQLVariant.

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• 2D Rendering with OpenGL ES 2.0 on Android (matrices not working)

  - by TranquilMarmot

  So I'm trying to render two moving quads, each at different locations. My shaders are as simple as possible (vertices are only transformed by the modelview-projection matrix, there's only one color). Whenever I try and render something, I only end up with slivers of color! I've only done work with 3D rendering in OpenGL before so I'm having issues with 2D stuff. Here's my basic rendering loop, simplified a bit (I'm using the Matrix manipulation methods provided by android.opengl.Matrix and program is a custom class I created that just calls GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv()): Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); program.setUniformMatrix4f("Projection", projection); At this point, I render the quads (this is repeated for each quad): Matrix.setIdentityM(modelview, 0); Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); program.setUniformMatrix4f("ModelView", modelview); quad.render(); // calls glDrawArrays and all I see is a sliver of the color each quad is! I'm at my wits end here, I've tried everything I can think of and I'm at the point where I'm screaming at my computer and tossing phones across the room. Anybody got any pointers? Am I using ortho wrong? I'm 100% sure I'm rendering everything at a Z value of 0. I tried using frustumM instead of orthoM, which made it so that I could see the quads but they would get totally skewed whenever they got moved, which makes sense if I correctly understand the way frustum works (it's more for 3D rendering, anyway). If it makes any difference, I defined my viewport with GLES20.glViewport(0, 0, windowWidth, windowHeight); Where windowWidth and windowHeight are the same values that are pased to orthoM It might be worth noting that the android.opengl.Matrix methods take in an offset as the second parameter so that multiple matrices can be shoved into one array, so that'w what the first 0 is for For reference, here's my vertex shader code: uniform mat4 ModelView; uniform mat4 Projection; attribute vec4 vPosition; void main() { mat4 mvp = Projection * ModelView; gl_Position = vPosition * mvp; } I tried swapping Projection * ModelView with ModelView * Projection but now I just get some really funky looking shapes... EDIT Okay, I finally figured it out! (Note: Since I'm new here (longtime lurker!) I can't answer my own question for a few hours, so as soon as I can I'll move this into an actual answer to the question) I changed Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); to float ratio = windowWwidth / windowHeight; Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 1, -1, 1); I then had to scale my projection matrix to make it a lot smaller with Matrix.scaleM(projection, 0, 0.05f, 0.05f, 1.0f);. I then added an offset to the modelview translations to simulate a camera so that I could center on my action (so Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); was changed to Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX + camX, quadY + camY, 0);) Thanks for the help, all!

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• Mandatory look back at 2010

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Yeah, it's one of those posts, sorry. First, the mildly depressing: the most popular post on this blog this year with 47,000 hits was a post from last year about a fix to a bug in ASP.NET. A content-less post except for that link to the KB article that people should have found by going directly to the support site in the first place. Then, the really depressing: the second most popular post this year with 34,000 hits was a post from 2005 about how to display message boxes on a web page. I mean come on. This was kind of fun five years ago and it did solve one of the most common n00b mistakes VB programmers trying to move to the web were making. But come on, we've traveled about 4.7 billion miles around the Earth since then. Do people still do that kind of stuff? I should probably put a big red banner on top of this post. Oh [supernatural entity of your choice]. Hand me that gun, please. Third most popular post with 24,000 hits is from 2004. It's about how to set a session variable before redirecting. That problem has been fixed a long time ago. Oh well. Fourth most popular post. 21,000 hits. 2007. How to work around a stupid bug in ASP.NET Ajax 1.0. Fixed in ASP.NET 3.5? ASP.NET Ajax 1.0? Need I say more? The fifth one (20,000 hits) is an old post as well but I'm kind of fond of it: it's about that photo album handler I've been organically growing for a few years. It reminds me that I need to refresh it and make a new release. Good SEO title too. Back to insanity with the sixth one (16,000) that's about working around a bug in IE6. IE6. Please just refuse to pander to that browser any more. It's about time. Let's move on, please. Actually, the first post from 2010 is 15th in the list. We have a trio of these actually with server-side image resizing and FluentPath. So what happened? Well, I like the ad money, but not to the point that I'm going to write my stuff to inflate it. Actually I think if I tried I would fail miserably (I mean, I would fail worse). What really happened this year was new stuff: Orchard, FluentPath and the stuff with the Netduino. That stuff needs time to get off the ground but my hope is that it's going to be useful in the long run and that five years from now I'll be lamenting on how well those posts are still doing. So, no regret. 2010 was a good year. Oh, and I was on This Developer's Life this year! Yay! Anyways, thank you all for reading me. Please continue doing that. And happy 2011!

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• Speaker at the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2003

  The following is an excerpt from the UniversalThread conference coverage of the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2003 written by Hans-Otto Lochmann and Armin Neudert. Track: Visual FoxPro and Linux This track consists of 4 sessions presented on one day in one sequence. Originally the Linux portion of this track was to be presented by Whil Hentzen, the well-known publisher, book author and confer-ence speaker. Unfortunately some illness prevented him from joining this DevCon. Rainer got the bad news only on early Friday morning. It was definitely to late to find a replacement among the already invited speaker on such a short notice. So Rainer decided to take over these "three sessions in a row" by himself with "a little help from his friends". He hired a coach for him for the weekend and prepared slides and sessions by himself - the originally planed slides and session material were still in USA. Rainer survived barely an endless disaster of C0000005's due to various wrong configuration settings... At the presentation Jochen Kirstätter helped massively with technical details regarding Linux whereas Rainer did the slides and the presentation. Gerold Lübben then presented the MySQL part - as originally planned. This track concentrated on the how to run Visual FoxPro applications on Linux machines with the help of a Windows emulator like Wine. As more and more people use Linux machines in production (and not just for running servers), more and more invitations to bid for a development job includes the requirement to run the application in a Linux environment. If you would like to participate in such submissions, then you should get familiar with the open source operating system Linux and the open source Data Base system MySQL. [...] These sessions provided a broad, complete overview of where Linux fits into the current computing landscape from the perspective of a VFP developer, where VFP can be used with Linux, and a conceptual plan for how to approach the incorporation of Linux into your day-to-day work. In order for you to be able to work with a Linux back end, you're going to need to know something about how Linux works. The best way involves a two-step process: First, plunk down a Linux workstation on your desk next to your Windows machine and develop some experience with the new OS.Second, once you have a basic level of comfort with Linux, gained through your experience on a workstation, leverage that knowledge and learn to connect to a Linux server from your Windows machine. This track showed both of these processes: What you can expect when you set up your Linux work-station, how to set it up, how to connect to your Windows network, how to fit VFP into the mix, and even how you could use it to replace your Windows workstation in some cases. Also this track demonstrated how to connect to an existing Linux server, running MySQL or an another back end, and how to get your VFP apps talking to that back end data. This track also showed both of the positions you can take. Rainer disliked it wholeheartedly (the bad guy position in these talks) and Jochen loved it (the good guy and "typical Linux techie"-position we all love). These opposite position lasted for three sessions and both sides where shown with their Pros and Cons in live and lively discussions of the speakers (club banging was forbidden). Gerold Luebben showed how Visual Foxpro and MySQL can work together. MySQL is as one the most well known open SOURCE databases for nearly all platforms available. Particularly in eBusiness MySQL is well positioned and well known for its performance and its stability. Still we like Visual FoxPro more - for sure . [...]

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• Android - passing data between Activities

  - by Bill Osuch

  (To follow along with this, you should understand the basics of starting new activities: Link ) The easiest way to pass data from one activity to another is to create your own custom bundle and pass it to your new class. First, create two new activities called Search and SearchResults (make sure you add the second one you create to the AndroidManifest.xml file!), and create xml layout files for each. Search's file should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout     xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="fill_parent"     android:orientation="vertical">     <TextView          android:layout_width="fill_parent"      android:layout_height="wrap_content"      android:text="Name:"/>     <EditText                android:id="@+id/edittext"         android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>     <TextView          android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"         android:text="ID Number:"/>     <EditText                android:id="@+id/edittext2"                android:layout_width="fill_parent"                android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>     <Button           android:id="@+id/btnSearch"          android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"         android:text="Search" /> </LinearLayout> and SearchResult's should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout     xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="fill_parent"     android:orientation="vertical">     <TextView          android:id="@+id/txtName"         android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>     <TextView          android:id="@+id/txtState"         android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"         android:text="No data"/> </LinearLayout> Next, we'll override the OnCreate method of Search: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {     super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);     setContentView(R.layout.search);     Button search = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnSearch);     search.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {         public void onClick(View view) {                           Intent intent = new Intent(Search.this, SearchResults.class);              Bundle b = new Bundle();                           EditText txt1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edittext);             EditText txt2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edittext2);                                      b.putString("name", txt1.getText().toString());             b.putInt("state", Integer.parseInt(txt2.getText().toString()));                              //Add the set of extended data to the intent and start it             intent.putExtras(b);             startActivity(intent);          }     }); } This is very similar to the previous example, except here we're creating our own bundle, adding some key/value pairs to it, and adding it to the intent. Now, to retrieve the data, we just need to grab the Bundle that was passed to the new Activity and extract our values from it: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {     super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);     setContentView(R.layout.search_results);     Bundle b = getIntent().getExtras();     int value = b.getInt("state", 0);     String name = b.getString("name");             TextView vw1 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtName);     TextView vw2 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtState);             vw1.setText("Name: " + name);     vw2.setText("State: " + String.valueOf(value)); }

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• Visual Studio Exceptions dialogs

  - by Daniel Moth

  Previously I covered step 1 of live debugging with start and attach. Once the debugger is attached, you want to go to step 2 of live debugging, which is to break. One way to break under the debugger is to do nothing, and just wait for an exception to occur in your code. This is true for all types of code that you debug in Visual Studio, and let's consider the following piece of C# code:3: static void Main() 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: int i = 0; 8: int r = 5 / i; 9: } 10: catch (System.DivideByZeroException) {/*gulp. sue me.*/} 11: System.Console.ReadLine(); 12: } If you run this under the debugger do you expect an exception on line 8? It is a trick question: you have to know whether I have configured the debugger to break when exceptions are thrown (first-chance exceptions) or only when they are unhandled. The place you do that is in the Exceptions dialog which is accessible from the Debug->Exceptions menu and on my installation looks like this: Note that I have checked all CLR exceptions. I could have expanded (like shown for the C++ case in my screenshot) and selected specific exceptions. To read more about this dialog, please read the corresponding Exception Handling debugging msdn topic and all its subtopics. So, for the code above, the debugger will break execution due to the thrown exception (exactly as if the try..catch was not there), so I see the following Exception Thrown dialog: Note the following: I can hit continue (or hit break and then later continue) and the program will continue fine since I have a catch handler. If this was an unhandled exception, then that is what the dialog would say (instead of first chance exception) and continuing would crash the app. That hyperlinked text ("Open Exception Settings") opens the Exceptions dialog I described further up. The coolest thing to note is the checkbox - this is new in this latest release of Visual Studio: it is a shortcut to the checkbox in the Exceptions dialog, so you don't have to open it to change this setting for this specific exception - you can toggle that option right from this dialog. Finally, if you try the code above on your system, you may observe a couple of differences from my screenshots. The first is that you may have an additional column of checkboxes in the Exceptions dialog. The second is that the last dialog I shared may look different to you. It all depends on the Debug->Options settings, and the two relevant settings are in this screenshot: The Exception assistant is what configures the look of the UI when the debugger wants to indicate exception to you, and the Just My Code setting controls the extra column in the Exception dialog. You can read more about those options on MSDN: How to break on User-Unhandled exceptions (plus Gregg’s post) and Exception Assistant. Before I leave you to go play with this stuff a bit more, please note that this level of debugging is now available for JavaScript too, and if you are looking at the Exceptions dialog and wondering what the "GPU Memory Access Exceptions" node is about, stay tuned on the C++ AMP blog ;-) Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Do MORE with WebCenter

  - by Michael Snow

  We’ve been extremely busy here on the Oracle WebCenter team. We hope that you’ve all be keeping up with the interesting news each week. Last week was jammed full of GartnerPCC and Gartner360 buzz. If you missed any of the highlights – be sure to check out both Kellsey’s post from last week: Gartner PCC: A Shovel & Some Ah-Ha's and Christie’s overview of Loren Weinberg’s PCC presentation: "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Engage Your Customers or Lose Them"  . This week, we’ll be focusing on “Doing More with WebCenter” leading up to a great webcast scheduled for Thursday, March 22 (invite and registration link below). This is the 2nd in a series of 3 webcasts dedicated to expanding the understanding of the full capabilities of WebCenter. Yes – that might mean that you are not getting the full benefits of the software you already own or the expansion potential via upgrade to the full WebCenter Suite Plus. Tune in on Thursday 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET.  ++++++++++++++ Want to be a Speaker at Oracle OpenWorld 2012? Oracle Open World planning has already kicked off. We know that it is only March and next October is far in the distance. But planning has already started for Oracle OpenWorld 2012. So if you want to be a speaker and propose your own session for this year's event in San Francisco on September 30th - October 4th, starting thinking now!  The annual OpenWorld Call for Papers is now open until April 9th! All of the details to submit a paper are available here. Of course, the WebCenter team here is interested in sessions including case studies, thought-leadership, customer stories around any of the Oracle WebCenter solutions, but the Call for Papers is open to all Oracle topics. When submitting your topic, be sure to describe what you plan to discuss and the value of the presentation to other attendees. Sell your session, because there will be a lot of competition to be selected.  Bonus News: Speakers for selected sessions receive a complimentary full conference pass! Get your papers in and we'll see you in San Francisco! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Webcast Series: Do More with Oracle WebCenter - Expand Beyond Content Management Enable Employees, Partners, and Customers to Do More with Your Content Dear [FIRSTNAME] [LASTNAME],-- Did you know that, in addition to content management, Oracle WebCenter now also includes comprehensive portal, composite application, collaboration, and Web experience management capabilities? Join us for this Webcast and learn how you can provide a new level of user engagement. Learn how Oracle WebCenter: Drives task-specific application data and content to a single screen for executing specific business processes Enables mixed internal and external environments where content can be securely shared and filtered with employees, partners, and customers, based upon role-based security Offers Web experience management, driving contextually relevant, social, and interactive online experiences across multiple channels Provides social features that enable sharing, activity feeds, collaboration, expertise location, and best-practices communities Learn how to do more with Oracle WebCenter. Register now for the Webcast. Register Now Join us for the second Webcast in the series "Do More With Oracle WebCenter". March 22, 2012 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: Michelle Huff Senior Director, WebCenter Product Management, Oracle Greg Utecht Project Manager,IT Operations,TIES Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices | Privacy Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States

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• Silverlight Cream for December 27, 2010 -- #1016

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Sacha Barber, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Martin Krüger, Ryan Alford(-2-), Michael Crump, Peter Kuhn(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Part 4 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers" Michael Crump WP7: "Navigating with the WebBrowser Control on WP7" Shawn Wildermuth Shoutouts: John Papa posted that the open call is up for MIX11 presenters: Your Chance to Speak at MIX11 From SilverlightCream.com: Aspect Examples (INotifyPropertyChanged via aspects) If you're wanting to read a really in-depth discussion of aspect oriented programming (AOP), check out the article Sacha Barber has up at CodeProject discussing INPC via aspects. How to: Localize a Windows Phone 7 application that uses the Windows Phone Toolkit into different languages David Anson has a nice tutorial up on localizing your WP7 app, including using the Toolkit and controls such as DatePicker... remember we're talking localized Windows Phone From Scratch – Animation Part 1 Jesse Liberty continues in his 'From Scratch' series with this first post on WP7 Animation... good stuff, Jesse! Navigating with the WebBrowser Control on WP7 In building his latest WP7 app, Shawn Wildermuth ran into some obscure errors surrounding browser.InvokeScript. He lists the simple solution and his back, refresh, and forward button functionality for us. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #7 In the time I was out, Jeff Blankenburg got ahead of me, so I'll catch up 2 at a time... in this number 7 he discusses making videos of your apps, links to the Learn Visual Studio series, and his new website What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #8 Jeff Blankenburg's number 8 is a very cool tip on using the return key on the keyboard to handle the loss of focus and handling of text typed into a textbox. Resize of a grid by using thumb controls Martin Krüger has a sample in the Expression Gallery of a grid that is resizable by using 'thumb controls' at the 4 corners... all source, so check it out! Silverlight 4 – Productivity Power Tools and EF4 Ryan Alford found a very interesting bug associated with EF4 and the Productivity Power Tools, and the way to get out of it is just weird as well. Silverlight 4 – Toolkit and Theming Ryan Alford also had a problem adding a theme from the Toolkit, and what all you might have to do to get around this one.... Part 4 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers. Michael Crump has part 4 of his series on Silverlight Development tips and tricks. This is numbers 16 through 20 and covers topics such as Version information, Using Lambdas, Specifying a development port, Disabling ChildWindow Close button, and XAML cleanup. The XML content importer and Windows Phone 7 Peter Kuhn wanted to use the XML content inporter with a WP7 app and ran into problems implementing the process and a lack of documentation as well... he pounded through it all and has a class he's sharing for loading sounds via XML file settings. WP7 snippet: analyzing the hyperlink button style In a second post, Peter Kuhn responds to a forum discussion about the styles for the hyperlink button in WP7 and why they're different than SL4 ... and styles-to-go to get all the hyperlink goodness you want... wrapped text, or even non-text content. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases – Day 13 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Relational Database and NoSQL database in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases Supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (Yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (Yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (This post) Document Databases (This post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Spatial Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Key Value Pair Databases Key Value Pair Databases are also known as KVP databases. A key is a field name and attribute, an identifier. The content of that field is its value, the data that is being identified and stored. They have a very simple implementation of NoSQL database concepts. They do not have schema hence they are very flexible as well as scalable. The disadvantages of Key Value Pair (KVP) database are that they do not follow ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. Additionally, it will require data architects to plan for data placement, replication as well as high availability. In KVP databases the data is stored as strings. Here is a simple example of how Key Value Database will look like: Key Value Name Pinal Dave Color Blue Twitter @pinaldave Name Nupur Dave Movie The Hero As the number of users grow in Key Value Pair databases it starts getting difficult to manage the entire database. As there is no specific schema or rules associated with the database, there are chances that database grows exponentially as well. It is very crucial to select the right Key Value Pair Database which offers an additional set of tools to manage the data and provides finer control over various business aspects of the same. Riak Rick is one of the most popular Key Value Database. It is known for its scalability and performance in high volume and velocity database. Additionally, it implements a mechanism for collection key and values which further helps to build manageable system. We will further discuss Riak in future blog posts. Key Value Databases are a good choice for social media, communities, caching layers for connecting other databases. In simpler words, whenever we required flexibility of the data storage keeping scalability in mind – KVP databases are good options to consider. Document Database There are two different kinds of document databases. 1) Full document Content (web pages, word docs etc) and 2) Storing Document Components for storage. The second types of the document database we are talking about over here. They use Javascript Object Notation (JSON) and Binary JSON for the structure of the documents. JSON is very easy to understand language and it is very easy to write for applications. There are two major structures of JSON used for Document Database – 1) Name Value Pairs and 2) Ordered List. MongoDB and CouchDB are two of the most popular Open Source NonRelational Document Database. MongoDB MongoDB databases are called collections. Each collection is build of documents and each document is composed of fields. MongoDB collections can be indexed for optimal performance. MongoDB ecosystem is highly available, supports query services as well as MapReduce. It is often used in high volume content management system. CouchDB CouchDB databases are composed of documents which consists fields and attachments (known as description). It supports ACID properties. The main attraction points of CouchDB are that it will continue to operate even though network connectivity is sketchy. Due to this nature CouchDB prefers local data storage. Document Database is a good choice of the database when users have to generate dynamic reports from elements which are changing very frequently. A good example of document usages is in real time analytics in social networking or content management system. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various other Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Beginner Geek: Scan Files for Viruses Before Using Them

  - by Mysticgeek

  To help avoid getting your computer infected by malicious software, it’s a good idea to scan files before executing them. Today we take a look at a couple of options that will let you scan files easily from your desktop. Scan File with Your Antivirus Software Most Antivirus software will put an option in the context menu so you can scan individual files. After downloading a file or email attachment, simply right-click the file and select the option to scan with your Antivirus software. If you want to scan more than one at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while you clicking each file you want to scan. Then right-click and select to scan with your Antivirus software. Here is our favorite Antivirus app, Microsoft Security Essentials scanning a couple of files. If a virus is found, your Antivirus app will delete it or put it in Quarantine so it cannot infect your system. Using VirusTotal Uploader To be very thorough and want a second opinion (actually 41), then you might want to check out the VirusTotal Uploader. This handy app will scan your files with 41 different Antivirus apps online. After installing VirusTotal Uploader, right-click the file, go to Send To, then VirusTotal. Alternately you can launch VirusTotal Uploader and Get and upload the file. It will send the file to VirusTotal.com and scan it with 41 different Antivirus apps and show you the results.   If you don’t want to install the Uploader, you can go to the VirusTotal site and upload a file from there to scan. We’ve noticed that occasionally there will be a false positive detected on files we know are clean. Sometimes the definition database of an Anti-malware app isn’t current, or an obscure Antivirus App will find something questionable. If that is the case, use your best judgment when viewing the results. Conclusion Most Antivirus apps today have real-time scanning and should be able to detect possible infections before you’re able to execute them. However, if they don’t or when in doubt, following these tips can save you a lot of headaches in the long run. If you use a lot of different flash drives throughout the day, check out our article on how to scan a thumb drive for viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog. Download Microsoft Security Essentials Download VirusTotal Uploader VirusTotal Website Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Scan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebMake Microsoft Security Essentials Scan Faster by Excluding Certain File TypesBeginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay DialogSecure Computing: Free Anti-Virus Protection With AVG Free Edition TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox

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• Fastest pathfinding for static node matrix

  - by Sean Martin

  I'm programming a route finding routine in VB.NET for an online game I play, and I'm searching for the fastest route finding algorithm for my map type. The game takes place in space, with thousands of solar systems connected by jump gates. The game devs have provided a DB dump containing a list of every system and the systems it can jump to. The map isn't quite a node tree, since some branches can jump to other branches - more of a matrix. What I need is a fast pathfinding algorithm. I have already implemented an A* routine and a Dijkstra's, both find the best path but are too slow for my purposes - a search that considers about 5000 nodes takes over 20 seconds to compute. A similar program on a website can do the same search in less than a second. This website claims to use D*, which I have looked into. That algorithm seems more appropriate for dynamic maps rather than one that does not change - unless I misunderstand it's premise. So is there something faster I can use for a map that is not your typical tile/polygon base? GBFS? Perhaps a DFS? Or have I likely got some problem with my A* - maybe poorly chosen heuristics or movement cost? Currently my movement cost is the length of the jump (the DB dump has solar system coordinates as well), and the heuristic is a quick euclidean calculation from the node to the goal. In case anyone has some optimizations for my A*, here is the routine that consumes about 60% of my processing time, according to my profiler. The coordinateData table contains a list of every system's coordinates, and neighborNode.distance is the distance of the jump. Private Function findDistance(ByVal startSystem As Integer, ByVal endSystem As Integer) As Integer 'hCount += 1 'If hCount Mod 0 = 0 Then 'Return hCache 'End If 'Initialize variables to be filled Dim x1, x2, y1, y2, z1, z2 As Integer 'LINQ queries for solar system data Dim systemFromData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = startSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z Dim systemToData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = endSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z 'LINQ execute 'Fill variables with solar system data for from and to system For Each solarSystem In systemFromData x1 = (solarSystem.x) y1 = (solarSystem.y) z1 = (solarSystem.z) Next For Each solarSystem In systemToData x2 = (solarSystem.x) y2 = (solarSystem.y) z2 = (solarSystem.z) Next Dim x3 = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) Dim y3 = Math.Abs(y1 - y2) Dim z3 = Math.Abs(z1 - z2) 'Calculate distance and round 'Dim distance = Math.Round(Math.Sqrt(Math.Abs((x1 - x2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((y1 - y2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((z1 - z2) ^ 2))) Dim distance = firstConstant * Math.Min(secondConstant * (x3 + y3 + z3), Math.Max(x3, Math.Max(y3, z3))) 'Dim distance = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) + Math.Abs(z1 - z2) + Math.Abs(y1 - y2) 'hCache = distance Return distance End Function And the main loop, the other 30% 'Begin search While openList.Count() != 0 'Set current system and move node to closed currentNode = lowestF() move(currentNode.id) For Each neighborNode In neighborNodes If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 0) Then If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 1) Then Dim newNode As New nodeData() newNode.id = neighborNode.toSystem newNode.parent = currentNode.id newNode.g = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance newNode.h = findDistance(newNode.id, endSystem) newNode.f = newNode.g + newNode.h newNode.security = neighborNode.security openList.Add(newNode) shortOpenList(OLindex) = newNode.id OLindex += 1 Else Dim proposedG As Integer = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance If proposedG < gValue(neighborNode.toSystem) Then changeParent(neighborNode.toSystem, currentNode.id, proposedG) End If End If End If Next 'Check to see if done If currentNode.id = endSystem Then Exit While End If End While If clarification is needed on my spaghetti code, I'll try to explain.

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• Oracle WebCenter: Common User Experience Architecture

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  You may remember that the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  In previous weeks we've provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals and this week, we'll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter delivers a Common User Experience Architecture.When Oracle talks about a Common User Experience Architecture, it really focuses on a core set of areas.  First, the way that information is accessed needs to be consistent and extensible so that as requirements change, the applications don't need to be rewritten for every change. Second, this information access layer needs to be securely accessible to any application, site, or any other channel that needs to leverage this information.  Third, there needs to be a consistent presentation layout, Oracle calls it a UI shell, so that all resources can fit together in a useable, productive way.  Fourth, there needs to be a common set of design patterns for how different menus, features, and services fit into this UI Shell for broad and productive usability.  Fifth, there needs to be a set of design patterns for the individual services that plug into this UI shell so that end users can move from one module of the application to another without new learning.  Finally, all of these layers need to be customizable in an easy way that insulates IT from patching and upgrading problems and allows the business owners the agility to quickly change with the market conditions.As Oracle has already announced, we will release our next generation of enterprise applications called Oracle Fusion Applications.  We have thousands of developers building these applications that all had different programming tool experience and UI design experience.  We've educated over 6,000 developers building Oracle Fusion Applications to leverage these Common User Experience Architecture patterns to speed their learning curve of the new Java standards as well as SOA principles to deliver a revolutionary new set of applications.  You could imagine the big challenge with getting all these developers with different backgrounds and different UI design skills to deliver a completely integrated application user experience.  This is why Oracle invested heavily in designing this Common User Experience Architecture, based on Oracle WebCenter and the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF).  It pulls together the best practices and design patterns that Oracle development required in order to bring Fusion Applications to market and Oracle WebCenter is the user experience layer that all of this is surfaced through.  In this way, customers can quickly brand a deployment for new partnerships without having to redevelop a new site.  Or they can quickly add new options to the UI Shell to enable their line of business managers to quickly adapt to a new competitive product.  And with the core integration of the activities to produce a Business Activity Stream, customers are able to stay on top of all their key business actions when they happen as they happen and more importantly, the system can recommend actions or resources to help act on these activities.And we've authored this whole set of design patterns for Oracle development to take advantage of in delivering Fusion Applications.  We're also applying these design patterns to our existing eBusiness Suite, Peoplesoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards applications so that they can tie in the exact same way that Fusion Applications has been brought together.  This will provide customers with a complete Common User Experience Architecture for their entire ecosystem of applications within their enterprise whether they are from Oracle, another vender, or custom built applications. And this is all provided in the new release of Oracle WebCenter.  These design patterns cover elements around delivering a complete, aggregated menu of all the capabilities that their role allows independent of which application they are trying to access.   It means that as they move from one application to another, they will have a consistent user experience.  And if they are using an Oracle application, any customizations that are made to the application are preserved and managed through upgrades and patches.Be sure to check back this week as we share more information and resources on Oracle's Common User Experience Architecture.

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• Oracle's PeopleSoft Customer Advisory Boards Convene to Discuss Roadmap at Pleasanton Campus

  - by john.webb(at)oracle.com

  Last week we hosted all of the PeopleSoft CABs (Customer Advisory Boards) at our Pleasanton Development Center to review our detailed designs for future Feature Packs, PeopleSoft 9.2, and beyond. Over 150 customers from 79 companies attended representing a variety of industries, geographies, and company sizes. The PeopleSoft team relies heavily on this group to provide key input on our roadmap for applications as well as technology direction. A good product strategy is one part well thought out idea with many handfuls of customer validation, and very often our best ideas originate from these customer discussions. While the individual CABs have frequent interactions with our teams, it's always great to have all of them in one place and in person. Our attendance was up from last year which I attribute to two things: (1) More interest as a result of PeopleSoft 9.1 upgrade; (2) An improving economy allowing for more travel. Maybe we should index the second item meeting-to-meeting and use it as a market indicator - we'll see! We kicked off the day one session with an overview of the PeopleSoft Roadmap and I outlined our strategy around Feature Packs and PeopleSoft 9.2. Given the high adoption rate of PeopleSoft 9.1 (over 4x that of 9.0 given the same time lapse since the release date), there was a lot of interest around the 9.1 Feature Packs as a vehicle for continuous value. We provided examples of our 3 central design themes: Simplicity, Productivity, and lower TCO, including those already delivered via Feature Packs in 2010. A great example of this is the Company Directory feature in PeopleSoft HCM. The configuration capabilities and the new actionable links our CAB advised us on last Spring were made available to all customers late last year. We reviewed many more future Navigation changes that will fundamentally change the way users interact with PeopleSoft. Our old friend, the menu tree, is being relegated from center stage to a bit part, with new concepts like Activity Guides, Train Stops, Related Actions, Work Centers, Collaborative Workspaces, and Secure Enterprise Search bringing users what they need in a contextual, role based manner with fewer clicks. Paco Aubrejuan, our PeopleSoft GM, and Steve Miranda, the SVP for Fusion Applications, then discussed our plans around Oracle's Application Investment Strategy.  This included our continued investment in developing both PeopleSoft and Fusion as well as the co-existence strategy with new Fusion Apps integrating to PeopleSoft Apps. Should you want to view this presentation, a recording is available. Jeff Robbins, our lead PeopleTools Strategist, provided the roadmap for PeopleTools and discussed our continuing plan to deliver annual releases to further evolve the user experience. Numerous examples were highlighted with the Navigation techniques I mentioned previously. Jeff also provided a lot of food for thought around Lifecycle Management topics and how to remain current on releases with a  lower cost of ownership. Dennis Mesler, from Boise, was the guest speaker in this slot, who spoke about the new PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF). Regression Testing is a key cost component when product updates are applied. This new tool (which is free to all PeopleSoft customers as part of PeopleTools 8.51) provides a meta data driven approach to recording and executing test scripts. Coupled with what our Usage Monitor enables, PTF provides our customers a powerful tool to lower costs and manage product updates more efficiently and at the time of their choosing. Beyond the general session, we broke out into the individual CABs: HCM, Financials, ESA/ALM, SRM, SCM, CRM, and PeopleTools/ Technology. A day and half of very engaging discussions around our plans took place for each product pillar. More about that to follow in future posts.      We capped the first day with a reception sponsored by our partners: InfoSys, SmartERP (represented by Doris Wong), and Grey Sparling  Solutions (represented by Chris Heller and Larry Grey). Great to see these old friends actively engaged in the very busy PeopleSoft ecosystem!   Jeff Robbins previews the roadmap for PeopleTools with the PeopleSoft CAB  

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