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• Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer

  - by Ryan

  Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one-man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?

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• Compiling for T4

  - by Darryl Gove

  I've recently had quite a few queries about compiling for T4 based systems. So it's probably a good time to review what I consider to be the best practices. Always use the latest compiler. Being in the compiler team, this is bound to be something I'd recommend But the serious points are that (a) Every release the tools get better and better, so you are going to be much more effective using the latest release (b) Every release we improve the generated code, so you will see things get better (c) Old releases cannot know about new hardware. Always use optimisation. You should use at least -O to get some amount of optimisation. -xO4 is typically even better as this will add within-file inlining. Always generate debug information, using -g. This allows the tools to attribute information to lines of source. This is particularly important when profiling an application. The default target of -xtarget=generic is often sufficient. This setting is designed to produce a binary that runs well across all supported platforms. If the binary is going to be deployed on only a subset of architectures, then it is possible to produce a binary that only uses the instructions supported on these architectures, which may lead to some performance gains. I've previously discussed which chips support which architectures, and I'd recommend that you take a look at the chart that goes with the discussion. Crossfile optimisation (-xipo) can be very useful - particularly when the hot source code is distributed across multiple source files. If you're allowed to have something as geeky as favourite compiler optimisations, then this is mine! Profile feedback (-xprofile=[collect: | use:]) will help the compiler make the best code layout decisions, and is particularly effective with crossfile optimisations. But what makes this optimisation really useful is that codes that are dominated by branch instructions don't typically improve much with "traditional" compiler optimisation, but often do respond well to being built with profile feedback. The macro flag -fast aims to provide a one-stop "give me a fast application" flag. This usually gives a best performing binary, but with a few caveats. It assumes the build platform is also the deployment platform, it enables floating point optimisations, and it makes some relatively weak assumptions about pointer aliasing. It's worth investigating. SPARC64 processor, T3, and T4 implement floating point multiply accumulate instructions. These can substantially improve floating point performance. To generate them the compiler needs the flag -fma=fused and also needs an architecture that supports the instruction (at least -xarch=sparcfmaf). The most critical advise is that anyone doing performance work should profile their application. I cannot overstate how important it is to look at where the time is going in order to determine what can be done to improve it. I also presented at Oracle OpenWorld on this topic, so it might be helpful to review those slides.

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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Happy New fiscal Year FY13 - thanks for the FY12 middleware business! Our SOA & BPM Partner Community continued to grow to almost 4000 members. Additional we launched the WebLogic Partner Community which grew very fast to 800+ members! To continue our joint successful business in the new fiscal year our Top priorities FY13 are: Become trained:the next opportunity are the summer camps in Lisbon & Munich or our on-demand training SOA & BPM and see our detailed training calendar below. Run your marketing & sales campaign: sales kits, marketing kits, solution catalog add your services to oracle.com, add your events to oracle.com and advertisement Get recognized: OFM awards, partner excellence awards & references & plaques Become Specialized: All of the above makes the Oracle Specialization! Make sure you get your Specialization benefits! Topics: Key product focus areas will be: SOA as the foundation for clouds, integration platform 2.0 for industrial SOA including BAM & CEP, BPM & adaptive case management & migrate legacy solutions to the strategic offerings. The new Oracle VM VirtualBox image is available to test SOA Suite and BPM Suite. To start your BPM 11g project a new BPM Standard Edition a license entry version is available. EAIESB published a post with all BPMN2.0 notations. If you want to learn more please visit the Oracle Learning Library. We want to promote your SOA 11g & BPM 11g success let us know where you are in production! And nominate this success for our Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012. Douwe P. van den Bos published at his blog a SOA governance series: Principles of Service-Oriented Architecture & The Maturity of a Service-Oriented Architecture & SOA Maturity Models. Please let us know if you published interesting papers! Would be great to see you at the SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium by Thomas Erl. Please feel free to get your conference pass with the oracle discount code “DJMXZ370”. See you in Lisbon & London at our summer camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2012 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA Demo System,BPM

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• Convert VARCHAR() columns to NVARCHAR()

  - by ChrisD

  We recently underwent an upgrade that required us to change our database columns from varchar to NVarchar, to support unicode characters. Digging through the internet, I found a base script which I modified to handle reserved word table names, and maintain the NULL/NotNull constraint of the columns.   I Ran this script use NWOperationalContent – Your Catalog Name here GO SELECT 'ALTER TABLE ' + isnull(schema_name(syo.id), 'dbo') + '.[' +  syo.name +'] '     + ' ALTER COLUMN [' + syc.name + '] NVARCHAR(' + case syc.length when -1 then 'MAX'         ELSE convert(nvarchar(10),syc.length) end + ') '+         case  syc.isnullable when 1 then ' NULL' ELSE ' NOT NULL' END +';'    FROM sysobjects syo    JOIN syscolumns syc ON      syc.id = syo.id    JOIN systypes syt ON      syt.xtype = syc.xtype    WHERE      syt.name = 'varchar'     and syo.xtype='U'   which produced a series of ALTER statements which I could then execute the tables.  In some cases I had to drop indexes, alter the tables, and re-create the indexes.  There might have been a better way to do that, but manually dropping them got the job done.   use NWMerchandisingContent GO ALTER TABLE Locale Drop Constraint PK_Locale ALTER TABLE Country DROP CONSTRAINT PK_Country GO ALTER TABLE dbo.[Campaign]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [Locale] NVARCHAR(8)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [UnitOfmeasure] NVARCHAR(200)  NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleComponentLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [Locale] NVARCHAR(8)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleComponentLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [Imperative] NVARCHAR(MAX)  NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleComponentLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [Instructions] NVARCHAR(MAX)  NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleComponentLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[BundleComponent]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[Bundle]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[Banner]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[Video]  ALTER COLUMN [Link] NVARCHAR(512)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[Video]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[ProductUsage]  ALTER COLUMN [VideoLink] NVARCHAR(512)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[ProductUsage]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[Thumbnail]  ALTER COLUMN [ActorKey] NVARCHAR(200)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[SkuLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [Locale] NVARCHAR(8)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[SkuLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [UnitOfMeasure] NVARCHAR(150)  NOT NULL; ALTER TABLE dbo.[SkuLocalization]  ALTER COLUMN [SwatchColor] NVARCHAR(50)  NOT NULL; etc.. GO ALTER TABLE Locale ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Locale PRIMARY KEY (LocaleId) ALTER TABLE Country ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Country PRIMARY KEY (CountryId) Note that this alter is non-destructive to the data.   Hope this helps.

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• It's Here! Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Ship

  Today Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0. I've been using the RC version of Visual Studio 2010 quite a bit for the past couple of months and have really grown to like it. It has a host of features and enhancements that improve developer productivity, from improved IntelliSense to better multiple monitor support. Plus there's something about the user experience that, to me, makes it feel better than Visual Studio 2008. I don't know if it's the new blue color motif or what, but the IDE seems more modern looking and more responsive to my mouse movements and other input. Anyway, if you've not yet downloaded Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0, why not? As with previous versions of Visual Studio there's a free Express Edition and VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 runs side-by-side with earlier versions of Visual Studio and ASP.NET. And with Visual Studio 2010's multi-targeting you can even use VS2010 as your development editor for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 web applications. (Although be forewarned if you have multiple developers working on the application that the project files in VS2010 and earlier versions of Visual Studio differ.) This week's article on 4Guys explores my favorite new features of Visual Studio 2010. Here's an excerpt: The Visual Studio 2010 user experience is noticeably different than with previous versions. Some of the changes are cosmetic - gone is the decades-old red and orange color scheme, having been replaced with blues and purples - while others are more substantial. For instance, the Visual Studio 2010 shell was rewritten from the ground up to use Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). In addition to an updated user experience, Visual Studio introduces an array of new features designed to improve developer productivity. There are new tools for searching for files, types, and class members; it's now easier than ever to use IntelliSense; the Toolbox can be searched using the keyboard; and you can use a single editor - Visual Studio 2010 - to work on. This article explores some of the new features in Visual Studio 2010. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather highlights those features that I, as an ASP.NET developer, find most useful in my line of work. Read on to learn more! And, in closing, here are some helpful VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 links: One click installation for ASP.NET 4.0, Visual Web Developer 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and ASP.NET MVC 2 Eight Quick Hit videos showing some of the cool new VS2010 features VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Release Announcement with some great info/links from none other than Scott Guthrie Happy Programming!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Actor and Sprite, who should own these properties?

  - by Gerardo Marset

  I'm writing sort of a 2D game engine for making the process of creating games easier. It has two classes, Actor and Sprite. Actor is used for interactive elements (the player, enemies, bullets, a menu, an invisible instance that controls score, etc) and Sprite is used for animated (or not) images with transparency (or not). The actor may have an assigned sprite that represents it on the screen, which may change during the game. E.g. in a top-down action game you may have an actor with a sprite of a little guy that changes when attacking, walking, and facing different directions, etc. Currently the actor has x and y properties (its coordinates in the screen), while the sprite has an index property (the number of the frame currently being shown by the sprite). Since the sprite doesn't know which actor it belongs to (or if it belongs to an actor at all), the actor must pass its x and y coordinates when drawing the sprite. Also, since a actors may reset its sprite each frame (and usually do), the sprite's index property must be passed from the old to the new sprite like so (pseudocode): function change_sprite(new_sprite) old_index = my.sprite.index my.sprite = new_sprite() my.sprite.index = old_index % my.sprite.frames end I always thought this was kind of cumbersome, but it never was a big problem. Now I decided to add support for more properties. Namely a property to draw the sprite rotated, a property to draw it flipped, it a property draw it stretched, etc. These should probably belong to the sprite and not the actor, but if they do, the actor would have to pass them from the old to the new sprite each time it changes... On the other hand, if they belonged to the actor, the actor would have to pass each property to the sprite when drawing it (since the sprite doesn't know which actor it belongs to, and it shouldn't, since sprites aren't just meant to be used by actors, really). Another option I thought of would be having an extra class that owns all these properties (plus index, x and y) and links an actor with a sprite, but that doesn't come without drawbacks. So, what should I do with all these properties? Thanks!

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• EBS – ATG Webcast 9/11 - 9/12

  - by cwarticki

  EBS – ATG Webcast in September 2012 EBS – Multiple Language Support (MLS) Agenda :EBS is MLS Ready                                                                                 NLS / MLS Basic ArchitectureNLS / MLS InstallationNLS / MLS Configuration Settings                                                                    TroubleshootingQuestion and AnswersEMEA Session : September 11, 2012 at 09:00 UK / 10:00 CET / 13:30 India / 17:00 Japan / 18:00 Sydney (Australia) Details & Registration : Note 1480084.1 Direct link to register in WebEx US Session : September 12, 2012 at 18:00 UK / 19:00 CET / 10:00 AM Pacific / 11:00 AM Mountain/ 01:00 PM Eastern ·      Details & Registration : Note 1480085.1 ·      Direct link to register in WebEx ·         Schedules, recordings and the Presentations of the Advisor Webcast drove under the EBS Applications Technology area can be found in Note 1186338.1. ·         Current Schedules of Advisor Webcast for all Oracle Products can be found on Note 740966.1 ·         Post Presentation Recordings of the Advisor Webcasts for all Oracle Products can be found on Note 740964.1 If you have any question about the schedules or if you have a suggestion for an Advisor Webcast to be planned in future, please send an E-Mail to Ruediger Ziegler.

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• Games at Work Part 1: Introduction to Gamification and Applications

  - by ultan o'broin

  Games Are Everywhere How many of you (will admit to) remember playing Pong? OK then, do you play Angry Birds on your phone during work hours? Thought about why we keep playing online, video, and mobile games and what this "gamification" business we're hearing about means for the enterprise applications user experience? In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal says that playing computer and online games now provides more rewards for people than their real lives do. Games offer intrinsic rewards and happiness to the players as they pursue more satisfying work and the success, social connection, and meaning that goes with it. Yep, Gran Turismo, Dungeons & Dragons, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Boxing, and the rest are all forms of work it seems. Games are, in fact, work taken so seriously that governments now move to limit the impact of virtual gaming currencies on the real financial system. Anyone who spends hours harvesting crops on FarmVille realizes it’s hard work too. Yet games evoke a positive emotion in players who voluntarily stay engaged with games for hours, day after day. Some 183 million active gamers in the United States play on average 13 hours per week. Weekly, 5 million of those gamers play for longer than a working week (45 hours). So why not harness the work put into games to solve real-world problems? Or, in the case of our applications users, real-world work problems? What’s a Game? Jane explains that all games have four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. We need to look at what motivational ideas behind the dynamics of the game—what we call gamification—are appropriate for our users. Typically, these motivators are achievement, altruism, competition, reward, self-expression, and status). Common game techniques for leveraging these motivations include: Badging and avatars Points and awards Leader boards Progress charts Virtual currencies or goods Gifting and giving Challenges and quests Some technology commentators argue for a game layer on top of everything, but this layer is already part of our daily lives in many instances. We see gamification working around us already: the badging and kudos offered on My Oracle Support or other Oracle community forums, becoming a Dragon Slayer implementor of Atlassian applications, being made duke of your favorite coffee shop on Yelp, sharing your workout details with Nike+, or donating to Japanese earthquake relief through FarmVille, for example. And what does all this mean for the applications that you use in your work? Read on in part two...

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• Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?

  - by Andrea

  I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? EDIT: To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below): I like Emacs as a user because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a "power user" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. EDIT: To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity.

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• A starting point for Use Cases and User Stories

  - by Mike Benkovich

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/benko/archive/2013/07/23/a-starting-point-for-use-cases-and-user-stories.aspxSoftware is a challenging business and is rife with opportunities to go wrong. Over the years a number of methodologies have evolved to help make sure that things go right. In an effort to contribute to this I’ve created a list of user stories that I think should be included and sometimes are just assumed. Note this is a work in progress, so I’m looking for your feedback. I’m curious what you would add or change in my list. · As a DBA I am working with a Normalized data model that reflects an agreed upon logical model for the system · As a DBA I am using consistent names for my fields which match the naming standards of my organization · As a DBA my model supports simple CRUD operations against all the entities · As an Application Architect the UI has been validated against the Business requirements and a complete set of user story’s have been created · As an Application Architect the database model has been validated against the UI · As an Application Architect we have a logical business model that describes all the known and/or expected usage of the system during the software’s expected lifecycle · As an Application Architect we have a Deployment diagram that describes how the application components will be deployed · As an Application Architect we have a navigation diagram that describes the typical application flow · As an Application Architect we have identified points of interaction which describes how the UI interacts with the services and the data storage · As an Application Architect we have identified external systems which may now or in the future use the data of this application and have adapted the logical model to include these interactions · As an Application Architect we have identified existing systems and tools that can be extended and/or reused to help this application achieve it’s business goals · As a Project Manager all team members understand the goals of each release and iteration as they are planned · As a Project Manager all team members understand their role and the roles of others · As a Project Manager we have support of the business to do the right thing even if it is not the expedient thing · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created a simulation environment for testing the system which does not use sensitive data and accurately reflects the scenarios of all the data that will be supported by the system · As a Test/QA Analyst we have identified the matrix of supported clients used to access the system including the likely browsers, mobile devices and other interfaces to work with the application · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created exit criteria for each user story that match the requirements of the business story that was used to create them · As a Test/QA Analyst we have access to a Test environment that is isolated from production and staging environments · As a Test/QA Analyst there we have a way to reset the environment so we can rerun tests when a new version of the software becomes available · As a Test/QA Analyst I am able to automate portions of the test process Thoughts? -mike

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• Playing with F#

  - by mroberts

  Project Euler is a awesome site.   When working with a new language it can be tricky to find problems that need solving, that are more complex than "Hello World" and simpler than a full blown application. Project Euler gives use just that, cool and thought provoking problems that usually don't take days to solve.  I've solved a number of questions with C# and some with Java.  BTW, I used Java because it had BigInteger support before .Net. A couple weeks ago, back when winter had a firm grip on Columbus, OH, I began playing (researching) with F#.  I began with Problem #1 from Project Euler.  I started by looking at my solution in C#. Here is my solution in C#. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3:   4: namespace Problem001 5: { 6: class Program 7: { 8: static void Main(string[] args) 9: { 10: List<int> values = new List<int>(); 11:   12: for (int i = 1; i < 1000; i++) 13: { 14: if (i % 3 == 0 || i % 5 == 0) 15: values.Add(i); 16: } 17: int total = 0; 18:   19: values.ForEach(v => total += v); 20:   21: Console.WriteLine(total); 22: Console.ReadKey(); 23: } 24: } 25: }   Now, after much tweaking and learning, here is my solution in F#.   1: open System 2:   3: let calc n = 4: [1..n] 5: |> List.map (fun x -> if (x % 3 = 0 || x % 5 = 0) then x else 0) 6: |> List.sum 7:   8: let main() = 9: calc 999 10: |> printfn "result = %d" 11: Console.ReadKey(true) |> ignore 12:   13: main() Just this little example highlights some cool things about F#. Type inference. F# infers the type of a value.  In the C# code above we declare a number of variables, the list, and a couple ints.  F# does not require this, it infers the calc (a function) accepts a int and returns a int. Great built in functionality for Lists.  List.map for example. BTW, I don’t think I’m spilling the beans by giving away the code for Problem 1.  It by far is the easiest question, IMHO, solved by 92,000+ people. Next I’ll look into writing a class library with F#.

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• Is MongoDB a good choice or not for my application?

  - by shubham

  I have a Reporting application which stores the reports in xml format as recieved from source (XML schema is not defined, it can be any format) and those reports contain some keys and values. Like jobid, setid be keys for 1 type of report and userid, groupId for another type of report etc. The type of keys that can be referred from the document is determined by the namespaces used in the xml doc. These keys are stored on the basis of namespace used in the xml document. For e.g. If a tag in xml fragment uses namespace= "myspace1", then I have keys A and B for myspace1 stored in another table. It will fetch those keys from that table for this namespace, look for their values in xml doc and store it in another table along with the pointer to this xml document (Id of a record storing complete xml document in a cell). Use cases: When the user comes and queries for that key and value, I return the document or a set of documents that are having those key/value pairs. When the user comes and queries for a certain key and provide a name for xslt (pre stored), I fetch the set of documents fulfilling that criteria and convert that xml to html with the specified xslt. When the user comes and asks for a particular fragment of a doc then it can fetch a subset from a particular document also. When the user comes and queries for top x values of a certain key, I return the set of documents that are having top 10 values of that key. I am using DB2 database for its support of xml along with relational capabilities. That makes easier for me to run xpath expressions and fetch values of keys and also aggregate a set of documents fullfilling a criteria, all on the database side. Problems: DB2 stores XML doc of upto 2GB in size. Retrieval is very slow. If some thing involves many documents, then it takes significant time for things to show up in browser, and the user has to wait. Can MongoDb help in this case, as it is document oriented? can I do xml related xpath queries and document transformations on db side? Or is it ok to use both in such a case?

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• Can't install alternate CD from USB?

  - by mattias

  Hi im trying to install ubuntu 12.04 with full hard disk encryption. After downloading and installing the Ubuntu live CD, I learned that truecrypt doesnt support full disk encryption on linux. I also learned that the best way to get "nearly full disk encryption" on ubuntu is by installing it from the alternate install CD. I tried that, but something is wrong with my CD reader/burner so it doesnt boot up when i insert the cd. My thought here was to take the .iso that I downloaded on my unencrypted Ubuntu system, use Unetbootin to make the usb drive. The usb drive used for this is exactly the same brand as one that I know has worked with a previous ubuntu live system on the same computer. I also used unetbootin for that usb, but I created it from windows that time. The usb stick boots up fine and i get through the first couple of steps in the installation process. However, After a while I get a "box" with the following error message "Load Installer components from CD" There was a problem reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it is in the drive. If retrying does not work, you should check the integrity of your CD-ROM. "Failed to copy file from CD-ROM. Retry? " Then I cant get any further. I googled a lot and found this page which seems to tackle this very problem: http://www.dotkam.com/2010/11/29/ins...mage-from-usb/ I tried to do what it said. After pressing TAB, I wrote : cdrom-detect/try-usb=true without quotes because that's what i think is right. When I press TAB, there already is a text saying : /ubnkern initrd=/ubninit vga=788 -- quiet which can be removed. I have tried to both delete the text before the "--" and just inserting cdrom-detect/try-usb=true before it. Any idea of what can be wrong? I would like to do a full system encryption, or as full as it is possible. I dont want to just encrypt my /home folder. Maybe this isn't the easiest way. I use SanDisk usb sticks. I know there is a problem with U3 launcher on some SanDisks, but I never had to remove U3 before from similar disks, and the alternate install does boot up, so I dont think using U3 removal would help me. Any help or indication to an easier way to do this would be appreciated

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• Running C++ AMP kernels on the CPU

  - by Daniel Moth

  One of the FAQs we receive is whether C++ AMP can be used to target the CPU. For targeting multi-core we have a technology we released with VS2010 called PPL, which has had enhancements for VS 11 – that is what you should be using! FYI, it also has a Linux implementation via Intel's TBB which conforms to the same interface. When you choose to use C++ AMP, you choose to take advantage of massively parallel hardware, through accelerators like the GPU. Having said that, you can always use the accelerator class to check if you are running on a system where the is no hardware with a DirectX 11 driver, and decide what alternative code path you wish to follow.  In fact, if you do nothing in code, if the runtime does not find DX11 hardware to run your code on, it will choose the WARP accelerator which will run your code on the CPU, taking advantage of multi-core and SSE2 (depending on the CPU capabilities WARP also uses SSE3 and SSE 4.1 – it does not currently use AVX and on such systems you hopefully have a DX 11 GPU anyway). A few things to know about WARP It is our fallback CPU solution, not intended as a primary target of C++ AMP. WARP stands for Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform and you can read old info on this MSDN page on WARP. What is new in Windows 8 Developer Preview is that WARP now supports DirectCompute, which is what C++ AMP builds on. It is not currently clear if we will have a CPU fallback solution for non-Windows 8 platforms when we ship. When you create a WARP accelerator, its is_emulated property returns true. WARP does not currently support double precision.   BTW, when we refer to WARP, we refer to this accelerator described above. If we use lower case "warp", that refers to a bunch of threads that run concurrently in lock step and share the same instruction. In the VS 11 Developer Preview, the size of warp in our Ref emulator is 4 – Ref is another emulator that runs on the CPU, but it is extremely slow not intended for production, just for debugging. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Can see samba shares but not access them

  - by nitefrog

  For the life of me I cannot figure this one out. I have samba installed and set up on the ubuntu box and on the Win7 box I CAN SEE all the shares I created. I created two users on ubuntu that map to the users in windows. On ubuntu they are both admins, user A & B on Windows User A is admin and user B is poweruser. User A can see both shares and access them, but user B can see everythin, but only access the homes directory, the other directory throws an error. I have two drives in Ubuntu and this is the smb.config file (I am new to samba): [global] workgroup = WORKGROUP server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu) wins support = no dns proxy = yes name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 syslog = 0 panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d security = user encrypt passwords = true passdb backend = tdbsam obey pam restrictions = yes unix password sync = yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . pam password change = yes map to guest = bad user ; usershare max shares = 100 usershare allow guests = yes And here is the share section: Both user A & B can access this from windows. No problems. [homes] comment = Home Directories browseable = no writable = yes Both User A & B can see this share, but only user A can access it. User B get an error thrown. [stuff] comment = Unixmen File Server path = /media/data/appinstall/ browseable = yes ;writable = no read only = yes hosts allow = The permission for the media/data/appinstall/ is as follows: appInstall properties: share name: stuff Allow others to create and delete files in this folder is cheeked Guest access (for people without a user account) is checked permissions: Owner: user A Folder Access: Create and delete files File Access: --- Group: user A Folder Access: Create and delete files File Access: --- Others Folder Access: Create and delete files File Access: --- I am at a loss and need to get this work. Any ideas? The goal is to have a setup like this. 3 users on window machines. Each user on the data drive will have their own personal folder where they are the ones that can only access, then another folder where 2 of the users will have read only and one user full access. I had this setup before on windows, but after what happened I am NEVER going back to windows, so Unix here I am to stay! I am really stuck. I am running Ubuntu 11. I could reformat again and put on version 10 if that would make life easier. I have been dealing with this since Wed. 3pm. Thanks.

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• WIF, ADFS 2 and WCF&ndash;Part 1: Overview

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  A lot has been written already about passive federation and integration of WIF and ADFS 2 into web apps. The whole active/WS-Trust feature area is much less documented or covered in articles and blogs. Over the next few posts I will try to compile all relevant information about the above topics – but let’s start with an overview. ADFS 2 has a number of endpoints under the /services/trust base address that implement the WS-Trust protocol. They are grouped by the WS-Trust version they support (/13 and /2005), the client credential type (/windows*, /username*, /certificate*) and the security mode (*transport, *mixed and message). You can see the endpoints in the MMC console under the Service/Endpoints page. So in other words, you use one of these endpoints (which exactly depends on your configuration / system setup) to request tokens from ADFS 2. The bindings behind the endpoints are more or less standard WCF bindings, but with SecureConversation (establishSecurityContext) disabled. That means that whenever you need to programmatically talk to these endpoints – you can (easily) create client bindings that are compatible. Another option is to use the special bindings that come with WIF (in the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Protocols.WSTrust.Bindings namespace). They are already pre-configured to be compatible with the ADFS endpoints. The downside of these bindings is, that you can’t use them in configuration. That’s definitely a feature request of mine for the next version of WIF. The next important piece of information is the so called Federation Service Identifier. This is the value that you (at least by default) have to use as a realm/appliesTo whenever you are requesting a token for ADFS (e.g. in  IdP –> RSTS scenario). Or (even more) technically speaking, ADFS 2 checks for this value in the audience URI restriction in SAML tokens. You can get to this value by clicking the “Edit Federation Service Properties” in the MMC when the Service tree-node is selected. OK – I will come back to this basic information in the following posts. Basically I want to go through the following scenarios: ADFS in the IdP role ADFS in the R-STS role (with a chained claims provider) Using the WCF bindings for automatic token issuance Using WSTrustChannelFactory for manual token handling Stay tuned…

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• How to deal with malicious domain redirections?

  - by user359650

  It is possible for anybody to buy a domain name containing negative terms and point it to someone's website in order to damage their reputation. For instance someone could buy the domain child-pornography.com and point it to the address 64.34.119.12 which is the address behind stackoverflow.com and people navigating to the domain in question would end up visualizing content from StackExchange which would be detrimental to StackExchange's image. To illustrate this, I added the entry 64.34.119.12 child-pornography.com to my /etc/hosts file and tested. Here is what I obtained: I personally found this user experience terrible as someone could think that Stack Exchange are in favor of child pornography and awaiting support from the community to create a Q&A site about it. I tested with other websites and experienced other behaviors that I would categorize as follows: 1 - Useful 404 page (happens with stackoverflow.com): For me the worst way of handling this as the image of the targeted website is directly associated with the offending domain. The more useful the 404 page, the bigger the impression that the targeted website would be willing to help with child pornography. 2 - Redirection (happens with microsoft.com): For instance when accessing child-pornography.com you get redirected to www.microsoft.com. It isn't as bad as above as the offending domain name never appears alongside the targeted website's content, but still bad in my opinion as it gives the impression the targeted website bought the offending domain and redirected it to their website to get more traffic. 3 - Server error (happens with lemonde.fr): You get an error from the webserver which page doesn't contain any content that can be associated with the targeted website (e.g. default Apache 404 page, completely blank page). I believe that is good as the identify of the targeted website isn't revealed. Above are the various behaviors I experienced, but I also thought about a fourth way of dealing with this which is described below. 4 - Disclaimer page (haven't found any website implementing that technique): Display a message such as : "You ended here because someone bought and linked the child-pornography.com domain to our website. We do not own this domain and do not associate ourselves with it. This request has been logged by our servers and we will raise this issue with the competent authorities to have this domain taken down. If you want to access our website, please click here." The good thing about this method is that it can be implemented at application layer (good if you don't have control over web server which happens with some hosting solutions), allows you to protect yourself from any liability, and offer the visitor to be redirected to your own website. Which of the above options would you implement to deal with malicious domain linking (IMO only options 3 and 4 are worth considering) ?

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• .Net Application & Database Modularity/Reuse

  - by Martaver

  I'm looking for some guidance on how to architect an app with regards to modularity, separation of concerns and re-usability. I'm working on an application (ASP.Net, C#) that has distinctly generic chunks of functionality, that I'd love to be able to lift out, all layers, into re-usable components. This means the module handles the database schema, data access, API, everything so that the next time I want to use it I can just register the module and hook into it. Developing modules of re-usable functionality is a no-brainer, but what is really confusing me is what to do when it comes to handling a core re-usable database schema that serves the module's functionality. In an ideal world, I would register a module and it would ensure that the associated database schema exists in the DB. I would code on the assumption that the tables exist, calling the module's functionality through the DLL, agnostic of the database layer. Kind of like Enterprise Library's Caching/Logging Application Block, which can create a DB schema in the target DB to use as a data store. My Questions is: What do you think is the best way to achieve this, firstly, in terms design architecture, and secondly solution structure. What patterns/frameworks do you know that exist & support this kind of thing? My thoughts so far: I mostly use Entity Framework and SQL Server DB Projects. I thought about a 'black box' approach to modules of functionality. I could use use a code-first approach in EF4, and use the ObjectContext to create a database when the module is initialized. However this means that all of the entities that my module encapsulates would be disconnected from the rest of the application because they belonged to an abstracted ObjectContext. Further - Creating appropriate indexes and references between domain entities and the module's entities would be impossible to do practically. I've thought of adopting Enterprise Library and creating my own Application Blocks. I'm not sure how this would play nice with Entity Framework (if at all) though. I like the idea of building on proven patterns & practices to encapsulate established, reusable functionality. I thought of abandoning Entity Framework for the Module, and just creating a separate DB schema for the module with its own set of stored procedures & ADO.Net. Then deploying the script at run-time if interrogation shows that it doesn't exist. But once again, for application developing outside of the application, I would want to use Entity Framework and I would have to use the module separately, disconnected from the domain ObjectContext. Has anyone had experience developing these sorts of full-stack modules? What advice can you offer? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

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• Data structures for a 2D multi-layered and multi-region map?

  - by DevilWithin

  I am working on a 2D world editor and a world format subsequently. If I were to handle the game "world" being created just as a layered set of structures, either in top or side views, it would be considerably simple to do most things. But, since this editor is meant for 3rd parties, I have no clue how big worlds one will want to make and I need to keep in mind that eventually it will become simply too much to check, handling and comparing stuff that are happening completely away from the player position. I know the solution for this is to subdivide my world into sub regions and stream them on the fly, loading and unloading resources and other data. This way I know a virtually infinite game area is achievable. But, while I know theoretically what to do, I really have a few questions I'd hoped to get answered for some hints about the topic. The logic way to handle the regions is some kind of grid, would you pick evenly distributed blocks with equal sizes or would you let the user subdivide areas by taste with irregular sized rectangles? In case of even grids, would you use some kind of block/chunk neighbouring system to check when the player transposes the limit or just put all those in a simple array? Being a region a different data structure than its owner "game world", when streaming a region, would you deliver the objects to the parent structures and track them for unloading later, or retain the objects in each region for a more "hard-limit" approach? Introducing the subdivision approach to the project, and already having a multi layered scene graph structure on place, how would i make it support the new concept? Would you have the parent node have the layers as children, and replicate in each layer node, a node per region? Or the opposite, parent node owns all the regions possible, and each region has multiple layers as children? Or would you just put the region logic outside the graph completely(compatible with the first suggestion in Q.3) When I say virtually infinite worlds, I mean it of course under the contraints of the variable sizes and so on. Using float positions, a HUGE world can already be made. Do you think its sane to think beyond that? Because I think its ok to stick to this limit since it will never be reached so easily.. As for when to stream a region, I'm implementing it as a collection of watcher cameras, which the streaming system works with to know what to load/unload. The problem here is, i will be needing some kind of warps/teleports built in for my game, and there is a chance i will be teleporting a player to a unloaded region far away. How would you approach something like this? Is it sane to load any region to memory which can be teleported to by a warp within a radius from the player? Sorry for the huge question, any answers are helpful!

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• Building SANE from git-source produce backend missmatch on 12.04 even if built locally

  - by deinonychusaur

  It seems to me that with Ubuntu Precise Pangolin it is all but easy to do a proper install of SANE from source (git-repo). I've found other scanning issues trying to find an answer to this, where the output people posted seems to indicate they suffer the same issue (unknowingly). If I run on a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 with compiled SANE source from the git I get: $ scanimage -V scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.24git; backend version 1.0.22 (I basically followed the instructions on http://ubuntuportal.com/2012/02/how-to-get-an-canon-canoscan-lide-100-scanner-to-work-in-ubuntu-11-10linux-mint-12.html since I didn't find any other information making sure that sane was not installed prior to installation.) My primary interest is the epson2-backend. In 1.0.22 it offers the wrong TPU settings for Epson V700 (TPU2-mode wasn't supported in 1.0.22, and the scanner is useless to me if I don't have the TPU2-support). Since if I ask it to enter transparency mode, it shows 1.0.22 behaviour, it implies that the epson2-backend comes from 1.0.22 and not 1.0.24 even though I just built it. If I install SANE with prefix to a local folder and run that version of scanimage it still produces the mismatch. However, on another computer where I installed a custom 1.0.22 build of SANE prior to upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04, I can build and install the same SANE-git locally and have it correctly match backends: $ ./SANE/bin/scanimage -V scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.24git; backend version 1.0.24 $ scanimage -V scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.22; backend version 1.0.22 On this computer the 1.0.24 works correctly in finding TPU2 on Epson V700. So what am I missing/doing wrong? (And I want to replace 1.0.22 with 1.0.24 for the whole system, the local build was just debugging.) Any help would be much appreciated. Edit 1: Just tried compiling SANE using this instruction on Ubuntu 10.04 and it worked like a charm. However, when I upgraded to 12.04 (really would like to run 12.04), SANE was downgraded to 1.0.22. When trying the same set of instructions on 12.04 I was still out of luck -- the backend missmatch was there again (and I do have libusb-dev installed) Edit 2: I updated to Ubuntu 12.10 which now has the 1.0.23 SANE drivers. I haven't dared trying to compile from source on 12.10 since 1.0.23 is good enough for me. This is just a work-around and I would still like to know what's up with Ubuntu 12.04.

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• The Nine Cs of Customer Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  Avoid Social Media Fatigue - Learn the 9 C's of Customer Engagement inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Have We Hit a Social-Media Plateau? In recent years, social media has evolved from a cool but unproven medium to become the foundation of pragmatic social business and a driver of business value. Yet, time is running out for businesses to make the most out of this channel. This isn’t a warning. It’s a fact. Join leading industry analyst R “Ray” Wang as he explains how to apply the nine Cs of engagement to strengthen customer relationships. Learn: How to overcome social-media fatigue and make the most of the medium Why engagement is the most critical factor in the age of overexposure The nine pillars of successful customer engagement Register for the eighth Webcast in the Social Business Thought Leaders series today. Register Now Thurs., Sept. 20, 2012 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: R “Ray” Wang Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research Christian Finn Senior Director, Product Management Oracle Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement SEV100103386 Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time.Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

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• Looking for an ultra portable laptop for Ubuntu

  - by prule

  Hi, I'm in the market for a new laptop, and portability is important since I really only use it when I'm travelling to and from work - primarily for programming. I've been searching high and low for something like this: less than 2kg hopefully Intel i5 (but negotiable) NO dvd drive - just don't need it 4G ram either 7200rpm disk or SSD (ssd preferable) 13 inch screen not too pricey (MacBook Air is about $1700 AUD) available in Australia The Dell Inspiron 13z and Lenovo Edge 13 look close, but I've not found anything that says I'm not going to have a fight with compatibility. The MacBook Air 13 looks like the PERFECT hardware, but I'm afraid it will just be easier to run MacOS than Ubuntu. I want to stay with Ubuntu, but the MacBook Air is only $1700 so I'm in danger of becoming another apple fanboi if I can't find anything competitive. Going through all the sites looking for stuff has been a huge waste of time System 76 doesn't deliver to Australia http://www.linux-laptop.net/ and http://www.linlap.com/ are hard work and not confidence inspiring http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/nsintro.html is hard work again, searching for every laptop they say has excellent compatibility on the web to find out what spec it is http://zareason.com/shop/Strata-Pro-13.html (at $1345 USD) looks interesting, but I've got no idea how much I'll get stung by customs importing Dell Inspiron 13z with i5, 4G, 320 7200rpm disk, ATI Mobility Radeon HD5430 - 1GB, Dell Wireless 1501 802.11b/g/n @ $1200 AUD seems like the only competitor but is it compatible? (Dell support offer no opinion - as far as they are concerned they only have 2 models that are certified for ubuntu) Am I worrying too much about the compatibility? Should I just go with Dell? Or switch to MacOS? (It would be good to have a searchable database that had the full machine specs, and compatibility - I'm thinking about building something... but I don't have much time right now...) Thanks. UPDATE I went with a MacBook Air. The price/weight/power was just right. Everything else was either too pricy (i5) or too heavy, or underpowered (SU7300 1.3GHz). Its a pity, because I didn't really want to leave Ubuntu. I'll still run it on my media center and spare (heavy) laptop.

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• Oracle At QCon SF 2012

  - by Cassandra Clark - OTN

  Oracle Technology Network is a Platinum sponsor at QCon San Francisco.  (qconsf.com).  Don’t miss these great developer focused sessions: Shay ShmeltzerHow we simplified Web, Mobile and Cloud development for our own developers? - the Oracle StoryOver the past several years, Oracle has beendeveloping a new set of enterprise applications in what is probably one of thelargest Java based development project in the world. How do you take 3000 developers and make them productive? How do you insure the delivery of cutting edge UIs for both Mobile and Web channels? How do you enable Cloud baseddevelopment and deployment?  Come and learn how we did it at Oracle, and see how the same technologies and methodologies can apply to your development efforts. Dan SmithProject Lambda in Java 8Java SE 8 will include major enhancements to the Java Programming Language and its core libraries.  This suite of new features, known as Project Lambda in the OpenJDK community, includes lambda expressions, default methods, and parallel collections (and much more!).  The result will be a next-generation Java programming experience with more flexibility and better abstractions.   This talk will introduce the new Java features and offer a behind-the-scenes view of how they evolved and why they work the way that they do. Arun GuptaJSR 356: Building HTML5 WebSocket Applications in JavaThe family of HTML5 technologies has pushed the pendulum away from rich client technologies and toward ever-more-capable Web clients running on today’s browsers. In particular, WebSocket brings new opportunities for efficient peer-to-peer communication, providing the basis for a new generation of interactive and “live” Web applications. This session examines the efforts under way to support WebSocket in the Java programming model, from its base-level integration in the Java Servlet and Java EE containers to a new, easy-to-use API and toolset that are destined to become part of the standard Java platform. The full conference schedule is here: http://qconsf.com/sf2012/schedule/wednesday.jsp But wait, there’s more!  At the Oracle booth, we’ll also be covering: ·         Oracle ADF Mobile·         Oracle Developer Cloud Service·         Oracle ADF Essentials·         NetBeans Project Easel Lastly we’ll share the results of a short cloud survey at QConSF ater this week.  If you attended this year's Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences, it would be hard not to notice that Oracle is clearly "all-in" when it comes to the Cloud.  With Cloud computing being such a hot topic on many OTN members' minds, we'd like to know what you're doing in the cloud and invite you to take this short cloud survey.

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• The Birth of SSAS Compare

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  Noemi Moreno, Red Gate Business Intelligence Specialist Software vendors – even Microsoft – tend to forget about the needs of business intelligence developers. We are a rare and rather invisible species. For example, BIDS remained in VS 2008 until SQL Server 2012. It took until this release before we got something as simple as an “undo” function. Before I joined Red Gate as a BI specialist, I worked on SQL Development. I’ll never forget the time I discovered Red Gate’s SQL Compare tool and how it reduced the task of preparing a database release from a couple of days to ten minutes. When I moved to SSAS, MDX and cubes, I became frustrated with the deployment process because I couldn’t find a tool that made Cube releases as easy as they are with SQL Compare. This became my quest. I pitched the idea to a few people in Red Gate’s regular Down Tools Week, when everyone puts down their day-to-day tasks and works on their own projects. My task was to reason with a roomful of cynical developers, hardened to the blandishments of project managers, for help to develop a tool that would compare two different SSAS databases and create the script to process only the objects that needed processing, thereby reducing release time to only a few minutes. I walked to the podium and gave them the full story of the distressed BI specialists, doomed to spend tedious hours preparing deployment scripts. A few developers recovered from their torpor to cast a languid eye at my presentation. It wasn’t enough. In a sudden impulse, I blurted out a promise to perform a flamenco dance for just the team if the tool was able to successfully compare two SSAS databases and generate a script by the end of the week. I was lucky enough that some of them believed me and jumped in: David Pond (Dev), Matt Burton (Dev), Tilman Bregler (Dev), Shobana Sekar (Test), Ruchija Raj (Test), Nick Sutherland (Product Manager) and Irma Tanovic (BI). They didn’t know that Irma and I would be away on a conference in Amsterdam and would leave them without our support. But to my surprise, they had a working tool by the time we came back – basic, and with a few bugs, but a working tool nonetheless! Seeing it compare a very basic SSAS database, detect the changes and generate the scripts was amazing! Something that normally takes half a day was done in under a minute. Since then, a few months have passed and a BI Tools team has been created at Red Gate to work full time on BI tools for BI developers, starting with SSAS Compare. How cool is that? So download the free beta and give us your feedback. And the flamenco? I still need to deliver that. Tilman reminds me every day! I need to get the full flamenco costume.

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• Goodbye, Spreadsheets and Hello Modern ERP

  - by Christine Randle

  By: Steve Cox, Vice President, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies     Signs of the resurging economy continue to sprout, with green shoots rising across different sectors and industries. With the economy on the rebound, businesses are increasing their investment in technology to keep up with growth and evolving demands; as proof, Gartner recently increased its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2012 to $3.6 trillion, anticipating a 3 percent increase from 2011 spending.   One of the segments most reliant on technology to catapult growth is midsize companies – established businesses leveraging every competitive efficiency and advantage to compete with much larger enterprises. We find that to compete against the big guys, they need to create an internal technology infrastructure to fuel that growth. Goodbye, spreadsheets and hello modern ERP.   While many businesses postponed upgrading or replacing financial and HR management systems during the recession, now some have started dusting off RFPs and revisiting technology options. Years ago, midsize organizations used spreadsheet-based systems and processes to manage employees, customers, partners, products and revenue. We’ve found that as companies scale up, they are apt to avoid heavily customizing their existing systems, and instead are more prone to standardize on a modern, enterprise-class ERP system.   Modern ERP platforms enable growing companies to immediately address the most pressing challenges – accounting, talent management, customer retention, et. al. Midsize companies implement these systems and processes to help them earn more, go public or expand globally.   And today, choice is a primary factor when selecting an ERP solution. Businesses have more deployment options now than ever before, depending on their unique structures and needs. Whether the preference is on demand, cloud, hosted or on premise, a modular, scalable deployment is available to meet the need.   With modern ERP systems, business that once struggled to do more with fewer resources have access to the same quality tools as larger competitors. By adopting top tier ERP systems tailored to individual business needs, midsize companies can support business operations while creating an enterprise system that seamlessly scales up to fuel future growth. Meaning that the ERP decision that your company makes today, will have legs to serve your business for years to come.

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