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PASS: Election Changes for 2011

- by Bill Graziano

Last year after the election, the PASS Board created an Election Review Committee. This group was charged with reviewing our election procedures and making suggestions to improve the process. You can read about the formation of the group and review some of the intermediate work on the site – especially in the forums. I was one of the members of the group along with Joe Webb (Chair), Lori Edwards, Brian Kelley, Wendy Pastrick, Andy Warren and Allen White. This group worked from October to April on our election process. Along the way we: Interviewed interested parties including former NomCom members, Board candidates and anyone else that came forward. Held a session at the Summit to allow interested parties to discuss the issues Had numerous conference calls and worked through the various topics I can’t thank these people enough for the work they did. They invested a tremendous number of hours thinking, talking and writing about our elections. I’m proud to say I was a member of this group and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone (even if I did finally get tired of all the calls.) The ERC delivered their recommendations to the PASS Board prior to our May Board meeting. We reviewed those and made a few modifications. I took their recommendations and rewrote them as procedures while incorporating those changes. Their original recommendations as well as our final document are posted at the ERC documents page. Please take a second and read them BEFORE we start the elections. If you have any questions please post them in the forums on the ERC site. (My final document includes a change log at the end that I decided to leave in. If you want to know which areas to pay special attention to that’s a good start.) Many of those recommendations were already posted in the forums or in the blogs of individual ERC members. Hopefully nothing in the ERC document is too surprising. In this post I’m going to walk through some of the key changes and talk about what I remember from both ERC and Board discussions. I’ll pay a little extra attention to things the Board changed from the ERC. I’d also encourage any of the Board or ERC members to blog their thoughts on this. The Nominating Committee will continue to exist. Personally, I was curious to see what the non-Board ERC members would think about the NomCom. There was broad agreement that a group to vet candidates had value to the organization. The NomCom will be composed of five members. Two will be Board members and three will be from the membership at large. The only requirement for the three community members is that you’ve volunteered in some way (and volunteering is defined very broadly). We expect potential at-large NomCom members to participate in a forum on the PASS site to answer questions from the other PASS members. We’re going to hold an election to determine the three community members. It will be closer to voting for Summit sessions than voting for Board members. That means there won’t be multiple dedicated emails. If you’re at all paying attention it will be easy to participate. Personally I wanted it easy for those that cared to participate but not overwhelm those that didn’t care. I think this strikes a good balance. There’s also a clause that in order to be considered a winner in this NomCom election, you must receive 10 votes. This is something I suggested. I have no idea how popular the NomCom election is going to be. I just wanted a fallback that if no one participated and some random person got in with one or two votes. Any open slots will be filled by the NomCom chair (usually the PASS Immediate Past President). My assumption is that they would probably take the next highest vote getters unless they were throwing flames in the forums or clearly unqualified. As a final check, the Board still approves the final NomCom. The NomCom is going to rank candidates instead of rating them. This has interesting implications. This was championed by another ERC member and I’m hoping they write something about it. This will really force the NomCom to make decisions between candidates. You can’t just rate everyone a 3 and be done with it. It may also make candidates appear further apart than they actually are. I’m looking forward talking with the NomCom after this election and getting their feedback on this. The PASS Board added an option to remove a candidate with a unanimous vote of the NomCom. This was primarily put in place to handle people that lied on their application or had a criminal background or some other unusual situation and we figured it out. We list an explicit goal of three candidate per open slot. We also wanted an easy way to find the NomCom candidate rankings from the ballot. Hopefully this will satisfy those that want a broad candidate pool and those that want the NomCom to identify the most qualified candidates. The primary spokesperson for the NomCom is the committee chair. After the issues around the election last year we didn’t have a good communication plan in place. We should have and that was a failure on the part of the Board. If there is criticism of the election this year I hope that falls squarely on the Board. The community members of the NomCom shouldn’t be fielding complaints over the election process. That said, the NomCom is ranking candidates and we are forcing them to rank some lower than others. I’m sure you’ll each find someone that you think should have been ranked differently. I also want to highlight one other change to the process that we started last year and isn’t included in these documents. I think the candidate forums on the PASS site were tremendously helpful last year in helping people to find out more about candidates. That gives our members a way to ask hard questions of the candidates and publicly see their answers. This year we have two important groups to fill. The first is the NomCom. We need three people from our membership to step up and fill this role. It won’t be easy. You will have to make subjective rankings of your fellow community members. Your actions will be important in deciding who the future leaders of PASS will be. There’s a 50/50 chance that one of the people you interview will be the President of PASS someday. This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The second is the slate of candidates. If you’ve ever thought about running for the Board this is the year. We’ve never had nine candidates on the ballot before. Your chance of making it through the NomCom are higher than in any previous year. Unfortunately the more of you that run, the more of you that will lose in the election. And hopefully that competition will mean more community involvement and better Board members for PASS. Is this the end of changes to the election process? It isn’t. Every year that I’ve been on the Board the election process has changed. Some years there have been small changes and some years there have been large changes. After this election we’ll look at how the process worked and decide what steps to take – just like we do every year.

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #031

- by Pinal Dave

Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Find Table without Clustered Index – Find Table with no Primary Key Clustered index is very important concept for any table. They impact the performance very heavily. Here is a quick script to find tables without a clustered index. Replace TEXT with VARCHAR(MAX) – Stop using TEXT, NTEXT, IMAGE Data Types Question: “Is VARCHAR (MAX) big enough to store the TEXT field?” Answer: “Yes, VARCHAR(MAX) is big enough to accommodate TEXT field. TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types of SQL Server 2000 will be deprecated in a future version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 provides backward compatibility to data types but it is recommended to use new data types which are VARHCAR (MAX), NVARCHAR (MAX) and VARBINARY (MAX).” Limiting Result Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE – Examples Introduced in SQL Server 2005, TABLESAMPLE allows you to extract a sampling of rows from a table in the FROM clause. The rows retrieved are random and they are are not in any order. This sampling can be based on a percentage of number of rows. You can use TABLESAMPLE when only a sampling of rows is necessary for the application instead of a full result set. User Defined Functions (UDF) Limitations UDF have its own advantage and usage but in this article we will see the limitation of UDF. Things UDF can not do and why Stored Procedure are considered as more flexible then UDFs. Stored Procedure are more flexibility then User Defined Functions(UDF). However, this blog post is a good read to know what are the limitations of UDF. Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility For a long time SQL Server stayed on the compatibility level of 80 which is of SQL Server 2000. However, as soon as SQL Server 2005 introduced the issue of compatibility was quite a major issue. Since that time MS has been releasing the versions at every 2-3 years, changing compatibility is a ever popular topic. In this blog post, we learn how we can do the same using T-SQL. We can also do the same using SSMS and here is the blog post for the same: Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility – Part 2 – Management Studio. Constraint on VARCHAR(MAX) Field To Limit It Certain Length How can I limit the VARCHAR(MAX) field with maximum length of 12500 characters only. His Question was valid as our application was allowed 12500 characters. First of all – this requirement is bit strange but if someone wants to do the same, they can do it as described in this blog post. 2008 UNPIVOT Table Example Understanding UNPIVOT can be very complicated at times. In this blog post, I have attempted to explain the same concept in very simple words. Create Default Constraint Over Table Column A simple straight to script blog post – I still use this blog quite many times for my own reference. UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function It took me 4 iteration to find this very simple function which can immediately get the day of the week in a single line. 2009 Find Hostname and Current Logged In User Name There are two tricks listed in this blog post where users can find out the hostname and current logged user name immediately and very easily. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers When I was doing a project, I made an interesting observation of executing a logon trigger multiple times. It was absolutely unexpected for me! As I was logging only once, naturally, I was expecting the entry only once. However, it did it multiple times on different threads – indeed an eccentric phenomenon at first sight! Difference Between Candidate Keys and Primary Key One needs to be very careful in selecting the Primary Key as an incorrect selection can adversely impact the database architect and future normalization. For a Candidate Key to qualify as a Primary Key, it should be Non-NULL and unique in any domain. I have observed quite often that Primary Keys are seldom changed. I would like to have your feedback on not changing a Primary Key. Create Multiple Filegroup For Single Database Why should one create multiple file group for any database and what are the advantages of the same. In this blog post, I explain the same in detail. List All Objects Created on All Filegroups in Database In this blog post we discuss the essential question – “How can I find which object belongs to which filegroup. Is there any way to know this?” 2010 DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008 When DATE is converted to DATETIME it adds the of midnight. When TIME is converted to DATETIME it adds the date of 1900 and it is something one wants to consider if you are going to run scripts from SQL Server 2008 to earlier version with CONVERT. Disabled Index and Update Statistics If you do not need a nonclustered index, I suggest you to drop it as keeping them disabled is an overhead on your system. This is because every time the statistics are updated for system all the statistics for disabled indexes are also updated. Precision of SMALLDATETIME – A 1 Minute Precision The precision of the datatype SMALLDATETIME is 1 minute. It discards the seconds by rounding up or rounding down any seconds greater than zero. 2011 Getting Columns Headers without Result Data – SET FMTONLY ON SET FMTONLY ON returns only metadata to the client. It can be used to test the format of the response without actually running the query. When this setting is ON the resultset only have headers of the results but no data. Copy Database from Instance to Another Instance – Copy Paste in SQL Server SQL Server has a feature which copy database from one database to another database and it can be automated as well using SSIS. Make sure you have SQL Server Agent Turned on as this feature will create a job. Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) If you have ever wondered SELECT * gives error when executed alone but SELECT COUNT(*) does not. Why? in that case, you should read this blog post. Creating All New Database with Full Recovery Model This blog post is very based on very interesting story where the user wants to do something by default for every single new database created. Model database is a secret weapon which should be used very carefully and with proper evalution. If used carefully this can be a very much beneficiary when we need a newly created database behave in certain fashion. 2012 In year 2012 I had two interesting series ran on the blog. If there is no fun in learning, the learning becomes a burden. For the same reason, I had decided to build a three part quiz around SEQUENCE. The quiz was to identify the next value of the sequence. I encourage all of you to take part in this fun quiz. Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 1 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 2 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 3 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling? This is probably a silly question because – of course you can! Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life. It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Read five part series on developer training subject Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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SQL Sentry First Impressions

- by AjarnMark

After struggling to defend my SQL Servers from a political attack recently, I realized that I needed better tools to back me up, and SQL Sentry is the leading candidate. A couple of weeks ago, seemingly from out of nowhere, complaints from the business users started coming in that one of the core internal applications was running dramatically slower than normal, and fingers were being pointed at the SQL Server. Unfortunately, we don’t have a production DBA whose entire job is to monitor and maintain our SQL Servers. The responsibility falls to me to do the best I can, investing only a small portion of my time, because there are so many other responsibilities to take care of, and our industry is still deep in recession. I inherited these SQL Servers and have made significant improvements in process and procedure, but I had not yet made the time to take real baseline measurements or keep a really close eye on the performance. Like many DBAs, I wrote several of my own tools and used the “built-in tools” like Profiler, PerfMon, and sp_who2 (did I mention most of our instances are SQL Server 2000?). These have all served me well for in-the-moment troubleshooting and maintenance, but they really fell down on the job when I was called upon to “prove” that SQL Server performance was acceptable and more importantly had not degraded recently (i.e. historical comparisons). I really didn’t have anything from a historical comparison perspective, but I was able to show that current performance was acceptable, and deflect attention back onto other components (which in fact turned out to be the real culprit). That experience dramatically illustrated the need for better monitoring tools. Coincidentally, I had been talking recently to my boss about the mini nightmare of monitoring several critical and interdependent overnight jobs that operate on separate instances of SQL Server. Among other tools, I had been using Idera’s SQL Job Manager which is a free tool and did a nice job of showing me job schedules and histories in a nice calendar view. This worked fairly well, and for the money (did I mention it was free?) it couldn’t be beat. But it is based on the stored job history in MSDB, and there were other performance problems that we ran into when we started changing the settings for how much job history to retain, in order to be able to look back a month or more in the calendar view. Another coincidence (if you believe in such things) was that when we had some of those performance challenges, I posted a couple of questions to the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter and Greg Gonzalez (@SQLSensei) suggested I check out SQL Sentry’s Event Manager. At the time, I just thought he worked there, but later found out that he founded the company. When I took a quick look at the features & benefits, the one that really jumped out at me is Chaining and Queueing which sounded like it would really help with our “interdependent jobs on different servers” issue. I know that is a lot of background story and coincidences, but hopefully you have stuck with me so far, and now we have arrived at the point where last week I downloaded and installed the 30-day trial of the SQL Sentry Power Suite, which is Event Manager plus Performance Advisor. And I must say that I really like what I see so far. Here are a few highlights: Great Support. I had two issues getting the trial setup and monitoring a handful of our servers. One of which was entirely my fault (missed a security setting in SQL 2008) and the other was mostly my fault (late change to some config settings that were apparently cached and did not get refreshed properly). In both cases, the support staff at SQL Sentry were very responsive and rather quickly figured out what the cause and fix was for each of them. This left me with a great impression of the company. Kudos to them! Chaining and Queueing. While I have not yet activated this feature, I am very excited about the possibilities. We have jobs on three different instances of SQL Server that have to be run in a certain order, and each has to finish before the next can successfully begin, and I believe this feature will ensure just that. It has been a real pain in the backside when one of those jobs runs just a little too long and does not finish before the job on another instance starts, thus triggering a chain reaction of either outright job failures, or worse, successful completion of completely invalid processing. Calendar View. I really, really like the Event Manager calendar view where I can see all jobs and events across all instances and identify potential resource contention as well as windows of opportunity for maintenance activity. Very well done, and based on Event Manager’s own database of accumulated historical information rather than querying the source instances every time. Performance Advisor Dashboard History View. This view let’s me quickly select a date and time range and it displays graphs of key SQL Server and Windows metrics. This is exactly the thing I needed to answer the “has performance changed recently” question at the beginning of this post. Reporting Services Subscription Jobs with Report Name. This was a big and VERY pleasant surprise. If you have ever looked at the list of SQL Server jobs that SQL Server Reporting Services creates when you make a Subscription, you will notice that they all have some sort of GUID as the name of the job. This is really ugly, and really annoying because when you are just looking at the SQL Agent and Job Activity Monitor, if you see that Job X failed, you really do not have any indication in the name or the properties of the Job itself, as to what Report that was for. But with SQL Sentry Event Manager you do. The Jobs list in the Navigator pane in SQL Sentry, amazingly, displays the name of the Report that the Subscription Job is for. And when you open it to see more details, it shows you the full Reporting Services path to that Report, so you can immediately track it down in the Report Manager in case you want to identify/notify the owner or edit the Subscription information. I did not expect this at all, but I sure do like it. HOORAY! That is just my first impressions from using the tools for a few days. And I haven’t even gotten into how it showed me where I was completely mistaken about one aspect of my SQL Server disk configurations. I’ll share that lesson in another blog entry. But I have to say it again, the combination of Event Manager and Performance Advisor working together have really made me a fan.

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Best Practices - which domain types should be used to run applications

- by jsavit

This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) One question that frequently comes up is "which types of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer in most cases: "only run applications in guest domains", but enhancements to T-series servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and the advent of SPARC SuperCluster have made this question more interesting and worth qualifying differently. This article reviews the relevant concepts and provides suggestions on where to deploy applications in a logical domains environment. Review: division of labor and types of domain Oracle VM Server for SPARC offloads many functions from the hypervisor to domains (also called virtual machines). This is a modern alternative to using a "thick" hypervisor that provides all virtualization functions, as in traditional VM designs, This permits a simpler hypervisor design, which enhances reliability, and security. It also reduces single points of failure by assigning responsibilities to multiple system components, which further improves reliability and security. In this architecture, management and I/O functionality are provided within domains. Oracle VM Server for SPARC does this by defining the following types of domain, each with their own roles: Control domain - management control point for the server, used to configure domains and manage resources. It is the first domain to boot on a power-up, is an I/O domain, and is usually a service domain as well. I/O domain - has been assigned physical I/O devices: a PCIe root complex, a PCI device, or a SR-IOV (single-root I/O Virtualization) function. It has native performance and functionality for the devices it owns, unmediated by any virtualization layer. Service domain - provides virtual network and disk devices to guest domains. Guest domain - a domain whose devices are all virtual rather than physical: virtual network and disk devices provided by one or more service domains. In common practice, this is where applications are run. Typical deployment A service domain is generally also an I/O domain: otherwise it wouldn't have access to physical device "backends" to offer to its clients. Similarly, an I/O domain is also typically a service domain in order to leverage the available PCI busses. Control domains must be I/O domains, because they boot up first on the server and require physical I/O. It's typical for the control domain to also be a service domain too so it doesn't "waste" the I/O resources it uses. A simple configuration consists of a control domain, which is also the one I/O and service domain, and some number of guest domains using virtual I/O. In production, customers typically use multiple domains with I/O and service roles to eliminate single points of failure: guest domains have virtual disk and virtual devices provisioned from more than one service domain, so failure of a service domain or I/O path or device doesn't result in an application outage. This is also used for "rolling upgrades" in which service domains are upgraded one at a time while their guests continue to operate without disruption. (It should be noted that resiliency to I/O device failures can also be provided by the single control domain, using multi-path I/O) In this type of deployment, control, I/O, and service domains are used for virtualization infrastructure, while applications run in guest domains. Changing application deployment patterns The above model has been widely and successfully used, but more configuration options are available now. Servers got bigger than the original T2000 class machines with 2 I/O busses, so there is more I/O capacity that can be used for applications. Increased T-series server capacity made it attractive to run more vertical applications, such as databases, with higher resource requirements than the "light" applications originally seen. This made it attractive to run applications in I/O domains so they could get bare-metal native I/O performance. This is leveraged by the SPARC SuperCluster engineered system, announced a year ago at Oracle OpenWorld. In SPARC SuperCluster, I/O domains are used for high performance applications, with native I/O performance for disk and network and optimized access to the Infiniband fabric. Another technical enhancement is the introduction of Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which make it possible to give domains direct connections and native I/O performance for selected I/O devices. A domain with either a DIO or SR-IOV device is an I/O domain. In summary: not all I/O domains own PCI complexes, and there are increasingly more I/O domains that are not service domains. They use their I/O connectivity for performance for their own applications. However, there are some limitations and considerations: at this time, a domain using physical I/O cannot be live-migrated to another server. There is also a need to plan for security and introducing unneeded dependencies: if an I/O domain is also a service domain providing virtual I/O go guests, it has the ability to affect the correct operation of its client guest domains. This is even more relevant for the control domain. where the ldm has to be protected from unauthorized (or even mistaken) use that would affect other domains. As a general rule, running applications in the service domain or the control domain should be avoided. To recap: Guest domains with virtual I/O still provide the greatest operational flexibility, including features like live migration. I/O domains can be used for applications with high performance requirements. This is used to great effect in SPARC SuperCluster and in general T4 deployments. Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) make this more attractive by giving direct I/O access to more domains. Service domains should in general not be used for applications, because compromised security in the domain, or an outage, can affect other domains that depend on it. This concern can be mitigated by providing guests' their virtual I/O from more than one service domain, so an interruption of service in the service domain does not cause an application outage. The control domain should in general not be used to run applications, for the same reason. SPARC SuperCluster use the control domain for applications, but it is an exception: it's not a general purpose environment; it's an engineered system with specifically configured applications and optimization for optimal performance. These are recommended "best practices" based on conversations with a number of Oracle architects. Keep in mind that "one size does not fit all", so you should evaluate these practices in the context of your own requirements. Summary Higher capacity T-series servers have made it more attractive to use them for applications with high resource requirements. New deployment models permit native I/O performance for demanding applications by running them in I/O domains with direct access to their devices. This is leveraged in SPARC SuperCluster, and can be leveraged in T-series servers to provision high-performance applications running in domains. Carefully planned, this can be used to provide higher performance for critical applications.

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The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

- by Applications User Experience

By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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Probation is Over: PASS Board Year 1, Q2

- by Denise McInerney

Though it's not always official every job begins with a probation period. You start out with lots of questions and every day you find out how much more you have to learn. Usually after a few months you discover that you can actually answer some questions and have at least an idea of what you are supposed to be doing. Now at the end of my second quarter on the "job" of serving on the PASS Board I have reached that point. My probation period is over. The last three months were busy for the entire Board with the budget process, an in-person meeting and moving forward with PASS Global Growth plans. I had also set a specific goal for myself for my 2nd quarter: to see the Board to adopt a Code of Conduct for the PASS Summit. Code of Conduct When I ran for the Board I included my desire to see PASS establish a code of conduct in my campaign platform. I was motivated to do this for a few reasons. Other technical conferences have had incidents of harassment. Most of these did not have a policy in place prior to having a problem, though several conference organizers have since adopted anti-harassment policies or codes of conduct. I felt it would be in PASS' interest to establish a policy so we would be prepared should there be an incident. "This is Community" Adopting a code of conduct would reinforce our community orientation and send a message about the positive character of the Summit. PASS is a leader among technical organizations for its promotion and support of women. Adopting a code of conduct would further demonstrate our leadership in this area. After researching similar polices from other organizations I published a first draft in April. I solicited feedback from the Board, HQ staff and some PASS members. Incorporating that feedback I presented version 4 at the May Board meeting, where we had a good discussion. You can read the meeting minutes for details. I incorporated points from the Board discussion as well as feedback from a legal review to produce a final version which has been submitted to the Board. It will be discussed at the Board meeting July 12. You can read the full text at the end of this post. Virtual Chapters In the first quarter we started ramping up marketing support for the Virtual Chapters. Since then each edition of the Connector has highlighted a different VC to help get out the message about the variety of eductional opporutnities that are offered. These VC profiles will continue in the coming months. I was very pleased to welcome the new DBA Fundamentals VC which is geared toward new DBAs, people who are considering entering the field and those transitioning from a different IT role. Thanks to the contributions of Erin Stellato, Michelle Nalliah and Karla Landrum we published a "Virtual Chapter Guidebook". This document includes great advice on how to build and promote a VC. It's also a reference for how things work, from budgets to webinar hosting. I think this document will be extremely valuable to all our VC leaders and am grateful to those who put it together. Board Meeting/SQL Rally The Board met in May in Dallas. Among the items discussed were Global Growth, the budget, future events and the upcoming elections. We covered a lot of ground in two days and I will again refer you to the meeting minutes for details. The meeting schedule allowed us to participate in the SQL Rally networking events and one full day of the conference. I enjoyed having the opportunity to meet and talk with many PASS members. And my hat is off to the SQL Rally organizers who put on an outstanding event. Global Growth PASS has undertaken a major intitiative to reach and engage SQL Server professionals around the world. This Global Growth plan is ambitious and will have a significant impact on the strategic direction of the organization. We have been reaching out to the community for feedback, including hosting Twitter chats and live Town Hall meetings. I co-hosted two of these events and appreciated hearing the different perspectives of the people who participated If you have not done so I encourage you to read about the Global Growth vision and proposed governance changes and submit your feedback. FY13 Budget July 1 is the beginning of PASS' fiscal year, which makes the end of June the deadline for approving a budget. Each director submits a budget for his or her portfolio. For the Virtual Chapter portfolio I focused on how we can allocate resources to grow the VCs. Budgeting is a give-and-take process, and while I didn't get everything I asked for I'm pleased the FY13 budget includes a significant increase in financial support for the Virtual Chapters. Many people put a lot of work into the budget, but no two people deserve credit more than VP of Finance Douglas McDowell and Accounting Manager Sandy Cherry. Thanks to both of them for getting us across the goal line on time. SQL Saturday I attended SQL Saturdays in Orange Co. CA and Phoenix. It's always inspiring to see the enthusiasm in the community for learning and networking. These events are successful due to the hard work of many volunteers. Thanks to the organizers in both cities for all your efforts. Next Up This quarter we'll be gearing up plans for the VCs at the Summit and exploring ways the VCs can best support PASS' Global Growth work. I'll also be wrapping up work on the Code of Conduct and attending a Board meeting in September. And I will be at SQL Saturday #144 in Sacramento later this month. Here is the language of the Code of Conduct I have submitted to the Board for consideration: PASS Code of Conduct The PASS Summit provides database professionals from a variety of backgrounds with an opportunity to connect, share and learn. We value the strong sense of community that characterizes this event and we seek to foster an inclusive, professional atmosphere. We are dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion or any other protected classification. Everyone at the Summit is expected to follow the Code of Conduct. This includes but is not limited to: PASS Staff, Exhibitors, Speakers, Attendees and anyone affiliated with the event. Participants are expected to follow the Code of Conduct at all Summit events, including PASS-sponsored social events. Participant behavior Harassment includes, but is not limited to, offensive verbal comments related to gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion, or any other protected classification. Intimidation, threats, stalking, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact and unwelcome attention will also be considered harassment. Similarly, sexual, racist, derogatory, threatening or other inappropriate language and imagery are not appropriate for any conference venue, including sessions. Recourse If a participant engages in any conduct that is prohibited under this Code of Conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expelling the offender from the conference. No refunds will be granted to attendees expelled from the Summit due to violations of the Code of Conduct. If you are being harassed, witness harassment, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff immediately. Conference staff can be identified by their “Headquarters/Staff” shirts and are trained to handle the situation appropriately. A Code of Conduct Committee (CCC) made up of the Executive Manager and three members of the Board of Directors designated by the President will be authorized to take action in response to an incident or behavior that violates the Code of Conduct.

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Unable to connect to Wireless after installing Ubuntu 12.10

- by Moulik

I am using Asus U56E laptop and after installing Ubuntu 12.10 alongside Windows 8, I am unable to connect to the Wireless. I have been trying to solve this problem since two weeks and couldn't solve it. Please help. Any answer would be appreciated. Here are some command-line results. lspci -v | grep -iA 7 network ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -v | grep -iA 7 network 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 (rev 67) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 BGN Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 52 Memory at de800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi Kernel modules: iwlwifi lsmod | grep iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsmod | grep iwlwifi iwlwifi 386826 0 mac80211 539908 1 iwlwifi cfg80211 206566 2 iwlwifi,mac80211 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | grep iwlwifi [ 57.846261] iwlwifi: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree: [ 57.846264] iwlwifi: Copyright(c) 2003-2012 Intel Corporation [ 57.846336] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [ 57.846338] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >pci_resource_base = ffffc90000c7c000 [ 57.846341] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >HW Revision ID = 0x67 [ 57.846438] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >irq 52 for MSI/MSI-X [ 59.558335] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >loaded firmware version 41.28.5.1 build 33926 [ 59.558514] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled [ 59.558516] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS enabled [ 59.558517] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING enabled [ 59.558519] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TESTMODE enabled [ 59.558520] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_P2P disabled [ 59.558522] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 BGN, REV=0x84 [ 59.558583] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 59.569083] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >device EEPROM VER=0x557, CALIB=0x6 [ 59.569085] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Device SKU: 0x150 [ 59.569087] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Valid Tx ant: 0x1, Valid Rx ant: 0x3 [ 59.569100] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 0 802.11a channels [ 70.208469] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 70.208648] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 [ 70.366319] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 70.366470] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 sudo lshw -c network ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -c network *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 67 serial: 40:25:c2:84:99:c4 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.5.0-17-generic firmware=41.28.5.1 build 33926 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:52 memory:de800000-de801fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: 54:04:a6:2b:6a:ef capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.0-NAPI latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:54 memory:dd400000-dd43ffff ioport:a000(size=128) ifconfig ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 54:04:a6:2b:6a:ef UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:176 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:176 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:14368 (14.3 KB) TX bytes:14368 (14.3 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 40:25:c2:84:99:c4 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) iwconfig ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ iwconfig eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off iwlist scan ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ iwlist scan eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning. lo Interface doesn't support scanning. wlan0 No scan results nm-tool ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: disconnected - Device: eth0 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: atl1c State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: 54:04:A6:2B:6A:EF Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: off - Device: wlan0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwlwifi State: disconnected Default: no HW Address: 40:25:C2:84:99:C4 Capabilities: Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points hypeness2: Infra, 00:21:29:DA:08:4F, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 42 WPA love: Infra, 68:7F:74:17:02:66, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WPA WPA2 DIRECT-MwSCX-3400Pamela: Infra, 02:15:99:A3:3F:AC, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 22 WPA2 router: Infra, 1C:AF:F7:D6:76:F3, Freq 2417 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 20 WPA2 wing: Infra, E8:40:F2:34:E4:F7, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 20 WPA WPA2 132LINKSYS: Infra, 00:1A:70:80:1F:E9, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 57 WEP VMITTAL: Infra, E0:46:9A:3C:F0:C4, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 27 WEP HP-Print-10-LaserJet 1025: Infra, 7C:E9:D3:7E:F8:10, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 59 ACNBB: Infra, 00:26:75:22:A6:2F, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 20 SATKAIVAL: Infra, 00:18:E7:CE:69:A6, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 69 WPA WPA2 hypeness: Infra, B8:E6:25:24:C3:B1, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 54 WPA WPA2 CSNetwork: Infra, BC:14:01:58:C5:88, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 25 WPA WPA2 tharma: Infra, BC:14:01:E2:06:18, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 15 WPA WPA2 Active2.4: Infra, 10:6F:3F:0E:F3:8E, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 17 WPA WPA2 ACNBB: Infra, 00:26:75:58:4E:7A, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 85 KO: Infra, BC:14:01:2E:AF:A8, Freq 2452 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 22 WPA WPA2 FEAR: Infra, 00:18:4D:C0:BC:58, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 17 WPA Pamela: Infra, BC:14:01:52:F6:F8, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 24 WPA WPA2 bvrk2: Infra, 78:CD:8E:7B:3C:79, Freq 2457 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WPA WPA2 BELL030: Infra, D8:6C:E9:17:AF:09, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 22 WPA2 Desai: Infra, 00:1D:7E:52:FB:C5, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 14 WEP Sritharan: Infra, BC:14:01:E5:59:78, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WPA WPA2 PFN: Infra, 00:13:10:8B:CF:45, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WEP rfkill list all ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list all 0: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: asus-wimax: WiMAX Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no so these are some more results sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 echo "blacklist asus_wmi" | sudo tee -a /etcmodprobe.d/blacklist.conf ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ echo "blacklist asus_wmi" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf blacklist asus_wmi echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 sudo modprobe -rfv iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe -rfv iwlwifi rmmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko rmmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko rmmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko sudo modprobe -v iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe -v iwlwifi insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko 11n_disable=1

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Fun with Aggregates

- by Paul White

There are interesting things to be learned from even the simplest queries. For example, imagine you are given the task of writing a query to list AdventureWorks product names where the product has at least one entry in the transaction history table, but fewer than ten. One possible query to meet that specification is: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p JOIN Production.TransactionHistory AS th ON p.ProductID = th.ProductID GROUP BY p.ProductID, p.Name HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10; That query correctly returns 23 rows (execution plan and data sample shown below): The execution plan looks a bit different from the written form of the query: the base tables are accessed in reverse order, and the aggregation is performed before the join. The general idea is to read all rows from the history table, compute the count of rows grouped by ProductID, merge join the results to the Product table on ProductID, and finally filter to only return rows where the count is less than ten. This ‘fully-optimized’ plan has an estimated cost of around 0.33 units. The reason for the quote marks there is that this plan is not quite as optimal as it could be – surely it would make sense to push the Filter down past the join too? To answer that, let’s look at some other ways to formulate this query. This being SQL, there are any number of ways to write logically-equivalent query specifications, so we’ll just look at a couple of interesting ones. The first query is an attempt to reverse-engineer T-SQL from the optimized query plan shown above. It joins the result of pre-aggregating the history table to the Product table before filtering: SELECT p.Name FROM ( SELECT th.ProductID, cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th GROUP BY th.ProductID ) AS q1 JOIN Production.Product AS p ON p.ProductID = q1.ProductID WHERE q1.cnt < 10; Perhaps a little surprisingly, we get a slightly different execution plan: The results are the same (23 rows) but this time the Filter is pushed below the join! The optimizer chooses nested loops for the join, because the cardinality estimate for rows passing the Filter is a bit low (estimate 1 versus 23 actual), though you can force a merge join with a hint and the Filter still appears below the join. In yet another variation, the < 10 predicate can be ‘manually pushed’ by specifying it in a HAVING clause in the “q1” sub-query instead of in the WHERE clause as written above. The reason this predicate can be pushed past the join in this query form, but not in the original formulation is simply an optimizer limitation – it does make efforts (primarily during the simplification phase) to encourage logically-equivalent query specifications to produce the same execution plan, but the implementation is not completely comprehensive. Moving on to a second example, the following query specification results from phrasing the requirement as “list the products where there exists fewer than ten correlated rows in the history table”: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ); Unfortunately, this query produces an incorrect result (86 rows): The problem is that it lists products with no history rows, though the reasons are interesting. The COUNT_BIG(*) in the EXISTS clause is a scalar aggregate (meaning there is no GROUP BY clause) and scalar aggregates always produce a value, even when the input is an empty set. In the case of the COUNT aggregate, the result of aggregating the empty set is zero (the other standard aggregates produce a NULL). To make the point really clear, let’s look at product 709, which happens to be one for which no history rows exist: -- Scalar aggregate SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = 709; -- Vector aggregate SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = 709 GROUP BY th.ProductID; The estimated execution plans for these two statements are almost identical: You might expect the Stream Aggregate to have a Group By for the second statement, but this is not the case. The query includes an equality comparison to a constant value (709), so all qualified rows are guaranteed to have the same value for ProductID and the Group By is optimized away. In fact there are some minor differences between the two plans (the first is auto-parameterized and qualifies for trivial plan, whereas the second is not auto-parameterized and requires cost-based optimization), but there is nothing to indicate that one is a scalar aggregate and the other is a vector aggregate. This is something I would like to see exposed in show plan so I suggested it on Connect. Anyway, the results of running the two queries show the difference at runtime: The scalar aggregate (no GROUP BY) returns a result of zero, whereas the vector aggregate (with a GROUP BY clause) returns nothing at all. Returning to our EXISTS query, we could ‘fix’ it by changing the HAVING clause to reject rows where the scalar aggregate returns zero: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) BETWEEN 1 AND 9 ); The query now returns the correct 23 rows: Unfortunately, the execution plan is less efficient now – it has an estimated cost of 0.78 compared to 0.33 for the earlier plans. Let’s try adding a redundant GROUP BY instead of changing the HAVING clause: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY th.ProductID HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ); Not only do we now get correct results (23 rows), this is the execution plan: I like to compare that plan to quantum physics: if you don’t find it shocking, you haven’t understood it properly :) The simple addition of a redundant GROUP BY has resulted in the EXISTS form of the query being transformed into exactly the same optimal plan we found earlier. What’s more, in SQL Server 2008 and later, we can replace the odd-looking GROUP BY with an explicit GROUP BY on the empty set: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ); I offer that as an alternative because some people find it more intuitive (and it perhaps has more geek value too). Whichever way you prefer, it’s rather satisfying to note that the result of the sub-query does not exist for a particular correlated value where a vector aggregate is used (the scalar COUNT aggregate always returns a value, even if zero, so it always ‘EXISTS’ regardless which ProductID is logically being evaluated). The following query forms also produce the optimal plan and correct results, so long as a vector aggregate is used (you can probably find more equivalent query forms): WHERE Clause SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE ( SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () ) < 10; APPLY SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p CROSS APPLY ( SELECT NULL FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ) AS ca (dummy); FROM Clause SELECT q1.Name FROM ( SELECT p.Name, cnt = ( SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () ) FROM Production.Product AS p ) AS q1 WHERE q1.cnt < 10; This last example uses SUM(1) instead of COUNT and does not require a vector aggregate…you should be able to work out why :) SELECT q.Name FROM ( SELECT p.Name, cnt = ( SELECT SUM(1) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID ) FROM Production.Product AS p ) AS q WHERE q.cnt < 10; The semantics of SQL aggregates are rather odd in places. It definitely pays to get to know the rules, and to be careful to check whether your queries are using scalar or vector aggregates. As we have seen, query plans do not show in which ‘mode’ an aggregate is running and getting it wrong can cause poor performance, wrong results, or both. © 2012 Paul White Twitter: @SQL_Kiwi email: [email protected]

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Conducting Effective Web Meetings

- by BuckWoody

There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting. (This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind) Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web: 100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM. I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries. I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after. Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them. Be Clear About the Goal This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know. This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better. There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite. Understand the Technology There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading. Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use) ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting. Use a WebCam I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on. Set Up Early Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive. Mute When Not Talking No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group. Share Collateral If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day. Set Actions At the Meeting A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary. So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

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Mscorlib mocking minus the attribute

- by mehfuzh

Mocking .net framework members (a.k.a. mscorlib) is always a daunting task. It’s the breed of static and final methods and full of surprises. Technically intercepting mscorlib members is completely different from other class libraries. This is the reason it is dealt differently. Generally, I prefer writing a wrapper around an mscorlib member (Ex. File.Delete(“abc.txt”)) and expose it via interface but that is not always an easy task if you already have years old codebase. While mocking mscorlib members first thing that comes to people’s mind is DateTime.Now. If you Google through, you will find tons of example dealing with just that. May be it’s the most important class that we can’t ignore and I will create an example using JustMock Q2 with the same. In Q2 2012, we just get rid of the MockClassAtrribute for mocking mscorlib members. JustMock is already attribute free for mocking class libraries. We radically think that vendor specific attributes only makes your code smelly and therefore decided the same for mscorlib. Now, I want to fake DateTime.Now for the following class: public class NestedDateTime { public DateTime GetDateTime() { return DateTime.Now; } } It is the simplest one that can be. The first thing here is that I tell JustMock “hey we have a DateTime.Now in NestedDateTime class that we want to mock”. To do so, during the test initialization I write this: .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Mock.Replace(() => DateTime.Now).In<NestedDateTime>(x => x.GetDateTime());.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } I can also define it for all the members in the class, but that’s just a waste of extra watts. Mock.Replace(() => DateTime.Now).In<NestedDateTime>(); Now question, why should I bother doing it? The answer is that I am not using attribute and with this approach, I can mock any framework members not just File, FileInfo or DateTime. Here to note that we already mock beyond the three but when nested around a complex class, JustMock was not intercepting it correctly. Therefore, we decided to get rid of the attribute altogether fixing the issue. Finally, I write my test as usual. [TestMethod] public void ShouldAssertMockingDateTimeFromNestedClass() { var expected = new DateTime(2000, 1, 1); Mock.Arrange(() => DateTime.Now).Returns(expected); Assert.Equal(new NestedDateTime().GetDateTime(), expected); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } That’s it, we are good. Now let me do the same for a random one, let’s say I want mock a member from DriveInfo: Mock.Replace<DriveInfo[]>(() => DriveInfo.GetDrives()).In<MsCorlibFixture>(x => x.ShouldReturnExpectedDriveWhenMocked()); Moving forward, I write my test: [TestMethod] public void ShouldReturnExpectedDriveWhenMocked() { Mock.Arrange(() => DriveInfo.GetDrives()).MustBeCalled(); DriveInfo.GetDrives(); Mock.Assert(()=> DriveInfo.GetDrives()); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here is one convention; you have to replace the mscorlib member before executing the target method that contains it. Here the call to DriveInfo is within the MsCorlibFixture therefore it should be defined during test initialization or before executing the test method. Hope this gives you the idea.

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Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

- by Mike Dietrich

Discussing the topic "Why Upgrade" or "Why not Upgrade" is not always fun. Actually the arguments repeat from customer to customer. Typically we hear things such as: A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugs A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new features which lead to risk and require application verification Patching means risk Patching changes the execution plans Patching requires too much testing Patching is too much work for our DBAs Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay out And to be very honest sometimes it's hard for me to stay calm in such discussions. Let's discuss some of these points a bit more in detail. A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugsWell, yes, that is true as no software containing more than some lines of code is bug free. This applies to Oracle's code as well as too any application or operating system code. But first of all, does that mean you never patch your OS because the patch may introduce new flaws? And second, what is the point of saying "it introduces new bugs"? Does that mean you will never get rid of the mean issues we know about and we fixed already? Scroll down from MOS Note:161818.1 to the patch release you are on, no matter if it's 10.2.0.4 or 11.2.0.3 and check for the Known Issues And Alerts.Will you take responsibility to know about all these issues and refuse to upgrade to 11.2.0.4? I won't. A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new featuresOk, we can discuss that. Offering new functionality within a database patch set is a dubious thing. It has advantages such as in 11.2.0.4 where we backported Database Redaction to. But this is something you will only use once you have an Advanced Security license. I interpret that statement I've heard quite often from customers in a different way: People don't want to get surprises such as new behaviour. This certainly gives everybody a hard time. And we've had many examples in the past (SESSION_CACHED_CURSROS in 10.2.0.4, _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE in 11.2.0.2 and others) where those things weren't documented, not even in the README. Thanks to many friends out there I learned about those as well. So new behaviour is the topic people consider as risky - not really new features. And just to point this out: A PSU never brings in new features or new behaviour by definition! Patching means riskDoes it really mean risk? Yes, there were issues in the past (and sometimes in the present as well) where a patch didn't get installed correctly. But personally I consider it way more risky to not patch. Keep that in mind: The day Oracle publishes an PSU (or CPU) containing security fixes all the great security experts out there go public with their findings as well. So from that day on even my grandma can find out about those issues and try to attack somebody. Now a lot of people say: "My database does not face the internet." And I will answer: "The enemy is sitting already behind your firewalls. And knows potentially about these things." My statement: Not patching introduces way more risk to your environment than patching. Seriously! Patching changes the execution plansDo they really? I agree - there's a very small risk for this happening with Patch Sets. But not with PSUs or CPUs as they contain no optimizer fixes changing behaviour (but they may contain fixes curing wrong-query-result-bugs). But what's the point of a changing execution plan? In Oracle Database 11g it is so simple to be prepared. SQL Plan Management is a free EE feature - so once that occurs you'll put the plan into the Plan Baseline. Basta! Yes, you wouldn't like to get such surprises? Than please use the SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) from Real Application Testing and you'll detect that easily upfront in minutes. And not to forget this, a plan change can also be very positive!Yes, there's a little risk with a database patchset - and we have many possibilites to detect this before patching. Patching requires too much testingWell, does it really? I have seen in the past 12 years how people test. There are very different efforts and approaches on this. I have seen people spending a hell of money on licenses or on project team staffing. And I have seen people sailing blindly without any tests just going the John-Wayne-approach.Proper tools will allow you to test easily without too much efforts. See the paragraph above. We have used Real Application Testing in so many customer projects reducing the amount of work spend on testing by over 50%. But apart from that at some point you will have to stop testing. If you don't you'll get lost and you'll burn money. There's no 100% guaranty. You will have to deal with a little risk as reaching the final 5% of certainty will cost you the same as it did cost to reach 95%. And doing this will lead to abnormal long product cycles that you'll run behind forever. And this will cost even more money. Patching is too much work for our DBAsPatching is a lot of work. I agree. And it's no fun work. It's boring, annoying. You don't learn much from that. That's why you should try to automate this task. Use the Database's Lifecycle Management Pack. And don't cry about the fact that it costs money. Yes it does. But it will ease the process and you'll save a lot of costs as you don't waste your valuable time with patching. Or use Oracle Database 12c Oracle Multitenant and patch either by unplug/plug or patch an entire container database with all PDBs with one patch in one task. We have customer reference cases proofing it saved them 75% of time, effort and cost since they've used Lifecycle Management Pack. So why don't you use it? Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay outWell, see my statements in the paragraph above. And it pays out as flying with a database with 100 known critical flaws in it which are already fixed by Oracle (such as in the Oct 2013 PSU for Oracle Database 12c) will cost ways more in case of failure or even data loss. Bet with me? Let me finally ask you some questions. What cell phone are you using and which OS does it run? Do you have an iPhone 5 and did you upgrade already to iOS 7.0.3? I've just encountered on mine that the alarm (which I rely on when traveling) has gotten now a dependency on the physical switch "sound on/off". If it is switched to "off" physically the alarm rings "silently". What a wonderful example of a behaviour change coming in with a patch set. Will this push you to stay with iOS5 or iOS6? No, because those have security flaws which won't be fixed anymore. What browser are you surfing with? Do you use Mozilla 3.6? Well, congratulations to all the hackers. It will be easy for them to attack you and harm your system. I'd guess you have the auto updater on. Same for Google Chrome, Safari, IE. Right? -Mike The T.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default }

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Disaster, or Migration?

- by Rob Farley

This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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BI Applications overview

- by sv744

Welcome to Oracle BI applications blog! This blog will talk about various features, general roadmap, description of functionality and implementation steps related to Oracle BI applications. In the first post we start with an overview of the BI apps and will delve deeper into some of the topics below in the upcoming weeks and months. If there are other topics you would like us to talk about, pl feel free to provide feedback on that. The Oracle BI applications are a set of pre-built applications that enable pervasive BI by providing role-based insight for each functional area, including sales, service, marketing, contact center, finance, supplier/supply chain, HR/workforce, and executive management. For example, Sales Analytics includes role-based applications for sales executives, sales management, as well as front-line sales reps, each of whom have different needs. The applications integrate and transform data from a range of enterprise sources—including Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and others—into actionable intelligence for each business function and user role. This blog starts with the key benefits and characteristics of Oracle BI applications. In a series of subsequent blogs, each of these points will be explained in detail. Why BI apps? Demonstrate the value of BI to a business user, show reports / dashboards / model that can answer their business questions as part of the sales cycle. Demonstrate technical feasibility of BI project and significantly lower risk and improve success Build Vs Buy benefit Don’t have to start with a blank sheet of paper. Help consolidate disparate systems Data integration in M&A situations Insulate BI consumers from changes in the OLTP Present OLTP data and highlight issues of poor data / missing data – and improve data quality and accuracy Prebuilt Integrations BI apps support prebuilt integrations against leading ERP sources: Fusion Applications, E- Business Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, SAP Co-developed with inputs from functional experts in BI and Applications teams. Out of the box dimensional model to source model mappings Multi source and Multi Instance support Rich Data Model BI apps have a very rich dimensionsal data model built over 10 years that incorporates best practises from BI modeling perspective as well as reflect the source system complexities Thanks for reading a long post, and be on the lookout for future posts. We will look forward to your valuable feedback on these topics as well as suggestions on what other topics would you like us to cover. I Conformed dimensional model across all business subject areas allows cross functional reporting, e.g. customer / supplier 360 Over 360 fact tables across 7 product areas CRM – 145, SCM – 47, Financials – 28, Procurement – 20, HCM – 27, Projects – 18, Campus Solutions – 21, PLM - 56 Supported by 300 physical dimensions Support for extensive calendars; Gregorian, enterprise and ledger based Conformed data model and metrics for real time vs warehouse based reporting Multi-tenant enabled Extensive BI related transformations BI apps ETL and data integration support various transformations required for dimensional models and reporting requirements. All these have been distilled into common patterns and abstracted logic which can be readily reused across different modules Slowly Changing Dimension support Hierarchy flattening support Row / Column Hybrid Hierarchy Flattening As Is vs. As Was hierarchy support Currency Conversion :- Support for 3 corporate, CRM, ledger and transaction currencies UOM conversion Internationalization / Localization Dynamic Data translations Code standardization (Domains) Historical Snapshots Cycle and process lifecycle computations Balance Facts Equalization of GL accounting chartfields/segments Standardized values for categorizing GL accounts Reconciliation between GL and subledgers to track accounted/transferred/posted transactions to GL Materialization of data only available through costly and complex APIs e.g. Fusion Payroll, EBS / Fusion Accruals Complex event Interpretation of source data – E.g. o What constitutes a transfer o Deriving supervisors via position hierarchy o Deriving primary assignment in PSFT o Categorizing and transposition to measures of Payroll Balances to specific metrics to support side by side comparison of measures of for example Fixed Salary, Variable Salary, Tax, Bonus, Overtime Payments. o Counting of Events – E.g. converting events to fact counters so that for example the number of hires can easily be added up and compared alongside the total transfers and terminations. Multi pass processing of multiple sources e.g. headcount, salary, promotion, performance to allow side to side comparison. Adding value to data to aid analysis through banding, additional domain classifications and groupings to allow higher level analytical reporting and data discovery Calculation of complex measures examples: o COGs, DSO, DPO, Inventory turns etc o Transfers within a Hierarchy or out of / into a hierarchy relative to view point in hierarchy. Configurability and Extensibility support BI apps offer support for extensibility for various entities as automated extensibility or part of extension methodology Key Flex fields and Descriptive Flex support Extensible attribute support (JDE) Conformed Domains ETL Architecture BI apps offer a modular adapter architecture which allows support of multiple product lines into a single conformed model Multi Source Multi Technology Orchestration – creates load plan taking into account task dependencies and customers deployment to generate a plan based on a customers of multiple complex etl tasks Plan optimization allowing parallel ETL tasks Oracle: Bit map indexes and partition management High availability support Follow the sun support. TCO BI apps support several utilities / capabilities that help with overall total cost of ownership and ensure a rapid implementation Improved cost of ownership – lower cost to deploy On-going support for new versions of the source application Task based setups flows Data Lineage Functional setup performed in Web UI by Functional person Configuration Test to Production support Security BI apps support both data and object security enabling implementations to quickly configure the application as per the reporting security needs Fine grain object security at report / dashboard and presentation catalog level Data Security integration with source systems Extensible to support external data security rules Extensive Set of KPIs Over 7000 base and derived metrics across all modules Time series calculations (YoY, % growth etc) Common Currency and UOM reporting Cross subject area KPIs (analyzing HR vs GL data, drill from GL to AP/AR, etc) Prebuilt reports and dashboards 3000+ prebuilt reports supporting a large number of industries Hundreds of role based dashboards Dynamic currency conversion at dashboard level Highly tuned Performance The BI apps have been tuned over the years for both a very performant ETL and dashboard performance. The applications use best practises and advanced database features to enable the best possible performance. Optimized data model for BI and analytic queries Prebuilt aggregates& the ability for customers to create their own aggregates easily on warehouse facts allows for scalable end user performance Incremental extracts and loads Incremental Aggregate build Automatic table index and statistics management Parallel ETL loads Source system deletes handling Low latency extract with Golden Gate Micro ETL support Bitmap Indexes Partitioning support Modularized deployment, start small and add other subject areas seamlessly Source Specfic Staging and Real Time Schema Support for source specific operational reporting schema for EBS, PSFT, Siebel and JDE Application Integrations The BI apps also allow for integration with source systems as well as other applications that provide value add through BI and enable BI consumption during operational decision making Embedded dashboards for Fusion, EBS and Siebel applications Action Link support Marketing Segmentation Sales Predictor Dashboard Territory Management External Integrations The BI apps data integration choices include support for loading extenral data External data enrichment choices : UNSPSC, Item class etc. Extensible Spend Classification Broad Deployment Choices Exalytics support Databases : Oracle, Exadata, Teradata, DB2, MSSQL ETL tool of choice : ODI (coming), Informatica Extensible and Customizable Extensible architecture and Methodology to add custom and external content Upgradable across releases

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“It’s only test code…”

- by Chris George

“Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems. Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier! Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you. Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base. Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 28, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 28, 2010Popular ReleasesMDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.25.7002: Fixed updater Fixed FileServe Fixed LetItBitNotepad.NET: Notepad.NET 0.7 Preview 1: Whats New?* Optimized Code Generation: Which means it will run significantly faster. * Preview of Syntax Highlighting: Only VB.NET highlighting is supported, C# and Ruby will come in Preview 2. * Improved Editing Updates (when the line number, etc updates) to be more graceful. * Recent Documents works! * Images can be inserted but they're extremely large. Known Bugs* The Update Process hangs: This is a bug apparently spawning since 0.5. It will be fixed in Preview 2. Until then, perform a fr...Flickr Schedulr: Schedulr v2.2.3984: This is v2.2 of Flickr Schedulr, a Windows desktop application that automatically uploads pictures and videos to Flickr based on a schedule (e.g. to post a new picture every day at a certain time). What's new in this release? Videos are now supported as well. The application can now automatically add pictures to the queue when it starts up, from specific monitored folders. Sets and Groups can now be displayed as text only (without icons) to speed up the application. Fixed issue that ta...Cropper: 1.9.4: Mostly fixes for issues with a few feature requests. Fixed Issues 2730 & 3638 & 14467 11044 11447 11448 11449 14665 Implemented Features 6123 11581PFC: PFC for PB 11.5: This is just a migration from the 11.0 code. No changes have been made yet (and they are needed) for it to work properly with 11.5.PDF Rider: PDF Rider 0.5: This release does not add any new feature for pdf manipulation, but enables automatic updates checking, so it is reccomended to install it in order to stay updated with next releases. Prerequisites * Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (XP - Vista - 7) * Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 runtime * A PDF rendering software (i.e. Adobe Reader) that can be opened inside Internet Explorer. Installation instructionsChoose one of the following methods: 1. Download and run the "pdfRider0...XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1: 1.1 Release New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.Sexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)Deep Zoom for WPF: First Release: This first release of the Deep Zoom control has the same source code, binaries and demos as the CodeProject article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/DeepZoom.aspx).BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC: This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.0. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 1.6. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation and the installation screencast. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. As this ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.156: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a feature for aggregating the overall metrics in a folder full of NodeXL workbooks, adds geographical coordinates to the Twitter import features, and fixes a memory-related bug. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Please Note: There is a new option in the setup program to install for "Just Me" or "Everyone." Most people...VFPX: FoxBarcode v.0.11: FoxBarcode v.0.11 - Released 2010.11.22 FoxBarcode is a 100% Visual FoxPro class that provides a tool for generating images with different bar code symbologies to be used in VFP forms and reports, or exported to other applications. Its use and distribution is free for all Visual FoxPro Community. Whats is new? Added a third parameter to the BarcodeImage() method Fixed some minor bugs History FoxBarcode v.0.10 - Released 2010.11.19 - 85 Downloads Project page: FoxBarcodeDotNetAge -a lightweight Mvc jQuery CMS: DotNetAge 1.1.0.5: What is new in DotNetAge 1.1.0.5 ?Document Library features and template added. Resolve issues of templates Improving publishing service performance Opml support added. What is new in DotNetAge 1.1 ? D.N.A Core updatesImprove runtime performance , more stabilize. The DNA core objects model added. Personalization features added that allows users create the personal website, manage their resources, store personal data DynamicUIFixed the PageManager could not move page node bug. ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6DotSpatial: DotSpatial 11-21-2010: This release introduces the following Fixed bugs related to dispose, which caused issues when reordering layers in the legend Fixed bugs related to assigning categories where NULL values are in the fields New fast-acting resize using a bitmap "prediction" of what the final resize content will look like. ImageData.ReadBlock, ImageData.WriteBlock These allow direct file access for reading or writing a rectangular window. Bitmaps are used for holding the values. Removed the need to stor...New ProjectsAC: Just a simple AC ProjectAvailability Manager Project (CMPE290): Availability Manager Project (CMPE290)BCLExtensions: BCLExtensions is an extension method library for .NET 3.5 or higher which offers various extension methods for classes in the .NET Base Class Library (BCL)Command Browser 2.0 for Visual Studio: The Command Browser is a visual studio add-in that Lets you browse, and execute Visual Studio commands on the fly. It’s very handy for people that don’t tend to use bindings on daily basis and simply wants to learn new commands out of interest.EDM And T4: Generate a WCF Service from your edmxEmperor of the Multiverse: Szoftverarchitekturak rocks :)KINECT CALL: Kinect CallMultiSafepay for nopCommerce: This is MultiSafepay shop plugin voor nopCommerce. The current version supported is nopCommerce 1.60.MyGadgebydeleted: MyGadgebydeletedNHashcash: NHashcash is a .NET implementation of the Hashcash mechanism for paying for e-mail with burnt CPU cycles.OhYeah!: WP7 Note Demo ApplicationOMax - Online Market and Exchange for Real Estate: OMax Project - Online Real Estate Management System OMax stands for Online Market and eXchange and is a Real Estate management system focusing on both individuals (brokers, agents) and organizations (real estate companies) looking for online property management solutions.Opus - Silverlight UI Framework: The opus framework provides a simple way for creating UIs for Silverlight by leveraging your current MVVM structure. Outliner, the edge detection utility: Outliner is a vectorizer of the edges in the raster pictures. The new edge detection algorithm is used. It is developed in Visual C++ 2010 Express Edition, using WinAPI and STL.SharpDropBox Client for .NET: SharpDropBox Client is a DropBox client for (at first) WP7. It caches files/directories in ISO storage, and also uses Sterling DB to metadata info so that it can easily do hash checks against DropBox making it download only when there are changes. It can also be used offline.SicunSimpleDiary: ???????（????）Silverlight Navigation With Caliburn.Micro: Bring the power of the Cabliurn.Micro MVVM framework to Siliverlight 4 navigation applications. This sample application for CM shows how it can be used to create MVVM friendly Navigation applications which formerly required a view-first approach. SilverTrace - a tracer and logger for Silverlight applications: SilverTrace - a tracer and logger for Silverlight applications.StackDeck: StackDeck is a StackOverflow analysis tool written in WPFSVNHelper -- a small clean tool for visual studio: A small tool that used to clean your bin direcotry and temporary directory for the whole solutions. I usually use it before commit soure to a SVN Server. System.Xml.Serialization: Expressions.Compiler is a lightweight xml serialization framework. It is an addition to the standart .NET XML serialization. It is designed to support out-of-the-box features: * interface-driven Xml serialization * class-driven Xml serialization * runtime serializationVoXign: - Proposer une formation introductive à la langue des signes, en e-Learning. - autonomie de gestion de l’emploi du temps, du rythme - apprentissage d’un lexique de « première nécessité » - introduction à la culture sourde et approche des spécificités linguistiques de la LSF Weyland: A .NET metaprogramming framework.

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What's up with LDoms: Part 5 - A few Words about Consoles

- by Stefan Hinker

Back again to look at a detail of LDom configuration that is often forgotten - the virtual console server. Remember, LDoms are SPARC systems. As such, each guest will have it's own OBP running. And to connect to that OBP, the administrator will need a console connection. Since it's OBP, and not some x86 BIOS, this console will be very serial in nature ;-) It's really very much like in the good old days, where we had a terminal concentrator where all those serial cables ended up in. Just like with other components in LDoms, the virtualized solution looks very similar. Every LDom guest requires exactly one console connection. Envision this similar to the RS-232 port on older SPARC systems. The LDom framework provides one or more console services that provide access to these connections. This would be the virtual equivalent of a network terminal server (NTS), where all those serial cables are plugged in. In the physical world, we'd have a list somewhere, that would tell us which TCP-Port of the NTS was connected to which server. "ldm list" does just that: root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 0.4% 27d 8h 22m jupiter bound ------ 5002 20 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.5% 55d 14h 10m venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 40m pluto inactive ------ 4 4G The column marked "CONS" tells us, where to reach the console of each domain. In the case of the primary domain, this is actually a (more) physical connection - it's the console connection of the physical system, which is either reachable via the ILOM of that system, or directly via the serial console port on the chassis. All the other guests are reachable through the console service which we created during the inital setup of the system. Note that pluto does not have a port assigned. This is because pluto is not yet bound. (Binding can be viewed very much as the assembly of computer parts - CPU, Memory, disks, network adapters and a serial console cable are all put together when binding the domain.) Unless we set the port number explicitly, LDoms Manager will do this on a first come, first serve basis. For just a few domains, this is fine. For larger deployments, it might be a good idea to assign these port numbers manually using the "ldm set-vcons" command. However, there is even better magic associated with virtual consoles. You can group several domains into one console group, reachable through one TCP port of the console service. This can be useful when several groups of administrators are to be given access to different domains, or for other grouping reasons. Here's an example: root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console jupiter root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind jupiter root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 6.1% 27d 8h 24m jupiter bound ------ 5002 200 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 12m pluto bound ------ 5002 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 42m root@sun # telnet localhost 5002 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:l DOMAIN ID DOMAIN NAME DOMAIN STATE 2 jupiter online 3 pluto online sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:npluto Connecting to console "pluto" in group "planets" .... Press ~? for control options .. What I did here was add the two domains pluto and jupiter to a new console group called "planets" on the service "console" running in the primary domain. Simply using a group name will create such a group, if it doesn't already exist. By default, each domain has its own group, using the domain name as the group name. The group will be available on port 5002, chosen by LDoms Manager because I didn't specify it. If I connect to that console group, I will now first be prompted to choose the domain I want to connect to from a little menu. Finally, here's an example how to assign port numbers explicitly: root@sun # ldm set-vcons port=5044 group=pluto service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 3.8% 27d 8h 54m jupiter active -t---- 5002 200 8G 0.5% 30m mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 43m pluto bound ------ 5044 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.4% 56d 1h 13m With this, pluto would always be reachable on port 5044 in its own exclusive console group, no matter in which order other domains are bound. Now, you might be wondering why we always have to mention the console service name, "console" in all the examples here. The simple answer is because there could be more than one such console service. For all "normal" use, a single console service is absolutely sufficient. But the system is flexible enough to allow more than that single one, should you need them. In fact, you could even configure such a console service on a domain other than the primary (or control domain), which would make that domain a real console server. I actually have a customer who does just that - they want to separate console access from the control domain functionality. But this is definately a rather sophisticated setup. Something I don't want to go into in this post is access control. vntsd, which is the daemon providing all these console services, is fully RBAC-aware, and you can configure authorizations for individual users to connect to console groups or individual domain's consoles. If you can't wait until I get around to security, check out the man page of vntsd. Further reading: The Admin Guide is rather reserved on this subject. I do recommend to check out the Reference Manual. The manpage for vntsd will discuss all the control sequences as well as the grouping and authorizations mentioned here.

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Make a lives display in HUD, Flash AS3 (not text!)

- by user40404

I've been searching the internet all day and I can't find the answer I'm looking for. In my HUD I want to use orange dots to represent lives. The user starts off with 5 lives and every time they die, I want a dot to be removed. Pretty straight forward. So far my idea is to make a movie clip that has the five dots in a line. There would be 5 frames on the timeline (because after the last life it goes to a game over screen right away). I would have a variable set up to store the number of lives and a function to keep track of lives. So every hit of an obstacle would result in livesCounter--;. Then I would set up something like this: switch(livesCounter){ case 5: livesDisplay.gotoAndPlay(1); break; case 4: livesDisplay.gotoAndPlay(2); break; case 3: livesDisplay.gotoAndPlay(3); break; case 2: livesDisplay.gotoAndPlay(4); break; case 1: livesDisplay.gotoAndPlay(5); break; } I feel like there has to be an easier way to do this where I could just have a movie clip of a single orange dot that I could replicate across an x value based on the number of lives. Maybe the dots would be stored in an array? When the user loses a life, a dot on the right end of the line is removed. So in the end the counter would look like this: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (last life lost results in the end game screen) EDIT: code based on suggestions by Zhafur and Arthur Wolf White package { import flash.display.MovieClip; import flash.events.*; import flash.ui.Multitouch; import flash.ui.MultitouchInputMode; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.text.*; import flash.utils.getTimer; public class CollisionMouse extends MovieClip{ public var mySprite:Sprite = new Sprite(); Multitouch.inputMode = MultitouchInputMode.TOUCH_POINT; public var replacement:newSprite = new newSprite; public var score:int = 0; public var obstScore:int = -50; public var targetScore:int = 200; public var startTime:uint = 0; public var gameTime:uint; public var pauseScreen:PauseScreen = new PauseScreen(); public var hitTarget:Boolean = false; public var hitObj:Boolean = false; public var currLevel:Number = 1; public var heroLives:int = 5; public var life:Sprite; public function CollisionMouse() { mySprite.graphics.beginFill(0xff0000); mySprite.graphics.drawRect(0,0,40,40); addChild(mySprite); mySprite.x = 200; mySprite.y = 200; pauseScreen.x = stage.width/2; pauseScreen.y = stage.height/2; life = new Sprite(); life.x = 210; stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE,followMouse); /*mySprite.addEventListener(TouchEvent.TOUCH_END, onTouchEnd);*/ //checkLevel(); timeCheck(); trackLives(); } public function timeCheck(){ addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, showTime); } public function showTime(e:Event) { gameTime = getTimer()-startTime; rm1_mc.timeDisplay.text = clockTime(gameTime); rm1_mc.livesDisplay.text = String(heroLives); } public function clockTime(ms:int) { var seconds:int = Math.floor(ms/1000); var minutes:int = Math.floor(seconds/60); seconds -= minutes*60; var timeString:String = minutes+":"+String(seconds+100).substr(1,2); return timeString; } public function trackLives(){ for(var i:int=0; i<heroLives; i++){ life.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0xff9900); life.graphics.beginFill(0xff9900, 1); life.graphics.drawCircle(i*15, 45, 6); life.graphics.endFill(); addChild(life); } } function followMouse(e:MouseEvent){ mySprite.x=mouseX; mySprite.y=mouseY; trackCollisions(); } function trackCollisions(){ if(mySprite.hitTestObject(rm1_mc.obst1) || mySprite.hitTestObject(rm1_mc.obst2)){ hitObjects(); } else if(mySprite.hitTestObject(rm1_mc.target_mc)){ hitTarg(); } } function hitObjects(){ addChild(replacement); mySprite.x ^= replacement.x; replacement.x ^= mySprite.x; mySprite.x ^= replacement.x; mySprite.y ^= replacement.y; replacement.y ^= mySprite.y; mySprite.y ^= replacement.y; stage.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, followMouse); removeChild(mySprite); hitObj = true; checkScore(); } function hitTarg(){ addChild(replacement); mySprite.x ^= replacement.x; replacement.x ^= mySprite.x; mySprite.x ^= replacement.x; mySprite.y ^= replacement.y; replacement.y ^= mySprite.y; mySprite.y ^= replacement.y; stage.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, followMouse); removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, showTime); removeChild(mySprite); hitTarget = true; currLevel++; checkScore(); } function checkScore(){ if(hitObj){ score += obstScore; heroLives--; removeChild(life); } else if(hitTarget){ score += targetScore; } rm1_mc.scoreDisplay.text = String(score); rm1_mc.livesDisplay.text = String(heroLives); trackLives(); } } }

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Part 3 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers.

- by mbcrump

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 I wanted to create a series of blog post that gets right to the point and is aimed specifically at Silverlight Developers. The most important things I want this series to answer is : What is it? Why do I care? How do I do it? I hope that you enjoy this series. Let’s get started: Tip/Trick #11) What is it? Underline Text in a TextBlock. Why do I care? I’ve seen people do some crazy things to get underlined text in a Silverlight Application. In case you didn’t know there is a property for that. How do I do it: On a TextBlock you have a property called TextDecorations. You can easily set this property in XAML or CodeBehind with the following snippet: <UserControl x:Class="SilverlightApplication19.MainPage" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <TextBlock Name="txtTB" Text="MichaelCrump.NET" TextDecorations="Underline" /> </Grid> </UserControl> or you can do it in CodeBehind… txtTB.TextDecorations = TextDecorations.Underline; Tip/Trick #12) What is it? Get the browser information from a Silverlight Application. Why do I care? This will allow you to program around certain browser conditions that otherwise may not be aware of. How do I do it: It is very easy to extract Browser Information out a Silverlight Application by using the BrowserInformation class. You can copy/paste this code snippet to have access to all of them. string strBrowserName = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.Name; string strBrowserMinorVersion = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.BrowserVersion.Minor.ToString(); string strIsCookiesEnabled = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.CookiesEnabled.ToString(); string strPlatform = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.Platform; string strProductName = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.ProductName; string strProductVersion = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.ProductVersion; string strUserAgent = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.UserAgent; string strBrowserVersion = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.BrowserVersion.ToString(); string strBrowserMajorVersion = HtmlPage.BrowserInformation.BrowserVersion.Major.ToString(); Tip/Trick #13) What is it? Always check the minRuntimeVersion after creating a new Silverlight Application. Why do I care? Whenever you create a new Silverlight Application and host it inside of an ASP.net website you will notice Visual Studio generates some code for you as shown below. The minRuntimeVersion value is set by the SDK installed on your system. Be careful, if you are playing with beta’s like “Lightswitch” because you will have a higher version of the SDK installed. So when you create a new Silverlight 4 project and deploy it your customers they will get a prompt telling them they need to upgrade Silverlight. They also will not be able to upgrade to your version because its not released to the public yet. How do I do it: Open up the .aspx or .html file Visual Studio generated and look for the line below. Make sure it matches whatever version you are actually targeting. Tip/Trick #14) What is it? The VisualTreeHelper class provides useful methods for involving nodes in a visual tree. Why do I care? It’s nice to have the ability to “walk” a visual tree or to get the rendered elements of a ListBox. I have it very useful for debugging my Silverlight application. How do I do it: Many examples exist on the web, but say that you have a huge Silverlight application and want to find the parent object of a control. In the code snippet below, we would get 3 MessageBoxes with (StackPanel first, Grid second and UserControl Third). This is a tiny application, but imagine how helpful this would be on a large project. <UserControl x:Class="SilverlightApplication18.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <StackPanel> <Button Content="Button" Height="23" Name="button1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" Click="button1_Click" /> </StackPanel> </Grid> </UserControl> private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { DependencyObject obj = button1; while ((obj = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(obj)) != null) { MessageBox.Show(obj.GetType().ToString()); } } Tip/Trick #15) What is it? Add ChildWindows to your Silverlight Application. Why do I care? ChildWindows are a great way to direct a user attention to a particular part of your application. This could be used when saving or entering data. How do I do it: Right click your Silverlight Application and click Add then New Item. Select Silverlight Child Window as shown below. Add an event and call the ChildWindow with the following snippet below: private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { ChildWindow1 cw = new ChildWindow1(); cw.Show(); } Your main application can still process information but this screen forces the user to select an action before proceeding. The code behind of the ChildWindow will look like the following: namespace SilverlightApplication18 { public partial class ChildWindow1 : ChildWindow { public ChildWindow1() { InitializeComponent(); } private void OKButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { this.DialogResult = true; //TODO: Add logic to save what the user entered. } private void CancelButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { this.DialogResult = false; } } } Thanks for reading and please come back for Part 4. Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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Beyond Cloud Technology, Enabling A More Agile and Responsive Organization

- by sxkumar

This is the second part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain”. In the first part, I was sharing with you how a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative, I will describe in this section how it requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. People: Most IT organizations have a fairly complex organizational structure. There are different groups, managing different pieces of the puzzle, and yet, they don't always work together. Provisioning a new application therefore may require a request to float endlessly through system administrators, DBAs and middleware admin worlds – resulting in long delays and constant finger pointing. Cloud users expect end-to-end automation - which requires these silos to be greatly simplified, if not completely eliminated. Most customers I talk to acknowledge this problem but are quick to admit that such a transformation is hard. As hard as it may be, I am afraid that the status quo is no longer an option. Sticking to an organizational structure that was created ages back will not only impede cloud adoption, it also risks making the IT skills increasingly irrelevant in a world that is rapidly moving towards converged applications and infrastructure. Process: Most IT organizations today operate with a mindset that they must fully "control" access to any and all types of IT services. This in turn leads to people clinging on to outdated manual approval processes . While requiring approvals for scarce resources makes sense, insisting that every single request must be manually approved defeats the very purpose of cloud. Not only this causes delays, thereby at least partially negating the agility benefits, it also results in gross inefficiency. In a cloud environment, self-service access should be governed by policies, quotas that the administrators can define upfront . For a cloud initiative to be successful, IT organizations MUST be ready to empower users by giving them real control rather than insisting on brokering every single interaction between users and the cloud resources. Technology: From a technology perspective, cloud is about consolidation, standardization and automation. A consolidated and standardized infrastructure helps increase utilization and reduces cost. Additionally, it enables a much higher degree of automation - thereby providing users the required agility while minimizing operational costs. Obviously, automation is the key to cloud. Unfortunately it hasn’t received as much attention within enterprises as it should have. Many organizations are just now waking up to the criticality of automation and it still often gets relegated to back burner in favor of other "high priority" projects. However, it is important to understand that without the right type and level of automation, cloud will remain a distant dream for most enterprises. This in turn makes the choice of the cloud management software extremely critical. For a cloud management software to be effective in an enterprise environment, it must meet the following qualifications: Broad and Deep Solution It should offer a broad and deep solution to enable the kind of broad-based transformation we are talking about. Its footprint must cover physical and virtual systems, as well as infrastructure, database and application tiers. Too many enterprises choose to equate cloud with virtualization. While virtualization is a critical component of a cloud solution, it is just a component and not the whole solution. Similarly, too many people tend to equate cloud with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). While it is perfectly reasonable to treat IaaS as a starting point, it is important to realize that it is just the first stepping stone - and on its own it can only provide limited business benefits. It is actually the higher level services, such as (application) platform and business applications, that will bring about a more meaningful transformation to your enterprise. Run and Manage Efficiently Your Mission Critical Applications It should not only be able to run your mission critical applications, it should do so better than before. For enterprises, applications and data are the critical business assets As such, if you are building a cloud platform that cannot run your ERP application, it isn't truly a "enterprise cloud". Also, be wary of vendors who try to sell you the idea that your applications must be written in a certain way to be able to run on the cloud. That is nothing but a bogus, self-serving argument. For the cloud to be meaningful to enterprises, it should adopt to your applications - and not the other way around. Automated, Integrated Set of Cloud Management Capabilities At the root of many of the problems plaguing enterprise IT today is complexity. A complex maze of tools and technology, coupled with archaic processes, results in an environment which is inflexible, inefficient and simply too hard to manage. Management tool consolidation, therefore, is key to the success of your cloud as tool proliferation adds to complexity, encourages compartmentalization and defeats the very purpose that you are building the cloud for. Decision makers ought to be extra cautious about vendors trying to sell them a "suite" of disparate and loosely integrated products as a cloud solution. An effective enterprise cloud management solution needs to provide a tightly integrated set of capabilities for all aspects of cloud lifecycle management. A simple question to ask: will your environment be more or less complex after you implement your cloud? More often than not, the answer will surprise you. At Oracle, we have understood these challenges and have been working hard to create cloud solutions that are relevant and meaningful for enterprises. And we have been doing it for much longer than you may think. Oracle was one of the very first enterprise software companies to make our products available on the Amazon Cloud. As far back as in 2007, we created new cloud solutions such as Cloud Database Backup that are helping customers like Amazon save millions every year. Our cloud solution portfolio is also the broadest and most deep in the industry - covering public, private, hybrid, Infrastructure, platform and applications clouds. It is no coincidence therefore that the Oracle Cloud today offers the most comprehensive set of public cloud services in the industry. And to a large part, this has been made possible thanks to our years on investment in creating cloud enabling technologies. I will dedicated the third and final part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain” to Oracle Cloud Technologies Building Blocks and how they mapped into our vision of Enterprise Cloud. Stay Tuned.

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why is LZMA SDK (7-zip) so slow

- by Tono Nam

I found 7-zip great and I will like to use it on .net applications. I have a 10MB file (a.001) and it takes: 2 seconds to encode. Now it will be nice if I could do the same thing on c#. I have downloaded http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html LZMA SDK c# source code. I basically copied the CS directory into a console application in visual studio: Then I compiled and eveything compiled smoothly. So on the output directory I placed the file a.001 which is 10MB of size. On the main method that came on the source code I placed: [STAThread] static int Main(string[] args) { // e stands for encode args = "e a.001 output.7z".Split(' '); // added this line for debug try { return Main2(args); } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine("{0} Caught exception #1.", e); // throw e; return 1; } } when I execute the console application the application works great and I get the output a.7z on the working directory. The problem is that it takes so long. It takes about 15 seconds to execute! I have also tried http://stackoverflow.com/a/8775927/637142 approach and it also takes very long. Why is it 10 times slower than the actual program ? Also Even if I set to use only one thread: It still takes much less time (3 seconds vs 15): (Edit) Another Possibility Could it be because C# is slower than assembly or C ? I notice that the algorithm does a lot of heavy operations. For example compare these two blocks of code. They both do the same thing: C void main() { time_t now; int i,j,k,x; long counter ; counter = 0; now = time(NULL); /* LOOP */ for(x=0; x<10; x++) { counter = -1234567890 + x+2; for (j = 0; j < 10000; j++) for(i = 0; i< 1000; i++) for(k =0; k<1000; k++) { if(counter > 10000) counter = counter - 9999; else counter= counter +1; } printf (" %d \n", time(NULL) - now); // display elapsed time } printf("counter = %d\n\n",counter); // display result of counter printf ("Elapsed time = %d seconds ", time(NULL) - now); gets("Wait"); } output c# static void Main(string[] args) { DateTime now; int i, j, k, x; long counter; counter = 0; now = DateTime.Now; /* LOOP */ for (x = 0; x < 10; x++) { counter = -1234567890 + x + 2; for (j = 0; j < 10000; j++) for (i = 0; i < 1000; i++) for (k = 0; k < 1000; k++) { if (counter > 10000) counter = counter - 9999; else counter = counter + 1; } Console.WriteLine((DateTime.Now - now).Seconds.ToString()); } Console.Write("counter = {0} \n", counter.ToString()); Console.Write("Elapsed time = {0} seconds", DateTime.Now - now); Console.Read(); } Output Note how much slower was c#. Both programs where run from outside visual studio on release mode. Maybe that is the reason why it takes so much longer in .net than on c++. Conclusion I cannot seem to know what is causing the problem. I guess I will use 7z.dll and invoke the necessary methods from c#. A library that does that is at: http://sevenzipsharp.codeplex.com/ and that way I am using the same library that 7zip is using as: // dont forget to add reference to SevenZipSharp located on the link I provided static void Main(string[] args) { // load the dll SevenZip.SevenZipCompressor.SetLibraryPath(@"C:\Program Files (x86)\7-Zip\7z.dll"); SevenZip.SevenZipCompressor compress = new SevenZip.SevenZipCompressor(); compress.CompressDirectory("MyFolderToArchive", "output.7z"); }

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Draw a Custom cell for tableview ( uitableview ) , with changed colors and separator color and width

- by Madhup

Hi, I want to draw the background of a UITableViewCell which has a grouped style. The problem with me is I am not able to call the -(void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect or I think it should be called programmatically... I have taken code from following link . http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400965/how-to-customize-the-background-border-colors-of-a-grouped-table-view/1031593#1031593 // // CustomCellBackgroundView.h // // Created by Mike Akers on 11/21/08. // Copyright 2008 __MyCompanyName__. All rights reserved. // #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> typedef enum { CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionTop, CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionMiddle, CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionBottom, CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionSingle } CustomCellBackgroundViewPosition; @interface CustomCellBackgroundView : UIView { UIColor *borderColor; UIColor *fillColor; CustomCellBackgroundViewPosition position; } @property(nonatomic, retain) UIColor *borderColor, *fillColor; @property(nonatomic) CustomCellBackgroundViewPosition position; @end // // CustomCellBackgroundView.m // // Created by Mike Akers on 11/21/08. // Copyright 2008 __MyCompanyName__. All rights reserved. // #import "CustomCellBackgroundView.h" static void addRoundedRectToPath(CGContextRef context, CGRect rect, float ovalWidth,float ovalHeight); @implementation CustomCellBackgroundView @synthesize borderColor, fillColor, position; - (BOOL) isOpaque { return NO; } - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame { if (self = [super initWithFrame:frame]) { // Initialization code } return self; } - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { // Drawing code CGContextRef c = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(c, [fillColor CGColor]); CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(c, [borderColor CGColor]); CGContextSetLineWidth(c, 2.0); if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionTop) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , midx = CGRectGetMidX(rect), maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny + 1; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy ; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, maxy); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, miny, midx, miny, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, miny, maxx, maxy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, maxy); // Close the path CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } else if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionBottom) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , midx = CGRectGetMidX(rect), maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny ; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy - 1; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, miny); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, maxy, midx, maxy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, maxy, maxx, miny, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, miny); // Close the path CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } else if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionMiddle) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny ; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy ; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, miny); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, miny); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, maxy); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, minx, maxy); CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } else if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionSingle) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , midx = CGRectGetMidX(rect), maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , midy = CGRectGetMidY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny + 1; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy - 1; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, midy); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, miny, midx, miny, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, miny, maxx, midy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, maxy, midx, maxy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, maxy, minx, midy, ROUND_SIZE); // Close the path CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } } - (void)dealloc { [borderColor release]; [fillColor release]; [super dealloc]; } @end static void addRoundedRectToPath(CGContextRef context, CGRect rect, float ovalWidth,float ovalHeight) { float fw, fh; if (ovalWidth == 0 || ovalHeight == 0) {// 1 CGContextAddRect(context, rect); return; } CGContextSaveGState(context);// 2 CGContextTranslateCTM (context, CGRectGetMinX(rect),// 3 CGRectGetMinY(rect)); CGContextScaleCTM (context, ovalWidth, ovalHeight);// 4 fw = CGRectGetWidth (rect) / ovalWidth;// 5 fh = CGRectGetHeight (rect) / ovalHeight;// 6 CGContextMoveToPoint(context, fw, fh/2); // 7 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, fw, fh, fw/2, fh, 1);// 8 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, 0, fh, 0, fh/2, 1);// 9 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, 0, 0, fw/2, 0, 1);// 10 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, fw, 0, fw, fh/2, 1); // 11 CGContextClosePath(context);// 12 CGContextRestoreGState(context);// 13 } but the problem is my drawRect is not getting called automatically......... I am doing it like this. CustomCellBackgroundView *custView = [[CustomCellBackgroundView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0,0,320,44)]; [cell setBackgroundView:custView]; [custView release]; and doing this gives me transparent cell. I tried and fought with code but could get any results. Please help me out. I am really having no idea how this code will run.

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Jquery Datepicker with XML file

- by matt

an extension of my last question, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2562986/getdate-with-jquery-datepicker , I am trying to use the jquery datepicker to load specific info from xml file dependent on the date selected by the user. Similar code but i am trying to load and parse an xml file to read contents of the file for the particular date. In a perfect world the user would tap a date and below the datepicker html output would give the user specific times for the selected date instead of my last project of an image. my probelm is nothing is loading, so my question is what am i doing wrong? my code is as follows <!DOCTYPE html> <link type="text/css" href="css/ui-darkness/jquery-ui-1.8.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-ui-1.8.custom.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function(){ // Datepicker $('#datepicker').datepicker({ dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd', inline: true, minDate: new Date(2010, 1 - 1, 1), maxDate:new Date(2010, 12 - 1, 31), altField: '#datepicker_value', onSelect: function(){ var day1 = $("#datepicker").datepicker('getDate').getDate(); var month1 = $("#datepicker").datepicker('getDate').getMonth() + 1; var year1 = $("#datepicker").datepicker('getDate').getFullYear(); var fullDate = year1 + "" + month1 + "" + day1; //var str_output ="<img src=\"http://69.89.20.27/images/a" + fullDate +".png\" width=\"100%\"/>"; //"<h1>"+fullDate+"</h1>"; //"<img src=\"http://69.*.*.*/images/a" + fullDate +".png\"/>"; //$('#page_output').html(str_output); var doc = loadXMLDoc('date.xml'); // loading the XML file var el = doc.getElementsByTagName('_'+date); // retrieving the elements corrsponding to a date, eg: _20100103 var page_output = document.getElementById('page_output'); if(el.length >= 1) { // matched XML data found for the specified date var dt = el[0].getElementsByTagName('date'); var great_times = el[0].getElementsByTagName('great_times'); var good_times = el[0].getElementsByTagName('good_times'); var str_output = "<h1><center>" + dt[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue + "</center></h1><br/><br>"; str_output += "<b>Excellent Times:</b><br> " + great_times[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue + "<br/><br>"; str_output += "<b>Good Times:</b><br> " + good_times[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue + "<br/><br>"; $('#page_output').html(str_output);// writing the results to the div element (page_out) } else { alert("Sorry","Action not allowed on this page"); page_output.innerHTML = ''; // No XML data found for the selected date reloadmainwDate(); return false; } return true; } }); //hover states on the static widgets $('#dialog_link, ul#icons li').hover( function() { $(this).addClass('ui-state-hover'); }, function() { $(this).removeClass('ui-state-hover'); } ); }); //var img_date = .datepicker('getDate'); //var day1 = $("#datepicker").datepicker('getDate').getDate(); //var month1 = $("#datepicker").datepicker('getDate').getMonth() + 1; //var year1 = $("#datepicker").datepicker('getDate').getFullYear(); //var fullDate = year1 + "-" + month1 + "-" + day1; //var date = $('#datepicker').datepicker({ dateFormat: 'dd-mm-yy' }); //var str_output = "<h1><center><p>"+ date + "</p></center></h1>"; //$('#page_output')[0].innerHTML = str_output; // writing the results to the div element (page_out) </script> <script> function loadXMLDoc(dname) { var xmlDoc; // IE 5 and IE 6 if(typeof ActiveXObject != 'undefined') { xmlDoc=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM"); xmlDoc.async=false; xmlDoc.load(dname); return xmlDoc; } else if (window.XMLHttpRequest) // firefox { xmlDoc=new window.XMLHttpRequest(); xmlDoc.open("GET",dname,false); xmlDoc.send(""); return xmlDoc.responseXML; } alert("Error loading document"); return null; }  <div id="datepicker"></div>  <div id="page_output"></div> </body>

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Questions about TinyMCE. Or suggestions on a compariable product.

- by chobo2

Hi I am using jquery 1.3.2 and asp.net mvc 1.0. Originally I was using some other rich html editor but I ran into one major problem when a user pasted in text from open office or MS office it would bring along tons of styling junk. If a user like wrote one sentence what was like 25 characters and pasted that into my current html editor the count would 25,000 characters and I don't want to store all that junk( I can't afford to). So tinyMCE seems to not have this problem. However I got some questions. It seems if you want to use for commercial use(what my site is but currently is not making very much at this time) you need to get a commercial license. However it does not say if it is free or if it will cost money. I am assuming it means that you will have to pay but I would like to confirm this. So do you have to pay for a license to use tinyMCe if your using it for commercial use? (Yes/ No) ------------------ Answer the following questions if you said "no" to the first question ----------- So would I use the jQuery package then or is it better to use the other versions? What is this .net compressor zip for? Do I need it? I only want a few of the buttons(like bold,font size) can I remove the other buttons? It seems to display a word count. Can it be changed to character count? ----------------- Answer the following question if you said "yes" to the first question -------- Is there a rich html editor that is free for commercial use and preferably for jquery that can remove the junk that office programs seem to bring along? This is a test to show how much formatting gets made. • One • Two • Three The above text when copied into my current rich html editor will have all this code with it. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5Cchobo2%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5Cchobo2%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5Cchobo2%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><style>  </style> <p class="MsoNormal">This is a test to show <b style="">how</b> much formatting gets made.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">         </span></span></span>One</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">         </span></span></span>Two</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">         </span></span></span>Three</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><o:p> </o:p></p>

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JPA Entity (in multiple persistence-unit) in OSGi (Spring DM) Environnement is confusing me.

- by Vincent Demeester

Hi, I'm a bit confused about a strange behavior of my JPA's related objects. I have three bundle : The User bundle does contain some user-related objects, but mainly the User object. The Energy bundle does contain some energy-related objects, and particularly a ConsumptionTerminal which contains a List of User. The Index bundle does contain an Index object that has no dependency at all. My OSGi environment is the following : A DataSource bundle that provide 2 services : dataSource and jpaVendorAdapter. The three bundles. They consume dataSource and jpaVendorAdapter. Their module-context.xml file look like : And they all have a persistence.xml file : User <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <persistence> <persistence-unit name="securityPU" transaction-type="JTA"> <jta-data-source>java:/securityDataSourceService</jta-data-source> <class>net.nextep.amundsen.security.domain.User</class>  <exclude-unlisted-classes>true</exclude-unlisted-classes> <properties> <property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="INFO" /> <property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation" value="create-tables" /> <property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation.output-mode" value="database" /> <property name="eclipselink.orm.throw.exceptions" value="true" /> </properties> </persistence-unit> </persistence> Energy <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <persistence> <persistence-unit name="energyPU" transaction-type="JTA"> <jta-data-source>java:/securityDataSourceService</jta-data-source> <class>net.nextep.amundsen.security.domain.User</class> <class>net.nextep.amundsen.energy.domain.User</class>  <exclude-unlisted-classes>true</exclude-unlisted-classes> <properties> <property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="INFO" /> <property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation" value="create-tables" /> <property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation.output-mode" value="database" /> <property name="eclipselink.orm.throw.exceptions" value="true" /> </properties> </persistence-unit> </persistence> Index : This one has the most simple persistence.xml with just the Index class (no shared Class). I'm using named @PersistenceUnit annotation like @PersitenceUnit(name = 'securityPU') (for the User bundle). And finally, I'm using EclipseLink as Jpa provider and Spring DM (+ Spring DM Server in the development process) The problem is the following : When the User bundle is deployed, I'm able to persist User objects. When the User bundle and Energy bundles are both deployed, I'm not able to persist User objects (neither the Energy object). But I don't have any exception at all ! There is no problem at all with the Index bundle. The bug is dataSource independent (I tried with PostgreSQL and MySQL so far). My first conclusion was that the <class>net.nextep.amundsen.security.domain.User</class> in both persistence unit was causing the trouble. I tried without it (and hiding the User dependent object in the Energy bundle) but it failed too. I'm a bit confused about that bug. I'm also not quite sure about the transaction management in this context. I wasn't the one who designed this architecture (but I tell my intern OK without testing it.. shame on me) but if I could understand this bug and maybe fix it without rewrite the bundle (and break my intern work), I would appreciate. Am I doing something wrong ? (it's obvious, but what..) Did I miss something while reading documentation ? By the way, I'm also looking for some best practices or advices when it comes to JPA, EclipseLink (or whatever JPA Provider) and Spring DM (and OSGi in general). I found interesting slides from Mike Keith about this topic (by browsing Stackoverflow).

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How to debug a native Java crash on Linux?

- by Paul J. Lucas

I've seen this question and this article on how to debug a native Java crash. The article is with respect to Windows. What are the equivalent debugging aids on Linux? Note: All I have is this crash log from a user in the field. I do not have access to the machine on which the crash occurred. Update: I am pretty sure the crash is due to JNI code we have. I never meant to imply that it was the JVM itself that was faulty. Per request, here is the crash dump (or as much of it as will fit in the 30K stackoverflow limit): # # An unexpected error has been detected by Java Runtime Environment: # # SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0x06300e76, pid=9983, tid=4106996592 # # Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.6.0_03-b05 mixed mode, sharing) # Problematic frame: # V [libjvm.so+0x300e76] # # If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit: # http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp # --------------- T H R E A D --------------- Current thread (0x0922e000): VMThread [id=9985] siginfo:si_signo=11, si_errno=0, si_code=1, si_addr=0x00000008 Registers: EAX=0x00000008, EBX=0x88a829b3, ECX=0x88a829b0, EDX=0xa7d6c1dc ESP=0xf4cbba5c, EBP=0xf4cbba68, ESI=0xa7d6d1d8, EDI=0x00000404 EIP=0x06300e76, CR2=0x00000008, EFLAGS=0x00010202 Top of Stack: (sp=0xf4cbba5c) 0xf4cbba5c: a7d6c1c8 0920cc30 aa0de5c0 f4cbba98 0xf4cbba6c: 063517d7 cf8f2a20 a7d6c1c8 0920cc30 0xf4cbba7c: 0920cc30 00000000 00000000 6d224c40 0xf4cbba8c: 00000001 f4cbbbb0 0920b440 f4cbbab8 0xf4cbba9c: 061dd4df 0920cc30 f4cbbb10 f4cbbac8 0xf4cbbaac: 0633cb7e 0643b5b8 f4492968 f4cbbad8 0xf4cbbabc: 061dcd68 f4cbbaf0 0920cc30 f4cbbaf8 0xf4cbbacc: 061df31e f4cbbb10 d4cbcc2c f4cbbb08 Instructions: (pc=0x06300e76) 0x06300e66: 82 39 f2 73 34 90 8d 74 26 00 8b 02 85 c0 74 22 0x06300e76: 8b 18 80 3d 45 10 42 06 00 74 0c 89 d8 31 c9 83 Stack: [0xf4c3c000,0xf4cbd000), sp=0xf4cbba5c, free space=510k Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code) V [libjvm.so+0x300e76] V [libjvm.so+0x3517d7] V [libjvm.so+0x1dd4df] V [libjvm.so+0x1dcd68] V [libjvm.so+0x1dc3cc] V [libjvm.so+0x1d4c52] V [libjvm.so+0x1d32cc] V [libjvm.so+0x1d4229] V [libjvm.so+0x1dc82a] V [libjvm.so+0x1d1d34] V [libjvm.so+0x186125] V [libjvm.so+0x1d20bc] V [libjvm.so+0x3b2cbe] V [libjvm.so+0x3c5037] V [libjvm.so+0x3c46bc] V [libjvm.so+0x3c488a] V [libjvm.so+0x3c446f] V [libjvm.so+0x30b719] C [libpthread.so.0+0x5cb2] VM_Operation (0xf2b60728): generation collection for allocation, mode: safepoint, requested by thread 0x09449c00 --------------- P R O C E S S --------------- Java Threads: ( = current thread ) 0x092afc00 JavaThread "RawImageCache" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10026] 0xf37d1000 JavaThread "TimerQueue" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10022] 0x09410000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard7" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10021] 0x0940f000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard6" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10020] 0x0946fc00 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard5" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10019] 0x0946e800 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard4" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10018] 0x0946d400 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard3" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10017] 0x0946c000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard2" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10016] 0x0946ac00 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard1" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10015] 0x0946a000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10014] 0x0944a800 JavaThread "Image List Poller" [_thread_blocked, id=10012] 0x09449c00 JavaThread "Image Task Queue" [_thread_blocked, id=10011] 0xf37e3c00 JavaThread "Laf-Widget fade tracker" [_thread_blocked, id=10010] 0x094abc00 JavaThread "FileCacheMonitor" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10009] 0xf37e3800 JavaThread "DestroyJavaVM" [_thread_blocked, id=9984] 0xf37ee400 JavaThread "Thread-6" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10006] 0xf3a7c800 JavaThread "DirectoryMonitor.MonitorThread" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10005] 0xf3a73800 JavaThread "AWT Watchdog" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10004] 0xf3adb800 JavaThread "TileReaper" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10003] 0x093c3c00 JavaThread "process reaper" daemon [_thread_in_native, id=10001] 0x093ac800 JavaThread "Timer-0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9999] 0x093a8c00 JavaThread "AWT-EventQueue-0" [_thread_blocked, id=9997] 0x093a8000 JavaThread "AWT-Shutdown" [_thread_blocked, id=9996] 0x09378c00 JavaThread "AWT-XAWT" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9994] 0x09368400 JavaThread "Java2D Disposer" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9993] 0x09350000 JavaThread "Thread-1" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9992] 0x0923b400 JavaThread "Low Memory Detector" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9990] 0x09239c00 JavaThread "CompilerThread0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9989] 0x09238800 JavaThread "Signal Dispatcher" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9988] 0x09230800 JavaThread "Finalizer" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9987] 0x0922f400 JavaThread "Reference Handler" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9986] Other Threads: =0x0922e000 VMThread [id=9985] 0x09245000 WatcherThread [id=9991] VM state:at safepoint (normal execution) VM Mutex/Monitor currently owned by a thread: ([mutex/lock_event]) [0x09205178/0x092051a0] Threads_lock - owner thread: 0x0922e000 [0x09205638/0x09205650] Heap_lock - owner thread: 0x09449c00 Heap def new generation total 83968K, used 9280K [0x55600000, 0x5b110000, 0x5ec40000) eden space 74688K, 0% used [0x55600000, 0x55600000, 0x59ef0000) from space 9280K, 100% used [0x5a800000, 0x5b110000, 0x5b110000) to space 9280K, 0% used [0x59ef0000, 0x59ef0000, 0x5a800000) tenured generation total 1233640K, used 1233529K [0x5ec40000, 0xaa0fa000, 0xcf800000) the space 1233640K, 99% used [0x5ec40000, 0xaa0de5c0, 0x8b4af400, 0xaa0fa000) compacting perm gen total 13312K, used 13175K [0xcf800000, 0xd0500000, 0xd3800000) the space 13312K, 98% used [0xcf800000, 0xd04ddd70, 0xd04dde00, 0xd0500000) ro space 8192K, 69% used [0xd3800000, 0xd3d8f608, 0xd3d8f800, 0xd4000000) rw space 12288K, 57% used [0xd4000000, 0xd46eee98, 0xd46ef000, 0xd4c00000) Dynamic libraries: [ snip ] VM Arguments: jvm_args: -Dinstall4j.jvmDir=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre -Dinstall4j.appDir=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone -Dexe4j.moduleName=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/LightZone -Dcom.lightcrafts.licensetype=ESD -Xmx2000000k java_command: com.install4j.runtime.Launcher launch com.lightcrafts.platform.linux.LinuxLauncher true false /home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/LightZone.log /home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/LightZone.log false true false true true -1 -1 20 20 Arial 0,0,0 8 500 20 40 Arial 0,0,0 8 500 -1 Launcher Type: SUN_STANDARD Environment Variables: PATH=/home/berbmit/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games USERNAME=berbmit LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre/lib/i386/client:/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre/lib/i386:/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre/../lib/i386:/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/.: SHELL=/bin/bash DISPLAY=:0.0 Signal Handlers: SIGSEGV: [libjvm.so+0x3b29c0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGBUS: [libjvm.so+0x3b29c0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGFPE: [libjvm.so+0x309ec0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGPIPE: SIG_IGN, sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x00000000 SIGILL: [libjvm.so+0x309ec0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGUSR1: SIG_DFL, sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x00000000 SIGUSR2: [libjvm.so+0x30bef0], sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGHUP: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGINT: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGQUIT: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGTERM: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGUSR2: [libjvm.so+0x30bef0], sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x10000004 --------------- S Y S T E M --------------- OS:squeeze/sid uname:Linux 2.6.35-23-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 24 11:55:36 UTC 2010 x86_64 libc:glibc 2.12.1 NPTL 2.12.1 rlimit: STACK 8192k, CORE 0k, NPROC infinity, NOFILE 1024, AS infinity load average:0.67 0.54 0.36 CPU:total 8 (8 cores per cpu, 2 threads per core) family 6 model 10 stepping 5, cmov, cx8, fxsr, mmx, sse, sse2, sse3, ssse3, ht Memory: 4k page, physical 8191552k(3359308k free), swap 1016828k(1016828k free) vm_info: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.6.0_03-b05) for linux-x86, built on Sep 24 2007 22:45:46 by "java_re" with gcc 3.2.1-7a (J2SE release)

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