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• XBRL - Moving from Production to Consumption

  - by jmorourke

  Here's an update on what’s new with XBRL and how it can actually benefit your organization versus adding extra time and costs to financial reporting.  On February 29th (leap day) of 2012 I attended the XBRL and Financial Analysis Technology Conference at Baruch College in NYC.  The event, which attracted over 300 XBRL gurus and fans was presented by XBRL US, The New York Society of Security Analysts’ Improved Corporate Reporting Committee, and Baruch College’s Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity.  The event featured keynotes from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the CFA Institute as well as panels covering alternative research tools and data, corporate reporting to stakeholders and a demonstration of XBRL analysis tools.  The program culminated in a presentation of the finalists and the winner of the $20,000 XBRL Challenge.    Some of the key points made in the sessions included: The focus of XBRL tools is moving from production to consumption. As of February 2012, over 9000 companies are reporting in XBRL, with over 10 million facts filed to date XBRL taxonomy extensions have dropped from 27% to 11% making comparisons easier The SEC reports that XBRL makes it easier to analyze disclosures, focus on accounting issues XBRL is helping standards-setters like the FASB speed their analysis of impacts of proposed accounting rule changes Companies like Thomson Reuters report that XBRL is helping speed the delivery of data to clients The most interesting part of the program though, was the session highlighting the 5 finalists in the XBRL Challenge competition and the winning solution.  The XBRL Challenge was launched in 2011 as a means of spurring the development of more end-user tools to help with the consumption of XBRL-based financial information.       Over an 8-month process handled by 5 judges, there were 84 registrants, 15 completed submissions, 5 finalists and one winner of the challenge.  All of the solutions are open-sourced tools and most of them focus on consuming XBRL-based data.  The 5 finalists included: Advanced XBRL Processing from Oxide solutions – XBRL viewer for taxonomies, filings and company data with peer comparison capabilities. Arrelle – API for XBRL processes, supports SEC Validations, RSS Feeds to access filings etc. Calcbench – XBRL data analysis tool that can be embedded in other web applications.  This tool can combine XBRL filings with real-time market data. XBRL to XL – allows the importing of XBRL data into Microsoft Excel for analysis, comparisons.  Users start on the web and populate Excel with XBRL data. XBurble – allows users to search and view XBRL filings, export to Excel, merge for comparison, and includes a workflow interface. The winner of the $20,000 XBRL Challenge prize was CalcBench.  More information about the XBRL Challenge and the finalists can be found at www.XBRLUS.org/challenge XBRL for Sustainability Reporting – other recent news on the XBRL front was the announcement by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) of an XBRL taxonomy for Sustainability Reporting.  This taxonomy was co-developed by the GRI and Deloitte and is designed to make the consumption of data found in Sustainability Reports much easier.  Although there is no government mandate to file Sustainability Reports in XBRL format, organizations that do use the GRI guidelines for Sustainability Reporting are encouraged to tag and submit their data voluntarily to the GRI – who will populate a database with Sustainability Reporting data and make this available to the public.  For more information about this initiative, you can go to the GRI web site:  www.globalreporting.org. So how does all of this benefit corporate filers and investors?  Since its introduction, the consensus in the market is that XBRL has mainly benefited the regulators and investment analysts who need to consume and analyze large volumes of financial data.  But with the emergence of more end-user tools for consuming and analyzing XBRL-based data, and the ability to perform quick comparisons of one company versus its peers and competitors in an industry group, will soon accelerate the benefits to corporate finance staff, as well as individual investors.  This could apply to financial results tagged in XBRL, as well as non-financial information such as Sustainability Reporting – which over the long-term will likely be integrated with financial reporting.   And as multiple regulators and agencies in a country adopt the XBRL standard for corporate filings, more benefits will accrue as companies will be able to leverage one set of XBRL-based financial data for multiple regulatory filings.     For more information about the latest developments in XBRL, check out the XBRL US or XBRL International web sites:  www.xbrl.org, www.xbrlus.org. For more information about what Oracle is doing to support XBRL, here are some links: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/disclosure-management-065892.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need more information:  [email protected]

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• How to properly add texture to multi-fixture/shape b2Body

  - by Blazej Wdowikowski

  Hello to everyone this is my first poste here I hope that will be not fail start. At start I must say I make part 1 in Ray's Tutorial "How To Make A Game Like Fruit Ninja With Box2D and Cocos2D". But I wonder what when I want make more complex body with texture? Simple just add n b2FixtureDef to the same body. OK but what about texture? If I will take code from that tutorial it only fill last fixture. Probably it does not takes every b2Vec2 point. I was right, it did not. So quick refactor and from that -(id)initWithTexture:(CCTexture2D*)texture body:(b2Body*)body original:(BOOL)original { // gather all the vertices from our Box2D shape b2Fixture *originalFixture = body->GetFixtureList(); b2PolygonShape *shape = (b2PolygonShape*)originalFixture->GetShape(); int vertexCount = shape->GetVertexCount(); NSMutableArray *points = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:vertexCount]; for(int i = 0; i < vertexCount; i++) { CGPoint p = ccp(shape->GetVertex(i).x * PTM_RATIO, shape->GetVertex(i).y * PTM_RATIO); [points addObject:[NSValue valueWithCGPoint:p]]; } if ((self = [super initWithPoints:points andTexture:texture])) { _body = body; _body->SetUserData(self); _original = original; // gets the center of the polygon _centroid = self.body->GetLocalCenter(); // assign an anchor point based on the center self.anchorPoint = ccp(_centroid.x * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.width, _centroid.y * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.height); } return self; } I came up with that -(id)initWithTexture:(CCTexture2D*)texture body:(b2Body*)body original:(BOOL)original { int vertexCount = 0; //gather total number of b2Vect2 points b2Fixture *currentFixture = body->GetFixtureList(); while (currentFixture) { //new b2PolygonShape *shape = (b2PolygonShape*)currentFixture->GetShape(); vertexCount += shape->GetVertexCount(); currentFixture = currentFixture->GetNext(); } NSMutableArray *points = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:vertexCount]; // gather all the vertices from our Box2D shape b2Fixture *originalFixture = body->GetFixtureList(); while (originalFixture) { //new NSLog((NSString*)@"-"); b2PolygonShape *shape = (b2PolygonShape*)originalFixture->GetShape(); int currentVertexCount = shape->GetVertexCount(); for(int i = 0; i < currentVertexCount; i++) { CGPoint p = ccp(shape->GetVertex(i).x * PTM_RATIO, shape->GetVertex(i).y * PTM_RATIO); [points addObject:[NSValue valueWithCGPoint:p]]; } originalFixture = originalFixture->GetNext(); } if ((self = [super initWithPoints:points andTexture:texture])) { _body = body; _body->SetUserData(self); _original = original; // gets the center of the polygon _centroid = self.body->GetLocalCenter(); // assign an anchor point based on the center self.anchorPoint = ccp(_centroid.x * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.width,_centroid.y * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.height); } return self; } I was working for simple two fixtures body like b2BodyDef bodyDef; bodyDef.type = b2_dynamicBody; bodyDef.position = position; bodyDef.angle = rotation; b2Body *body = world->CreateBody(&bodyDef); b2FixtureDef fixtureDef; fixtureDef.density = 1.0; fixtureDef.friction = 0.5; fixtureDef.restitution = 0.2; fixtureDef.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; fixtureDef.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; b2Vec2 vertices[] = { b2Vec2(0.0/PTM_RATIO,50.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(0.0/PTM_RATIO,0.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(50.0/PTM_RATIO,30.1/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(60.0/PTM_RATIO,60.0/PTM_RATIO) }; b2PolygonShape shape; shape.Set(vertices, 4); fixtureDef.shape = &shape; body->CreateFixture(&fixtureDef); b2Vec2 vertices2[] = { b2Vec2(20.0/PTM_RATIO,50.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(20.0/PTM_RATIO,0.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(70.0/PTM_RATIO,30.1/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(80.0/PTM_RATIO,60.0/PTM_RATIO) }; shape.Set(vertices2, 4); fixtureDef.shape = &shape; body->CreateFixture(&fixtureDef); But if I try put secondary shape upper than first it starting wierd, texture goes crazy. For example not mention about more complex shapes. What's more if shapes have one common point texture will not render for them at all [For that I use Physics Edytor like in tutorial part1] BTW. I use PolygonSprite and in method createWithWorld... another shapes. Uff.. Question So my question is, why texture coords are in such a mess up? It's my modify method or just wrong approach? Maybe I should remove duplicated from points array?

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• NetBeans, JSF, and MySQL Primary Keys using AUTO_INCREMENT

  - by MarkH

  I recently had the opportunity to spin up a small web application using JSF and MySQL. Having developed JSF apps with Oracle Database back-ends before and possessing some small familiarity with MySQL (sans JSF), I thought this would be a cakewalk. Things did go pretty smoothly...but there was one little "gotcha" that took more time than the few seconds it really warranted. The Problem Every DBMS has its own way of automatically generating primary keys, and each has its pros and cons. For the Oracle Database, you use a sequence and point your Java classes to it using annotations that look something like this: @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator="POC_ID_SEQ") @SequenceGenerator(name="POC_ID_SEQ", sequenceName="POC_ID_SEQ", allocationSize=1) Between creating the actual sequence in the database and making sure you have your annotations right (watch those typos!), it seems a bit cumbersome. But it typically "just works", without fuss. Enter MySQL. Designating an integer-based field as PRIMARY KEY and using the keyword AUTO_INCREMENT makes the same task seem much simpler. And it is, mostly. But while NetBeans cranks out a superb "first cut" for a basic JSF CRUD app, there are a couple of small things you'll need to bring to the mix in order to be able to actually (C)reate records. The (RUD) performs fine out of the gate. The Solution Omitting all design considerations and activity (!), here is the basic sequence of events I followed to create, then resolve, the JSF/MySQL "Primary Key Perfect Storm": Fire up NetBeans. Create JSF project. Create Entity Classes from Database. Create JSF Pages from Entity Classes. Test run. Try to create record and hit error. It's a simple fix, but one that was fun to find in its completeness. :-) Even though you've told it what to do for a primary key, a MySQL table requires a gentle nudge to actually generate that new key value. Two things are needed to make the magic happen. First, you need to ensure the following annotation is in place in your Java entity classes: @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY) All well and good, but the real key is this: in your controller class(es), you'll have a create() function that looks something like this, minus the comment line and the setId() call in bold red type:     public String create() {         try {             // Assign 0 to ID for MySQL to properly auto_increment the primary key.             current.setId(0);             getFacade().create(current);             JsfUtil.addSuccessMessage(ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("CategoryCreated"));             return prepareCreate();         } catch (Exception e) {             JsfUtil.addErrorMessage(e, ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("PersistenceErrorOccured"));             return null;         }     } Setting the current object's primary key attribute to zero (0) prior to saving it tells MySQL to get the next available value and assign it to that record's key field. Short and simple…but not inherently obvious if you've never used that particular combination of NetBeans/JSF/MySQL before. Hope this helps! All the best, Mark

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• Black Screen: How to set Projection/View Matrix

  - by Lisa

  I have a Windows Phone 8 C#/XAML with DirectX component project. I'm rendering some particles, but each particle is a rectangle versus a square (as I've set the vertices to be positions equally offset from each other). I used an Identity matrix in the view and projection matrix. I decided to add the windows aspect ratio to prevent the rectangles. But now I get a black screen. None of the particles are rendered now. I don't know what's wrong with my matrices. Can anyone see the problem? These are the default matrices in Microsoft's project example. View Matrix: XMVECTOR eye = XMVectorSet(0.0f, 0.7f, 1.5f, 0.0f); XMVECTOR at = XMVectorSet(0.0f, -0.1f, 0.0f, 0.0f); XMVECTOR up = XMVectorSet(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); XMStoreFloat4x4(&m_constantBufferData.view, XMMatrixTranspose(XMMatrixLookAtRH(eye, at, up))); Projection Matrix: void CubeRenderer::CreateWindowSizeDependentResources() { Direct3DBase::CreateWindowSizeDependentResources(); float aspectRatio = m_windowBounds.Width / m_windowBounds.Height; float fovAngleY = 70.0f * XM_PI / 180.0f; if (aspectRatio < 1.0f) { fovAngleY /= aspectRatio; } XMStoreFloat4x4(&m_constantBufferData.projection, XMMatrixTranspose(XMMatrixPerspectiveFovRH(fovAngleY, aspectRatio, 0.01f, 100.0f))); } I've tried modifying them to use cocos2dx's WP8 example. XMMATRIX identityMatrix = XMMatrixIdentity(); float fovy = 60.0f; float aspect = m_windowBounds.Width / m_windowBounds.Height; float zNear = 0.1f; float zFar = 100.0f; float xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax; ymax = zNear * tanf(fovy * XM_PI / 360); ymin = -ymax; xmin = ymin * aspect; xmax = ymax * aspect; XMMATRIX tmpMatrix = XMMatrixPerspectiveOffCenterRH(xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zNear, zFar); XMMATRIX projectionMatrix = XMMatrixMultiply(tmpMatrix, identityMatrix); // View Matrix float fEyeX = m_windowBounds.Width * 0.5f; float fEyeY = m_windowBounds.Height * 0.5f; float fEyeZ = m_windowBounds.Height / 1.1566f; float fLookAtX = m_windowBounds.Width * 0.5f; float fLookAtY = m_windowBounds.Height * 0.5f; float fLookAtZ = 0.0f; float fUpX = 0.0f; float fUpY = 1.0f; float fUpZ = 0.0f; XMMATRIX tmpMatrix2 = XMMatrixLookAtRH(XMVectorSet(fEyeX,fEyeY,fEyeZ,0.f), XMVectorSet(fLookAtX,fLookAtY,fLookAtZ,0.f), XMVectorSet(fUpX,fUpY,fUpZ,0.f)); XMMATRIX viewMatrix = XMMatrixMultiply(tmpMatrix2, identityMatrix); XMStoreFloat4x4(&m_constantBufferData.view, viewMatrix); Vertex Shader cbuffer ModelViewProjectionConstantBuffer : register(b0) { //matrix model; matrix view; matrix projection; }; struct VertexInputType { float4 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float4 color : COLOR; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float4 color : COLOR; }; PixelInputType main(VertexInputType input) { PixelInputType output; // Change the position vector to be 4 units for proper matrix calculations. input.position.w = 1.0f; //===================================== // TODO: ADDED for testing input.position.z = 0.0f; //===================================== // Calculate the position of the vertex against the world, view, and projection matrices. //output.position = mul(input.position, model); output.position = mul(input.position, view); output.position = mul(output.position, projection); // Store the texture coordinates for the pixel shader. output.tex = input.tex; // Store the particle color for the pixel shader. output.color = input.color; return output; } Before I render the shader, I set the view/projection matrices into the constant buffer void ParticleRenderer::SetShaderParameters() { ViewProjectionConstantBuffer* dataPtr; D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE mappedResource; DX::ThrowIfFailed(m_d3dContext->Map(m_constantBuffer.Get(), 0, D3D11_MAP_WRITE_DISCARD, 0, &mappedResource)); dataPtr = (ViewProjectionConstantBuffer*)mappedResource.pData; dataPtr->view = m_constantBufferData.view; dataPtr->projection = m_constantBufferData.projection; m_d3dContext->Unmap(m_constantBuffer.Get(), 0); // Now set the constant buffer in the vertex shader with the updated values. m_d3dContext->VSSetConstantBuffers(0, 1, m_constantBuffer.GetAddressOf() ); // Set shader texture resource in the pixel shader. m_d3dContext->PSSetShaderResources(0, 1, &m_textureView); } Nothing, black screen... I tried so many different look at, eye, and up vectors. I tried transposing the matrices. I've set the particle center position to always be (0, 0, 0), I tried different positions too, just to make sure they're not being rendered offscreen.

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• How Important is Project Team Communication in the Public Sector?

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Paul Bender, Director of Public Administration Strategy, Oracle Primavera It goes without saying that communication between project team members is a core competency that connects every member of a project team to a common set of strategies, goals and actions. If these components are not effectively shared by project leads and understood by stakeholders, project outcomes can be jeopardized and budgets may incur unnecessary risk. As reported by PMI’s 2013 Pulse of the Profession, an organization’s ability to meet project timelines, budgets and especially goals significantly impacts its ability to survive—and even thrive. The Pulse study revealed that the most crucial success factor in project management is effective communication to all stakeholders—a critical core competency for public agencies. PMI’s 2013 Pulse of the Profession report revealed that US$135 million is at risk for every US$1 billion spent on a project. Further research on the importance of effective project team communication uncovers that a startling 56 percent (US$75 million of that US$135 million) is at risk due to ineffective communication. Simply stated: public agencies cannot execute strategic initiatives unless they can effectively communicate their strategic alignment and business benefits. Executives and project managers around the world agree that poor communication between project team members contributes to project failure. A Forbes Insights 2010 Strategic Initiatives Study “Adapting Corporate Strategy to the Changing Economy,” found that nine out of ten CEOs believe that communication is critical to the success of their strategic initiatives, and nearly half of respondents cite communication as an integral and active component of their strategic planning and execution process. Project managers see it similarly from their side as well. According to PMI’s Pulse research, 55 percent of project managers agree that effective communication to all stakeholders is the most critical success factor in project management. As we all know, not all projects succeed. On average, two in five projects do not meet their original goals and business intent, and one-half of those unsuccessful projects are related to ineffective communication. Results reveal that while all aspects of project communication can be challenging to public agencies, the biggest problem areas are: A gap in understanding the business benefits. Challenges surrounding the language used to deliver project-related information, which is often unclear and peppered with project management jargon. Public agencies -- federal, state, and local -- have difficulty communicating with the appropriate levels with clarity and detail. This difficulty is likely exacerbated by the divide between each key audience and its understanding of project-specific, technical language. For those involved in public sector project and portfolio management, I would be interested to hear your thoughts and please visit Primavera EPPM solutions for public sector.

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• Windows for IoT, continued

  - by Valter Minute

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2014/08/05/windows-for-iot-continued.aspxI received many interesting feedbacks on my previous blog post and I tried to find some time to do some additional tests. Bert Kleinschmidt pointed out that pins 2,3 and 10 of the Galileo are connected directly to the SOC, while pin 13, the one used for the sample sketch is controlled via an I2C I/O expander. I changed my code to use pin 2 instead of 13 (just changing the variable assignment at the beginning of the code) and latency was greatly reduced. Now each pulse lasts for 1.44ms, 44% more than the expected time, but ways better that the result we got using pin 13. I also used SetThreadPriority to increase the priority of the thread that was running the sketch to THREAD_PRIORITY_HIGHEST but that didn't change the results. When I was using the I2C-controlled pin I tried the same and the timings got ways worse (increasing more than 10 times) and so I did not commented on that part, wanting to investigate the issua a bit more in detail. It seems that increasing the priority of the application thread impacts negatively the I2C communication. I tried to use also the Linux-based implementation (using a different Galileo board since the one provided by MS seems to use a different firmware) and the results of running the sample blink sketch modified to use pin 2 and blink the led for 1ms are similar to those we got on the same board running Windows. Here the difference between expected time and measured time is worse, getting around 3.2ms instead of 1 (320% compared to 150% using Windows but far from the 100.1% we got with the 8-bit Arduino). Both systems were not under load during the test, maybe loading some applications that use part of the CPU time would make those timings even less reliable, but I think that those numbers are enough to draw some conclusions. It may not be worth running a full OS if what you need is Arduino compatibility. The Arduino UNO is probably the best Arduino you can find to perform this kind of development. The Galileo running the Linux-based stack or running Windows for IoT is targeted to be a platform for "Internet of Things" devices, whatever that means. At the moment I don't see the "I" part of IoT. We have low level interfaces (SPI, I2C, the GPIO pins) that can be used to connect sensors but the support for connectivity is limited and the amount of work required to deliver some data to the cloud (using a secure HTTP request or a message queuing system like APMQS or MQTT) is still big and the rich OS underneath seems to not provide any help doing that.Why should I use sockets and can't access all the high level connectivity features we have on "full" Windows?I know that it's possible to use some third party libraries, try to build them using the Windows For IoT SDK etc. but this means re-inventing the wheel every time and can also lead to some IP concerns if used for products meant to be closed-source. I hope that MS and Intel (and others) will focus less on the "coolness" of running (some) Arduino sketches and more on providing a better platform to people that really want to design devices that leverage internet connectivity and the cloud processing power to deliver better products and services. Providing a reliable set of connectivity services would be a great start. Providing support for .NET would be even better, leaving native code available for hardware access etc. I know that those components may require additional storage and memory etc. So making the OS componentizable (or, at least, provide a way to install additional components) would be a great way to let developers pick the parts of the system they need to develop their solution, knowing that they will integrate well together. I can understand that the Arduino and Raspberry Pi* success may have attracted the attention of marketing departments worldwide and almost any new development board those days is promoted as "XXX response to Arduino" or "YYYY alternative to Raspberry Pi", but this is misleading and prevents companies from focusing on how to deliver good products and how to integrate "IoT" features with their existing offer to provide, at the end, a better product or service to their customers. Marketing is important, but can't decide the key features of a product (the OS) that is going to be used to develop full products for end customers integrating it with hardware and application software. I really like the "hackable" nature of open-source devices and like to see that companies are getting more and more open in releasing information, providing "hackable" devices and supporting developers with documentation, good samples etc. On the other side being able to run a sketch designed for an 8 bit microcontroller on a full-featured application processor may sound cool and an easy upgrade path for people that just experimented with sensors etc. on Arduino but it's not, in my humble opinion, the main path to follow for people who want to deliver real products.   *Shameless self-promotion: if you are looking for a good book in Italian about the Raspberry Pi , try mine: http://www.amazon.it/Raspberry-Pi-alluso-Digital-LifeStyle-ebook/dp/B00GYY3OKO

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• jQuery with SharePoint solutions

  - by KunaalKapoor

  For me jQuery is the 'Plan-B' for everything.And most of my projects include the use of jQuery for something or the other, so I decided to write a small note on what works best while using jQuery along with SharePoint.I prefer to use the jQuery JavaScript library, which is far more robust, easier to use, and allows for plugins. Follow the steps below to add jQuery to your master page. For office 365, the prefered location to add jQuery files is the "Site Asserts" library.Deployment Best PracticesThey are only as good as the context it’s being referenced.  In other words, take into account your world before applying it.Script your deployment options.  Folder in SPD. Use the file system.  Make external references.  The JQuery library is on the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network. You may even choose to publish to and from the document library. (pros and cons to this approach)Reference options when referencing the script.ScriptLink will make sure it’s loaded at the top of the page and only loaded once. You need Visual Studio or SPDContent Editor Web Part (CEWP).  Drop it on the page and it’s there.  Easy but dangerousCustom Actions. Great for global deployments of JQuery.  Loads it on every page. It also works in Sandbox installations.Deployment Maintenance Dont’sDon’t add scripts directly to your Master Page. That’s way too much effort because the pages are hard to maintain.Don’t add scripts directly to the CEWP.  Use a content link instead. That will allow for reuse. If you or someone deletes the CEWP you won’t lose code in the web partSecurity.  Any scripts run with the same privileges of the current user.  In other words, you can’t get in trouble.Development Best PracticesDon’t abuse the DOM.  There are better options to load the DOM without hitting it 1,000 times.User other performance boosters.Try other libraries.  Try some custom codeAvoid String conversionMinify your filesUse CAML to reduce number of returns rowsOnly update your JQuery library AFTER RIGOROUS REGRESSION TESTINGCRUD operations can come with some funSP Services wraps SharePoint’s web services for executionThe Bing SDK is pretty easy to use.  You can add it to your page with a script,  put it into a content editor web part and connect it from the address parameters in a list.Steps:1. Go to jquery.com and download the latest jQuery library to your desktop. You want to get the compressed production version, not the development version.2. Open SharePoint Designer (SPD) and connect to the root level of your site's site collection.In SPD, open the "Style Library" folder. Create a folder named "Scripts" inside of the Style Library. Drag the jQuery library JavaScript file from your desktop into the Scripts folder.In the Scripts folder, create a new JavaScript file and name it (e.g. "actions.js").3. If you are using visual studio add a folder for js, you can create a new folder at the root level or if you prefer more cleaner solutions like me, you can use the layouts folder which cleans out on deactivation/uninstall.4. Within the <head> tag of the master page, add a script reference to the jQuery library just above the content place holder named "PlaceHolderAdditonalPageHead" (and above your custom CSS references, if applicable) as follows:<script src="/Style%20Library/Scripts/{jquery library file}.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Immediately after the jQuery library reference add a script reference to your custom scripts file as follows:<script src="/Style%20Library/Scripts/actions.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Inside your script tag, you can test if jQuery is already defined and if not, then add it to the page.<script type='text/javascript'>  if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined')    document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.1.min.js"></sc'+'ript>');</script>For the inquisitive few... Read on if you'd like :)Why jQuery on SharePoiny is AwesomeIt’s all about that visual wow factor.  You can get past that, “But it looks like SharePoint”  Take a long list view and put it into JQuery with pagination, etc and you are the hero.  It’s also about new controls you get with JQuery that you couldn’t do before.Why jQuery with SharePoint should be AwfulAlthough it’s fairly easy to get jQuery up and running. Copy/Paste can cause a problem.  If you don’t understand what it’s doing in the Client Object Model and the Document Object Model then it will do things on your site that were completely unexpected. Many blogs will note workarounds they employed on their sites. Why it’s not working: Debugging “sucks”.You need to develop small blocks of functionality, Test it by putting in some alerts  and console.log. Set breakpoints and monitor the DOM via Firebug and some IE development toolsPerformance - It happens all the time. But you should look at the tradeoffs. More time may give you more functionality.Consistency - ”But it works fine on my computer. So test on many browsers.  Take into account client resourcesHarm the Farm -  You need to code wisely and negatively test.  Don’t be the cause of a DoS attack that’s really JQuery asking for a resource over and over and over again.  So code wisely. Do negative testing. Monitor Server Resources.They also did a demo where JQuery did an endless loop to pull data from a list. It’s a poor decision but also an easy mistake.  They spiked their server resources within a couple seconds and had to shut down the call before it brought it down.ConclusionJQuery is now another tool in your tool kit. You don’t have to use it. Use it where it makes sense and where it helps you get your job done.Don’t abuse it, you will pay for it laterIt will add to page bloat so take that into accountIt can slow your performance

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• Loading XML file containing leading zeros with SSIS preserving the zeros

  - by Compudicted

  Visiting the MSDN SQL Server Integration Services Forum oftentimes I could see that people would pop up asking this question: “why I am not able to load an element from an XML file that contains zeros so the leading/trailing zeros would remain intact?”. I started to suspect that such a trivial and often-required operation perhaps is being misunderstood by the developer community. I would also like to add that the whole state of affairs surrounding the XML today is probably also going to be increasingly affected by a motion of people who dislike XML in general and many aspects of it as XSD and XSLT invoke a negative reaction at best. Nevertheless, XML is in wide use today and its importance as a bridge between diverse systems is ever increasing. Therefore, I deiced to write up an example of loading an arbitrary XML file that contains leading zeros in one of its elements using SSIS so the leading zeros would be preserved keeping in mind the goal on simplicity into a table in SQL Server database. To start off bring up your BIDS (running as admin) and add a new Data Flow Task (DFT). This DFT will serve as container to adding our XML processing elements (besides, the XML Source is not available anywhere else other than from within the DFT). Double-click your DFT and drag and drop the XMS Source component from the Tool Box’s Data Flow Sources. Now, let the fun begin! Being inspired by the upcoming Christmas I created a simple XML file with one set of data that contains an imaginary SSN number of Rudolph containing several leading zeros like 0000003. This file can be viewed here. To configure the XML Source of course it is quite intuitive to point it to our XML file, next what the XML source needs is either an embedded schema (XSD) or it can generate one for us. In lack of the one I opted to auto-generate it for me and I ended up with an XSD that looked like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xs:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="XMasEvent"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CaseInfo"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ID" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CreatedDate" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="LastName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="FirstName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="SSN" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <!-- Becomes string -- > <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="DOB" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="Event" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ClosedDate" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> As an aside on the XML file: if your XML file does not contain the outer node (<XMasEvent>) then you may end up in a situation where you see just one field in the output. Now please note that the SSN element’s data type was chosen to be of unsignedByte (and this is for a reason). The reason is stemming from the fact all our figures in the element are digits, this is good, but this is not exactly what we need, because if we will attempt to load the data with this XSD then we are going to either get errors on the destination or most typically lose the leading zeros. So the next intuitive choice is to change the data type to string. Besides, if a SSIS package was already created based on this XSD and the data type change was done thereafter, one should re-set the metadata by right-clicking the XML Source and choosing “Advanced Editor” in which there is a refresh button at the bottom left which will do the trick. So far so good, we are ready to load our XML file, well actually yes, and no, in my experience typically some data conversion may be required. So depending on your data destination you may need to tweak the data types targeted. Let’s add a Data Conversion Task to our DFT. Your package should look like: To make the story short I only will cover the SSN field, so in my data source the target SQL Table has it as nchar(10) and we chose string in our XSD (yes, this is a big difference), under such circumstances the SSIS will complain. So will go and manipulate on the data type of SSN by making it Unicode String (DT_WSTR), World String per se. The conversion should look like: The peek at the Metadata: We are almost there, now all we need is to configure the destination. For simplicity I chose SQL Server Destination. The mapping is a breeze, F5 and I am able to insert my data into SQL Server now! Checking the zeros – they are all intact!

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• Windows in StreamInsight: Hopping vs. Snapshot

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Three weeks ago, we explained the basic concept of windows in StreamInsight: defining sets of events that serve as arguments for set-based operations, like aggregations. Today, we want to discuss the so-called Hopping Windows and compare them with Snapshot Windows. We will compare these two, because they can serve similar purposes with different behaviors; we will discuss the remaining window type, Count Windows, another time. Hopping (and its syntactic-sugar-sister Tumbling) windows are probably the most straightforward windowing concept in StreamInsight. A hopping window is defined by its length, and the offset from one window to the next. They are aligned with some absolute point on the timeline (which can also be given as a parameter to the window) and create sets of events. The diagram below shows an example of a hopping window with length of 1h and hop size (the offset) of 15 minutes, hence creating overlapping windows:   Two aspects in this diagram are important: Since this window is overlapping, an event can fall into more than one windows. If an (interval) event spans a window boundary, its lifetime will be clipped to the window, before it is passed to the set-based operation. That’s the default and currently only available window input policy. (This should only concern you if you are using a time-sensitive user-defined aggregate or operator.) The set-based operation will be applied to each of these sets, yielding a result. This result is: A single scalar value in case of built-in or user-defined aggregates. A subset of the input payloads, in case of the TopK operator. Arbitrary events, when using a user-defined operator. The timestamps of the result are almost always the ones of the windows. Only the user-defined  operator can create new events with timestamps. (However, even these event lifetimes are subject to the window’s output policy, which is currently always to clip to the window end.) Let’s assume we were calculating the sum over some payload field: var result = from window in source.HoppingWindow( TimeSpan.FromHours(1), TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15), HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new { avg = window.Avg(e => e.Value) }; Now each window is reflected by one result event:   As you can see, the window definition defines the output frequency. No matter how many or few events we got from the input, this hopping window will produce one result every 15 minutes – except for those windows that do not contain any events at all, because StreamInsight window operations are empty-preserving (more about that another time). The “forced” output for every window can become a performance issue if you have a real-time query with many events in a wide group & apply – let me explain: imagine you have a lot of events that you group by and then aggregate within each group – classical streaming pattern. The hopping window produces a result in each group at exactly the same point in time for all groups, since the window boundaries are aligned with the timeline, not with the event timestamps. This means that the query output will become very bursty, delivering the results of all the groups at the same point in time. This becomes especially obvious if the events are long-lasting, spanning multiple windows each, so that the produced result events do not change their value very often. In such a case, a snapshot window can remedy. Snapshot windows are more difficult to explain than hopping windows: they represent those periods in time, when no event changes occur. In other words, if you mark all event start and and times on your timeline, then you are looking at all snapshot window boundaries:   If your events are never overlapping, the snapshot window will not make much sense. It is commonly used together with timestamp modification, which make it a very powerful tool. Or as Allan Mitchell expressed in in a recent tweet: “I used to look at SnapshotWindow() with disdain. Now she is my mistress, the one I turn to in times of trouble and need”. Let’s look at a simple example: I want to compute the average of some value in my events over the last minute. I don’t want this output be produced at fixed intervals, but at soon as it changes (that’s the true event-driven spirit!). The snapshot window will include all currently active event at each point in time, hence we need to extend our original events’ lifetimes into the future: Applying the Snapshot window on these events, it will appear to be “looking back into the past”: If you look at the result produced in this diagram, you can easily prove that, at each point in time, the current event value represents the average of all original input event within the last minute. Here is the LINQ representation of that query, applying the lifetime extension before the snapshot window: var result = from window in source .AlterEventDuration(e => TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1)) .SnapshotWindow(SnapshotWindowOutputPolicy.Clip) select new { avg = window.Avg(e => e.Value) }; With more complex modifications of the event lifetimes you can achieve many more query patterns. For instance “running totals” by keeping the event start times, but snapping their end times to some fixed time, like the end of the day. Each snapshot then “sees” all events that have happened in the respective time period so far. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• BizTalk &ndash; Routing failure on Delivery Notifications (BizTalk 2006 R2 to 2013)

  - by S.E.R.

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/SERivas/archive/2013/11/11/biztalk-routing-failure-on-delivery-notifications.aspxThis is a detailed explanation of a something I posted a few month ago on stackoverflow, concerning a weird behavior (a bug, really…) of the delivery notifications in BizTalk. Reminder: what are delivery notifications Mechanism BizTalk has the ability to automatically publish positive acknowledgments (ACK) when it has succeeded transmitting a message or negative acknowledgments (NACK) in case of a transmission failure. Orchestrations can use delivery notifications to subscribe to those ACKs and NACKs in order to know if a message sent on a one-way send port has been successfully transmitted. Delivery Notifications can be “activated” in two ways: The most common and easy way is to set the Delivery Notification property of a logical send port (in the orchestration designer) to Transmitted: Another way is to set the BTS.AckRequired context property of the message to be sent to true: NOTE: fundamentally, those methods are strictly equivalent since the fact of setting the Delivery Notification to Transmitted on the send port only tells BizTalk the BTS.AckRequired context property has to be set to true on the outgoing message. Related context properties ACKs and NACKs have a common set of propoted context properties, which are : Propriété Description AckType Equals ACK when successful or NACK otherwise AckID MessageID of the message concerned by the acknowledgment AckOwnerID InstanceID of the instance associated with the acknowledgment AckSendPortID ID of the send port AckSendPortName Name of the send port AckOutboundTransportLocation URI of the send port AckReceivePortID ID of the port the message came from AckReceivePortName Name of the port the message came from AckInboundTransportLocation URI of the port the message came from Detailed behavior The way Delivery Notifications are handled by BizTalk is peculiar compared to the standard behavior of the Message Box: if no active subscription exists for the acknowledgment, it is simply discarded. The direct consequence of this is that there can be no routing failure for an acknowledgment, and an acknowledgment cannot be suspended. Moreover, when a message is sent to a send port where Delivery Notification = Transmitted, a correlation set is initialized and a correlation token is attached to the message (Context property: CorrelationToken). This correlation token will also be attached to the acknowledgment. So when the acknowledgment is issued, it is automatically routed to the source orchestration. Finally, when a NACK is received by the source orchestration, a DeliveryFailureException is thrown, which can be caught in Catch section. Context of the problem Consider this scenario: In an orchestration, Delivery Notifications are activated on a One-Way send port In case of a transmission failure, the messaging instance is suspended and the orchestration catches an exception (DeliveryFailureException). When the exception is caught, the orchestration does some logging and then terminates (thanks to a Terminate shape). So that leaves only the suspended messaging instance, waiting to be resumed. Symptoms Once the problem that caused the transmission failure is solved, the messaging instance is resumed. Considering what was said in the reminder, we would expect the instance to complete, leaving no active or suspended instance. Nevertheless, the result is that the messaging instance is once more suspended, this time because of a routing failure: The routing failure report shows that the suspended message has the following attached properties: Explanation Those properties clearly indicate that the message being suspended is an acknowledgment (ACK in this case), which was published in the message box and was supended because no subscribers were found. This makes sense, since the source orchestration was terminated before we resumed the messaging instance. So its subscription to the acknowledgments was no longer active when the ACK was published, which explains the routing failure. But this behavior is in direct contradiction with what was said earlier: an acknowledgment must be discarded when no subscriber is found and therefore should not be suspended. Cause It is indeed an outright bug, which appeared with the SP1 of BizTalk 2006 R2 and was never corrected since then: not in the next 4 CUs, not in BizTalk 2009, not in 2010 and not event in 2013 – though I haven’t tested CU1 and CU2 for this last edition, but I bet there is nothing to be expected from those CUs (on this particular point). Side effects This bug can have pretty nasty side effects: this behavior can be propagated to other ports, due to routing mechanisms. For instance: you have configured the ESB Toolkit and have activated the “Enable routing failure for failed messages”. The result will be that the ESB Exception SQL send port will also try and publish ACKs or NACKs concerning its own messaging instances. In itself, this is already messy, but remember that those acknowledgments will also have the source correlation token attached to them… See how far it goes? Well, actually there is more: in SQL send ports, transactions will be rolled back because of the routing failure (I guess it also happens with other adapters - like Oracle, but I haven’t tested them). Again, think of what happens when the send port is the ESB Exception send port: your BizTalk box is going mad, but you have no idea since no exception can be written in the exception database! All of this can be tricky to diagnose, I can tell you that… Solution There is no real solution, only a work-around, but it won’t solve all of the problems and side effects. The idea is to create an orchestration which subscribes to all acknowledgments. That is to say: The message type of the incoming message will be XmlDocument The BTS.AckType property exists The logical receive port will use direct binding By doing so, all acknowledgments will be consumed by an instance of this orchestration, thus avoiding the routing failure. Here is an example of what this orchestration could look like: In order not to pollute the HAT and the DTA Db (after all, this orchestration is only meant to be a palliative to some faulty internal BizTalk mechanism, so there should be no trace of its execution), all tracking must be deactivated:

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• Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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• Remote Workers...We're Not That Bad!

  - by user12601034

  I work from home a lot – my team is located in different cities and countries, my manager is in a different city, and most of our work is done via conference calls, email and collaboration through Oracle Social Network. We’ve figured out how to be effective and involve team members, regardless of where we are all located. When I mention that I work from home, a lot of my friends will laugh, roll their eyes or use their fingers to make quotation marks around “work from home.” Their belief is that I’m sitting at home, eating bon-bons and watching television. The attempts at humor only multiply when they know that my husband also mostly works from home. So, it was with great joy that I read the Lifehacker article Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged. I’m not going to re-write the article for you, but four highlights from the article include: Proximity breeds complacency –because communicating with employees sitting next to you is so easy, you may not do it well. Absence makes people try harder to connect – because you have to make an effort to connect to your team, you tend to pay better attention when you do connect Leaders of virtual team make better use of tools – when working remotely, you will use technology (many different forms of it) to connect with your team. This daily use of the tools makes you more proficient with those tools Leaders of far-flung teams maximize the time spent together – getting together takes effort, time and money, so leaders tend to filter out distractions when teams do get together. These points made me happy because I’ve seen the same things play out in my team located around the world. And I’m not saying that a virtual team is more effective than a co-located team – but my virtual team doesn’t have the option of filing into a conference room for a face-to-face meeting whenever we want. Instead, we have to figure out how to work effectively without meeting face-to-face. Am I more engaged as a remote worker? I’d like to think that I am. I’ve been on calls with colleagues at 3am – this would never happen if my only option was to be in the office. I can leave my “office” to pick up my kids from school…and I’m willingly back online after kids are in bed to finish up anything I need to. Oracle Social Network lets me use my iPad to engage with my teammates when I’m waiting at music lessons, the doctor’s office or any place else with a network connection. I feel like I’m more connected with my team, and I feel like I’m more connected with my family life. So yes, I am a remote worker, and I am engaged. If you lead a virtual team, I challenge you to increase the ways that you communicate to effectively engage your team. If you are on a virtual team, I challenge you to think about how you might interact with team members to keep both them and yourself engaged in your work. And if you have some great ideas on how to make virtual teams (and workers) effective and engaged, please share those ideas in the comments! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a bon-bon...   :) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• How is the gimbal locked problem solved using accumulative matrix transformations

  - by Luke San Antonio

  I am reading the online "Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming" book by Jason L. McKesson As of now, I am up to the gimbal lock problem and how to solve it using quaternions. However right here, at the Quaternions page. Part of the problem is that we are trying to store an orientation as a series of 3 accumulated axial rotations. Orientations are orientations, not rotations. And orientations are certainly not a series of rotations. So we need to treat the orientation of the ship as an orientation, as a specific quantity. I guess this is the first spot I start to get confused, the reason is because I don't see the dramatic difference between orientations and rotations. I also don't understand why an orientation cannot be represented by a series of rotations... Also: The first thought towards this end would be to keep the orientation as a matrix. When the time comes to modify the orientation, we simply apply a transformation to this matrix, storing the result as the new current orientation. This means that every yaw, pitch, and roll applied to the current orientation will be relative to that current orientation. Which is precisely what we need. If the user applies a positive yaw, you want that yaw to rotate them relative to where they are current pointing, not relative to some fixed coordinate system. The concept, I understand, however I don't understand how if accumulating matrix transformations is a solution to this problem, how the code given in the previous page isn't just that. Here's the code: void display() { glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); glClearDepth(1.0f); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glutil::MatrixStack currMatrix; currMatrix.Translate(glm::vec3(0.0f, 0.0f, -200.0f)); currMatrix.RotateX(g_angles.fAngleX); DrawGimbal(currMatrix, GIMBAL_X_AXIS, glm::vec4(0.4f, 0.4f, 1.0f, 1.0f)); currMatrix.RotateY(g_angles.fAngleY); DrawGimbal(currMatrix, GIMBAL_Y_AXIS, glm::vec4(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f)); currMatrix.RotateZ(g_angles.fAngleZ); DrawGimbal(currMatrix, GIMBAL_Z_AXIS, glm::vec4(1.0f, 0.3f, 0.3f, 1.0f)); glUseProgram(theProgram); currMatrix.Scale(3.0, 3.0, 3.0); currMatrix.RotateX(-90); //Set the base color for this object. glUniform4f(baseColorUnif, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0); glUniformMatrix4fv(modelToCameraMatrixUnif, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(currMatrix.Top())); g_pObject->Render("tint"); glUseProgram(0); glutSwapBuffers(); } To my understanding, isn't what he is doing (modifying a matrix on a stack) considered accumulating matrices, since the author combined all the individual rotation transformations into one matrix which is being stored on the top of the stack. My understanding of a matrix is that they are used to take a point which is relative to an origin (let's say... the model), and make it relative to another origin (the camera). I'm pretty sure this is a safe definition, however I feel like there is something missing which is blocking me from understanding this gimbal lock problem. One thing that doesn't make sense to me is: If a matrix determines the difference relative between two "spaces," how come a rotation around the Y axis for, let's say, roll, doesn't put the point in "roll space" which can then be transformed once again in relation to this roll... In other words shouldn't any further transformations to this point be in relation to this new "roll space" and therefore not have the rotation be relative to the previous "model space" which is causing the gimbal lock. That's why gimbal lock occurs right? It's because we are rotating the object around set X, Y, and Z axes rather than rotating the object around it's own, relative axes. Or am I wrong? Since apparently this code I linked in isn't an accumulation of matrix transformations can you please give an example of a solution using this method. So in summary: What is the difference between a rotation and an orientation? Why is the code linked in not an example of accumulation of matrix transformations? What is the real, specific purpose of a matrix, if I had it wrong? How could a solution to the gimbal lock problem be implemented using accumulation of matrix transformations? Also, as a bonus: Why are the transformations after the rotation still relative to "model space?" Another bonus: Am I wrong in the assumption that after a transformation, further transformations will occur relative to the current? Also, if it wasn't implied, I am using OpenGL, GLSL, C++, and GLM, so examples and explanations in terms of these are greatly appreciated, if not necessary. The more the detail the better! Thanks in advance...

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• ADF version of "Modern" dialog windows

  - by Martin Deh

  It is no surprise with the popularity of the i-devices (iphone, ipad), that many of the iOS UI based LnF (look and feel) would start to inspire web designers to incorporate the same LnF into their web sites.  Take for example, a normal dialog popup.  In the iOS world, the LnF becomes a bit more elegant by add just a simple element as a "floating" close button: In this blog post, I will describe how this can be accomplished using OOTB ADF components and CSS3 style elements. There are two ways that this can be achieved.  The easiest way is to simply replace the default image, which looks like this, and adjust the af|panelWindow:close-icon-style skin selector.   Using this simple technique, you can come up with this: The CSS code to produce this effect is pretty straight forward: af|panelWindow.test::close-icon-style{    background-image: url("../popClose.gif");    line-height: 10px;    position: absolute;    right: -10px;    top: -10px;    height:38px;    width:38px;    outline:none; } You can see from the CSS, the position of the region, which holds the image, is relocated based on the position based attributes.  Also, the addition of the "outline" attribute removes the border that is visible in Chrome and IE.  The second example, is based on not having an image to produce the close button.  Like the previous sample, I will use the OOTB panelWindow.  However, this time I will use a OOTB commandButton to replace the image.  The construct of the components looks like this: The commandButton is positioned first in the hierarchy making the re-positioning easier.  The commandButton will also need a style class assigned to it (i.e. closeButton), which will allow for the positioning and the over-riding of the default skin attributes of a default button.  In addition, the closeIconVisible property is set to false, since the default icon is no longer needed.  Once this is done, the rest is in the CSS.  Here is the sample that I created that was used for an actual customer POC: The CSS code for the button: af|commandButton.closeButton, af|commandButton.closeButton af|commandButton:text-only{     line-height: 10px;     position: absolute;     right: -10px;     top: -10px;     -webkit-border-radius: 70px;     -moz-border-radius: 70px;     -ms-border-radius: 70px;     border-radius: 70px;     background-image:none;     border:#828c95 1px solid;     background-color:black;     font-weight: bold;     text-align: center;     text-decoration: none;     color:white;     height:30px;     width:30px;     outline:none; } The CSS uses the border radius to create the round effect on the button (in IE 8, since border-radius is not supported, this will only work with some added code). Also, I add the box-shadow attribute to the panelWindow style class to give it a nice shadowing effect.

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• Unexpected advantage of Engineered Systems

  - by user12244672

  It's not surprising that Engineered Systems accelerate the debugging and resolution of customer issues. But what has surprised me is just how much faster issue resolution is with Engineered Systems such as SPARC SuperCluster. These are powerful, complex, systems used by customers wanting extreme database performance, app performance, and cost saving server consolidation. A SPARC SuperCluster consists or 2 or 4 powerful T4-4 compute nodes, 3 or 6 extreme performance Exadata Storage Cells, a ZFS Storage Appliance 7320 for general purpose storage, and ultra fast Infiniband switches.  Each with its own firmware. It runs Solaris 11, Solaris 10, 11gR2, LDoms virtualization, and Zones virtualization on the T4-4 compute nodes, a modified version of Solaris 11 in the ZFS Storage Appliance, a modified and highly tuned version of Oracle Linux running Exadata software on the Storage Cells, another Linux derivative in the Infiniband switches, etc. It has an Infiniband data network between the components, a 10Gb data network to the outside world, and a 1Gb management network. And customers can run whatever middleware and apps they want on it, clustered in whatever way they want. In one word, powerful.  In another, complex. The system is highly Engineered.  But it's designed to run general purpose applications. That is, the physical components, configuration, cabling, virtualization technologies, switches, firmware, Operating System versions, network protocols, tunables, etc. are all preset for optimum performance and robustness. That improves the customer experience as what the customer runs leverages our technical know-how and best practices and is what we've tested intensely within Oracle. It should also make debugging easier by fixing a large number of variables which would otherwise be in play if a customer or Systems Integrator had assembled such a complex system themselves from the constituent components.  For example, there's myriad network protocols which could be used with Infiniband.  Myriad ways the components could be interconnected, myriad tunable settings, etc. But what has really surprised me - and I've been working in this area for 15 years now - is just how much easier and faster Engineered Systems have made debugging and issue resolution. All those error opportunities for sub-optimal cabling, unusual network protocols, sub-optimal deployment of virtualization technologies, issues with 3rd party storage, issues with 3rd party multi-pathing products, etc., are simply taken out of the equation. All those error opportunities for making an issue unique to a particular set-up, the "why aren't we seeing this on any other system ?" type questions, the doubts, just go away when we or a customer discover an issue on an Engineered System. It enables a really honed response, getting to the root cause much, much faster than would otherwise be the case. Here's a couple of examples from the last month, one found in-house by my team, one found by a customer: Example 1: We found a node eviction issue running 11gR2 with Solaris 11 SRU 12 under extreme load on what we call our ExaLego test system (mimics an Exadata / SuperCluster 11gR2 Exadata Storage Cell set-up).  We quickly established that an enhancement in SRU12 enabled an 11gR2 process to query Infiniband's Subnet Manager, replacing a fallback mechanism it had used previously.  Under abnormally heavy load, the query could return results which were misinterpreted resulting in node eviction.  In several daily joint debugging sessions between the Solaris, Infiniband, and 11gR2 teams, the issue was fully root caused, evaluated, and a fix agreed upon.  That fix went back into all Solaris releases the following Monday.  From initial issue discovery to the fix being put back into all Solaris releases was just 10 days. Example 2: A customer reported sporadic performance degradation.  The reasons were unclear and the information sparse.  The SPARC SuperCluster Engineered Systems support teams which comprises both SPARC/Solaris and Database/Exadata experts worked to root cause the issue.  A number of contributing factors were discovered, including tunable parameters.  An intense collaborative investigation between the engineering teams identified the root cause to a CPU bound networking thread which was being starved of CPU cycles under extreme load.  Workarounds were identified.  Modifications have been put back into 11gR2 to alleviate the issue and a development project already underway within Solaris has been sped up to provide the final resolution on the Solaris side.  The fixed SPARC SuperCluster configuration greatly aided issue reproduction and dramatically sped up root cause analysis, allowing the correct workarounds and fixes to be identified, prioritized, and implemented.  The customer is now extremely happy with performance and robustness.  Since the configuration is common to other customers, the lessons learned are being proactively rolled out to other customers and incorporated into the installation procedures for future customers.  This effectively acts as a turbo-boost to performance and reliability for all SPARC SuperCluster customers.  If this had occurred in a "home grown" system of this complexity, I expect it would have taken at least 6 months to get to the bottom of the issue.  But because it was an Engineered System, known, understood, and qualified by both the Solaris and Database teams, we were able to collaborate closely to identify cause and effect and expedite a solution for the customer.  That is a key advantage of Engineered Systems which should not be underestimated.  Indeed, the initial issue mitigation on the Database side followed by final fix on the Solaris side, highlights the high degree of collaboration and excellent teamwork between the Oracle engineering teams.  It's a compelling advantage of the integrated Oracle Red Stack in general and Engineered Systems in particular.

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• ReSharper C# Live Template for Read-Only Dependency Property and Routed Event Boilerplate

  - by Bart Read

  Following on from my previous post, where I shared a Live Template for quickly declaring a normal read-write dependency property and its associated property change event boilerplate, here's an unsurprisingly similar template for creating a read-only dependency property.        #region $PROPNAME$ Read-Only Property and Property Change Routed Event        private static readonly DependencyPropertyKey $PROPNAME$PropertyKey =                                             DependencyProperty.RegisterReadOnly(             "$PROPNAME$", typeof ( $PROPTYPE$ ), typeof ( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ),             new PropertyMetadata( $DEF_VALUE$ , On$PROPNAME$Changed ) );       public static readonly DependencyProperty $PROPNAME$Property =                                           $PROPNAME$PropertyKey.DependencyProperty;        public $PROPTYPE$ $PROPNAME$         {             get { return ( $PROPTYPE$ ) GetValue( $PROPNAME$Property ); }             private set { SetValue( $PROPNAME$PropertyKey, value ); }         }       public static readonly RoutedEvent $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent   =                                           EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent(           "$PROPNAME$Changed",           RoutingStrategy.$ROUTINGSTRATEGY$,           typeof( RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > ),           typeof( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ) );       public event RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > $PROPNAME$Changed       {           add { AddHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }           remove { RemoveHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }       }        private static void On$PROPNAME$Changed(           DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)         {             var $DECLARING_TYPE_var$ = d as $DECLARING_TYPE$;            var args = new RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs< $PROPTYPE$ >(               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.OldValue,               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.NewValue );           args.RoutedEvent    = $DECLARING_TYPE$.$PROPNAME$ChangedEvent;           $DECLARING_TYPE_var$.RaiseEvent( args );$END$        }        #endregion The only real difference here is the addition of the DependencyPropertyKey, which allows your implementation to set the value of the dependency property without exposing the setter code to consumers of your type. You'll probably find that you create read-only dependency properties much less often than read-write properties, but this should still save you some typing when you do need to do so. Technorati Tags: resharper,live template,c#,dependency property,read-only,routed events,property change,boilerplate,wpf

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• The Enterprise is a Curmudgeon

  - by John K. Hines

  Working in an enterprise environment is a unique challenge.  There's a lot more to software development than developing software.  A project lead or Scrum Master has to manage personalities and intra-team politics, has to manage accomplishing the task at hand while creating the opportunities and a reputation for handling desirable future work, has to create a competent, happy team that actually delivers while being careful not to burn bridges or hurt feelings outside the team.  Which makes me feel surprised to read advice like: " The enterprise should figure out what is likely to work best for itself and try to use it." - Ken Schwaber, The Enterprise and Scrum. The enterprises I have experience with are fundamentally unable to be self-reflective.  It's like asking a Roman gladiator if he'd like to carve out a little space in the arena for some silent meditation.  I'm currently wondering how compatible Scrum is with the top-down hierarchy of life in a large organization.  Specifically, manufacturing-mindset, fixed-release, harmony-valuing large organizations.  Now I understand why Agile can be a better fit for companies without much organizational inertia. Recently I've talked with nearly two dozen software professionals and their managers about Scrum and Agile.  I've become convinced that a developer, team, organization, or enterprise can be Agile without using Scrum.  But I'm not sure about what process would be the best fit, in general, for an enterprise that wants to become Agile.  It's possible I should read more than just the introduction to Ken's book. I do feel prepared to answer some of the questions I had asked in a previous post: How can Agile practices (including but not limited to Scrum) be adopted in situations where the highest-placed managers in a company demand software within extremely aggressive deadlines? Answer: In a very limited capacity at the individual level.  The situation here is that the senior management of this company values any software release more than it values developer well-being, end-user experience, or software quality.  Only if the developing organization is given an immediate refactoring opportunity does this sort of development make sense to a person who values sustainable software.   How can Agile practices be adopted by teams that do not perform a continuous cycle of new development, such as those whose sole purpose is to reproduce and debug customer issues? Answer: It depends.  For Scrum in particular, I don't believe Scrum is meant to manage unpredictable work.  While you can easily adopt XP practices for bug fixing, the project-management aspects of Scrum require some predictability.  My question here was meant toward those who want to apply Scrum to non-development teams.  In some cases it works, in others it does not. How can a team measure if its development efforts are both Agile and employ sound engineering practices? Answer: I'm currently leaning toward measuring these independently.  The Agile Principles are a terrific way to measure if a software team is agile.  Sound engineering practices are those practices which help developers meet the principles.  I think Scrum is being mistakenly applied as an engineering practice when it is essentially a project management practice.  In my opinion, XP and Lean are examples of good engineering practices. How can Agile be explained in an accurate way that describes its benefits to sceptical developers and/or revenue-focused non-developers? Answer: Agile techniques will result in higher-quality, lower-cost software development.  This comes primarily from finding defects earlier in the development cycle.  If there are individual developers who do not want to collaborate, write unit tests, or refactor, then these are simply developers who are either working in an area where adding these techniques will not add value (i.e. they are an expert) or they are a developer who is satisfied with the status quo.  In the first case they should be left alone.  In the second case, the results of Agile should be demonstrated by other developers who are willing to receive recognition for their efforts.  It all comes down to individuals, doesn't it?  If you're working in an organization whose Agile adoption consists exclusively of Scrum, consider ways to form individual Agile teams to demonstrate its benefits.  These can even be virtual teams that span people across org-chart boundaries.  Once you can measure real value, whether it's Scrum, Lean, or something else, people will follow.  Even the curmudgeons.

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

  - by Chris George

  I’d like to give you a bit of background first… so please bear with me! In 1996, whilst studying for my final year of my degree, I applied for a job as a C++ Developer at a small software house in Hertfordshire  After bodging up the technical part of the interview I didn’t get the job, but was offered a position as a QA Engineer instead. The role sounded intriguing and the pay was pretty good so in the absence of anything else I took it. Here began my career in the world of software testing! Back then, testing/QA was often an afterthought, something that was bolted on to the development process and very much a second class citizen. Test automation was rare, and tools were basic or non-existent! The internet was just starting to take off, and whilst there might have been testing communities and resources, we were certainly not exposed to any of them. After 8 years I moved to another small company, and again didn’t find myself exposed to any of the changes that were happening in the industry. It wasn’t until I joined Red Gate in 2008 that my view of testing and software development as a whole started to expand. But it took a further 4 years for my view of testing to be totally blown open, and so the story really begins… In May 2012 I was fortunate to land the role of Head of Test Engineering. Soon after, I received an email with details for the “Agile Testi However, in my new role, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and at least go to one conference. Perhaps I could get some new ideas to supplement and support some of the ideas I already had.ng Days” conference in Potsdam, Germany. I looked over the suggested programme and some of the talks peeked my interest. For numerous reasons I’d shied away from attending conferences in the past, one of the main ones being that I didn’t see much benefit in attending loads of talks when I could just read about stuff like that on the internet. So, on the 18th November 2012, myself and three other Red Gaters boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Potsdam, Germany to attend Agile Testing Days 2012. Tutorial Day – “Software Testing Reloaded” We chose to do the tutorials on the 19th, I chose the one titled “Software Testing Reloaded – So you wanna actually DO something? We’ve got just the workshop for you. Now with even less powerpoint!”. With such a concise and serious title I just had to see what it was about! I nervously entered the room to be greeted by tables, chairs etc all over the place, not set out and frankly in one hell of a mess! There were a few people in there playing a game with dice. Okaaaay… this is going to be a long day! Actually the dice game was an exercise in deduction and simplification… I found it very interesting and is certainly something I’ll be using at work as a training exercise! (I won’t explain the game here cause I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag…) The tutorial consisted of several games, exploring different aspects of testing. They were all practical yet required a fair amount of thin king. Matt Heusser and Pete Walen were running the tutorial, and presented it in a very relaxed and light-hearted manner. It was really my first experience of working in small teams with testers from very different backgrounds, and it was really enjoyable. Matt & Pete were very approachable and offered advice where required whilst still making you work for the answers! One of the tasks was to devise several strategies for testing some electronic dice. The premise was that a Vegas casino wanted to use the dice to appeal to the twenty-somethings interested in tech, but needed assurance that they were as reliable and random as traditional dice. This was a very interesting and challenging exercise that forced us to challenge various assumptions, determine/clarify requirements but most of all it was frustrating because the dice made a very very irritating beeping noise. Multiple that by at least 12 dice and I was dreaming about them all that night!! Some of the main takeaways that were brilliantly demonstrated through the games were not to make assumptions, challenge requirements, and have fun testing! The tutorial lasted the whole day, but to be honest the day went very quickly! My introduction into the conference experience started very well indeed, and I would talk to both Matt and Pete several times during the 4 days. Days 1,2 & 3 will be coming soon…  

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• Top Questions and Answers for Pluging into Oracle Database as a Service

  - by David Swanger

  Yesterday we hosted a comprehensive online forum that shared a comprehensive path to help your organization design, deploy, and deliver a Database as a Service cloud. If you missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand by registering here. We received numerous questions.  Below are highlights of the most informative: DBaaS requires a lengthy and careful design efforts. What is the minimum requirements of setting up a scaled-down environment and test it out? You should have an OEM 12c environment for DBaaS administration and then a target database deployment platform that has the key characteristics of what your production environment will look like. This could be a single server or it could be a small pool of hosts if your production DBaaS will be larger and you want to test a more robust / real world configuration with Zones and Pools or DR capabilities for example. How does this benefit companies having their own data center? This allows companies to transform their internal IT to a service delivery model for the database. The benefits to the company are significant cost savings, improved business agility and reduced risk. The benefits to the consumers (internal) of services if much fast provisioning, and response to change in business requirements. From a deployment perspective, is DBaaS's job solely DBA's job? The best deployment model enables the DBA (or end-user) to control the entire process. All resources required to deploy the service are pre-provisioned, and there are no external dependencies (on network, storage, sysadmins teams). The service is created either via a self-service portal or by the DBA. The purpose of self service seems to be that the end user does not rely on the DBA. I just need to give him a template. He decides how much AMM he needs. Why shall I set it one by one. That doesn't seem to be the purpose of self service. Most customers we have worked with define a standardized service catalog, with a few (2 to 5) different classes of service. For each of these classes, there is a pre-defined deployment template, and the user has the ability to select from some pre-defined service sizes. The administrator only has to create this catalog once. Each user then simply selects from the options offered in the catalog.  Looking at DBaaS service definition, it seems to be no different from a service definition provided by a well defined DBA team. Why do you attribute it to DBaaS? There are a couple of perspectives. First, some organizations might already be operating with a high level of standardization and a higher level of maturity from an ITIL or Service Management perspective. Their journey to DBaaS could be shorter and their Service Definition will evolve less but they still might need to add capabilities such as Self Service and Metering/Chargeback. Other organizations are still operating in highly siloed environments with little automation and their formal Service Definition (if they have one) will be a lot less mature today. Therefore their future state DBaaS will look a lot different from their current state, as will their Service Definition. How database as a service impact or help with "Click to Compute" or deploying "Database in cloud infrastructure" DBaaS enables Click to Compute. Oracle DBaaS can be implemented using three architecture models: Oracle Multitenant 12c, native consolidation using Oracle Database and consolidation using virtualization in infrastructure cloud. As Deploy session showed, you get higher consolidating density and efficiency using Multitenant and higher isolation using infrastructure cloud. Depending upon your business needs, DBaaS can be implemented using any of these models. How exactly is the DBaaS different from the traditional db? Storage/OS/DB all together to 'transparently' provide service to applications? Will there be across-databases access by application/user. Some key differences are: 1) The services run on a shared platform. 2) The services can be rapidly provisioned (< 15 minutes). 3) The services are dynamic and can be relocated, grown, shrunk as needed to meet business needs without disruption and rapidly. 4) The user is able to provision the services directly from a standardized service catalog.. With 24x7x365 databases its difficult to find off peak hrs to do basic admin tasks such as gathering stats, running backups, batch jobs. How does pluggable database handle this and different needs/patching downtime of apps databases might be serving? You can gather stats in Oracle Multitenant the same way you had been in regular databases. Regarding patching/upgrading, Oracle Multitenant makes patch/upgrade very efficient in that you can pre-provision a new version/patched multitenant db in a different ORACLE_HOME and then unplug a PDB from its CDB and plug it into the newer/patched CDB in seconds.  Thanks for all the great questions!  If you'd like to learn more and missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand here.

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• Identity Globe Trotters (Sep Edition): The Social Customer

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the inaugural edition of our monthly series - Identity Globe Trotters. Starting today, the last Friday of every month, we will explore regional commentary on Identity Management. We will invite guest contributors from around the world to share their opinions and experiences around Identity Management and highlight regional nuances, specific drivers, solutions and more. Today's feature is contributed by Michael Krebs, Head of Business Development at esentri consulting GmbH, a (SOA) specialized Oracle Gold Partner based in Ettlingen, Germany. In his current role, Krebs is dealing with the latest developments in Enterprise Social Networking and the Integration of Social Media within business processes.  By Michael Krebs The relevance of "easy sign-on" in the age of the "Social Customer" With the growth of Social Networks, the time people spend within those closed "eco-systems" is growing year by year. With social networks looking to integrate search engines, like Facebook announced some weeks ago, their relevance will continue to grow in contrast to the more conventional search engines. This is one of the reasons why social network accounts of the users are getting more and more like a virtual fingerprint. With the growing relevance of social networks the importance of a simple way for customers to get in touch with say, customer care or contract departments, will be crucial for sales processes in critical markets. Customers want to have one single point of contact and also an easy "login-method" with no dedicated usernames, passwords or proprietary accounts. The golden rule in the future social media driven markets will be: The lower the complexity of the initial contact, the better a company can profit from social networks. If you, for example, can generate a smart way of how an existing customer can use self-service portals, the cost in providing phone support can be lowered significantly. Recruiting and Hiring of "Digital Natives" Another particular example is "social" recruiting processes. The so called "digital natives" don´t want to type in their profile facts and CV´s in proprietary systems. Why not use the actual LinkedIn profile? In German speaking region, the market in the area of professional social networks is dominated by XING, the equivalent to LinkedIn. A few weeks back, this network also opened up their interfaces for integrating social sign-ons or the usage of profile data for recruiting-purposes. In the European (and especially the German) employment market, where the number of young candidates is shrinking because of the low birth rate in the region, it will become essential to use social-media supported hiring processes to find and on-board the rare talents. In fact, you will see traditional recruiting websites integrated with social hiring to attract the best talents in the market, where the pool of potential candidates has decreased dramatically over the years. Identity Management as a key factor in the Customer Experience process To create the biggest value for customers and also future employees, companies need to connect their HCM or CRM-systems with powerful Identity management solutions. With the highly efficient Oracle (social & mobile enabling) Identity Management solution, enterprises can combine easy sign on with secure connections to the backend infrastructure. This combination enables a "one-stop" service with personalized content for customers and talents. In addition, companies can collect valuable data for the enrichment of their CRM-data. The goal is to enrich the so called "Customer Experience" via all available customer channels and contact points. Those systems have already gained importance in the B2C-markets and will gradually spread out to B2B-channels in the near future. Conclusion: Central and "Social" Identity management is key to Customer Experience Management and Talent Management For a seamless delivery of "Customer Experience Management" and a modern way of recruiting the best talent, companies need to integrate Social Sign-on capabilities with modern CX - and Talent management infrastructure. This lowers the barrier for existing and future customers or employees to get in touch with sales, support or human resources. Identity management is the technology enabler and backbone for a modern Customer Experience Infrastructure. Oracle Identity management solutions provide the opportunity to secure Social Applications and connect them with modern CX-solutions. At the end, companies benefit from "best of breed" processes and solutions for enriching customer experience without compromising security. About esentri: esentri is a provider of enterprise social networking and brings the benefits of social network communication into business environments. As one key strength, esentri uses Oracle Identity Management solutions for delivering Social and Mobile access for Oracle’s CRM- and HCM-solutions. …..End Guest Post…. With new and enhanced features optimized to secure the new digital experience, the recently announced Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 enables organizations to securely embrace cloud, mobile and social infrastructures and reach new user communities to help further expand and develop their businesses. Additional Resources: Oracle Identity Management 11gR2 release Oracle Identity Management website Datasheet: Mobile and Social Access (pdf) IDM at OOW: Focus on Identity Management Facebook: OracleIDM Twitter: OracleIDM We look forward to your feedback on this post and welcome your suggestions for topics to cover in Identity Globe Trotters. Last Friday, every month!

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• Airline mess - what a journey

  - by Mike Dietrich

  What a day, what a journey ... Flew this noon from Munich to Zuerich for catch my ongoing flight to San Francisco with Swiss. And that day did start very well as Lufthansa messed up the connection flight by 42 minutes for a 35 minute flight. And as I was obviously the only passenger connection to San Francisco nobody picked me up at the airplane to bring me directly to my connection as Swiss did for the 8 passengers connection to Miami. So I missed my flight. What a start - and many thanks to Lufthansa. I was not the only one missing a connection as Lufthansa/Swiss had canceled the flight before due to "technical problems". In Zuerich Swiss did rebook me via Frankfurt with Lufthansa to board a United Airlines flight to San Francisco. "Ouch" I thought. I had my share of experience with United already as they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco some years ago and it took them five (!!!) days to fly my bag over and deliver it. But actually it was the only option today. So I said "Yes". A big mistake as I've learned later on. The Frankfurt flight was delayed as well "due to a late incoming aircraft". But there was plenty of time. And I went to the Swiss counter at the gate and let them check if my baggage is on that flight to Frankfurt. They've said "Yes". Boarding the plane with a delay of 45 minutes (the typical Lufthansa delay these days) I spotted my Rimowa trolley right next to the plane on the airfield. So I was sure that it will be send to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I went to the United counter once it did open - had to go through the passport check they do for US flights as well - and they've said "Yes, your luggage is with us". Well ... Arriving in San Francisco with just a bit of a some minutes delay and a very fast immigration procedure I saw the first bags with Priority tags getting pushed to the baggage claim - but mine was not there. I did wait ... and wait ... and wait. Well, thanks United, you did it again!!! I flew twice in the past years United Airlines - and in both cases they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco. How lovely is that ... Now the real fun started again as the lady at the "Lost and Found" counter for luggage spotted my luggage in her system in Zuerich - and told me it's supposed to be sent with LH1191 to Frankfurt on Sept 27. But this was yesterday in Europe - it's already Sept 28 - and I saw my luggage in front of the airplane. So I'd suppose it's in Frankfurt already. But what could she do? Nothing but doing the awful paperwork. And "No Mr Dietrich, we don't call international numbers". Thank you, United. Next time I'll try to get a contract for a US land line in advance. They can't even tell you which plane will bring your luggage. It may be tomorrow with UA flight arriving around 4pm in SFO. I'm looking forward to some hours in the wonderful United Airlines call center waiting line. Last time I did spend 60-90 minutes every day until I got my luggage. If it takes again that long then OOW will be over by then. I love airline travel - and especially with United Airlines. And by the way ... they gave us these nice fancy packages during the flight:  That looks good - what's in that box??? Yes, really ... a bag of potato chips. Pure fat - very healthy.  I doubt that I'll ever fly United Airlines again!!!

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• YouTube Scalability Lessons

  - by Bertrand Matthelié

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }h2 { margin: 12pt 0cm 3pt; page-break-after: avoid; font-size: 14pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: italic; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }span.Heading2Char { font-family: Calibri; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Very interesting blog post by Todd Hoff at highscalability.com presenting “7 Years of YouTube Scalability Lessons in 30 min” based on a presentation from Mike Solomon, one of the original engineers at YouTube: …. The key takeaway away of the talk for me was doing a lot with really simple tools. While many teams are moving on to more complex ecosystems, YouTube really does keep it simple. They program primarily in Python, use MySQL as their database, they’ve stuck with Apache, and even new features for such a massive site start as a very simple Python program. That doesn’t mean YouTube doesn’t do cool stuff, they do, but what makes everything work together is more a philosophy or a way of doing things than technological hocus pocus. What made YouTube into one of the world’s largest websites? Read on and see... Stats @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } 4 billion Views a day 60 hours of video is uploaded every minute 350+ million devices are YouTube enabled Revenue double in 2010 The number of videos has gone up 9 orders of magnitude and the number of developers has only gone up two orders of magnitude. 1 million lines of Python code Stack @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Python - most of the lines of code for YouTube are still in Python. Everytime you watch a YouTube video you are executing a bunch of Python code. Apache - when you think you need to get rid of it, you don’t. Apache is a real rockstar technology at YouTube because they keep it simple. Every request goes through Apache. Linux - the benefit of Linux is there’s always a way to get in and see how your system is behaving. No matter how bad your app is behaving, you can take a look at it with Linux tools like strace and tcpdump. MySQL - is used a lot. When you watch a video you are getting data from MySQL. Sometime it’s used a relational database or a blob store. It’s about tuning and making choices about how you organize your data. Vitess- a  new project released by YouTube, written in Go, it’s a frontend to MySQL. It does a lot of optimization on the fly, it rewrites queries and acts as a proxy. Currently it serves every YouTube database request. It’s RPC based. Zookeeper - a distributed lock server. It’s used for configuration. Really interesting piece of technology. Hard to use correctly so read the manual Wiseguy - a CGI servlet container. Spitfire - a templating system. It has an abstract syntax tree that let’s them do transformations to make things go faster. Serialization formats - no matter which one you use, they are all expensive. Measure. Don’t use pickle. Not a good choice. Found protocol buffers slow. They wrote their own BSON implementation, which is 10-15 time faster than the one you can download. ...Contiues. Read the blog Watch the video

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• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

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• Is Data Science “Science”?

  - by BuckWoody

  I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April  2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”.  I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability.  These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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• Thread.Interrupt Is Evil

  - by Alois Kraus

  Recently I have found an interesting issue with Thread.Interrupt during application shutdown. Some application was crashing once a week and we had not really a clue what was the issue. Since it happened not very often it was left as is until we have got some memory dumps during the crash. A memory dump usually means WindDbg which I really like to use (I know I am one of the very few fans of it).  After a quick analysis I did find that the main thread already had exited and the thread with the crash was stuck in a Monitor.Wait. Strange Indeed. Running the application a few thousand times under the debugger would potentially not have shown me what the reason was so I decided to what I call constructive debugging. I did create a simple Console application project and try to simulate the exact circumstances when the crash did happen from the information I have via memory dump and source code reading. The thread that was  crashing was actually MS code from an old version of the Microsoft Caching Application Block. From reading the code I could conclude that the main thread did call the Dispose method on the CacheManger class which did call Thread.Interrupt on the cache scavenger thread which was just waiting for work to do. My first version of the repro looked like this   static void Main(string[] args) { Thread t = new Thread(ThreadFunc) { IsBackground = true, Name = "Test Thread" }; t.Start(); Console.WriteLine("Interrupt Thread"); t.Interrupt(); } static void ThreadFunc() { while (true) { object value = Dequeue(); // block until unblocked or awaken via ThreadInterruptedException } } static object WaitObject = new object(); static object Dequeue() { object lret = "got value"; try { lock (WaitObject) { } } catch (ThreadInterruptedException) { Console.WriteLine("Got ThreadInterruptException"); lret = null; } return lret; } I do start a background thread and call Thread.Interrupt on it and then directly let the application terminate. The thread in the meantime does plenty of Monitor.Enter/Leave calls to simulate work on it. This first version did not crash. So I need to dig deeper. From the memory dump I did know that the finalizer thread was doing just some critical finalizers which were closing file handles. Ok lets add some long running finalizers to the sample. class FinalizableObject : CriticalFinalizerObject { ~FinalizableObject() { Console.WriteLine("Hi we are waiting to finalize now and block the finalizer thread for 5s."); Thread.Sleep(5000); } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { FinalizableObject fin = new FinalizableObject(); Thread t = new Thread(ThreadFunc) { IsBackground = true, Name = "Test Thread" }; t.Start(); Console.WriteLine("Interrupt Thread"); t.Interrupt(); GC.KeepAlive(fin); // prevent finalizing it too early // After leaving main the other thread is woken up via Thread.Abort // while we are finalizing. This causes a stackoverflow in the CLR ThreadAbortException handling at this time. } With this changed Main method and a blocking critical finalizer I did get my crash just like the real application. The funny thing is that this is actually a CLR bug. When the main method is left the CLR does suspend all threads except the finalizer thread and declares all objects as garbage. After the normal finalizers were called the critical finalizers are executed to e.g. free OS handles (usually). Remember that I did call Thread.Interrupt as one of the last methods in the Main method. The Interrupt method is actually asynchronous and does wake a thread up and throws a ThreadInterruptedException only once unlike Thread.Abort which does rethrow the exception when an exception handling clause is left. It seems that the CLR does not expect that a frozen thread does wake up again while the critical finalizers are executed. While trying to raise a ThreadInterrupedException the CLR goes down with an stack overflow. Ups not so nice. Why has this nobody noticed for years is my next question. As it turned out this error does only happen on the CLR for .NET 4.0 (x86 and x64). It does not show up in earlier or later versions of the CLR. I have reported this issue on connect here but so far it was not confirmed as a CLR bug. But I would be surprised if my console application was to blame for a stack overflow in my test thread in a Monitor.Wait call. What is the moral of this story? Thread.Abort is evil but Thread.Interrupt is too. It is so evil that even the CLR of .NET 4.0 contains a race condition during the CLR shutdown. When the CLR gurus can get it wrong the chances are high that you get it wrong too when you use this constructs. If you do not believe me see what Patrick Smacchia does blog about Thread.Abort and List.Sort. Not only the CLR creators can get it wrong. The BCL writers do sometimes have a hard time with correct exception handling as well. If you do tell me that you use Thread.Abort frequently and never had problems with it I do suspect that you do not have looked deep enough into your application to find such sporadic errors.

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