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• Slow wifi on Ubuntu 12.04 wifi driver ath9k

  - by lunar

  For the last couple of days my wifi connection is extremely slow. I am pretty sure that it is caused by the driver. Can this be improved? lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"MyWiFi" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:68:FE:7B:C7 Bit Rate=58.5 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=48/70 Signal level=-62 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:6960 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions. sudo lshw -class network *-network description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: 74:f0:6d:34:c2:4e width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.2.0-31-generic-pae firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.2 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:17 memory:d7400000-d740ffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: 48:4b:38:78:f6:ae capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.0-NAPI firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:51 memory:d3800000-d383ffff ioport:8000(size=128) lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1bb Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0b05:1788 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 18) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 18) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 06) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 425M] (rev a1) 03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) 04:00.0 USB controller: Fresco Logic Device 1400 (rev 01) 06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0) ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 05) ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 05) ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 05) ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 05) ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05) ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05) rfkill list all 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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• glsl shader to allow color change of skydome ogre3d

  - by Tim

  I'm still very new to all this but learning a lot. I'm putting together an application using Ogre3d as the rendering engine. So far I've got it running, with a simple scene, a day/night cycle system which is working okay. I'm now moving on to looking at changing the color of the skydome material based on the time of day. What I've done so far is to create a struct to hold the ColourValues for the different aspects of the scene. struct todColors { Ogre::ColourValue sky; Ogre::ColourValue ambient; Ogre::ColourValue sun; }; I created an array to store all the colours todColors sceneColours [4]; I populated the array with the colours I want to use for the various times of the day. For instance DayTime (when the sun is high in the sky) sceneColours[2].sky = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].ambient = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].sun = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); I've got code to work out the time of the day using a float currentHours to store the current hour of the day 10.5 = 10:30 am. This updates constantly and updates the sun as required. I am then calculating the appropriate colours for the time of day when relevant using else if( currentHour >= 4 && currentHour < 7) { // Lerp from night to morning Ogre::ColourValue lerp = Ogre::Math::lerp<Ogre::ColourValue, float>(sceneColours[GT_TOD_NIGHT].sky , sceneColours[GT_TOD_MORNING].sky, (currentHour - 4) / (7 - 4)); } My original attempt to get this to work was to dynamically generate a material with the new colour and apply that material to the skydome. This, as you can probably guess... didn't go well. I know it's possible to use shaders where you can pass information such as colour to the shader from the code but I am unsure if there is an existing simple shader to change a colour like this or if I need to create one. What is involved in creating a shader and material definition that would allow me to change the colour of a material without the overheads of dynamically generating materials all the time? EDIT : I've created a glsl vertex and fragment shaders as follows. Vertex uniform vec4 newColor; void main() { gl_FrontColor = newColor; gl_Position = ftransform(); } Fragment void main() { gl_FragColor = gl_Color; } I can pass a colour to it using ShaderDesigner and it seems to work. I now need to investigate how to use it within Ogre as a material. EDIT : I created a material file like this : vertex_program colour_vs_test glsl { source test.vert default_params { param_named newColor float4 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 } } fragment_program colour_fs_glsl glsl { source test.frag } material Test/SkyColor { technique { pass { lighting off fragment_program_ref colour_fs_glsl { } vertex_program_ref colour_vs_test { } } } } In the code I have tried : Ogre::MaterialPtr material = Ogre::MaterialManager::getSingleton().getByName("Test/SkyColor"); Ogre::GpuProgramParametersSharedPtr params = material->getTechnique(0)->getPass(0)->getVertexProgramParameters(); params->setNamedConstant("newcolor", Ogre::Vector4(0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 1)); I've set that as the Skydome material which seems to work initially. I am doing the same with the code that is attempting to lerp between colours, but when I include it there, it all goes black. Seems like there is now a problem with my colour lerping.

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• How Exactly Is One Linux OS “Based On” Another Linux OS?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When reviewing different flavors of Linux, you’ll frequently come across phrases like “Ubuntu is based on Debian” but what exactly does that mean? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader PLPiper is trying to get a handle on how Linux variants work: I’ve been looking through quite a number of Linux distros recently to get an idea of what’s around, and one phrase that keeps coming up is that “[this OS] is based on [another OS]“. For example: Fedora is based on Red Hat Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu For someone coming from a Mac environment I understand how “OS X is based on Darwin”, however when I look at Linux Distros, I find myself asking “Aren’t they all based on Linux..?” In this context, what exactly does it mean for one Linux OS to be based on another Linux OS? So, what exactly does it mean when we talk about one version of Linux being based off another version? The Answer SuperUser contributor kostix offers a solid overview of the whole system: Linux is a kernel — a (complex) piece of software which works with the hardware and exports a certain Application Programming Interface (API), and binary conventions on how to precisely use it (Application Binary Interface, ABI) available to the “user-space” applications. Debian, RedHat and others are operating systems — complete software environments which consist of the kernel and a set of user-space programs which make the computer useful as they perform sensible tasks (sending/receiving mail, allowing you to browse the Internet, driving a robot etc). Now each such OS, while providing mostly the same software (there are not so many free mail server programs or Internet browsers or desktop environments, for example) differ in approaches to do this and also in their stated goals and release cycles. Quite typically these OSes are called “distributions”. This is, IMO, a somewhat wrong term stemming from the fact you’re technically able to build all the required software by hand and install it on a target machine, so these OSes distribute the packaged software so you either don’t need to build it (Debian, RedHat) or they facilitate such building (Gentoo). They also usually provide an installer which helps to install the OS onto a target machine. Making and supporting an OS is a very complicated task requiring a complex and intricate infrastructure (upload queues, build servers, a bug tracker, and archive servers, mailing list software etc etc etc) and staff. This obviously raises a high barrier for creating a new, from-scratch OS. For instance, Debian provides ca. 37k packages for some five hardware architectures — go figure how much work is put into supporting this stuff. Still, if someone thinks they need to create a new OS for whatever reason, it may be a good idea to use an existing foundation to build on. And this is exactly where OSes based on other OSes come into existence. For instance, Ubuntu builds upon Debian by just importing most packages from it and repackaging only a small subset of them, plus packaging their own, providing their own artwork, default settings, documentation etc. Note that there are variations to this “based on” thing. For instance, Debian fosters the creation of “pure blends” of itself: distributions which use Debian rather directly, and just add a bunch of packages and other stuff only useful for rather small groups of users such as those working in education or medicine or music industry etc. Another twist is that not all these OSes are based on Linux. For instance, Debian also provide FreeBSD and Hurd kernels. They have quite tiny user groups but anyway. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• SQL SERVER – #TechEdIn – Presenting Tomorrow on SQL Server Misconception and Resolution with Vinod Kumar at TechEd India 2012

  - by pinaldave

  I am excited AND nervous at the same time. I am going to present a very interesting topic tomorrow at an SQL Server track in India. This will be my fourth time presenting at TechEd India. So far, I have received so much feedback about this one session. It seems like every single person out there has their own wishes and requests. I am sure that it is going to very challenging experience to satisfy everyone who attends the event through my presentation. Surprise Element Here is the good news: I am going to co-present this session with Vinod Kumar, my long time friend and co-worker. We have known each other for almost four years now, but this is the very first time that we are going to present together on the big stage of TechEd.  When there are more than two presenters, the usual trick is to practice the session multiple times and know exactly what each other is going to present and talk about. However, there’s a catch – we decided to make it different this time and have shared nothing to each other regarding what exactly we are going to present. This makes everything extremely interesting as each of us will be as clueless as the audience when other person is going to talk. Action Item Here are a few of the action items for all of those who are going to attend this session. Vinod and I will be present at the venue 15 minutes before the session. Do come in early and talk with us. We would be glad to talk with you and see if either of us can accommodate your suggestion in our session. If we do, we will give a surprise gift for you. As discussed, this session is going to be a unique two-presenter session. You will have chance to take a side with one speaker and stump the other speaker. Come early to decide which speaker you want to cheer during the session. Quiz and Goodies By now, you must have figured out that this session is going to be an extremely interactive session. We need your support through your active participation. We will have some really brain-twisting quiz line up just for you. You will have to take part and win surprises from us! Trust me. If you get it right, we will give you something which can help you learn more! We will have a quiz on Twitter as well. We will ask a question in person and you will be able to participate on Twitter. 10 – Demos As I said, both of us do not know what each other is going to present, but there are few things which we know very well. We have 10 demos and 6 slides. I think this is going to be an exciting demo marathon. Trust me, you will love it and the taste of this session will be in your mouth till the next TechEd. Session Details Title: SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective (Add to Calendar) Abstract: “The earth is flat”! – An ancient common misconception, which has been proven incorrect as we progressed in modern times. In this session, we will see various database misconceptions prevailing and their resolutions with the aid of the demos. In this unique session, the audience will be a part of the conversation and resolution. Date and Time: March 21, 2012, 15:15 to 16:15 Location: Hotel Lalit Ashok - Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru – 560001, Karnataka, India. Add to Calendar Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• FFmpeg Video Hosting for Linux and Windows Server

  - by Aditi

  FFmpeg hosting is a special type of web hosting where the host servers have video transcoding software loaded on them, which allows the automatic conversion of videos from one format to another. FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution for recording, converting, transcoding and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec – the leading audio/video codec library. FFmpeg hosting gets its name from a set of server side programs (modules) called FFmpeg. There are a number of applications or web scripts available, which allow webmasters to create their own video sharing websites. Video hosting typically requires: PHP 4.3 and above (including support of CLI) Mencoder and also Mplayer FFMpeg-PHP MySQL database server LAME MP3 Encoder Libogg + Libvorbis GD Library 2 or higher CGI-BIN There are number of web service providers who provide FFmpeg hosting service. Following is a list of some of the Best FFmpeg hosting providers for both Linux and Windows Server below. Dream Host Dreamhost provides for web based email access, mail filtering, spam filtering, unlimited email ids, vacation autoresponder, python support, full CGI access and many more services. Price: $7.95 View Details Micfo It offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Other services include free domain for life and free Website Transfer with many more services. All in all one of the best option to consider. Price: $5 View Details Host Upon HostUpon offers FFMpeg Hosting on all their hosting packages, with readily installed modules to start a Video website or Social Network with Video uploading. These scripts such as Boonex Dolphin / PHPMotion / Social Engine / ABKsoft Scripts / Joomla Video Plugin / Clipshare / ClipBucket / Social Media / Rayzz / Vidi Script work with their ffmpeg. Their FFMPEG hosting plan offers 24/7/365 support with typical response time of 15min or less. Price: $5.95 View Details DownTown Host DownTown Host provides full and exceptional support by live chat and telephone. It has high-power, modern servers and the finest web server technology. It offers free search engine Submission and continuous data backup protection with free email forwarding and site move. There are many more services too. Site5 This ffmpeg service provider offers uptime guarantee, a real time stats on each server and many more attractive services. Price: $4.95 View Details Cirtex Hosting Cirtex Hosting allows to host 7 websites & domains and provides for unlimited storage space and monthly bandwidth. It also offers FTP and email accounts and many more services. Price: $2.49 View Details FLV Hosting FLV hosting supplies RTMP SERVER STREAMING for large size video streaming and server side recording. It is flexible and costs less. They customize to the clients requirements. Price: $9.95 View Details AptHost This hosting service provides for 24x7x365 Premium Support and fully ffmpeg enabled services. Price: $4.95 View Details HostMDS Great Support, Priced Low. It provides for SSH access, CGI, Ruby on Rails, Perl, PHP, MySQL, front page extentions, 24/7 Support, FREE Domain transfer and spam filtering. It offers instant account setup, low latency fast bandwidth & much more! They were formerly known as Vistapages. Price: $4.95 View Details Related posts:Best WordPress Video Themes for a Video Blog Free Web Based Applications 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

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• A temporary disagreement

  - by Tony Davis

  Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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• OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam

  - by JuergenKress

  OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam This September during Oracle OpenWorld 2013 the weather in San Francisco, as you see can from the photo, was exceptionally sunny. The dramatic final few days of the Americas Cup sailing competition, being held every day in the bay, coincided with the conference and meant that there was almost a holiday feel to the whole event. Here's my annual round-up of what I think was most interesting at OpenWorld 2013 for Fusion Middleware architects and administrators; I hope you find it useful and if you think I've missed something please add a comment! WebLogic and Cloud Application Foundation (CAF) The big WebLogic release of the year has already happened a few months ago with 12.1.2 so I won't duplicate that here. Will Lyons discussed the WebLogic and Coherence roadmap which essentially is that 12.1.3 will probably be released to coincide with SOA 12c next year and that 12.1.4, the next feature-rich WebLogic release, is more likely to be in 2015. This latter release will probably include full Java EE 7 support, have enhancements for multi-tenancy and further auto-scaling features to support increased density (i.e. more WebLogic usage for the same amount of hardware). There's a new Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (OVAB) out already and an Oracle Traffic Director (OTD) 12c release round the corner too. Also of relevance to administrators is that Oracle has increased the support lifetime for Fusion Middleware 11g (e.g. WebLogic 10.3.6) so that Premier Support will now run to the end of 2018 and Extended Support until 2021 - this should remove any Oracle-driven pressure to upgrade at least. Java Mission Control Java Mission Control (JMC) is the HotSpot Java 7 version of JRockit 6 Mission Control, a very nice performance monitoring tool from Oracle's BEA acquisition. Flight Recorder is a feature built into the JVM which records diagnostic events into, typically, a circular buffer which can then be used for historical analysis, particularly in the case of a JVM crash or hang. It's been available separately for WebLogic only for perhaps a year now but, more significantly, it now includes JVM events and was bundled in with JDK7 Update 40 a few weeks ago. I attended a couple of interesting Java One sessions on JMC/Flight Recorder and have to say it's looking really good - it has all the previous JRMC features except for memory leak detector, plus some enhancements around operative sets and ECID filtering I think. Marcus also showed how you could add your own events into flight recorder by building your own event class - they are then available for graphing alongside all the other events in JMC. This uses a currently an unsupported/undocumented API, but it's also the same one that WebLogic uses for WLDF events so I imagine it is stable. I'm not sure quite whether this would be useful to custom applications, as opposed to infrastructure services or ISV packaged applications, but it was a very nice demonstration. I've been testing JMC / FR enabling on several environments recently and my confidence is growing - it feels robust and I think could very soon be part of my standard builds. Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: OOW,Simon Haslam,Oracle OpenWorld,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

  - by Mike Stiles

  The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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• Customizing Spaces UI

  - by vijaykumar.yenne

  In most common scenarios we stumble up on use cases to customize the Web center spaces UI. Is the Spaces UI customizable? What is the extent to which we can customize? How do i customize it? These are some questions that developers/architects normally come across. Well to clear the air, OOTB spaces comes with some default "site templates" and it also gives a flexibility to create custom site templates suiting the organization needs. The site templates concept has been introduced in the latest PS1 release of webcenter and to customize/create the the new site template, we have to leverage the Extend Spaces Project available on OTN. You could download the the project from here. Also there is white paper available on what all can be customized/extended from spaces perspective listed here . There is a specific details outlined on how to create custom site template in the Customizing Site Template white paper. One of the things the white paper high lights is "While you can create new site templates and modify the sample site templates but you cannot modify either of the out-of-the-box site templates ie the default and maximized. So if my need is to either increase the size of header to fit in a bigger logo or introduce couple of extra links on the default/maximized lay out how do i achieve this? All you need to do is customize the OOTB shell (shell-config.xml). 1. Copy the shell config's available in the Source Files Directory of the extended spaces unzipped directory into the CustomSite Template Project ExtendWebCenterSpaces\CustomSiteTemplate\custom\oracle\webcenter\webcenterapp\metadata\shell 2. Modify the appropriate shell 3. Deploy the CustomSite Template as ADF Jar 4. ensure you have the profile dependency on the aboproject int he custom webcenter spaces project 5. Deploy the Spaces Extension on the Webcenter Spaces Instance. (Details in the first white paper). You should see the changes immediately. eg: In the default shell, i have changed the height from 30 to 60 to increase the header size height="60" This is what i get to see : If you have worked on the R1 release time frame, where you created a custom shell/chrome, how do we make them compatible and make it available in the Spaces PS1 instance? All you need to do is the following: 1. Copy the custom shell in to the shell directory of the custom site template project 2. Register the shell with WCSiteTemplates.xml available in the same project. Eg : Yo can add the below entry pagePath="/oracle/webcenter/webcenterapp/view/templates/MyShellTemplate.jspx" pageDefPath="/oracle/webcenter/webcenterapp/bindings/pageDefs/oracle_webcenter_webcenterapp_view_templates_WebCenterAppShellTemplatePageDef.xml" displayName="myShell" chromeLevel="myShell"/ Note : pagePath - Absolute path of the template JSPX file. This path must be unique. So you might have to do the following to get your custom chrome working absolutely fine with no problems at all: 1. Create a jspx page, say /custom/mysite/SiteTemplate.jspx 2. Include the the default jspx in the new site template like following SiteTemplate.jspx ------------------ 3. Add the newly created site template in the WCSiteTemplate.xml file like following - pagePath="/custom/mysite/SiteTemplate.jspx" pageDefPath="/oracle/webcenter/webcenterapp/bindings/pageDefs/oracle_webcenter_webcenterapp_view_templates_WebCenterAppShellTemplatePageDef.xml" displayName="myShell" chromeLevel="myShell"/

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• Q&A: Oracle's Paul Needham on How to Defend Against Insider Attacks

  - by Troy Kitch

  Source: Database Insider Newsletter: The threat from insider attacks continues to grow. In fact, just since January 1, 2014, insider breaches have been reported by a major consumer bank, a major healthcare organization, and a range of state and local agencies, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.  We asked Paul Needham, Oracle senior director, product management, to shed light on the nature of these pernicious risks—and how organizations can best defend themselves against the threat from insider risks. Q. First, can you please define the term "insider" in this context? A. According to the CERT Insider Threat Center, a malicious insider is a current or former employee, contractor, or business partner who "has or had authorized access to an organization's network, system, or data and intentionally exceeded or misused that access in a manner that negatively affected the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the organization's information or information systems."  Q. What has changed with regard to insider risks? A. We are actually seeing the risk of privileged insiders growing. In the latest Independent Oracle Users Group Data Security Survey, the number of organizations that had not taken steps to prevent privileged user access to sensitive information had grown from 37 percent to 42 percent. Additionally, 63 percent of respondents say that insider attacks represent a medium-to-high risk—higher than any other category except human error (by an insider, I might add). Q. What are the dangers of this type of risk? A. Insiders tend to have special insight and access into the kinds of data that are especially sensitive. Breaches can result in long-term legal issues and financial penalties. They can also damage an organization's brand in a way that directly impacts its bottom line. Finally, there is the potential loss of intellectual property, which can have serious long-term consequences because of the loss of market advantage.  Q. How can organizations protect themselves against abuse of privileged access? A. Every organization has privileged users and that will always be the case. The questions are how much access should those users have to application data stored in the database, and how can that default access be controlled? Oracle Database Vault (See image) was designed specifically for this purpose and helps protect application data against unauthorized access.  Oracle Database Vault can be used to block default privileged user access from inside the database, as well as increase security controls on the application itself. Attacks can and do come from inside the organization, and they are just as likely to come from outside as attempts to exploit a privileged account.  Using Oracle Database Vault protection, boundaries can be placed around database schemas, objects, and roles, preventing privileged account access from being exploited by hackers and insiders.  A new Oracle Database Vault capability called privilege analysis identifies privileges and roles used at runtime, which can then be audited or revoked by the security administrators to reduce the attack surface and increase the security of applications overall.  For a more comprehensive look at controlling data access and restricting privileged data in Oracle Database, download Needham's new e-book, Securing Oracle Database 12c: A Technical Primer. 

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• STOP PRESS: FY15 Q1 Oracle ZS3 Contest for Partners

  - by Cinzia Mascanzoni

  04 JUNE 2014 Oracle EMEA Partners Stop Press Stay Connected Oracle Media Network   OPN on PartnerCast   STOP PRESS: FY15 Q1 Oracle ZS3 Contest for PartnersShare an unforgettable experience at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan Dear valued Partner, We are pleased to launch a partner contest exclusive to our partners dedicated to promoting and selling Oracle Systems! You are essential to the success of Oracle and we want to recognize your contribution and effort in driving Oracle Storage to the market. To show our appreciation we are delighted to announce a contest, giving the winners the opportunity to attend a roundtable chaired by Senior Oracle Executives and spend an unforgettable evening at the magnificent Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, followed by a stay at the Grand Hotel et de Milan, courtesy of Oracle. Recognition will be given to 12 partner companies (10 VARs & 2 VADs) who will be recognized for their ZFS storage booking achievement in the broad market between June 1st and July 18th 2014. Criteria of Eligibility A minimum deal value of $30k is required for qualification Partners who are wholly or partially owned by a public sector organization are not eligible for participation Winners The winning VARs will be: The highest ZS3 or ZBA bookings achievers by COB on July 18th, 2014 in each Oracle EMEA region (1) The highest Oracle on Oracle (2) ZS3 or ZBA bookings achievers by COB on July 18th, 2014 in each Oracle EMEA region The winning VADs (3) will be: The highest ZS3 or ZBA bookings achiever by COB on July 18th 2014 in EMEA The highest Oracle on Oracle (2) ZS3 or ZBA bookings achiever by COB on July 18th 2014 in EMEA (1) Two VAR winners for each EMEA region – Eastern Europe & CIS, Middle East & Africa, South Europe, North Europe, UK/Ireland & Israel - as per the criteria outlined above(2) Oracle on Oracle, in this instance, means ZS3 or ZBA storage attached to DB or DB options, Engineered Systems or Sparc servers sold to the same customer by the same partner within the contest timelines.(3) Two VAD winners, one for each of the criteria outlined above, will be selected from across EMEA. Oracle shall be the final arbiter in selecting the winners. All winners will be notified via their Oracle account manager. Full details about the contest, expenses covered by Oracle and timetable of events can be found on the Oracle EMEA Hardware (Servers & Storage) Partner Community workspace (FY15 Q1 ZFS Partner Contest). Access to the community workspace requires membership. If you are not a member please register here. The Prize Winners will be invited to participate to a roundtable chaired by Oracle on Monday September 8th 2014 in Milan and to be guests of Oracle in the evening of September 8th, 2014 at the Teatro Alla Scala. The evening will comprise of a private tour of the Scala museum, cocktail reception at the elegant museum rooms and attending the performance by the renowned Soprano, Maria Agresta. Our guests will then retire for the evening to the Grand Hotel et de Milan, courtesy of Oracle. Good Luck!! For more information, please contact Sasan Moaveni. Regards, Olivier TordoSenior Director - Systems Business DevelopmentOracle EMEA Alliances & Channels Resources EMEA Hardware Partner Community EMEA Oracle Partner Days Find Partner Events EMEA Partner News Blog EMEA Partner Enablement Blog Oracle PartnerNetwork Copyright © 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates.All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement

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• Exception Handling Frequency/Log Detail

  - by Cyborgx37

  I am working on a fairly complex .NET application that interacts with another application. Many single-line statements are possible culprits for throwing an Exception and there is often nothing I can do to check the state before executing them to prevent these Exceptions. The question is, based on best practices and seasoned experience, how frequently should I lace my code with try/catch blocks? I've listed three examples below, but I'm open to any advice. I'm really hoping to get some pros/cons of various approaches. I can certainly come up with some of my own (greater log granularity for the O-C approach, better performance for the Monolithic approach), so I'm looking for experience over opinion. EDIT: I should add that this application is a batch program. The only "recovery" necessary in most cases is to log the error, clean up gracefully, and quit. So this could be seen to be as much a question of log granularity as exception handling. In my mind's eye I can imagine good reasons for both, so I'm looking for some general advice to help me find an appropriate balance. Monolitich Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } public static void Step2(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } public static void Step3(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } } Delegated Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Obsessive-Compulsive Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Other approaches welcomed and encouraged. Above are examples only.

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• concurrency::accelerator_view

  - by Daniel Moth

  Overview We saw previously that accelerator represents a target for our C++ AMP computation or memory allocation and that there is a notion of a default accelerator. We ended that post by introducing how one can obtain accelerator_view objects from an accelerator object through the accelerator class's default_view property and the create_view method. The accelerator_view objects can be thought of as handles to an accelerator. You can also construct an accelerator_view given another accelerator_view (through the copy constructor or the assignment operator overload). Speaking of operator overloading, you can also compare (for equality and inequality) two accelerator_view objects between them to determine if they refer to the same underlying accelerator. We'll see later that when we use concurrency::array objects, the allocation of data takes place on an accelerator at array construction time, so there is a constructor overload that accepts an accelerator_view object. We'll also see later that a new concurrency::parallel_for_each function overload can take an accelerator_view object, so it knows on what target to execute the computation (represented by a lambda that the parallel_for_each also accepts). Beyond normal usage, accelerator_view is a quality of service concept that offers isolation to multiple "consumers" of an accelerator. If in your code you are accessing the accelerator from multiple threads (or, in general, from different parts of your app), then you'll want to create separate accelerator_view objects for each thread. flush, wait, and queuing_mode When you create an accelerator_view via the create_view method of the accelerator, you pass in an option of immediate or deferred, which are the two members of the queuing_mode enum. At any point you can access this value from the queuing_mode property of the accelerator_view. When the queuing_mode value is immediate (which is the default), any commands sent to the device such as kernel invocations and data transfers (e.g. parallel_for_each and copy, as we'll see in future posts), will get submitted as soon as the runtime sees fit (that is the definition of immediate). When the value of queuing_mode is deferred, the commands will be batched up. To send all buffered commands to the device for execution, there is a non-blocking flush method that you can call. If you wish to block until all the commands have been sent, there is a wait method you can call. Deferring is a more advanced scenario aimed at performance gains when you are submitting many device commands and you want to avoid the tiny overhead of flushing/submitting each command separately. Querying information Just like accelerator, accelerator_view exposes the is_debug and version properties. In fact, you can always access the accelerator object from the accelerator property on the accelerator_view class to access the accelerator interface we looked at previously. Interop with D3D (aka DX) In a later post I'll show an example of an app that uses C++ AMP to compute data that is used in pixel shaders. In those scenarios, you can benefit by integrating C++ AMP into your graphics pipeline and one of the building blocks for that is being able to use the same device context from both the compute kernel and the other shaders. You can do that by going from accelerator_view to device context (and vice versa), through part of our interop API in amp.h: *get_device, create_accelerator_view. More on those in a later post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• What I've Gained from being a Presenter at Tech Events

  - by MOSSLover

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MOSSLover/archive/2014/06/12/what-ive-gained-from-being-a-presenter-at-tech-events.aspxI know I fail at blogging lately.  As I've said before life happens and it gets in the way of best laid out plans.  I thought about creating some type of watch with some app that basically dictates using dragon naturally speaking to Wordpress, but alas no time and the write processing capabilities just don't exist yet.So to get to my point Alison Gianotto created this blog post: http://www.snipe.net/2014/06/why-you-should-stop-stalling-and-start-presenting/.  I like the message she has stated in this post and I want to share something personal.It was around 2007 that I was seriously looking into leaving the technology field altogether and going back to school.  I was calling places like Washington University in Saint Louis and University of Missouri Kansas City asking them how I could go about getting into some type of post graduate medical school program.  My entire high school career was based on Medical Explorers and somehow becoming a doctor.  I did not want to take my hobby and continue using it as a career mechanism.  I was unhappy, but I didn't realize why I was unhappy at the time.  It was really a lot of bad things involving the lack of self confidence and self esteem.  Overall I was not in a good place and it took me until 2011 to realize that I still was not in a good place in life.So in about April 2007 or so I started this blog that you guys have been reading or occasionally read.  I kind of started passively stalking people by reading their blogs in the SharePoint and .Net communities.  I also started listening to .Net Rocks & watching videos on their corresponding training for SharePoint, WCF, WF, and a bunch of other technologies.  I wanted more knowledge, so someone suggested I go to a user group.  I've told this story before about how I met Jeff Julian & John Alexander, so that point I will spare you the details.  You know how I got to my first user group presentation and how I started getting involved with events, so I'll also spare those details.The point I want to touch on is that I went out I started speaking and that path I took helped me gain the self confidence and self respect I needed.  When I first moved to NYC I couldn't even ride a subway by myself or walk alone without getting lost.  Now I feel like I can go out and solve any problem someone throws at me.  So you see what Alison states in her blog post is true and I am a great example to that point.  I stood in front of 800 or so people at SharePoint Conference in 2011 and spoke about a topic.  In 2007 I would have hidden or stuttered the entire time.  I have now spoken at over 70 events and user groups.  I am a top 25 influencer in my technology.  I was a most valued professional for years in a row in Microsoft SharePoint.  People are constantly trying to gain my time, so that they can pick my brain for solutions and other life problems.  I went from maybe five or six friends to over hundreds of friends in various cities across the globe.  I'm not saying it's an instant fame and it doesn't take a ton of work, but I have never looked back once at my life and regretted the choice I made in 2007.  It has lead me to a lot of other things in my life, including more positivity and happiness.  If anyone ever wants to contact me and pick my brain on a presentation go ahead.  If you want me to help you find the best meetup that suits you for that presentation I can try to help too (I might be a little more helpful in the Microsoft or iOS arenas though).  The best thing I can state is don't be scared just do it.  If you need an audience I can try to pencil it in my schedule.  I can't promise anything, but if you are in NYC I can at least try.

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• SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at another IO-related wait type. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task is waiting for I/Os to finish. ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. If by any means your application that’s connected to SQL Server is processing the data very slowly, this type of wait can occur. Several long-running database operations like BACKUP, CREATE DATABASE, ALTER DATABASE or other operations can also create this wait type. Reducing ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue related to IO, one should check for the following things associated to IO subsystem: Look at the programming and see if there is any application code which processes the data slowly (like inefficient loop, etc.). Note that it should be re-written to avoid this  wait type. Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of the files – LDF and MDF on separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk), etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is a higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly and so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on the development setup (test environment). As soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very likely to happen that there are no proper indexes on the system and yet there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the following two articles I wrote that talk about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• The Oscar of Java Programming

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Why bother nominating a peer, yourself or your company for a Duke's Choice Award? I asked Duke's Choice Award winner Fabiane Nardon, whose team won in 2005 for the Healthcare Information System they created for the Brazilian government, what it was like winning the award and if it had any impact on her career. Here's what she told me: 1) What was it like to win a Duke's Choice Award? For me it was like winning an Oscar or a Grammy :-) I think that for a Java developer, a Duke's Choice Award is probably the highest award you can get, so it was really an honor. We had an amazing team working on that project and the team really deserved it. We were all very happy when we got that email with the announcement. That moment was one of the most important moments of my career. 2) What benefits have you gotten from being a "Duke's Choice Award Winner?" I think the most important benefit you get from winning a Duke is the fact that you become known by your peers. This opens many doors, since you are approached by more people, get invitations to speak in more conferences, you meet people with the same technical interests you have and so on. I certainly benefited a lot from it. We were lucky that in 2005, when we got our award, the winners were featured in the JavaOne keynote, with short documentaries produced about each one. So, we could be on the stage and talk a little about the project. We got lots of press at the time. We see  today's winners benefiting a lot from the press coverage. 3) How is the the Brazilian Healthcare Information System project doing today? Still running and getting new features every year. I'm not involved on the project anymore, but there are good people taking care of it. We opened the code since the beginning, so different cities could use and add features to it. There are many new developers working on that code base right now and I hope they can take the whole system to a new level. 4) What are you up to these days? I worked in the healthcare field for many years and a few years ago I decided that it was time to move on and take the experience I got designing large scale and mission critical systems to other fields. Since then I have been working with high access internet applications. I also co-founded ToolsCloud, a company that provides a development environment with open source tools in the cloud. We just launched ToolsCloud in USA, so other companies can get the same bundle of tools, hassle free, that several companies are successfully using in Brazil. Besides that, right now I'm personally working on the coolest project I ever worked on. It combines several technical challenges with a good dose of social impact. We should launch it in the second semester and I should keep it as a secret for now. Hopefully it will be useful to many people and disruptive enough to maybe get us a new Duke's Choice Award. Who knows? Read more about Fabiane in the "Heroes of Java" series by Markus Eisele. Her Twitter handle is @FabianeNardon. The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the best in Java innovation. Nominate via the easy online form at www.Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until June 15, 2012.

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• BizTalk 2009 - BizTalk Benchmark Wizard: Running a Test

  - by StuartBrierley

  The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard is a ultility that can be used to gain some validation of a BizTalk installation, giving a level of guidance on whether it is performing as might be expected.  It should be used after BizTalk Server has been installed and before any solutions are deployed to the environment.  This will ensure that you are getting consistent and clean results from the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard. The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard applies load to the BizTalk Server environment under a choice of specific scenarios. During these scenarios performance counter information is collected and assessed against statistics that are appropriate to the BizTalk Server environment. For details on installing the Benchmark Wizard see my previous post. The BizTalk Benchmarking Wizard provides two simple test scenarios, one for messaging and one for Orchestrations, which can be used to test your BizTalk implementation. Messaging Loadgen generates a new XML message and sends it over NetTCP A WCF-NetTCP Receive Location receives a the xml document from Loadgen. The PassThruReceive pipeline performs no processing and the message is published by the EPM to the MessageBox. The WCF One-Way Send Port, which is the only subscriber to the message, retrieves the message from the MessageBox The PassThruTransmit pipeline provides no additional processing The message is delivered to the back end WCF service by the WCF NetTCP adapter Orchestrations Loadgen generates a new XML message and sends it over NetTCP A WCF-NetTCP Receive Location receives a the xml document from Loadgen. The XMLReceive pipeline performs no processing and the message is published by the EPM to the MessageBox. The message is delivered to a simple Orchestration which consists of a receive location and a send port The WCF One-Way Send Port, which is the only subscriber to the Orchestration message, retrieves the message from the MessageBox The PassThruTransmit pipeline provides no additional processing The message is delivered to the back end WCF service by the WCF NetTCP adapter Below is a quick outline of how to run the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard on a single server, although it should be noted that this is not ideal as this server is then both generating and processing the load.  In order to separate this load out you should run the "Indigo" service on a seperate server. To start the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard click Start > All Programs > BizTalk Benchmark Wizard > BizTalk Benchmark Wizard. On this screen click next, you will then get the following pop up window. Check the server and database names and check the "check prerequsites" check-box before pressing ok.  The wizard will then check that the appropriate test scenarios are installed. You should then choose the test scenario that wish to run (messaging or orchestration) and the architecture that most closely matches your environment. You will then be asked to confirm the host server for each of the host instances. Next you will be presented with the prepare screen.  You will need to start the indigo service before pressing the Test Indigo Service Button. If you are running the indigo service on a separate server you can enter the server name here.  To start the indigo service click Start > All Programs > BizTalk Benchmark Wizard > Start Indigo Service.   While the test is running you will be presented with two speed dial type displays - one for the received messages per second and one for the processed messages per second. The green dial shows the current rate and the red dial shows the overall average rate.  Optionally you can view the CPU usage of the various servers involved in processing the tests. For my development environment I expected low results and this is what I got.  Although looking at the online high scores table and comparing to the quad core system listed, the results are perhaps not really that bad. At some time I may look at what improvements I can make to this score, but if you are interested in that now take a look at Benchmark your BizTalk Server (Part 3).

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• Validating Petabytes of Data with Regularity and Thoroughness

  - by rickramsey

  by Brian Zents When former Intel CEO Andy Grove said “only the paranoid survive,” he wasn’t necessarily talking about tape storage administrators, but it’s a lesson they’ve learned well. After all, tape storage is the last line of defense to prevent data loss, so tape administrators are extra cautious in making sure their data is secure. Not surprisingly, we are often asked for ways to validate tape media and the files on them. In the past, an administrator could validate the media, but doing so was often tedious or disruptive or both. The debut of the Data Integrity Validation (DIV) and Library Media Validation (LMV) features in the Oracle T10000C drive helped eliminate many of these pains. Also available with the Oracle T10000D drive, these features use hardware-assisted CRC checks that not only ensure the data is written correctly the first time, but also do so much more efficiently. Traditionally, a CRC check takes at least 25 seconds per 4GB file with a 2:1 compression ratio, but the T10000C/D drives can reduce the check to a maximum of nine seconds because the entire check is contained within the drive. No data needs to be sent to a host application. A time savings of at least 64 percent is extremely beneficial over the course of checking an entire 8.5TB T10000D tape. While the DIV and LMV features are better than anything else out there, what storage administrators really need is a way to check petabytes of data with regularity and thoroughness. With the launch of Oracle StorageTek Tape Analytics (STA) 2.0 in April, there is finally a solution that addresses this longstanding need. STA bundles these features into one interface to automate all media validation activities across all Oracle SL3000 and SL8500 tape libraries in an environment. And best of all, the validation process can be associated with the health checks an administrator would be doing already through STA. In fact, STA validates the media based on any of the following policies: Random Selection – Randomly selects media for validation whenever a validation drive in the standalone library or library complex is available. Media Health = Action – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Action.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Evaluate – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Evaluate.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Monitor – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Monitor.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Extended Period of Non-Use – Selects media that have not had an exchange for a specified number of days. You can specify from 365 to 1,095 days (one to three years). Newly Entered – Selects media that have recently been entered into the library. Bad MIR Detected – Selects media with an exchange resulting in a “Bad MIR Detected” error. A bad media information record (MIR) indicates degraded high-speed access on the media. To avoid disrupting host operations, an administrator designates certain drives for media validation operations. If a host requests a file from media currently being validated, the host’s request takes priority. To ensure that the administrator really knows it is the media that is bad, as opposed to the drive, STA includes drive calibration and qualification features. In addition, validation requests can be re-prioritized or cancelled as needed. To ensure that a specific tape isn’t validated too often, STA prevents a tape from being validated twice within 24 hours via one of the policies described above. A tape can be validated more often if the administrator manually initiates the validation. When the validations are complete, STA reports the results. STA does not report simply a “good” or “bad” status. It also reports if media is even degraded so the administrator can migrate the data before there is a true failure. From that point, the administrators’ paranoia is relieved, as they have the necessary information to make a sound decision about the health of the tapes in their environment. About the Photograph Photograph taken by Rick Ramsey in Death Valley, California, May 2014 - Brian Follow OTN Garage on: Web | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

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• Tuesday at OpenWorld: Identity Management

  - by Tanu Sood

  At Oracle OpenWorld? From keynotes, general sessions to product deep dives and executive events, this Tuesday is full of informational, educational and networking opportunities for you. Here’s a quick run-down of what’s happening today: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 KEYNOTE: The Oracle Cloud: Oracle’s Cloud Platform and Applications Strategy 8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D Leading customers will join Oracle Executive Vice President Thomas Kurian to discuss how Oracle’s innovative cloud solutions are transforming how they manage their business, excite and retain their employees, and deliver great customer experiences through Oracle Cloud. GENERAL SESSION: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone North - Hall D Join Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Product in this strategy and roadmap session to hear how developers leverage new innovations in their applications and customers achieve their business innovation goals with Oracle Fusion Middleware. CON9437: Mobile Access Management 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone West 3022 The session will feature Identity Management evangelists from companies like Intuit, NetApp and Toyota to discuss how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON9162: Oracle Fusion Middleware: Meet This Year's Most Impressive Customer Projects 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 a.m., Moscone West, 3001 Hear from the winners of the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards and see which customers are taking home a trophy for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award.  Read more about the Innovation Awards here. CON9491: Enhancing the End-User Experience with Oracle Identity Governance applications 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Join experts from Visa and Oracle as they explore how Oracle Identity Governance solutions deliver complete identity administration and governance solutions with support for emerging requirements like cloud identities and mobile devices. CON9447: Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Dealing with scale problems? Looking to address identity management requirements with million or so users in mind? Then take note of Cisco’s implementation. Join this session to hear first-hand how Cisco tackled identity management and scaled their implementation to bolster security and enforce compliance. CON9465: Next Generation Directory – Oracle Unified Directory 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Get the 360 degrees perspective from a solution provider, implementation services partner and the customer in this session to learn how the latest Oracle Unified Directory solutions can help you build a directory infrastructure that is optimized to support cloud, mobile and social networking and yet deliver on scale and performance. EVENTS: Executive Edge @ OpenWorld: Chief Security Officer (CSO) Summit 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. If you are attending the Executive Edge at Open World, be sure to check out the sessions at the Chief Security Officer Summit. Former Sr. Counsel for the National Security Agency, Joel Brenner, will be speaking about his new book "America the Vulnerable". In addition, PWC will present a panel discussion on "Crisis Management to Business Advantage: Security Leadership". See below for the complete agenda. PRODUCT DEMOS: And don’t forget to see Oracle identity Management solutions in action at Oracle OpenWorld DEMOgrounds. DEMOS LOCATION EXHIBITION HALL HOURS Access Management: Complete and Scalable Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-218 Monday, October 1 9:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 9:30 a.m.–10:45 a.m. (Dedicated Hours) Tuesday, October 2 9:45 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–2:45 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Wednesday, October 3 9:45 a.m.–4:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–3:30 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Access Management: Federating and Leveraging Social Identities Moscone South, Right - S-220 Access Management: Mobile Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-219 Access Management: Real-Time Authorizations Moscone South, Right - S-217 Access Management: Secure SOA and Web Services Security Moscone South, Right - S-223 Identity Governance: Modern Administration and Tooling Moscone South, Right - S-210 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Oracle Directory Services Plus: Performant, Cloud-Ready Moscone South, Right - S-222 Oracle Identity Management: Closed-Loop Access Certification Moscone South, Right - S-221 For a complete listing, keep the Focus on Identity Management document handy. And don’t forget to converse with us while at OpenWorld @oracleidm. We look forward to hearing from you.

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• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

  - by user127817

  I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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• Analysis Services (SSAS) - Unexpected Internal Error when processing (ProcessUpdate). Workaround/Resolution

  - by James Rogers

  Many implementations require the use of ProcessUpdate to support Type 1 slowly changing dimensions. ProcessUpdate drops all of the affected indexes and aggregations in partitions affected by data that changes in the Dimension on which the ProcessUpdate is being performed. Twice now I have had situations where the processing fails with "Internal error: An unexpected exception occurred." Any subsequent ProcessUpdate processing will also fail with the same error. In talking with Microsoft the issue is corrupt indexes for the Dimension(s) being processed in the partitions of the affected measure group. I cannot guarantee that the following will correct your problem but it did in my case and saved us quite a bit of down time.   Workaround: ProcessIndexes on the entire cube that is being processed and throwing the error. This corrected the problem on both 2008 and 2008 R2.   Pros:  Does not require a complete rebuild of the data (ProcessFull) for either the Dimension or Cube. User access can continue while this ProcessIndexes in underway.   Cons: Can take a long time, especially on large cubes with many partitions, dimensions and/or aggregations. Query Performance is usually severely impacted due to the memory and CPU requirements for Aggregation and Index building   <Batch http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine"http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">  <Parallel>     <Process xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ddl2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2" xmlns:ddl2_2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2/2" xmlns:ddl100_100="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2008/engine/100/100" xmlns:ddl200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200" xmlns:ddl200_200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200/200">       <Object>         <DatabaseID>MyDatabase</DatabaseID>         <CubeID>MyCube</CubeID>       </Object>       <Type>ProcessIndexes</Type>       <WriteBackTableCreation>UseExisting</WriteBackTableCreation>     </Process>  </Parallel> </Batch>   The cube where the corruption exists can be found by having Profiler running while the ProcessUpdate is executing. The first partition that displays the "The Job has ended in failure." message in the TextData column will be part of the cube/measuregroup that has the corruption. You can try to run ProcessIndexes on just that measure group. This may correct the problem and save additional time if you have other large measure groups in the cube that are not affected by the corruption.   Remember to execute your normal ProcessUpdate batch after the successful completion of the ProcessIndexes. The ProcessIndexes does not pick up data changes.   Things that did not work: ProcessClearIndexes - why this doesn't work and ProcessIndexes does is unclear at this point. ProcessFull on the partition in question. In my latest case, this would clear up the problem for that partition. However, the next partition the ProcessUpdate touched that had data in it would generate and error. This leads me to believe the corruption problem will exist in all partitions in the affected measure group that have data in them.   NOTE: I experience this problem in both a SQL 2008 and SQL 2008 R2 Analysis Services environment, on separate built from the same relational database. This leads me to believe that some data condition in the tables used for the Dimension processing caused the corruption since the two environments were on physically separate hardware. I am waiting on Microsoft to analyze the dumps to give us more insight into what actually caused the corruption and will update this post accordingly.

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• P90X or How I Stopped Worrying and Love Exercise

  - by Matt Christian

  Last Wednesday, after many UPS delivery failures, I received P90X in the mail.  P90X is a series of DVD's and a nutrition guide you use to shed pounds and gain muscle.  Odds are you've seen the infomercial on TV at some point if you watch a little tube now and again.  I started last Thursday and am still standing to tell this tale. At it's core, P90X is a 12 DVD set of exercise videos.  Each video is comprised of a different workout routine that typically last around an hour (some up to 1 1/2 hours).  Every day you are supposed to do one of the workouts which are different every day (sometimes you may repeat a shorter 6 min workout dedicated to abs twice a week).  There are different 'programs' focused on different areas, for weight loss you do the Lean Program, standard weight loss and muscle gain do the Regular Program, and for those hardcore health-nuts, the Insane Program (which consists of 2 - 1 hour long exercises per day).  Each Program has a different set of workouts per week which you repeat for 3 weeks, followed by a 'Relaxation Week' which is essentially a slightly different order.  After the month of workouts is over, you've finished 1 phase out of 3.  P90X takes 90 days, split into 3 Phases (1 phase per month).  Every phase has a different workout order which is also focused on different areas (Weight Loss, Muscle Gain, etc...)  With the DVD's you also get a small glossy book of about 100 pages detailing the different workouts and the different programs as well as a sample workout to see if you're even ready to start P90X. The second part of P90X, which can also be considered the 'core' (actually the other half of the core) is the nutrition guide that is included.  The Nutrition Guide is a book similar to the one that defines the exercises (about 100 glossy pages) though it details foods you should eat, the amounts, and a number of healthy (and tasty!) recipes.  The guide is split up into 3 phases as well, promoting high protein and low carb/dairy at during Phase 1, and levelling off through to Phase 3 where you have a relatively balanced amount of every food group. So after 1 week where am I?  I've stuck quite close to the nutrition guide (there isn't 'diet food' in here people, it's ACTUALLY food) and done my exercise every day.  I think a lot of the first week is getting into the whole idea and learning the moves performed on the DVD.  Have I lost weight?  No.  Do I feel some definition already starting to poke out?  Absolutely (no pun intended). Tony Horton (the 51-year old hulk that runs the whole thing) is very fun to listen and work along with and the 'diet' really isn't too hard to follow unless all you eat is carbs.  I've tried the gym thing and could not get motivated enough to continue going.  P90X is the first time I've ached from a workout, BEFORE starting my next workout.  For anyone interested, Google 'P90X' or 'BeachBody' to find out more information about this awesome program!

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• A quick look at: sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server places data into cache as it reads it from disk so as to speed up future queries. This dmv lets you see how much data is cached at any given time and knowing how this changes over time can help you ensure your servers run smoothly and are adequately resourced to run your systems. This dmv gives the number of cached pages in the buffer pool along with the database id that they relate to: USE [tempdb] GO SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) , database_id ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC; This gives you results which are quite useful, but if you add a new column with the code: …to convert the pages value to show a MB value then they become more relevant and meaningful. To see how your server reacts to queries, start up SSMS and connect to a test server and database – mine is called AdventureWorks2008. Make sure you start from a know position by running: -- Only run this on a test server otherwise your production server's-- performance may drop off a cliff and your phone will start ringing. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS GO Now we can run a query that would normally turn a DBA’s hair white: USE [AdventureWorks2008] go SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] …and then check our cache situation: A nice low figure – not! Almost 2000 pages of data in cache equating to approximately 15MB. Luckily these tables are quite narrow; if this had been on a table with more columns then this could be even more dramatic. So, let’s make our query more efficient. After resetting the cache with the DROPCLEANBUFFERS and FREEPROCCACHE code above, we’ll only select the columns we want and implement a WHERE predicate to limit the rows to a specific customer. SELECT [sod].[OrderQty] , [sod].[ProductID] , [soh].[OrderDate] , [soh].[CustomerID] FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] WHERE [soh].[CustomerID] = 29722 …and check our effect cache: Now that is more sympathetic to our server and the other systems sharing its resources. I can hear you asking: “What has this got to do with logging, Jonathan?” Well, a smart DBA will keep an eye on this metric on their servers so they know how their hardware is coping and be ready to investigate anomalies so that no ‘disruptive’ code starts to unsettle things. Capturing this information over a period of time can lead you to build a picture of how a database relies on the cache and how it interacts with other databases. This might allow you to decide on appropriate schedules for over night jobs or otherwise balance the work of your server. You could schedule this job to run with a SQL Agent job and store the data in your DBA’s database by creating a table with: IF OBJECT_ID('CachedPages') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE CachedPages CREATE TABLE CachedPages ( cached_pages_count INT , MB INT , Database_Name VARCHAR(256) , CollectedOn DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE() ) …and then filling it with: INSERT INTO [dbo].[CachedPages] ( [cached_pages_count] , [MB] , [Database_Name] ) SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , ( COUNT(*) * 8.0 ) / 1024 AS MB , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY database_id After this has been left logging your system metrics for a while you can easily see how your databases use the cache over time and may see some spikes that warrant your attention. This sort of logging can be applied to all sorts of server statistics so that you can gather information that will give you baseline data on how your servers are performing. This means that when you get a problem you can see what statistics are out of their normal range and target you efforts to resolve the issue more rapidly.

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• Tuning Red Gate: #3 of Lots

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I'm drilling down into the metrics about SQL Server itself available to me in the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor to see what's up with our two problematic servers. In the previous post I'd noticed that rg-sql01 had quite a few CPU spikes. So one of the first things I want to check there is how much CPU is getting used by SQL Server itself. It's possible we're looking at some other process using up all the CPU Nope, It's SQL Server. I compared this to the rg-sql02 server: You can see that there is a more, consistently low set of CPU counters there. I clearly need to look at rg-sql01 and capture more specific data around the queries running on it to identify which ones are causing these CPU spikes. I always like to look at the Batch Requests/sec on a server, not because it's an indication of a problem, but because it gives you some idea of the load. Just how much is this server getting hit? Here are rg-sql01 and rg-sql02: Of the two, clearly rg-sql01 has a lot of activity. Remember though, that's all this is a measure of, activity. It doesn't suggest anything other than what it says, the number of requests coming in. But it's the kind of thing you want to know in order to understand how the system is used. Are you seeing a correlation between the number of requests and the CPU usage, or a reverse correlation, the number of requests drops as the CPU spikes? See, it's useful. Some of the details you can look at are Compilations/sec, Compilations/Batch and Recompilations/sec. These give you some idea of how the cache is getting used within the system. None of these showed anything interesting on either server. One metric that I like (even though I know it can be controversial) is the Page Life Expectancy. On the average server I expect see a series of mountains as the PLE climbs then drops due to a data load or something along those lines. That's not the case here: Those spikes back in January suggest that the servers weren't really being used much. The PLE on the rg-sql01 seems to be somewhat consistent growing to 3 hours or so then dropping, but the rg-sql02 PLE looks like it might be all over the map. Instead of continuing to look at this high level gathering data view, I'm going to drill down on rg-sql02 and see what it's done for the last week: And now we begin to see where we might have an issue. Memory on this system is getting flushed every 1/2 hour or so. I'm going to check another metric, scans: Whoa! I'm going back to the system real quick to look at some disk information again for rg-sql02. Here is the average disk queue length on the server: and the transfers Right, I think I have a guess as to what's up here. We're seeing memory get flushed constantly and we're seeing lots of scans. The disks are queuing, especially that F drive, and there are lots of requests that correspond to the scans and the memory flushes. In short, we've got queries that are scanning the data, a lot, so we either have bad queries or bad indexes. I'm going back to the server overview for rg-sql02 and check the Top 10 expensive queries. I'm modifying it to show me the last 3 days and the totals, so I'm not looking at some maintenance routine that ran 10 minutes ago and is skewing the results: OK. I need to look into these queries that are getting executed this much. They're generating a lot of reads, but which queries are generating the most reads: Ow, all still going against the same database. This is where I'm going to temporarily leave SQL Monitor. What I want to do is connect up to the server, validate that the Warehouse database is using the F:\ drive (which I'll put money down it is) and then start seeing what's up with these queries. Part 1 of the Series Part 2 of the Series

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• Thinktecture.IdentityModel: Comparing Strings without leaking Timinig Information

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Paul Hill commented on a recent post where I was comparing HMACSHA256 signatures. In a nutshell his complaint was that I am leaking timing information while doing so – or in other words, my code returned faster with wrong (or partially wrong) signatures than with the correct signature. This can be potentially used for timing attacks like this one. I think he got a point here, especially in the era of cloud computing where you can potentially run attack code on the same physical machine as your target to do high resolution timing analysis (see here for an example). It turns out that it is not that easy to write a time-constant string comparer due to all sort of (unexpected) clever optimization mechanisms in the CLR. With the help and feedback of Paul and Shawn I came up with this: Structure the code in a way that the CLR will not try to optimize it In addition turn off optimization (just in case a future version will come up with new optimization methods) Add a random sleep when the comparison fails (using Shawn’s and Stephen’s nice Random wrapper for RNGCryptoServiceProvider). You can find the full code in the Thinktecture.IdentityModel download. [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoOptimization)] public static bool IsEqual(string s1, string s2) {     if (s1 == null && s2 == null)     {         return true;     }       if (s1 == null || s2 == null)     {         return false;     }       if (s1.Length != s2.Length)     {         return false;     }       var s1chars = s1.ToCharArray();     var s2chars = s2.ToCharArray();       int hits = 0;     for (int i = 0; i < s1.Length; i++)     {         if (s1chars[i].Equals(s2chars[i]))         {             hits += 2;         }         else         {             hits += 1;         }     }       bool same = (hits == s1.Length * 2);       if (!same)     {         var rnd = new CryptoRandom();         Thread.Sleep(rnd.Next(0, 10));     }       return same; }

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