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• Best triple head display setup

  - by dgel

  I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 with a darn good triple head display setup. I've got a VisionTek 900530 Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 PCI Express video card that has two DVI outputs and one Mini DisplayPort that I have connected to a HDMI adapter. I'm running three identical Asus 1920x1080 monitors that each have a DVI, VGA, and HDMI input. I'm using the xorg-edgers ppa, so I'm using the open source radeon driver version 6.99.99. I tried using the ATI binary fglrx driver, but I wasn't able to get the three monitors working properly- the monitor connected via HDMI / DisplayPort wouldn't run at full resolution. The setup is almost perfect: Compiz runs fine and is quite snappy. I'm not able to use that great compiz feature where you can drag a window to the side of a display and it will half maximize. I occasionally experience display corruption weirdness with Unity and need to restart it. When I use a dropdown menu in LibreOffice it often pops the menu down in another window. For example, if I'm using the center monitor and click the Insert menu, the menu pulls down on the monitor to my right, forcing me to chase it. If I chase down the menu and choose Manual Break, the dialog appears over on my left monitor. This absurdity is mildly entertaining but has lost its novelty. I've decided to build a new system and have spared no expense- latest i7 processor, SSD, etc. I really like the performance of the Nvidia binary drivers, so I put two ZOTAC ZT-40707-10L GeForce GT 440 in the system, figuring I'd have four DVI outputs and an awesome triple (or even eventually quad) head setup. Unfortunately it appears that I didn't do sufficient research before my purchase. It seems that Nvidia TwinView only supports two monitors on one card (I guess that's why they call it TwinView...). I messed around with running two X servers, but I really don't want that- being able to drag windows to any monitor is critical. It doesn't sound like Xinerama is an option because from what I understand it simply doesn't support Compiz. I've seen a BaseMosaic option that can be used with the Nvidia drivers that appears to support an almost unlimited number of heads- unfortunately me cheap little cards don't support it. I'm also not sure whether you'll still have all nice maximizing and snapping that TwinView provides, or whether Ubuntu will only see it as one massive display. I put my old trusty ATI card into my new system and installed 12.10. I'm using the opensource radeon drivers again because even in 12.10 I can't get the fglrx binary drivers to do triple head. Unfortunately, even with an unbelievably powerful system the experience is extremely sluggish (much more so than my experience in 12.04). The menu scattering problem appears to be fixed, but I get a lot of nasty Unity display corruption. So finally, my question is this: What hardware / drivers should I use? I'm willing to buy (almost) any video card(s). I have two PCI-Express 3.0 slots on my motherboard (which has an integrated Intel HD card). I'm willing to use ATI or Nvidia cards and willing to run Ubuntu 12.04.1 or 12.10. I'm not a gamer, but do want beautiful and snappy Compiz effects. Does anyone out there have the perfect triple head setup in 12.04 or 12.10? What hardware / drivers are you using? I have those two Nvidia cards but will probably be returning them unless someone knows a way to use them together for a triple head setup. Since I'm having pretty good luck with a single ATI card providing three displays, should I just buy a beefier one with the hopes that it will fix the horrible sluggishness I'm experiencing in 12.10?

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• WiFi stops working after a while in Lenovo ThinkPad W520 (Ubuntu 12.04)

  - by el10780

  After several minutes(I do not know how many) there is no internet connection on my laptop via Wi-Fi.Ubuntu doesn't show any kind of message that my WiFi was disconnected neither there is a signal drop,but suddenly Firefox stops connecting to web pages.I checked my modem/router and it seems that it is working fine.I tried also to reboot the WiFi device and nothing happens.The only thing that it makes it work again is a reboot of the system and if I do not want to do a reboot then I am enforced to connect to the Internet using Ethernet cable.Does anybody know what is happening? ## Some Hardware info that might be helpful ## el10780@ThinkPad-W520:~$ sudo lshw -class network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 19 bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0 logical name: eth0 version: 04 serial: f0:de:f1:f1:be:10 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=1.5.1-k duplex=full firmware=0.13-3 ip=192.168.0.10 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:50 memory:f3a00000-f3a1ffff memory:f3a2b000-f3a2bfff ioport:6080(size=32) *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 5e serial: 64:80:99:63:14:74 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.2.0-26-generic firmware=41.28.5.1 build 33926 ip=192.168.0.6 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn resources: irq:52 memory:f3900000-f3901fff *-network description: Ethernet interface physical id: 1 bus info: usb@2:1.3 logical name: wmx0 serial: 00:1d:e1:53:b2:e8 capabilities: ethernet physical configuration: driver=i2400m firmware=i6050-fw-usb-1.5.sbcf link=no el10780@ThinkPad-W520:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family KT Controller (rev 04) 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b4) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b4) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b4) 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev b4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation QM67 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [Quadro 1000M] (rev a1) 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 (rev 5e) 0d:00.0 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e823 (rev 08) 0d:00.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 PCIe IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04) 0e:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04) el10780@ThinkPad-W520:~$ rfkill list all 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: i2400m-usb:2-1.3:1.0: WiMAX Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no The weirdest thing is this screenshot which I took after running the **Additional Drivers** program.I mean I have a NVidia Quadro 1000M and my Intel Centrino WiFi Card and this shows that there are not proprietay drivers for my system. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/268/screenshotfrom201207062.png/

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• Five Key Trends in Enterprise 2.0 for 2011

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  We recently sat down with Andy MacMillan, an industry veteran and vice president of product management for Enterprise 2.0 at Oracle, to get his take on the year ahead in Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0). He offered us his five predictions about the ways he believes E2.0 technologies will transform business in 2011. 1. Forward-thinking organizations will achieve an unprecedented level of organizational awareness. Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. But this year we are anticipating that organizations will go to the next step and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver rich contextual "activity streams." Activity streams are a new way for enterprise users to get relevant information as quickly as it happens, by navigating to that information in context directly from their portal. We don't mean syndicating social activities limited to a single application. Instead, we believe back-office systems will be combined with social media tools to drive how users make informed business decisions in brand new ways. For example, an account manager might log into the company portal and automatically receive notification that colleagues are closing business around a certain product in his market segment. With a single click, he can reach out instantly to these colleagues via social media and learn from their successes to drive new business opportunities in his own area. 2. Online customer engagement will become a high priority for CMOs. A growing number of chief marketing officers (CMOs) have created a new direct report called "head of online"--a senior marketing executive responsible for all engagements with customers and prospects via the Web, mobile, and social media. This new field has been dubbed "Web experience management" or "online customer engagement" by firms and analyst organizations. It is likely to rapidly increase demand for a host of new business objectives and metrics from Web content management solutions. As companies interface with customers more and more over the Web, Web experience management solutions will help deliver more targeted interactions to ensure increased customer loyalty while meeting sales and business objectives. 3. Real composite applications will be widely adopted. We expect organizations to move from the concept of a single "uber-portal" that encompasses all the necessary features to a more modular, component-based concept for composite applications. This approach is now possible as IT and power users are empowered to assemble new, purpose-built composite applications quickly from existing components. 4. Records management will drive ECM consolidation. We continue to see a significant shift in the approach to records management. Several years ago initiatives were focused on overlaying records management across a set of electronic repositories and physical storage locations. We believe federated records management will continue, but we also expect to see records management driving conversations around single-platform content management consolidation. 5. Organizations will demand ECM at extreme scale. We have already seen a trend within IT organizations to provide a common, highly scalable infrastructure to consolidate and support content and information needs. But as data sizes grow exponentially, ECM at an extreme scale is likely to spread at unprecedented speeds this year. This makes sense as regulations and transparency requirements rise. The model in which ECM and lightweight CMS systems provide basic content services such as check-in, update, delete, and search has converged around a set of industry best practices and has even been coded into new industry standards such as content management interoperability services. As these services converge and the demand for them accelerates, organizations are beginning to rationalize investments into a single, highly scalable infrastructure. Is your organization ready for Enterprise 2.0 in 2011? Learn more.

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• Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

  - by Phil Factor

  For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

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• Give a session on C++ AMP – here is how

  - by Daniel Moth

  Ever since presenting on C++ AMP at the AMD Fusion conference in June, then the Gamefest conference in August, and the BUILD conference in September, I've had numerous requests about my material from folks that want to re-deliver the same session. The C++ AMP session I put together has evolved over the 3 presentations to its final form that I used at BUILD, so that is the one I recommend you base yours on. Please get the slides and the recording from channel9 (I'll refer to slide numbers below). This is how I've been presenting the C++ AMP session: Context (slide 3, 04:18-08:18) Start with a demo, on my dual-GPU machine. I've been using the N-Body sample (for VS 11 Developer Preview). (slide 4) Use an nvidia slide that has additional examples of performance improvements that customers enjoy with heterogeneous computing. (slide 5) Talk a bit about the differences today between CPU and GPU hardware, leading to the fact that these will continue to co-exist and that GPUs are great for data parallel algorithms, but not much else today. One is a jack of all trades and the other is a number cruncher. (slide 6) Use the APU example from amd, as one indication that the hardware space is still in motion, emphasizing that the C++ AMP solution is a data parallel API, not a GPU API. It has a future proof design for hardware we have yet to see. (slide 7) Provide more meta-data, as blogged about when I first introduced C++ AMP. Code (slide 9-11) Introduce C++ AMP coding with a simplistic array-addition algorithm – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 12-13) index<N>, extent<N>, and grid<N>. (Slide 14-16) array<T,N>, array_view<T,N> and comparison between them. (Slide 17) parallel_for_each. (slide 18, 21) restrict. (slide 19-20) actual restrictions of restrict(direct3d) – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 22) bring it altogether with a matrix multiplication example. (slide 23-24) accelerator, and accelerator_view. (slide 26-29) Introduce tiling incl. tiled matrix multiplication [tiling probably deserves a whole session instead of 6 minutes!]. IDE (slide 34,37) Briefly touch on the concurrency visualizer. It supports GPU profiling, but enhancements specific to C++ AMP we hope will come at the Beta timeframe, which is when I'll be spending more time talking about it. (slide 35-36, 51:54-59:16) Demonstrate the GPU debugging experience in VS 11. Summary (slide 39) Re-iterate some of the points of slide 7, and add the point that the C++ AMP spec will be open for other compiler vendors to implement, even on other platforms (in fact, Microsoft is actively working on that). (slide 40) Links to content – see slide – including where all your questions should go: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/parallelcppnative/threads.   "But I don't have time for a full blown session, I only need 2 (or just 1, or 3) C++ AMP slides to use in my session on related topic X" If all you want is a small number of slides, you can take some from the session above and customize them. But because I am so nice, I have created some slides for you, including talking points in the notes section. Download them here. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Setup and configure a MVC4 project for Cloud Service(web role) and SQL Azure

  - by MagnusKarlsson

  I aim at keeping this blog post updated and add related posts to it. Since there are a lot of these out there I link to others that has done kind of the same before me, kind of a blog-DRY pattern that I'm aiming for. I also keep all mistakes and misconceptions for others to see. As an example; if I hit a stacktrace I will google it if I don't directly figure out the reason for it. I will then probably take the most plausible result and try it out. If it fails because I misinterpreted the error I will not delete it from the log but keep it for future reference and for others to see. That way people that finds this blog can see multiple solutions for indexed stacktraces and I can better remember how to do stuff. To avoid my errors I recommend you to read through it all before going from start to finish.The steps:Setup project in VS2012. (msdn blog)Setup Azure Services (half of mpspartners.com blog)Setup connections strings and configuration files (msdn blog + notes)Export certificates.Create Azure package from vs2012 and deploy to staging (same steps as for production).Connections string error Set up the visual studio project:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/11/08/developing-asp-net-mvc4-based-windows-azure-web-role.aspx Then login in to Azure to setup the services:Stop following this guide at the "publish website" part since we'll be uploading a package.http://www.mpspartners.com/2012/09/ConfiguringandDeployinganMVC4applicationasaCloudServicewithAzureSQLandStorage/ When set up (connection strings for debug and release and all), follow this guide to set up the configuration files:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh369931.aspxTrying to package our application at this step will generate the following warning:3>MvcWebRole1(0,0): warning WAT170: The configuration setting 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString' is set up to use the local storage emulator for role 'MvcWebRole1' in configuration file 'ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg'. To access Windows Azure storage services, you must provide a valid Windows Azure storage connection string. Right click the web role under roles in solution manager and choose properties. Choose "Service configuration: Cloud". At "specify storage account credentials" we will copy/paste our account name and key from the Azure management platform.3.1 4. Right click Remote desktop Configuration and select certificate and export to file. We need to allow it in Portal manager.4.15 Now right click the cloud project and select package.5.1 Showing dialogue box. 5.2 Package success Now copy the path to the packaged file and go to management portal again. Click your web role and choose staging (or production). Upload. 5.3Tick the box about the single instance if that's what you want or you don't know what it means. Otherwise the following will happen (see image 4.6)5.4 Dialogue box When you have clicked the symbol for accept- button you will see the following screen with some green indicators down at the right corner. Click them if you want to see status.5.5 Information screen.5.6 "Failed to deploy application. The upload application has at least one role with only one instance. We recommend that you deploy at least two instances per role to ensure high availability in case one of the instances becomes unavailable. "To fix, go to step 5.4If you forgot to (or just didn't know you were supposed to) export your certificates. The following error will occur. Side note, the following thread suggests. To prevent: "Enable Remote Desktop for all roles" when right-clicking BIAB and choosing "Package". But in my case it was the not so present certificates. I fund the solution here.http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dotnetstocktradersampleapplication/thread/0e94c2b5-463f-4209-86b9-fc257e0678cd5.75.8 Success! 5.9 Nice URL n' all. (More on that at another blog post).6. If you try to login and getWhen this error occurs many web sites suggest this is because you need:http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Providers.LocalDBOr : http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.ProvidersBut it can also be that you don't have the correct setup for converting connectionstrings between your web.config to your debug.web.config(or release.web.config, whichever your using).Run as suggested in the "ordinary project in your solution. Go to the management portal and click update.

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• Business School graduate joins Oracle

  - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com

  My name is Mathias, I work as an Applications Inside Sales Rep for the French market, and I’d like to give you a brief snapshot of my experience at Oracle. First things first, how did you hear about Oracle? Where have you seen the sharp and recognizable red logo? Was it in Charles de Gaulle Airport when your eyes crossed the 20-metre banner with a picture of a strange big machine in the middle? Was it through reading the Forbes 10 top IT companies worldwide ranking? Or is it because IT is your thing and you cannot but know one of the “big four”? Meeting with a Grenoble Alumnus My story is a little different. My plan was to work in sales, in the IT industry. I had heard about Oracle, but my opinion at the time was that this kind of multinational company was way out of reach for a young graduate, even with high enthusiasm and great excitement to be (finally) on the job market. So, I was really surprised when I had an interesting conversation with a top alumnus of my business school. We were at the Grenoble Ecole de Management graduation ceremony (our graduation!), and before the party got really started, I got to chat with her. She told me of the great experience she was getting by living and working in Dublin. She had already figured it all out: “you work with another 100 young people from 10 different nationalities across Europe, you can be based in Dublin, but then once you work really hard you can move to Malaga Spain or other BUs around the world, you can work with different lines of business and learn about new “techy” and business oriented products, move to the field in your home country or elsewhere, etc.” What, what, what? Moving around Europe, trained by the best sales coaches in the world, acquiring strong IT knowledge and getting on board with one of fastest-growing and most watched companies in the world? Well, I was in. The next day (OK, 3 days after, the time to recover), I sent her my CV, and 3 months later I started as a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin, representing the latest cloud based CRM across the French market. That was 15 months ago. Since then, I moved line of business twice, I’m always learning new things and working with different and senior stakeholders; I have attended hundreds of hours of sales and product training (priceless when you come from a business background); I passed the Dublin Institute of Technology Sales Certification through different trainings given onsite within Oracle; I’ve led projects based around social media and I’ve gotten involved within various sales deals going on my market. Despite all of these great things, two will remain in my spirit: the multiculturalism that I experience every day in the office, and the American style of management - more direct and open than what you can find in “regular French companies”. Sales Progression Board In May 2012, I passed what we call a ‘Sales Progression Board’ to be promoted to an Inside Sales position. I am now in charge of generating revenue through the sale of Oracle applications on my specific territory. Always keeping in my mind my personal ambition: going to the field one day. Interested to join Oracle in the same role as Mathias? Visit http://campus.oracle.com.

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• OPN Specialized Latest News (15th November)

  - by swalker

  HELPING YOU TO SPECIALIZE WebCenter Implementation Specialist Exam Preparation Webcasts: WebCenter Content And WebCenter Portal Oracle Partner Network would like to invite you to Refresh Courses for WebCenter Content and WebCenter Portal, to help partners to prepare for the WebCenter Implementation Specialist EXAMS. This is a 3 hours intensive refresher partner-only training session, providing attendees with an overview of WebCenter Content and WebCenter Portal functions and related topics. After the refresher part you will be able to take the relevant Implementation Specialist EXAM depending on your personal focus. NOTE: This is only suitable for experienced WebCenter Content or WebCenter Portal practitioners Who should attend? Partner Consultants who want to become an Oracle WebCenter Content or a WebCenter Portal Certified Implementation Specialist or both, that will help them to differentiate themselves in front of customers and support their Companies to become Specialized. Webcast Details: Click here to read more... Specialized Partners Only! New Service to Promote Your Events The Partner Event Publisher has just been made available to all specialized partners in EMEA.  Partners now have the opportunity to publish their events to the Oracle.com/events site and spread the word on their upcoming live in-person and/or live webcast events. Click here to read more information and watch a short video demo. VADs Get Specialized Effective November 1, 2011 , VADs, with a valid Value Added Distributor Agreement will no longer be required to meet customer reference requirements outlined in the business criteria section in order to become specialized. VADs must continue meet all other business and competency criteria set forth in the applicable Knowledge Zone prior to specialization approval. New Certification Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System Your opportunity to take the Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System Essentials (1Z0-581) Exam is vailable now in beta. Pass the exam so you can become a Pillar Axiom 600 Storage Systems Implementation Specialist! Free vouchers are available for Oracle Partners! If you would like to receive a free Beta exam voucher, please send your request to [email protected] and include your name, business email address, company, and the Exam name Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System Essentials Beta exam. New Certification Available: Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing 2 Essentials (1Z0-562) is a solution designed to help you meet market windows and regulatory deadlines while enjoying a low total cost of ownership and a high return on investment. Take the exam now to become an  Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing 2 Essentials Implementation Specialists. MEASURING YOUR SUCCESS We had 1674 Specialized Partners covering 5364 Specializations. Please note that due to OPN contract renewals at any given point in time there are valid Specialized Partners and Specializations which are temporarily not captured in the total statistics. An incremental 1961 individuals were accredited as Implementation Specialists giving an EMEA cumulative total of 9598 Implementation Specialists 26 ISVs obtained one or more Ready's, for a total of 53 Ready's Don't forget! You can submit your own press releases to Oracle! Every time you achieve specialization we'd like to support you getting the message out! Press guidelines and a submission link can be found on the OPN Portal here.

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• Call For Papers Tips and Tricks

  - by speakjava

  This year's JavaOne session review has just been completed and by now everyone who submitted papers should know whether they were successful or not.  I had the pleasure again this year of leading the review of the 'JavaFX and Rich User Experiences' track.  I thought it would be useful to write up a few comments to help people in future when submitting session proposals, not just for JavaOne, but for any of the many developer conferences that run around the world throughout the year.  This also draws on conversations I recently had with various Java User Group leaders at the Oracle User Group summit in Riga.  Many of these leaders run some of the biggest and most successful Java conferences in Europe. Try to think of a title which will sound interesting.  For example, "Experiences of performance tuning embedded Java for an ARM architecture based single board computer" probably isn't going to get as much attention as "Do you like coffee with your dessert? Java on the Raspberry Pi".  When thinking of the subject and title for your talk try to steer clear of sessions that might be too generic (and so get lost in a group of similar sessions).  Introductory talks are great when the audience is new to a subject, but beware of providing sessions that are too basic when the technology has been around for a while and there are lots of tutorials already available on the web. JavaOne, like many other conferences has a number of fields that need to be filled in when submitting a paper.  Many of these are selected from pull-down lists (like which track the session is applicable to).  Check these lists carefully.  A number of sessions we had needed to be shuffled between tracks when it was thought that the one selected was not appropriate.  We didn't count this against any sessions, but it's always a good idea to try and get the right one from the start, just in case. JavaOne, again like many other conferences, has two fields that describe the session being submitted: abstract and summary.  These are the most critical to a successful submission.  The two fields have different names and that is significant; a frequent mistake people make is to write an abstract for a session and then duplicate it for the summary.  The abstract (at least in the case of JavaOne) is what gets printed in the show guide and is typically what will be used by attendees when deciding what sessions to attend.  This is where you need to sell your session, not just to the reviewers, but also the people who you want in your audience.  Submitting a one line abstract (unless it's a really good one line) is not usually enough to decide whether this is worth investing an hour of conference time.  The abstract typically has a limit of a few hundred characters.  Try to use as many of them as possible to get as much information about your session across.  The summary should be different from the abstract (and don't leave it blank as some people do).  This field is where you can give the reviewers more detail about things like the structure of the talk, possible demonstrations and so on.  As a reviewer I look to this section to help me decide whether the hard-sell of the title and abstract will actually be reflected in the final content.  Try to make this comprehensive, but don't make it excessively long.  When you have to review possibly hundreds of sessions a certain level of conciseness can make life easier for reviewers and help the cause of your session. If you've not made many submissions for talks in the past, or if this is your first, try to give reviewers places to find background on you as a presenter.  Having an active blog and Twitter handle can also help reviewers if they're not sure what your level of expertise is.  Many call-for-papers have places for you to include this type of information.  It's always good to have new and original presenters and presentations for conferences.  Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when you answer the next call-for-papers.

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• Controlling soft errors and false alarms in SSIS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  If you are like me, you dread the 3AM wake-up call.  I would say that the majority of the pages I get are false alarms.  The alerts that require action often require me to open an SSIS package, see where the trouble is and try to identify the offending data.  That can be very time-consuming and can take quite a chunk out of my beauty sleep.  For those reasons, I have developed a simple error handling scenario for SSIS which allows me to rest a little easier.  Let me first say, this is a high level discussion; getting into the nuts and bolts of creating each shape is outside the scope of this document, but if you have an average understanding of SSIS, you should have no problem following along. In the Data Flow above you can see that there is a caution triangle.  For the purpose of this discussion I am creating a truncation error to demonstrate the process, so this is to be expected.  The first thing we need to do is to redirect the error output.  Double-clicking on the Query shape presents us with the properties window for the input.  Simply set the columns that you want to redirect to Redirect Row in the dropdown box and hit Apply. Without going into a dissertation on error handling, I will just note that you can decide which errors you want to redirect on Error and on Truncation.  Therefore, to override this process for a column or condition, simply do not redirect that column or condition. The next thing we want to do is to add some information about the error; specifically, the name of the package which encountered the error and which step in the package wrote the record to the error table.  REMEMBER: If you redirect the error output, your package will not fail, so you will not know where the error record was created without some additional information.    I added 3 columns to my error record; Severity, Package Name and Step Name.  Severity is just a free-form column that you can use to note whether an error is fatal, whether the package is part of a test job and should be ignored, etc.  Package Name and Step Name are system variables. In my package I have created a truncation situation, where the firstname column is 50 characters in the input, but only 4 characters in the output.  Some records will pass without truncation, others will be sent to the error output.  However, the package will not fail. We can see that of the 14 input rows, 8 were redirected to the error table. This information can be used by another step or another scheduled process or triggered to determine whether an error should be sent.  It can also be used as a historical record of the errors that are encountered over time.  There are other system variables that might make more sense in your infrastructure, so try different things.  Date and time seem like something you would want in your output for example.  In summary, we have redirected the error output from an input, added derived columns with information about the errors, and inserted the information and the offending data into an error table.  The error table information can be used by another step or process to determine, based on the error information, what level alert must be sent.  This will eliminate false alarms, and give you a head start when a genuine error occurs.

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• Multithreading 2D gravity calculations

  - by Postman

  I'm building a space exploration game and I've currently started working on gravity ( In C# with XNA). The gravity still needs tweaking, but before I can do that, I need to address some performance issues with my physics calculations. This is using 100 objects, normally rendering 1000 of them with no physics calculations gets well over 300 FPS (which is my FPS cap), but any more than 10 or so objects brings the game (and the single thread it runs on) to its knees when doing physics calculations. I checked my thread usage and the first thread was killing itself from all the work, so I figured I just needed to do the physics calculation on another thread. However when I try to run the Gravity.cs class's Update method on another thread, even if Gravity's Update method has nothing in it, the game is still down to 2 FPS. Gravity.cs public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in entityEngine.Entities) { Vector2 Force = new Vector2(); foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e2 in entityEngine.Entities) { if (e2.Key != e.Key) { float distance = Vector2.Distance(entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position, entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position); if (distance > (entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Texture.Width / 2 + entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Texture.Width / 2)) { double angle = Math.Atan2(entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position.Y - entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position.Y, entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position.X - entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position.X); float mult = 0.1f * (entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Mass * entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Mass) / distance * distance; Vector2 VecForce = new Vector2((float)Math.Cos(angle), (float)Math.Sin(angle)); VecForce.Normalize(); Force = Vector2.Add(Force, VecForce * mult); } } } entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position += Force; } } Yeah, I know. It's a nested foreach loop, but I don't know how else to do the gravity calculation, and this seems to work, it's just so intensive that it needs its own thread. (Even if someone knows a super efficient way to do these calculations, I'd still like to know how I COULD do it on multiple threads instead) EntityEngine.cs (manages an instance of Gravity.cs) public class EntityEngine { public Dictionary<string, Entity> Entities = new Dictionary<string, Entity>(); public Gravity gravity; private Thread T; public EntityEngine() { gravity = new Gravity(this); } public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in Entities) { Entities[e.Key].Update(); } T = new Thread(new ThreadStart(gravity.Update)); T.IsBackground = true; T.Start(); } } EntityEngine is created in Game1.cs, and its Update() method is called within Game1.cs. I need my physics calculation in Gravity.cs to run every time the game updates, in a separate thread so that the calculation doesn't slow the game down to horribly low (0-2) FPS. How would I go about making this threading work? (any suggestions for an improved Planetary Gravity system are welcome if anyone has them) I'm also not looking for a lesson in why I shouldn't use threading or the dangers of using it incorrectly, I'm looking for a straight answer on how to do it. I've already spent an hour googling this very question with little results that I understood or were helpful. I don't mean to come off rude, but it always seems hard as a programming noob to get a straight meaningful answer, I usually rather get an answer so complex I'd easily be able to solve my issue if I understood it, or someone saying why I shouldn't do what I want to do and offering no alternatives (that are helpful). Thank you for the help!

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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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• Heterogeneous Datacenter Management with Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Joe Diemer

  The following is a Guest Blog, contributed by Bryce Kaiser, Product Manager at Blue MedoraWhen I envision a perfect datacenter, it would consist of technologies acquired from a single vendor across the entire server, middleware, application, network, and storage stack - Apps to Disk - that meets your organization’s every IT requirement with absolute best-of-breed solutions in every category.   To quote a familiar motto, your datacenter would consist of "Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together".  In almost all cases, practical realities dictate something far less than the IT Utopia mentioned above.   You may wish to leverage multiple vendors to keep licensing costs down, a single vendor may not have an offering in the IT category you need, or your preferred vendor may quite simply not have the solution that meets your needs.    In other words, your IT needs dictate a heterogeneous IT environment.  Heterogeneity, however, comes with additional complexity. The following are two pretty typical challenges:1) No End-to-End Visibility into the Enterprise Wide Application Deployment. Each vendor solution which is added to an infrastructure may bring its own tooling creating different consoles for different vendor applications and platforms.2) No Visibility into Performance Bottlenecks. When multiple management tools operate independently, you lose diagnostic capabilities including identifying cross-tier issues with database, hung-requests, slowness, memory leaks and hardware errors/failures causing DB/MW issues. As adoption of Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) has increased, especially since the release of Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle has seen an increase in the number of customers who want to leverage their investments in EM to manage non-Oracle workloads.  Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of glass view into their entire datacenter.  By creating a highly extensible framework via the Oracle EM Extensibility Development Kit (EDK), Oracle has provided the tooling for business partners such as my company Blue Medora as well as customers to easily fill gaps in the ecosystem and enhance existing solutions.  As mentioned in the previous post on the Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, customers have access to an assortment of Oracle and Partner provided solutions through this Exchange, which is accessed at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emextensibility.  Currently, there are over 80 Oracle and partner provided plug-ins across the EM 11g and EM 12c versions.  Blue Medora is one of those contributing partners, for which you will find 3 of our solutions including our flagship plugin for VMware.  Let's look at Blue Medora’s VMware plug-in as an example to what I'm trying to convey.  Here is a common situation solved by true visibility into your entire stack:Symptoms•    My database is bogging down, however the database appears okay internally.  Maybe it’s starved for resources?•    My OS tooling is showing everything is “OK”.  Something doesn’t add up. Root cause•    Through the VMware plugin we can see the problem is actually on the virtualization layer Solution•    From within Enterprise Manager  -- the same tool you use for all of your database tuning -- we can overlay the data of the database target, host target, and virtual machine target for a true picture of the true root cause. Here is the console view: Perhaps your monitoring conditions are more specific to your environment.  No worries, Enterprise Manager still has you covered.  With Metric Extensions you have the “Next Generation” of User-Defined Metrics, which easily bring the power of your existing management scripts into a single console while leveraging the proven Enterprise Manager framework. Simply put, Oracle Enterprise manager boasts a growing ecosystem that provides the single pane of glass for your entire datacenter from the database and beyond.  Bryce can be contacted at [email protected]

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• Successfully Deliver on State and Local Capital Projects through Project Portfolio Management

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} While the debate continues on Capitol Hill about which federal programs to cut and which to keep, communities and towns across America are feeling the budget crunch closer to home. State and local governments are trying to save as many projects as they can without promising too much to constituents – and they, in turn, want to know where their tax dollars are going. Fortunately, with the right planning and management, you can deliver successful projects and portfolios on a limited budget. Watch the replay of our recent webcast with Oracle Primavera and Industry Product Manager Garrett Harley that will demonstrate how state and local governments can get the most out of their capital projects and learn how two Oracle Primavera customers have implemented project portfolio management practices to: Predict the cost of long-term capital programs and projects Assess risk and mitigation strategies Collaborate and track performance across government agencies Speakers: Garrett Harley, Industry and Product Manager, Oracle Primavera Cory Davis, Director of Capital Renovation and New Construction, Chicago Public Schools Julie Owen, PSP™, CCC™, Sr. Project Controls Manager,LA Metro Transit Authority With the right planning and management, state and local governments can deliver successful projects on a limited budget. 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Head in the Clouds

  - by Tony Davis

  We're just past the second anniversary of the launch of Windows Azure. A couple of years' experience with Azure in the industry has provided some obvious success stories, but has deflated some of the initial marketing hyperbole. As a general principle, Azure seems to work well in providing a Service-Oriented Architecture for services in enterprises that suffer wide fluctuations in demand. Instead of being obliged to provide hardware sufficient for the occasional peaks in demand, one can hire capacity only when it is needed, and the cost of hosting an application is no longer a capital cost. It enables companies to avoid having to scale out hardware for peak periods only to see it underused for the rest of the time. A customer-facing application such as a concert ticketing system, which suffers high demand in short, predictable bursts of activity, is a great example of an application that would work well in Azure. However, moving existing applications to Azure isn't something to be done on impulse. Unless your application is .NET-based, and consists of 'stateless' components that communicate via queues, you are probably in for a lot of redevelopment work. It makes most sense for IT departments who are already deep in this .NET mindset, and who also want 'grown-up' methods of staging, testing, and deployment. Azure fits well with this culture and offers, as a bonus, good Visual Studio integration. The most-commonly stated barrier to porting these applications to Azure is the problem of reconciling the use of the cloud with legislation for data privacy and security. Putting databases in the cloud is a sticky issue for many and impossible for some due to compliance and security issues, the need for direct control over data, and so on. In the face of feedback from the early adopters of Azure, Microsoft has broadened the architectural choices to cater for a wide range of requirements. As well as SQL Azure Database (SAD) and Azure storage, the unstructured 'BLOB and Entity-Attribute-Value' NoSQL storage alternative (which equates more closely with folders and files than a database), Windows Azure offers a wide range of storage options including use of services such as oData: developers who are programming for Windows Azure can simply choose the one most appropriate for their needs. Secondly, and crucially, the Windows Azure architecture allows you the freedom to produce hybrid applications, where only those parts that need cloud-based hosting are deployed to Azure, whereas those parts that must unavoidably be hosted in a corporate datacenter can stay there. By using a hybrid architecture, it will seldom, if ever, be necessary to move an entire application to the cloud, along with personal and financial data. For example that we could port to Azure only put those parts of our ticketing application that capture and process tickets orders. Once an order is captured, the financial side can be processed in our own data center. In short, Windows Azure seems to be a very effective way of providing services that are subject to wide but predictable fluctuations in demand. Have you come to the same conclusions, or do you think I've got it wrong? If you've had experience with Azure, would you recommend it? It would be great to hear from you. Cheers, Tony.

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• Strategies for invoking subclass methods on generic objects

  - by Brad Patton

  I've run into this issue in a number of places and have solved it a bunch of different ways but looking for other solutions or opinions on how to address. The scenario is when you have a collection of objects all based off of the same superclass but you want to perform certain actions based only on instances of some of the subclasses. One contrived example of this might be an HTML document made up of elements. You could have a superclass named HTMLELement and subclasses of Headings, Paragraphs, Images, Comments, etc. To invoke a common action across all of the objects you declare a virtual method in the superclass and specific implementations in all of the subclasses. So to render the document you could loop all of the different objects in the document and call a common Render() method on each instance. It's the case where again using the same generic objects in the collection I want to perform different actions for instances of specific subclass (or set of subclasses). For example (an remember this is just an example) when iterating over the collection, elements with external links need to be downloaded (e.g. JS, CSS, images) and some might require additional parsing (JS, CSS). What's the best way to handle those special cases. Some of the strategies I've used or seen used include: Virtual methods in the base class. So in the base class you have a virtual LoadExternalContent() method that does nothing and then override it in the specific subclasses that need to implement it. The benefit being that in the calling code there is no object testing you send the same message to each object and let most of them ignore it. Two downsides that I can think of. First it can make the base class very cluttered with methods that have nothing to do with most of the hierarchy. Second it assumes all of the work can be done in the called method and doesn't handle the case where there might be additional context specific actions in the calling code (i.e. you want to do something in the UI and not the model). Have methods on the class to uniquely identify the objects. This could include methods like ClassName() which return a string with the class name or other return values like enums or booleans (IsImage()). The benefit is that the calling code can use if or switch statements to filter objects to perform class specific actions. The downside is that for every new class you need to implement these methods and can look cluttered. Also performance could be less than some of the other options. Use language features to identify objects. This includes reflection and language operators to identify the objects. For example in C# there is the is operator that returns true if the instance matches the specified class. The benefit is no additional code to implement in your object hierarchy. The only downside seems to be the lack of using something like a switch statement and the fact that your calling code is a little more cluttered. Are there other strategies I am missing? Thoughts on best approaches?

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• Feynman's inbox

  - by user12607414

  Here is Richard Feynman writing on the ease of criticizing theories, and the difficulty of forming them: The problem is not just to say something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy. As soon as any really definite idea is substituted it becomes almost immediately apparent that it does not work. The second difficulty is that there is an infinite number of possibilities of these simple types. It is something like this. You are sitting working very hard, you have worked for a long time trying to open a safe. Then some Joe comes along who knows nothing about what you are doing, except that you are trying to open the safe. He says ‘Why don’t you try the combination 10:20:30?’ Because you are busy, you have tried a lot of things, maybe you have already tried 10:20:30. Maybe you know already that the middle number is 32 not 20. Maybe you know as a matter of fact that it is a five digit combination… So please do not send me any letters trying to tell me how the thing is going to work. I read them — I always read them to make sure that I have not already thought of what is suggested — but it takes too long to answer them, because they are usually in the class ‘try 10:20:30’. (“Seeking New Laws”, page 161 in The Character of Physical Law.) As a sometime designer (and longtime critic) of widely used computer systems, I have seen similar difficulties appear when anyone undertakes to publicly design a piece of software that may be used by many thousands of customers. (I have been on both sides of the fence, of course.) The design possibilities are endless, but the deep design problems are usually hidden beneath a mass of superfluous detail. The sheer numbers can be daunting. Even if only one customer out of a thousand feels a need to express a passionately held idea, it can take a long time to read all the mail. And it is a fact of life that many of those strong suggestions are only weakly supported by reason or evidence. Opinions are plentiful, but substantive research is time-consuming, and hence rare. A related phenomenon commonly seen with software is bike-shedding, where interlocutors focus on surface details like naming and syntax… or (come to think of it) like lock combinations. On the other hand, software is easier than quantum physics, and the population of people able to make substantial suggestions about software systems is several orders of magnitude bigger than Feynman’s circle of colleagues. My own work would be poorer without contributions — sometimes unsolicited, sometimes passionately urged on me — from the open source community. If a Nobel prize winner thought it was worthwhile to read his mail on the faint chance of learning a good idea, I am certainly not going to throw mine away. (In case anyone is still reading this, and is wondering what provoked a meditation on the quality of one’s inbox contents, I’ll simply point out that the volume has been very high, for many months, on the Lambda-Dev mailing list, where the next version of the Java language is being discussed. Bravo to those of my colleagues who are surfing that wave.) I started this note thinking there was an odd parallel between the life of the physicist and that of a software designer. On second thought, I’ll bet that is the story for anybody who works in public on something requiring special training. (And that would be pretty much anything worth doing.) In any case, Feynman saw it clearly and said it well.

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• Artec TV18R Tuner not working :(

  - by Antillar Maximus

  Can somebody kindly help me setup my TV Tuner stick? Make and Model: Artec TV18R USB TV Tuner OS: Ubuntu 11.10 64bit Hardware: MSI MS1656-US (GX640 barebones): i5 580M, 2xIntel X25M SSDs, Radeon HD5850M,Realtek sound. Logs and messages: antillar@antillar-MS-1656:/usr/share/dvb/atsc$ [B][COLOR=Red]sudo lsusb[/COLOR][/B] 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 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 002 Device 003: ID ffc0:001f Bus 002 Device 005: ID 05d8:8117 Ultima Electronics Corp. [/code][code]antillar@antillar-MS-1656:/usr/share/dvb/atsc$ So, it seems that the tuner is being detected, but the light on it does not turn on? Not sure what is going on? sudo lspci [sudo] password for antillar: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 05) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Broadway PRO [Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series] 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Juniper HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series] 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) 04:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): JMicron Technology Corp. IEEE 1394 Host Controller 04:00.1 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller 04:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller 04:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller 04:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller 05:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) antillar@antillar-MS-1656:/usr/share/dvb/atsc$ I have been searching for a solution to this all weekend without any luck. I remember reading that ehci_hcd is the problem, but I'm not sure if disabling it is a good idea. I don't want my USB ports to go back to v1.1. Thank you!

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• What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of?

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been “tagged” by my friend Paul Randal. It’s a high-tech way of making someone else do what you want, but since it’s Paul, well, I guess I’m OK with that. He’s asked in his recent blog entry “What five things would you get rid of in SQL Server if you were in charge?” This is, of course, a delicate issue. After all, I work at Microsoft, so anything I say here might be taken as a criticism that would require action – but of course it really doesn’t. Interestingly, you may have more to do with what goes in to SQL Server than I did even as a Program Manager where I “owned” a feature. Unlike many places I’ve worked, Microsoft really does drive its products by what its users want – not every time, and not every user request, mind you, but overall I think we hit the mark pretty well. So, with all of that said, and of course the obligatory statement of “these are my own opinions, and have nothing to do with any official Microsoft position in any way, and do not reflect the opinions of other Microsoft employees or management”, here goes. 1. Get rid of SQL Server Management Studio Does that surprise you? After all, when I was a Program Manager, I actually owned the general architecture for SSMS. But those on my team probably would have been able to guess this one for you. I think that SSMS is a fine development tool. But I think that it does less of a good job for managing a system. It’s based on Visual Studio, probably one of the best development IDE’s around. And when I develop code, I really like it. But for a monitoring/management tool, I prefer a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I know, the old one (prior to 3.0) was kludgy, difficult to use and program in. But that’s changed. Of course, when I bring this up, you’ll probably immediately say “But I don’t have that in XP.” And that’s one of the reasons we didn’t go there. (But I still don’t like SSMS for management.) 2. ShrinkDB I think this discussion has been done to death, so I’ll leave it at that. 3. SQL Server Agent Does that one surprise you as well? In my mind, since we ALWAYS ride on Windows, just use the task scheduler there, along with PowerShell. You could log the results in Windows logs, files, back into SQL Server, whatever. It’s just a complexity we don’t need in SQL Server. 4. SQL Server Error Logs We have a full logging setup in Windows. They’re well done, easy to understand and ubiquitous. We should just use that. 5. Several SKU’s I won’t say which, but we have a few SKU’s of SQL Server that need to go. And we need to figure out how to help you understand clearly where you need to go to Enterprise or Data Center.  Most folks are trying to push Standard edition to do things it isn’t designed to do, and then they think SQL Server won’t scale. I think we can do a better job of showing you where Standard Edition will hit the wall, and I think with fewer choices it would be pretty simple for you to pick the right one. Well, once again I’ve probably puzzled some folks and angered others. I think my work here is done. :) Back to you, Paul. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Design Pattern for building a Budget

  - by Scott

  So I've looked at the Builder Pattern, Abstract Interfaces, other design patterns, etc. - and I think I'm over thinking the simplicity behind what I'm trying to do, so I'm asking you guys for some help with either recommending a design pattern I should use, or an architecture style I'm not familiar with that fits my task. So I have one model that represents a Budget in my code. At a high level, it looks like this: public class Budget { public int Id { get; set; } public List<MonthlySummary> Months { get; set; } public float SavingsPriority { get; set; } public float DebtPriority { get; set; } public List<Savings> SavingsCollection { get; set; } public UserProjectionParameters UserProjectionParameters { get; set; } public List<Debt> DebtCollection { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public List<Expense> Expenses { get; set; } public List<Income> IncomeCollection { get; set; } public bool AutoSave { get; set; } public decimal AutoSaveAmount { get; set; } public FundType AutoSaveType { get; set; } public decimal TotalExcess { get; set; } public decimal AccountMinimum { get; set; } } To go into more detail about some of the properties here shouldn't be necessary, but if you have any questions about those I will fill more out for you guys. Now, I'm trying to create code that builds one of these things based on a set of BudgetBuildParameters that the user will create and supply. There are going to be multiple types of these parameters. For example, on the sites homepage, there will be an example section where you can quickly see what your numbers look like, so they would be a much simpler set of SampleBudgetBuildParameters then say after a user registers and wants to create a fully filled out Budget using much more information in the DebtBudgetBuildParameters. Now a lot of these builds are going to be using similar code for certain tasks, but might want to also check the status of a users DebtCollection when formulating a monthly spending report, where as a Budget that only focuses on savings might not want to. I'd like to reduce code duplication (obviously) as much as possible, but in my head, every way I can think to do this would require using a base BudgetBuilderFactory to return the correct builder to the caller, and then creating say a SimpleBudgetBuilder that inherits from a BudgetBuilder, and put all duplicate code in the BudgetBuilder, and let the SimpleBudgetBuilder handle it's own cases. Problem is, a lot of the unique cases are unique to 2/4 builders, so there will be duplicate code somewhere in there obviously if I did that. Can anyone think of a better way to either explain a solution to this that may or may not be similar to mine, or a completely different pattern or way of thinking here? I really appreciate it.

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• The Connected Company: WebCenter Portal - Feedback - Analytics and Polls

  - by Michael Snow

  Evernote Export body, td { }Guest Post by: Mitchell Palski, Staff Sales Consultant The importance of connecting peers has been widely recognized and socialized as a critical component of employee intranets. Organizations are striving to provide mediums for sharing knowledge and improving awareness across their enterprise. Indirectly, the socialization of your enterprise should lead to cost savings and improved product/service quality. However, many times the direct effects of connecting an organization’s leadership with its employees are overlooked. Oracle WebCenter Portal can help you bridge that gap by gathering implicit and explicit feedback. Implicit Feedback Through Usage Analytics Analytics allows administrators to track and analyze WebCenter Portal traffic and usage. Analytics provides the following basic functionality: Usage Tracking Metrics: Analytics collects and reports metrics of common WebCenter Portal functions, including community and portlet traffic. Behavior Tracking: Analytics can be used to analyze WebCenter Portal metrics to determine usage patterns, such as page visit duration and usage over time. User Profile Correlation: Analytics can be used to correlate metric information with user profile information. Usage tracking reports can be viewed and filtered by user profile data such as country, company or title. Usage analytics help measure how users interact with website content – allowing your IT staff and business analysts to make informed decisions when planning development for your next intranet enhancement. For example: If users are not accessing your Announcements page and missing critical information that they need to be aware of, you may elect to use graphical links on the home page to direct more users to that page. As a result, the number of employee help-requests to HR decreases. If users are not accessing your News page to read recent articles, you may elect to stop spending as much time updating the page with new stories and cut costs in your communications department. You notice that there is a high volume of users accessing the Employee Dashboard page so your organization decides to continue making personalization enhancements to the page and investing in the Portal tool that most users are accessing. Usage analytics aren’t necessarily a new concept in the IT industry. What sets WebCenter Portal Analytics apart is: Reports are tailored for WebCenter specific tools Report can be easily added to a page as simple as a drag-and-drop Explicit Feedback Through Polls WebCenter Portal users can create, edit, take, and analyze online polls. With polls, you can survey your audience (such as their opinions and their experience level), check whether they can recall important information, and gather feedback and metrics. How many times have you been involved in a requirements discussion and someone has asked a question similar to “Well how do you know that no one likes our home page?” and the response is “Everyone says they hate it! That’s all anyone complains about.” No one has any measurable, quantifiable metric to gauge user satisfaction. Analytics measure usage, but your organization also needs to measure the quality of your portal as defined by the actual people that use it. With that information, your leadership can make informed decisions that will not only match usage patterns but also relate to employees on a personal level. The end result is a connection between employees and leadership that gives everyone in the organization a sense of ownership of their Portal rather than the feeling of development decisions being segregated to leadership only. Polls can be created and edited through the Poll Manager: Polls and View Poll Results can easily be added to a page through drag-and-drop. What did we learn? Being a “connected” company doesn’t just mean helping employees connect with each other horizontally across your enterprise. It also means connecting those employees to the decisions that affect their everyday activities. Through WebCenter Portal Usage Analytics and Polls, any decision that is made to remove a Portal page, update a Portal page, or develop new Portal functionality, can be justified by quantifiable metrics. Instead of fielding complaints and hearing that your employees don’t have a voice, give those employees a voice and listen!

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• The Latest Major Release of AutoVue is Now Available!

  - by Pam Petropoulos

  Click here to read the full press release. To learn more about AutoVue 20.2, check out the What's New in AutoVue 20.2 Datasheet AutoVue 20.2 continues to set the standard for enterprise level visualization with Augmented Business Visualization, a new paradigm which reconciles information and business data from multiple sources into a single view, providing rich and actionable visual decision-making environments. The release also includes; capabilities that enhance end-to-end approval workflow; solutions to visually enable the mobile workforce; and support for the latest manufacturing and high tech formats.     New capabilities in release 20.2 include: ·         Enhancements to the Augmented Business Visualization framework o    Creation of 2D hotspots has been extended in 2D drawings, PDF and image files and can now be defined as regional boxes, rather than just text strings o    New 3D Hotspot links in models and drawings. Parts or components of 3D models can be selected to create hotspot links. ·         Enhanced end-to-end approval workflows with digital stamping and batch stamping improvements ·         Solutions that visually enable the mobile workforce and extend enterprise visualization to mobile devices, including iPads through OVDI (Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) ·         Enhancements to AutoVue enterprise readiness: reliability and performance improvements, as well as security enhancements which adhere to Oracle’s Software Security Assurance standards ·         Timely support for new MCAD, ECAD, and Office formats ·         New 20.2 versions of AutoVue Document Print Services and Integration SDK (iSDK) ·         New Dutch language availability   The press release also contains terrific supporting quotes from AutoVue customers and partners.        “AutoVue’s stamping enhancements will greatly benefit our building permit management processes,” said Ties Kremer, Information Manager, Noordenveld Municipality, Netherlands. “The ability to batch stamp documents will speed up our approval processes, enable us to save time and money, and help us meet our regulatory compliance obligations.”          “AutoVue provides our non-technical teams in marketing and sales with access to customer order requirements and supporting CAD documents and drawings,” said James Lim, Regional Technical Systems Manager at Molex Incorporated. “AutoVue 20.2 has enabled us to refine our quotation process, and reduce order errors.”         “We are excited about our use of AutoVue’s Augmented Business Visualization framework, which will offer Meridian users enhanced access to related technical documentation,” said Edwin van Dijk, Director of Product Management, BlueCielo.  “By including AutoVue’s new regional hotspot capabilities within BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise, the context of engineering information is carried over into the visual representation of complex assets, thereby helping us to improve productivity and operational excellence.”    

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• XNA Multiplayer Games and Networking

  - by JoshReuben

  ·        XNA communication must by default be lightweight – if you are syncing game state between players from the Game.Update method, you must minimize traffic. That game loop may be firing 60 times a second and player 5 needs to know if his tank has collided with any player 3 and the angle of that gun turret. There are no WCF ServiceContract / DataContract niceties here, but at the same time the XNA networking stack simplifies the details. The payload must be simplistic - just an ordered set of numbers that you would map to meaningful enum values upon deserialization.   Overview ·        XNA allows you to create and join multiplayer game sessions, to manage game state across clients, and to interact with the friends list ·        Dependency on Gamer Services - to receive notifications such as sign-in status changes and game invitations ·        two types of online multiplayer games: system link game sessions (LAN) and LIVE sessions (WAN). ·        Minimum dev requirements: 1 Xbox 360 console + Creators Club membership to test network code - run 1 instance of game on Xbox 360, and 1 on a Windows-based computer   Network Sessions ·        A network session is made up of players in a game + up to 8 arbitrary integer properties describing the session ·        create custom enums – (e.g. GameMode, SkillLevel) as keys in NetworkSessionProperties collection ·        Player state: lobby, in-play   Session Types ·        local session - for split-screen gaming - requires no network traffic. ·        system link session - connects multiple gaming machines over a local subnet. ·        Xbox LIVE multiplayer session - occurs on the Internet. Ranked or unranked   Session Updates ·        NetworkSession class Update method - must be called once per frame. ·        performs the following actions: o   Sends the network packets. o   Changes the session state. o   Raises the managed events for any significant state changes. o   Returns the incoming packet data. ·        synchronize the session à packet-received and state-change events à no threading issues   Session Config ·        Session host - gaming machine that creates the session. XNA handles host migration ·        NetworkSession properties: AllowJoinInProgress , AllowHostMigration ·        NetworkSession groups: AllGamers, LocalGamers, RemoteGamers   Subscribe to NetworkSession events ·        GamerJoined ·        GamerLeft ·        GameStarted ·        GameEnded – use to return to lobby ·        SessionEnded – use to return to title screen   Create a Session session = NetworkSession.Create(         NetworkSessionType.SystemLink,         maximumLocalPlayers,         maximumGamers,         privateGamerSlots,         sessionProperties );   Start a Session if (session.IsHost) {     if (session.IsEveryoneReady)     {        session.StartGame();        foreach (var gamer in SignedInGamer.SignedInGamers)        {             gamer.Presence.PresenceMode =                 GamerPresenceMode.InCombat;   Find a Network Session AvailableNetworkSessionCollection availableSessions = NetworkSession.Find(     NetworkSessionType.SystemLink,       maximumLocalPlayers,     networkSessionProperties); availableSessions.AllowJoinInProgress = true;   Join a Network Session NetworkSession session = NetworkSession.Join(     availableSessions[selectedSessionIndex]);   Sending Network Data var packetWriter = new PacketWriter(); foreach (LocalNetworkGamer gamer in session.LocalGamers) {     // Get the tank associated with this player.     Tank myTank = gamer.Tag as Tank;     // Write the data.     packetWriter.Write(myTank.Position);     packetWriter.Write(myTank.TankRotation);     packetWriter.Write(myTank.TurretRotation);     packetWriter.Write(myTank.IsFiring);     packetWriter.Write(myTank.Health);       // Send it to everyone.     gamer.SendData(packetWriter, SendDataOptions.None);     }   Receiving Network Data foreach (LocalNetworkGamer gamer in session.LocalGamers) {     // Keep reading while packets are available.     while (gamer.IsDataAvailable)     {         NetworkGamer sender;          // Read a single packet.         gamer.ReceiveData(packetReader, out sender);          if (!sender.IsLocal)         {             // Get the tank associated with this packet.             Tank remoteTank = sender.Tag as Tank;              // Read the data and apply it to the tank.             remoteTank.Position = packetReader.ReadVector2();             …   End a Session if (session.AllGamers.Count == 1)         {             session.EndGame();             session.Update();         }   Performance •        Aim to minimize payload, reliable in order messages •        Send Data Options: o   Unreliable, out of order -(SendDataOptions.None) o   Unreliable, in order (SendDataOptions.InOrder) o   Reliable, out of order (SendDataOptions.Reliable) o   Reliable, in order (SendDataOptions.ReliableInOrder) o   Chat data (SendDataOptions.Chat) •        Simulate: NetworkSession.SimulatedLatency , NetworkSession.SimulatedPacketLoss •        Voice support – NetworkGamer properties: HasVoice ,IsTalking , IsMutedByLocalUser

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• Advanced Record-Level Business Intelligence with Inner Queries

  - by gt0084e1

  While business intelligence is generally applied at an aggregate level to large data sets, it's often useful to provide a more streamlined insight into an individual records or to be able to sort and rank them. For instance, a salesperson looking at a specific customer could benefit from basic stats on that account. A marketer trying to define an ideal customer could pull the top entries and look for insights or patterns. Inner queries let you do sophisticated analysis without the overhead of traditional BI or OLAP technologies like Analysis Services. Example - Order History Constancy Let's assume that management has realized that the best thing for our business is to have customers ordering every month. We'll need to identify and rank customers based on how consistently they buy and when their last purchase was so sales & marketing can respond accordingly. Our current application may not be able to provide this and adding an OLAP server like SSAS may be overkill for our needs. Luckily, SQL Server provides the ability to do relatively sophisticated analytics via inner queries. Here's the kind of output we'd like to see. Creating the Queries Before you create a view, you need to create the SQL query that does the calculations. Here we are calculating the total number of orders as well as the number of months since the last order. These fields might be very useful to sort by but may not be available in the app. This approach provides a very streamlined and high performance method of delivering actionable information without radically changing the application. It's also works very well with self-service reporting tools like Izenda. SELECT CustomerID,CompanyName, ( SELECT COUNT(OrderID) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID ) As Orders, DATEDIFF(mm, ( SELECT Max(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) ,getdate() ) AS MonthsSinceLastOrder FROM Customers Creating Views To turn this or any query into a view, just put CREATE VIEW AS before it. If you want to change it use the statement ALTER VIEW AS. Creating Computed Columns If you'd prefer not to create a view, inner queries can also be applied by using computed columns. Place you SQL in the (Formula) field of the Computed Column Specification or check out this article here. Advanced Scoring and Ranking One of the best uses for this approach is to score leads based on multiple fields. For instance, you may be in a business where customers that don't order every month require more persistent follow up. You could devise a simple formula that shows the continuity of an account. If they ordered every month since their first order, they would be at 100 indicating that they have been ordering 100% of the time. Here's the query that would calculate that. It uses a few SQL tricks to make this happen. We are extracting the count of unique months and then dividing by the months since initial order. This query will give you the following information which can be used to help sales and marketing now where to focus. You could sort by this percentage to know where to start calling or to find patterns describing your best customers. Number of orders First Order Date Last Order Date Percentage of months order was placed since last order. SELECT CustomerID, (SELECT COUNT(OrderID) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) As Orders, (SELECT Max(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) AS LastOrder, (SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) AS FirstOrder, DATEDIFF(mm,(SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID),getdate()) AS MonthsSinceFirstOrder, 100*(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT 100*DATEPART(yy,OrderDate) + DATEPART(mm,OrderDate)) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) / DATEDIFF(mm,(SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID),getdate()) As OrderPercent FROM Customers

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• Non use of persisted data

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  Working at a client site, that in itself is good to say, I ran into a set of circumstances that made me ponder, and appreciate, the optimizer engine a bit more. Working on optimizing a stored procedure, I found a piece of code similar to : select BillToAddressID, Rowguid, dbo.udfCleanGuid(rowguid) from sales.salesorderheaderwhere BillToAddressID = 985 A lovely scalar UDF was being used,  in actuality it was used as part of the WHERE clause but simplified here.  Normally I would use an inline table valued function here, but in this case it wasn't a good option. So this seemed like a pretty good case to use a persisted column to improve performance. The supporting index was already defined as create index idxBill on sales.salesorderheader(BillToAddressID) include (rowguid) and the function code is Create Function udfCleanGuid(@GUID uniqueidentifier)returns varchar(255)with schemabindingasbegin Declare @RetStr varchar(255) Select @RetStr=CAST(@Guid as varchar(255)) Select @RetStr=REPLACE(@Retstr,'-','') return @RetStrend Executing the Select statement produced a plan of : Nothing surprising, a seek to find the data and compute scalar to execute the UDF. Lets get optimizing and remove the UDF with a persisted column Alter table sales.salesorderheaderadd CleanedGuid as dbo.udfCleanGuid(rowguid)PERSISTED A subtle change to the SELECT statement… select BillToAddressID,CleanedGuid from sales.salesorderheaderwhere BillToAddressID = 985 and our new optimized plan looks like… Not a lot different from before!  We are using persisted data on our table, where is the lookup to fetch it ?  It didnt happen,  it was recalculated.  Looking at the properties of the relevant Compute Scalar would confirm this ,  but a more graphic example would be shown in the profiler SP:StatementCompleted event. Why did the lookup happen ? Remember the index definition,  it has included the original guid to avoid the lookup.  The optimizer knows this column will be passed into the UDF, run through its logic and decided that to recalculate is cheaper than the lookup.  That may or may not be the case in actuality,  the optimizer has no idea of the real cost of a scalar udf.  IMO the default cost of a scalar UDF should be seen as a lot higher than it is, since they are invariably higher. Knowing this, how do we avoid the function call?  Dropping the guid from the index is not an option, there may be other code reliant on it.   We are left with only one real option,  add the persisted column into the index. drop index Sales.SalesOrderHeader.idxBillgocreate index idxBill on sales.salesorderheader(BillToAddressID) include (rowguid,cleanedguid) Now if we repeat the statement select BillToAddressID,CleanedGuid from sales.salesorderheaderwhere BillToAddressID = 985 We still have a compute scalar operator, but this time it wasnt used to recalculate the persisted data.  This can be confirmed with profiler again. The takeaway here is,  just because you have persisted data dont automatically assumed that it is being used.

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