Search Results

Search found 20785 results on 832 pages for 'idea'.

Page 738/832 | < Previous Page | 734 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744 745  | Next Page >

• How to solve conflicts with another programmer..

  - by Tio

  Hi all.. I've read this question, but I think it doesn't really applies in my case.. I started to work at new company about 2 months ago with the position of senior web developer, there was already one programmer there, my position is above his, but I'm not his boss.. I don't tell him what to do.. Since the day I started to work at the company, I managed to implement a kind of a test server which he refuses to use, implemented a project management tool which he refuses to use also, and I'm in the process of implementing version control using mercurial ( damn Mercurial that's giving me so much headaches ), which he is going to use.. He is a nice guy, but just the other day we had a big discussion about "best practices", and "coding standards".. for me it's absolutely necessary to have this two things, at the place I'm currently working... otherwise it's not going to work.. This discussion, basically revolved about using short tags and the echo shortcut, and how we shouldn't use it anymore ( because I sometimes use short tags ).. this went for about 15 minutes, until I finally dropped the subject because I had work to do.. and of course he didn't budge even a millimeter, he's continuing to use short tags, and the echo shortcut and he not even cares about what I think.. When I mentioned that we are a team, he told me: "We are not a team, you work on your projects and I work on mine".. Let's just say, that the switch in my brain flipped, I raised my voice, and I told him that he was going nuts.. this was the most improper way to deal it with, I know, but there are certain things that can't be said to me.. The question here, is how do I deal with this? I want, to implement more changes on our work workflow, and I know that it's going to be a pain, with him always complaining and saying things like this.. Our boss is going to intervene in a few days, I talked to him today, the other programmer send him an email the day we had the discussion complaining.. Just to clarify, when I talk about implementing changes, I just don't appear at work, the next day with a sheet of paper, and say: "This is our we are doing things from now on! And there is no discussion.." For example, when I was trying to implement the project management tool, I took the time to talk to everybody that was going to be involved in it, to see what they think about it.. everyone was positive except him, he responded that it was just a mean to control us even more.. Does anyone has any idea on how to deal with this? PS: Truth to be told, I didn't start the best way with him, in the 4º day of work at the company, I found a really bad piece of code on our custom CMS, one of those things that I only expect to find in code produced by a programmer that has only 1 month of training in programming, and I talked to my boss about it... he showed up at the time I saw that piece of code, he saw my face and asked about it, so I told him.. I know the worst thing that can be said to a programmer is saying that their code is awful, but I've already learned that my code isn't the best of the world, so I take criticism in a completely different way now.. maybe he doesn't..

  Read the article

• Where should you put constants and why?

  - by Tim Meyer

  In our mostly large applications, we usually have a only few locations for constants: One class for GUI and internal contstants (Tab Page titles, Group Box titles, calculation factors, enumerations) One class for database tables and columns (this part is generated code) plus readable names for them (manually assigned) One class for application messages (logging, message boxes etc) The constants are usually separated into different structs in those classes. In our C++ applications, the constants are only defined in the .h file and the values are assigned in the .cpp file. One of the advantages is that all strings etc are in one central place and everybody knows where to find them when something must be changed. This is especially something project managers seem to like as people come and go and this way everybody can change such trivial things without having to dig into the application's structure. Also, you can easily change the title of similar Group Boxes / Tab Pages etc at once. Another aspect is that you can just print that class and give it to a non-programmer who can check if the captions are intuitive, and if messages to the user are too detailed or too confusing etc. However, I see certain disadvantages: Every single class is tightly coupled to the constants classes Adding/Removing/Renaming/Moving a constant requires recompilation of at least 90% of the application (Note: Changing the value doesn't, at least for C++). In one of our C++ projects with 1500 classes, this means around 7 minutes of compilation time (using precompiled headers; without them it's around 50 minutes) plus around 10 minutes of linking against certain static libraries. Building a speed optimized release through the Visual Studio Compiler takes up to 3 hours. I don't know if the huge amount of class relations is the source but it might as well be. You get driven into temporarily hard-coding strings straight into code because you want to test something very quickly and don't want to wait 15 minutes just for that test (and probably every subsequent one). Everybody knows what happens to the "I will fix that later"-thoughts. Reusing a class in another project isn't always that easy (mainly due to other tight couplings, but the constants handling doesn't make it easier.) Where would you store constants like that? Also what arguments would you bring in order to convince your project manager that there are better concepts which also comply with the advantages listed above? Feel free to give a C++-specific or independent answer. PS: I know this question is kind of subjective but I honestly don't know of any better place than this site for this kind of question. Update on this project I have news on the compile time thing: Following Caleb's and gbjbaanb's posts, I split my constants file into several other files when I had time. I also eventually split my project into several libraries which was now possible much easier. Compiling this in release mode showed that the auto-generated file which contains the database definitions (table, column names and more - more than 8000 symbols) and builds up certain hashes caused the huge compile times in release mode. Deactivating MSVC's optimizer for the library which contains the DB constants now allowed us to reduce the total compile time of your Project (several applications) in release mode from up to 8 hours to less than one hour! We have yet to find out why MSVC has such a hard time optimizing these files, but for now this change relieves a lot of pressure as we no longer have to rely on nightly builds only. That fact - and other benefits, such as less tight coupling, better reuseability etc - also showed that spending time splitting up the "constants" wasn't such a bad idea after all ;-)

  Read the article

• 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!

  Read the article

• How much is a subscriber worth?

  - by Tom Lewin

  This year at Red Gate, we’ve started providing a way to back up SQL Azure databases and Azure storage. We decided to sell this as a service, instead of a product, which means customers only pay for what they use. Unfortunately for us, it makes figuring out revenue much trickier. With a product like SQL Compare, a customer pays for it, and it’s theirs for good. Sure, we offer support and upgrades, but, fundamentally, the sale is a simple, upfront transaction: we’ve made this product, you need this product, we swap product for money and everyone is happy. With software as a service, it isn’t that easy. The money and product don’t change hands up front. Instead, we provide a service in exchange for a recurring fee. We know someone buying SQL Compare will pay us $X, but we don’t know how long service customers will stay with us, or how much they will spend. How do we find this out? We use lifetime value analysis. What is lifetime value? Lifetime value, or LTV, is how much a customer is worth to the business. For Entrepreneurs has a brilliant write up that we followed to conduct our analysis. Basically, it all boils down to this equation: LTV = ARPU x ALC To make it a bit less of an alphabet-soup and a bit more understandable, we can write it out in full: The lifetime value of a customer equals the average revenue per customer per month, times the average time a customer spends with the service Simple, right? A customer is worth the average spend times the average stay. If customers pay on average $50/month, and stay on average for ten months, then a new customer will, on average, bring in $500 over the time they are a customer! Average spend is easy to work out; it’s revenue divided by customers. The problem comes when we realise that we don’t know exactly how long a customer will stay with us. How can we figure out the average lifetime of a customer, if we only have six months’ worth of data? The answer lies in the fact that: Average Lifetime of a Customer = 1 / Churn Rate The churn rate is the percentage of customers that cancel in a month. If half of your customers cancel each month, then your average customer lifetime is two months. The problem we faced was that we didn’t have enough data to make an estimate of one month’s cancellations reliable (because barely anybody cancels)! To deal with this data problem, we can take data from the last three months instead. This means we have more data to play with. We can still use the equation above, we just need to multiply the final result by three (as we worked out how many three month periods customers stay for, and we want our answer to be in months). Now these estimates are likely to be fairly unreliable; when there’s not a lot of data it pays to be cautious with inference. That said, the numbers we have look fairly consistent, and it’s super easy to revise our estimates when new data comes in. At the very least, these numbers give us a vague idea of whether a subscription business is viable. As far as Cloud Services goes, the business looks very viable indeed, and the low cancellation rates are much more than just data points in LTV equations; they show that the product is working out great for our customers, which is exactly what we’re looking for!

  Read the article

• The inevitable Hello World post!

  - by brendonpage

  Greetings to anyone reading this! This is my first of hopefully many posts. I would like to use this post to introduce myself and to let you know what to expect from this blog in future. Okay so a bit about myself. In case you missed the name of this blog, my name is Brendon Page! I am a Software Developer from South Africa and work for a small company who’s main focus is producing software for the kitchen cupboard industry, although from time to time we do produce custom solutions for other industries. I work in a small team of 3, including myself, and am fortunate enough to work from home! I have been involved in IT since 1996, which is when I got my first PC, and started working as a junior programmer in 2003. Outside of work I enjoy playing squash, PC Games and of course LANing with my friends. If I get any free time between all of that I will usually dedicate some of it to a personal project, these are mainly prototypes for an idea I have had or for something that could be useful at work. I was in 2 minds on whether to include a photo of myself. The reason for this was because while I was looking for a suitable photo to use, it dawned on me how much time I dedicate to pulling funny faces in photos! I also realized how little I shave, which I blame completely on working form home. So after much debate here I am, funny face, beard and all!   Now that you know a bit about me lets move onto what expect from this blog. I work predominantly with Microsoft technologies so most if not all of my posts will be related to something Microsoft. Since most of my job entails Software Development you can expect a lot of posts which will deal with the .NET Framework. I am currently working on a large Silverlight project, so my first few posts will be targeted at in that direction. I will be striving to make the content of my posts as useful as possible from both an explanation and code perspective, I aim to include a working solution for every post, which I will put up on my skydrive for download. Here is what I have planned for my next few posts: Where did my session variables go?  Here I will take you through the lessons I learnt the hard way about the ASP.NET session. I am not going to go into to much depth in this post, as there is already a lot of information available on it. I mainly want to cover it in an effort to keep the scope creep of my posts to a minimum, some the solutions I upload will use it and I would like to have a post that I can reference to explain why I am doing something a certain way. Uploading files through SIlverlight Again there is a lot of existing information on this topic, so I wont be going into to much depth, but I will be using the solution from this as a base for my next post. Generating and Displaying DeepZoom images dynamically in Silverlight Well the title pretty much speaks for it’s self on this one. As I mentioned I will be building off the solution that I create in my ‘Uploading files through Silverlight’ post. Securing DeepZoom images using a custom implementation of the MultiScaleTileSource In this post I will look at the privacy issue surrounding the default usage of DeepZoom images in Silverlight and how to overcome it. This makes the use of DeepZoom in privacy conscious applications more viable. Thanks to anyone who actually read this post! I look forward to producing more which will hopefully be helpful to you.

  Read the article

• Easy Made Easier - Networking

  - by dragonfly

      In my last post, I highlighted the feature of the Appliance Manager Configurator to auto-fill some fields based on previous field values, including host names based on System Name and sequential IP addresses from the first IP address entered. This can make configuration a little faster and a little less subject to data entry errors, particularly if you are doing the configuration on the Oracle Database Appliance itself.     The Oracle Database Appliance Appliance Manager Configurator is available for download here. But why would you download it, if it comes pre-installed on the Oracle Database Appliance? A common reason for customers interested in this new Engineered System is to get a good idea of how easy it is to configure. Beyond that, you can save the resulting configuration as a file, and use it on an Oracle Database Appliance. This allows you to verify the data entered in advance, and in the comfort of your office. In addition, the topic of this post is another strong reason to download and use the Appliance Manager Configurator prior to deploying your Oracle Database Appliance.     The most common source of hiccups in deploying an Oracle Database Appliance, based on my experiences with a variety of customers, involves the network configuration. It is during Step 11, when network validation occurs, that these come to light, which is almost half way through the 24 total steps, and can be frustrating, whether it was a typo, DNS mis-configuration or IP address already in use. This is why I recommend as a best practice taking advantage of the Appliance Manager Configurator prior to deploying an Oracle Database Appliance.     Why? Not only do you get the benefit of being able to double check your entries before you even start on the Oracle Database Appliance, you can also take advantage of the Network Validation step. This is the final step before you review all the data and can save it to a text file. It can be skipped, if you aren't ready or are not connected to the network that the Oracle Database Appliance will be on. My recommendation, though, is to run the Appliance Manager Configurator on your laptop, enter the data or re-load a previously saved file of the data, and then connect to the network that the Oracle Database Appliance will be on. Now run the Network Validation. It will check to make sure that the host names you entered are in DNS and do resolve to the IP addresses you specifiied. It will also ping the IP Addresses you specified, so that you can verify that no other machine is already using them (yes, that has happened at customer sites).     After you have completed the validation, as seen in the screen shot below, you can review the results and move on to saving your settings to a file for use on your Oracle Database Appliance, or if there are errors, you can use the Back button to return to the appropriate screen and correct the data. Once you are satisfied with the Network Validation, just check the Skip/Ignore Network Validation checkbox at the top of the screen, then click Next. Is the Network Validation in the Appliance Manager Configurator required? No, but it can save you time later. I should also note that the Network Validation screen is not part of the Appliance Manager Configurator that currently ships on the Oracle Database Appliance, so this is the easiest way to verify your network configuration.     I hope you are finding this series of posts useful. My next post will cover some aspects of the windowing environment that gets run by the 'startx' command on the Oracle Database Appliance, since this is needed to run the Appliance Manager Configurator via a direct connected monitor, keyboard and mouse, or via the ILOM. If it's been a while since you've used an OpenWindows environment, you'll want to check it out.

  Read the article

• Stepping outside Visual Studio IDE [Part 2 of 2] with Mono 2.6.4

  - by mbcrump

  Continuing part 2 of my Stepping outside the Visual Studio IDE, is the open-source Mono Project. Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com/), Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. A growing family of solutions and an active and enthusiastic contributing community is helping position Mono to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications. So, to clarify. You can use Mono to develop .NET applications that will run on Linux, Windows or Mac. It’s basically a IDE that has roots in Linux. Let’s first look at the compatibility: Compatibility If you already have an application written in .Net, you can scan your application with the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) to determine if your application uses anything not supported by Mono. The current release version of Mono is 2.6. (Released December 2009) The easiest way to describe what Mono currently supports is: Everything in .NET 3.5 except WPF and WF, limited WCF. Here is a slightly more detailed view, by .NET framework version: Implemented C# 3.0 System.Core LINQ ASP.Net 3.5 ASP.Net MVC C# 2.0 (generics) Core Libraries 2.0: mscorlib, System, System.Xml ASP.Net 2.0 - except WebParts ADO.Net 2.0 Winforms/System.Drawing 2.0 - does not support right-to-left C# 1.0 Core Libraries 1.1: mscorlib, System, System.Xml ASP.Net 1.1 ADO.Net 1.1 Winforms/System.Drawing 1.1 Partially Implemented LINQ to SQL - Mostly done, but a few features missing WCF - silverlight 2.0 subset completed Not Implemented WPF - no plans to implement WF - Will implement WF 4 instead on future versions of Mono. System.Management - does not map to Linux System.EnterpriseServices - deprecated Links to documentation. The Official Mono FAQ’s Links to binaries. Mono IDE Latest Version is 2.6.4 That's it, nothing more is required except to compile and run .net code in Linux. Installation After landing on the mono project home page, you can select which platform you want to download. I typically pick the Virtual PC image since I spend all of my day using Windows 7. Go ahead and pick whatever version is best for you. The Virtual PC image comes with Suse Linux. Once the image is launch, you will see the following: I’m not going to go through each option but its best to start with “Start Here” icon. It will provide you with information on new projects or existing VS projects. After you get Mono installed, it's probably a good idea to run a quick Hello World program to make sure everything is setup properly. This allows you to know that your Mono is working before you try writing or running a more complex application. To write a "Hello World" program follow these steps: Start Mono Development Environment. Create a new Project: File->New->Solution Select "Console Project" in the category list. Enter a project name into the Project name field, for example, "HW Project". Click "Forward" Click “Packaging” then OK. You should have a screen very simular to a VS Console App. Click the "Run" button in the toolbar (Ctrl-F5). Look in the Application Output and you should have the “Hello World!” Your screen should look like the screen below. That should do it for a simple console app in mono. To test out an ASP.NET application, simply copy your code to a new directory in /srv/www/htdocs, then visit the following URL: http://localhost/directoryname/page.aspx where directoryname is the directory where you deployed your application and page.aspx is the initial page for your software. Databases You can continue to use SQL server database or use MySQL, Postgress, Sybase, Oracle, IBM’s DB2 or SQLite db. Conclusion I hope this brief look at the Mono IDE helps someone get acquainted with development outside of VS. As always, I welcome any suggestions or comments.

  Read the article

• Minecraft style XNA game collision?

  - by Levi

  I've been trying to get this working for ages now, I can detect if there's a solid block at any place on the map and I can check how far something is inside of it, but I don't understand how to fix the collision. I've tried loads of ways and all of them end up by the player getting stuck, glitching around, incorrect responses and I really have no idea how to go about this :/. int Chnk = Utility.GetChunkFromPosition(origin); if (Chnk == -1) return; Vector3 Pos = Utility.GetCubeVectorFromPosition(origin); if (GlobalWorld.LoadedChunks[Chnk].Blocks[(byte)Pos.X, (byte)Pos.Y, (byte)Pos.Z] != 0) { isInIllegalState = true; if (velocity.Y < 0f) velocity.Y = 0f; } while (isInIllegalState) { if (GlobalWorld.LoadedChunks[Chnk].Blocks[(byte)Pos.X, (byte)origin.Y, (byte)Pos.Z] != 0) origin.Y = (int)(origin.Y + 1); else isInIllegalState = false; } if (origin.Y < Chunk.YSize - 2 && GlobalWorld.LoadedChunks[Chnk].Blocks[(byte)Pos.X, (byte)(origin.Y + playerHeight.Y), (byte)Pos.Z] != 0) { velocity.Y = 0f; //Acceleration.Y = 0f; origin.Y = (int)origin.Y;// -0.5f; } for (int x = -1; x <= 1; x+=2) { for (int z = -1; z <= 1; z += 2) { Vector3 CornerPosition = new Vector3(boundingSize * x, 0, boundingSize * z); bool CorrectX = false; bool CorrectZ = false; Vector3 RoundedOrigin = Utility.RoundVector(origin); Vector3 RoundedCorner = Utility.RoundVector(origin + CornerPosition); byte BlockAdjacent = Utility.GetCubeFromPosition(origin + CornerPosition); if (BlockAdjacent == 0) continue; if (RoundedCorner.X != RoundedOrigin.X && RoundedCorner.Z != RoundedOrigin.Z) { CorrectX = true; CorrectZ = true; } if (RoundedCorner.Z != RoundedOrigin.Z && RoundedCorner.X == RoundedOrigin.X) CorrectZ = true; if (RoundedCorner.X != RoundedOrigin.X && RoundedCorner.Z == RoundedOrigin.Z) CorrectX = true; if (CorrectX && CornerPosition.X > 0) { if (origin.X > 0f) origin.X = (int)(origin.X + 1) - boundingSize; else origin.X = (int)origin.X - boundingSize; } else if (CorrectX && CornerPosition.X < 0) { if (origin.X > 0f) origin.X = (int)(origin.X) + boundingSize; else origin.X = (int)(origin.X - 1) + boundingSize; } if (CorrectZ && CornerPosition.Z > 0) { if (origin.Z > 0f) origin.Z = (int)(origin.Z + 1) - boundingSize; else origin.Z = (int)origin.Z - boundingSize; } else if (CorrectZ && CornerPosition.Z < 0) { if (origin.Z > 0f) origin.Z = (int)(origin.Z) + boundingSize; else origin.Z = (int)(origin.Z - 1) + boundingSize; } } }

  Read the article

• 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.

  Read the article

• Snap App Windows to Pre-Defined Screen Sections with Acer GridVista

  - by Asian Angel

  The window snapping feature in Windows 7 and the ability to organize monitor(s) into specific gridded sections have both become popular lately. If you love the idea of having both combined in a single software then join us as we look at Acer GridVista. Note: Acer GridVista works with Windows XP, Vista, & 7. It will also work with dual monitors. Setup Acer GridVista comes in a zip file format and at first you might assume that it is portable in nature but it is not. Once you unzip the enclosed folder you will need to double click on “Setup.exe” to install the program. Acer GridVista in Action Once you have installed the program and started it up all that you will notice at first is the new “System Tray Icon”. Here you can see the “Context Menu”… The only menu command that you will likely use most of the time is the “Grid Configuration Command”. Notice that for our single monitor setup that it lists “Display 1”. The “Single Setting” is enabled by default and you can easily choose the layout that best suits your needs. The enabled layout style will always be highlighted in yellow for easy reference. For our example we chose the “Triple (primary at right)” layout style. Each section will be specifically numbered as shown here. Do not worry…the grid and numbers only appear for a moment and then become invisible again until you move an app window into that section/area of your screen. On every regular app window that you open you will notice three new buttons in the upper right corner. Here is what each of these new buttons do: Acer GridVista Extensions (Transparent, Send To Window Grid, About Acer GridVista): Viewable in a drop-down menu Lock To Grid (Enable/Disable): Enabled by default –> Note: Set to disable on a particular window to keep it free of the “grid locking function” Always On Top (Enable/Disable): Disabled by default A good look at the “Extensions Drop-Down Menu” where you can set an app window to be transparent or send it to a specific screen section on your monitor(s). If you open an app it will not automatically lock into a specific section. To lock the window into a specific section drag-and-drop the app window into the desired section. Notice the red outline and highlighted number on “Section 2” below. The red outline and highlighted number serves as an indicator that if you release the app window at that moment it will lock into the outlined/highlighted section. Now that Notepad is locked into “Section 2” you can see that it is maximized within that section. Continue to drag-and-drop your app windows into the appropriate sections as desired…apps can still be reduced to the “Taskbar” the same as before. Options These are the options available for Acer GridVista… Conclusion If you have been wanting the ability to “snap” windows and organize them into specific screen areas then Acer GridVista is definitely a program that you should try out. Links Download Acer GridVista at Softpedia View detailed information at the Acer GridVista Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnapHelp Troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death by Preventing Automatic RebootAdd Windows 7’s AeroSnap Feature to Vista and XPResize Windows to Specific Dimensions Easily With SizerKeyboard Ninja: Assign a Hotkey to any Window TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Playing Games In Chrome Made Easier Stop In The Name Of Love (Firefox addon) Chitika iPad Labs Gives Live iPad Sale Stats Heaven & Hell Finder Icon Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet

  Read the article

• WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

  - by alexhildyard

  I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

  Read the article

• Omni-directional light shadow mapping with cubemaps in WebGL

  - by Winged

  First of all I must say, that I have read a lot of posts describing an usage of cubemaps, but I'm still confused about how to use them. My goal is to achieve a simple omni-directional (point) light type shading in my WebGL application. I know that there is a lot more techniques (like using Two-Hemispheres or Camera Space Shadow Mapping) which are way more efficient, but for an educational purpose cubemaps are my primary goal. Till now, I have adapted a simple shadow mapping which works with spotlights (with one exception: I don't know how to cut off the glitchy part beyond the reach of a single shadow map texture): glitchy shadow mapping<<< So for now, this is how I understand the usage of cubemaps in shadow mapping: Setup a framebuffer (in case of cubemaps - 6 framebuffers; 6 instead of 1 because every usage of framebufferTexture2D slows down an execution which is nicely described here <<<) and a texture cubemap. Also in WebGL depth components are not well supported, so I need to render it to RGBA first. this.texture = gl.createTexture(); gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, this.texture); gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, gl.TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, gl.LINEAR); gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, gl.TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, gl.LINEAR); for (var face = 0; face < 6; face++) gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X + face, 0, gl.RGBA, this.size, this.size, 0, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, null); gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, null); this.framebuffer = []; for (face = 0; face < 6; face++) { this.framebuffer[face] = gl.createFramebuffer(); gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, this.framebuffer[face]); gl.framebufferTexture2D(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, gl.COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, gl.TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X + face, this.texture, 0); gl.framebufferRenderbuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, gl.DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, gl.RENDERBUFFER, this.depthbuffer); var e = gl.checkFramebufferStatus(gl.FRAMEBUFFER); // Check for errors if (e !== gl.FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE) throw "Cubemap framebuffer object is incomplete: " + e.toString(); } Setup the light and the camera (I'm not sure if should I store all of 6 view matrices and send them to shaders later, or is there a way to do it with just one view matrix). Render the scene 6 times from the light's position, each time in another direction (X, -X, Y, -Y, Z, -Z) for (var face = 0; face < 6; face++) { gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, shadow.buffer.framebuffer[face]); gl.viewport(0, 0, shadow.buffer.size, shadow.buffer.size); gl.clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | gl.DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); camera.lookAt( light.position.add( cubeMapDirections[face] ) ); scene.draw(shadow.program); } In a second pass, calculate the projection a a current vertex using light's projection and view matrix. Now I don't know If should I calculate 6 of them, because of 6 faces of a cubemap. ScaleMatrix pushes the projected vertex into the 0.0 - 1.0 region. vDepthPosition = ScaleMatrix * uPMatrixFromLight * uVMatrixFromLight * vWorldVertex; In a fragment shader calculate the distance between the current vertex and the light position and check if it's deeper then the depth information read from earlier rendered shadow map. I know how to do it with a 2D Texture, but I have no idea how should I use cubemap texture here. I have read that texture lookups into cubemaps are performed by a normal vector instead of a UV coordinate. What vector should I use? Just a normalized vector pointing to the current vertex? For now, my code for this part looks like this (not working yet): float shadow = 1.0; vec3 depth = vDepthPosition.xyz / vDepthPosition.w; depth.z = length(vWorldVertex.xyz - uLightPosition) * linearDepthConstant; float shadowDepth = unpack(textureCube(uDepthMapSampler, vWorldVertex.xyz)); if (depth.z > shadowDepth) shadow = 0.5; Could you give me some hints or examples (preferably in WebGL code) how I should build it?

  Read the article

• 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.

  Read the article

• Move on and look elsewhere, or confront the boss?

  - by Meister

  Background: I have my Associates in Applied Science (Comp/Info Tech) with a strong focus in programming, and I'm taking University classes to get my Bachelors. I was recently hired at a local company to be a Software Engineer I on a team of about 8, and I've been told they're looking to hire more. This is my first job, and I was offered what I feel to be an extremely generous starting salary ($30/hr essentially + benefits and yearly bonus). What got me hired was my passion for programming and a strong set of personal projects. Problem: I had no prior experience when I interviewed, so I didn't know exactly what to ask them about the company when I was hired. I've spotted a number of warning signs and annoyances since then, such as: Four developers when I started, with everyone talking about "Ben" or "Ryan" leaving. One engineer hired thirty days before me, one hired two weeks after me. Most of the department has been hiring a large number of people since I started. Extremely limited internet access. I understand the idea from an IT point of view, but not only is Facebook blocked, but so it Youtube, Twitter, and Pandora. I've also figured out that they block all access to non-DNS websites (http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/) and strangely enough Miranda-IM. Low cubicles. Which is fine because I like my immediate coworkers, but they put the developers with the customer service, customer training, and QA department in a huge open room. Noise, noise, noise, and people stop to chitchat all day long. Headphones only go so far. Several emails have been sent out by my boss since I started telling us programmers to not talk about non-work-related-things like Video Games at our cubicles, despite us only spending maybe five minutes every few hours doing so. Further digging tells me that this is because someone keeps complaining that the programmers are "slacking off". People are looking over my shoulder all day. I was in the Freenode webchat to get help with a programming issue, and within minutes I had an email from my boss (to all the developers) telling us that we should NOT be connected to any outside chat servers at work. Version control system from 2005 that we must access with IE and keep the Java 1.4 JRE installed to be able to use. I accidentally updated to Java 6 one day and spent the next two days fighting with my PC to undo this "problem". No source control, no comments on anything, no standards, no code review, no unit testing, no common sense. I literally found a problem in how they handle string resource translations that stems from the simple fact that they don't trim excess white spaces, leading to developers doing: getResource("Date: ") instead of: getResource("Date") + ": ", and I was told to just add the excess white spaces back to the database instead of dealing with the issue directly. Some of these things I'd like to try to understand, but I like having IRC open to talk in a few different rooms during the day and keep in touch with friends/family over IM. They don't break my concentration (not NEARLY as much as the lady from QA stopping by to talk about her son), but because people are looking over my shoulder all day as they walk by they complain when they see something that's not "programmer-looking work". I've been told by my boss and QA that I do good, fast work. I should be judged on my work output and quality, not what I have up on my screen for the five seconds you're walking by So, my question is, even though I'm just barely at my 90 days: How do you decide to move on from a job and looking elsewhere, or when you should start working with your boss to resolve these issues? Is it even possible to get the boss to work with me in many of these things? This is the only place I heard back from even though I sent out several resume's a day for several months, and this place does pay well for putting up with their many flaws, but I'm just starting to get so miserable working here already. Should I just put up with it?

  Read the article

• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

  Read the article

• Access denied error while mounting a shared folder?

  - by SSH

  I am a linux newbie and I have a very basic question. I have three machines - machineA 10.108.24.132 machineB 10.108.24.133 machineC 10.108.24.134 and all those machines have Ubuntu 12.04 installed in it and I have root access to all those three machines. Now I am supposed to do below things in my above machines - Create mount point /opt/exhibitor/conf Mount the directory in all servers. sudo mount <NFS-SERVER>:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ I have already created /opt/exhibitor/conf directory in all those three machines as mentioned above. Now I am trying to create a Mount Point on all those three machines. So I followed the below process - Install NFS support files and NFS kernel server in all the above three machines $ sudo apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server Create the shared directory in all the above three machines $ mkdir /opt/exhibitor/conf/ Edited the /etc/exports and added the entry like this in all the above three machines - # /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported # to NFS clients. See exports(5). # # Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3: # /srv/homes hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) # # Example for NFSv4: # /srv/nfs4 gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check) # /srv/nfs4/homes gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) # /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.*(rw) Run exportfs in all the above three machines root@machineA:/# exportfs -rv exportfs: /etc/exports [1]: Neither 'subtree_check' or 'no_subtree_check' specified for export "10.108.24.*:/opt/exhibitor/conf/". Assuming default behaviour ('no_subtree_check'). NOTE: this default has changed since nfs-utils version 1.0.x exporting 10.108.24.*:/opt/exhibitor/conf Now I did showmount on machineA root@machineA:/# showmount -e 10.108.24.132 Export list for 10.108.24.132: /opt/exhibitor/conf 10.108.24.* And also I have started the NFS server like this in all the above three machines - sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start And now when I did this, I am getting an error - root@machineA:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf I have also tried doing the same thing from machineB and machineC as well and still I get the same error- root@machineB:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ root@machineC:/# sudo mount -t nfs 10.108.24.132:/opt/exhibitor/conf /opt/exhibitor/conf/ Did my /etc/exports file looks good? As I have the same content in all the three machines. And also are there any logs related to NFS which I can see to find any clues? Any idea what wrong I am doing here? UPDATE:- So my etc/exports files would be like this in all the three machines - # /etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported # to NFS clients. See exports(5). # # Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3: # /srv/homes hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check) # # Example for NFSv4: # /srv/nfs4 gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check) # /srv/nfs4/homes gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) # /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.132(rw) /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.133(rw) /opt/exhibitor/conf/ 10.108.24.134(rw) Just a quick check - The IP Address that I am taking for each machine as mentioned above is like this - root@machineB:/# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:ad:5b:a7 inet addr:10.108.24.133 Bcast:10.108.27.255 Mask:255.255.252.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:5696812 errors:0 dropped:12462 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:5083427 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:7904369145 (7.9 GB) TX bytes:601844910 (601.8 MB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:187144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:187144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:24012302 (24.0 MB) TX bytes:24012302 (24.0 MB) Here the IP Address that I am taking for machineB is 10.108.24.133.

  Read the article

• The Three-Legged Milk Stool - Why Oracle Fusion Incentive Compensation makes the difference!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  During the London Olympics, we were exposed to dozens of athletes who worked with sports psychologists to maximize their performance. Executives often hire business psychologists to coach their teams to excellence. In the same vein, Fusion Incentive Compensation can be used to get people to change their sales behavior so we can make our numbers. But what about using incentive compensation solutions in a non-sales scenario to drive change? Recently, I was working an opportunity where a company was having a low user adoption rate for Salesforce.com, which was causing problems for them. I suggested they use Fusion Incentive Comp to change the reps' behavior. We tossed around the idea of tracking user adoption by creating a variable bonus for reps based on how well they forecasted revenues in the new system. Another thought was to reward the reps for how often they logged into the system or for the percentage of leads that became opportunities and turned into revenue. A new twist on a great product. Fusion CRM's Sweet Spot I'm excited about the sales performance management (SPM) tools in Fusion CRM. This trio of Incentive Compensation, Territory Management, and Quota Management sets us apart from the competition because Oracle is the only vendor that provides all three of these capabilities on a single tech stack, in a single application, and with a single look and feel. The niche vendors offer standalone territory or incentive compensation solutions, but then the customer has to custom build the other tools and can end up with a Frankenstein-type environment. On average, companies overpay sales commissions by three to eight percent. You calculate that number for a company the size of Oracle for one quarter and it makes a pretty air-tight financial case for using SPM tools to figure accurate commissions. Plus when sales reps get the right compensation, they can be out selling rather than spending precious time figuring out what they didn't get paid or looking for another job. And one more thing ... Oracle knows incentive comp. We have been a Gartner Market Scope leader in this space for the last five years. Our solution gets high marks because of its scalability and because of its interoperability with other technologies. And now that we're leading with Fusion, our incentive compensation offering includes the innovations that the Fusion team built, plus enhancements from the E-Business Suite Incentive Comp team. It's a case of making a good thing even better. (See product video.) The "Wedge" Apps In a number of accounts that I'm working on, there is a non-Oracle CRM system of record. That gives me the perfect opportunity to introduce the benefits of our SPM tools and to get the customer using Fusion. Then the door is wide open for the company to uptake more of Fusion CRM, especially since all the integrations they need are out of the box. I really believe that implementing this wedge of SPM tools is the ticket to taking market share away from other vendors. It allows us to insert ourselves in an environment where no other CRM solution in the market has the extending capabilities of Fusion. Not Just Your Usual Suspects Usually the stakeholders that I talk to for Territory Management are tightly aligned with the sales management team. When I sell the quota planning tool, I'm talking to finance people on the ERP side of the house who are measuring quotas and forecasting revenue. And then Incentive Comp is of most interest to the sales operations people, and generally these people roll up to either HR or the payroll department. I think of our Fusion SPM tools as a three-legged stool straddling an organization's Sales, Finance, and HR departments. So when you're prospecting for opportunities -- yes, people with a CRM perspective will be very interested -- but don't limit yourselves to that constituency. You might find stakeholders in accounting, revenue planning, or HR compensation teams. You just might discover, as I did at United Airlines, that the HR organization is spearheading the CRM project because incentive compensation is what they need ... and they're the ones with the budget. Jason Loh Global Solutions Manager, Fusion CRM Sales Planning Oracle Corporation

  Read the article

• SPTI problem with Mode Select

  - by Bob Murphy

  I'm running into a problem in which an attempt to do a "Mode Select" SCSI command using SPTI is returning an error status of 0x02 ("Check Condition"), and hope someone here might have some tips or suggestions. The code in question is intended to work with at a custom SCSI device. I wrote the original support for it using ASPI under WinXP, and am converting it to work with SPTI under 64-bit Windows 7. Here's the problematic code - and what's happening is, sptwb.spt.ScsiStatus is 2, which is a "Check Condition" error. Unfortunately, the device in question doesn't return useful information when you do a "Request Sense" after this problem occurs, so that's no help. void MSSModeSelect(const ModeSelectRequestPacket& inRequest, StatusResponsePacket& outResponse) { IPC_LOG("MSSModeSelect(): PathID=%d, TargetID=%d, LUN=%d", inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId, inRequest.m_Device.m_TargetId, inRequest.m_Device.m_Lun); int adapterIndex = inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId; HANDLE adapterHandle = prvOpenScsiAdapter(inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId); if (adapterHandle == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) { outResponse.m_Status = eScsiAdapterErr; return; } SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_WITH_BUFFERS sptwb; memset(&sptwb, 0, sizeof(sptwb)); #define MODESELECT_BUF_SIZE 32 sptwb.spt.Length = sizeof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH); sptwb.spt.PathId = inRequest.m_Device.m_PathId; sptwb.spt.TargetId = inRequest.m_Device.m_TargetId; sptwb.spt.Lun = inRequest.m_Device.m_Lun; sptwb.spt.CdbLength = CDB6GENERIC_LENGTH; sptwb.spt.SenseInfoLength = 0; sptwb.spt.DataIn = SCSI_IOCTL_DATA_IN; sptwb.spt.DataTransferLength = MODESELECT_BUF_SIZE; sptwb.spt.TimeOutValue = 2; sptwb.spt.DataBufferOffset = offsetof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_WITH_BUFFERS,ucDataBuf); sptwb.spt.Cdb[0] = SCSIOP_MODE_SELECT; sptwb.spt.Cdb[4] = MODESELECT_BUF_SIZE; DWORD length = offsetof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_WITH_BUFFERS,ucDataBuf) + sptwb.spt.DataTransferLength; memset(sptwb.ucDataBuf, 0, sizeof(sptwb.ucDataBuf)); sptwb.ucDataBuf[2] = 0x10; sptwb.ucDataBuf[16] = (BYTE)0x01; ULONG bytesReturned = 0; BOOL okay = DeviceIoControl(adapterHandle, IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH, &sptwb, sizeof(SCSI_PASS_THROUGH), &sptwb, length, &bytesReturned, FALSE); DWORD gle = GetLastError(); IPC_LOG(" DeviceIoControl() %s", okay ? "worked" : "failed"); if (okay) { outResponse.m_Status = (sptwb.spt.ScsiStatus == 0) ? eOk : ePrinterStatusErr; } else { outResponse.m_Status = eScsiPermissionsErr; } CloseHandle(adapterHandle); } A few more remarks, for what it's worth: This is derived from some old ASPI code that does the "Mode Select" flawlessly. This routine opens \\.\SCSI<whatever> at the beginning, via prvOpenScsiAdapter(), and closes the handle at the end. All the other routines for dealing with the device do the same thing, including the routine to do "Reserve Unit". Is this a good idea under SPTI, or should the call to "Reserve Unit" leave the handle open, so this routine and others in the sequence can use the same handle? This uses the IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH. Should "Mode Select" use IOCTL_SCSI_PASS_THROUGH_DIRECT instead? Thanks in advance - any help will be greatly appreciated.

  Read the article

• News From EAP Testing

  - by Fatherjack

  There is a phrase that goes something like “Watch the pennies and the pounds/dollars will take care of themselves”, meaning that if you pay attention to the small things then the larger things are going to fare well too. I am lucky enough to be a Friend of Red Gate and once in a while I get told about new features in their tools and have a test copy of the software to trial. I got one of those emails a week or so ago and I have been exploring the SQL Prompt 6 EAP since then. One really useful feature of long standing in SQL Prompt is the idea of a code snippet that is automatically pasted into the SSMS editor when you type a few key letters. For example I can type “ssf” and then press the tab key and the text is expanded to SELECT * FROM. There are lots of these combinations and it is possible to create your own really easily. To create your own you use the Snippet Manager interface to define the shortcut letters and the code that you want to have put in their place. Let’s look at an example. Say I am writing a blog about something and want to have the demo code create a temporary table. It might looks like this; The first time you run the code everything is fine, a lovely set of dates fill the results grid but run it a second time and this happens.   Yep, we didn’t destroy the temporary table so the CREATE statement fails when it finds the table already exists. No matter, I have a snippet created that takes care of this.   Nothing too technical here but you will see that in the Code section there is $CURSOR$, this isn’t a TSQL keyword but a marker for SQL Prompt to place the cursor in that position when the Code is pasted into the SSMS Editor. I just place my cursor above the CREATE statement and type “ifobj” – the shortcut for my code to DROP the temporary table – which has been defined in the Snippet Manager as below. This means I am right-away ready to type the name of the offending table. Pretty neat and it’s been very useful in saving me lots of time over many years.   The news for SQL Prompt 6 is that Red Gate have added a new Snippet Command of $PASTE$. Let’s alter our snippet to the following and try it out   Once again, we will type type “ifobj” in the SSMS Editor but first of all, highlight the name of the table #TestTable and copy it to your clipboard. Now type “ifobj” and press Tab… Wherever the string $PASTE$ is placed in the snippet, the contents of your clipboard are merged into the pasted TSQL. This means I don’t need to type the table name into the code snippet, it’s already there and I am seeing a fully functioning piece of TSQL ready to run. This means it is it even easier to write TSQL quickly and consistently. Attention to detail like this from Red Gate means that their developer tools stay on track to keep winning awards year after year and help take the hard work out of writing neat, accurate TSQL. If you want to try out SQL Prompt all the details are at http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-prompt/.

  Read the article

• Basic collision direction detection on 2d objects

  - by Osso Buko

  I am trying to develop a platform game for Android by using ANdroid GL Engine (ANGLE). And I am having trouble with collision detection. I have two objects which is shaped as rectangular. And no change in rotation. Here is a scheme of attributes of objects. What i am trying to do is when objects collide they block each other's movement on that direction. Every object has 4 boolean (bTop, bBottom, bRight, bLeft). For example when bBottom is true object can't advance on that direction. I came up with a solution but it seems it only works on one dimensional. Bottom and top or right and left. public void collisionPlatform (MyObject a, MyObject b) { // first obj is player and second is a wall or a platform Vector p1 = a.mPosition; // p1 = middle point of first object Vector d1 = a.mPosition2; // width(mX) and height of first object Vector mSpeed1 = a.mSpeed; // speed vector of first object Vector p2 = b.mPosition; // p1 = middle point of second object Vector d2 = b.mPosition2; // width(mX) and height of second object Vector mSpeed2 = b.mSpeed; // speed vector of second object float xDist, yDist; // distant between middle of two object float width , height; // this is average of two objects measurements width=(width1+width2)/2 xDist=(p1.mX - p2.mX); // calculate distance // if positive first object is at the right yDist=(p1.mY - p2.mY); // if positive first object is below width = d1.mX + d2.mX; // average measurements calculate height = d1.mY + d2.mY; width/=2; height/=2; if (Math.abs(xDist) < width && Math.abs(yDist) < height) { // Two object is collided if(p1.mY>p2.mY) { // first object is below second one a.bTop = true; if(a.mSpeed.mY<0) a.mSpeed.mY=0; b.bBottom = true; if(b.mSpeed.mY>0) b.mSpeed.mY=0; } else { a.bBottom = true; if(a.mSpeed.mY>0) a.mSpeed.mY=0; b.bTop = true; if(b.mSpeed.mY<0) b.mSpeed.mY=0; } } As seen in my code it simply will not work. when object comes from right or left it doesn't work. I tried couple of ways other than this one but none worked. I am guessing right method will include mSpeed vector. But I have no idea how to do it. I really appreciate if you could help. Sorry for my bad english.

  Read the article

• Cloud Computing Pricing - It's like a Hotel

  - by BuckWoody

  I normally don't go into the economics or pricing side of Distributed Computing, but I've had a few friends that have been surprised by a bill lately and I wanted to quickly address at least one aspect of it. Most folks are used to buying software and owning it outright - like buying a car. We pay a lot for the car, and then we use it whenever we want. We think of the "cloud" services as a taxi - we'll just pay for the ride we take an no more. But it's not quite like that. It's actually more like a hotel. When you subscribe to Azure using a free offering like the MSDN subscription, you don't have to pay anything for the service. But when you create an instance of a Web or Compute Role, Storage, that sort of thing, you can think of the idea of checking into a hotel room. You get the key, you pay for the room. For Azure, using bandwidth, CPU and so on is billed just like it states in the Azure Portal. so in effect there is a cost for the service and then a cost to use it, like water or power or any other utility. Where this bit some folks is that they created an instance, played around with it, and then left it running. No one was using it, no one was on - so they thought they wouldn't be charged. But they were. It wasn't much, but it was a surprise.They had the hotel room key, but they weren't in the room, so to speak. To add to their frustration, they had to talk to someone on the phone to cancel the account. I understand the frustration. Although we have all this spelled out in the sign up area, not everyone has the time to read through all that. I get that. So why not make this easier? As an explanation, we bill for that time because the instance is still running, and we have to tie up resources to be available the second you want them, and that costs money. As far as being able to cancel from the portal, that's also something that needs to be clearer. You may not be aware that you can spin up instances using code - and so cancelling from the Portal would allow you to do the same thing. Since a mistake in code could erase all of your instances and the account, we make you call to make sure you're you and you really want to take it down. Not a perfect system by any means, but we'll evolve this as time goes on. For now, I wanted to make sure you're aware of what you should do. By the way, you don't have to cancel your whole account not to be billed. Just delete the instance from the portal and you won't be charged. You don't have to call anyone for that. And just FYI - you can download the SDK for Azure and never even hit the online version at all for learning and playing around. No sign-up, no credit card, PO, nothing like that. In fact, that's how I demo Azure all the time. Everything runs right on your laptop in an emulated environment.  

  Read the article

• My LAN USB NIC is not working in ubuntu 11.10?

  - by Gaurav_Java

  Today i start my system its seems that my LAN port is not working . so i buy one USB to LAN adapter and i plug in ubuntu system its doen't connect automatically .when i check result lsusb its shows me that there is one DM9601 Ethernet adapter is connected when i click on network information in panel its shows me that there is something " wired NEtwork (Broadcom NetLink BCM5784M gigabit Ethernet PCIe) I think want some driver for that .i don't have any idea how it can be used ? here output of sudo lspci -nn *00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07) 00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07) 00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 [8086:2944] (rev 03) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 [8086:2948] (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03) 00:1d.3 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller [8086:2919] (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:2930] (rev 03) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1698] (rev 10) 04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]* sudo lshw -class network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 10 serial: 00:1f:16:9a:56:98 capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.119 firmware=sb v2.19 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:47 memory:f4500000-f450ffff *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: WiFi Link 5100 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 00 serial: 00:22:fa:09:02:00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlagn driverversion=3.0.0-17-generic firmware=8.83.5.1 build 33692 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn resources: irq:46 memory:f4600000-f4601fff *-network description: Ethernet interface physical id: 4 logical name: eth1 serial: 00:60:6e:00:f1:7d size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s capabilities: ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=dm9601 driverversion=22-Aug-2005 duplex=full firmware=Davicom DM9601 USB Ethernet ip=192.168.1.34 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s I am using Wimax internet connection which i have to connect from browser . at that time my system is not showing that i am connected to any wired connection. but when i connect internet from other system after getting conneted to internet . when i plug again my USB LAN then its shows that you are conneted to wired connetion. here is screenshot for conneting wimax from browser after connecting to internet network connection shows

  Read the article

• Make your TSQL easier to read during a presentation

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server Management Studio 2012 has some neat settings that you can use to help your presentations at a SQL event better for the attendees if you are willing to spend a few minutes making some settings changes. Historically, I have been reluctant to make changes to my SSMS settings as it is such a tedious process and it’s not 100% clear that what you think you are changing is actually what gets changed. With SSMS 2012 this has become a lot easier and a lot less risky. In any session that involves TSQL there is a trade off between the speaker having all the code on screen and the attendees being able to read any of what is on screen. You (the speaker) might be able to read this when you are working on the code but plenty of your audience wont be able to make head or tail of it. SSMS 2012 has a zoom facility that can help: but don’t go nuts … Having the font too big means you will be scrolling a lot and the code will again be rendered unreadable. There is more though but you need to take a deep breath and open the Tools menu and delve into the SSMS options. In previous versions of SSMS this is a deep, dark and scary place where changing values can be obscure and sometimes catastrophic to the UI when you get back to the code editor. First things first, we set out as a good DBA and save our current (and presumably acceptable) SSMS configuration. From the import and Export Settings you can set up a file to hold all of the settings that you currently have. The wizard will open and ask you to pick an option. This time around choose to export settings. hit next and next again and then name your settings profile in the final step of the wizard and then click Finish. Once this is done then you can change whatever you like and always get back to this configuration in a couple of clicks. So what can you change to make for a good experience? Well there are plenty of things that can be altered but don’t go too mad and change too many things without taking a look at the results for every item on the list above you can change font, size, weight, colour, background colour etc. etc. but consider what you are trying to achieve and take it slowly. I have seen presenters with their settings set to have a yellow highlight and black font rather than the default pale blue background and slightly darker font so to achieve that select Text Editor and then select “Selected Text” in the Display Items listbox. As you change things the Sample area give you an idea of what effect you are going to have. Black and yellow is the colour combination with the highest contrast – that’s why bees and wasps# are that colour. What next? how about increasing the default font for your demo scripts? This means that any script you open and any new ones that you start will take on this font. No more zooming (or forgetting to) in the middle of sessions. now don’t forget to save this profile – follow the same steps as above but give the profile a different name, something like PresentationBigFontHighContrast might be appropriate. Once you are done making changes, export the settings once more and then go into the Import Export wizard and import settings from the first profile you created. Everything will be back to normal. Now making changes to suit your environment can be done very easily and with confidence. * – and warning tape and safety signs and so forth – Health and Safety officers simply copy nature!

  Read the article

• Customer owes me half my payment. Should I take ownership of his AWS account for charging? How?

  - by Cawas

  Background They paid me my first half (back in April 15th) before even we could get into an agreement. Very nice of him! Then I've finished the 2 weeks job of setting up the servers, using his AWS credentials he had just bought. I waited for another 2 weeks for everything settling up, and it was all running fine. He did what he needed with his sftp account, everyone were happy. Now, it has been almost 2 months since I've finished the job and I still didn't get the 2nd half. I must assume, it's not much money (about U$400, converted), but it would help me pay the bills at least. Heck, the Amazon bills they are paying are little less than that (for now). Measures I'm wondering how I can go to charge him now. First thought, of course, would be taking everything down and say "pay now, or be doomed". If that's not good enough, then I lost it. I have no contracts and I doubt I could get a law suit in this country for such a low value based only on emails. And I don't really want to get too agressive here - there might be a business chance in the future and I don't want to ruin it. Second though would be just changing the password. But then he probably could gain access again by some recovery means. That's where my question may mainly relay. How can I do it and not leaving any room for recovery from his side? I even got the first AWS "your account was created" mail from himself, showing me I could begin my job, back then. Lastly, do you have any other idea on what I can and what I should do in this case? Responding to Answers Please, consider reading the current answers and comments. This is not a very simple case. I've considered many, many options (including all lawful ones) before considering this ones I've listed here, and I am willing to take the loss and all that. That's not the point. The point is being practical here. I will call him again and talk about it. I will do terrorism on getting lawyers and getting contract. I am ready to go all forth while I have time and energy for it. But, in practice, there is this extra thing I can do to assure myself of the work I've done. I can basically take it back and delete everything! I'd only take his password because I can find no other way to do it within Amazon. Maybe, contacting Amazon and explaining the situation? I don't know. Give me ideas on this technical side! And thank everyone for the attention and helping me clarifying the issue so far! :)

  Read the article

• Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

  - by jamiet

  Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure SQL Database ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations. To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 734 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744 745  | Next Page >