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• Top 5 Mobile Apps To Keep Track Of Cricket Scores [ICC World Cup]

  - by Gopinath

  The ICC World Cup 2011 has started with a bang today and the first match between India vs Bangladesh was a cracker. India trashed Bangladesh with a huge margin, thanks to Sehwag for scoring an entertaining 175 runs in 140 runs. At the moment it’s very clear that whole India is gripped with cricket fever and so the rest of fans across the globe. Couple of days ago we blogged about how to watch live streaming of ICC cricket world cup online for free as well as top 10 websites to keep track live scores on your computers. What about tracking live cricket scores on mobiles phones? Here is our guide to top mobile apps available for Symbian(Nokia), Android, iOS and Windows mobiles. By the way, we are covering free apps alone in this post. Why to waste money when free apps are available? SnapTu – Symbian Mobile App SnapTu is a multi feature application that lets you to track live cricket scores, read latest news and check stats published on cric info. SnapTu has tie up with Cric Info and accessing all of CricInfo website on your mobile is very easy. Along with live scores, SnapTu also lets you access your Facebook, Twitter and Picassa on your mobile. This is my favourite application to track cricket on Symbian mobiles. Download SnapTu for your mobiles here Yahoo! Cricket – Symbian & iOS App Yahoo! Cricket Scores is another dedicated application to catch up with live scores and news on your Nokia mobiles and iPhones. This application is developed by Yahoo!, the web giant as well as the official partner of ICC. Features of the app at a glance Cricket: Get a summary page with latest scores, upcoming matches and details of the recent matches News: View sections devoted to the latest news, interviews and photos Statistics: Find the latest team and player stats Download Yahoo! Cricket For Symbian Phones   Download Yahoo! Cricket For iOS ESPN CricInfo – Android and iOS App Is there any site that is better than CricInfo to catch up with latest cricket news and live scores? I say No. ESPN CricInfo is the best website available on the web to get up to the minute  cricket information with in-depth analysis from cricket experts. The live commentary provided by CricInfo site is equally enjoyable as watching live cricket on TV. CricInfo guys have their official applications for Android mobiles and iOS devices and you accessing ball by ball updates on these application is joy. Download ESPN Crick Info App: Android Version, iPhone Version NDTV Cricket – Android, iOS and Blackberry App NDTV Cricket App is developed by NDTV, the most popular English TV news channel in India. This application provides live coverage of international and domestic cricket (Test, ODI & T20) along with latest News, Photos, Videos and Stats. This application is available for iOS devices(iPhones, iPads, iPod Touch), Android mobiles and Blackberry devices. Download NDTV Cricket for iOS here & here    Download NDTV Apps For Rest of OSs ECB Cricket – Symbian, iOS & Android App If you are an UK citizen then  this may be the right application to download for getting live cricket score updates as well as latest news about England Cricket Board. ECB Cricket is an official application of England Cricket Board Download ECB Cricket : Android Version, iPhone Version, Symbian Version Are there any better apps that we missed to feature in this list? This article titled,Top 5 Mobile Apps To Keep Track Of Cricket Scores [ICC World Cup], was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• WebLogic Server–Use the Execution Context ID in Applications–Lessons From Hansel and Gretel

  - by james.bayer

  I learned a neat trick this week.  Don’t let your breadcrumbs go to waste like Hansel and Gretel did!  Keep track of the code path, logs and errors for each request as they flow through the system.  Earlier this week an OTN forum post in the WLS – General category by Oracle Ace John Stegeman asked a question how to retrieve the Execution Context ID so that it could be used on an error page that a user could provide to a help desk or use to check with application administrators so they could look up what went wrong.  What is the Execution Context ID (ECID)?  Fusion Middleware injects an ECID as a request enters the system and it says with the request as it flows from Oracle HTTP Server to Oracle Web Cache to multiple WebLogic Servers to the Oracle Database. It’s a way to uniquely identify a request across tiers.  According to the documentation it’s: The value of the ECID is a unique identifier that can be used to correlate individual events as being part of the same request execution flow. For example, events that are identified as being related to a particular request typically have the same ECID value.  The format of the ECID string itself is determined by an internal mechanism that is subject to change; therefore, you should not have or place any dependencies on that format. The novel idea that I see John had was to extend this concept beyond the diagnostic information that is captured by Fusion Middleware.  Why not also use this identifier in your logs and errors so you can correlate even more information together!  Your logging might already identify the user, so why not identify the request so you filter down even more.  All you need to do inside of WebLogic Server to get ahold of this information is invoke DiagnosticConextHelper: weblogic.diagnostics.context.DiagnosticContextHelper.getContextId() This class has other helpful methods to see other values tracked by the diagnostics framework too.  This way I can see even more detail and get information across tiers. In performance profiling, this can be very handy to track down where time is being spent in code.  I’ve blogged and made videos about this before.  JRockit Flight Recorder can use the WLDF Diagnostic Volume in WLS 10.3.3+ to automatically capture and correlate lots of helpful information for each request without installing any special agents and with the out-of-the-box JRockit and WLS settings!  You can see here how information is displayed in JRockit Flight Recorder about a single request as it calls a Servlet, which calls an EJB, which gets a DB connection, which starts a transaction, etc.  You can get timings around everything and even see the SQL that is used. http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/web.1111/e13714/using_flightrecorder.htm#WLDFC480 Recent versions of the WLS console also are able to visualize this data too, so it works with other JVMs besides JRockit when you turn on WLDF instrumentation. I wrote a little sample application that verified to myself that the ECID did actually cross JVM boundaries.  I invoked a Servlet in one JVM, which acted as an EJB client to Stateless Session Bean running in another JVM.  Each call returned the same ECID.  You need to turn on WLDF Instrumentation for this to work otherwise the framework returns null.  I’m glad John put me on to this API as I have some interesting ideas on how to correlate some information together.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Fishbowl Solutions

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Today, I give you the final entry in the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, held last week during OpenWorld. This one comes from Friend of the ‘Lab and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) hacker, John Sim (@jrsim_uix), whom you might remember from his XBox Kinect demo at COLLABORATE 12 (presentation slides and abstract) hacks and other exploits with WebCenter. We put this challenge together specifically for developers like John, who like to experiment with new tools and push the envelope of what’s possible and build cool things, and as you can see from his entry John did just that, mashing together Google Maps and Oracle Social Network into a mobile app built with PhoneGap that uses the device’s camera and GPS to keep teams on the move in touch. He calls it a Mobile GeoTagging Solution, but I think Avengers Assemble! would have equally descriptive, given that was obviously his inspiration. Here’s his description of the mobile app: My proposed solution was to design and simplify GeoLocation mapping, and automate updates for users and teams on the move; who don’t have access to a laptop or want to take their ipads out – but allow them to make quick updates to OSN and upload photos taken from their mobile device – there and then. As part of this; the plan was to include a rules engine that could be configured by the user to allow the device to automatically update and post messages when they arrived at a set location(s). Inspiration for this came from on{x} – automate your life. Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the conference to show off his hard work in person, but luckily, he had a colleague from Fishbowl and a video to showcase his work.    Here are some shots of John’s mobile app for your viewing pleasure: John’s thinking is sound. Geolocation is usually relegated to consumer use cases, thanks to services like foursquare, but distributed teams working on projects out in the world definitely need a way to stay in contact. Consider a construction job. Different contractors all converge on a single location, and time is money. Rather than calling or texting each other and risking a distracted driving accident, an app like John’s allows everyone on the job to see exactly where the other contractors are. Using his GPS rules, they could easily be notified about how close each is to the site, definitely useful when you have a flooring contractor sitting idle, waiting for an electrician to finish the wiring. The best part is that the project manager or general contractor could stay updated on all the action (or inaction) using Oracle Social Network, either sitting at a desk using the browser app or desktop client or on the go, using one of the native mobile apps built for Oracle Social Network. I can see this being used by insurance adjusters too, and really any team that, erm, assembles at a given spot. Of course, it’s also useful for meeting at the pub after the day’s work is done. Beyond people, this solution could also be implemented for physical objects that are in route to a destination. Say you’re a customer waiting on rail shipment or a package delivery. You could track your valuable’s whereabouts easily as they report their progress via checkins. If they deviated from the GPS rules, you’d be notified. You might even be able to get a picture into Oracle Social Network with some light hacking. Thanks to John and his colleagues at Fishbowl for participating in our challenge. We hope everyone had a good experience. Make sure to check out John’s blog post on his work and the experience using Oracle Social Network. Although this is the final, official entry we had, tomorrow, I’ll show you the work of someone who finished code, but wasn’t able to make the judging event. Stay tuned.

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• What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

  - by Daniel Moth

  Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Randomly placing items script not working - sometimes items spawn in walls, sometimes items spawn in weird locations

  - by Timothy Williams

  I'm trying to figure out a way to randomly spawn items throughout my level, however I need to make sure they won't spawn inside another object (walls, etc.) Here's the code I'm currently using, it's based on the Physics.CheckSphere(); function. This runs OnLevelWasLoaded(); It spawns the items perfectly fine, but sometimes items spawn partway in walls. And sometimes items will spawn outside of the SpawnBox range (no clue why it does that.) //This is what randomly generates all the items. void SpawnItems () { if (Application.loadedLevelName == "Menu" || Application.loadedLevelName == "End Demo") return; //The bottom corner of the box we want to spawn items in. Vector3 spawnBoxBot = Vector3.zero; //Top corner. Vector3 spawnBoxTop = Vector3.zero; //If we're in the dungeon, set the box to the dungeon box and tell the items we want to spawn. if (Application.loadedLevelName == "dungeonScene") { spawnBoxBot = new Vector3 (8.857f, 0, 9.06f); spawnBoxTop = new Vector3 (-27.98f, 2.4f, -15); itemSpawn = dungeonSpawn; } //Spawn all the items. for (i = 0; i != itemSpawn.Length; i ++) { spawnedItem = null; //Zeroes out our random location Vector3 randomLocation = Vector3.zero; //Gets the meshfilter of the item we'll be spawning MeshFilter mf = itemSpawn[i].GetComponent<MeshFilter>(); //Gets it's bounds (see how big it is) Bounds bounds = mf.sharedMesh.bounds; //Get it's radius float maxRadius = new Vector3 (bounds.extents.x + 10f, bounds.extents.y + 10f, bounds.extents.z + 10f).magnitude * 5f; //Set which layer is the no walls layer var NoWallsLayer = 1 << LayerMask.NameToLayer("NoWallsLayer"); //Use that layer as your layermask. LayerMask layerMask = ~(1 << NoWallsLayer); //If we're in the dungeon, certain items need to spawn on certain halves. if (Application.loadedLevelName == "dungeonScene") { if (itemSpawn[i].name == "key2" || itemSpawn[i].name == "teddyBearLW" || itemSpawn[i].name == "teddyBearLW_Admiration" || itemSpawn[i].name == "radio") randomLocation = new Vector3(Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.x, -26.96f), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.y, spawnBoxTop.y), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.z, -2.141f)); else randomLocation = new Vector3(Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.x, spawnBoxTop.x), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.y, spawnBoxTop.y), Random.Range(-2.374f, spawnBoxTop.z)); } //Otherwise just spawn them in the box. else randomLocation = new Vector3(Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.x, spawnBoxTop.x), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.y, spawnBoxTop.y), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.z, spawnBoxTop.z)); //This is what actually spawns the item. It checks to see if the spot where we want to instantiate it is clear, and if so it instatiates it. Otherwise we have to repeat the whole process again. if (Physics.CheckSphere(randomLocation, maxRadius, layerMask)) spawnedItem = Instantiate(itemSpawn[i], randomLocation, Random.rotation); else i --; //If we spawned something, set it's name to what it's supposed to be. Removes the (clone) addon. if (spawnedItem != null) spawnedItem.name = itemSpawn[i].name; } } What I'm asking for is if you know what's going wrong with this code that it would spawn stuff in walls. Or, if you could provide me with links/code/ideas of a better way to check if an item will spawn in a wall (some other function than Physics.CheckSphere). I've been working on this for a long time, and nothing I try seems to work. Any help is appreciated.

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• Launching Ops Center 12c

  - by user12601629

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c is most ambitious version of the Ops Center tooling that we've ever released. I think that make it appropriate that we launched it in grand style! When it became clear we were going to be complete with the 12c final release about this time of year, the marketing team proposed that we roll the launch of 12c into Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo.  I thought that sounded like a fine idea!  You see, I have always loved Japan.  I even studied a bit of Japanese language back in school. OpenWorld Tokyo was an outstanding even this year.  It was held in Roppongi, one of the most stylish districts in Tokyo. And, to make things even better, the Sakura (cherry blossoms) were blooming.  If you've never been in Japan for cherry blossom season, it's a must see!  Here are a couple of pics for you. Here is a picture from Roppongi, near the conference.  Here's a picture near the Imperial Palace.  A couple of friends from the local sales team took me here before my flight out. So, now back to the product launch! We choose to launch the product in John Fowler's "Engineered Systems" keynote address.  It made perfect sense because of the close ties of Ops Center to the Systems portfolio of products.  It was a packed house for the keynote.  Here's a picture I took just before we started -- there were also hundreds more people in "overflow" rooms in other parts of the venue. Here's a picture of me on stage during the launch. While there are countless new features in Ops Center 12c that customers will love, I had to limit myself to discussing just three. Mission Critical Clouds Solaris 11 Engineered Systems So, what does Mission Critical Cloud mean?  It means we've expanded EM's cloud capabilities in a couple of key areas. First, we've expanded the "self service provisioning" capabilities we have to include SPARC -- not just x86.  Now you can build clouds of Solaris Zones with ease!  Second, we've much more deeply integrated high-end storage and network management into the cloud layers.  These may our IaaS story is now much more powerful! For Solaris 11, we didn't simply port our monitoring agent to S11.  That would have been easy, but also boring! We support S11 deeply.  Full access to the power of the IPS packaging system, the new virtualized networking stack, new Zones features, the Auto Install framework.  If you're ready to try Solaris 11 then Ops Center is ready for you. Last is on the area of Engineered Systems.  These combinations of hardware and software are fast and powerful. However, we're also on a mission to make them ever easier to manage.  We've made major strides with Ops Center 12c. Manage these systems as racks, not individual components.  The new capabilities for the new engineered systems like Exalogic and SPARC SuperCluster and striking. You can read more here: Oracle Unveils Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c So, I'll wrap this up with one final bit of fun. One of my friends from the Oracle marketing department found a super cool place to get dinner.  It's a restaurant called Gonpachi. It turns out this is the place that inspired the scene in the Quentin Taratino movie Kill Bill where Uma Thurman fights 88 Ninjas.  Here is a picture I snapped while we were there. It was surely a good time. Check it out next time you're in Tokyo.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part II

  - by Tara Kizer

  I arrived in Seattle last Monday afternoon to attend PASS Summit 2011.  I had really wanted to attend Gail Shaw’s (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar “All About Execution Plans” on Monday, but that would have meant flying out on Sunday which I couldn’t do.  On Tuesday, I attended Allan Hirt’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar entitled “A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups”.  Allan is a great speaker, and his seminar was packed with demos and information about AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012.  Unfortunately, I have lost my notes from this seminar and the presentation materials are only available on the pre-con DVD.  Hmpf! On Wednesday, I attended Gail Shaw’s “Bad Plan! Sit!”, Andrew Kelly’s (blog|twitter) “SQL 2008 Query Statistics”, Dan Jones’ (blog|twitter) “Improving your PowerShell Productivity”, and Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) “BLITZ! The SQL – More One Hour SQL Server Takeovers”.  In Gail’s session, she went over how to fix bad plans and bad query patterns.  Update your stale statistics! How to fix bad plans Use local variables – optimizer can’t sniff it, so it’ll optimize for “average” value Use RECOMPILE (at the query or stored procedure level) – CPU hit OPTIMIZE FOR hint – most common value you’ll pass How to fix bad query patterns Don’t use them – ha! Catch-all queries Use dynamic SQL OPTION (RECOMPILE) Multiple execution paths Split into multiple stored procedures OPTION (RECOMPILE) Modifying parameter values Use local variables Split into outer and inner procedure OPTION (RECOMPILE) She also went into “last resort” and “very last resort” options, but those are risky unless you know what you are doing.  For the average Joe, she wouldn’t recommend these.  Examples are query hints and plan guides. While I enjoyed Andrew’s session, I didn’t take any notes as it was familiar material.  Andrew is a great speaker though, and I’d highly recommend attending his sessions in the future. Next up was Dan’s PowerShell session.  I need to look into profiles, manifests, function modules, and function import scripts more as I just didn’t quite grasp these concepts.  I am attending a PowerShell training class at the end of November, so maybe that’ll help clear it up.  I really enjoyed the Excel integration demo.  It was very cool watching PowerShell build the spreadsheet in real-time.  I must look into this more!  On a side note, I am jealous of Dan’s hair.  Fabulous hair! Brent’s session showed us how to quickly gather information about a server that you will be taking over database administration duties for.  He wrote a script to do a fast health check and then later wrapped it into a stored procedure, sp_Blitz.  I can’t wait to use this at my work even on systems where I’ve been the primary DBA for years, maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked.  We are using EPM to help standardize our environment and uncover problems, but sp_Blitz will definitely still help us out.  He even provides a cloud-based update feature, sp_BlitzUpdate, for sp_Blitz so you don’t have to constantly update it when he makes a change.  I think I’ll utilize his update code for some other challenges that we face at my work.

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• Build-time dependency resolving coming to Entity Framework. Now, how about those BI tools too?

  - by jamiet

  Three months ago I wrote a blog post entitled Some thoughts on Visual Studio database references and how they should be used for SQL Server BI where I shared some thoughts on a feature available to database developers in Visual Studio 2010 that I would love to see added to SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS) and Reporting Services (SSRS). In there I said: Over the past few weeks I have been making heavy use of the Database tools in Visual Studio 2010 and one of the features that has most impressed me has been database references.   Database references allow you to have stored procedures in your database project that refer to objects (tables, views, stored procedures etc…) that exist in other database projects and hence when you build your database project it is able to resolve those references.   It occurred to me that similar functionality would be incredibly useful for SQL Server Integration Services(SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS) & Reporting Services (SSRS) projects. After all reports, packages and data source views are rife with references to database objects – why shouldn’t we be able to have design-time dependency checking in our BI projects the same way that database and .Net developers do? In that blog post I shared links to three Connect submissions where I requested this feature be added to SSIS, SSAS & SSRS. In addition I also submitted a request that the feature be extended to .Net projects so that any reference to a database object in a .Net assembly can be resolved at build time. That Connect submission is at [Entity FX] Use database references to constrain the EDM and overnight it received this comment from Microsoft: We have been working on this feature for a while and and will be available soon This is really good news - it improves the Microsoft developer ecosystem by ensuring invalid references to database references get caught at build time (ideally as part of a Continuous integration build) rather than run time. [Hopefully it might nip this code-first nonsense in the bud too (Ooo...way to incite flame comments :) ) ]. If you want to see this feature in action then check out a video from Teched Europe last month entitled SQL Server Developer Tools Code-named "Juneau" where it is demo'd by Lance Delano and Tim Laverty.   The point of this blog post though is not just to draw attention to this forthcoming feature for .Net developers, it is to ask you to petition Microsoft to get this feature added to SSIS/SSAS/SSRS too. After all, we already know (from the video above) that the feature is coming to this new code-name Juneau development environment plus we also know that Juneau will be the development environment for SSIS/SSAS/SSRS as well - is it really much of a stretch to expect the BI tools to have access to this great feature too? I don't think so and if you agree with me then I urge you to vote and add a comment to the Connection submissions that are requesting this feature. They are at: [SSAS] Declare Object Dependancies [SSRS] Declare Object Dependancies [SSIS] Declare Object Dependancies (Update, Apparently someone at Microsoft has deemed it necassary to set this to private and I am not able to change it back even though I submitted it. You can still vote on the other two though.) Let's close that SQL Developer Gap!   @Jamiet    

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• How the number of indexes built on a table can impact performances?

  - by Davide Mauri

  We all know that putting too many indexes (I’m talking of non-clustered index only, of course) on table may produce performance problems due to the overhead that each index bring to all insert/update/delete operations on that table. But how much? I mean, we all agree – I think – that, generally speaking, having many indexes on a table is “bad”. But how bad it can be? How much the performance will degrade? And on a concurrent system how much this situation can also hurts SELECT performances? If SQL Server take more time to update a row on a table due to the amount of indexes it also has to update, this also means that locks will be held for more time, slowing down the perceived performance of all queries involved. I was quite curious to measure this, also because when teaching it’s by far more impressive and effective to show to attended a chart with the measured impact, so that they can really “feel” what it means! To do the tests, I’ve create a script that creates a table (that has a clustered index on the primary key which is an identity column) , loads 1000 rows into the table (inserting 1000 row using only one insert, instead of issuing 1000 insert of one row, in order to minimize the overhead needed to handle the transaction, that would have otherwise ), and measures the time taken to do it. The process is then repeated 16 times, each time adding a new index on the table, using columns from table in a round-robin fashion. Test are done against different row sizes, so that it’s possible to check if performance changes depending on row size. The result are interesting, although expected. This is the chart showing how much time it takes to insert 1000 on a table that has from 0 to 16 non-clustered indexes. Each test has been run 20 times in order to have an average value. The value has been cleaned from outliers value due to unpredictable performance fluctuations due to machine activity. The test shows that in a  table with a row size of 80 bytes, 1000 rows can be inserted in 9,05 msec if no indexes are present on the table, and the value grows up to 88 (!!!) msec when you have 16 indexes on it This means a impact on performance of 975%. That’s *huge*! Now, what happens if we have a bigger row size? Say that we have a table with a row size of 1520 byte. Here’s the data, from 0 to 16 indexes on that table: In this case we need near 22 msec to insert 1000 in a table with no indexes, but we need more that 500msec if the table has 16 active indexes! Now we’re talking of a 2410% impact on performance! Now we can have a tangible idea of what’s the impact of having (too?) many indexes on a table and also how the size of a row also impact performances. That’s why the golden rule of OLTP databases “few indexes, but good” is so true! (And in fact last week I saw a database with tables with 1700bytes row size and 23 (!!!) indexes on them!) This also means that a too heavy denormalization is really not a good idea (we’re always talking about OLTP systems, keep it in mind), since the performance get worse with the increase of the row size. So, be careful out there, and keep in mind the “equilibrium” is the key world of a database professional: equilibrium between read and write performance, between normalization and denormalization, between to few and too may indexes. PS Tests are done on a VMWare Workstation 7 VM with 2 CPU and 4 GB of Memory. Host machine is a Dell Precsioni M6500 with i7 Extreme X920 Quad-Core HT 2.0Ghz and 16Gb of RAM. Database is stored on a SSD Intel X-25E Drive, Simple Recovery Model, running on SQL Server 2008 R2. If you also want to to tests on your own, you can download the test script here: Open TestIndexPerformance.sql

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• Cellbi Silverlight Controls Giveaway (5 License to give away)

  - by mbcrump

  Cellbi recently updated their new Silverlight Controls to version 4 and to support Visual Studio 2010. I played with a couple of demos on their site and had to take a look. I headed over to their website and downloaded the controls. The first thing that I noticed was all of the special text effects and animations included. I emailed them asking if I could give away their controls in my January 2011 giveaway and they said yes. They also volunteered to give away 5 total license so the changes for you to win would increase.  I am very thankful they were willing to help the Silverlight community with this giveaway. So some quick rules below: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of Cellbi Silverlight Controls! (5 License to give away) Random winner will be announced on February 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump and @cellbi http://mcrump.me/cscfree ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit Cellbi because they made this possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark: The What's new in this release page is here. You can also check out the live demos here. Don’t worry about the Samples/Help Documentation. That is installed to your local HDD during the installation process. Begin by downloading the trial version and running the program. After everything is installed then you will see the following screen: After it is installed, you may want to take a look at your Toolbox in Visual Studio 2010. After you add the controls from the “Choose Items” in Silverlight and you will see that you now have access to all of these controls. At this point, to use the controls it’s as simple as drag/drop onto your Silverlight container. It will create the proper Namespaces for you. It’s hard to show with a static screenshot just how powerful the controls actually are so I will refer you to the demo page to learn more about them. Since all of these are animations/effects it just doesn’t work with a static screenshot. It is worth noting that the Sfx pack really focuses on the following core effects: I will show you the best route to get started building a new project with them below. The best page to start is the sample browser which you can access by going to SvFx Launcher. In my case, I want to build a new Carousel. I simple navigate to the Carousel that I want to build and hit the “Cs” code at the top. This launches Visual Studio 2010 and now I can copy/paste the XAML into my project. That is all there is to it. Hopefully this post was helpful and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win a set of the controls!  Subscribe to my feed

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• Heading out to Dallas GiveCamp 2011

  - by dotgeek

  The day has finally arrived for twelve local charities here in the Dallas area, when they’ll get some help from various local Developers with their website initiative needs at this years Dallas GiveCamp. I’m really looking forward to helping out at this year event and what I hope will be the start of many more GiveCamps to follow. Similar to Habitat for Humanity, where people gather to help build and improve homes for people in need, GiveCamp brings together programmers and equips them with the virtual tools they need to build and improve their existing websites. Tonight is when things will kickoff for this weekends events and teams will start working on their various projects. The building continues on through the night then and all the way through until Sunday afternoon. The end goal for the teams and charities is to have a completed and working website for each charity to begin using and turn over all the production code and digital assets to them. None of this would be possible with out the great sponsors we have returning once again and their donations of various products to help these charities out with their projects, like Telerik's CMS product Sitefinity 4.0, paired with a year of hosting from Verio to mention just a few of them. Just like the skilled builders who might help train volunteers in the use of a nail gun in building a house. Training is also available here on site for the Developers and these local Charities. Giving them all the skills in how to manage and use these products, from site development and then into actual production is a key to the success of this weekends event.     Tonight's training sessions will kick off with a real treat from Giovanni Gallucci, as he speaks about Social Media for NPOs and then later Gabe Sumner from Telerik will begin a training session on Sitefinity for Developers. These training sessions will continue through out the weekend with .Net Nuke and Mojo Portal sessions also planned as well. If you’re a developer and would like to help out in the future, then check in your area and with your local User Groups to find out if you already have a GiveCamp near you to help out. If you don’t have one available, then consider starting up a local GiveCamp and then you too can help Code it Forward. About GiveCamp GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend. During GiveCamp, developers are welcome to go home in the evenings or camp out all weekend long. There are usually food and drink provided at the event. There are sometimes even game systems set up for when you and your need a little break! Overall, it’s a great opportunity for people to work together, developing new friendships, and doing something important for their community. At GiveCamp, there is an expectation of “What Happens at GiveCamp, Stays at GiveCamp”. Therefore, all source code must be turned over to the charities at the end of the weekend (developers cannot ask for payment) and the charities are responsible for maintaining the code moving forward (charities cannot expect the developers to maintain the codebase).

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• Slow Ubuntu 10.04 after long time unused

  - by Winston Ewert

  I'm at spring break so I'm back at my parent's house. I've turned my computer on which has been off since January and its unusably slow. This was not the case when I last used the computer in January. It is running 10.04, Memory: 875.5 MB CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ Available Disk Space: 330.8 GB I'm not seeing a large usage of either memory or Disk I/O. If I look at my list of processes there is only a very small amount of CPU usage. However, if I hover over the CPU usage graph that I've on the top bar, I sometimes get really high readings like 100%. It took a long time to boot, to open firefox, to open a link in firefox. As far as I can tell everything that the computer tries to do is just massively slow. Right now, I'm apt-get dist-upgrading to install any updates that I will have missed since last time this computer was on. Any ideas as to what is going on here? UPDATE: I thought to check dmesg and it has a lot of entries like this: [ 1870.142201] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1870.142206] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1870.142210] ata3.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1870.142217] ata3.00: cmd 60/08:10:c0:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 4096 in [ 1870.142218] res 41/40:00:c5:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1870.142221] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1870.142223] ata3.00: error: { UNC } [ 1870.143981] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1870.146758] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1870.146761] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1870.146777] ata3: EH complete [ 1872.092269] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1872.092274] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1872.092278] ata3.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1872.092285] ata3.00: cmd 60/08:00:c0:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in [ 1872.092287] res 41/40:00:c5:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1872.092289] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1872.092292] ata3.00: error: { UNC } [ 1872.094050] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1872.096795] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1872.096798] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1872.096814] ata3: EH complete [ 1874.042279] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1874.042285] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1874.042289] ata3.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1874.042296] ata3.00: cmd 60/08:10:c0:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 4096 in [ 1874.042297] res 41/40:00:c5:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1874.042300] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1874.042302] ata3.00: error: { UNC } [ 1874.044048] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1874.046837] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1874.046840] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1874.046861] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code [ 1874.046863] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 1874.046867] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor] [ 1874.046872] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 1874.046874] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 1874.046883] 03 65 4a c5 [ 1874.046886] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed [ 1874.046892] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 03 65 4a c0 00 00 08 00 [ 1874.046900] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 56969925 [ 1874.046920] ata3: EH complete I'm not certain, but that looks like my problem may be a failing hard drive. But the drive is less then a year old, it really shouldn't be failing now...

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for September 2-8, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 items shared on the OTN Facebook Page for the week of September 2-8, 2012. Adding a runtime LOV for a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena illustrates how to customize the parameters tab for a taskflow in WebCenter. Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET | Scott Nelson "It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings," says Scott Nelson. "Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there." Free Event: Oracle Technology Network Architect Day – Boston, MA – 9/12/2012 Sure, you could ask a voodoo priestess for help in improving your solution architecture skills. But there's the whole snake thing, and the zombie thing, and other complications. So why not keep it simple and register for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA. There's no magic, just a full day of technical sessions covering Cloud, SOA, Engineered Systems, and more. Registration is free, but seating is limited. You'll curse yourself if you miss this one. Starting and Stopping Fusion Applications the Right Way | Ronaldo Viscuso While the fastartstop tool that ships with Oracle Fusion Applications does most of the work to start/stop/bounce the Fusion Apps environment, it does not do it all. Oracle Fusion Applications A-Team blogger Ronaldo Viscuso's post "aims to explain all tasks involved in starting and stopping a Fusion Apps environment completely." Article Index: Architect Community Column in Oracle Magazine Did you know that Oracle Magazine features a regular column devoted specifically to the architect community? Every issue includes insight and expertise from architects who regularly work with Oracle Technologies. Click here to see a complete list of these articles. Using FMAP and AnalyticsRes in a Oracle BI High Availability Implementation | Art of Business Intelligence "The fmap syntax has been used for a long time in Oracle BI / Siebel Analytics when referencing images inherent in the application as well as custom images," says Oracle ACE Christian Screen. "This syntax is used on Analysis requests an dashboards." Dodeca Customer Feedback - The Rosewood Company | Tim Tow Oracle ACE Director Tim Tow shares anecdotal comments from one of his clients, a company that is deploying Dodeca to replace an aging VBA/Essbase application. Configuring UCM cache to check for external Content Server changes | Martin Deh Oracle WebCenter and ADF A-Team blogger shares the background information and the solution to a recently encountered customer scenario. Attend OTN Architect Day in Los Angeles – by Architects, for Architects – October 25 The OTN Architect Day roadshow stops in Boston next week, then it's on to Los Angeles for another all architecture, all day event on Thursday October 25, 2012 at the Sofitel Los Angeles, 555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Like all Architect Day events, this one is absolutley free, so register now. The Role of Oracle VM Server for SPARC In a Virtualization Strategy New OTN article from Matthias Pfutzner. Thought for the Day "Practicing architects, through eduction, experience and examples, accumulate a considerable body of contextual sense by the time they're entrusted with solving a system-level problem…" — Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• What information must never appear in logs?

  - by MainMa

  I'm about to write the company guidelines about what must never appear in logs (trace of an application). In fact, some developers try to include as many information as possible in trace, making it risky to store those logs, and extremely dangerous to submit them, especially when the customer doesn't know this information is stored, because she never cared about this and never read documentation and/or warning messages. For example, when dealing with files, some developers are tempted to trace the names of the files. For example before appending file name to a directory, if we trace everything on error, it will be easy to notice for example that the appended name is too long, and that the bug in the code was to forget to check for the length of the concatenated string. It is helpful, but this is sensitive data, and must never appear in logs. In the same way: Passwords, IP addresses and network information (MAC address, host name, etc.)¹, Database accesses, Direct input from user and stored business data must never appear in trace. So what other types of information must be banished from the logs? Are there any guidelines already written which I can use? ¹ Obviously, I'm not talking about things as IIS or Apache logs. What I'm talking about is the sort of information which is collected with the only intent to debug the application itself, not to trace the activity of untrusted entities. Edit: Thank you for your answers and your comments. Since my question is not too precise, I'll try to answer the questions asked in the comments: What I'm doing with the logs? The logs of the application may be stored in memory, which means either in plain on hard disk on localhost, in a database, again in plain, or in Windows Events. In every case, the concern is that those sources may not be safe enough. For example, when a customer runs an application and this application stores logs in plain text file in temp directory, anybody who has a physical access to the PC can read those logs. The logs of the application may also be sent through internet. For example, if a customer has an issue with an application, we can ask her to run this application in full-trace mode and to send us the log file. Also, some application may sent automatically the crash report to us (and even if there are warnings about sensitive data, in most cases customers don't read them). Am I talking about specific fields? No. I'm working on general business applications only, so the only sensitive data is business data. There is nothing related to health or other fields covered by specific regulations. But thank you to talk about that, I probably should take a look about those fields for some clues about what I can include in guidelines. Isn't it easier to encrypt the data? No. It would make every application much more difficult, especially if we want to use C# diagnostics and TraceSource. It would also require to manage authorizations, which is not the easiest think to do. Finally, if we are talking about the logs submitted to us from a customer, we must be able to read the logs, but without having access to sensitive data. So technically, it's easier to never include sensitive information in logs at all and to never care about how and where those logs are stored.

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• How to Mentor a Junior Developer

  - by Josh Johnson

  This title is a little broad but I may need to give a little background before I can ask my question properly. I know that similar questions have been asked here already. But in my case I'm not asking if I should be mentoring someone or if the person is a good fit for being a software developer. That is not my place to judge. I have not been asked outright, but it is apparent that myself and other fellow senior developers are to mentor the new developers that start here. I have no problem with this whatsoever and, in many cases, it lends me a fresh perspective on things and I end up learning in the process. Also, I remember how beneficial it was in the beginning of my career when someone would take some time to teach me something. When I say "new developer" they could be anywhere from fresh out of college to having a year or two of experience. Recently and in the past we've had people start here who seem to have an attitude toward development/programming which is different from mine and hard for me to reconcile; they seem to extract just enough information to get the task done but not really learn from it. I find myself going over and over the same issues with them. I understand that part of this could be a personality thing, but I feel it's my job to do my best and sort of push them out of the nest while they're under my wing, so to speak. How can I impart just enough information so that they will learn but not give so much as to solve the problem for them? Or perhaps: What's the proper response to questions that are designed to take the path of least resistance and, in essence, force them to learn instead of take the easy way out? These questions are probably more general teaching questions and don't have that much to do specifically with software development. Note: I do not get a say in what tasks they are working on. Management doles the task out and it could be anything from a very simple bug fix to starting an entire application by themselves. While this is not ideal by any means and obviously presents its own gauntlet of challenges, I feel it's a topic best left for another question. So the best I can do is help them with the problem at hand and try to help them break it down into simpler problems and also check their commit logs and point out mistakes that they made. My main objectives are to: Help them out and give them the tools they need to start becoming more self-reliant. Steer them in the right direction and break bad development habits early on. Lessen the amount of time I spend with them (the personality type described above seems to need much more one-on-one time and does not do well over IM or email. While that's generally fine, I can't always stop what I'm working on, break my stride, and help them debug an error on a moments notice; I have my own projects that need to get done).

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• DISA Cross Domain Enterprise Solutions on the NetBeans Platform

  - by Geertjan

  Bray 2.0 is a tool based on the NetBeans Platform that assists in creating valid Data Flow Configuration (DFC) files. The DFC Specification was developed to provide a standardized way for defining, validating, and approving data flows for use on cross-domain guarding solutions. A DFC document specifies key entities such as security domains, guards that facilitate data between security domains, data flows that describe how data travels between security domains, filters that transform and validate the data and more. Related info: http://www.disa.mil/Services/Information-Assurance/Cross-Domain-Solutions The Bray product is in development at Fulcrum IT (http://www.fulcrumco.com). The DFC Specification and Bray were developed in support of the US Department of Defense. Bray 2.0 marks the first release of Bray on the NetBeans Platform and utilizes a number of features that are core to the NetBeans Platform: Modular plugability. Bray consumers can integrate their own tools, file types, and more into the product with relative ease. Robust UI. The NetBeans Platform intuitive UI makes it easy to access and manipulate multiple aspects of a DFC. Explorer. The Explorer is a key component that makes the DFC XML easy to traverse, edit, and find errors. Context-sensitive help. JavaHelp can be readily integrated for the product as well as all the UI within. Editors. Any external file can be added to a DFC. Users can register their own editors or use the provided NetBeans editors to edit files. Printing. The NetBeans Platform Print API makes it easy to determine what should be printed and how.   A screenshot: Bray 2.0 provides a lot of key features in developing valid, robust DFC files:  XML validation. A DFC can be validated against the DFC schema specification. DFC Check List. An interactive, minimal guide for creating a complete DFC. Summary Window. The Summary Window functions like the Navigator in NetBeans IDE. The current "item of interest" is checked against various business rules and provides the ability to quickly find and fix errors. Change Log. Bray audits every change to a DFC and places them in a change log for users to peruse. Comments. Users can optionally add comments for other users to see. Digital signatures. DFC files can be digitally signed. A signature history and signature validation is provided in Bray. Pluggable security schemes. Bray ships with plain text and IC-ISM security schemes. If needed, users can integrate additional ones.  ...and more to come! New features for Bray are constantly in development including use of the NetBeans Visual Library, language support, and more. More screenshots:

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• Overriding the Pager rendering in Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  The Pager shape that is used in Orchard to render pagination is one of those shapes that are built in code rather than in a Razor template. This can make it a little more confusing to override, but nothing is impossible. If we look at the Pager method in CoreShapes, here is what we see: [Shape] public IHtmlString Pager(dynamic Shape, dynamic Display) { Shape.Metadata.Alternates.Clear(); Shape.Metadata.Type = "Pager_Links"; return Display(Shape); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The Shape attribute signals a shape method. All it does is remove all alternates that may exist and replace the type of the shape with “Pager_Links”. In turn, this shape method is rather large and complicated, but it renders as a set of smaller shapes: a List with a “pager” class, and under that Pager_First, Pager_Previous, Pager_Gap, for each page a Pager_Link or a Pager_Current, then Pager_Gap, Pager_Next and Pager_Last. Each of these shapes can be displayed or not depending on the properties of the pager. Each can also be overridden with a Razor template. This can be done by dropping a file into the Views folder of your theme. For example, if you want the current page to appear between square braces, you could drop this Pager-CurrentPage.cshtml into your views folder: <span>[@Model.Value]</span> This overrides the original shape method, which was this: [Shape] public IHtmlString Pager_CurrentPage(HtmlHelper Html, dynamic Display, object Value) { var tagBuilder = new TagBuilder("span"); tagBuilder.InnerHtml = Html.Encode(Value is string ? (string)Value : Display(Value)); return MvcHtmlString.Create(tagBuilder.ToString()); } And here is what it would look like: Now what if we want to completely hide the pager if there is only one page? Well, the easiest way to do that is to override the Pager shape by dropping the following into the Views folder of your theme: @{ if (Model.TotalItemCount > Model.PageSize) { Model.Metadata.Alternates.Clear(); Model.Metadata.Type = "Pager_Links"; @Display(Model) } } And that’s it. The code in this template just adds a check for the number of items to display (in a template, Model is the shape) and only displays the Pager_Links shape if it knows that there’s going to be more than one page.

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• Building a personal website using Silverlight.

  - by mbcrump

  I’ve always believed that as a developer you should always have a hobby project going on. I think a hobby project needs to contain at least one of following things: Something that you have never done before. Something that you are interested in. Something that you can work on in your spare time without affecting your *paying* job. I decided my hobby project would be an entire web application written in Silverlight that could be used as a self-promotion/marketing tool. This goal of the site is to provide information on the work that I’ve done to conferences, future employers and anyone else that wanted to learn more about me. Before I go any further, if you just want to check out the site then it is located at http://michaelcrump.info. So, what did I use to create it? MVVM Light – I’m a big fan of this software. The item and project templates plus code snippets make this a huge win for any SL/WPF/WP7 application. Jetpack Theme by Microsoft – I suck at designing so I used this template to help speed up this project. ComponentOne 3rd Party Controls – I have a license and really like several of their products. A User Control that Jeremy Likness created called DynamicXaml (used with his permission). I had created my own version of this a while back, but Jeremy’s implementation was simply better. Main Page – Designed to create my “brand”. This was built for a quick glimpse of who I am and what do I do.  Blog – The best marketing tool for a developer is their blog. I decided to go with an HTML page displaying my site and the user could pop into full-screen if desired. I also included my feed and Silverlight-Zone. (Another site I work on) Online – This page links to sites that I have been featured on as well as community involvement and awards. I also have a web service that I can update this information without re-compiling the Silverlight App. Projects – I’ve been wanting to use a CoverFlow for a really long time now. =) This page list several hobby projects as well as a few professional projects.  Resume Page – This page only exist because I got tired of sending companies my resume in e-mail. I can now provide a deep link to this page and the recruiter can print, search or save my resume. The PDF of my resume exist in a folder that I can easily update without recompiling the app. Contact Page – Just a contact page with a web service that sends the email. The Send button becomes disabled after a successful send. I thought of adding captcha to this page but in the end didn’t think it was worth it. Looking back at this app, I’m happy with how it turned out. I love Silverlight and I am already thinking of my next hobby project. (Thinking another Windows Phone 7 app or MVC3).  Subscribe to my feed

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• Sweet and Sour Source Control

  - by Tony Davis

  Most database developers don't use Source Control. A recent anonymous poll on SQL Server Central asked its readers "Which Version Control system do you currently use to store you database scripts?" The winner, with almost 30% of the vote was...none: "We don't use source control for database scripts". In second place with almost 28% of the vote was Microsoft's VSS. VSS? Given its reputation for being buggy, unstable and lacking most of the basic features required of a proper source control system, answering VSS is really just another way of saying "I don't use Source Control". At first glance, it's a surprising thought. You wonder how database developers can work in a team and find out what changed, when the system worked before but is now broken; to work out what happened to their changes that now seem to have vanished; to roll-back a mistake quickly so that the rest of the team have a functioning build; to find instantly whether a suspect change has been deployed to production. Unfortunately, the survey didn't ask about the scale of the database development, and correlate the two questions. If there is only one database developer within a schema, who has an automated approach to regular generation of build scripts, then the need for a formal source control system is questionable. After all, a database stores far more about its metadata than a traditional compiled application. However, what is meat for a small development is poison for a team-based development. Here, we need a form of Source Control that can reconcile simultaneous changes, store the history of changes, derive versions and builds and that can cope with forks and merges. The problem comes when one borrows a solution that was designed for conventional programming. A database is not thought of as a "file", but a vast, interdependent and intricate matrix of tables, indexes, constraints, triggers, enumerations, static data and so on, all subtly interconnected. It is an awkward fit. Subversion with its support for merges and forks, and the tolerance of different work practices, can be made to work well, if used carefully. It has a standards-based architecture that allows it to be used on all platforms such as Windows Mac, and Linux. In the words of Erland Sommerskog, developers should "just do it". What's in a database is akin to a "binary file", and the developer must work only from the file. You check out the file, edit it, and save it to disk to compile it. Dependencies are validated at this point and if you've broken anything (e.g. you renamed a column and broke all the objects that reference the column), you'll find out about it right away, and you'll be forced to fix it. Nevertheless, for many this is an alien way of working with SQL Server. Subversion is the powerhouse, not the GUI. It doesn't work seamlessly with your existing IDE, and that usually means SSMS. So the question then becomes more subtle. Would developers be less reluctant to use a fully-featured source (revision) control system for a team database development if they had a turn-key, reliable system that fitted in with their existing work-practices? I'd love to hear what you think. Cheers, Tony.

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• Hey Retailers, Are You Ready For The Holiday Season?

  - by Jeri Kelley

  With online holiday spending reaching $35.3 billion in 2011 and American shoppers spending just under $750 on average on their holiday purchases this year, how ready is your business for the 2012 holiday season?   ?? Today’s shoppers do not take their purchases lightly.  They are more connected, interact with more resources to make decisions, diligently compare products and services, seek out the best deals, and ask for input from friends and family.   This holiday season, as consumers browse for apparel, tablets, toys, and much more, they will be bombarded with retailer communication - from emails and commercials to countless search engine results and social recommendations.  With a flurry of activity coming at consumers from every channel and competitor, your success this year will rely on communicating a consistent, personalized message no matter where your customers are shopping.  Here are a few ideas to help with your commerce strategy this holiday season: CONSISTENCY COUNTS FOR MULTICHANNEL SHOPPERS??According to a November 2011 study commissioned by Oracle, “Channel Commerce 2011: The Consumer View,” 54% of consumers in the U.S. and Canada regularly employ two or more channels before they make a purchase.  While each channel has its own unique benefit, user profile, and purpose, it’s critical that your shoppers have a consistent core experience wherever they’re looking for information or making a purchase.  Be sure consumers can consistently search and browse the same product information and receive the same promotions online, on their mobile devices, and in-store.? USE YOUR CUSTOMER’S CONTEXT TO SURFACE RELEVANT CONTENTYour Web site is likely the hub of your holiday activity.  According to a Monetate infographic, 39% of shoppers will visit your Web site directly to find out about the best holiday deals.   Use everything you know about your customers from past purchase data to browsing history to provide a relevant experience at every click, and assemble content in a context that entices shoppers to buy online, or influences an offline purchase.? TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MOBILE BEHAVIOR?Having a mobile program is no longer a choice.   Armed with smartphones and tablets, consumers now have access to more and more product information and can compare products and prices from anywhere.  In fact, approximately 52% of smartphone users will use their device to research products, redeem coupons and use apps to assist in their holiday gift purchase.  At a minimum, be sure your mobile environment has store information, consistent pricing and promotions, and simple checkout capabilities. ARM IN-STORE ASSOCIATES WITH TABLETS?According to RISNews.com, 31% of retailers plan to begin testing tablets in stores in 2012, 22% have already begun such testing and 6% had fully deployed tablets within stores.   Take advantage of this compelling sales tool to get shoppers interacting with videos, user reviews, how-to guides, side-by-side product comparisons, and specs.  Automatically trigger upsell and cross sell suggestions for store associates to recommend for each product or category, build in alerts for promotions, and allow associates to place orders and check inventory from their tablet.  ? WISDOM OF THE CROWDS IS GOOD, BUT WISDOM FROM FRIENDS IS BETTER?Shoppers who grapple with options are looking for recommendations; they’d rather get advice from friends, and they’re more likely to spend more while doing so.    In fact, according to an infographic by Mr. Youth, 66% of social media users made a purchase on Black Friday or Cyber Monday as a direct result of social media interactions with brands or family.   This holiday season, be sure you are leveraging your social channels from Facebook to Pinterest to drive consistent promotions and help your brand to become part of the conversation. So, are you ready for the holidays this year?  

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• How to Create SharePoint List and Insert List Item programmatically from a Windows Forms Application.

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this post I’m going to demonstrate how to create SharePoint List and also Insert Items on the List from a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio and create a new project. On the project template select Windows Form Application under C#. 2. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI.  3. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. (Your solution should look like the one below) 4. Open the Form1 in design view and from the Toolbox menu add a button on the form surface. Your form should look like the one below. 5. Double click the button to open the code view. Add Using statement to reference the Sharepoint Client Library then create method for the Create List. Your code should like the codes below. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client; namespace ClientObjectModel {     public partial class Form1 : Form     {         // url of the Sharepoint site         const string _context = "urlofthesharepointsite";         public Form1()         {             InitializeComponent();         }         private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {                    }         private void cmdcreate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             try             {                 // declare the ClientContext Object                 SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context);                 SP.Web _site = _clientcontext.Web;                 // declare a ListCreationInfo                 SP.ListCreationInformation _listcreationinfo = new SP.ListCreationInformation();                 // set the Title and the Template of the List to be created                 _listcreationinfo.Title = "NewListFromCOM";                 _listcreationinfo.TemplateType = (int)SP.ListTemplateType.GenericList;                 // Call the add method to the ListCreatedInfo                 SP.List _list = _site.Lists.Add(_listcreationinfo);                 // Add Description field to the List                 SP.Field _Description = _list.Fields.AddFieldAsXml(@"                                     <Field Type='Text'                                         DisplayName='Description'>                                     </Field>", true, SP.AddFieldOptions.AddToDefaultContentType);                 // declare the List item Creation object for creating List Item                 SP.ListItemCreationInformation _itemcreationinfo = new SP.ListItemCreationInformation();                 // call the additem method of the list to insert a new List Item                 SP.ListItem _item = _list.AddItem(_itemcreationinfo);                 _item["Title"] = "New Item from Client Object Model";                 _item["Description"] = "This item was added by a Windows Forms Application";                 // call the update method                 _item.Update();                 // execute the query of the clientcontext                 _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();                 // dispose the clientcontext                 _clientcontext.Dispose();                 MessageBox.Show("List Creation Successfull");             }             catch(Exception ex)             {                 MessageBox.Show("Error creating list" + ex.ToString());             }          }     } } 6. Hit F5 to run the application. A message will be displayed on the screen if the operation is successful and also if it fails. 7. To make that the operation of our Windows Form Application has really created the List and Inserted an item on it. Let’s open our SharePoint site. Once the SharePoint is open click on the Site Actions then View All Site Content. 7. Click the List to open it and check if an Item is inserted. That’s it. Hope this helps.

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• Restrict number of characters to be typed for af:autoSuggestBehavior

  - by Arunkumar Ramamoorthy

  When using AutoSuggestBehavior for a UI Component, the auto suggest list is displayed as soon as the user starts typing in the field. In this article, we will find how to restrict the autosuggest list to be displayed till the user types in couple of characters. This would be more useful in the low latency networks and also the autosuggest list is bigger. We could display a static message to let the user know that they need to type in more characters to get a list for picking a value from. Final output we would expect is like the below image Lets see how we can implement this. Assuming we have an input text for the users to enter the country name and an autosuggest behavior is added to it. <af:inputText label="Country" id="it1"> <af:autoSuggestBehavior /> </af:inputText> Also, assuming we have a VO (we'll name it as CountryView for this example), with a view criteria to filter out the VO based on the bind variable passed. Now, we would generate View Impl class from the java node (including bind variables) and then expose the setter method of the bind variable to client interface. In the View layer, we would create a tree binding for the VO and the method binding for the setter method of the bind variable exposed above, in the pagedef file As we've already added an input text and an autosuggestbehavior for the test, we would not need to build the suggested items for the autosuggest list.Let us add a method in the backing bean to return us List of select items to be bound to the autosuggest list. padding: 5px; background-color: #fbfbfb; min-height: 40px; width: 544px; height: 168px; overflow: auto;"> public List onSuggest(String searchTerm) { ArrayList<SelectItem> selectItems = new ArrayList<SelectItem>(); if(searchTerm.length()>1) { //get access to the binding context and binding container at runtime BindingContext bctx = BindingContext.getCurrent(); BindingContainer bindings = bctx.getCurrentBindingsEntry(); //set the bind variable value that is used to filter the View Object //query of the suggest list. The View Object instance has a View //Criteria assigned OperationBinding setVariable = (OperationBinding) bindings.get("setBind_CountryName"); setVariable.getParamsMap().put("value", searchTerm); setVariable.execute(); //the data in the suggest list is queried by a tree binding. JUCtrlHierBinding hierBinding = (JUCtrlHierBinding) bindings.get("CountryView1"); //re-query the list based on the new bind variable values hierBinding.executeQuery(); //The rangeSet, the list of queries entries, is of type //JUCtrlValueBndingRef. List<JUCtrlValueBindingRef> displayDataList = hierBinding.getRangeSet(); for (JUCtrlValueBindingRef displayData : displayDataList){ Row rw = displayData.getRow(); //populate the SelectItem list selectItems.add(new SelectItem( (String)rw.getAttribute("Name"), (String)rw.getAttribute("Name"))); } } else{ SelectItem a = new SelectItem("","Type in two or more characters..","",true); selectItems.add(a); } return selectItems; } So, what we are doing in the above method is, to check the length of the search term and if it is more than 1 (i.e 2 or more characters), the return the actual suggest list. Otherwise, create a read only select item new SelectItem("","Type in two or more characters..","",true); and add it to the list of suggested items to be displayed. The last parameter for the SelectItem (boolean) is to make it as readOnly, so that users would not be able to select this static message from the displayed list. Finally, bind this method to the input text's autosuggestbehavior's suggestedItems property. <af:inputText label="Country" id="it1"> <af:autoSuggestBehavior suggestedItems="#{AutoSuggestBean.onSuggest}"/> </af:inputText>

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• JavaOne Latin America 2012 Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  JavaOne Latin America 2012 was held at the Transamerica Expo Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil on December 4-6. The conference was a resounding success with a great vibe, excellent technical content and numerous world class speakers. Some notable local and international speakers included Bruno Souza, Yara Senger, Mattias Karlsson, Vinicius Senger, Heather Vancura, Tori Wieldt, Arun Gupta, Jim Weaver, Stephen Chin, Simon Ritter and Henrik Stahl. Topics covered included the JCP/JUGs, Java SE 7, HTML 5/WebSocket, CDI, Java EE 6, Java EE 7, JSF 2.2, JMS 2, JAX-RS 2, Arquillian and JavaFX. Bruno Borges and I manned the GlassFish booth at the Java Pavilion on Tuesday and Webnesday. The booth traffic was decent and not too hectic. We met a number of GlassFish adopters including perhaps one of the largest GlassFish deployments in Brazil as well as some folks migrating to Java EE from Spring. We invited them to share their stories with us. We also talked with some key members of the local Java community. Tuesday evening we had the GlassFish party at the Tribeca Pub. The party was definitely a hit and we could have used a larger venue (this was the first time we had the GlassFish party in Brazil). Along with GlassFish enthusiasts, a number of Java community leaders were there. We met some of the same folks again at the JUG leader's party on Wednesday evening. On Thursday Arun Gupta, Bruno Borges and I ran a hands-on-lab on JAX-RS, WebSocket and Server-Sent Events (SSE) titled "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". This is the same Java EE 7 lab run at JavaOne San Francisco. The lab provides developers a first hand glipse of how an HTML 5 powered Java EE application might look like. We had an overflow crowd for the lab (at one point we had about twenty people standing) and the lab went very well. The slides for the lab are here: Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket from Reza Rahman The actual contents for the lab is available here. Give me a shout if you need help getting it up and running. I gave two solo talks following the lab. The first was on JMS 2 titled "What’s New in Java Message Service 2". This was essentially the same talk given by JMS 2 specification lead Nigel Deakin at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JMS 2 simplified API, JMSContext injection, delivery delays, asynchronous send, JMS resource definition in Java EE 7, standardized configuration for JMS MDBs in EJB 3.2, mandatory JCA pluggability and the like. The session went very well, there was good Q & A and someone even told me this was the best session of the conference! The slides for the talk are here: What’s New in Java Message Service 2 from Reza Rahman My last talk for the conference was on JAX-RS 2 in the keynote hall. Titled "JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API" this was basically the same talk given by the specification leads Santiago Pericas-Geertsen and Marek Potociar at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JAX-RS 2 client API, asyncronous processing, filters/interceptors, hypermedia support, server-side content negotiation and the like. The talk went very well and I got a few very kind complements afterwards. The slides for the talk are here: JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API from Reza Rahman On a more personal note, Sao Paulo has always had a special place in my heart as the incubating city for Sepultura and Soulfy -- two of my most favorite heavy metal musical groups of all time! Consequently, the city has a perpertually alive and kicking metal scene pretty much any given day of the week. This time I got to check out a solid performance by local metal gig Republica at the legendary Manifesto Bar. I also wanted to see a Dio Tribute at the Blackmore but ran out of time and energy... Overall I enjoyed the conference/Sao Paulo and look forward to going to Brazil again next year!

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• SSAS: Utility to export SQL code from your cube's Data Source View (DSV)

  - by DrJohn

  When you are working on a cube, particularly in a multi-person team, it is sometimes necessary to review what changes that have been done to the SQL queries in the cube's data source view (DSV). This can be a problem as the SQL editor in the DSV is not the best interface to review code. Now of course you can cut and paste the SQL into SSMS, but you have to do each query one-by-one. What is worse your DBA is unlikely to have BIDS installed, so you will have to manually export all the SQL yourself and send him the files. To make it easy to get hold of the SQL in a Data Source View, I developed a C# utility which connects to an OLAP database and uses Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO) to obtain and export all the SQL to a series of files. The added benefit of this approach is that these SQL files can be placed under source code control which means the DBA can easily compare one version with another. The Trick When I came to implement this utility, I quickly found that the AMO API does not give direct access to anything useful about the tables in the data source view. Iterating through the DSVs and tables is easy, but getting to the SQL proved to be much harder. My Google searches returned little of value, so I took a look at the idea of using the XmlDom to open the DSV’s XML and obtaining the SQL from that. This is when the breakthrough happened. Inspecting the DSV’s XML I saw the things I was interested in were called TableType DbTableName FriendlyName QueryDefinition Searching Google for FriendlyName returned this page: Programming AMO Fundamental Objects which hinted at the fact that I could use something called ExtendedProperties to obtain these XML attributes. This simplified my code tremendously to make the implementation almost trivial. So here is my code with appropriate comments. The full solution can be downloaded from here: ExportCubeDsvSQL.zip   using System;using System.Data;using System.IO;using Microsoft.AnalysisServices; ... class code removed for clarity// connect to the OLAP server Server olapServer = new Server();olapServer.Connect(config.olapServerName);if (olapServer != null){ // connected to server ok, so obtain reference to the OLAP databaseDatabase olapDatabase = olapServer.Databases.FindByName(config.olapDatabaseName);if (olapDatabase != null){ Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Succesfully connected to '{0}' on '{1}'",   config.olapDatabaseName,   config.olapServerName));// export SQL from each data source view (usually only one, but can be many!)foreach (DataSourceView dsv in olapDatabase.DataSourceViews){ Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Exporting SQL from DSV '{0}'", dsv.Name));// for each table in the DSV, export the SQL in a fileforeach (DataTable dt in dsv.Schema.Tables){ Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Exporting SQL from table '{0}'", dt.TableName)); // get name of the table in the DSV// use the FriendlyName as the user inputs this and therefore has control of itstring queryName = dt.ExtendedProperties["FriendlyName"].ToString().Replace(" ", "_");string sqlFilePath = Path.Combine(targetDir.FullName, queryName + ".sql"); // delete the sql file if it exists... file deletion code removed for clarity// write out the SQL to a fileif (dt.ExtendedProperties["TableType"].ToString() == "View"){ File.WriteAllText(sqlFilePath, dt.ExtendedProperties["QueryDefinition"].ToString());}if (dt.ExtendedProperties["TableType"].ToString() == "Table"){ File.WriteAllText(sqlFilePath, dt.ExtendedProperties["DbTableName"].ToString()); } } } Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Successfully written out SQL scripts to '{0}'", targetDir.FullName)); } }   Of course, if you are following industry best practice, you should be basing your cube on a series of views. This will mean that this utility will be of limited practical value unless of course you are inheriting a project and want to check if someone did the implementation correctly.

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• Persevering & Friday Night Big Ideas

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  by Jim Lein, Oracle Midsize Programs Every successful company, personal accomplishment, and philanthropic endeavor starts with one good idea. I have my best ideas on Friday evenings. The creative side of my brain is stimulated by end of week endorphins. Free thinking. Anything is possible. But, as my kids love to remind me, most of Dad's Friday Night Big Ideas (FNBIs) fizzle on the drawing board. Usually there's one barrier blocking the way that seems insurmountable by noon on Monday. For example, trekking the 486 mile Colorado Trail is on my bucket list. Since I have a job, I'll have to do it in bits and pieces--day hikes, weekends, and a vacation week here and there. With my trick neck, backpacking is not an option. How to survive equip myself for overnight backcountry travel was that one seemingly insurmountable barrier.  Persevering Lewis and Clark wouldn't have given up so I explored options and, as I blogged about back in December, I had an FNBI to hire llamas to carry my load. Last weekend, that idea came to fruition. Early Saturday morning, I met up with Bill, the owner of Antero Llamas, for an overnight training expedition along segment 14 of the Colorado Trail with a string of twelve llamas. It was a crash course on learning how to saddle, load, pasture, and mediate squabbles. Amazingly, we left the trailhead with me, the complete novice, at the lead. Instead of trying to impart three decades of knowledge on me in two days, Bill taught me two things: "Go With the Flow" and "Plan B". It worked. There were times I would be lost in thought for long stretches of time until one snort would remind me that I had a string of twelve llamas trailing behind. A funny thing happened along the trail... Up until last Saturday, my plan had been to trek all 28 segments of the trail east to west and sequentially. Out of some self-imposed sense of decorum. That plan presented myriad logistical challenges such as impassable snow pack on the Continental Divide when segment 6 is up next. On Sunday, as we trekked along the base of 14,000 ft peaks, I applied Bill's llama handling philosophy to my quest and came up with a much more realistic and enjoyable strategy for achieving my goal.  Seize opportunities to hike regardless of order. Define my own segments. Go west to east for awhile if it makes more sense. Let the llamas carry more creature comforts. Chill out.  I will still set foot on all 486 miles of the trail. Technically, the end result will be the same.And I and my traveling companions--human and camelid--will enjoy the journey more. Much more. Got Big Ideas of Your Own? Check out Tongal. This growing Oracle customer works with brands to crowd source fantastic ideas for promoting products and services. Your great idea could earn you cash.  Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Jim Lein I evangelize Oracle's enterprise solutions for growing midsize companies. I recently celebrated 15 years with Oracle, having joined JD Edwards in 1999. I'm based in Evergreen, Colorado and love relating stories about creativity and innovation whether they be about software, live music, or the mountains. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle.

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