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• Best Frameworks/libraries/engines for 2D multiplayer C# Webbased RPG

  - by Thirlan

  Title is a mouthful but important because I'm looking to meet a specific criteria and it's complex enough that I need a lot of help in finding what I'm looking for. I really want people's suggestions because I trust it a lot more than anything else, so I just need to clearly define what it is I want heh : P Game is a 2D RPG. Think of Secret of Mana. Game is online multiplayer, but not MMO sized. Game must be webbased! I'm looking to the future and want to hit as many platforms as possible. I'm leaning to Webgl because of this, but still looking around. Since the users are seeing the game through the webbrowser the front-end should be mainly responsible for drawing, taking input and some basic checking such as preliminary collision detection. This is important because it means the game engine is NOT on the client's machine. The server should be responsible for the game engine and all the calculations. This means the server is doing all the work and the client is mostly a dumb terminal. Server language is c# I'm looking for fast project execution so I want to use as many pre-existing tools as possible. This would make sense because I'm making a game here, not an engine. I'm not creating some new revolutionary graphics or pushing the physics engines to the next level. Preference for commercially supported tools. For game mechanics reasons and for reasons 4 and 5, don't think I can use existing 2D rpg engines. I've seen them out there and I fear that if I try and use them they will have too many restrictions, but will be happy to hear out suggestions. So all this means I need a game engine on the server, or maybe just a physics engine, and then I need another engine/library to draw everything that the server is sending to the client on the webbrowser. Maybe this is how 50% of games work on the web and there are plenty of frameworks that support this! I wouldn't actually don't know : ( but my gut is telling me that most webgames are single player and 90% of the game is running on the client. So... any suggestions?

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-10-12

  - by Bob Rhubart

  This is your brain on IT architecture. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles, Oct 25 This is your brain on IT architecture. Stuff your cranium with architecture by attending Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles, October 25, 2012, at the Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Technical sessions, panel Q&A, and peer roundtables--plus a free lunch. Register now. WebCenter Sites Gadget Development Concepts Quickstart | John Brunswick What are Gadgets? "At their most basic level they can be thought of as lightweight portlets that run largely on the client side of an architecture," says John Brunswick. "Gadgets provide a cross-platform container to run reusable UI modules that generally expose dynamic information to an end user, allowing for some level of end user customization." ORCLville: OOW 2012 - A Not So Brief Recap Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter, an Applications & Apps Technology specialists, shares his personal, frank, and and extensive recap or Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Fusion Applications Technical Tips | Naveen Nahata "Setting memory parameters for Admin and Managed servers of various domains in Fusion Applications can be, let us say, a little daunting," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Naveen Nahata. "While all this may look complicated and intimidating, it is actually relatively simple once you understand how it all works." Following the Thread in OSB | Antony Reynolds Antony Reynolds recently led an Oracle Service Bus POC in which his team needed to get high throughput from an OSB pipeline. "Imagine our surprise when, on stressing the system, we saw it lock up, with large numbers of blocked threads." He shares the details of the problem and the solution in this extensive technical post. ExaLogic Hackers Night - November 19th Nürnberg Germany | WebLogic Partner Community EMEA Want to get your hands on Oracle Exalogic? Make your way to Nürnberg, Germany for this Exalogic Hacker's Night on November 19, 2012. Experts will be on hand to help you test your ideas. (The blog post is in English, but the event registration page is in German.) Thought for the Day "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…" — Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• [EF + Oracle] Intro

  - by JTorrecilla

  Prologue I have a busy personal and working time, and at this moment that I start to get more free time, I decided to start a Serie about Entity Framework with Oracle. A few time ago, I got my first experience with EF and Oracle with Oracle 10 g express and Oracle 10 g with the same results, Doesn’t work. Now I download Oracle 11 g to Test again. Tools To start using EF with Oracle we need the following: 1. Visual Studio 2010. No Express Edition 2. Oracle 11g 3 Oracle Driver for EF (ODAC) Intro People, who are starting with EF developments, I recommend to take a look into Unai Zorrilla’s Blog, the post were written in Spanish but they are great! To this Serie, we are going to define the DB from the Oracle administrator. For that we need to follow the next steps: 1. Create a User with a PassWord. In my example the user will be Jtorrecilla 2. Create a TableSpace 3. Define some example tables   (Image1) When we have created the DB, we are going to start a new project in VS 2010. I will start a C# Project. To start with EF, we need to add a new objet to our Project “ADO .NET Entity Data Model". (Image2) The next step will be to indicate that our model will be based on an existing DB, and indicate the connection string (Images 3 and 4): (Imagen3) (Imagen4) Once we selected the connection string, we will need to indicate that in the connection will be saved “Sensitive” data (Image 5), and in the next step we are going to select the DB objets to use in the project(Image 6).   (Image 5) (Image 6) A the end of the selection, we will press Finish button, and it will generate a EDMX file to add to our solution, and in the IDE will appear the DB Schema with the selected Tables and Relations. (Imagen7) One Entity is composed by a set of properties (each matches with a column from the Table in the DB) and Navigation Properties that represents any relation with other Entities.   Finally With this chapter we have installed the environment, defined a DB and configured the solution to start using EF with Oracle. In the next chapter we are going to see What is a Entity and how it works. I hope you enjoy this Serie!

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• C Minishell Command Expansion Printing Gibberish

  - by Optimus_Pwn

  I'm writing a unix minishell in C, and am at the point where I'm adding command expansion. What I mean by this is that I can nest commands in other commands, for example: $> echo hello $(echo world! ... $(echo and stuff)) hello world! ... and stuff I think I have it working mostly, however it isn't marking the end of the expanded string correctly, for example if I do: $> echo a $(echo b $(echo c)) a b c $> echo d $(echo e) d e c See it prints the c, even though I didn't ask it to. Here is my code: msh.c - http://pastebin.com/sd6DZYwB expand.c - http://pastebin.com/uLqvFGPw I have a more code, but there's a lot of it, and these are the parts that I'm having trouble with at the moment. I'll try to tell you the basic way I'm doing this. Main is in msh.c, here it gets a line of input from either the commandline or a shellfile, and then calls processline (char *line, int outFD, int waitFlag), where line is the line we just got, outFD is the file descriptor of the output file, and waitFlag tells us whether or not we should wait if we fork. When we call this from main we do it like this: processline (buffer, 1, 1); In processline, we allocate a new line: char expanded_line[EXPANDEDLEN]; We then call expand, in expand.c: expand(line, expanded_line, EXPANDEDLEN); In expand, we copy the characters literally from line to expanded_line until we find a $(, which then calls: static int expCmdOutput(char *orig, char *new, int *oldl_ind, int *newl_ind) orig is line, and new is expanded line. oldl_ind and newl_ind are the current positions in the line and expanded line, respectively. Then we pipe, and recursively call processline, passing it the nested command(for example, if we had "echo a $(echo b)", we would pass processline "echo b"). This is where I get confused, each time expand is called, is it allocating a new chunk of memory EXPANDEDLEN long? If so, this is bad because I'll run out of stack room really quickly(in the case of a hugely nested commandline input). In expand I insert a null character at the end of the expanded string, so why is it printing past it? If you guys need any more code, or explanations, just ask. Secondly, I put the code in pastebin because there's a ton of it, and in my experience people don't like it when I fill up several pages with code. Thanks.

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• Portland Silverlight User Group: WP7 &amp; XNA &ndash; I survived.

  - by George Clingerman

  Last night I gave a talk to the Portland Silverlight User Group. http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 And I survived (which you should have probably already figured out since you’re reading this post AND that’s what I titled it…) Really though it was a fantastic time and I had a lot of fun! I was a little nervous getting ready for it, but I’m always a little nervous getting ready for things. I had the game all written,  I knew the general flow for what the talk was going to be. I read over Scott Hanselman’s 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical presentation (which has become something I do EVERY time I’m preparing for a talk). I gave myself a brief list of points I wanted to make sure I covered or worked into the talk. But then I was ready and I waited. I hate the waiting. It makes me nervous. Once I was up in front of the room though with my laptop open and some XNA code in front of me, my nerves go away. Then I’m ready. I know XNA, I love talking about XNA and I love sharing what I know and hearing questions that make me think. And hopefully that came through while I was talking. I had a freaking blast. The swag went quickly (and I was even able to hand out some XNA 2.0 books that have been around forever!) and the pizza was been gobbled down. I started the talk at about 6:10 and managed to cover a very brief intro to programming against the game loop (it’s a different concept and one that seems to trip a lot of people up getting started with game development) and then rolled into making a basic 2D game for Windows Phone 7 using XNA. And I finished the whole thing before 8:30. Wahoo! I’m planning on posting the source code and assets on my site so those should be coming soon. And to make things even better, they recorded the whole thing on video so everyone will get to see me pretend I can speak! Just wait till you hear the new song I wrote for this talk…

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• OData &ndash; The easiest service I can create

  - by Jon Dalberg

  I wanted to create an OData service with the least amount of code so I fired up Visual Studio and got cracking. I decided to serve up a list of naughty words and make them read-only. Create a new web project. I created an empty MVC 2 application but MVC is not required for OData. Add a new WCF Data Service to the project. I named mine NastyWords.svc since I’m serving up a list of nasty words. Add a class to expose via the service: NastyWord 1: [DataServiceKey("Word")] 2: public class NastyWord 3: { 4: public string Word { get; set; } 5: }   I need to be able to uniquely identify instances of NastyWords for the DataService so I used the DataServiceKey attribute with the “Word” property as the key. I could have added an “ID” property which would have uniquely identified them and would then not need the “DataServiceKey” attribute because the DataService would apply some reflection and heuristics to guess at which property would be the unique identifier. However, the words themselves are unique so adding an “ID” property would be redundantly repetitive. Then I created a data source to expose my NastyWord objects to the service. This is just a simple class with IQueryable<T> properties exposing the entities for my service: 1: public class NastyWordsDataSource 2: { 3: private static IList<NastyWord> words = new List<NastyWord> 4: { 5: new NastyWord{ Word="crap"}, 6: new NastyWord{ Word="darn"}, 7: new NastyWord{ Word="hell"}, 8: new NastyWord{ Word="shucks"} 9: }; 10:   11: public NastyWordsDataSource() 12: { 13: NastyWords = words.AsQueryable(); 14: } 15:   16: public IQueryable<NastyWord> NastyWords { get; private set; } 17: }   Now I can go to the NastyWords.svc class and tell it which data source to use and which entities to expose: 1: public class NastyWords : DataService<NastyWordsDataSource> 2: { 3: // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. 4: public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) 5: { 6: config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead); 7: config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; 8: } 9: }   Compile and browse to my NastWords.svc and weep with joy Now I can query my service just like any other OData service. Next time, I’ll modify this service to allow updates to sent so I can build up my list of nasty words. Enjoy!

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• 5 ways to stop code thrashing&hellip;

  - by MarkPearl

  A few days ago I was programming on a personal project and hit a roadblock. I was applying the MVVM pattern and for some reason my view model was not updating the view when the state changed??? I had applied this pattern many times before and had never had this problem. It just didn’t make sense. So what did I do… I did what anyone would have done in my situation and looked to pass the blame to someone or something else. I tried to blame one of the inherited base classes, but it looked fine, then to Visual Studio, but it seemed to be fine and eventually to any random segment of code I came across. My elementary problem had now mushroomed into one that had lost any logical basis and I was in thrashing mode! So what to do when you begin to thrash? 1) Do a general code cleanup – Now there is a difference between cleaning code and changing code . When you thrash you change code and you want to avoid this. What you really want to do is things like rename variables to have better meaning and go over your comments. 2) Do a proof of concept – if cleaning code doesn’t help. The  you want to isolate the problem and identify the key concepts. When you isolate code you ideally want it to be in a totally separate project with as little complexity as possible. Make the building blocks and try and replicate the functionality that you are getting in your current application. 3) Phone a friend – I have found speaking to someone else about the problem generally helps me solve any thrashing issues I am having. Usually they don’t even have to say anything to solve the problem, just you talking them through the problem helps you get clarity of mind. 4) Let the dust settle – Sometimes time is the best solution. I have had a few problems that no matter who I discussed them with and no matter how much code cleaning I had done I just couldn’t seem to fix it. My brain just seemed to be going in circles. A good nights rest has always helped and often just the break away from the problem has helped me find a solution. 5) Stack overflow it – So similar to phone a friend. I am really surprised to see what a melting pot stack overflow has been and what a help it has been in solving technology specific problems. Just be considerate to those using the site and explain clearly exactly what problem you are having and the technologies you are using or else you will probably not get any useful help…

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• Creating a shared library that might be used with desktop applications and web projects

  - by dreza

  I have been involved in a number of MVC.NET and c# desktop projects in our company over the last year or so while also managing to kept my nose poked into other projects (in a read-only learning capacity of course). From this I've noticed that across the various projects and teams there is a-lot of functionality that has been well designed against good interfaces and abstractions. Because we tend to like our own work at times, I noticed a couple of projects had the exact same class, method copied into it as it had obviously worked on one and so was easily moved to a new project (probably by the same developer who originally wrote it) I mentioned this fact in one of our programmer meetings we have occasionally and suggested we pull some of this functionality into a core company library that we can build up over time and use across multiple projects. Everyone agreed and I started looking into this possibility. However, I've come across a stumbling block pretty early on. Our team primarily focuses on MVC at the moment and we have projects mainly in 2.0 but are starting to branch to 3.0. We also have a number of desktop applications that might benefit from some shared classes and basic helper methods. Initially when creating this DLL I included some shared classes that could be used across any project type (Web, Client etc) but then I started looking at adding some shared modules that would be useful in our MVC applications only. However this meant I had to include a reference to some Microsoft Web DLL's in order to leverage some of the classes I was creating (at this stage MVC 2.0). Now my issue is that we have a shared DLL that has references to web specific libraries that could also possibly be used in a client application. Not only that, our DLL referenced initially MVC 2.0 and we will eventually move onto MVC 3.0 for all projects. But alot of the classes in this library I expect to still be relevant to MVC 3 etc Our code within this DLL is separated into it's own namespaces such as: CompanyDLL.Primitives CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc CompanyDLL.Helpers etc etc So, my questions are: Is it OK to do a shared library like this, or if we have web specific features in it should we create a separate web DLL only targeted at a specific framework or MVC version? If it's OK, what kind of issues might we face when using the library that references MVC 2 in a MVC 3 project for example. I would be thinking that we might run into some sort of compatibility issue, or even issues where the developers using the library doesn't realize they need MVC 2.0 libraries. They might only want to use some of the generic classes etc The concept seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm starting to think maybe it's not really a practical solution. But the number of times I've seen copied classes and methods across projects because they are proven tested code is a bit unnerving to be perfectly honest!

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• C# OpenGL problem with animation

  - by user3696303

  there is a program that simulates a small satellite and requires that a rotation animation of the satellite along the three axes. But when you try to write an animation problem during compilation: the program simply closes (shutdown occurs when swapbuffers, mainloop, redisplay), when you write the easiest programs have the same problem arose. Trying to catch exception by try-catch but here is not exception. How to solve this? I suffer with this a few days. Work in c# visual studio 2008 framework namespace WindowsFormsApplication6 { public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { try { InitializeComponent(); AnT1.InitializeContexts(); } catch(Exception) { Glut.glutDisplayFunc(Draw); Glut.glutTimerFunc(50, Timer, 0); Glut.glutMainLoop(); } } void Timer(int Unused) { Glut.glutPostRedisplay(); Glut.glutTimerFunc(50, Timer, 0); } private void AnT1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Glut.glutInit(); Glut.glutInitDisplayMode(Glut.GLUT_RGB | Glut.GLUT_DOUBLE | Glut.GLUT_DEPTH); Gl.glClearColor(255, 255, 255, 1); Gl.glViewport(0, 0, AnT1.Width, AnT1.Height); Gl.glMatrixMode(Gl.GL_PROJECTION); Gl.glLoadIdentity(); Glu.gluPerspective(45, (float)AnT1.Width / (float)AnT1.Height, 0.1, 200); Gl.glMatrixMode(Gl.GL_MODELVIEW); Gl.glLoadIdentity(); Gl.glEnable(Gl.GL_DEPTH_TEST); Gl.glClear(Gl.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | Gl.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); Gl.glPushMatrix(); double xy = 0.2; Gl.glTranslated(xy, 0, 0); xy += 0.2; Draw(); Glut.glutSwapBuffers(); Glut.glutPostRedisplay(); Gl.glPushMatrix(); Draw(); Gl.glPopMatrix(); } void Draw() { Gl.glLoadIdentity(); Gl.glColor3f(0.502f, 0.502f, 0.502f); Gl.glTranslated(-1, 0, -6); Gl.glRotated(95, 1, 0, 0); Glut.glutSolidCylinder(0.7, 2, 60, 60); Gl.glLoadIdentity(); Gl.glColor3f(0, 0, 0); Gl.glTranslated(-1, 0, -6); Gl.glRotated(95, 1, 0, 0); Glut.glutWireCylinder(0.7, 2, 20, 20); } } }

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• Expanding Influence and Community

  - by Johnm

  When I was just nine years of age my father introduced me to the computer. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (aka: CoCo). He shared with me the nuances of writing BASIC and it wasn't long before I was in the back seat of the school bus scribbling, on a pad of paper, the code I would later type. My father demonstrated that while my friends were playing their Atari 2600 consoles, I had the unique opportunity to create my own games on the Coco. One of which provided a great friend of mine hours and hours of hilarity and entertainment. It wasn't long before my father was inviting me to tag along as he drove to the local high school where a gathering of fellow Coco enthusiasts assembled. In these meetings all in attendance would chat about their latest challenges and solutions. They would swap the labors of their sleepless nights eagerly gazing into their green and black screens. Friendships were built and business partners were developed. While these experiences at the time in my pre-teen mind were chalked up to simply sharing time with my father, it had a tremendous impact on me later in life. This past weekend I attended the Louisville SQL Saturday (#45). It was great to see that there were some who brought along their children. It is encouraging to see fresh faces in the crowd at our  monthly IndyPASS meetings. Each time I see the youthful eyes peering from the audience while the finer details of SQL Server is presented, I cannot help but to be transported back to the experiences that I enjoyed in those Coco days. It is exciting to think of how these experiences are impacting their lives and stimulating their minds. Some of these children have actually approached me asking questions about what was presented or simply bragging about their latest discovery in programming. One of the topics that arose in the "Women in Technology" session in Louisville, which was masterfully facilitated by Kathi Kellenberger, was exploring how we could ignite the spark of interest in databases among the youth. It was awesome to hear that there were some that volunteer their time to share their experiences with students. It made me wonder what user groups could achieve if we were to consider expanding our influence and community beyond our immediate peers to include those who are simply enjoying their time with their father or mother.

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• How to display image in second layer in Cocos2d

  - by PeterK

  I am very new at Cocos2d and is testing to displaying an image over the "Hello World" text on a second layer and need help to get it work. I guess it is some basic stuff here and appreciate any tips etc. with this. I know that if i put the display-code (myLayer1) in the "init" it work or do the call [self goHere] from the "init" in myLayer1 it works but i want to call the "goHere" directly. I have the following code: HelloWorld.m: #import "HelloWorldLayer.h" #import "myLayer1.h" // HelloWorldLayer implementation @implementation HelloWorldLayer +(CCScene *) scene { // 'scene' is an autorelease object. CCScene *scene = [CCScene node]; // 'layer' is an autorelease object. HelloWorldLayer *layer = [HelloWorldLayer node]; myLayer1 *layer1 = [myLayer1 node]; // add layer as a child to scene [scene addChild: layer]; [scene addChild: layer1]; // return the scene return scene; } // on "init" you need to initialize your instance -(id) init { // always call "super" init // Apple recommends to re-assign "self" with the "super" return value if( (self=[super init])) { // create and initialize a Label CCLabelTTF *label = [CCLabelTTF labelWithString:@"Hello World" fontName:@"Marker Felt" fontSize:64]; // ask director the the window size CGSize size = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; // position the label on the center of the screen label.position = ccp( size.width /2 , size.height/2 ); // add the label as a child to this Layer [self addChild: label]; myLayer1 *a1 = [myLayer1 new]; [a1 goHere]; [myLayer1 release]; } return self; } myLayer1.m: #import "myLayer1.h" @implementation myLayer1 -(void)goHere { NSLog(@">>>>goHere<<<<"); CGSize size = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; CCSprite *vv = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"hand.png"]; vv.position = ccp( size.width /2 , size.height/2 ); [self addChild:vv z:3]; } -(id) init { // always call "super" init // Apple recommends to re-assign "self" with the "super" return value if( (self=[super init])) { } return self; } @end

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• New computer hangs on shutdown/reboot, how to troubleshoot?

  - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

  My system is working perfectly but it freezes during shutdown/reboot/suspend/hibernate: All windows and the menu bar disappear but the desktop wallpaper remains. It doesn't even show the shutdown screen (the one with the animated dots) where I could hit ESC and watch the shutdown console text. The system is brand-new and fully updated using Update Manager. How can I determine what is causing the freeze? Is there a log I can investigate? How can I fix this? I see no obvious cause of the freeze. The only USB attachment is a mouse/keyboard; I don't have any external storage attached; and I don't have any programs running (the machine freezes even when doing shutdown right from the login screen). What I've tried so far: Based on other questions (this, this, and this) that suggest some ACPI settings, I've tried sudo shutdown -h now to see whether the shutdown console text display offers any hints, but the system doesn't even get that far - it still freezes while the screen shown the desktop background image, without any toolbars. Only sudo shutdown --force works, but that's not a solution. Editing the grub menu to add acpi=off to the kernel didn't help. I guess there's not much point in trying the other (lesser) ACPI suggestions? Adding noapic to the grub entry had no discernible effect. Adding nolapic instead did something (I had removed the quiet option) - the system managed to continue further with the shutdown, right until the line Checking for running unattended-upgrades: which were the last characters on the screen. I've also checked the system BIOS, especially regarding power options, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Switching the BIOS standby setting from S3 to S1 didn't help. The standby setting can't be disabled, and there are no other ACPI-related settings AFAIK. BIOS reset didn't help. Not surprised; hadn't changed anything. I tried going to a virtual console (CtrlAltF1) as suggested by djeikyb and from there did a shutdown -h now and it froze there too, after this console output. I didn't try killing processes one at a time because I'm still too newbie to figure out how to do that. Booting with kernel 2.6.35.22 rather than 2.6.35.25 didn't help. Disabling the Nvidia drivers didn't help. Booting from Live CD (USB stick in fact) didn't help; it freezes the same way. Booting from Live CD, with acpi=off noapic nolapic didn't help either. Neither did just nolapic. So evidently this is not some custom setting in my install, but some sort of basic issue. MemTest competed in 1 hour without errors.

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• Simple thruster like behaviour when rotating sprite

  - by ensamgud

  I'm prototyping some 2D game concepts with XNA and have added some basic keyboard inputs to control a triangle sprite. When I press key up the sprite accelerates in it's current facing direction, when I release the key it brakes down. For rotation, when I press left/right keys I rotate the sprite. Currently the sprite immedately changes direction when I rotate it. What I want is for it to keep moving in the same direction when I rotate, until I hit key up, adding thrust in whatever direction the sprite is pointing at. This would simulate thrusters on a classic space shooter like Asteroids. I'm adding an image to describe the behaviour I'm after and some code samples of how I'm doing things at the moment. This is my player struct, holding information of the sprite. public struct PlayerData { public Vector2 Position; // where to draw the sprite public Vector2 Direction; // travel direction of sprite public float Angle; // rotation of sprite public float Velocity; public float Acceleration; public float Decelleration; public float RotationAcceleration; public float RotationDecceleration; public float TopSpeed; public float Scale; } This is how I'm currently handling thrusting / braking (when pressing/releasing key up) (simplified, removed some bounds checking etc): player.Velocity += player.Acceleration * 0.1f; player.Velocity -= player.Acceleration * 0.1f; And when I rotate the sprite left and right: player.Angle -= player.RotationAcceleration * 0.1f; player.Angle += player.RotationAcceleration * 0.1f; This runs in the update loop, keeps the direction updated and updates the position: Vector2 up = new Vector2(0f, -1f); Matrix rotMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationZ(player.Angle); player.Direction = Vector2.Transform(up, rotMatrix); player.Direction *= player.Velocity; player.Position += player.Direction; I am following along various beginner tutorials and haven't found any describing this, but I have tried some on my own without success. Do I need to change my velocity and acceleration fields to Vectors instead of floats to accomplish this type of movement? I realise my Angle and the Direction vector is currently tied together and I need to disconnect these somehow to be able to rotate freely without changing the direction of the movement, but I can't quite figure out how to do this while keeping the acceleration/decceleration functional. Would appreciate an explanation rather than pure code samples. Thanks,

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• How granular should a command be in a CQ[R]S model?

  - by Aaronaught

  I'm considering a project to migrate part of our WCF-based SOA over to a service bus model (probably nServiceBus) and using some basic pub-sub to achieve Command-Query Separation. I'm not new to SOA, or even to service bus models, but I confess that until recently my concept of "separation" was limited to run-of-the-mill database mirroring and replication. Still, I'm attracted to the idea because it seems to provide all the benefits of an eventually-consistent system while sidestepping many of the obvious drawbacks (most notably the lack of proper transactional support). I've read a lot on the subject from Udi Dahan who is basically the guru on ESB architectures (at least in the Microsoft world), but one thing he says really puzzles me: As we get larger entities with more fields on them, we also get more actors working with those same entities, and the higher the likelihood that something will touch some attribute of them at any given time, increasing the number of concurrency conflicts. [...] A core element of CQRS is rethinking the design of the user interface to enable us to capture our users’ intent such that making a customer preferred is a different unit of work for the user than indicating that the customer has moved or that they’ve gotten married. Using an Excel-like UI for data changes doesn’t capture intent, as we saw above. -- Udi Dahan, Clarified CQRS From the perspective described in the quotation, it's hard to argue with that logic. But it seems to go against the grain with respect to SOAs. An SOA (and really services in general) are supposed to deal with coarse-grained messages so as to minimize network chatter - among many other benefits. I realize that network chatter is less of an issue when you've got highly-distributed systems with good message queuing and none of the baggage of RPC, but it doesn't seem wise to dismiss the issue entirely. Udi almost seems to be saying that every attribute change (i.e. field update) ought to be its own command, which is hard to imagine in the context of one user potentially updating hundreds or thousands of combined entities and attributes as it often is with a traditional web service. One batch update in SQL Server may take a fraction of a second given a good highly-parameterized query, table-valued parameter or bulk insert to a staging table; processing all of these updates one at a time is slow, slow, slow, and OLTP database hardware is the most expensive of all to scale up/out. Is there some way to reconcile these competing concerns? Am I thinking about it the wrong way? Does this problem have a well-known solution in the CQS/ESB world? If not, then how does one decide what the "right level" of granularity in a Command should be? Is there some "standard" one can use as a starting point - sort of like 3NF in databases - and only deviate when careful profiling suggests a potentially significant performance benefit? Or is this possibly one of those things that, despite several strong opinions being expressed by various experts, is really just a matter of opinion?

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• eSTEP Newsletter December 2012

  - by uwes

  Dear Partners,We would like to inform you that the December issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains informations to the following topics: Notes from Corporate: It's Earth day - Every Day, Oracle SPARC Newsletter, Pre-Built Developer VMs (for Oracle VM VirtualBox), Oracle Database Appliance Now Certified by SAP, Database High Availability, Cultivating Business-Led Innovation Technical Corner: Geek Fest! Talking About the Design of the T4 and T5 SPARC Chips, Blog: Is This Your Idea of Disaster Recovery?; Oracle® Practitioner Guide - A Pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption; Oracle Practitioner Guide: A pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption; Darren Moffat Explains the new ZFS Encryption Features in Solaris 11.1; Command Summary: Basic Operations with the Image Packaging System; SPARC T4 Server Delivers Outstanding Performance on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g; SPARC T4-4 Servers Set First World Record on PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Benchmark; Sun ZFS Appliance Monitor Refresh: Core Factor Table; Remanufactured Systems Program for Sun Systems from Oracle; Reminder: Oracle Premier Support for Systems; Reminder: Oracle Platinum Services Learning & Events: eSTEP Events Schedule; Recently Delivered Techcasts; Webinar: Maximum Availibility with Oracle GoldenGate References: LUKOIL Overseas Holding Optimizes Oil Field Development Projects with Integrated Project Management; United Networks Increases Accounting Flexibility and Boosts System Performance with ERP Applications Upgrade; Ziggo Rapidly Creates Applications That Accelerate Communications-Service Orders l How to ...: The Role of Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle Linux Containers in a Virtualization Strategy; How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1; Using svcbundle to Create Manifests and Profiles in Oracle Solaris 11.1; How to Migrate Your Data to Oracle Solaris 11 Using Shadow Migration; How to Script Oracle Solaris 11.1 Zones for Easy Cloning; How to Script Oracle Solaris 11 Zones Creation for a Network-in-a-Box Configuration; How to Know Whether T4 Crypto Accelerators Are in Use; Fault Handling and Prevention – Part 1; Transforming and Consolidating Web Data with Oracle Database; Looking Under the Hood at Networking in Oracle VM Server for x86; Best Way to Migrate Data from Legacy File System to ZFS in Oracle Solaris 11; Special Year End Article: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 You find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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• Get AutoHotkey Script To Run As Admin At Startup

  - by deadlydog

  A few weeks back I posted some problems with running AutoHotkey (AHK) in Windows 8, and that the solution was to run your AHK script as admin.  I also showed how to have the script start automatically when you logged into Windows.  What I didn’t realize at the time though was that the method only worked because I had disabled UAC in the registry (which prevents most Metro apps from working in Windows 8, and likely isn’t acceptable for most people). So here is a Windows 8, UAC-friendly method to accomplish the same task (also works in previous versions of Windows).  The trick is to use the Task Scheduler: 1. Open the Task Scheduler (also known as “Schedule tasks” in Windows 8 Settings).   2. Create a new Basic Task. 3. Give it a name and description (something like “launch AutoHotkey script at login”), and then specify to have it run “When I log on”.  Then specify that you want it to “Start a program”, and then point it towards your AutoHotkey script.  Before you finish the wizard, check off “Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish”.   4. When that Properties dialog opens up, go to the Conditions tab and make sure none of the checkboxes under the Power category are checked off; this will ensure the script still launches if you are on a laptop and not plugged into AC power.   5. Now here is the important part; To have your script “Run as admin”, on the General tab check off “Run with highest privileges”. Now your AHK script should start automatically as soon as you log into Windows; even when UAC is enabled   6. If your AHK script uses an #Include statement to include other files, you may get an error similar to this one when your task runs: “#Include file … cannot be opened. The program will exit.” The solution to this is to tell your AHK script to start in the same directory as the file that you want to include.  So you will need to edit your scheduled task’s Action to specify the Start In directory. Happy coding!

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: HarQen Nodal

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. We wrapped the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge last week at OpenWorld, and this week, I’ll be sharing all the entries. All the teams that entered our challenge did a ton of work and built really interesting integrations with Oracle Social Network, and I want to showcase their hard work and innovative ideas. Today, I give you Nodal from the HarQen (@harqen) team, Kris Gösser (@krisgosser), Jesse Vogt (@jesse_vogt) and Matt Stockton (@mstockton). The guys from HarQen built Nodal to provide a visual way to navigate your connections and conversations in Oracle Social Network and view relationships. Using Nodal, you can: Search through names and profiles in Oracle Social Network. Choose people and view their social graphs in a visually useful way. Expand nodes in the social graph and add that person’s social graph to the Nodal view for comparison. Move nodes around and lock them in place for easier viewing, using a physics engine for movement. Adjust the physics engine properties according to your viewing preferences. Select nodes in the social graph and create a conversation directly based on the selection. Here are some shots of Nodal. They really don’t do the physics engine justice, but maybe the guys at Harqen will post a video of what they did for your viewing pleasure. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }   Nodal’s visuals wowed the judges and the audience, and anyone with a decent-sized social network presence understands the need for good network visualization. Tools like Nodal allow you to discover hidden connections in your network and maximize the value of your weak ties and find mavens, a very important key to getting work done. Thanks to the HarQen team for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week.

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• So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• How to enable and connect to RDP on a Windows Azure Web Role Instance?

  - by Enrique Lima

  We all know there have been some updates to Windows Azure, and one of the biggest I would say is the capability of being able to remote into the “OS level” of the image running a role.  And I am not talking about VM Role, I am talking about a Web Role for example. As developers we use Visual Studio, and when we are getting ready to deploy a project, we have the option of enabling this. Here is how: 1.  We publish our Project 2. On the Deployment dialog, provide all the details for your account, and before clicking OK, click on Configure Remote Desktop connections. 3.  Enable connections and the rest of the configuration.  Now, here is where there is an extra set of steps.  The first thing to know: The certificate used here is different from the other certs you have in place.  I created a new one, the went into certmgr.msc, then to Personal, then I selected the cert I just created.  Did a right-click, then All Tasks > Export.  Because what is needed is a pfx package, make sure when exporting you select to export the private key. 4. Click OK, on the Remote Desktop Configuration screen, now before you click OK on the Deployment, you will need to visit the Azure Portal. And perform the following: Go to your hosted services. Then with the service available, select the Certificates folder location. Then, select Add Certificate from the toolbar (more like Azure Portal Ribbon) Provide the details to upload the recently create pfx file. That will create the Certificate. Click OK on the deployment dialog, this kick off the deployment process. 5. Now, we need to go to the Windows Azure Portal.  Here we will select the Web Role deployed and Configure RDP. 6. Time to test.  Click on the Instance (not the role), this will make the Remote Access Connect Button available.  A file will start the process to be downloaded too 7. You will then be prompted for the credentials you configured. 8.  Validate connectivity … 9. Open IIS Manager … From here on, this is a way to manage and work with your Instance.

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• Partial Shader Signatures HLSL D3D11 C++

  - by ThePhD

  I had been debugging a problem I was having in a single shader file with 2 functions in it. I'm using DirectX 11, vs_5_0 and ps_5_0. I have stripped it down to its basic components to understand what was going wrong with the shaders, because the different named components of the Pixel and Vertex shaders were swapping the data being input: void QuadVertex ( inout float4 position : SV_Position, inout float4 color : COLOR0, inout float2 tex : TEXCOORD0 ) { // ViewProject is a 4x4 matrix, // just included here to show the simple passthrough of the data position = mul(position, ViewProjection); } And a Pixel Shader: float4 QuadPixel ( float4 color : COLOR0, float2 tex : TEXCOORD0 ) : SV_Target0 { // Color is filled with position data and tex is // filled with color values from the Vertex Shader return color; } The ID3D11InputLayout and associated C++ code correctly compiles the shaders and sets them up with some simple primitive data: data[0].Position.x = 0.0f * 210; data[0].Position.y = 1.0f * 160; data[0].Position.z = 0.0f; data[1].Position.x = 0.0f * 210; data[1].Position.y = 0.0f * 160; data[1].Position.z = 0.0f; data[2].Position.x = 1.0f * 210; data[2].Position.y = 1.0f * 160; data[2].Position.z = 0.0f; data[0].Colour = Colors::Red; data[1].Colour = Colors::Red; data[2].Colour = Colors::Red; data[0].Texture = Vector2::Zero; data[1].Texture = Vector2::Zero; data[2].Texture = Vector2::Zero; When used with the shader, the float4 color always ended up with the position data, and the float2 tex always ended up with the color data. After a moment, I figured out that the shader's input and output signatures needed to be in the correct order and the correct format and be laid out in the exact order of the output from the Vertex Shader, regardless of the semantics: float4 QuadPixel ( float4 pos : SV_Position, float4 color : COLOR0, float2 tex : TEXCOORD0 ) : SV_Target0 { return color; } After finding this out, My question is: Why don't the semantics map the appropriate components when going from Vertex Shader to Pixel Shader? Is there any way that I can make it so certain semantics are always mapped to other semantics, or do I always have to follow the rigid Shader Signature (in this case, Position, Color, and Texture) ? As a side note for why I'm asking: I know that when using XNA, my shader signatures for functions could differ in position and even drop items from Vertex Shader to Pixel Shader function parameters, having only the COLOR0 and TEXCOORD0 components being used (and it would still match up correctly). However, I also know that XNA relied on DX9 (and maybe a little DX10) implementation, and that maybe this kind of flexibility no longer exists in DX11?

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• Partner BI Applications 4-Day Hands-on Training Workshop

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} 12th - 15th February 2012, Oracle Reading (UK) - REGISTER NOW This training will provide attendees with an in-depth working understanding of the architecture, the technical and the functional content of the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, whilst also providing an understanding of their installation, configuration and extension. The course will cover the following topics: Overview of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Oracle BI Applications Fundamentals and Features Configuring BI Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Understanding BI Applications Architecture Fundamentals of BI Applications Security Prerequisites - This training is only for OPN member Partners. Good understanding of basic data warehousing concepts Hands on experience in Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Hands on experience in Informatica Good understanding of any of the following Oracle EBS modules: General Ledger, Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables Some understanding of  Oracle BI Applications is required (See Sales & Technical Tutorials for OBI, BI-Apps and Hyperion EPM)  Please note that attendees are required to bring a laptop. Laptop 4GB RAM-Recognized by Windows 64 bits 80GB free space in Hard drive or External Device CPU Core 2 Duo or Higher Operating System Requirements Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 2003 NOT ALLOWED with Windows Vista An Administrator User

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• Oracle OpenWorld / JavaOne Where I'll Be

  - by Shay Shmeltzer

  It's that time of the year again when San Francisco get flooded with Oracle and Java geeks for the annual OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences. Here are some of the places where you'll be able to find me: Sunday has a bunch of great ADF content in the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group track - I'm not sure if I'll make it there but I'm sure those who will will get some serious knowledge transfer. I'm starting Monday at the Keynote for Developers (10:45 in Salon 8 at the Marriott) - that's a great place for ADF developers to start the official week with an overview of what's new and upcoming in the world of development with ADF. While I'm not presenting this session - Chris Tonas who leads the development tools org will -  a demo that I built will be shown. So I'll be sitting in the audience crossing my fingers praying for the demo gods (and the wifi connection to work). My presentation part of the week starts on Monday at 12:15 at Moscone South room 306 where I'll be presenting "CON3004 - Understanding Oracle ADF and Its Role in Oracle Fusion"  . A basic introduction to ADF, it's architecture, development experience and how it integrates and works with the rest of the Fusion Middleware components.  After the session between 2-4 I'll be at the JDeveloper demo booth in Moscone South to answer any questions people might have. Then at 6:15 together with Grant we'll host BOF4492 - How to Get Started with Oracle ADF where we'll try and explain some of the learning paths and resources that are available for people who want to start learning ADF. This is a birds-of-a-feather so we'll also love to hear ideas from the audience about what paths they took and what things work or need improvment. Tuesday is relatively a quite day for me with a shift at the Oracle ADF Essentials pod at JavaOne from 1:30-3:30. There are several very good ADF architecture and best practices sessions on that day - so I'll try and hit those. Wednesday starts with another shift at the JDeveloper booth at JavaOne. Then at 4:30, instead of doing what all the ADF developers should do and heading over to the ADF meetup at the OTN Lounge, I'll be heading over to JavaOne for my CON3770 - Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF: What’s New session. It's been a couple of years since the last time JDeveloper or ADF got any airtime at JavaOne - so it will be a great opportunity to show those in the Java community with open minds our approach to Java development. Now that ADF Essentials offers a free way to develop with ADF on GlassFish, I hope we'll be getting more people from the core Java camp interested in what we have to offer. Thursday is another relaxed day for me - who knows maybe I'll even be able to catch a session or two on that day. If you want to learn more about the ADF related sessions at OOW check out our full list here.

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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