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• How to make transition effect on css sprite hover

  - by MonsterMMORPG

  Here part of my css sprite code #IconSet a { width: 36px; height: 36px; display: inline-block; } #DeviantArtIcon { border-width: 0px; border-style: none; background-image: url(http://static.monstermmorpg.com/images/csssprites/SocialIcons.png); background-color: transparent; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: -144px -0px; width: 36px; height: 36px; } #DeviantArtIcon:hover { border-width: 0px; border-style: none; background-image: url(http://static.monstermmorpg.com/images/csssprites/SocialIcons.png); background-color: transparent; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: -144px -36px; width: 36px; height: 36px; } <a id="DeviantArtIcon" href="http://monstermmorpg.deviantart.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="Monster MMORPG On Deviant Art - Please Watch Our Channel"></a> Now when this icon hovered i want to have transition effect. How can i do that ? I tried here but no luck CSS Fade Between Background Images on Hover

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• MySql scoping problem with correlated subqueries

  - by Rolf

  Hi, I'm having this Mysql query, It works: SELECT nom ,prenom ,(SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(category_en) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT category_en FROM categories c WHERE id IN (SELECT DISTINCT category_id FROM m3allems_to_categories m2c WHERE m3allem_id = 37) ) cS ) categories ,(SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(area_en) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT area_en FROM areas c WHERE id IN (SELECT DISTINCT area_id FROM m3allems_to_areas m2a WHERE m3allem_id = 37) ) aSq ) areas FROM m3allems m WHERE m.id = 37 The result is: nom prenom categories areas Man Multi Carpentry,Paint,Walls Beirut,Baalbak,Saida It works correclty, but only when i hardcode into the query the id that I want (37). I want it to work for all entries in the m3allem table, so I try this: SELECT nom ,prenom ,(SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(category_en) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT category_en FROM categories c WHERE id IN (SELECT DISTINCT category_id FROM m3allems_to_categories m2c WHERE m3allem_id = m.id) ) cS ) categories ,(SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(area_en) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT area_en FROM areas c WHERE id IN (SELECT DISTINCT area_id FROM m3allems_to_areas m2a WHERE m3allem_id = m.id) ) aSq ) areas FROM m3allems m And I get an error: Unknown column 'm.id' in 'where clause' Why? From the MySql manual: 13.2.8.7. Correlated Subqueries [...] Scoping rule: MySQL evaluates from inside to outside. So... do this not work when the subquery is in a SELECT section? I did not read anything about that. Does anyone know? What should I do? It took me a long time to build this query... I know it's a monster query but it gets what I want in a single query, and I am so close to getting it to work! Can anyone help?

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• Reuse, Rewrite, or Refactor?

  - by Jon Purdy

  At work I inherited development of a PHP-based Web site after the consultant who originally produced it bailed out and left without a trace. Literally half of the code is ripped from online tutorials, and there are thousands of lines of cruft that, being incomplete, do precious little. Hardly any of it actually works. I've been trying to pull out the usable components, such as the layout (cleverly intermixed with code), session management (delicately seasoned with unescaped, unvalidated SQL queries), and a few other things, but it's very difficult to force all of this junk into place. Further, I don't speak idiomatic PHP, being more of a Perl user, and I'm supposed to be on this project principally for maintenance, so rewriting everything seems like it would take just as long as wrestling the existing monster back into place. As an aside, I have literally never seen anything as badly written as this. Welcome me to the world of working with other people's code, I guess, but I do hope it's not this common in the real world to have such gems as these: // WHY IS THIS NOT WORKING // I know this is bad but were going for working stuff right now... // This is a PHP code outputing Javascript code outputting HTML...do not go further // Not userful I'm looking for the best advice I can get here. What would you do if you were in my position?

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• How to store an inventory using hashtables?

  - by Harm De Weirdt

  Hello everyone. For an assignment in collego we have to make a script in Perl that allows us to manage an inventory for an e-store. (The example given was Amazon) Users can make orders in a fully text-based environment and the inventory must be updated when an order is completed. Every item in the inventory has 3 to 4 attributes: a product code, a title, a price and for some an amount (MP3's for example do not have this attribute) Since this is my first encounter with Perl, i don't really know how to start. My main problem is how i should "implement" the inventory in the program. One of the functions of the program is searching trough the titles. Another is to make an order, where the user should give a product code. My first idea was a hashtable with the productcode as key. But if i wanted to search in the titles that could be a problem because of this: the hashkey would be something like DVD-123, the information belonging to that key could be "The Green Mask 12" (without the ") where the 12 indicates how many of this DVD are currently in stock. So i'd have to find a way to ignore the 12 in the end. Another solution was to use the title as Hashkey, but that would prove cumbersome too I think. Is there a way to make a hashtable with 2 key's, and when I give only one it returns an array with the other values? (Including the other key and the other information) That way I could use another key depending on what info I need from my inventory. We have to read the default inventory from a txt file looking like this: MP3-72|Lady Gaga - Kiss and Run (Fear of Commitment Monster)|0.99 CD-400|Kings of Leon - Only By The Night|14.50|2 MP3-401|Kings of Leon - Closer|0.85 DVD-144|Live Free or Die Hard|14.99|2 SOFT-864|Windows Vista|49.95 Any help would be appreciated very much :) PS: I am sorry for my bad grammar, English isn't my native language.

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• Testing a Gui-heavy WPF application.

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  We (my colleagues) have a messy 12 y.o. mature app that is GUI-based, and the current plan is to add new dialogs & other GUI in WPF, as well as replace some of the older dialogs in WPF as well. At the same time we wish to be able to test that Monster - GUI automation in a maintainable way. Some challenges: The application is massive. It constantly gains new features. It is being changed around (bug fixes, patches). It has a back end, and a layer in-between. The state of it can get out of whack if you beat it to death. What we want is: Some tool that can automate testing of WPF. auto-discovery of what the inputs and the outputs of the dialog are. An old test should still work if you add a label that does nothing. It should fail, however, if you remove a necessary text field. It would be very nice if the test suite was easy to maintain, if it ran and did not break most of the time. Every new dialog should be created with testability in mind. At this point I do not know exactly what I want, so I am marking this as a community wiki. If having to test a huge GUI-based app rings the bell (even if not in WPF), then please share your good, bad and ugly experiences here.

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• Immutable classes in C++

  - by ereOn

  Hi, In one of my projects, I have some classes that represent entities that cannot change once created, aka. immutable classes. Example : A class RSAKey that represent a RSA key which only has const methods. There is no point changing the existing instance: if you need another one, you just create one. My objects sometimes are heavy and I enforced the use of smart pointers to avoid copy. So far, I have the following pattern for my classes: class RSAKey : public boost::noncopyable, public boost::enable_shared_from_this<RSAKey> { public: /** * \brief Some factory. * \param member A member value. * \return An instance. */ static boost::shared_ptr<const RSAKey> createFromMember(int member); /** * \brief Get a member. * \return The member. */ int getMember() const; private: /** * \brief Constructor. * \param member A member. */ RSAKey(int member); /** * \brief Member. */ const int m_member; }; So you can only get a pointer (well, a smart pointer) to a const RSAKey. To me, it makes sense, because having a non-const reference to the instance is useless (it only has const methods). Do you guys see any issue regarding this pattern ? Are immutable classes something common in C++ or did I just created a monster ? Thank you for your advices !

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• MUD (game) design concept question about timed events.

  - by mudder

  I'm trying my hand at building a MUD (multiplayer interactive-fiction game) I'm in the design/conceptualizing phase and I've run into a problem that I can't come up with a solution for. I'm hoping some more experienced programmers will have some advice. Here's the problem as best I can explain it. When the player decides to perform an action he sends a command to the server. the server then processes the command, determines whether or not the action can be performed, and either does it or responds with a reason as to why it could not be done. One reason that an action might fail is that the player is busy doing something else. For instance, if a player is mid-fight and has just swung a massive broadsword, it might take 3 seconds before he can repeat this action. If the player attempts to swing again to soon, the game will respond indicating that he must wait x seconds before doing that. Now, this I can probably design without much trouble. The problem I'm having is how I can replicate this behavior from AI creatures. All of the events that are being performed by the server ON ITS OWN, aka not as an immediate reaction to something a player has done, will have to be time sensitive. Some evil monster has cast a spell on you but must wait 30 seconds before doing it again... I think I'll probably be adding all these events to some kind of event queue, but how can I make that event queue time sensitive?

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• Which MySQL Fork/Version to Pick??

  - by Drew

  As most of you know, Sun acquired MySQL (and later Oracle acquired Sun), and during these acquisitions, there were a lot of FUD in MySQL community which resulted in creation of various forks. Today we have MySQL from MySQL, Percona (XtraDB) MySQL, OurDelta MySQL, MariaDB, Drizzle to name a few. Which brings us to the source of the problem. We are in the process of upgrading our databases (hardware/software) and I would like to know which one of the forks should I go with. Each has their own set of pros/cons. We are currently using MySQL 5.0.x from MySQL/Linux on an 8-core machine. Our new hardware is a monster with 32 cores and 32GB of memory connecting to a fast NetApp Storage via FC. I would like to stick with MySQL from MySQL but I have heard horror stories on how badly MySQL 5.1 performs on many cores. I have also heard that MySQL 5.4 performs better on multi-core machines but that's still not production ready. In addition, I have also heard a lot of good things about Percona builds. This is what I know so far: MySQL 5.1 from MySQL: Reliable choice, but doesn't scale well on a big machine Percona: Scales well, good backing company. I don't have much experience with it MariaDB: Don't know much about it besides that it was founded by Original MySQL developers (including Monty) OurDelta: Don't know much Drizzle: Mostly optimized for cloud computing I would like to know what's the general notion about this problem. Which build/version should I go with? How are you guys picking your builds/versions? Thanks!

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• Using `<List>` when dealing with pointers in C#.

  - by Gorchestopher H

  How can I add an item to a list if that item is essentially a pointer and avoid changing every item in my list to the newest instance of that item? Here's what I mean: I am doing image processing, and there is a chance that I will need to deal with images that come in faster than I can process (for a short period of time). After this "burst" of images I will rely on the fact that I can process faster than the average image rate, and will "catch-up" eventually. So, what I want to do is put my images into a <List> when I acquire them, then if my processing thread isn't busy, I can take an image from that list and hand it over. My issue is that I am worried that since I am adding the image "Image1" to the list, then filling "Image1" with a new image (during the next image acquisition) I will be replacing the image stored in the list with the new image as well (as the image variable is actually just a pointer). So, my code looks a little like this: while (!exitcondition) { if(ImageAvailabe()) { Image1 = AcquireImage(); ImgList.Add(Image1); } if(ImgList.Count 0) { ProcessEngine.NewImage(ImgList[0]); ImgList.RemoveAt(0); } } Given the above, how can I ensure that: - I don't replace all items in the list every time Image1 is modified. - I don't need to pre-declare a number of images in order to do this kind of processing. - I don't create a memory devouring monster. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

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• Do ORMs normally allow circular relations? If so, how would they handle it?

  - by SeanJA

  I was hacking around trying to make a basic orm that has support for the one => one and one => many relationships. I think I succeeded somewhat, but I am curious about how to handle circular relationships. Say you had something like this: user::hasOne('car'); car::hasMany('wheels'); car::property('type'); wheel::hasOne('car'); You could then do this (theoretically): $u = new user(); echo $u->car->wheels[0]->car->wheels[1]->car->wheels[2]->car->wheels[3]->type; #=> "monster truck" Now, I am not sure why you would want to do this. It seems like it wastes a whole pile of memory and time just to get to something that could have been done in a much shorter way. In my small ORM, I now have 4 copies of the wheel class, and 4 copies of the car class in memory, which causes a problem if I update one of them and save it back to the database, the rest get out of date, and could overwrite the changes that were already made. How do other ORMs handle circular references? Do they even allow it? Do they go back up the tree and create a pointer to one of the parents? DO they let the coder shoot themselves in the foot if they are silly enough to go around in circles?

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• Being pressured to GOTO the dark-side

  - by Dan McG

  We have a situation at work where developers working on a legacy (core) system are being pressured into using GOTO statements when adding new features into existing code that is already infected with spagetti code. Now, I understand there may be arguments for using 'just one little GOTO' instead of spending the time on refactoring to a more maintainable solution. The issue is, this isolated 'just one little GOTO' isn't so isolated. At least once every week or so there is a new 'one little GOTO' to add. This codebase is already a horror to work with due to code dating back to or before 1984 being riddled with GOTOs that would make many Pastafarians believe it was inspired by the Flying Spagetti Monster itself. Unfortunately the language this is written in doesn't have any ready made refactoring tools, so it makes it harder to push the 'Refactor to increase productivity later' because short-term wins are the only wins paid attention to here... Has anyone else experienced this issue whereby everybody agrees that we cannot be adding new GOTOs to jump 2000 lines to a random section, but continually have Anaylsts insist on doing it just this one time and having management approve it? tldr; How can one go about addressing the issue of developers being pressured (forced) to continually add GOTO statements (by add, I mean add to jump to random sections many lines away) because it 'gets that feature in quicker'? I'm beginning to fear we may loses valuable developers to the raptors over this...

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• :order does not work on :include

  - by SpyrosP

  Hello there, i'm wondering why this gives me an error : DiscoveredLocation.find_all_by_user_id(user.id, :include => [:boss_location, :monsters], :order => 'boss_location.location_index ASC') It seems as if it's trying to execute a really long query and i get an error like : Mysql::Error: Unknown column 'monsters_discovered_locations_join.boss_location_id' in 'on clause': SELECT `discovered_locations`.`id` AS t0_r0, `discovered_locations`.`user_id` AS t0_r1, `discovered_locations`.`boss_location_id` AS t0_r2, `discovered_locations`.`created_at` AS t0_r3, `discovered_locations`.`updated_at` AS t0_r4, `boss_locations`.`id` AS t1_r0, `boss_locations`.`name` AS t1_r1, `boss_locations`.`location_index` AS t1_r2, `boss_locations`.`min_level` AS t1_r3, `boss_locations`.`needed_gold_to_open` AS t1_r4, `boss_locations`.`created_at` AS t1_r5, `boss_locations`.`updated_at` AS t1_r6, `monsters`.`id` AS t2_r0, `monsters`.`name` AS t2_r1, `monsters`.`strength` AS t2_r2, `monsters`.`dexterity` AS t2_r3, `monsters`.`magic` AS t2_r4, `monsters`.`accuracy` AS t2_r5, `monsters`.`minGold` AS t2_r6, `monsters`.`maxGold` AS t2_r7, `monsters`.`hp` AS t2_r8, `monsters`.`level` AS t2_r9, `monsters`.`armor` AS t2_r10, `monsters`.`first_class` AS t2_r11, `monsters`.`weapon_id` AS t2_r12, `monsters`.`imageName` AS t2_r13, `monsters`.`monster_type` AS t2_r14, `monsters`.`boss_location_index` AS t2_r15, `monsters`.`boss_location_id` AS t2_r16, `monsters`.`created_at` AS t2_r17, `monsters`.`updated_at` AS t2_r18 FROM `discovered_locations` LEFT OUTER JOIN `boss_locations` ON `boss_locations`.id = `discovered_locations`.boss_location_id LEFT OUTER JOIN `boss_locations` monsters_discovered_locations_join ON (`discovered_locations`.`id` = `monsters_discovered_locations_join`.`boss_location_id`) LEFT OUTER JOIN `monsters` ON (`monsters`.`boss_location_id` = `monsters_discovered_locations_join`.`id`) WHERE (`discovered_locations`.`user_id` = 986759322) ORDER BY boss_location.location_index ASC The models associations are : class BossKill < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user belongs_to :monster class DiscoveredLocation < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user belongs_to :boss_location has_many :monsters, :through => :boss_location has_many :boss_kills, :through => :monsters class BossLocation < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :discovered_locations has_many :users, :through => :discovered_locations has_many :monsters Any ideas ?

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• Save and Load Dictionary from encrypted or unreadable or binary format ?

  - by Prix

  I have a dictionary like the follow: public Dictionary<int, SpawnList> spawnEntities = new Dictionary<int, SpawnList>(); The class being used is as follow: public class SpawnList { public int NpcID { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public int Level { get; set; } public int TitleID { get; set; } public int StaticID { get; set; } public entityType Status { get; set; } public int TypeA { get; set; } public int TypeB { get; set; } public int TypeC { get; set; } public int ZoneID { get; set; } public int Heading { get; set; } public float PosX { get; set; } public float PosY { get; set; } public float PosZ { get; set; } } /// <summary>Entity type enum.</summary> public enum entityType { Ally, Enemy, SummonPet, NPC, Object, Monster, Gatherable, Unknown } How could I save this Dictionary to either a binary or encrypted format so I could later Load it again into my application ? My limitation is .Net 3.5 can't use anything higher.

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• Best way to migrate export/import from SQL Server to oracle

  - by matao

  Hi guys! I'm faced with needing access for reporting to some data that lives in Oracle and other data that lives in a SQL Server 2000 database. For various reasons these live on different sides of a firewall. Now we're looking at doing an export/import from sql server to oracle and I'd like some advice on the best way to go about it... The procedure will need to be fully automated and run nightly, so that excludes using the SQL developer tools. I also can't make a live link between databases from our (oracle) side as the firewall is in the way. The data needs to be transformed in the process from a star schema to a de-normalised table ready for reporting. What I'm thinking about is writing a monster query for SQL Server (which I mostly have already) that will denormalise and read out the data from SQL Server into a flat file using the sql server equivalent of sqlplus as a scheduled task, dump into a Well Known Location, then on the oracle side have a cron job that copies down the file and loads it with sql loader and rebuilds indexes etc. This is all doable, but very manual. Is there one or a combination of FOSS or standard oracle/SQL Server tools that could automate this for me? the Irreducible complexity is the query on one side and building indexes on the other, but I would love to not have to write the CSV dumping detail or the SQL loader script, just say dump this view out to CSV on one side, and on the other truncate and insert into this table from CSV and not worry about mapping column names and all other arcane sqlldr voodoo... best practices? thoughts? comments? edit: I have about 50+ columns all of varying types and lengths in my dataset, which is why I'd prefer to not have to write out how to generate and map each single column...

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• Are we in demand?

  - by dotnetdev

  I was made redundant in the end of November. This wasn't because I lacked required skills (although I'm a youngster and in career levels a junior dev - though I knew a lot more than was called for in my job). Anyway, I was laid off due to the whole recession/credit crunch thing going on. I worked for a small company and money got tight and I had to go. I haven't made a thread about this but I have seen threads about others being laid off and experiencing a similar fate. This leads me to the question: What is the job market like for developers? Are we in demand? I ask this question on a global level, but I live in London UK (in case anyone comes across this thread from the same area). I am a .NET dev but my secondary skillset is Flex (actionscript too) and Java, which my personal portfolio is made with. I hope to be strong enough in this to do this commercially, with a few more months of practise. Then I will have more jobs applicable to me. Unfortunately, I use agencies and sites like Jobserve/Monster.com but no new jobs are ever posted on there so when you apply to all the relevant jobs, then what? Whatsmore, a lot of companies are putting a freeze on recruitment. Thanks

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• Large Switch statements: Bad OOP?

  - by Mystere Man

  I've always been of the opinion that large switch statements are a symptom of bad OOP design. In the past, I've read articles that discuss this topic and they have provided altnerative OOP based approaches, typically based on polymorphism to instantiate the right object to handle the case. I'm now in a situation that has a monsterous switch statement based on a stream of data from a TCP socket in which the protocol consists of basically newline terminated command, followed by lines of data, followed by an end marker. The command can be one of 100 different commands, so I'd like to find a way to reduce this monster switch statement to something more manageable. I've done some googling to find the solutions I recall, but sadly, Google has become a wasteland of irrelevant results for many kinds of queries these days. Are there any patterns for this sort of problem? Any suggestions on possible implementations? One thought I had was to use a dictionary lookup, matching the command text to the object type to instantiate. This has the nice advantage of merely creating a new object and inserting a new command/type in the table for any new commands. However, this also has the problem of type explosion. I now need 100 new classes, plus I have to find a way to interface them cleanly to the data model. Is the "one true switch statement" really the way to go? I'd appreciate your thoughts, opinions, or comments.

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• How to handle 30k files in a project which requires them?

  - by Jeremiah

  Visual Studio 2010 RC - Silverlight Application We have a library of images that we need to have access to. They are given to us from a vendor (through an installer) and they are not in a database, they are files in a folder (a very large monster of a folder). We do not control when the images change, so the vendor needs to be able to override them individually. We get updates frequently enough from this vendor to state that these images change "randomly" and without our (programmer) knowledge. The problem: I don't want 30K images in SVN. Heck, I don't even want to imagine them in my Solution. However, our application requires them in order to run properly. So, our build/staging servers need access to these images (we have two build servers). The Question: How would you handle it when your application will not work as specified without access to each of 30k images and you don't control when those images change? I'm do not want to have a crazy large SVN repository. Because I don't know when any of these images change, I really don't want them in my solution (definitely do not want a large solution, either). I also don't want a bunch of manual steps to do every time these images change. Our mantra, up to this point, has always been, any developer could download from SVN, compile and run our app. These images are going to kill that mantra. I'm tempted to make a WCF service that will return images if they exist and a dummy image if they don't. This way all dev boxes will return a dummy image and our build/staging/production boxes will return real images (ones that actually have the vendor's image installer installed on). This has to be a solved problem. What have other people done to handle these types of problems? I'm open to suggestions.

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• How To Create a lookup Table with an NSDate for weekly range (over 5 year period)

  - by EarlyMan

  Unsure how to best achieve this. NSDate *date = [NSDate date]; I need to do a lookup on the date and return a string value. 12/17/2011 < date < 12/23/2011 return "20120101" 12/24/2011 < date < 12/30/2012 return "20120102" 12/31/2011 < date < 01/06/2012 return "20120201" ... 10/20/2012 < date < 10/26/2012 return "20122301" ... 11/02/2013 < date < 11/08/2013 return "20132301" .. for 5 years... for each week date can be any date until Dec. 2017. I do not know the logic behind the return strings so I can't simply calculate the string based on the date. The return string (converted to NSDate in the model) is used successfully as my section for my fetchedresultscontroller. I am not sure how to create a lookup table based on an NSDate or if I need some monster if/case statement.

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• Exchange-Server Query

  - by Rudi Kershaw

  First, a little background. I've recently been taken on as a web and software developer for a small company, who has no other in-house IT support. They've been asking my opinion on lots of IT subjects that are quite far out of my comfort zone. I'm definitely not a network admin. Their IT consultancy contractor is pushing them to upgrade their dedicated exchange server, even though it seems like the one they currently have has a lot of life left in it and is running problem free. They say it's "coming to the natural end of it's life". They want to install a monster with a Xeon E5-2420, 32GB RAM, 2x 1TB HDDs, Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft Exchange 2010. They want to charge a small fortune for it. Basically, this system seems massively over the top seeing as it won't be doing anything else other than running as an exchange server for a company with less than 25 email accounts. My employers also have a file server system in-house that hosts three web apps, an SQL server, their local domain, print server and shared folders. That machine is using the same specs as the proposed new one, and it is barely using any of it's potential. I asked if Microsoft Exchange 2010 could be installed on their file server, but they said that MS Exchange can't run on the same system as an SQL server because for some reason they will eat up each others resources (even though the SQL server isn't touching 1% of the current system's CPU or RAM). My question is really, are they trying to rip my employers off? Could MS Exchange be installed on their other server (on a virtual instance or not), or does the old one even need replacing at all? Going with their current suggestion will cost the company in excess of £6k, and it seems entirely unnecessary. I apologies, because I know this is probably a little thin on details, but if I carry on I could end up writing a massive essay that no-one will want to read. I've been doing my research, but I'm not knowledgeable enough make any hard decisions. Let me know if you need any more details. Thank you for any help you can offer. Further Details: The new exchange would need to support Outlook Web App, 25 users, a few public mailboxes, and email exchange with Blackberries.

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• How do you backup 40+ Centos5.5 servers?

  - by John Little

  We are embarrassed to ask this question. Apologies for our lack of UNIX expertise. We have inherited 40+ centos 5.5 servers, and don't know how to back them up. We need low level clone type images so that we could restore the servers from scratch if we had to replace the HDs etc. We have used the "dd" command, but we assume this only works if you want to back up one local disk to another, not 40 servers to one server with an external USB HD attached. All 40 servers have a pair of mirrored disks (dont know if its HW or SW raid). Most only have 100MB used. SErvers are running apache, zend, tomcat, mysql etc. Ideally we dont want to have to shut them down to backup (but could). We assume that standard unix commands like tar, cpio, rsync, scp etc. are of no use as they only copy files, not partitions, all attributes, groups etc. i.e. do not produce a result which can simply be re-imaged to a new HD to get the serer back from dead. We have a large SAN, a spare windows box and spare unix boxes, but these are only visible to one layer in the network. We have an unused Dell DL2000 monster tape unit, but no sw or documentation for it. WE have a copy of symantec backup exec, but we have no budget for unix client licenses. (The company has negative amounts of money). We need to be able to initiate the backup remotely, as we can only access the servers in person in an emergency (i.e. to restore) Googling returns some applications to do this, e.g. clonezilla - looks difficult to install and invasive. Mondo, only seems to support backup if you are local to the machine. Amanda might be an option, but looks like days/weeks of work to learn and setup? Is there anything built into Centos, or do we have to go the route of installing, learning and configuring a set of backup softwares? Any ideas? This must be a pretty standard problem which goggling doesnt give an obvious answer.

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• Developer’s Life – Summary of Superhero Articles

  - by Pinal Dave

  Earlier this year, I wrote an article series where I talked about developer’s life and compared it with Superhero. I have got amazing response to this series and I have been receiving quite a lots of email suggesting that I should write more blog post about them. Currently I am not planning to write more blog post but I will soon continue another series. In this blog post, I have summarized the entire series. Let me know if you want me to write about any superhero. I will see what I can do about that hero. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Captain America Captain America was first created as a comic book character in the 1940’s as a way to boost morale during World War II.  Aimed at a children’s audience, his legacy faded away when the war ended.  However, he has recently has a major reboot to become a popular movie character that deals with modern issues. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is the Incredible Hulk The Incredible Hulk is possibly one of the scariest superheroes out there.  All superheroes are meant to be “out of this world” and awe-inspiring, but I think most people will agree with I say The Hulk takes this to the next level.  He is the result of an industrial accident, which is scary enough in it’s own right.  Plus, when mild-mannered Bruce Banner is angered, he goes completely out-of-control and transforms into a destructive monster that he cannot control and has no memories of. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Wonder Woman We have focused a lot lately on this “superhero series.”  I love fantasy books and movies, and I feel like there is a lot to be learned from them.  As I am writing this series, though, I have noticed that every super hero I write about is a man.  So today, I would like to talk about the major female super hero – Wonder Woman. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Harry Potter Harry Potter might not be a superhero in the traditional sense, but I believe he still has a lot to teach us and show us about life as a developer.  If you have been living under a rock for the last 17 years, you might not know that Harry Potter is the main character in an extremely popular series of books and movies documenting the education and tribulation of a young wizard (and his friends). Developer’s Life – Every Developer is Like Transformers Transformers may not be superheroes – they don’t wear capes, they don’t have amazing powers outside of their size and folding ability, they’re not even human (technically).  Part of their enduring popularity is that while we are enjoying over-the-top movies, we are learning about good leadership and strong personal skills. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Iron Man Iron Man is another superhero who is not naturally “super,” but relies on his brain (and money) to turn him into a fighting machine.  While traditional superheroes are still popular, a three-movie franchise and incorporation into the new Avengers series shows that Iron Man is popular enough on his own. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Sherlock Holmes I have been thinking a lot about how developers are like super heroes, and I have written two blog posts now comparing them to Spiderman and Superman.  I have a lot of love and respect for developers, and I hope that they are enjoying these articles, and others are learning a little bit about the profession.  There is another fictional character who, while not technically asuper hero, is very powerful, and I also think stands as a good example of a developer. That character is Sherlock Holmes.  Sherlock Holmes is a British detective, first made popular at the turn of the 19thcentury by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The original Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective who could solve the most mind-boggling crime through simple observations and deduction. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Chhota Bheem Chhota Bheem is a cartoon character that is extremely popular where I live.  He is my daughter’s favorite characters.  I like to say that children love Chhota Bheem more than their parents – it is lucky for us he is not real!  Children love Chhota Bheem because he is the absolute “good guy.”  He is smart, loyal, and strong.  He and his friends live in Dholakpur and fight off their many enemies – and always win – in every episode.  In each episode, they learn something about friendship, bravery, and being kind to others.  Chhota Bheem is a good role model for children, and I think that he is a good role model for developers are well. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Superman I enjoyed comparing developers to Spiderman so much, that I have decided to continue the trend and encourage some of my favorite people (developers) with another favorite superhero – Superman.  Superman is probably the most famous superhero – and one of the most inspiring. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Spiderman I have to admit, Spiderman is my favorite superhero.  The most recent movie recently was released in theaters, so it has been at the front of my mind for some time. Spiderman was my favorite superhero even before the latest movie came out, but of course I took my whole family to see the movie as soon as I could!  Every one of us loved it, including my daughter.  We all left the movie thinking how great it would be to be Spiderman.  So, with that in mind, I started thinking about how we are like Spiderman in our everyday lives, especially developers. I would like to know which Superhero is your favorite hero! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Real World Perspectives from Oracle WebCenter Customers

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you frequent the Oracle WebCenter blog you’ve probably read a lot about the customer experience revolution over the last few months.  An important aspect of the customer experience revolution is the increasing role that peers play in influencing how others perceive a product, brand or solution, simply by sharing their own, real-world experiences.  Think about it, who do you trust more -- marketers and sales people pitching polished messages or peers with similar roles and similar challenges to the ones you face in your business every day? With this spirit in mind, this polished marketer personally invites you to hear directly from Oracle WebCenter customers about their real-life experiences during our customer panel sessions at Oracle OpenWorld next week.  If you’re currently using WebCenter, thinking about it, or just want to find out more about best practices in social business, next-generation portals, enterprise content management or web experience management, be sure to attend these sessions: CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West - 3000Priscilla Hancock - Vice President/CIO, University of Louisville Kellie Christensen - Director of Information Technology, Banner EngineeringWhat does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change your organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. This session will take a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel DiscussionWednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West - 3000Roberts Wayne - Director, IT, Canadian Partnership Against CancerMike Beattie - VP Application Development, Aramark Uniform ServicesJohn Chen - Utilities Services Manager 6, Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerJörg Modlmayr - Head of Product Managment, Siemens AGSocial and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM NirvanaThursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001Stephen Madsen - Senior Management Consultant, Alberta Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentHimanshu Parikh - Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture & Middleware, Ross Stores, Inc.Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we're not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing SuccessThursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001Blane Nelson - Chief Architect, Ancestry.comMike Remedios - CIO, ArbonneCaitlin Scanlon - Product Manager, Monster WorldwideEvery year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from customers on how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. Your Handy Guide to WebCenter at Oracle OpenWorld Want a quick and easy guide to all the keynotes, demos, hands-on labs and WebCenter sessions you definitely don't want to miss at Oracle OpenWorld? Download this handy guide, Focus on WebCenter. More helpful links: * Oracle OpenWorld* Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld* Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook * Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter* Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn* Oracle OpenWorld Blog

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• Tuning Red Gate: #4 of Some

  - by Grant Fritchey

  First time connecting to these servers directly (keys to the kingdom, bwa-ha-ha-ha. oh, excuse me), so I'm going to take a look at the server properties, just to see if there are any issues there. Max memory is set, cool, first possible silly mistake clear. In fact, these look to be nicely set up. Oh, I'd like to see the ANSI Standards set by default, but it's not a big deal. The default location for database data is the F:\ drive, where I saw all the activity last time. Cool, the people maintaining the servers in our company listen, parallelism threshold is set to 35 and optimize for ad hoc is enabled. No shocks, no surprises. The basic setup is appropriate. On to the problem database. Nothing wrong in the properties. The database is in SIMPLE recovery, but I think it's a reporting system, so no worries there. Again, I'd prefer to see the ANSI settings for connections, but that's the worst thing I can see. Time to look at the queries, tables, indexes and statistics because all the information I've collected over the last several days suggests that we're not looking at a systemic problem (except possibly not enough memory), but at the traditional tuning issues. I just want to note that, I started looking at the system, not the queries. So should you when tuning your environment. I know, from the data collected through SQL Monitor, what my top poor performing queries are, and the most frequently called, etc. I'm starting with the most frequently called. I'm going to get the execution plan for this thing out of the cache (although, with the cache dumping constantly, I might not get it). And it's not there. Called 1.3 million times over the last 3 days, but it's not in cache. Wow. OK. I'll see what's in cache for this database: SELECT  deqs.creation_time,         deqs.execution_count,         deqs.max_logical_reads,         deqs.max_elapsed_time,         deqs.total_logical_reads,         deqs.total_elapsed_time,         deqp.query_plan,         SUBSTRING(dest.text, (deqs.statement_start_offset / 2) + 1,                   (deqs.statement_end_offset - deqs.statement_start_offset) / 2                   + 1) AS QueryStatement FROM    sys.dm_exec_query_stats AS deqs         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) AS dest         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(deqs.plan_handle) AS deqp WHERE   dest.dbid = DB_ID('Warehouse') AND deqs.statement_end_offset > 0 AND deqs.statement_start_offset > 0 ORDER BY deqs.max_logical_reads DESC ; And looking at the most expensive operation, we have our first bad boy: Multiple table scans against very large sets of data and a sort operation. a sort operation? It's an insert. Oh, I see, the table is a heap, so it's doing an insert, then sorting the data and then inserting into the primary key. First question, why isn't this a clustered index? Let's look at some more of the queries. The next one is deceiving. Here's the query plan: You're thinking to yourself, what's the big deal? Well, what if I told you that this thing had 8036318 reads? I know, you're looking at skinny little pipes. Know why? Table variable. Estimated number of rows = 1. Actual number of rows. well, I'm betting several more than one considering it's read 8 MILLION pages off the disk in a single execution. We have a serious and real tuning candidate. Oh, and I missed this, it's loading the table variable from a user defined function. Let me check, let me check. YES! A multi-statement table valued user defined function. And another tuning opportunity. This one's a beauty, seriously. Did I also mention that they're doing a hash against all the columns in the physical table. I'm sure that won't lead to scans of a 500,000 row table, no, not at all. OK. I lied. Of course it is. At least it's on the top part of the Loop which means the scan is only executed once. I just did a cursory check on the next several poor performers. all calling the UDF. I think I found a big tuning opportunity. At this point, I'm typing up internal emails for the company. Someone just had their baby called ugly. In addition to a series of suggested changes that we need to implement, I'm also apologizing for being such an unkind monster as to question whether that third eye & those flippers belong on such an otherwise lovely child.

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• Training a 'replacement', how to enforce standards?

  - by Mohgeroth

  Not sure that this is the right stack exchange site to ask this of, but here goes... Scope I work for a small company that employs a few hundred people. The development team for the company is small and works out of visual foxpro. A specific department in the company hired me in as a 'lone gunman' to fix and enhance a pre-existing invoicing system. I've successfully taken an Access application that suffered from a lot of risks and limitations and converted it into a C# application driven off of a SQL server backend. I have recently obtained my undergraduate and am no expert by any means. To help make up for that I've felt that earning microsoft certifications will force me to understand more about .net and how it functions. So, after giving my notice with 9 months in advance, 3 months ago a replacement finally showed up. Their role is to learn what I have been designing to an attempt to support the applications designed in C#. The Replacement Fresh out of college with no real-world work experience, the first instinct for anything involving data was and still is listboxes... any time data is mentioned the list box is the control of choice for the replacement. This has gotten to the point, no matter how many times I discuss other controls, where I've seen 5 listboxes on a single form. Classroom experience was almost all C++ console development. So, an example of where I have concern is in a winforms application: Users need to key Reasons into a table to select from later. Given that I know that a strongly typed data set exists, I can just drag the data source from the toolbox and it would create all of this for me. I realize this is a simple example but using databinding is the key. For the past few months now we have been talking about the strongly typed dataset, how to use it and where it interacts with other controls. Data sets, how they work in relation to binding sources, adapters and data grid views. After handing this project off I expected questions about how to implement these since for me this is the way to do it. What happened next simply floors me: An instance of an adapter from the strongly typed dataset was created in the activate event of the form, a table was created and filled with data. Then, a loop was made to manually add rows to a listbox from this table. Finally, a variable was kept to do lookups to figure out what ID the record was for updates if required. How do they modify records you ask? That was my first question too. You won't believe how simple it is, all you do it double click and they type into a pop-up prompt the new value to change it to. As a data entry operator, all the modal popups would drive me absolutely insane. The final solution exceeds 100 lines of code that must be maintained. So my concern is that none of this is sinking in... the department is only allowed 20 hours a week of their time. Up until last week, we've only been given 4-5 hours a week if I'm lucky. The past week or so, I've been lucky to get 10. Question WHAT DO I DO?! I have 4 weeks left until I leave and they fully 'support' this application. I love this job and the opportunity it has given me but it's time for me to spread my wings and find something new. I am in no way, shape or form convinced that they are ready to take over. I do feel that the replacement has the technical ability to 'figure it out' but instead of learning they just write code to do all of this stuff manually. If the replacement wants to code differently in the end, as long as it works I'm fine with that as horrifiying at it looks. However to support what I have designed they MUST to understand how it works and how I have used controls and the framework to make 'magic' happen. This project has about 40 forms, a database with over 30 some odd tables, triggers and stored procedures. It relates labor to invoices to contracts to projections... it's not as simple as it was three years ago when I began this project and the department is now in a position where they cannot survive without it. How in the world can I accomplish any of the following?: Enforce standards or understanding in constent design when the department manager keeps telling them they can do it however they want to Find a way to engage the replacement in active learning of the framework and system design that support must be given for Gracefully inform sr. management that 5-9 hours a week is simply not enough time to learn about the department, pre-existing processes, applications that need to be supported AND determine where potential enhancements to the system go... Yes I know this is a wall of text, thanks for reading through me but I simply don't know what I should be doing. For me, this job is a monster of a reference and things would look extremely bad if I left and things fell apart. How do I handle this?

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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