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• SQL Authority News – Secret Tool Box of Successful Bloggers: 52 Tips to Build a High Traffic Top Ranking Blog

  - by Pinal Dave

  When I started this blog, it was meant as a bookmark for myself for helpful tips and tricks.  Gradually, it grew into a blog that others were reading and commenting on.  While SQL and databases are my first love and the reason I started this blog, the side effect was that I discovered I loved writing.  I discovered a secret goal I didn’t even know I wanted – I wanted to become an author.  For a long time, writing this blog satisfied that urge.  Gradually, though, I wanted to see my name in print. 12th Book Over the past few years I have authored and co-authored a number of books – they are all based on my knowledge of SQL Server, and were meant to spread my years of experience into the world, to share what I have learned with my community.  I currently have elevan of these “manuals” available for sale.  As exciting as it was to see my name in print, I still felt that there was more I could do as an author. That is when I realized that I am more than just a SQL expert.  I have been writing this blog now for more than 10 years, and it grew from a personal bookmark to a thriving website with over 2 million views per month.  I thought to myself “I could write a book about how to create a successful blog!”  And that is exactly what I did.  I am extremely excited to share with all of you my new book – “Secret Toolbox of Successful Bloggers.” A Labor of Love This project has been a labor of love for me.  It started out as a series for this blog – I would post one article a week until I felt the topic had been covered.  I found that as I wrote, new topics kept popping up in my mind, and eventually this small blog series grew into a full book.  The blog series was large enough to last a whole year, so I definitely thought that it could be a full book.  Ideas on how to become a successful blogger were so frequent that, I will admit, I feel like there is so much I left out of this book.  I had a lot more to say than I originally thought! I am so excited to be sharing this book with all of you.  I am so passionate about this topic, and I feel like there are so many people who can benefit from this book.  I know that when I started this blog, I did not know what I was doing, and I would have loved a “helping hand” to tell what to do and what not to do.  If this book can act that way to any of my readers, I feel it is a success. Rules of Thumb If you are interested in the topic of becoming a blogger, as you read this book, keep in mind that it is suggestions only.  Blogging is so new to the world that while there are “rules of thumb” about what to do and what not to do, a map of steps (“first, do x, then do y”) is not going to work for every single blogger.  This book is meant to encourage new bloggers to put their content out there in the world, to be brave and create a community like the one I have here at SQL Authority.  I have gained so much from this community, I wanted to give something back, and this book is just one small part. I hope that everyone who reads this books finds at least one helpful tip, and that everyone can experience the joy of blogging.  That is the whole reason I wrote this book, and what I hope everyone takes away from it. Where Can You Get It? You can get the book from following URL: Kindle eBook | Print Book Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL

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• Protecting Consolidated Data on Engineered Systems

  - by Steve Enevold

  In this time of reduced budgets and cost cutting measures in Federal, State and Local governments, the requirement to provide services continues to grow. Many agencies are looking at consolidating their infrastructure to reduce cost and meet budget goals. Oracle's engineered systems are ideal platforms for accomplishing these goals. These systems provide unparalleled performance that is ideal for running applications and databases that traditionally run on separate dedicated environments. However, putting multiple critical applications and databases in a single architecture makes security more critical. You are putting a concentrated set of sensitive data on a single system, making it a more tempting target.  The environments were previously separated by iron so now you need to provide assurance that one group, department, or application's information is not visible to other personnel or applications resident in the Exadata system. Administration of the environments requires formal separation of duties so an administrator of one application environment cannot view or negatively impact others. Also, these systems need to be in protected environments just like other critical production servers. They should be in a data center protected by physical controls, network firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, etc Exadata also provides unique security benefits, including a reducing attack surface by minimizing packages and services to only those required. In addition to reducing the possible system areas someone may attempt to infiltrate, Exadata has the following features: 1.    Infiniband, which functions as a secure private backplane 2.    IPTables  to perform stateful packet inspection for all nodes               Cellwall implements firewall services on each cell using IPTables 3.    Hardware accelerated encryption for data at rest on storage cells Oracle is uniquely positioned to provide the security necessary for implementing Exadata because security has been a core focus since the company's beginning. In addition to the security capabilities inherent in Exadata, Oracle security products are all certified to run in an Exadata environment. Database Vault Oracle Database Vault helps organizations increase the security of existing applications and address regulatory mandates that call for separation-of-duties, least privilege and other preventive controls to ensure data integrity and data privacy. Oracle Database Vault proactively protects application data stored in the Oracle database from being accessed by privileged database users. A unique feature of Database Vault is the ability to segregate administrative tasks including when a command can be executed, or that the DBA can manage the health of the database and objects, but may not see the data Advanced Security  helps organizations comply with privacy and regulatory mandates by transparently encrypting all application data or specific sensitive columns, such as credit cards, social security numbers, or personally identifiable information (PII). By encrypting data at rest and whenever it leaves the database over the network or via backups, Oracle Advanced Security provides the most cost-effective solution for comprehensive data protection. Label Security  is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for classifying data and mediating access to data based on its classification. Designed to meet public-sector requirements for multi-level security and mandatory access control, Oracle Label Security provides a flexible framework that both government and commercial entities worldwide can use to manage access to data on a "need to know" basis in order to protect data privacy and achieve regulatory compliance  Data Masking reduces the threat of someone in the development org taking data that has been copied from production to the development environment for testing, upgrades, etc by irreversibly replacing the original sensitive data with fictitious data so that production data can be shared safely with IT developers or offshore business partners  Audit Vault and Database Firewall Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall serves as a critical detective and preventive control across multiple operating systems and database platforms to protect against the abuse of legitimate access to databases responsible for almost all data breaches and cyber attacks.  Consolidation, cost-savings, and performance can now be achieved without sacrificing security. The combination of built in protection and Oracle’s industry-leading data protection solutions make Exadata an ideal platform for Federal, State, and local governments and agencies.

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• Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

  - by Hazzard

  I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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• The Healthy Tension That Mobility Creates

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps In my previous post, I talked about the value of the mobile revolution on businesses and workers. Now let me put on a different hat and view the world from the IT department and the IT leader’s viewpoint. The IT leader has different concerns – around privacy, potential liability of information leakage, and intellectual property protection. These concerns and the leader’s goals create a healthy tension with the users. For example, effective device management becomes a must have for the IT leader, especially if you look at the Android ecosystem as an example. There are benefits to the Android strategy, but there are also drawbacks, such as uniformity – in device management, in operating systems, and in the application taxonomy and capabilities. Whereas, if you compare Android to iOS, Apple's operating system, iOS is more unified, more streamlined, and easier to manage. In either case, this is where mobile device management in the cloud makes good sense. I don't think IT departments should be hosting device management and managing that complexity. It should be a cloud service and I predict it's going to be key for our customers. A New Focus for IT Departments So where does that leave the IT departments? I think their futures are in governance, which is a more strategic play than a tactical one. Device management is tactical and it's the “now” topic. But the mobile phenomenon, if you will, is going to drive significant change in terms of how IT plans, hosts, and deploys enterprise applications. For example, opening up enterprise applications for mobile users presents some challenges unless you deploy more complicated network topologies, such as virtual private networks and threat protection technology. If you really want employees to be mobile you need to remove those kinds of barriers. But I don’t think IT departments want to wrestle with exposing their private enterprise data centers and being responsible for hosted business applications – applications in a sense that they’re making vulnerable to the public world. This opens up a significant need and a significant driver for cloud applications. However, it's not just about taking away the complexity – it's also about taking away the responsibility. Why should every business have to carry the responsibility and figure out all the nuts and bolts of how to protect themselves in this public, mobile world? When you use apps in the cloud, either your vendor or your hosting partner should have figured all that out. They need to assure the business that they are adhering to all sorts of security and compliance regulations so users can be connected and have access to information anywhere anytime. More Ideas and Better Service What’s more interesting is the world of possibilities that the connected, cloud-based world enables. I believe that the one-size-fits-all, uber-best practices, lowest-common denominator-like capabilities will go away. IT will now be able to solve very specific business challenges for the different corporate functions it serves. In this new world, IT will play a key role in enabling different organizations within a company to be best in class and delivering greater value to the line of business managers. IT will actually help to differentiate. Net result is a more agile workforce and business because each department is getting work done its own way.

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• New R Interface to Oracle Data Mining Available for Download

  - by charlie.berger

    The R Interface to Oracle Data Mining ( R-ODM) allows R users to access the power of Oracle Data Mining's in-database functions using the familiar R syntax. R-ODM provides a powerful environment for prototyping data analysis and data mining methodologies. R-ODM is especially useful for: Quick prototyping of vertical or domain-based applications where the Oracle Database supports the application Scripting of "production" data mining methodologies Customizing graphics of ODM data mining results (examples: classification, regression, anomaly detection) The R-ODM interface allows R users to mine data using Oracle Data Mining from the R programming environment. It consists of a set of function wrappers written in source R language that pass data and parameters from the R environment to the Oracle RDBMS enterprise edition as standard user PL/SQL queries via an ODBC interface. The R-ODM interface code is a thin layer of logic and SQL that calls through an ODBC interface. R-ODM does not use or expose any Oracle product code as it is completely an external interface and not part of any Oracle product. R-ODM is similar to the example scripts (e.g., the PL/SQL demo code) that illustrates the use of Oracle Data Mining, for example, how to create Data Mining models, pass arguments, retrieve results etc. R-ODM is packaged as a standard R source package and is distributed freely as part of the R environment's Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). For information about the R environment, R packages and CRAN, see www.r-project.org. R-ODM is particularly intended for data analysts and statisticians familiar with R but not necessarily familiar with the Oracle database environment or PL/SQL. It is a convenient environment to rapidly experiment and prototype Data Mining models and applications. Data Mining models prototyped in the R environment can easily be deployed in their final form in the database environment, just like any other standard Oracle Data Mining model. What is R? R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files. The design of R has been heavily influenced by two existing languages: Becker, Chambers & Wilks' S and Sussman's Scheme. Whereas the resulting language is very similar in appearance to S, the underlying implementation and semantics are derived from Scheme. R was initially written by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the Department of Statistics of the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Since mid-1997 there has been a core group (the "R Core Team") who can modify the R source code archive. Besides this core group many R users have contributed application code as represented in the near 1,500 publicly-available packages in the CRAN archive (which has shown exponential growth since 2001; R News Volume 8/2, October 2008). Today the R community is a vibrant and growing group of dozens of thousands of users worldwide. It is free software distributed under a GNU-style copyleft, and an official part of the GNU project ("GNU S"). Resources: R website / CRAN R-ODM

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• Custom Templates: Using user exits

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the features of Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 is the ability to use templates and user exits to extend the base configuration files. The configuration files used by the product are based upon a set of templates shipped with the product. When the configureEnv utility asks for configuration settings they are stored in a configuration file ENVIRON.INI which outlines the environment settings. These settings are then used by the initialSetup utility to populate the various configuration files used by the product using templates located in the templates directory of the installation. Now, whilst the majority of the installations at any site are non-production and the templates provided are generally adequate for that need, there are circumstances where extension of templates are needed to take advantage of more advanced facilities (such as advanced security and environment settings). The issue then becomes that if you alter the configuration files manually (directly or indirectly) then you may lose all your custom settings the next time you run initialSetup. To counter this we allow customers to either override templates with their own template or we now provide user exits in the templates to add fragments of configuration unique to that part of the configuration file. The latter means that the base template is still used but additions are included to provide the extensions. The provision of custom templates is supported but as soon as you use a custom template you are then responsible for reflecting any changes we put in the base template over time. Not a big task but annoying if you have to do it for multiple copies of the product. I prefer to use user exits as they seem to represent the least effort solution. The way to find the user exits available is to either read the Server Administration Guide that comes with your product or look at individual templates and look for the lines: #ouaf_user_exit <user exit name> Where <user exit name> is the name of the user exit. User exits are not always present but are in places that we feel are the most likely to be changed. If a user exit does not exist the you can always use a custom template instead. Now lets show an example. By default, the product generates a config.xml file to be used with Oracle WebLogic. This configuration file has the basic setting contained in it to manage the product. If you want to take advantage of the Oracle WebLogic advanced settings, you can use the console to make those changes and it will be reflected in the config.xml automatically. To retain those changes across invocations of initialSetup, you need to alter the template that generates the config.xml or use user exits. The technique is this. Make the change in the console and when you save the change, WebLogic will reflect it in the config.xml for you. Compare the old version and new version of the config.xml and determine what to add and then find the user exit to put it in by examining the base template. For example, by default, the console is not automatically deployed (it is deployed on demand) in the base config.xml. To make the console deploy, you can add the following line to the templates/CM_config.xml.win.exit_3.include file (for windows) or templates/CM_config.xml.exit_3.include file (for linux/unix): <internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled>false</internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled> Now run initialSetup to reflect the change and if you check the splapp/config/config.xml file you will see the change applied for you. Now how did I know which include file? I check the template for config.xml and found there was an user exit at the right place. I prefixed my include filename with "CM_" to denote it as a custom user exit. This will tell the upgrade tools to leave that file alone whenever you decide to upgrade (or even apply fixes). User exits can be powerful and allow customizations to be added for advanced configuration. You will see products using Oracle Utilities Application Framework use this exits themselves (usually prefixed with the product code). You are also taking advantage of them.

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• database design help for game / user levels / progress

  - by sprugman

  Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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• Incomplete upgrade 12.04 to 12.10

  - by David

  Everything was running smoothly. Everything had been downloaded from Internet, packages had been installed and a prompt asked for some obsolete programs/files to be removed or kept. After that the computer crashed and and to manually force a shutdown. I turned it on again and surprise I was on 12.10! Still the upgrade was not finished! How can I properly finish that upgrade? Here's the output I got in the command line after following posted instructions: i astrill - Astrill VPN client software i dayjournal - Simple, minimal, digital journal. i gambas2-gb-form - A gambas native form component i gambas2-gb-gtk - The Gambas gtk component i gambas2-gb-gtk-ext - The Gambas extended gtk GUI component i gambas2-gb-gui - The graphical toolkit selector component i gambas2-gb-qt - The Gambas Qt GUI component i gambas2-gb-settings - Gambas utilities class i A gambas2-runtime - The Gambas runtime i google-chrome-stable - The web browser from Google i google-talkplugin - Google Talk Plugin i indicator-keylock - Indicator for Lock Keys i indicator-ubuntuone - Indicator for Ubuntu One synchronization s i A language-pack-kde-zh-hans - KDE translation updates for language Simpl i language-pack-kde-zh-hans-base - KDE translations for language Simplified C i libapt-inst1.4 - deb package format runtime library idA libattica0.3 - a Qt library that implements the Open Coll idA libbabl-0.0-0 - Dynamic, any to any, pixel format conversi idA libboost-filesystem1.46.1 - filesystem operations (portable paths, ite idA libboost-program-options1.46.1 - program options library for C++ idA libboost-python1.46.1 - Boost.Python Library idA libboost-regex1.46.1 - regular expression library for C++ i libboost-serialization1.46.1 - serialization library for C++ idA libboost-signals1.46.1 - managed signals and slots library for C++ idA libboost-system1.46.1 - Operating system (e.g. diagnostics support idA libboost-thread1.46.1 - portable C++ multi-threading i libcamel-1.2-29 - Evolution MIME message handling library i libcmis-0.2-0 - CMIS protocol client library i libcupsdriver1 - Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Driver l i libdconf0 - simple configuration storage system - runt i libdvdcss2 - Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runti i libebackend-1.2-1 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libecal-1.2-10 - Client library for evolution calendars i libedata-cal-1.2-13 - Backend library for evolution calendars i libedataserver-1.2-15 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libexiv2-11 - EXIF/IPTC metadata manipulation library i libgdu-gtk0 - GTK+ standard dialog library for libgdu i libgdu0 - GObject based Disk Utility Library idA libgegl-0.0-0 - Generic Graphics Library idA libglew1.5 - The OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime en i libglew1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libglewmx1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libgnome-bluetooth8 - GNOME Bluetooth tools - support library i libgnomekbd7 - GNOME library to manage keyboard configura idA libgsoap1 - Runtime libraries for gSOAP i libgweather-3-0 - GWeather shared library i libimobiledevice2 - Library for communicating with the iPhone i libkdcraw20 - RAW picture decoding library i libkexiv2-10 - Qt like interface for the libexiv2 library i libkipi8 - library for apps that want to use kipi-plu i libkpathsea5 - TeX Live: path search library for TeX (run i libmagickcore4 - low-level image manipulation library i libmagickwand4 - image manipulation library i libmarblewidget13 - Marble globe widget library idA libmusicbrainz4-3 - Library to access the MusicBrainz.org data i libnepomukdatamanagement4 - Basic Nepomuk data manipulation interface i libnux-2.0-0 - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libnux-2.0-common - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libpoppler19 - PDF rendering library i libqt3-mt - Qt GUI Library (Threaded runtime version), i librhythmbox-core5 - support library for the rhythmbox music pl i libusbmuxd1 - USB multiplexor daemon for iPhone and iPod i libutouch-evemu1 - KernelInput Event Device Emulation Library i libutouch-frame1 - Touch Frame Library i libutouch-geis1 - Gesture engine interface support i libutouch-grail1 - Gesture Recognition And Instantiation Libr idA libx264-120 - x264 video coding library i libyajl1 - Yet Another JSON Library i linux-headers-3.2.0-29 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi i linux-headers-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.2.0 on i linux-image-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 64 i mplayerthumbs - video thumbnail generator using mplayer i myunity - Unity configurator i A openoffice.org-calc - office productivity suite -- spreadsheet i A openoffice.org-writer - office productivity suite -- word processo i python-brlapi - Python bindings for BrlAPI i python-louis - Python bindings for liblouis i rts-bpp-dkms - rts-bpp driver in DKMS format. i system76-driver - Universal driver for System76 computers. i systemconfigurator - Unified Configuration API for Linux Instal i systemimager-client - Utilities for creating an image and upgrad i systemimager-common - Utilities and libraries common to both the i systemimager-initrd-template-am - SystemImager initrd template for amd64 cli i touchpad-indicator - An indicator for the touchpad i ubuntu-tweak - Ubuntu Tweak i A unity-lens-utilities - Unity Utilities lens i A unity-scope-calculator - Calculator engine i unity-scope-cities - Cities engine i unity-scope-rottentomatoes - Unity Scope Rottentomatoes

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• Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer

  - by TheBeefMightBeTough

  I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws.

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• Ti Launchpad

  - by raysmithequip

  Just thought I would get a couple of notes up here for reference to anyone that is interested...it is now Feb 2011 and I have not been posting here enough to remember this blog. Back in Nov 2010 I ordered the Ti launchpad msp430, it is a little target board kit replete with a mini USB cable, two very inexpensive programmable mcu's and a couple of pin headers with a couple of led's on board, a spi connector some on board jumpers and two programmable micro switches....all for less than $5.00...INCLUDING SHIPPING!!....not bad when the ardruino's are running around 20.00 for the target board, atmega328 and cable off of eBay...I wont even mention the microchip pic right now.  Naw, for $5.00 the Ti launchpad kit is about the cheapest fun around...if-uns your a geek that is... Well, the launchpad was backordered for almost two months, came like Xmas eve in fact...I had almost forgotten it!! And really, it was way late and not my idea of an Xmas present for myself.  That would of been the web expressions 4 I bought a few weeks back.  With all the holidays, I did not even look at it till last week, in fact I passed the wrapped board around at my local ham club meeting during points of personal privilege....some oh's and ahhs but mostly duhs...I actually ordered it to avoid downloading the huge code compressor studio 4 (CCS) that was supposed to be included on the cd.  No cd.  I had already downloaded IAR  another programming IDE for these little micro bugs. In my spare time I toyed with IAR and the launchpad board but after about two days of playing delete the driver with windows I decided to just download CCS 4, the code limited version, and give that a shot......CCS 4, is a good rewrite from the earlier versions, it is based on Eclipse as an IDE and includes the drivers for the msp430 target board I received in the kit.  Once installed I quickly configured the debugger for the target chip which was already plugged into the dip socket at the factory, msp430G2131 from he drop down list and clicked ok...I was in!! The CCS4 is full of bells and whistles compared to the IAR, which I would of preferred for the simplicity.  But the code compressor studio really does have it all!!..the code limited version is free, and of all things will give you java script editor box.  The whole layout in debugger mode reminds me of any modern programmer IDE...I mean sure give me Tex anytime but you simply must admire all the boxes and options included in the GUI.  It was a simple matter to check the assembly code in the flash and ram memory that came preloaded for the launchpad kit.  Assembly.  I am right now looking for my old assembly textbooks...sure I remember how to use mov and add etc but a couple of the commands are a little more than vague anymore.  Still, these little mcu's are about 50 cents each and might just work in a couple of projects I have lined up for the near future.  I may document the code here.  Luckily, I plan to write the code in c++ for the main project but if it has to be assembly, no prob.  For reference, the program that came already on the 2131 in the kit was a temperature indicator that alternately flashed red and green leds and changed the intensity of either depending on whether the temp was rising or falling...neat.  Neat enough that it might be worthwhile banging out a little GUI in windows 7 to test the new user device system calls, maybe put a temp gauge widget up on the desktop...just to keep from getting bored.  If you see some assembly code on this blog, you know I was doing something with one of the many mcu's out there.....thats all for now, more to follow...a bit later, of course.

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• How to Draw Lines on the Screen

  - by Geertjan

  I've seen occasional questions on mailing lists about how to use the NetBeans Visual Library to draw lines, e.g., to make graphs or diagrams of various kinds by drawing on the screen. So, rather than drag/drop causing widgets to be added, you'd want widgets to be added on mouse clicks, and you'd want to be able to connect those widgets together somehow. Via the code below, you'll be able to click on the screen, which causes a dot to appear. When you have multiple dots, you can hold down the Ctrl key and connect them together. A guiding line appears to help you position the dots exactly in line with each other. When you go to File | Print, you'll be able to preview and print the diagram you've created. A picture that speaks 1000 words: Here's the code: public final class PlotterTopComponent extends TopComponent { private final Scene scene; private final LayerWidget baseLayer; private final LayerWidget connectionLayer; private final LayerWidget interactionLayer; public PlotterTopComponent() { initComponents(); setName(Bundle.CTL_PlotterTopComponent()); setToolTipText(Bundle.HINT_PlotterTopComponent()); setLayout(new BorderLayout()); this.scene = new Scene(); this.baseLayer = new LayerWidget(scene); this.interactionLayer = new LayerWidget(scene); this.connectionLayer = new LayerWidget(scene); scene.getActions().addAction(new SceneCreateAction()); scene.addChild(baseLayer); scene.addChild(interactionLayer); scene.addChild(connectionLayer); add(scene.createView(), BorderLayout.CENTER); putClientProperty("print.printable", true); } private class SceneCreateAction extends WidgetAction.Adapter { @Override public WidgetAction.State mousePressed(Widget widget, WidgetAction.WidgetMouseEvent event) { if (event.getClickCount() == 1) { if (event.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON1 || event.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON2) { baseLayer.addChild(new BlackDotWidget(scene, widget, event)); repaint(); return WidgetAction.State.CONSUMED; } } return WidgetAction.State.REJECTED; } } private class BlackDotWidget extends ImageWidget { public BlackDotWidget(Scene scene, Widget widget, WidgetAction.WidgetMouseEvent event) { super(scene); setImage(ImageUtilities.loadImage("org/netbeans/plotter/blackdot.gif")); setPreferredLocation(widget.convertLocalToScene(event.getPoint())); getActions().addAction( ActionFactory.createExtendedConnectAction( connectionLayer, new BlackDotConnectProvider())); getActions().addAction( ActionFactory.createAlignWithMoveAction( baseLayer, interactionLayer, ActionFactory.createDefaultAlignWithMoveDecorator())); } } private class BlackDotConnectProvider implements ConnectProvider { @Override public boolean isSourceWidget(Widget source) { return source instanceof BlackDotWidget && source != null ? true : false; } @Override public ConnectorState isTargetWidget(Widget src, Widget trg) { return src != trg && trg instanceof BlackDotWidget ? ConnectorState.ACCEPT : ConnectorState.REJECT; } @Override public boolean hasCustomTargetWidgetResolver(Scene arg0) { return false; } @Override public Widget resolveTargetWidget(Scene arg0, Point arg1) { return null; } @Override public void createConnection(Widget source, Widget target) { ConnectionWidget conn = new ConnectionWidget(scene); conn.setTargetAnchor(AnchorFactory.createCircularAnchor(target, 10)); conn.setSourceAnchor(AnchorFactory.createCircularAnchor(source, 10)); connectionLayer.addChild(conn); } } ... ... ... Note: The code above was written based on the Visual Library tutorials on the NetBeans Platform Learning Trail, in particular via the "ConnectScene" sample in the "test.connect" package, which is part of the very long list of Visual Library samples referred to in the Visual Library tutorials on the NetBeans Platform Learning Trail. The next steps are to add a reconnect action and an action to delete a dot by double-clicking on it. Would be interesting to change the connecting line so that the length of the line were to be shown, i.e., as you draw a line from one dot to another, you'd see a constantly changing number representing the current distance of the connecting line. Also, once lines are connected to form a rectangle, would be cool to be able to write something within that rectangle. Then one could really create diagrams, which would be pretty cool.

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• Working and Studying in Oracle, how I balance my time....

  - by anca.rosu

  Hi, my name is Laura. I am working as an Intern within Executive Administration at Oracle Denmark, whilst studying Information Management at Copenhagen Business school. I have recently handeding a paper on Information Systems which gave me exposure to Oracle. Once completing this paper I came across a job posting on my University’s intranet site and I applied directly online. When I submitted my application for the job offer, I wondered about what language I should use for the application form, as the job posting was in Danish, but the contact person and number looked Irish. I therefore chose English. Later that same day, Fiona, one of Oracle’s Graduates Recruitment Consultants based in Ireland, contacted me. This shows how global Oracle truly is. I went for my face-to-face interview in Oracle Denmark with Charlotte, one of the team managers. I spent 5 minutes waiting in the lobby, just looking around, thinking to myself, I really want to work here. The atmosphere seemed so pleasant with a relaxed approach between colleagues, employees and guests. The interview took about an hour, but we touched on a lot of different subjects. The profile I got of Oraclewas that this is a place where you are encouraged to think for yourself, and you are given the freedom to use your ideas. Later that evening, Fiona called and offered me the job. I was very happy. At Oracle Denmark we have 4 different zones: a Quiet Zone, a Project Zone, a Dialogue Zone and a Call Zone. Everyday when you arrive you consider what will be the most productive for the day’s task, and you take your toolbox and go find a desk in the zone you have decided on. It is therefore very unusual to be next to the same person two days in a row. At Oracle, people are located all over the world, and everybody has team members, colleagues or leaders in other countries, or even other time zones. Initially,I was worried about how I would adapt to this approach but I soon realized I had nothing to worry about and now I appreciate working this way. My colleagues have been very supportive and they have openly welcomed me into my new role. I typically work two days a week and have three days at University. During exam periods, I have the flexibility to work less hours and focus on the exams, in return for putting in more hours at work when needed. The first time I had to ask for time off before handing in a paper, my boss looked at me and said, ”Of course! Your education is the most important!” I hope that by sharing my experiences with you, I can inspire or encourage you to consider Oracle as a potential employer, where you can grow both professionally and personally. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com Technorati Tags: Intern,Oracle Denmark,Information Systems,Business school,Copenhagen,Graduates Recruitment,Ireland,Quiet Zone,Project Zone,Dialogue Zone,Call Zone,University,flexibility

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• DATEFROMPARTS

  - by jamiet

  I recently overheard a remark by Greg Low in which he said something akin to "the most interesting parts of a new SQL Server release are the myriad of small things that are in there that make a developer's life easier" (I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember the actual quote but it was something like that). The new DATEFROMPARTS function is a classic example of that . It simply takes three integer parameters and builds a date out of them (if you have used DateSerial in Reporting Services then you'll understand). Take the following code which generates the first and last day of some given years: SELECT 2008 AS Yr INTO #Years UNION ALL SELECT 2009 UNION ALL SELECT 2010 UNION ALL SELECT 2011 UNION ALL SELECT 2012SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 101))),      [LastDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 1231)))FROM   #Years y here are the results: That code is pretty gnarly though with those CONVERTs in there and, worse, if the character string is constructed in a certain way then it could fail due to localisation, check this out: SET LANGUAGE french;SELECT dt,Month_Name=DATENAME(mm,dt)FROM   (       SELECT  dt = CONVERT(DATETIME,CONVERT(CHAR(4),y.[Yr]) + N'-01-02')       FROM    #Years y       )d;SET LANGUAGE us_english;SELECT dt,Month_Name=DATENAME(mm,dt)FROM   (       SELECT  dt = CONVERT(DATETIME,CONVERT(CHAR(4),y.[Yr]) + N'-01-02')       FROM    #Years y       )d; Notice how the datetime has been converted differently based on the language setting. When French, the string "2012-01-02" gets interpreted as 1st February whereas when us_english the same string is interpreted as 2nd January. Instead of all this CONVERTing nastiness we have DATEFROMPARTS: SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],1,1),    [LasttDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],12,31)FROM   #Years y How much nicer is that? The bad news of course is that you have to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 or migrate to SQL Azure if you want to use it, as is the way of the world! Don't forget that if you want to try this code out on SQL Azure right this second, for free, you can do so by connecting up to AdventureWorks On Azure. You don't even need to have SSMS handy - a browser that runs Silverlight will do just fine. Simply head to https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net/ and use the following credentials: Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly One caveat, SELECT INTO doesn't work on SQL Azure so you'll have to use this instead: DECLARE @y TABLE ( [Yr] INT);INSERT @y([Yr])SELECT 2008 AS Yr UNION ALL SELECT 2009 UNION ALL SELECT 2010 UNION ALL SELECT 2011 UNION ALL SELECT 2012;SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],1,1),      [LastDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],12,31)FROM @y y;SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 101))),      [LastDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 1231)))FROM @y y; @Jamiet

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• SQL SERVER – Last Two Days to Get FREE Book – Joes 2 Pros Certification 70-433

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier this week we announced that we will be giving away FREE SQL Wait Stats book to everybody who will get SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Combo Kit. We had a fantastic response to the contest. We got an overwhelming response to the offer. We knew there would be a great response but we want to honestly say thank you to all of you for making it happen. Rick and I want to make sure that we express our special thanks to all of you who are reading our books. The offer is still on and there are two more days to avail this offer. We want to make sure that everybody who buys our most selling combo kits, we will send our other most popular SQL Wait Stats book. Please read all the details of the offer here. The books are great resources for anyone who wants to learn SQL Server from fundamentals and eventually go on the certification path of 70-433. Exam 70-433 contains following important subject and the book covers the subject of fundamental. If you are taking the exam or not taking the exam – this book is for every SQL Developer to learn the subject from fundamentals.  Create and alter tables. Create and alter views. Create and alter indexes. Create and modify constraints. Implement data types. Implement partitioning solutions. Create and alter stored procedures. Create and alter user-defined functions (UDFs). Create and alter DML triggers. Create and alter DDL triggers. Create and deploy CLR-based objects. Implement error handling. Manage transactions. Query data by using SELECT statements. Modify data by using INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. Return data by using the OUTPUT clause. Modify data by using MERGE statements. Implement aggregate queries. Combine datasets. INTERSECT, EXCEPT Implement subqueries. Implement CTE (common table expression) queries. Apply ranking functions. Control execution plans. Manage international considerations. Integrate Database Mail. Implement full-text search. Implement scripts by using Windows PowerShell and SQL Server Management Objects (SMOs). Implement Service Broker solutions. Track data changes. Data capture Retrieve relational data as XML. Transform XML data into relational data. Manage XML data. Capture execution plans. Collect output from the Database Engine Tuning Advisor. Collect information from system metadata. Availability of Book USA - Amazon | India - Flipkart | Indiaplaza Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Reducing Deadlocks - not a DBA issue ?

  - by steveh99999

   As a DBA, I'm involved on an almost daily basis troubleshooting 'SQL Server' performance issues. Often, this troubleshooting soon veers away from a 'its a SQL Server issue' to instead become a wider application/database design/coding issue.One common perception with SQL Server is that deadlocking is an application design issue - and is fixed by recoding...  I see this reinforced by MCP-type questions/scenarios where the answer to prevent deadlocking is simply to change the order in code in which tables are accessed....Whilst this is correct, I do think this has led to a situation where many 'operational' or 'production support' DBAs, when faced with a deadlock, are happy to throw the issue over to developers without analysing the issue further....A couple of 'war stories' on deadlocks which I think are interesting :- Case One , I had an issue recently on a third-party application that I support on SQL 2008.  This particular third-party application has an unusual support agreement where the customer is allowed to change the index design on the third-party provided database.  However, we are not allowed to alter application code or modify table structure..This third-party application is also known to encounter occasional deadlocks – indeed, I have documentation from the vendor that up to 50 deadlocks per day is not unusual !So, as a DBA I have to support an application which in my opinion has too many deadlocks - but, I cannot influence the design of the tables or stored procedures for the application. This should be the classic - blame the third-party developers scenario, and hope this issue gets addressed in a future application release - ie we could wait years for this to be resolved and implemented in our production environment...But, as DBAs  can change the index layout, is there anything I could do still to reduce the deadlocks in the application ?I initially used SQL traceflag 1222 to write deadlock detection output to the SQL Errorlog – using this I was able to identify one table heavily involved in the deadlocks.When I examined the table definition, I was surprised to see it was a heap – ie no clustered index existed on the table.Using SQL profiler to see locking behaviour and plan for the query involved in the deadlock, I was able to confirm a table scan was being performed.By creating an appropriate clustered index - it was possible to produce a more efficient plan and locking behaviour.So, less locks, held for less time = less possibility of deadlocks. I'm still unhappy about the overall number of deadlocks on this system - but that's something to be discussed further with the vendor.Case Two,  a system which hadn't changed for months suddenly started seeing deadlocks on a regular basis. I love the 'nothing's changed' scenario, as it gives me the opportunity to appear wise and say 'nothings changed on this system, except the data'.. This particular deadlock occurred on a table which had been growing rapidly. By using DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS - the DBA team were able to see that the deadlocks seemed to be occurring shortly after auto-update stats had regenerated the table statistics using it's default sampling behaviour.As a quick fix, we were able to schedule a nightly UPDATE STATISTICS WITH FULLSCAN on the table involved in the deadlock - thus, greatly reducing the potential for stats to be updated via auto_update_stats, consequently reducing the potential for a bad plan to be generated based on an unrepresentative sample of the data. This reduced the possibility of a deadlock occurring.  Not a perfect solution by any means, but quick, easy to implement, and needed no application code changes. This fix gave us some 'breathing space'  to properly fix the code during the next scheduled application release.   The moral of this post - don't dismiss deadlocks as issues that can only be fixed by developers...

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• Oracle support note for Leap Second Hang problem that may result into 100% CPU utilization in Linux environment

  - by Anand Akela

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} On or around July 1, 2012, Oracle has become aware of an issue on Linux distributions resulting from the introduction of the leap second; this is causing problems for some customers.  Leap seconds may be introduced at the end of June or December in a calendar year, like 2012, as necessary to maintain time standards. Servers hosting Oracle products which are clients of an NTP server (Network Time Protocol) may be particularly susceptible to this issue as the NTP server is updated. Linux distributions which may be affected include Oracle Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle VM and Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Asianux 2 and 3, based on RHEL 4 and 5, may also be affected. One report of correction to high agent CPU using Note 1472421.1 on SLES11 has also been reported. Not all customers will be affected, but those, who are affected, may observe higher than normal CPU consumption on their Linux environments where JVM's are utilized.  In Oracle Enterprise Manager ( EM ) , this problem can manifest itself as high CPU consumption with the EM Agent process (which runs on a JVM in EM 12c, for instance).  It is possible that the OMS is also affected. We would advise customers to review the description of this problem in MOS Note 1472651.1 and take action if they observe that their environment is affected. Contributed by Andrew Bulloch , Director, Application Systems Management Products

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• PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Phil Factor

  Around twenty-five years ago, I was trying to solve the problem of recruiting suitable developers for a large business. I visited the local University (it was a Technical College then). My mission was to remind them that we were a large, local employer of technical people and to suggest that, as they were in the business of educating young people for a career in IT, we should work together. I anticipated a harmonious chat where we could suggest to them the idea of mentioning our name to some of their graduates. It didn’t go well. The academic staff displayed a degree of revulsion towards the whole topic of IT in the world of commerce that surprised me; tweed met charcoal-grey, trainers met black shoes. However, their antipathy to commerce was something we could have worked around, since few of their graduates were destined for a career as university lecturers. They asked me what sort of language skills we needed. I tried ducking the invidious task of naming computer languages, since I wanted recruits who were quick to adapt and learn, with a broad understanding of IT, including development methodologies, technologies, and data. However, they pressed the point and I ended up saying that we needed good working knowledge of C and BASIC, though FORTRAN and COBOL were, at the time, still useful. There was a ghastly silence. It was as if I’d recommended the beliefs and practices of the Bogomils of Bulgaria to a gathering of Cardinals. They stared at me severely, like owls, until the head of department broke the silence, informing me in clipped tones that they taught only Modula 2. Now, I wouldn’t blame you if at this point you hurriedly had to look up ‘Modula 2′ on Wikipedia. Based largely on Pascal, it was a specialist language for embedded systems, but I’ve never ever come across it in a commercial business application. Nevertheless, it was an excellent teaching language since it taught modules, scope control, multiprogramming and the advantages of encapsulating a set of related subprograms and data structures. As long as the course also taught how to transfer these skills to other, more useful languages, it was not necessarily a problem. I said as much, but they gleefully retorted that the biggest local employer, a defense contractor specializing in Radar and military technology, used nothing but Modula 2. “Why teach any other programming language when they will be using Modula 2 for all their working lives?” said a complacent lecturer. On hearing this, I made my excuses and left. There could be no meeting of minds. They were providing training in a specific computer language, not an education in IT. Twenty years later, I once more worked nearby and regularly passed the long-deserted ‘brownfield’ site of the erstwhile largest local employer; the end of the cold war had led to lean times for defense contractors. A digger was about to clear the rubble of the long demolished factory along with the accompanying growth of buddleia and thistles, in order to lay the infrastructure for ‘affordable housing’. Modula 2 was a distant memory. Either those employees had short working lives or they’d retrained in other languages. The University, by contrast, was thriving, but I wondered if their erstwhile graduates had ever cursed the narrow specialization of their training in IT, as they struggled with the unexpected variety of their subsequent careers.

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• The Best Data Integration for Exadata Comes from Oracle

  - by maria costanzo

  Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate offer unique and optimized data integration solutions for Oracle Exadata. For example, customers that choose to feed their data warehouse or reporting database with near real-time throughout the day, can do so without decreasing  performance or availability of source and target systems. And if you ask why real-time, the short answer is: in today’s fast-paced, always-on world, business decisions need to use more relevant, timely data to be able to act fast and seize opportunities. A longer response to "why real-time" question can be found in a related blog post. If we look at the solution architecture, as shown on the diagram below,  Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate are both uniquely designed to take full advantage of the power of the database and to eliminate unnecessary middle-tier components. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is the best bulk data loading solution for Exadata. ODI is the only ETL platform that can leverage the full power of Exadata, integrate directly on the Exadata machine without any additional hardware, and by far provides the simplest setup and fastest overall performance on an Exadata system. We regularly see customers achieving a 5-10 times boost when they move their ETL to ODI on Exadata. For  some companies the performance gain is even much higher. For example a large insurance company did a proof of concept comparing ODI vs a traditional ETL tool (one of the market leaders) on Exadata. The same process that was taking 5hrs and 11 minutes to complete using the competing ETL product took 7 minutes and 20 seconds with ODI. Oracle Data Integrator was 42 times faster than the conventional ETL when running on Exadata.This shows that Oracle's own data integration offering helps you to gain the most out of your Exadata investment with a truly optimized solution. GoldenGate is the best solution for streaming data from heterogeneous sources into Exadata in real time. Oracle GoldenGate can also be used together with Data Integrator for hybrid use cases that also demand non-invasive capture, high-speed real time replication. Oracle GoldenGate enables real-time data feeds from heterogeneous sources non-invasively, and delivers to the staging area on the target Exadata system. ODI runs directly on Exadata to use the database engine power to perform in-database transformations. Enterprise Data Quality is integrated with Oracle Data integrator and enables ODI to load trusted data into the data warehouse tables. Only Oracle can offer all these technical benefits wrapped into a single intelligence data warehouse solution that runs on Exadata. Compared to traditional ETL with add-on CDC this solution offers: §  Non-invasive data capture from heterogeneous sources and avoids any performance impact on source §  No mid-tier; set based transformations use database power §  Mini-batches throughout the day –or- bulk processing nightly which means maximum availability for the DW §  Integrated solution with Enterprise Data Quality enables leveraging trusted data in the data warehouse In addition to Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Morrison Supermarkets, United Kingdom’s fourth-largest food retailer, has seen the power of this solution for their new BI platform and shared their story with us. Morrisons needed to analyze data across a large number of manufacturing, warehousing, retail, and financial applications with the goal to achieve single view into operations for improved customer service. The retailer deployed Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator to bring new data into Oracle Exadata in near real-time and replicate the data into reporting structures within the data warehouse—extending visibility into operations. Using Oracle's data integration offering for Exadata, Morrisons produced financial reports in seconds, rather than minutes, and improved staff productivity and agility. You can read more about Morrison’s success story here and hear from Starwood here. From an Irem Radzik article.

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• UPOS RFIDScanner data format

  - by Robert Snyder

  A lot of work that I do currently is based in the OPOS/UPOS world. My company has a device that can read 13.56Mhz tags (RFID), Smart Cards, and Mag Stripe cards. Up until somewhat recently I have only been working with RFID for a very specific scenario. That was to read UltraLight C and Desfire cards. These cards were all setup very specifically so that I could take the data read from those cards and force it into a MSR track2 format. The past couple of weeks, however, I have been working on reading RFID credit cards (since I have a Visa card I've been using mine), and Smart Card credit cards. (The visa card I have has both) In learning how to communicate with SmartCard and reading ISO7816 and EMVCO documents I became a little more familiar with how info is stored. But now I have a question regarding UPOS. The RFID data on my Visa is stored (and read) very similar to how the data is stored and read from the Smart Card on my Visa. Cool. Well in the UPOS spec for SmartCardRW the ReadData method returns a byte array. That's cool, I can just return all that data and then parse it as my heart desires. The RFID though has a LinkedList of Tags. Well this makes sense in terms of my Visa card (reminds me of a question I have in regards to SmartCard, but that is for another question) but what about ULC and Desfire, or for that matter any Mifare card. Pages, Files, Purses don't exactly fit the Tag profile. For instance lets just say I read pages 4-12 on my ULC card. Each page I read is 4 bytes long. Does this mean I have 9 tags in my LinkedList? Is my Tag id the page number? Or then how does that translate to Desfire? I open application 123456 and read file 1 and file 2, Do I have 2 tags? and if so what is my tag id? At least with my Visa I think that I have to use the Tag id (ex 5F24 for my expiration date) and value of {0x15, 0x10, 0x31} Part of me says yes..that makes sense. Another part of me says, "well if that is the case then why doesn't SmartCardRW have Tags?" So that is my question. How do I format my data from those different types of media? or is that the job of my Control Object (the application)? Is so how does it know? The only protocols I have are: // Summary: // Enumerates the available predefined RFID tag protocols the device supports. [Flags] public enum RFIDProtocols { EpcClass0 = 1, RFIDSdt0Plus = 2, EpcClass1 = 4, EpcClass1Gen2 = 8, EpcClass2 = 16, Iso14443A = 4096, Iso14443B = 8192, Iso15693 = 12288, Iso180006B = 16384, Other = 16777216, All = 1073741824, } If I use that well all of my cards that I have are all Iso14443A. I use the ATQA and the SAK to know what type of card I really have. There is no RFID property that lets me specify that. So I'm lost.

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• Package Version Numbers, why are they so important

  - by Chris W Beal

  One of the design goals of IPS has been to allow people to easily move forward to a supported "Surface" of component. That is to say, when you  # pkg update your system, you get the latest set of components which all work together, based on the packages you already have installed. During development, this has meant simply you update to the latest "build" of the components. (During development, we build everything and publish everything every two weeks). Now we've released Solaris 11 using the IPS technologies, things are a bit more complicated. We need to be able to reflect all the types of Solaris release we are doing. For example Solaris Development builds, Solaris Update builds and "Support Repository Updates" (the replacement for patches) in the version scheme. So simply saying "151" as the build number isn't sufficient to articulate what you are running, or indeed what is available to update to In my previous blog post I talked about creating your own package, and gave an example FMRI of pkg://tools/[email protected],0.5.11-0.0.0 But it's probably more instructive to look at the FMRI of a Solaris package. The package "core-os" contains all the common utilities and daemons you need to use Solaris.  $ pkg info core-os Name: system/core-os Summary: Core Solaris Description: Operating system core utilities, daemons, and configuration files. Category: System/Core State: Installed Publisher: solaris Version: 0.5.11 Build Release: 5.11 Branch: 0.175.0.0.0.2.1 Packaging Date: Wed Oct 19 07:04:57 2011 Size: 25.14 MB FMRI: pkg://solaris/system/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1:20111019T070457Z The FMRI is what we will concentrate on here. In this package "solaris" is the publisher. You can use the pkg publisher command to see where the solaris publisher gets it's bits from $ pkg publisher PUBLISHER TYPE STATUS URI solaris origin online http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/ So we can see we get solaris packages from pkg.oracle.com.  The package name is system/core-os. These can be arbitrary length, just to allow you to group similar packages together. Now on the the interesting? bit, the versions, everything after the @ is part of the version. IPS will only upgrade to a "higher" version. [email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1:20111019T070457Z core-os = Package Name0.5.11 = Component - in this case we're saying it's a SunOS 5.11 package, = separator5.11 = Built on version - to indicate what OS version you built the package on- = another separator0.175.0.0.0.2.1 = Branch Version : = yet another separator20111019T070457Z = Time stamp when the package was published So from that we can see the Branch Version seems rather complex. It is necessarily so, to allow us to describe the hierachy of releases we do In this example we see the following 0.175: is known as the trunkid, and is incremented each build of a new release of Solaris. During Solaris 11 this should not change  0: is the Update release for Solaris. 0 for FCS, 1 for update 1 etc 0: is the SRU for Solaris. 0 for FCS, 1 for SRU 1 etc 0: is reserved for future use 2: Build number of the SRU 1: Nightly ID - only important for Solaris developersTake a hypothetical example [email protected],5.11-0.175.1.5.0.4.1:<something> This would be build 4 of SRU 5 of Update 1 of Solaris 11 This is actually documented in a MOS article 1378134.1 Which you can read if you have a support contract.

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• Using Appendbuffers in unity for terrain generation

  - by Wardy

  Like many others I figured I would try and make the most of the monster processing power of the GPU but I'm having trouble getting the basics in place. CPU code: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class Test : MonoBehaviour { public ComputeShader Generator; public MeshTopology Topology; void OnEnable() { var computedMeshPoints = ComputeMesh(); CreateMeshFrom(computedMeshPoints); } private Vector3[] ComputeMesh() { var size = (32*32) * 4; // 4 points added for each x,z pos var buffer = new ComputeBuffer(size, 12, ComputeBufferType.Append); Generator.SetBuffer(0, "vertexBuffer", buffer); Generator.Dispatch(0, 1, 1, 1); var results = new Vector3[size]; buffer.GetData(results); buffer.Dispose(); return results; } private void CreateMeshFrom(Vector3[] generatedPoints) { var filter = GetComponent<MeshFilter>(); var renderer = GetComponent<MeshRenderer>(); if (generatedPoints.Length > 0) { var mesh = new Mesh { vertices = generatedPoints }; var colors = new Color[generatedPoints.Length]; var indices = new int[generatedPoints.Length]; //TODO: build this different based on topology of the mesh being generated for (int i = 0; i < indices.Length; i++) { indices[i] = i; colors[i] = Color.blue; } mesh.SetIndices(indices, Topology, 0); mesh.colors = colors; mesh.RecalculateNormals(); mesh.Optimize(); mesh.RecalculateBounds(); filter.sharedMesh = mesh; } else { filter.sharedMesh = null; } } } GPU code: #pragma kernel Generate AppendStructuredBuffer<float3> vertexBuffer : register(u0); void genVertsAt(uint2 xzPos) { //TODO: put some height generation code here. // could even run marching cubes / dual contouring code. float3 corner1 = float3( xzPos[0], 0, xzPos[1] ); float3 corner2 = float3( xzPos[0] + 1, 0, xzPos[1] ); float3 corner3 = float3( xzPos[0], 0, xzPos[1] + 1); float3 corner4 = float3( xzPos[0] + 1, 0, xzPos[1] + 1 ); vertexBuffer.Append(corner1); vertexBuffer.Append(corner2); vertexBuffer.Append(corner3); vertexBuffer.Append(corner4); } [numthreads(32, 1, 32)] void Generate (uint3 threadId : SV_GroupThreadID, uint3 groupId : SV_GroupID) { uint2 currentXZ = unint2( groupId.x * 32 + threadId.x, groupId.z * 32 + threadId.z); genVertsAt(currentXZ); } Can anyone explain why when I call "buffer.GetData(results);" on the CPU after the compute dispatch call my buffer is full of Vector3(0,0,0), I'm not expecting any y values yet but I would expect a bunch of thread indexes in the x,z values for the Vector3 array. I'm not getting any errors in any of this code which suggests it's correct syntax-wise but maybe the issue is a logical bug. Also: Yes, I know I'm generating 4,000 Vector3's and then basically round tripping them. However, the purpose of this code is purely to learn how round tripping works between CPU and GPU in Unity.

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• What is the best practice, point of view of well experienced developers

  - by Damien MIRAS

  My manager pushes me to use his self defined best practices. All of these practices are based on is own assumptions. I disagree with them and I would like to have some feedback of well experienced people about these practices. I would prefer answers from people involved in the maintenance of huge products and people whom have maintained the product for years. Developers with 15+ years of experience are preferred because my manager has that much experience himself. I have 7 years of experience. Here are the practices he wants me to use: never extends classes, use composition and interface instead because extending classes are unmaintainable and difficult to debug. What I think about that Extend when needed, respect "Liskov's Substitution Principle" and you'll never be stuck with a problem, but prefer composition and decoration. I don't know any serious project which has banned inheriting, sometimes it's impossible to not use that, i.e. in a UI framework. Design patterns are just unusable. In PHP, for simple use cases (for example a user needs a web interface to view a database table), his "best practice" is: copy some random php code wich we own, paste and modify it, put html and php code in same file, never use classes in PHP, it doesn't work well for small jobs, and in fact it doesn't work well at all, there is no good tool to work with. Copy & paste PHP code is good practice for maintenance because scripts are independent, if you have a bug somewhere you can fix it without side effects. What I think about that: NEVER EVER COPY code or do it because you have five minutes to deliver something, you will do some refactoring after that. Copy & paste code is a beginners error, if you have errors you'll have the error everywhere any time you have pasted it's a nightmare to maintain. If you repsect the "Open Close Principle" you'll rarely get edge effects, use unit test if you are afraid of that. For small jobs in PHP use at least something you get or write the HTML separately from the PHP code and reuse it any time you need it. Classes in PHP are mature, not as mature as other languages like python or java, but they are usable. There is tools to work with classes in PHP like Zend Studio that work very well. The use of classes or not depends not on the language you use but the programming paradigm you have choosen. I'm a OOP developer, I use PHP5, why do I have to shoot myself in the foot? When you find a simple bug in the code, and you can fix it simply, if you are not working on the code where you have found it, never fix it, even if it takes 5 seconds. He says to me his "best practices" are driven by the fact that he has a lot of experience in maintaining software in production (14 years) and he now knows what works and what doesn't work, what the community says is a fad, and the people advocating such principles as never copy & paste code, are not evolved in maintaining applications. What I think about that: If you find a bug fix it if you can do it quickly inform the people who've touched that code before, check if you have not introduced a new bug, ideally add a unit test for it. I currently work on a web commerce project, which serves 15k unique users per day. The code base has to be maintained and has been maintained this way since 2005. Ideally you include a short description of your position and experience in terms of years effectively maintaining an application which has been in production for real.

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• Designing status management for a file processing module

  - by bot

  The background One of the functionality of a product that I am currently working on is to process a set of compressed files ( containing XML files ) that will be made available at a fixed location periodically (local or remote location - doesn't really matter for now) and dump the contents of each XML file in a database. I have taken care of the design for a generic parsing module that should be able to accommodate the parsing of any file type as I have explained in my question linked below. There is no need to take a look at the following link to answer my question but it would definitely provide a better context to the problem Generic file parser design in Java using the Strategy pattern The Goal I want to be able to keep a track of the status of each XML file and the status of each compressed file containing the XML files. I can probably have different statuses defined for the XML files such as NEW, PROCESSING, LOADING, COMPLETE or FAILED. I can derive the status of a compressed file based on the status of the XML files within the compressed file. e.g status of the compressed file is COMPLETE if no XML file inside the compressed file is in a FAILED state or status of the compressed file is FAILED if the status of at-least one XML file inside the compressed file is FAILED. A possible solution The Model I need to maintain the status of each XML file and the compressed file. I will have to define some POJOs for holding the information about an XML file as shown below. Note that there is no need to store the status of a compressed file as the status of a compressed file can be derived from the status of its XML files. public class FileInformation { private String compressedFileName; private String xmlFileName; private long lastModifiedDate; private int status; public FileInformation(final String compressedFileName, final String xmlFileName, final long lastModified, final int status) { this.compressedFileName = compressedFileName; this.xmlFileName = xmlFileName; this.lastModifiedDate = lastModified; this.status = status; } } I can then have a class called StatusManager that aggregates a Map of FileInformation instances and provides me the status of a given file at any given time in the lifetime of the appliciation as shown below : public class StatusManager { private Map<String,FileInformation> processingMap = new HashMap<String,FileInformation>(); public void add(FileInformation fileInformation) { fileInformation.setStatus(0); // 0 will indicates that the file is in NEW state. 1 will indicate that the file is in process and so on.. processingMap.put(fileInformation.getXmlFileName(),fileInformation); } public void update(String filename,int status) { FileInformation fileInformation = processingMap.get(filename); fileInformation.setStatus(status); } } That takes care of the model for the sake of explanation. So whats my question? Edited after comments from Loki and answer from Eric : - I would like to know if there are any existing design patterns that I can refer to while coming up with a design. I would also like to know how I should go about designing the status management classes. I am more interested in understanding how I can model the status management classes. I am not interested in how other components are going to be updated about a change in status at the moment as suggested by Eric.

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• Ubiquitous BIP

  - by Tim Dexter

  The last number I heard from Mike and the PM team was that BIP is now embedded in more than 40 oracle products. That's a lot of products to keep track of and to help out with new releases, etc. Its interesting to see how internal Oracle product groups have integrated BIP into their products. Just as you might integrate BIP they have had to make a choice about how to integrate. 1. Library level - BIP is a pure java app and at the bottom of the architecture are a group of java libraries that expose APIs that you can use. they fall into three main areas, data extraction, template processing and formatting and delivery. There are post processing capabilities but those APIs are embedded withing the template processing libraries. Taking this integration route you are going to need to manage templates, data extraction and processing. You'll have your own UI to allow users to control all of this for themselves. Ultimate control but some effort to build and maintain. I have been trawling some of the products during a coffee break. I found a great post on the reporting capabilities provided by BIP in the records management product within WebCenter Content 11g. This integration falls into the first category, content manager looks after the report artifacts itself and provides you the UI to manage and run the reports. 2. Web Service level - further up in the stack is the web service layer. This is sitting on the BI Publisher server as a set of services, runReport and scheduleReport are the main protagonists. However, you can also manage the reports and users (locally managed) on the server and the catalog itself via the services layer.Taking this route, you still need to provide the user interface to choose reports and run them but the creation and management of the reports is all handled by the Publisher server. I have worked with a few customer on this approach. The web services provide the ability to retrieve a list of reports the user can access; then the parameters and LOVs for the selected report and finally a service to submit the report on the server. 3. Embedded BIP server UI- the final level is not so well supported yet. You can currently embed a report and its various levels of surrounding  'chrome' inside another html based application using a URL. Check the docs here. The look and feel can be customized but again, not easy, nor documented. I have messed with running the server pages inside an IFRAME, not bad, but not great. Taking this path should present the least amount of effort on your part to get BIP integrated but there are a few gotchas you need to get around. So a reasonable amount of choices with varying amounts of effort involved. There is another option coming soon for all you ADF developers out there, the ability to drop a BIP report into your application pages. But that's for another post.

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