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• 10 Steps to access Oracle stored procedures from Crystal Reports

  Requirements to access Oracle stored procedures from CR The following requirements must be met in order for CR to access an Oracle stored procedure: 1. You must create a package that defines the REF CURSOR. This REF CURSOR must be strongly bound to a static pre-defined structure (see Strongly Bound REF CURSORs vs Weakly Bound REF CURSORs). This package must be created separately and before the creation of the stored procedure. NOTE Crystal Reports 9 native connections will support Oracle stored procedures created within packages as well as Oracle stored procedures referencing weakly bound REF CURSORs. Crystal Reports 8.5 native connections will support Oracle stored procedures referencing weakly bound REF CURSORs. 2. The procedure must have a parameter that is a REF CURSOR type. This is because CR uses this parameter to access and define the result set that the stored procedure returns. 3. The REF CURSOR parameter must be defined as IN OUT (read/write mode). After the procedure has opened and assigned a query to the REF CURSOR, CR will perform a FETCH call for every row from the query's result. This is why the parameter must be defined as IN OUT. 4. Parameters can only be input (IN) parameters. CR is not designed to work with OUT parameters. 5. The REF CURSOR variable must be opened and assigned its query within the procedure. 6. The stored procedure can only return one record set. The structure of this record set must not change, based on parameters. 7. The stored procedure cannot call another stored procedure. 8. If using an ODBC driver, it must be the CR Oracle ODBC driver (installed by CR). Other Oracle ODBC drivers (installed by Microsoft or Oracle) may not function correctly. 9. If you are using the CR ODBC driver, you must ensure that in the ODBC Driver Configuration setup, under the Advanced Tab, the option 'Procedure Return Results' is checked ON. 10. If you are using the native Oracle driver and using hard-coded date selection within the procedure, the date selection must use either a string representation format of 'YYYY-DD-MM' (i.e. WHERE DATEFIELD = '1999-01-01') or the TO_DATE function with the same format specified (i.e. WHERE DATEFIELD = TO_DATE ('1999-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD'). For more information, refer to kbase article C2008023. 11. Most importantly, this stored procedure must execute successfully in Oracle's SQL*Plus utility. If all of these conditions are met, you must next ensure you are using the appropriate database driver. Please refer to the sections in this white paper for a list of acceptable database drivers. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• The Power to Control Power

  - by speakjava

  I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for October 14-20, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of October 14-21, 2012. Panel: On the Impact of Software | InfoQ Les Hatton (Oakwood Computing Associates), Clive King (Oracle), Paul Good (Shell), Mike Andrews (Microsoft) and Michiel van Genuchten (moderator) discuss the impact of software engineering on our lives in this panel discussion recorded at the Computer Society Software Experts Summit 2012. ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter Learn how ResCare solves content lifecycle challenges with Oracle WebCenter. Speakers: Joe Lichtefeld, VP of Application Services & PMO, ResCare Wayne Boerger, Product Manager, TEAM Informatics Doug Thompson, EVP Global Development, TEAM Informatics Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference "The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Mobile Apps for EBS | Capgemini Oracle Blog Capgemini solution architect Satish Iyer breifly describes how Oracle ADF and Oracle SOA Suite can be used to fill the gap in mobile applications for Oracle EBS. Introducing the New Face of Fusion Applications | Misha Vaughan Oracle ACE Directors Debra Lilly and Floyd Teter have already blogged about the the new face of Oracle Fusion Applications. Now Applications User Experience Architect Misha Vaughan shares a brief overview of how the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team developed the new look. BPM 11g - Dynamic Task Assignment with Multi-level Organization Units | Mark Foster "I've seen several requirements to have a more granular level of task assignment in BPM 11g based on some value in the data passed to the process," says Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Mark Foster. "Parametric Roles is normally the first port of call to try to satisfy this requirement, but in this blog we will show how a lot of use-cases can be satisfied by the easier to implement and flexible Organization Unit." OTN Architect Day Los Angeles - Oct 25 Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles happens in one week. Register now to make sure you don't miss out on a rich schedule of expert technical sessions and peer interaction covering the use of Oracle technologies in cloud computing, SOA, and more. Even better: it's all free. When: October 25, 2012, 8:30am - 5:00pm. Where: Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.2 released | Oracle's Virtualization Blog The Fat Bloke weighs in with a short post with information on where you can find information and the download for the latest VirtualBox release. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite #OOW 2012 SOA Presentations The Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. Thought for the Day "Software: do you write it like a book, grow it like a plant, accrete it like a pearl, or construct it like a building?" — Jeff Atwood Source: softwarequotes.com

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• Why is there no service-oriented language?

  - by Wolfgang

  Edit: To avoid further confusion: I am not talking about web services and such. I am talking about structuring applications internally, it's not about how computers communicate. It's about programming languages, compilers and how the imperative programming paradigm is extended. Original: In the imperative programming field, we saw two paradigms in the past 20 years (or more): object-oriented (OO), and service-oriented (SO) aka. component-based (CB). Both paradigms extend the imperative programming paradigm by introducing their own notion of modules. OO calls them objects (and classes) and lets them encapsulates both data (fields) and procedures (methods) together. SO, in contrast, separates data (records, beans, ...) from code (components, services). However, only OO has programming languages which natively support its paradigm: Smalltalk, C++, Java and all other JVM-compatibles, C# and all other .NET-compatibles, Python etc. SO has no such native language. It only comes into existence on top of procedural languages or OO languages: COM/DCOM (binary, C, C++), CORBA, EJB, Spring, Guice (all Java), ... These SO frameworks clearly suffer from the missing native language support of their concepts. They start using OO classes to represent services and records. This leads to designs where there is a clear distinction between classes that have methods only (services) and those that have fields only (records). Inheritance between services or records is then simulated by inheritance of classes. Technically, its not kept so strictly but in general programmers are adviced to make classes to play only one of the two roles. They use additional, external languages to represent the missing parts: IDL's, XML configurations, Annotations in Java code, or even embedded DSL like in Guice. This is especially needed, but not limited to, since the composition of services is not part of the service code itself. In OO, objects create other objects so there is no need for such facilities but for SO there is because services don't instantiate or configure other services. They establish an inner-platform effect on top of OO (early EJB, CORBA) where the programmer has to write all the code that is needed to "drive" SO. Classes represent only a part of the nature of a service and lots of classes have to be written to form a service together. All that boiler plate is necessary because there is no SO compiler which would do it for the programmer. This is just like some people did it in C for OO when there was no C++. You just pass the record which holds the data of the object as a first parameter to the procedure which is the method. In a OO language this parameter is implicit and the compiler produces all the code that we need for virtual functions etc. For SO, this is clearly missing. Especially the newer frameworks extensively use AOP or introspection to add the missing parts to a OO language. This doesn't bring the necessary language expressiveness but avoids the boiler platform code described in the previous point. Some frameworks use code generation to produce the boiler plate code. Configuration files in XML or annotations in OO code is the source of information for this. Not all of the phenomena that I mentioned above can be attributed to SO but I hope it clearly shows that there is a need for a SO language. Since this paradigm is so popular: why isn't there one? Or maybe there are some academic ones but at least the industry doesn't use one.

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• 10 Steps to access Oracle stored procedures from Crystal Reports

  Requirements to access Oracle stored procedures from CR The following requirements must be met in order for CR to access an Oracle stored procedure: 1. You must create a package that defines the REF CURSOR. This REF CURSOR must be strongly bound to a static pre-defined structure (see Strongly Bound REF CURSORs vs Weakly Bound REF CURSORs). This package must be created separately and before the creation of the stored procedure. NOTE Crystal Reports 9 native connections will support Oracle stored procedures created within packages as well as Oracle stored procedures referencing weakly bound REF CURSORs. Crystal Reports 8.5 native connections will support Oracle stored procedures referencing weakly bound REF CURSORs. 2. The procedure must have a parameter that is a REF CURSOR type. This is because CR uses this parameter to access and define the result set that the stored procedure returns. 3. The REF CURSOR parameter must be defined as IN OUT (read/write mode). After the procedure has opened and assigned a query to the REF CURSOR, CR will perform a FETCH call for every row from the query's result. This is why the parameter must be defined as IN OUT. 4. Parameters can only be input (IN) parameters. CR is not designed to work with OUT parameters. 5. The REF CURSOR variable must be opened and assigned its query within the procedure. 6. The stored procedure can only return one record set. The structure of this record set must not change, based on parameters. 7. The stored procedure cannot call another stored procedure. 8. If using an ODBC driver, it must be the CR Oracle ODBC driver (installed by CR). Other Oracle ODBC drivers (installed by Microsoft or Oracle) may not function correctly. 9. If you are using the CR ODBC driver, you must ensure that in the ODBC Driver Configuration setup, under the Advanced Tab, the option 'Procedure Return Results' is checked ON. 10. If you are using the native Oracle driver and using hard-coded date selection within the procedure, the date selection must use either a string representation format of 'YYYY-DD-MM' (i.e. WHERE DATEFIELD = '1999-01-01') or the TO_DATE function with the same format specified (i.e. WHERE DATEFIELD = TO_DATE ('1999-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD'). For more information, refer to kbase article C2008023. 11. Most importantly, this stored procedure must execute successfully in Oracle's SQL*Plus utility. If all of these conditions are met, you must next ensure you are using the appropriate database driver. Please refer to the sections in this white paper for a list of acceptable database drivers. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Handling "related" work within a single agile work item

  - by Tesserex

  I'm on a project team of 4 devs, myself included. We've been having a long discussion on how to handle extra work that comes up in the course of a single work item. This extra work is usually things that are slightly related to the task, but not always necessary to accomplish the goal of the item (that may be an opinion). Examples include but are not limited to: refactoring of the code changed by the work item refactoring code neighboring the code changed by the item re-architecting the larger code area around the ticket. For example if an item has you changing a single function, you realize the entire class now could be redone to better accommodate this change. improving the UI on a form you just modified When this extra work is small we don't mind. The problem is when this extra work causes a substantial extension of the item beyond the original feature point estimation. Sometimes a 5 point item will actually take 13 points of time. In one case we had a 13 point item that in retrospect could have been 80 points or more. There are two options going around in our discussion for how to handle this. We can accept the extra work in the same work item, and write it off as a mis-estimation. Arguments for this have included: We plan for "padding" at the end of the sprint to account for this sort of thing. Always leave the code in better shape than you found it. Don't check in half-assed work. If we leave refactoring for later, it's hard to schedule and may never get done. You are in the best mental "context" to handle this work now, since you're waist deep in the code already. Better to get it out of the way now and be more efficient than to lose that context when you come back later. We draw a line for the current work item, and say that the extra work goes into a separate ticket. Arguments include: Having a separate ticket allows for a new estimation, so we aren't lying to ourselves about how many points things really are, or having to admit that all of our estimations are terrible. The sprint "padding" is meant for unexpected technical challenges that are direct barriers to completing the ticket requirements. It is not intended for side items that are just "nice-to-haves". If you want to schedule refactoring, just put it at the top of the backlog. There is no way for us to properly account for this stuff in an estimation, since it seems somewhat arbitrary when it comes up. A code reviewer might say "those UI controls (which you actually didn't modify in this work item) are a bit confusing, can you fix that too?" which is like an hour, but they might say "Well if this control now inherits from the same base class as the others, why don't you move all of this (hundreds of lines of) code into the base and rewire all this stuff, the cascading changes, etc.?" And that takes a week. It "contaminates the crime scene" by adding unrelated work into the ticket, making our original feature point estimates meaningless. In some cases, the extra work postpones a check-in, causing blocking between devs. Some of us are now saying that we should decide some cut off, like if the additional stuff is less than 2 FP, it goes in the same ticket, if it's more, make it a new ticket. Since we're only a few months into using Agile, what's the opinion of all the more seasoned Agile veterans around here on how to handle this?

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• My search what the Cloud will mean for my Work, part 2

  - by Kay Sellenrode

  My experience with the cloud and why work will change and not disappear. Until now I have multiple experiences with the cloud, for the most good. i have worked on multiple cloud solutions in the past but let me describe them as 0.x versions. For me the 1st real serious cloud experience was a bit more than 1 year ago, when our company switched from an in house server to Microsoft BPOS as a complete replacement. Since we are a small consultancy firm and don’t have that much else to do than consulting, our IT requirements are quite simple. We need Mail and Storage space for our documents. With the in house server we had multiple outages during a year, mostly by lack of administering. Being consultants in the field and hardly having time to maintain a server, BPOS was and still is for us the right solution. Since the migration we have less outages and a much more robust solution. Have we run into issues with BPOS for our own environment? No not that I’m aware of. Based on this experience I made a stance about deploy ability of BPOS and cloud solutions, they are suitable for MKB (Dutch for Medium and Small Businesses). Most Small businesses don’t have the amount of work to hire a full time it admin. Hiring a service provider to maintain their own server might be even more costly than hiring an admin. So seeing the capabilities of BPOS and the needs of most businesses I see it as a great solution that gives the business a complete Server replacement solution for a fixed price per user. resulting in a clear budget for IT spending, something most small businesses were looking for, for a long time. So right now I’m deploying BPOS with a customer, and I run into some of the Cloud 1.0 issues. In my opinion BPOS is a good working Cloud version 1.0 solution. What do I mean with 1.0? Well 1.0 is mostly a tested solution (unlike 0.x versions) but still have quite some limitations caused by too few market experience. in my opnion this is also the reason why we don’t see that much BPOS customers yet and why I think Office 365 will make a huge difference. What I have seen of 365 shows me it is a Cloud 2.0 version, meaning it has all needed features and is much more flexible to the customer. This is also why I see changes happen in my work field, changes and not unemployment due to Cloud solutions. Cloud 1.0 solutions gave me the idea that if every customer would adopt them I would be out of work. But in reality Cloud 1.0 solutions are here just to set the market needs. The Cloud 2.0 and higher versions will give the customer much more flexibility, but also require the need for a consultant. Where the 1.0 versions are simple to setup and maintain, the 2.0 solution needs more thought upfront and afterwards. ie. BPOS in its 1.0 version brings you a very simplified Exchange 2007 solution, Suitable for some customers. Looking at Office 365 you receive almost a full blown Exchange 2010 solution. I expect this to be even more customizable in the next version. In my search for the changes to my work I try to regulary write a post with my thought around the Cloud and the impact on my work as a consultant. I'm also planning to present around this topic, so if anyone is interested to see me present around this topic, you're more than welcome to contact me.

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• Oracle Tutor: XPDL conversion (and why you should care)

  - by mary.keane

  You may have noticed that the Oracle Business Process Converter feature in Tutor 14 supports "XPDL" conversion to Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite (BPA), Oracle Business Process Management Suite (BPM), and Oracle Tutor, and you may have briefly wondered "what is XPDL?" before you moved on to the Visio import feature (a very popular feature in Tutor 14). This posting is for those who do not yet understand (or care) about XPDL and process modeling. Many of us (and I'm including myself) have spent years working in the process definition arena: we've written procedures, designed systems and software to help others write procedures, and have been responsible for embedding policies and procedures into training material for employees. We've worked with tools such as Oracle Tutor, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Word, and UPK. Most of us have never worked with "modeling tools" before, and we certainly never had to understand BPMN. It's a brave new world in this arena, and companies desperately need people with policy and procedural system expertise to be able to work with system analysts so there is a seamless transfer of knowledge from IT to employees. When working with applications, a picture is worth a thousand words, so eventually you're going to need to understand and be able to work with business process models. XPDL is an acronym for XML Process Definition Language, and it is an interchange format for business process models. It allows you to take a BPMN model that was developed in one workflow application such as BizAgi and import it into another workflow application or a true BPMN management system such as Oracle BPM. Specifically, the XPDL format contains the graphical information of a model as well as any executable information. By using a common format, models can be moved from a basic modeling application used by business owners to applications used by system architects. Over 80 applications support the XPDL format, including MetaStorm ProVision, BEA ALBPM, BizAgi, and Tibco. I mention these applications because we have provided XSLT mapping files specifically for these vendors. Oracle Business Process Converter was designed with user extensibility in mind, and thus users can add their own XML files so that additional XPDL models from other vendors can be converted to BPM, BPA, and Oracle Tutor. Instructions on how to add your own files can be found in Appendix 4 of the Oracle Business Converter manual. Let's take a visual look at how this works. Here is an example of a model devloped in BizAgi: This model can be created by the average business user without a large learning curve, and it's a good start for the system analyst who will be adding web services as well as for the business manager who manages the process described in the model. By exporting this model as XPDL, the information can be converted into Oracle BPA and Oracle BPM as well as converted to Oracle Tutor to become the framework for a procedure. Through this conversion feature, one graphic illustration of a business process can be used by a system analyst, business analyst, business manager, and employee, as seen below. Model Converted to Tutor Procedure Below is the task section of the procedure after conversion from an XPDL file. Model converted to BPA Model converted to BPM End users still want step by step instructions on how to perform their jobs, so procedures (Oracle Tutor) and application simulations (UPK) are still a critical piece of the solution. But IT professionals need graphic descriptions of how the applications work, regardless of whether there are any tasks involving humans. Now there is a way to convert procedures (Oracle Tutor docx files) and basic models (XPDL files) so that business managers and system analysts can share process information. References Wikipedia XPDL. Workflow Management Coalition, XPDL Support and Resources Oracle Business Process Converter manual, Oracle Tutor 14 Oracle Business Process Management 11g If you have any XPDL conversion stories to share, we'd love to hear from you. Best wishes for the coming new year, Mary Keane, Senior Development Manager, Oracle Tutor and BPM

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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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• As a person getting into mobile development, what's the best mobile platform in terms of profitability? [closed]

  - by Kyle Loman

  I realize this question can range very far so would love to hear any and all opinions on this. However, I'll be honest and say that I have been thinking of this in terms of most profitable. I know how this may sound either way but this is one of my main sticking points. I realize that I'm not guaranteed a single cent and success is never guaranteed but I'm going into this with the thought of making something out of it both financially and also for my own interest. I know that iOS gets a lot of attention on this front but Android commands a lot more market share. However, I know there are drawbacks to Android too, whether it's in the actual development process and programming (though I've heard conflicting reports on this, such as how easy/difficult it is for to address screen res in different devices) or the app ecosystem being flooded. But iOS's app ecosystem has been described as too saturated and harder to compete in for that reason. Since Windows Phone has fewer apps than both of those two, that might be the best place to start in order to be closer to the ground floor of the store and be noticed more? Less saturation = better chances of sales or differentiating? Something like the gold rush during the first years of the iOS App Store (not exactly but at least in concept)? Would it be that despite fewer users on the platform, there's more exposure due to less competition so that may translate to better success at sales? Plus, I know MS is in it for the long haul so I'm not too fearful of something like WebOS going away. Obviously RIM isn't very popular nowadays but I read a recent article that says Blackberry actually has the apps that make the most money, any thoughts on that: http://gigaom.com/mobile/which-mobile-oss-apps-make-most-money-surprise-its-blackberry/ Again, this is all I've heard or known about so if there's anything to add or correct here, please do. In addition, this has actually affected my next personal phone upgrade. I'm eligible for a carrier discount now and I've had my eye on the iPhone 5. However, the Lumia 920 is the one I'm holding out for and I'm open to trying an Android but I'm not sure I can wait that long for any new Nexus or even the Razr HD. Even the new Lumia in November is making me antsy, I'm so close to just getting an iPhone 5. But when I say this has affected my phone choice, I'd want to be able to carry the apps I write with me so that I'm able to pull my phone out to show people without having to carry around a second device to do so. So that's why I'd like to make my personal phone match the main platform I'm developing for. Of course, I will likely expand to other platforms if I gain any decent success but the one I target now would serve well as my personal phone I carry around so that I can use it as a marketing tool, in a sense, showing people my apps if the opportunity presents itself. So what's the best mobile platform to choose, and especially in regards to most lucrative? As said previously, this would influence my personal phone choice greatly. Thanks in advance and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way - I understand there are trade-offs and other factors that may balance this out but making some revenue is key among that. For some background, I have done software development and know programming language concepts so I'm not entirely new to it and I do get the notion of being familiar with these things so that I can translate this skill among a variety of languages but I'm currently just having difficulty choosing my first main mobile platform based on the criteria I've outlined above.

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• Java - Tile engine changing number in array not changing texture

  - by Corey

  I draw my map from a txt file. Would I have to write to the text file to notice the changes I made? Right now it changes the number in the array but the tile texture doesn't change. Do I have to do more than just change the number in the array? public class Tiles { public Image[] tiles = new Image[5]; public int[][] map = new int[64][64]; private Image grass, dirt, fence, mound; private SpriteSheet tileSheet; public int tileWidth = 32; public int tileHeight = 32; Player player = new Player(); public void init() throws IOException, SlickException { tileSheet = new SpriteSheet("assets/tiles.png", tileWidth, tileHeight); grass = tileSheet.getSprite(0, 0); dirt = tileSheet.getSprite(7, 7); fence = tileSheet.getSprite(2, 0); mound = tileSheet.getSprite(2, 6); tiles[0] = grass; tiles[1] = dirt; tiles[2] = fence; tiles[3] = mound; int x=0, y=0; BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("assets/map.dat")); String line; while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) { String[] values = line.split(","); for (String str : values) { int str_int = Integer.parseInt(str); map[x][y]=str_int; //System.out.print(map[x][y] + " "); y=y+1; } //System.out.println(""); x=x+1; y = 0; } in.close(); } public void update(GameContainer gc) { } public void render(GameContainer gc) { for(int x = 0; x < map.length; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < map.length; y ++) { int textureIndex = map[y][x]; Image texture = tiles[textureIndex]; texture.draw(x*tileWidth,y*tileHeight); } } } Mouse picking public void checkDistance(GameContainer gc) { Input input = gc.getInput(); float mouseX = input.getMouseX(); float mouseY = input.getMouseY(); double mousetileX = Math.floor((double)mouseX/tiles.tileWidth); double mousetileY = Math.floor((double)mouseY/tiles.tileHeight); double playertileX = Math.floor(playerX/tiles.tileWidth); double playertileY = Math.floor(playerY/tiles.tileHeight); double lengthX = Math.abs((float)playertileX - mousetileX); double lengthY = Math.abs((float)playertileY - mousetileY); double distance = Math.sqrt((lengthX*lengthX)+(lengthY*lengthY)); if(input.isMousePressed(Input.MOUSE_LEFT_BUTTON) && distance < 4) { System.out.println("Clicked"); if(tiles.map[(int)mousetileX][(int)mousetileY] == 1) { tiles.map[(int)mousetileX][(int)mousetileY] = 0; } } System.out.println(tiles.map[(int)mousetileX][(int)mousetileY]); }

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• Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

  - by Chris George

  The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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• C++ property system interface for game editors (reflection system)

  - by Cristopher Ismael Sosa Abarca

  I have designed an reusable game engine for an project, and their functionality is like this: Is a completely scripted game engine instead of the usual scripting languages as Lua or Python, this uses Runtime-Compiled C++, and an modified version of Cistron (an component-based programming framework).to be compatible with Runtime-Compiled C++ and so on. Using the typical GameObject and Component classes of the Component-based design pattern, is serializable via JSON, BSON or Binary useful for selecting which objects will be loaded the next time. The main problem: We want to use our custom GameObjects and their components properties in our level editor, before used hardcoded functions to access GameObject base class virtual functions from the derived ones, if do you want to modify an property specifically from that class you need inside into the code, this situation happens too with the derived classes of Component class, in little projects there's no problem but for larger projects becomes tedious, lengthy and error-prone. I've researched a lot to find a solution without luck, i tried with the Ogitor's property system (since our engine is Ogre-based) but we find it inappropiate for the component-based design and it's limited only for the Ogre classes and can lead to performance overhead, and we tried some code we find in the Internet we tested it and worked a little but we considered the macro and lambda abuse too horrible take a look (some code omitted): IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_BEGIN(CBaseEntity) IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Editor"); IWE_PROP_INT_S("Id", "Internal id", m_nEntID, [](int n) {}, true); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END(); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Entity"); IWE_PROP_STRING_S("Mesh", "Mesh used for this entity", m_pModelName, [pInst](const std::string& sModelName) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_MESH); pInst->m_stackMemUndoStr.push(pInst->getModelName()); pInst->setModel(sModelName, false); pInst->saveState(); }, false); IWE_PROP_VECTOR3_S("Position", m_vecPosition, [pInst](float fX, float fY, float fZ) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_POSITION); pInst->m_stackMemUndoVec3.push(pInst->getPosition()); pInst->saveState(); pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[0] = fX; pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[1] = fY; pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[2] = fZ; pInst->setPosition(pInst->m_vecPosition); }, false); IWE_PROP_QUATERNION_S("Orientation (Quat)", m_quatOrientation, [pInst](float fW, float fX, float fY, float fZ) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_ROTATE); pInst->m_stackMemUndoQuat.push(pInst->getOrientation()); pInst->saveState(); pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[0] = fW; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[1] = fX; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[2] = fY; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[3] = fZ; pInst->setOrientation(pInst->m_quatOrientation); }, false); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END(); IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_END() We are finding an simplified way to this, without leading confusing the programmers, (will be released to the public) i find ways to achieve this but they are only available for the common scripting as Lua or editors using C#. also too portable, we can write "wrappers" for different GUI toolkits as Qt or GTK, also i'm thinking to using Boost.Wave to get additional macro functionality without creating my own compiler. The properties designed to use in the editor they are removed in the game since the save file contains their data and loads it using an simple 'load' function to reduce unnecessary code bloat may will be useful if some GameObject property wants to be hidden instead. In summary, there's a way to implement an reflection(property) system for a level editor based in properties from derived classes? Also we can use C++11 and Boost (restricted only to Wave and PropertyTree)

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• October in Review

  - by Richard Bingham

  With OpenWorld over October was time to get back to serious work for everyone, including the Fusion Applications Developer Relations team. Don't forget the OpenWorld content is still available, including presentation downloads, for a limited period of time so be sure to grab anything you found useful or take another scan for anything you might have missed. Of all the announcements, the continued evolution of the Oracle Cloud services for extending and integrating with Fusion Applications is increasing in popularity, and certainly the Cloud Marketplace is something we're becoming involved in. More details to follow. Fusion Concepts Last week Vik from our team started the new "Fusion Concepts" series of articles, providing those new to Fusion Applications an explanation of the architectural basics, with the aim to reduce the learning curve and lay the platform for more efficient and effective development. The series begun with an insightful first post on the different schemas that exist in the Fusion Applications database. Look out for upcoming posts on multi-lingual entities, profile options, look-ups and more. New Learning Resources Our YouTube channel continued to expand with more 'how to' videos on using page composer, extending the Simplified UI (aka FUSE), and integrating BI reports and analytics. Also the Oracle Learning Library is now well established as a central resource for knowledge, now with thousands of tutorials, videos, and documents. Of particular note are the great new extensibility-related videos added by the CRM Product Management team, including more on the ever-expanding capabilities of Application Composer. To see some examples of these search using keyword 'customization' or the product 'Sales Cloud'. Finally on learning resources, as Oliver mentioned the Oracle Press book on Fusion Application Customization and Extensibility is now available for pre-order on Amazon (due out 1st Jan). Out And About October also saw us attend the annual Apps Conference held by the UK Oracle User Group in London. Interestingly there was an Applications Transformation stream of sessions and content that included Fusion Applications with all the latest in the Oracle Applications evolution, as always focused around the three tenets of social, mobile, and cloud. Read more in Richard's post-event write up. Other teams around Oracle have also been busy. Angelo from the Platform Technical Services group has done quite a bit of work using web services with Fusion SaaS and has published many interesting findings on his blog. It's definitely recommended reading if you are working on any related integration projects. The middleware-for-applications group has built a new tool called "AppAdvantage" offering an online assessment of your use of Fusion Middleware technologies with Oracle Applications. As the popularity of integrating cloud applications with on-premises systems continued to grow, leveraging existing middleware technologies (and licenses) to support the integration solution is likely to be of paramount importance. Similarly the "Build Enterprise Application Extensions with Ease" section of the related webpage has AppsUX director Killan Evers speaking about customization using the composer tools. Both are useful resources for those just getting started with a move to Fusion Applications. The Oracle A-Team, specialists in middleware technical architecture, always publish superb content via their 'chronicles' site, now with a substantial amount specifically related to Fusion Applications. Click on the Fusion Applications menu on the top right of their homepage to see more. Last month of particular note was an article on customizing the timeout pop-up message that shows to inactive users, providing design-time insight and easy-to-follow steps. Finally if you're looking at using Oracle Middleware and Cloud to tailor and extend your applications then you may also be interested in this new blog post on the roadmap for Oracle SOA and the latest on-demand Cloud Development webcast.

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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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• How do you report out user research results?

  - by user12277104

  A couple weeks ago, one of my mentees asked to meet, because she wanted my advice on how to report out user research results. She had just conducted her first usability test for her new employer, and was getting to the point where she wanted to put together some slides, but she didn't want them to be boring. She wanted to talk with me about what to present and how best to present results to stakeholders. While I couldn't meet for another week, thanks to slideshare, I could quickly point her in the direction that my in-person advice would have led her. First, I'd put together a panel for the February 2012 New Hampshire UPA monthly meeting that we then repeated for the 2012 Boston UPA annual conference. In this panel, I described my reporting techniques, as did six of my colleagues -- two of whom work for companies smaller than mine, and four of whom are independent consultants. Before taking questions, we each presented for 3 to 5 minutes on how we presented research results. The differences were really interesting. For example, when do you really NEED a long, written report (as opposed to an email, spreadsheet, or slide deck with callouts)? When you are reporting your test results to the FDA -- that makes sense. in this presentation, I describe two modes of reporting results that I use.  Second, I'd been a participant in the CUE-9 study. CUE stands for Comparative Usability Evaluation, and this was the 9th of these studies that Rolf Molich had designed. Originally, the studies were designed to show the variability in evaluation methods practitioners use to evaluate websites and applications. Of course, using methods and tasks of their own choosing, the results were wildly different. However, in this 9th study, the tasks were the same, the participants were the same, and the problem severity scale was the same, so how would the results of the 19 practitioners compare? Still wildly variable. But for the purposes of this discussion, it gave me a work product that was not proprietary to the company I work for -- a usability test report that I could share publicly. This was the way I'd been reporting results since 2005, and pretty much what I still do, when time allows.  That said, I have been continuing to evolve my methods and reporting techniques, and sometimes, there is no time to create that kind of report -- the team can't wait the days that it takes to take screen shots, go through my notes, refer back to recordings, and write it all up. So in those cases, I use bullet points in email, talk through the findings with stakeholders in a 1-hour meeting, and then post the take-aways on a wiki page. There are other requirements for that kind of reporting to work -- for example, the stakeholders need to attend each of the sessions, and the sessions can't take more than a day to complete, but you get the idea: there is no one "right" way to report out results. If the method of reporting you are using is giving your stakeholders the information they need, in a time frame in which it is useful, and in a format that meets their needs (FDA report or bullet points on a wiki), then that's the "right" way to report your results. 

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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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• Process Power to the People that Create Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  Organizations often speak about their engagement problems as if the problem is the people they are trying to engage - employees,  partners, customers and citizens.  The reality of most engagement problems is that the processes put in place to engage are impersonal, inflexible, unintuitive, and often completely ignorant of the population they are trying to serve. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Delight? How appropriate during this short week of the US Independence Day Holiday that we're focusing on People, Process and Engagement. As we celebrate this holiday in the US and the historic independence we gained (sorry Brits!) - it's interesting to think back to 1776 to the creation of that pivotal document, the Declaration of Independence. What tremendous pressure to create an engaging document and founding experience they must have felt. "On June 11, 1776, in anticipation of the impending vote for independence from Great Britain, the Continental Congress appointed five men — Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston — to write a declaration that would make clear to people everywhere why this break from Great Britain was both necessary and inevitable. The committee then appointed Jefferson to draft a statement. Jefferson produced a "fair copy" of his draft declaration, which became the basic text of his "original Rough draught." The text was first submitted to Adams, then Franklin, and finally to the other two members of the committee. Before the committee submitted the declaration to Congress on June 28, they made forty-seven emendations to the document. During the ensuing congressional debates of July 1-4, 1776, Congress adopted thirty-nine further revisions to the committee draft. (http://www.constitution.org) If anything was an attempt for engaging the hearts and minds of the 13 Colonies at the time, this document certainly succeeded in its mission. ...Their tools at the time were pen and ink and parchment. Although the final document would later be typeset with lead type for a printing press to distribute to the colonies, all of the original drafts were hand written. And today's enterprise complains about using "Review and Track Changes" at times.  Can you imagine the manual revision control process? or lack thereof?  Collaborative process? Time delays? Would  implementing a better process have helped our founding fathers collaborate better? Declaration of Independence rough draft below. One of many during the creation process. Great comparison across multiple versions of the document here. (from http://www.ushistory.org/): While you may not be creating a new independent nation, getting your employees to engage is crucial to your success as a company in today's world. Oracle WebCenter provides the tools that power engagement. Employees that have better tools for communication, collaboration and getting their job done are more engaged employees. Better engaged employees create more engaged customers and partners. 12.00 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Fun with Python

  - by dotneteer

  I am taking a class on Coursera recently. My formal education is in physics. Although I have been working as a developer for over 18 years and have learnt a lot of programming on the job, I still would like to gain some systematic knowledge in computer science. Coursera courses taught by Standard professors provided me a wonderful chance. The three languages recommended for assignments are Java, C and Python. I am fluent in Java and have done some projects using C++/MFC/ATL in the past, but I would like to try something different this time. I first started with pure C. Soon I discover that I have to write a lot of code outside the question that I try to solve because the very limited C standard library. For example, to read a list of values from a file, I have to read characters by characters until I hit a delimiter. If I need a list that can grow, I have to create a data structure myself, something that I have taking for granted in .Net or Java. Out of frustration, I switched to Python. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Python is very easy to learn. The tutorial on the official Python site has the exactly the right pace for me, someone with experience in another programming. After a couple of hours on the tutorial and a few more minutes of toying with IDEL, I was in business. I like the “battery supplied” philosophy that gives everything that I need out of box. For someone from C# or Java background, curly braces are replaced by colon(:) and tab spaces. Although I tend to miss colon from time to time, I found that the idea of tab space is actually very nice once I get use to them. I also like to feature of multiple assignment and multiple return parameters. When I need to return a by-product, I just add it to the list of returns. When would use Python? I would use Python if I need to computer anything quick. The language is very easy to use. Python has a good collection of libraries (packages). The REPL of the interpreter allows me test ideas quickly before committing them into script. Lots of computer science work have been ported from Lisp to Python. Some universities are even teaching SICP in Python. When wouldn’t I use Python? I mostly would not use it in a managed environment, such as Ironpython or Jython. Both .Net and Java already have a rich library so one has to make a choice which library to use. If we use the managed runtime library, the code will tie to the particular runtime and thus not portable. If we use the Python library, then we will face the relatively long start-up time. For this reason, I would not recommend to use Ironpython for WP7 development. The only situation that I see merit with managed Python is in a server application where I can preload Python so that the start-up time is not a concern. Using Python as a managed glue language is an over-kill most of the time. A managed Scheme could be a better glue language as it is small enough to start-up very fast.

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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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• Silverlight Cream for January 15, 2011 -- #1028

  - by Dave Campbell

  Note to #1024 Swag Winners: I'm sending emails to the vendors Sunday night, thanks for your patience (a few of you have not contacted me yet) In this Issue: Ezequiel Jadib, Daniel Egan(-2-), Page Brooks, Jason Zander, Andrej Tozon, Marlon Grech, Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Sacha Barber, William E. Burrows, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1" Page Brooks WP7: "Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7" Jason Zander Training: "WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs" Daniel Egan From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Rough Cut Editor SP1 Released Ezequiel Jadib has an announcement about the Rough Cut Editor SP1 release, and he walks you through the content, installation and a bit of the initial use. WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs Daniel Egan posted Part 1 of 3 of a new WP7 HOL ... video online and material to download... get 'em while they're hot! WP7 Saving to Media Library Daniel Egan has another post up as well on saving an image to the media library... not the update from Tim Heuer... all good info Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1 This freakin' cool post from Page Brooks is the first one of a series on building a 'Radar Control' in Silverlight ... seriously, go to the bottom and run the demo... I pretty much guarantee you'll take the next link which is download the code... don't forget to read the article too! Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 Jason Zander has a nice-looking tutorial up on dynamic tile notifications... good diagrams and discussion and plenty of code. Reactive.buffering.from event. Andrej Tozon is continuing his Reactive Extensions posts with this one on buffering: BufferWithTime and BufferWIthCount ... good stuff, good write-up, and the start of a WP7 game? MEFedMVVM with PRISM 4 Marlon Grech combines his MEFedMVVM with Prism 4, and says it was easy... check out the post and the code. Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #40 Jonathan van de Veen has a discussion up about things you need to pay attention to as your project gets close to first deployment... lots of good information to think about Silverlight or not. Customize Windows 7 Preview pane for XAML files Walt Ritscher has a (very easy) XAML extension for Windows 7 that allows previewing of XAML files in an explorer window... as our UK friends say "Brilliant!" Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client From the never-ending stream of posts that is Jesse Liberty comes this one on EF Code-First... so Jesse's describing Code-First and OData all wrapped up about a WP7 app Sterling Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Database Triggers and Auto-Identity Sterling and Database Triggers sitting in a tree... woot for WP7 from Jeremy Likness... provides database solutions including Validation, Data-specific concerns such as 'last modified', and post-save processing ... all good, Jeremy! A Look At Fluent APIs Sacha Barber has a great post up that isn't necessarily Silverlight, but is it? ... we've been hearing a lot about Fluent APIs... read on to see what the buzz is. Windows Phone 7 - Part 3 - Final Application William E. Burrows has Part 3 of his WP7 tutorial series up... this one completing the Golf Handicap app by giving the user the ability to manage scores. User Control vs Custom Control in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great diagram and description-filled post up on User Controls and Custom Controls in WP7... good external links too. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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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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• Why We Do What We Do. (Part 3 of 5 Part Series on JDE 5G Postponed)

  - by Kem Butller-Oracle

  By Lyle Ekdahl - Oracle JD Edwards Sr. VP General Manager  In the closing of part two of this 5 part blog series, I stated that in the next installment I would explore the expected results of the digital overdrive era and the impact it will have on our economy. While I have full intentions of writing on that topic, I am inspired today to write about something that is top of mind. It’s top of mind because it has come up several times recently conversations with my Oracle’s JD Edwards team members, with customers and our partners, plus I feel passionately about why I do what I do…. It is not what we do but why we do that thing that we do Do you know what you do? For the most part, I bet you could tell me what you do even if your work has changed over the years.  My real question is, “Do you get excited about what you do, and are you fulfilled? Does your work deliver a sense of purpose, a cause to work for, and something to believe in?”  Alright, I guess that was not a single question. So let me just ask, “Why?” Why are you here, right now? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you go to work? Of course, I can’t answer those questions for you but I can share with you my POV.   For starters, there are several things that drive me. As many of you know by now, I have a somewhat competitive nature but it is not solely the thrill of winning that actually fuels me. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like winning occasionally. However winning is only a potential result of competing and is clearly not guaranteed. So why compete? Why compete in business, and particularly why in this Enterprise Software business?  Here’s why! I am fascinated by creative and building processes. It is about making or producing things, causing something to come into existence. With the right skill, imagination and determination, whether it’s art or invention; the result can deliver value and inspire. In both avocation and vocation I always gravitate towards the create/build processes.  I believe one of the skills necessary for the create/build process is not just the aptitude but also, and especially, the desire and attitude that drives one to gain a deeper understanding. The more I learn about our customers, the more I seek to understand what makes the successful and what difficult issues cause them to struggle. I like to look for the complex, non-commodity process problems where streamlined design and modern technology can provide an easy and simple solution. It is especially gratifying to see our customers use our software to increase their own ability to deliver value to the market. What an incredible network effect! I know many of you share this customer obsession as well as the create/build addiction focused on simple and elegant design. This is what I believe is at the root of our common culture.  Are JD Edwards customers on a whole different than other ERP solutions’ customers? I would argue that for the most part, yes, they are. They selected our software, and our software is different. Why? Because I believe that the create/build process will generally result in solutions that reflect who built it and their culture. And a culture of people focused on why they create/build will attract different customers than one that is based on what is built or how the solution is delivered. In the past I have referred to this idea as character of the customer, and it transcends industry, size and run rate. Now some would argue that JD Edwards has some customers who are characters. But that is for a different post. As I have told you before, the JD Edwards culture is unique, and its resulting economy is valuable and deserving of our best efforts. 

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• Pro/con of using Angular directives for complex form validation/ GUI manipulation

  - by tengen

  I am building a new SPA front end to replace an existing enterprise's legacy hodgepodge of systems that are outdated and in need of updating. I am new to angular, and wanted to see if the community could give me some perspective. I'll state my problem, and then ask my question. I have to generate several series of check boxes based on data from a .js include, with data like this: $scope.fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap = [ {'id':"CAPITAL PRESERVATION", 'name':"Capital Preservation"}, {'id':"STABLE", 'name':"Moderate"}, {'id':"BALANCED", 'name':"Moderate Growth"}, // etc {'id':"NONE", 'name':"None"} ]; The checkboxes are created using an ng-repeat, like this: <div ng-repeat="investmentObjective in fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap"> ... </div> However, I needed the values represented by the checkboxes to map to a different model (not just 2-way-bound to the fieldmappings object). To accomplish this, I created a directive, which accepts a destination array destarray which is eventually mapped to the model. I also know I need to handle some very specific gui controls, such as unchecking "None" if anything else gets checked, or checking "None" if everything else gets unchecked. Also, "None" won't be an option in every group of checkboxes, so the directive needs to be generic enough to accept a validation function that can fiddle with the checked state of the checkbox group's inputs based on what's already clicked, but smart enough not to break if there is no option called "NONE". I started to do that by adding an ng-click which invoked a function in the controller, but in looking around Stack Overflow, I read people saying that its bad to put DOM manipulation code inside your controller - it should go in directives. So do I need another directive? So far: (html): <input my-checkbox-group type="checkbox" fieldobj="investmentObjective" ng-click="validationfunc()" validationfunc="clearOnNone()" destarray="investor.investmentObjective" /> Directive code: .directive("myCheckboxGroup", function () { return { restrict: "A", scope: { destarray: "=", // the source of all the checkbox values fieldobj: "=", // the array the values came from validationfunc: "&" // the function to be called for validation (optional) }, link: function (scope, elem, attrs) { if (scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id) !== -1) { elem[0].checked = true; } elem.bind('click', function () { var index = scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id); if (elem[0].checked) { if (index === -1) { scope.destarray.push(scope.fieldobj.id); } } else { if (index !== -1) { scope.destarray.splice(index, 1); } } }); } }; }) .js controller snippet: .controller( 'SuitabilityCtrl', ['$scope', function ( $scope ) { $scope.clearOnNone = function() { // naughty jQuery DOM manipulation code that // looks at checkboxes and checks/unchecks as needed }; The above code is done and works fine, except the naughty jquery code in clearOnNone(), which is why I wrote this question. And here is my question: after ALL this, I think to myself - I could be done already if I just manually handled all this GUI logic and validation junk with jQuery written in my controller. At what point does it become foolish to write these complicated directives that future developers will have to puzzle over more than if I had just written jQuery code that 99% of us would understand with a glance? How do other developers draw the line? I see this all over Stack Overflow. For example, this question seems like it could be answered with a dozen lines of straightforward jQuery, yet he has opted to do it the angular way, with a directive and a partial... it seems like a lot of work for a simple problem. Specifically, I suppose I would like to know: how SHOULD I be writing the code that checks whether "None" has been selected (if it exists as an option in this group of checkboxes), and then check/uncheck the other boxes accordingly? A more complex directive? I can't believe I'm the only developer that is having to implement code that is more complex than needed just to satisfy an opinionated framework.

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• Octree subdivision problem

  - by ChaosDev

  Im creating octree manually and want function for effectively divide all nodes and their subnodes - For example - I press button and subnodes divided - press again - all subnodes divided again. Must be like - 1 - 8 - 64. The problem is - i dont understand how organize recursive loops for that. OctreeNode in my unoptimized implementation contain pointers to subnodes(childs),parent,extra vector(contains dublicates of child),generation info and lots of information for drawing. class gOctreeNode { //necessary fields gOctreeNode* FrontBottomLeftNode; gOctreeNode* FrontBottomRightNode; gOctreeNode* FrontTopLeftNode; gOctreeNode* FrontTopRightNode; gOctreeNode* BackBottomLeftNode; gOctreeNode* BackBottomRightNode; gOctreeNode* BackTopLeftNode; gOctreeNode* BackTopRightNode; gOctreeNode* mParentNode; std::vector<gOctreeNode*> m_ChildsVector; UINT mGeneration; bool mSplitted; bool isSplitted(){return m_Splitted;} .... //unnecessary fields }; DivideNode of Octree class fill these fields, set mSplitted to true, and prepare for correctly drawing. Octree contains basic nodes(m_nodes). Basic node can be divided, but now I want recursivly divide already divided basic node with 8 subnodes. So I write this function. void DivideAllChildCells(int ix,int ih,int id) { std::vector<gOctreeNode*> nlist; std::vector<gOctreeNode*> dlist; int index = (ix * m_Height * m_Depth) + (ih * m_Depth) + (id * 1);//get index of specified node gOctreeNode* baseNode = m_nodes[index].get(); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontTopLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontTopRightNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontBottomLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontBottomRightNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackBottomLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackBottomRightNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackTopLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackTopRightNode); bool cont = true; UINT d = 0;//additional recursive loop param (?) UINT g = 0;//additional recursive loop param (?) LoopNodes(d,g,nlist,dlist); //Divide resulting nodes for(UINT i = 0; i < dlist.size(); i++) { DivideNode(dlist[i]); } } And now, back to the main question,I present LoopNodes, which must do all work for giving dlist nodes for splitting. void LoopNodes(UINT& od,UINT& og,std::vector<gOctreeNode*>& nlist,std::vector<gOctreeNode*>& dnodes) { //od++;//recursion depth bool f = false; //pass through childs for(UINT i = 0; i < 8; i++) { if(nlist[i]->isSplitted())//if node splitted and have childs { //pass forward through tree for(UINT j = 0; j < 8; j++) { nlist[j] = nlist[j]->m_ChildsVector[j];//set pointers to these childs } LoopNodes(od,og,nlist,dnodes); } else //if no childs { //add to split vector dnodes.push_back(nlist[i]); } } } This version of loop nodes works correctly for 2(or 1?) generations after - this will not divide neightbours nodes, only some corners. I need correct algorithm. Screenshot All I need - is correct version of LoopNodes, which can add all nodes for DivideNode.

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