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  • SQL Saturday 194 - Exeter

    - by Dave Ballantyne
    Many kudos goes to Jonathan and Annette Allen and the others on the team for confirming SQL Saturday 194 in Exeter on the 8th and 9th of March.  The event home page is here http://www.sqlsaturday.com/194/eventhome.aspx and I delighted that myself and Dave Morrison will be presenting a full day pre-con on the 8th on favourite subjects “TSQL and Internals”. Here is the full abstract : TSQL and internals - When faced with performance issues there are many lines of attack. Tuning the engine itself can get you so far, however for maximum effect you need to understand how the engine and how it translates SQL statements into performable actions. This is not a simple task, it is a massive task to deal with a multi-table join and the number of permutations can be immense. To back up this knowledge, we can create better performing TSQL and understand the impact that is has upon the engine and recognize the pitfalls and gotcha’s that exist in SQLServer. Ultimately, there is no ‘best way’ to perform a single task only many variations of ‘it depends’ , but now we can pick the most appropriate option for the required dataload. Over the years, there have been many myths and misconceptions have grown around the product, some have basis in older versions and some are just wrong. Continuing to build on the knowledge given so far these issue will be explored and broken down and proved or disproved. Finally we will look to the future and explore SQL Server 2012 and the new functionality that that brings and some of the common uses that we will be able to address. After completion of this days pre-con, attendees will have a more complete knowledge of execution plans, and how they relate to the physical and logical actions that SQLServer will be executing on their behalf. The attendees will also have a more rounded and fuller knowledge of TSQL and the implications of incorrectly defining a query. Dave is a fountain of knowledge on execution plans and optimizer internals and ,though i may flatter myself, I’m no shrinking violet when it comes to TSQL and such matters.  I hope that if you cant join us, then there are other pre-cons available from other experts in their fields that may ‘float you boat’ too.  The pre-con page is http://sqlsouthwest.co.uk/SQLSaturday_precon.htm Also, excitingly, this pre-con day is sponsored by Fusion-IO which is a great boon for the day. If you want a more of this then i am offering a 2 day TSQL course starting on the 19th of March. More details on this are available here

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  • OSB unit testing, part 1 by Qualogy

    - by JuergenKress
    First you need to implement the simple bpel process like this : In my current project, I inherited a lot of OSB components that have been developed by (former) team members, but they all lack unit tests. This is a situation I really dislike, since this makes it much harder to refactor or bug-fix the existing code base. So, for all newly created components (and components I have to bug-fix) I strive to add unit tests. Of course, the unit tests will be created using my favourite testing tool: soapUI ! Unit of test The unit test should be created for the service composition, which in OSB terms should be the proxy service combination with its business service. Now, since you do not want to rely on any other services, you should provide mock services for all services invoked from your Component-Under-Test. In a previous article, I wrote about mocking your services in soapUI. While this approach would also be valid here, creating a mock service (and certainly deploying it on a separate WebServer) does violate one of the core principles of unit testing: to make your unit tests as self-contained as possible, i.e. not depending on any external components. In this article, I will show you how to achieve this by simply providing a mock response inside your unit test. Scenario The scenario I implement for testing is a simple currency converter; the external request consists of a from and a to currency, and an amount (in currency from). The service will perform an exchange rate lookup using the WebServiceX CurrencyConverter and return a response to the caller consisting of both the source and target currencies and amounts. For the purpose of unit testing, I will implement a mock response for the exchange rate lookup. Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Qualogy,OSB,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Adobe Reader Wants Sensitive Email Details

    - by KDM
    When I run Adobe Reader, it tells me: Either there is no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfill the messaging request. Please run Microsoft Outlook and set it as the default mail client. I have a couple of issues with this: 1) It presupposes everyone has Microsoft Office installed. Not all home users have the budget or inclination for this. 2) It presupposes everyone wants Microsoft Outlook to be their default mail client. 3) I have Microsoft Office (incl. Outlook) installed and set as my default mail client. Even if I make it the default mail client from within the Adobe Reader Preferences, that doesn't stop the dialog appearing. 4) I thought I'd give Adobe Reader a new email address in the preferences, just to get it to stop bugging me. I notice, though, that it want's the SMTP and POP addresses and the account password? They have got to be kidding? I just want to view PDF files. How do I get the message to go away without telling Adobe my life story, giving them my mother's maiden name, my favourite movie, my place of birth, the name of my first goldfish and emptying the contents of my wallet for them?

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  • Looking for recommendations on OCR problem - tabular numeric data

    - by ldigas
    I have 20 pages of experiment measurement data which I need to digitalize. The results are in tabular form, scanned in 600 dpi resolution, and as far as scans go, they came up pretty clean and readable. For an example of how it looks see here (but beware: it is a rather big scan; about 5Mb; no problem for any broadband connection, but dialups should approach with caution!) ... and I need it finished by sunday afternoon (:-o) <-- smiley in a state of panic (then why did't you start sooner?)... yea, yeah ... I know ... but, it came up late, and I wasn't thinking I was gonna need this data also. So, I'm looking for recommendations. I haven't much experience with OCR programs, save scanning a page or two of pure text, but just to mention, I haven't the wish also to test out every OCR program out there. So this isn't a "name your OCR favourite". What I'm looking is advice from someone who's done something like that, and his/hers experience on what would be the best way to undertake. I need the data in txt form but since it will have to be checked (by drawing it, and just simply watching whether some points "jump out") I'll probably be entering it in Excel at first.

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  • How can I make the Windows 7 taskbar behave like a cross between the old Quick Launch and new Superbar?

    - by frumious
    I really like the taskbar in Windows 7, I think combining buttons to launch apps and the icons that show your running apps is groovy. However, because I like having as much space as possible, I've got small icons enabled and shrunk the bar down to one row. I've also told it not to group the running apps unless there's no space left (to save me having to work harder to find the particular window I want), which also means that they have captions, and are thus quite wide. The (admittedly small) problem this gives me is that I can pin all my favourite apps to the bar, which looks much like the old Quick Launch bar, but when I launch them the running apps because much wider, and the unlaunched apps get lost amongst them. I can manually change the order to fix this, but next time I'll launch a different app and I'll be back to square one. What I'd prefer is for small unlaunched icons to be kept on the left, and wider running apps to move over to the right, which for me would be the best of both worlds. Is there any way I can organise that? I'm aware that one can use the traditional quick launch bar in Windows 7, but that's not what I'm after; I generally prefer the Windows 7 way.

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  • Best shortcut in Total Commander

    - by life-warrior
    So, what's your favourite TC shortcut or shortcut combination ? Which one do you use and for what purpose ? Among my most often used: Ctrl-Left ( or Ctrl-Right ) - open archive or folder under cursor in opposite tab. Ctrl-Shift-Enter, Alt-F8, Ctrl-X - copy full file path to clipboard. Shift-F6, Shift-End(if needed), Ctrl-C - copy only file name w/o path. Select files, Ctrl-M - multi-rename, for example remove "DVDrip" from file names. Ctrl-\ - go to root directory. Ctrl-D, - go to directory with highlighted letter specified. For example, name a downloads directory "&Downloads" in favourites, and the letter after ampersand will be highlighted. Alt-F7, feed to listbox, Ctrl-A, Mark(menu)-Save selection to file - creates a file with all files and directories inside current, with full path. Ctrl-[3-6] - sort files by name(3), extension(4), date(5), size(6). For example, Sort by name, when you need movies and soundracks with the same name and different extension to group them together. Sort by extension, when you need to find EXEs in Windows directory. Sort by Date, when you need to find the latest file downloaded in your dir. Sort by size, when you need to delete the largest files for free space.

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  • Why is it bad to map network drives in Windows?

    - by Beeblebrox
    There has been some spirited discussion within our IT department about mapping network drives. In particular, it has been said that mapping network drives is A Bad Thing and that adding DFS paths or network shares to your (Windows Explorer/Libraries) Favourites is a far better solution. Why is this the case? Personally I find the convenience of z:\folder to be better than \\server\path\folder', particularly with cmd line and scripting (of course I'm not talking about hard-coded links, naturally!). I have tried searching for pros and cons of mapped network drives, but I haven't seen anything other than 'should the network go down, the drive will be unavailable'. But this is a limitation of any network-accessed storage... I have also been told that mapped network drives poll the network when the network resource is unavailable, however I haven't found more information on this. Wouldn't this still be an issue with other network access mechanisms (that is, mapped Favourites) whenever Windows tries to enumerate the file system (for example, when a file/folder picker dialog is opened)? -- Do network drives poll the network any more than a Windows Explorer library/favourite?

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  • Collation errors in business

    - by Rob Farley
    At the PASS Summit last month, I did a set (Lightning Talk) about collation, and in particular, the difference between the “English” spoken by people from the US, Australia and the UK. One of the examples I gave was that in the US drivers might stop for gas, whereas in Australia, they just open the window a little. This is what’s known as a paraprosdokian, where you suddenly realise you misunderstood the first part of the sentence, based on what was said in the second. My current favourite is Emo Phillip’s line “I like to play chess with old men in the park, but it can be hard to find thirty-two of them.” Essentially, this a collation error, one that good comedians can get mileage from. Unfortunately, collation is at its worst when we have a computer comparing two things in different collations. They might look the same, and sound the same, but if one of the things is in SQL English, and the other one is in Windows English, the poor database server (with no sense of humour) will get suspicious of developers (who all have senses of humour, obviously), and declare a collation error, worried that it might not realise some nuance of the language. One example is the common scenario of a case-sensitive collation and a case-insensitive one. One may think that “Rob” and “rob” are the same, but the other might not. Clearly one of them is my name, and the other is a verb which means to steal (people called “Nick” have the same problem, of course), but I have no idea whether “Rob” and “rob” should be considered the same or not – it depends on the collation. I told a lie before – collation isn’t at its worst in the computer world, because the computer has the sense to complain about the collation issue. People don’t. People will say something, with their own understanding of what they mean. Other people will listen, and apply their own collation to it. I remember when someone was asking me about a situation which had annoyed me. They asked if I was ‘pissed’, and I said yes. I meant that I was annoyed, but they were asking if I’d been drinking. It took a moment for us to realise the misunderstanding. In business, the problem is escalated. A business user may explain something in a particular way, using terminology that they understand, but using words that mean something else to a technical person. I remember a situation with a checkbox on a form (back in VB6 days from memory). It was used to indicate that something was approved, and indicated whether a particular database field should store True or False – nothing more. However, the client understood it to mean that an entire workflow system would be implemented, with different users have permission to approve items and more. The project manager I’d just taken over from clearly hadn’t appreciated that, and I faced a situation of explaining the misunderstanding to the client. Lots of fun... Collation errors aren’t just a database setting that you can ignore. You need to remember that Americans speak a different type of English to Aussies and Poms, and techies speak a different language to their clients.

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  • Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

    - by Giorgio
    This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in understanding and using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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  • Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

    - by Giorgio
    This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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  • Archiving SQLHelp tweets

    - by jamiet
    #SQLHelp is a Twitter hashtag that can be used by any Twitter user to get help from the SQL Server community. I think its fair to say that in its first year of being it has proved to be a very useful resource however Kendra Little (@kendra_little) made a very salient point yesterday when she tweeted: Is there a way to search the archives of #sqlhelp Trying to remember answer to a question I know I saw a couple months ago http://twitter.com/#!/Kendra_Little/status/15538234184441856 This highlights an inherent problem with Twitter’s search capability – it simply does not reach far enough back in time. I have made steps to remedy that situation by putting into place two initiatives to archive Tweets that contain the #sqlhelp hashtag. The Archivist http://archivist.visitmix.com/ is a free service that, quite simply, archives a history of tweets that contain a given search term by periodically polling Twitter’s search service with that search term and subsequently displaying a dashboard providing an aggregate view of those tweets for things like tweet volume over time, top users and top words (Archivist FAQ). I have set up an archive on The Archivist for “sqlhelp” which you can view at http://archivist.visitmix.com/jamiet/7. Here is a screenshot of the SQLHelp dashboard 36 minutes after I set it up: There is lots of good information in there, including the fact that Jonathan Kehayias (@SQLSarg) is the most active SQLHelp tweeter (I suspect as an answerer rather than a questioner ) and that SSIS has proven to be a rather (ahem) popular subject!! Datasift The Archivist has its uses though for our purposes it has a couple of downsides. For starters you cannot search through an archive (which is what Kendra was after) and nor can you export the contents of the archive for offline analysis. For those functions we need something a bit more heavyweight and for that I present to you Datasift. Datasift is a tool (currently an alpha release) that allows you to search for tweets and provide them through an object called a Datasift stream. That sounds very similar to normal Twitter search though it has one distinct advantage that other Twitter search tools do not – Datasift has access to Twitter’s Streaming API (aka the Twitter Firehose). In addition it has access to a lot of other rather nice features: It provides the Datasift API that allows you to consume the output of a Datasift stream in your tool of choice (bring on my favourite ultimate mashup tool J ) It has a query language (called Filtered Stream Definition Language – FSDL for short) A Datasift stream can consume (and filter) other Datasift streams Datasift can (and does) consume services other than Twitter If I refer to Datasift as “ETL for tweets” then you may get some sort of idea what it is all about. Just as I did with The Archivist I have set up a publicly available Datasift stream for “sqlhelp” at http://datasift.net/stream/1581/sqlhelp. Here is the FSDL query that provides the data: twitter.text contains "sqlhelp" Pretty simple eh? At the current time it provides little more than a rudimentary dashboard but as Datasift is currently an alpha release I think this may be worth keeping an eye on. The real value though is the ability to consume the output of a stream via Datasift’s RESTful API, observe: http://api.datasift.net/stream.xml?stream_identifier=c7015255f07e982afdeebdf1ae6e3c0d&username=jamiet&api_key=XXXXXXX (Note that an api_key is required during the alpha period so, given that I’m not supplying my api_key, this URI will not work for you) Just to prove that a Datasift stream can indeed consume data from another stream I have set up a second stream that further filters the first one for tweets containing “SSIS”. That one is at http://datasift.net/stream/1586/ssis-sqlhelp and here is the FSDL query: rule "414c9845685ff8d2548999cf3162e897" and (interaction.content contains "ssis") When Datasift moves beyond alpha I’ll re-assess how useful this is going to be and post a follow-up blog. @Jamiet

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  • 24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

    - by Rob Farley
    There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it. Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one. Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience. One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window. What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service. But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry! Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers? If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal. Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world. See you tomorrow! @rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

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  • 24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

    - by Rob Farley
    There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it. Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one. Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience. One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window. What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service. But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry! Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers? If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal. Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world. See you tomorrow! @rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

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

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

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  • Lessons Building KeyRef (a .NET developer learning Rails)

    - by Liam McLennan
    Just because I like to build things, and I like to learn, I have been working on a keyboard shortcut reference site. I am using this as an opportunity to improve my ruby and rails skills. The first few days were frustrating. Perhaps the learning curve of all the fun new toys was a bit excessive. Finally tonight things have really started to come together. I still don’t understand the rails built-in testing support but I will get there. Interesting Things I Learned Tonight RubyMine IDE Tonight I switched to RubyMine instead of my usual Notepad++. I suspect RubyMine is a powerful tool if you know how to use it – but I don’t. At the moment it gives me errors about some gems not being activated. This is another one of those things that I will get to. I have also noticed that the editor functions significantly differently to the editors I am used to. For example, in visual studio and notepad++ if you place the cursor at the start of a line and press left arrow the cursor is sent to the end of the previous line. In RubyMine nothing happens. Haml Haml is my favourite view engine. For my .NET work I have been using its non-union Mexican CLR equivalent – nHaml. Multiple CSS Classes To define a div with more than one css class haml lets you chain them together with a ‘.’, such as: .span-6.search_result contents of the div go here Indent Consistency I also learnt tonight that both haml and nhaml complain if you are not consistent about indenting. As a consequence of the move from notepad++ to RubyMine my haml views ended up with some tab indenting and some space indenting. For the view to render all of the indents within a view must be consistent. Sorting Arrays I guessed that ruby would be able to sort an array alphabetically by a property of the elements so my first attempt was: Application.all.sort {|app| app.name} which does not work. You have to supply a comparer (much like .NET). The correct sort is: Application.all.sort {|a,b| a.name.downcase <=> b.name.downcase} MongoMapper Find by Id Since document databases are just fancy key-value stores it is essential to be able to easily search for a document by its id. This functionality is so intrinsic that it seems that the MongoMapper author did not bother to document it. To search by id simply pass the id to the find method: Application.find(‘4c19e8facfbfb01794000002’) Rails And CoffeeScript I am a big fan of CoffeeScript so integrating it into this application is high on my priorities. My first thought was to copy Dr Nic’s strategy. Unfortunately, I did not get past step 1. Install Node.js. I am doing my development on Windows and node is unix only. I looked around for a solution but eventually had to concede defeat… for now. Quicksearch The front page of the application I am building displays a list of applications. When the user types in the search box I want to reduce the list of applications to match their search. A quick googlebing turned up quicksearch, a jquery plugin. You simply tell quicksearch where to get its input (the search textbox) and the list of items to filter (the divs containing the names of applications) and it just works. Here is the code: $('#app_search').quicksearch('.search_result'); Summary I have had a productive evening. The app now displays a list of applications, allows them to be sorted and links through to an application page when an application is selected. Next on the list is to display the set of keyboard shortcuts for an application.

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  • SQL analytical mash-ups deliver real-time WOW! for big data

    - by KLaker
    One of the overlooked capabilities of SQL as an analysis engine, because we all just take it for granted, is that you can mix and match analytical features to create some amazing mash-ups. As we move into the exciting world of big data these mash-ups can really deliver those "wow, I never knew that" moments. While Java is an incredibly flexible and powerful framework for managing big data there are some significant challenges in using Java and MapReduce to drive your analysis to create these "wow" discoveries. One of these "wow" moments was demonstrated at this year's OpenWorld during Andy Mendelsohn's general keynote session.  Here is the scenario - we are looking for fraudulent activities in our big data stream and in this case we identifying potentially fraudulent activities by looking for specific patterns. We using geospatial tagging of each transaction so we can create a real-time fraud-map for our business users. Where we start to move towards a "wow" moment is to extend this basic use of spatial and pattern matching, as shown in the above dashboard screen, to incorporate spatial analytics within the SQL pattern matching clause. This will allow us to compute the distance between transactions. Apologies for the quality of this screenshot….hopefully below you see where we have extended our SQL pattern matching clause to use location of each transaction and to calculate the distance between each transaction: This allows us to compare the time of the last transaction with the time of the current transaction and see if the distance between the two points is possible given the time frame. Obviously if I buy something in Florida from my favourite bike store (may be a new carbon saddle for my Trek) and then 5 minutes later the system sees my credit card details being used in Arizona there is high probability that this transaction in Arizona is actually fraudulent (I am fast on my Trek but not that fast!) and we can flag this up in real-time on our dashboard: In this post I have used the term "real-time" a couple of times and this is an important point and one of the key reasons why SQL really is the only language to use if you want to analyse  big data. One of the most important questions that comes up in every big data project is: how do we do analysis? Many enlightened customers are now realising that using Java-MapReduce to deliver analysis does not result in "wow" moments. These "wow" moments only come with SQL because it is offers a much richer environment, it is simpler to use and it is faster - which makes it possible to deliver real-time "Wow!". Below is a slide from Andy's session showing the results of a comparison of Java-MapReduce vs. SQL pattern matching to deliver our "wow" moment during our live demo.  You can watch our analytical mash-up "Wow" demo that compares the power of 12c SQL pattern matching + spatial analytics vs. Java-MapReduce  here: You can get more information about SQL Pattern Matching on our SQL Analytics home page on OTN, see here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/bi-datawarehousing/sql-analytics-index-1984365.html.  You can get more information about our spatial analytics here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database-options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html If you would like to watch the full Database 12c OOW presentation see here: http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/2686974264001

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  • New features in TFS Demo Setup 1.0.0.2

    - by Tarun Arora
    Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas Just pushed out the 2nd release of the TFS Demo setup on CodePlex, below a quick look at some of the new features/improvements in the tool… Details of the existing features can be found here. Feature 1 – Set up Work Items Queries as Team Favorites The task board looks cooler when the team favourite work item queries show up on the task board. The demo setup console application now has the ability to set up the work item queries as team favorites for you. If you want to see how you can add Team Favorites programmatically, refer to this blogpost here. Image 1 – Task board without Team Favorites Let’s see how the TFS Demo Setup application sets-up team favorites as part of the run… Open up the DemoDictionary.xml and you should be able to see the new node <TeamFavorites> this accepts multiple <TeamFavorite>. You simply need to specify the <Type> as Query and in the <Name> specify the name of the work item query that you would like added as a favorite. Image 2 – Highlighting the TeamFavorites block in DemoDictionary.xml So, when the demo set up application is run with the above config, work item queries “Blocked Tasks” and “Open Impediments” are added as team favorites. They then show up on the task board, as highlighted in the screen shot below. Image 3 – Team Favorites setup during the TFS demo setup app execution Feature 2 – Choose what you want to setup and exclude the rest I had a great feature request come in requesting the ability to exclude parts of the setup at the sole discretion of the executioner. To accommodate this, I have added an attribute with each block, the attribute “Run” accepts “true” or “false”. If you set the flag to true then at the time of execution that block would be considered for setup and if you set the flag to false, the block will be ignored during the setup. So, lets look at an example below… The attribute "Run” is set to true for TeamSettings, Team Favorites, TeamMembers and WorkItems. So, all of these would be setup as part of the demo setup application execution. Image 4 – New Attribute Run added to all blocks in DemoDictionary.xml If I did not want to recreate the team and did not want to add new work items but only wanted to add favorites and team members to the existing team “AgileChamps1” then I could simple run the application with below DemoDictionary.xml. Note – TeamSettings Run=”false” and WorkItems Run=”false”. Image 5 – TeamFavorites and TeamMembers set as true and others set to false Feature 3 – Usability Improvement If you try and assign a work item to a team member that does not exist then the application throws a nasty exception. This behaviour has now been changed, upon adding such a work item, the work items will be created and not assigned to any user. The work item id will be printed to the console making it simple for you to assign the work item manually. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am trying to assign the work item to a user “Tarun” and a user “v2” both are *not valid users in my team project collection* so the tool creates the work items and provides me the work item id and lets me know that since the user is invalid the work item could not be assigned to the user. Better user experience ae Image 6 – Behaviour if work item assigned to users are in valid users in team project That’s about it for the current release. I have some new features planned for the next release. Mean while if you have any ideas/comments please feel free to leave a comment. Stay tuned for more… Enjoy! Other posts on TFS Demo Setup can be found here.

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  • 5 Ways to Celebrate the Release of Internet Explorer 9

    - by David Wesst
    The day has finally come: Microsoft has released a web browser that is awesome. On Monday night, Microsoft officially introduced the world to the latest edition to its product family: Internet Explorer 9. That makes March 14, 2011 (also known as PI day) the official birthday of Microsoft’s rebirth in the world of web browsing. Just like any big event, you take some time to celebrate. Here are a few things that you can do to celebrate the return of Internet Explorer. 1. Download It If you’re not a big partier, that’s fine. The one thing you can do (and definitely should) is download it and give it a shot. Sure, IE may have disappointed you in the past, but believe me when I say they really put the effort in this time. The absolute least you can do is give it a shot to see how it stands up against your favourite browser. 2. Get yourself an HTML5 Shirt One of the coolest, if not best parts of IE9 being released is that it officially introduces HTML5 as a fully supported platform from Microsoft. IE9 supports a lot of what is already defined in the HTML5 technical spec, which really demonstrates Microsoft’s support of the new standard. Since HTML5 is cool on the web, it means that it is cool to wear it too. Head over to html5shirt.com and get yourself, or your staff, or your whole family, an HTML5 shirt to show the real world that you are ready for the future of the web. 3. HTML5-ify Something Okay, so maybe a shirt isn’t enough for you. Maybe you need start using HTML5 for real. If you have a blog, or a website, or anything out there on the web, celebrate IE9 adding some HTML5 to your site. Whether that is updating old code, adding something new, or just changing your WordPress theme, definitely take a look at what HTML5 can do for you. 4. Help Kill Old IE and Upgrade your Organization See this? This is sad. Upgrading web browsers in an large enterprise or organization is not a trivial task. A lot of companies will use the excuse of not having the resources to upgrade legacy web applications they were built for a specific version of IE and it doesn’t render correctly in legacy browsers. Well, it’s time to stop the excuses. IE9 allows you to define what version of Internet Explorer you would like it to emulate. It takes minimal effort for the developer, and will get rid of the excuses. Show your IT manager or software development team this link and show them how easy it is to make old code render right in the latest and greatest from the IE team. 5. Submit an Entry for DevUnplugged So, you’ve made it to number five eh? Well then, you must be pretty hardcore to make it this far down the list. Fine, let’s take it to the next level and build an HTML5 game. That’s right. A game. Like a video game. HTML5 introduces some amazing new features that can let you build working video games using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Plus, Microsoft is celebrating the launch of IE9 with a contest where you can submit an HTML5 game (or audio application) and have a chance to win a whack of cash and other prizes. Head here for the full scoop and rules for the DevUnplugged. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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  • Apprentice Boot Camp in South Africa (Part 2)

    - by Tim Koekkoek
    By Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) Today we have the second part of the adventures of seven apprentices from all over Europe in South-Africa!  Kruger National Park & other experiences Going to the Kruger National Park was definitely an experience we will all remember for the rest of our lives. This trip,organised by Patrick Fitzgerald, owner of the Travellers Nest (where we all stayed), took us from the hustle and bustle of Joburg to experience what Africa is all about, the wild! Although the first week’s training we had prior to this trip to the Kruger was going very well, we all knew this was to be a very nice break before we started the second week of training. And we were right, the animals, scenery and sights we saw were just simply incredible and like I said something we will remember for the rest of our lives. To see lions, elephants, cheetahs and rhinos and many more in a zoo is one thing, but to see them in the wild, in their natural habitat is very special and I personally only realised this from the early 5 am start on the first morning in the Kruger, which was definitely worth it. Not only was it all about the safari, we ate some wonderful food, in particular on the Saturday night, Patrick made us a traditional South African Braai which was one of my favourite meals of the whole two weeks. After the Kruger National Park we had a whole day of traveling back to Johannesburg but even this was made to be a good day by our hosts. Despite the early start on the road it was all worth it by the time we reached God's Window. The walk to the top was made a lot harder by all the steaks we had eaten in the first week but the hard walk was worth it at the top, with views that stretched for miles. The Food The food in South Africa is typically meat and in big amounts, while there we ate a lot of big beef steaks, ribs and kudu sausage. All of the meat we ate was usually cooked with a sauce such as a Barbeque glaze. The restaurants we visited were: Upperdeck Restaurant, with live music and a great terrace to eat, the atmosphere was good for enjoying the music and eating our food. Most of us ate  Spare ribs that weighed 600 kg, with barbecue sauce that was delicious. Die Bosvelder Pub & Restaurant is a restaurant with a very surprising decor, this is because the walls had many of south Africa’s famous animals on them. The food was maybe the best we ate in South Africa. Our orders were: Springbokvlakte Lambs' Neck Stew, beef in gravy and steaks topped with cheese and then more meat on top! All meals were accompanied by a selection of white sauce cauliflower, spinach and zanhorias. Pepper Chair Restaurant, where the specialty is T-Bone steaks of 1.4 kg, but most of us were happy to attempt the 1 kg. Cooked with barbecue sauce over the meat, it was very good!  The only problem was their size causing the  the meat to get cold if you did not eat it very fast! We’re all waiting for our 1.0 kg t-bone steak including our Senior Director EMEA Systems Support Germany & Switzerland: Werner Hoellrigl The Godfather Restaurant, the food here was more meat in abundance. We ate: great ribs, hamburgers, steaks and all accompanied with a small plates of carrot and sauteed spinach, very good. We had two great weeks in South-Africa! If you want to join Oracle, then check http://campus.oracle.com 

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  • When does a Tumbling Window Start in StreamInsight

    Whilst getting some courseware ready I was playing around writing some code and I decided to very simply show when a window starts and ends based on you asking for a TumblingWindow of n time units in StreamInsight.  I thought this was going to be a two second thing but what I found was something I haven’t yet found documented anywhere until now.   All this code is written in C# and will slot straight into my favourite quick-win dev tool LinqPad   Let’s first create a sample dataset   var EnumerableCollection = new [] { new {id = 1, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 2, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:20:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 3, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:30:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 4, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:40:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 5, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:50:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 6, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 01:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 7, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 01:10:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 8, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 02:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 9, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 03:20:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 10, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 03:30:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 11, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 04:40:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 12, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 04:50:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 13, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 05:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 14, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 05:10:00 PM").ToLocalTime()} };   Now let’s create a stream of point events   var inputStream = EnumerableCollection .ToPointStream(Application,evt=> PointEvent .CreateInsert(evt.StartTime,evt),AdvanceTimeSettings.StrictlyIncreasingStartTime);   Now we can create our windows over the stream.  The first window we will create is a one hour tumbling window.  We’'ll count the events in the window but what we do here is not the point, the point is our window edges.   var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromHours(1),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()};   Now we can have a look at what we get.  I am only going to show the first non Cti event as that is enough to demonstrate what is going on   windowedStream.ToIntervalEnumerable().First(e=> e.EventKind == EventKind.Insert).Dump("First Row from Windowed Stream");   The results are below   EventKind Insert   StartTime 01/10/2010 12:00   EndTime 01/10/2010 13:00     { CountOfEntries = 5 }   Payload CountOfEntries 5   Now this makes sense and is quite often the width of window specified in examples.  So what happens if I change the windowing code now to var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromHours(5),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()}; Now where does your window start?  What about   var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(13),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()};   Well for the first example your window will start at 01/10/2010 10:00:00 , and for the second example it will start at  01/10/2010 11:55:00 Surprised?   Here is the reason why and thanks to the StreamInsight team for listening.   Windows start at TimeSpan.MinValue. Windows are then created from that point onwards of the size you specified in your code.  If a window contains no events they are not produced by the engine to the output.  This is why window start times can be before the first event is created.

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  • Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

    - by Phil Factor
    For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

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  • In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?

    - by romkyns
    XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it’s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely new syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL? Since it’s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I’ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML might be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it’s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, much less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it’s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built "on top" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use completely different syntax than if you set the exact same thing as a content property. It’s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the syntax is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it’s the framework’s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the "needs learning" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can’t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses XAML and WPF, but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff.

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  • Patterns for a tree of persistent data with multiple storage options?

    - by Robin Winslow
    I have a real-world problem which I'll try to abstract into an illustrative example. So imagine I have data objects in a tree, where parent objects can access children, and children can access parents: // Interfaces interface IParent<TChild> { List<TChild> Children; } interface IChild<TParent> { TParent Parent; } // Classes class Top : IParent<Middle> {} class Middle : IParent<Bottom>, IChild<Top> {} class Bottom : IChild<Middle> {} // Usage var top = new Top(); var middles = top.Children; // List<Middle> foreach (var middle in middles) { var bottoms = middle.Children; // List<Bottom> foreach (var bottom in bottoms) { var middle = bottom.Parent; // Access the parent var top = middle.Parent; // Access the grandparent } } All three data objects have properties that are persisted in two data stores (e.g. a database and a web service), and they need to reflect and synchronise with the stores. Some objects only request from the web service, some only write to it. Data Mapper My favourite pattern for data access is Data Mapper, because it completely separates the data objects themselves from the communication with the data store: class TopMapper { public Top FetchById(int id) { var top = new Top(DataStore.TopDataById(id)); top.Children = MiddleMapper.FetchForTop(Top); return Top; } } class MiddleMapper { public Middle FetchById(int id) { var middle = new Middle(DataStore.MiddleDataById(id)); middle.Parent = TopMapper.FetchForMiddle(middle); middle.Children = BottomMapper.FetchForMiddle(bottom); return middle; } } This way I can have one mapper per data store, and build the object from the mapper I want, and then save it back using the mapper I want. There is a circular reference here, but I guess that's not a problem because most languages can just store memory references to the objects, so there won't actually be infinite data. The problem with this is that every time I want to construct a new Top, Middle or Bottom, it needs to build the entire object tree within that object's Parent or Children property, with all the data store requests and memory usage that that entails. And in real life my tree is much bigger than the one represented here, so that's a problem. Requests in the object In this the objects request their Parents and Children themselves: class Middle { private List<Bottom> _children = null; // cache public List<Bottom> Children { get { _children = _children ?? BottomMapper.FetchForMiddle(this); return _children; } set { BottomMapper.UpdateForMiddle(this, value); _children = value; } } } I think this is an example of the repository pattern. Is that correct? This solution seems neat - the data only gets requested from the data store when you need it, and thereafter it's stored in the object if you want to request it again, avoiding a further request. However, I have two different data sources. There's a database, but there's also a web service, and I need to be able to create an object from the web service and save it back to the database and then request it again from the database and update the web service. This also makes me uneasy because the data objects themselves are no longer ignorant of the data source. We've introduced a new dependency, not to mention a circular dependency, making it harder to test. And the objects now mask their communication with the database. Other solutions Are there any other solutions which could take care of the multiple stores problem but also mean that I don't need to build / request all the data every time?

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  • When will EBS 12.2 be released?

    - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)
    The most frequently asked question at OpenWorld this year was, "When will EBS 12.2 be released?" Sadly, Oracle's communication policies prohibit us from speculating about release dates for unreleased software. We are not permitted to give estimates, rough timelines, guesses, or anything else that remotely resembles specific guidance on release dates. You can monitor My Oracle Support and this blog for updates on EBS 12.2.  I'll post them here as soon as they're available.  I'm embedding an old favourite from 2007 in its entirety here, since it applies equally to new releases as well as certifications. "Loose Lips Sink Ships" (March 20, 2007)If I were to sort emails in my inbox into groups, the biggest -- by far -- would be the one for emails that start with, "When will _____ be certified with the E-Business Suite?"  I answer these dutifully but know that my replies can sometimes be maddening, for two reasons:  technical uncertainty, and Oracle's rules for such communications. On the Spiral Model of CertificationsTechnology stack certifications tend to be highly iterative in nature.  As a result, statements about certification dates tend to be accurate only when made in hindsight.  Laypeople are horrified to hear this, but it's the ugly truth.  Uncertainty is simply inherent to the process.  I've become inured to it over the years, but it might come as a surprise to you that it can take many cycles to get fully-released software to work together.  Take this scenario: We test a particular combination of Component A and B. If we encounter a problem, say, with Component A, we log a bug. We receive a new version of Component A. The process iterates again. The reality is this: until a certification is completed and released, there's no accurate way of telling how many iterations are yet to come.  This is true regardless of the number of iterations that have already been completed.  Our Lips Are SealedGenerally, people understand that things are subject to change, so the second reason I can't say anything specific is actually much more important than the first.  "Loose lips might sink ships" was coined in World War II in an effort to remind people that careless talk can have serious consequences.  Curiously, this applies to Oracle's communications about upcoming features, configurations, and releases, too.  As a publicly traded company, we have very strict policies that prohibit us from linking specific releases to specific dates.  If you've ever listened to an earnings call with analysts, you'll often hear them asking, "Can you add a little more color to that statement?"  For certifications, color is usually the only thing that I have.  Sometimes I can provide a bit more information about the technical nature of the certification in question, such as expected footprints or version levels.  I can occasionally share technical issues that we've found, too, to convey the degree of risk or complexity involved in the certification.  Aside from that, there's little additional information about specific dates, date ranges, or even speculation about dates that I can provide... that is, without having one of those uncomfortable conversations with Oracle Legal.  So, as much as it pains me to do so, when it comes to dates, I'm always forced to conclude with a generic reply that blandly states one of the following: We're working on that certification right now That certification is in the pipeline but hasn't been started yet We don't have plans for that certification Don't Shoot the MessengerThankfully, I've developed a thick skin over the years -- which is a good thing, considering the colorful and energetic responses I've received over the years after answering these questions.  However, on behalf of my Oracle colleagues who are faced with these questions every day in the field, I urge you to remember that they're required to follow these same corporate rules about date disclosures.  It never hurts to ask, but don't be too disappointed if we can't provide you with a detailed answer.  The Go-Go's had it right, after all.  Related Articles Webcast Replay Available: Technical Preview of EBS 12.2 Online Patching

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  • Code Golf: Leibniz formula for Pi

    - by Greg Beech
    I recently posted one of my favourite interview whiteboard coding questions in "What's your more controversial programming opinion", which is to write a function that computes Pi using the Leibniz formula. It can be approached in a number of different ways, and the exit condition takes a bit of thought, so I thought it might make an interesting code golf question. Shortest code wins! Given that Pi can be estimated using the function 4 * (1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...) with more terms giving greater accuracy, write a function that calculates Pi to within 0.00001. Edit: 3 Jan 2008 As suggested in the comments I changed the exit condition to be within 0.00001 as that's what I really meant (an accuracy 5 decimal places is much harder due to rounding and so I wouldn't want to ask that in an interview, whereas within 0.00001 is an easier to understand and implement exit condition). Also, to answer the comments, I guess my intention was that the solution should compute the number of iterations, or check when it had done enough, but there's nothing to prevent you from pre-computing the number of iterations and using that number. I really asked the question out of interest to see what people would come up with.

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