Search Results

Search found 4946 results on 198 pages for 'proper benchmarking'.

Page 146/198 | < Previous Page | 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153  | Next Page >

• Windows Azure Use Case: Agility

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Agility in this context is defined as the ability to quickly develop and deploy an application. In theory, the speed at which your organization can develop and deploy an application on available hardware is identical to what you could deploy in a distributed environment. But in practice, this is not always the case. Having an option to use a distributed environment can be much faster for the deployment and even the development process. Implementation: When an organization designs code, they are essentially becoming a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to their own organization. To do that, the IT operations team becomes the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to the development teams. From there, the software is developed and deployed using an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. A simplified view of an ALM process is as follows: Requirements Analysis Design and Development Implementation Testing Deployment to Production Maintenance In an on-premise environment, this often equates to the following process map: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including physical plant, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to on-premise Testing servers. If no server capacity available, more resources procured through standard budgeting and ordering processes. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Server team involved to select platform and environments with available capacity. If no server capacity available, standard budgeting and procurement process followed. If no server capacity available, systems built, configured and put under standard organizational IT control. Systems configured for proper operating systems, patches, security and virus scans. System maintenance, HA/DR, backups and recovery plans configured and put into place. Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. In a distributed computing environment like Windows Azure, the process maps a bit differently: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including budget, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to Azure. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Code deployed to Azure. Point in time backup and recovery plans configured and put into place.(HA/DR and automated backups already present in Azure fabric) Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. This means that several steps can be removed or expedited. It also means that the business function requesting the application can be held directly responsible for the funding of that request, speeding the process further since the IT budgeting process may not be involved in the Azure scenario. An additional benefit is the “Azure Marketplace”, In effect this becomes an app store for Enterprises to select pre-defined code and data applications to mesh or bolt-in to their current code, possibly saving development time. Resources: Whitepaper download- What is ALM?  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743693  Whitepaper download - ALM and Business Strategy: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743690  LiveMeeting Recording on ALM and Windows Azure (registration required, but free): http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/visualstudio/contact-us.aspx?sbj=Developing with Windows Azure (ALM perspective) - 10:00-11:00 - 19th Jan 2011

  Read the article

• Managing User & Role Security with Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  With the advent of SQL Developer v3.0, users have had access to some powerful database administration features. Version 3.1 introduced more powerful features such as an interface to Data Pump and RMAN. Today I want to talk about some very simple but frequently ran tasks that SQL Developer can assist with, like: identifying privs granted to users managing role privs assigning new roles and privs to users & roles Before getting started, you’ll need a connection to the database with the proper privileges. The common ROLE used to accomplish this is the ‘DBA‘ role. Curious as to what the DBA role is actually comprised of? Let’s find out! Open the DBA Console First make sure you’re connected to the database you want to manage security on with a privileged administrator account. Then open the View menu and select ‘DBA.’ Accessing the DBA panel ‘Create’ a Connection Click on the green ‘+’ button in the DBA panel. It will ask you to choose a previously defined SQL Developer connection. Defining a DBA connection in Oracle SQL Developer Once connected you will see a tree list of DBA features you can start interacting with. Expand the ‘Security’ Tree Node As you click on an object in the DBA panel, the ‘viewer’ will open on the right-hand-side, just like you are accustomed to seeing when clicking on a table or stored procedure. Accessing the DBA role If I’m a newly hired Oracle DBA, the first thing I might want to do is become very familiar with the DBA role. People will be asking you to grant them this role or a subset of its privileges. Once you see what the role can do, you will become VERY protective of it. My favorite 3-letter 4-letter word is ‘ANY’ and the DBA role is littered with privileges like this: ANY TABLE privs granted to DBA role So if this doesn’t freak you out, then maybe you should re-consider your career path. Or in other words, don’t be granting this role to ANYONE you don’t completely trust to take care of your database. If I’m just assigned a new database to manage, the first thing I might want to look at is just WHO has been assigned the DBA role. SQL Developer makes this easy to ascertain, just click on the ‘User Grantees’ panel. Who has the keys to your car? Making Changes to Roles and Users If you mouse-right-click on a user in the Tree, you can do individual tasks like grant a sys priv or expire an account. But, you can also use the ‘Edit User’ dialog to do a lot of work in one pass. As you click through options in these dialogs, it will build the ‘ALTER USER’ script in the SQL panel, which can then be executed or copied to the worksheet or to your .SQL file to be ran at your discretion. A Few Clicks vs a Lot of Typing These dialogs won’t make you a DBA, but if you’re pressed for time and you’re already in SQL Developer, they can sure help you make up for lost time in just a few clicks!

  Read the article

• OBIEE 11.1.1 - User Interface (UI) Performance Is Slow With Internet Explorer 8

  - by Ahmed A

  The OBIEE 11g UI is performance is slow in IE 8 and faster in Firefox.  For VPN or WAN users, it takes long time to display links on Dashboards via IE 8. Cause is IE 8 generates many HTTP 304 return calls and this caused the 11g UI slower when compared to the Mozilla FireFox browser. To resolve this issue, you can implement HTTP compression and caching. This is a best practice.Why use Web Server Compression / Caching for OBIEE? Bandwidth Savings: Enabling HTTP compression can have a dramatic improvement on the latency of responses. By compressing static files and dynamic application responses, it will significantly reduce the remote (high latency) user response time. Improves request/response latency: Caching makes it possible to suppress the payload of the HTTP reply using the 304 status code.  Minimizing round trips over the Web to re-validate cached items can make a huge difference in browser page load times. This screen shot depicts the flow and where the compression and decompression occurs: Solution: a. How to Enable HTTP Caching / Compression in Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 11.1.1.x 1. To implement HTTP compression / caching, install and configure Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 11.1.1.x for the bi_serverN Managed Servers (refer to "OBIEE Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence" document for details). 2. On the OHS machine, open the file HTTP Server configuration file (httpd.conf) for editing. This file is located in the OHS installation directory.For example: ORACLE_HOME/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs13. In httpd.conf file, verify that the following directives are included and not commented out: LoadModule expires_module "${ORACLE_HOME}/ohs/modules/mod_expires.soLoadModule deflate_module "${ORACLE_HOME}/ohs/modules/mod_deflate.so 4. Add the following lines in httpd.conf file below the directive LoadModule section and restart the OHS: Note: For the Windows platform, you will need to enclose any paths in double quotes ("), for example:Alias "/analytics ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app"<Directory "ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app"> Alias /analytics ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app#Pls replace the ORACLE_HOME with your actual BI ORACLE_HOME path<Directory ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app>#We don't generate proper cross server ETags so disable themFileETag noneSetOutputFilter DEFLATE# Don't compress imagesSetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpeg|png|js|x-javascript|javascript|css)$">#Enable future expiry of static filesExpiresActive onExpiresDefault "access plus 1 week"     #1 week, this will stops the HTTP304 calls i.e. generated by IE 8Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800"</FilesMatch>DirectoryIndex default.jsp</Directory>#Restrict access to WEB-INF<Location /analytics/WEB-INF>Order Allow,DenyDeny from all</Location> Note: Make sure you replace above placeholder "ORACLE_HOME" to your correct path for BI ORACLE_HOME.For example: my BI Oracle Home path is /Oracle/BIEE11g/Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app Important Notes: Above caching rules restricted to static files found inside the /analytics directory(/web/app). This approach is safer instead of setting static file caching globally. In some customer environments you may not get 100% performance gains in IE 8.0 browser. So in that case you need to extend caching rules to other directories with static files content. If OHS is installed on separate dedicated machine, make sure static files in your BI ORACLE_HOME (../Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app) is accessible to the OHS instance. The following screen shot summarizes the before and after results and improvements after enabling compression and caching:

  Read the article

• WCF REST Service Activation Errors when AspNetCompatibility is enabled

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m struggling with an interesting problem with WCF REST since last night and I haven’t been able to track this down. I have a WCF REST Service set up and when accessing the .SVC file it crashes with a version mismatch for System.ServiceModel: Server Error in '/AspNetClient' Application. Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.] System.RuntimeTypeHandle.GetTypeByName(String name, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMarkHandle stackMark, Boolean loadTypeFromPartialName, ObjectHandleOnStack type) +0 System.RuntimeTypeHandle.GetTypeByName(String name, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean loadTypeFromPartialName) +95 System.RuntimeType.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark) +54 System.Type.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase) +65 System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase) +69 System.Web.Configuration.HandlerFactoryCache.GetTypeWithAssert(String type) +38 System.Web.Configuration.HandlerFactoryCache.GetHandlerType(String type) +13 System.Web.Configuration.HandlerFactoryCache..ctor(String type) +19 System.Web.HttpApplication.GetFactory(String type) +81 System.Web.MaterializeHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +223 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +184 Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.1 What’s really odd about this is that it crashes only if it runs inside of IIS (it works fine in Cassini) and only if ASP.NET Compatibility is enabled in web.config:<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" /> Arrrgh!!!!! After some experimenting and some help from Glenn Block and his team mates I was able to track down the problem in ApplicationHost.config. Specifically the problem was that there were multiple *.svc mappings in the ApplicationHost.Config file and the older 2.0 runtime specific versions weren’t marked for the proper runtime. Because these handlers show up at the top of the list they execute first resulting in assembly load errors for the wrong version assembly. To fix this problem I ended up making a couple changes in applicationhost.config. On the machine level root’s Handler mappings I had an entry that looked like this:<add name="svc-Integrated" path="*.svc" verb="*" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" preCondition="integratedMode" /> and it needs to be changed to this:<add name="svc-Integrated" path="*.svc" verb="*" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv2.0" />Notice the explicit runtime version assignment in the preCondition attribute which is key to keep ASP.NET 4.0 from executing that handler. The key here is that the runtime version needs to be set explicitly so that the various *.svc handlers don’t fire only in the order defined which in case of a .NET 4.0 app with the original setting would result in an incompatible version of System.ComponentModel to load.What was really hard to track this down is that even when looking in the debugger when launching the Web app, the AppDomain assembly loads showed System.ServiceModel V4.0 starting up just fine. Apparently the ASP.NET runtime load occurs at a different point and that’s when things break.So how did this break? According to the Microsoft folks it’s some older tools that got installed that change the default service handlers. There’s a blog entry that points at this problem with more detail:http://blogs.iis.net/webtopics/archive/2010/04/28/system-typeloadexception-for-system-servicemodel-activation-httpmodule-in-asp-net-4.aspxNote that I tried running aspnet_regiis and that did not fix the problem for me. I had to manually change the entries in applicationhost.config.   © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in AJAX   ASP.NET  WCF  

  Read the article

• Best Practices for Handing over Legacy Code

  - by PersonalNexus

  In a couple of months a colleague will be moving on to a new project and I will be inheriting one of his projects. To prepare, I have already ordered Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code. But this books as well as most questions on legacy code I found so far are concerned with the case of inheriting code as-is. But in this case I actually have access to the original developer and we do have some time for an orderly hand-over. Some background on the piece of code I will be inheriting: It's functioning: There are no known bugs, but as performance requirements keep going up, some optimizations will become necessary in the not too distant future. Undocumented: There is pretty much zero documentation at the method and class level. What the code is supposed to do at a higher level, though, is well-understood, because I have been writing against its API (as a black-box) for years. Only higher-level integration tests: There are only integration tests testing proper interaction with other components via the API (again, black-box). Very low-level, optimized for speed: Because this code is central to an entire system of applications, a lot of it has been optimized several times over the years and is extremely low-level (one part has its own memory manager for certain structs/records). Concurrent and lock-free: While I am very familiar with concurrent and lock-free programming and have actually contributed a few pieces to this code, this adds another layer of complexity. Large codebase: This particular project is more than ten thousand lines of code, so there is no way I will be able to have everything explained to me. Written in Delphi: I'm just going to put this out there, although I don't believe the language to be germane to the question, as I believe this type of problem to be language-agnostic. I was wondering how the time until his departure would best be spent. Here are a couple of ideas: Get everything to build on my machine: Even though everything should be checked into source code control, who hasn't forgotten to check in a file once in a while, so this should probably be the first order of business. More tests: While I would like more class-level unit tests so that when I will be making changes, any bugs I introduce can be caught early on, the code as it is now is not testable (huge classes, long methods, too many mutual dependencies). What to document: I think for starters it would be best to focus documentation on those areas in the code that would otherwise be difficult to understand e.g. because of their low-level/highly optimized nature. I am afraid there are a couple of things in there that might look ugly and in need of refactoring/rewriting, but are actually optimizations that have been out in there for a good reason that I might miss (cf. Joel Spolsky, Things You Should Never Do, Part I) How to document: I think some class diagrams of the architecture and sequence diagrams of critical functions accompanied by some prose would be best. Who to document: I was wondering what would be better, to have him write the documentation or have him explain it to me, so I can write the documentation. I am afraid, that things that are obvious to him but not me would otherwise not be covered properly. Refactoring using pair-programming: This might not be possible to do due to time constraints, but maybe I could refactor some of his code to make it more maintainable while he was still around to provide input on why things are the way they are. Please comment on and add to this. Since there isn't enough time to do all of this, I am particularly interested in how you would prioritize.

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – How to Ignore Columnstore Index Usage in Query

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I wrote about SQL SERVER – Fundamentals of Columnstore Index and very first question I received in email was as following. “We are using SQL Server 2012 CTP3 and so far so good. In our data warehouse solution we have created 1 non-clustered columnstore index on our large fact table. We have very unique situation but your article did not cover it. We are running few queries on our fact table which is working very efficiently but there is one query which earlier was running very fine but after creating this non-clustered columnstore index this query is running very slow. We dropped the columnstore index and suddenly this one query is running fast but other queries which were benefited by this columnstore index it is running slow. Any workaround in this situation?” In summary the question in simple words “How can we ignore using columnstore index in selective queries?” Very interesting question – you can use I can understand there may be the cases when columnstore index is not ideal and needs to be ignored the same. You can use the query hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX to ignore the columnstore index. SQL Server Engine will use any other index which is best after ignoring the columnstore index. Here is the quick script to prove the same. We will first create sample database and then create columnstore index on the same. Once columnstore index is created we will write simple query. This query will use columnstore index. We will then show the usage of the query hint. USE AdventureWorks GO -- Create New Table CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]( [SalesOrderID] [int] NOT NULL, [SalesOrderDetailID] [int] NOT NULL, [CarrierTrackingNumber] [nvarchar](25) NULL, [OrderQty] [smallint] NOT NULL, [ProductID] [int] NOT NULL, [SpecialOfferID] [int] NOT NULL, [UnitPrice] [money] NOT NULL, [UnitPriceDiscount] [money] NOT NULL, [LineTotal] [numeric](38, 6) NOT NULL, [rowguid] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL, [ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GO -- Create clustered index CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX [CL_MySalesOrderDetail] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] ( [SalesOrderDetailID]) GO -- Create Sample Data Table -- WARNING: This Query may run upto 2-10 minutes based on your systems resources INSERT INTO [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] SELECT S1.* FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail S1 GO 100 -- Create ColumnStore Index CREATE NONCLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [MySalesOrderDetail] (UnitPrice, OrderQty, ProductID) GO Now we have created columnstore index so if we run following query it will use for sure the same index. -- Select Table with regular Index SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice) SumUnitPrice, AVG(UnitPrice) AvgUnitPrice, SUM(OrderQty) SumOrderQty, AVG(OrderQty) AvgOrderQty FROM [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] GROUP BY ProductID ORDER BY ProductID GO We can specify Query Hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX as described in following query and it will not use columnstore index. -- Select Table with regular Index SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice) SumUnitPrice, AVG(UnitPrice) AvgUnitPrice, SUM(OrderQty) SumOrderQty, AVG(OrderQty) AvgOrderQty FROM [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] GROUP BY ProductID ORDER BY ProductID OPTION (IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX) GO Let us clean up the database. -- Cleanup DROP INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] GO TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail GO DROP TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail GO Again, make sure that you use hint sparingly and understanding the proper implication of the same. Make sure that you test it with and without hint and select the best option after review of your administrator. Here is the question for you – have you started to use SQL Server 2012 for your validation and development (not on production)? It will be interesting to know the answer. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Silverlight Cream for May 15, 2010 -- #862

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Victor Gaudioso, Antoni Dol(-2-), Brian Genisio, Shawn Wildermuth, Mike Snow, Phil Middlemiss, Pete Brown, Kirupa, Dan Wahlin, Glenn Block, Jeff Prosise, Anoop Madhusudanan, and Adam Kinney. Shoutouts: Victor Gaudioso would like you to Checkout my Interview with Microsoft’s Murray Gordon at MIX 10 Pete Brown announced: Connected Show Podcast #29 With … Me! From SilverlightCream.com: New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Create Fast Forward for the MediaElement Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is on creating the ability to fast-forward a MediaElement... check it out in the tutorial player itself! Overlapping TabItems with the Silverlight Toolkit TabControl Antoni Dol has a very cool tutorial up on the Toolkit TabItems control... not only is he overlapping them quite nicely but this is a very cool tutorial... QuoteFloat: Animating TextBlock PlaneProjections for a spiraling effect in Silverlight Antoni Dol also has a Blend tutorial up on animating TextBlock items... run the demo and you'll want to read the rest :) Adventures in MVVM – My ViewModel Base – Silverlight Support! Brian Genisio continues his MVVM tutorials with this update on his ViewModel base using some new C# 4.0 features, and fully supports Silverlight and WPF My Thoughts on the Windows Phone 7 Shawn Wildermuth gives his take on WP7. He included a port of his XBoxGames app to WP7 ... thanks Shawn! Silverlight Tip of the Day #20 – Using Tooltips in Silverlight I figured Mike Snow was going to overrun me with tips since I have missed a couple days, but there's only one! ... and it's on Tooltips. Animating the Silverlight opacity mask Phil Middlemiss has an article at SilverZine describing a Behavior he wrote (and is sharing) that turns a FrameworkElement into an opacity mask for it's parent container... cool demo on the page too. Breaking Apart the Margin Property in Xaml for better Binding Pete Brown dug in on a Twitter message and put some thoughts down about breaking a Margin apart to see about binding to the individual elements. Building a Simple Windows Phone App Kirupa has a 6-part tutorial up on building not-your-typical first WP7 application... all good stuff! Integrating HTML into Silverlight Applications Dan Wahlin has a post up discussing three ways to display HTML inside a Silverlight app. Hello MEF in Silverlight 4 and VB! (with an MVVM Light cameo) Glenn Block has a post up discussing MEF, MVVM, and it's in VB this time... and it's actually a great tutorial top to bottom... all source included of course :) Understanding Input Scope in Silverlight for Windows Phone Jeff Prosise has a good post up on the WP7 SIP and how to set the proper InputScope to get the SIP you want. Thinking about Silverlight ‘desktop’ apps – Creating a Standalone Installer for offline installation (no browser) Anoop Madhusudanan is discussing something that's been floating around for a while... installing Silverlight from, say, a CD or DVD when someone installs your app. He's got some good code, but be sure to read Tim Heuer and Scott Guthrie's comments, and consider digging deeper into that part. Using FluidMoveBehavior to animate grid coordinates in Silverlight Adam Kinney has a cool post up on animating an object using the FluidMotionBehavior of Blend 4... looks great moving across a checkerboard... check out the demo, then grab the code. 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

  Read the article

• Changing the action of a hyperlink in a Silverlight RichTextArea

  - by Marc Schluper

  The title of this post could also have been "Move over Hyperlink, here comes Actionlink" or "Creating interactive text in Silverlight." But alas, there can be only one. Hyperlinks are very useful. However, they are also limited because their action is fixed: browse to a URL. This may have been adequate at the start of the Internet, but nowadays, in web applications, the one thing we do not want to happen is a complete change of context. In applications we typically like a hyperlink selection to initiate an action that updates a part of the screen. For instance, if my application has a map displayed with some text next to it, the map would react to a selection of a hyperlink in the text, e.g. by zooming in on a location and displaying additional locational information in a popup. In this way, the text becomes interactive text. It is quite common that one company creates and maintains websites for many client companies. To keep maintenance cost low, it is important that the content of these websites can be updated by the client companies themselves, without the need to involve a software engineer. To accommodate this scenario, we want the author of the interactive text to configure all hyperlinks (without writing any code). In a Silverlight RichTextArea, the default action of a Hyperlink is the same as a traditional hyperlink, but it can be changed: if the Command property has a value then upon a click event this command is called with the value of the CommandParameter as parameter. How can we let the author of the text specify a command for each hyperlink in the text, and how can we let an application react properly to a hyperlink selection event? We are talking about any command here. Obviously, the application would recognize only a specific set of commands, with well defined parameters, but the approach we take here is generic in the sense that it pertains to the RichTextArea and any command. So what do we require? We wish that: As a text author, I can configure the action of a hyperlink in a (rich) text without writing code; As a text author, I can persist the action of a hyperlink with the text; As a reader of persisted text, I can click a hyperlink and the configured action will happen; As an application developer, I can configure a control to use my application specific commands. In an excellent introduction to the RichTextArea, John Papa shows (among other things) how to persist a text created using this control. To meet our requirements, we can create a subclass of RichTextArea that uses John's code and allows plugging in two command specific components: one to prompt for a command definition, and one to execute the command. Since both of these plugins are application specific, our RichTextArea subclass should not assume anything about them except their interface. public interface IDefineCommand { void Prompt(string content, // the link content Action<string, object> callback); // the method called to convey the link definition } public interface IPerformCommand : ICommand {} The IDefineCommand plugin receives the content of the link (the text visible to the reader) and displays some kind of control that allows the author to define the link. When that's done, this (possibly changed) content string is conveyed back to the RichTextArea, together with an object that defines the command to execute when the link is clicked by the reader of the published text. The IPerformCommand plugin simply implements System.Windows.Input.ICommand. Let's use MEF to load the proper plugins. In the example solution there is a project that contains rudimentary implementations of these. The IDefineCommand plugin simply prompts for a command string (cf. a command line or query string), and the IPerformCommand plugin displays a MessageBox showing this command string. An actual application using this extended RichTextArea would have its own set of commands, each having their own parameters, and hence would provide more user friendly application specific plugins. Nonetheless, in any case a command can be persisted as a string and hence the two interfaces defined above suffice. For a Visual Studio 2010 solution, see my article on The Code Project.

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Advanced Solution – Wait Type – Day 7 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier we discussed about the what is the common solution to solve the issue with CXPACKET wait time. Today I am going to talk about few of the other suggestions which can help to reduce the CXPACKET wait. If you are going to suggest that I should focus on MAXDOP and COST THRESHOLD – I totally agree. I have covered them in details in yesterday’s blog post. Today we are going to discuss few other way CXPACKET can be reduced. Potential Reasons: If data is heavily skewed, there are chances that query optimizer may estimate the correct amount of the data leading to assign fewer thread to query. This can easily lead to uneven workload on threads and may create CXPAKCET wait. While retrieving the data one of the thread face IO, Memory or CPU bottleneck and have to wait to get those resources to execute its tasks, may create CXPACKET wait as well. Data which is retrieved is on different speed IO Subsystem. (This is not common and hardly possible but there are chances). Higher fragmentations in some area of the table can lead less data per page. This may lead to CXPACKET wait. As I said the reasons here mentioned are not the major cause of the CXPACKET wait but any kind of scenario can create the probable wait time. Best Practices to Reduce CXPACKET wait: Refer earlier article regarding MAXDOP and Cost Threshold. De-fragmentation of Index can help as more data can be obtained per page. (Assuming close to 100 fill-factor) If data is on multiple files which are on multiple similar speed physical drive, the CXPACKET wait may reduce. Keep the statistics updated, as this will give better estimate to query optimizer when assigning threads and dividing the data among available threads. Updating statistics can significantly improve the strength of the query optimizer to render proper execution plan. This may overall affect the parallelism process in positive way. Bad Practice: In one of the recent consultancy project, when I was called in I noticed that one of the ‘experienced’ DBA noticed higher CXPACKET wait and to reduce them, he has increased the worker threads. The reality was increasing worker thread has lead to many other issues. With more number of the threads, more amount of memory was used leading memory pressure. As there were more threads CPU scheduler faced higher ‘Context Switching’ leading further degrading performance. When I explained all these to ‘experienced’ DBA he suggested that now we should reduce the number of threads. Not really! Lower number of the threads may create heavy stalling for parallel queries. I suggest NOT to touch the setting of number of the threads when dealing with CXPACKET wait. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and I no way claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading book on-line for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats over here is generic and it varies by system to system. You are recommended to test this on development server before implementing to production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Integrating Windows Form Click Once Application into SharePoint 2007 &ndash; Part 1 of 2

  - by Kelly Jones

  Last year, I had the opportunity to build a solution that involved integrating a Windows Form application into a SharePoint 2007 (WSS version 3.0). In this post, I’ll layout our architecture thinking and in part two, I’ll describe the technical details. Business Case Our challenge was this: we needed an easy way for a small group of our users to upload documents, in batches.  They also needed to quickly set the meta data values, as well as set security on individual files. Using the out of the box uploads just didn’t fit.  The single file upload allows set the meta data, but our users would be uploading dozens of files.  The multiple upload would allow our users to upload batches of files, but it doesn’t allow them to set the meta data during upload.  Also, neither upload method allows the users to set the permissions on the file. Our Solution We looked into building a web control of some kind, but ruled that out due to security complexities (if I remember correctly).  Another option would have been using a technology like Silverlight (or Flash?), but our team didn’t have the skills necessary to build with these. So, after looking at what was technically possible, and also what skills our team had, we settled on a Windows Form application.  We also decided to deliver it to the clients via Click Once, so we would have the ability to easily update the application in the future. Lessons Learned After deploying our solution, we’ve learned a few lessons.  First, you’ll need to have the .Net Framework installed on the client computers.  We knew this, but we still ran into issues making sure our users had the proper framework version installed.  Second, we had issues with authentication.  Our issues were due to our testing domain being a separate Active Directory domain from the domain that our end users and their workstations were members of.  (See my earlier post about Clearing Saved Passwords for the fix to our problem). Our third issue was how we dealt with uploading files that were named the same.  Our application would replace the existing file with the new file, which is the way we expected it to work.  However, our users wanted to upload weekly reports, named the same as the previous week.  We solved this by using folders within the document library to keep the sets of reports separate from previous weeks. One last thing to consider before implementing a solution like this, is what browsers and platforms your users will be working from.  We only needed to support IE and Windows, which works fine.  However, if you need to support Firefox, there are add-ons that allow Click Once to work with Firefox.  This is still a Windows only solution though.  In order to support Macs, you’d have to focus on either browser techniques (AJAX?) or Silverlight/Flash. Summary Our users are happy with the Click Once app.  It allowed them to move all of their content to our SharePoint site in under a couple hours, which they were thrilled with.  We’re happy because we can easily deploy updates, our development time was small, and we met all of our business requirements.

  Read the article

• When to implement: Together with or after the source product?

  - by Jeremy Oosthuizen

  Somebody recently relayed a prospect's question to me: How hard would it be to implement OUBI after the source product (CC&B, WAM or NMS) has already been implemented? Fact is that MOST non-OUBI Data Warehouse / Business Intelligence implementations take place after the source application(s) are in place and hopefully stable. If an organization decides that they need better reporting and management information, then the logical path (see The Data Warehouse Institute's Data Warehouse Maturity Model) is to a Data Warehouse -- no matter when their last applications were implemented. If there is a pre-built Data Warehouse for their specific application, or even for the desired business process in their industry, they're in luck. Else they have to design and build from scratch, using a toolset. The implementation of a toolset is unlike the implementation of OUBI which, like OBI Apps, contain pre-built ETL routines and user content. Much has been written before about the advantages of that. So, because OUBI is designed specifically for Oracle Utilities transactional products, we often implement them in parallel -- with OUBI lagging a little behind by necessity, like Reporting. Customers know from the start they're going to need the solution, and therefore purchase the products at the same time. My biggest argument FOR a parallel installation/implementation of OUBI with the source product is two-fold: - There could be things (which is the technical term for data elements) that customers figure out they need when implementing OUBI, which are often easier added to the source product's implementation project, than to add later; - OUBI's ETL often points out errors (severe or not) with converted data, which are easier to fix during the source product's implementation project, or it may even be impossible to fix afterwards. The Conversion routines sometimes miss these errors, because the source system can live with the not-quite-perfect converted data. If the data can't be properly extracted, i.e. the proper Dimensions linked to the Facts, then it can't get into OUBI. That means it can't be analyzed effectively along with the rest of the organization's data. Then there is also the throw-away-work argument, which may be significant. The operational / transactional system cannot go live without reports on Day 1. A lot of those reports would be taken care of by the implementation of OUBI. If OUBI is implemented after go-live, those reports STILL have to be built during the source product's implementation project, but they become throw-away after the OUBI implementation. I have sometimes been told that it is better to implement OUBI after the source product, because it cuts down on scope and risk for the source product's implementation project. All I can say to that, is bah humbug. No, seriously, given the arguments above, planning has to include the OUBI implementation and it has to be managed properly -- just like any other implementation. If so, it should not add any risk and it should be included in the scope from the start. The answer to the prospect's question is therefore that it is not that much more difficult; after all, most DW/BI implemenations are done like that. They just have to consider the points above.

  Read the article

• Enterprise 2.0 - Connecting People, Processes & Content

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  With recent technological advances, the Internet is changing. When users head to the web, they are no longer just looking for information from a simple text and picture based website. Users want a more interactive experience - they want to participate, to share their views and get the feedback of others. And this is precisely what Web 2.0 technology addresses. Web 2.0 is about web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 technology is everywhere on the Internet and is radically changing the speed and medium in which we interact and communicate. There are thousands of examples in the consumer world of Web 2.0 applications, technologies and solutions at work. You might be familiar with some of them...blogs, wikis (Wikipedia), Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn - these are all examples of Web 2.0. And these technologies are transforming our world into a real-time, participation-oriented, user-driven, content-centric world. With all of these Web 2.0 solutions it's about the user, the consumer and all the content they are generating. It's a world full of online communities where people share and participate. We're not talking about disseminating information top-down , nor is it a bottom-up fight. Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate and share. The more you participate, the more you share, the more valued you are in the community. The web is not just a collection of documents online. It is the social web.  For the active users in the community, staying connected becomes critically important so they can participate at anytime and from anywhere. And because feedback and interaction are so critical, time is of the essence. When everyone is providing immediate responses, you feel the urge to do the same. Hence everything needs to be done right now, together...and collaboratively. With all the content being generated online by users, there is complete information overload out there. (That's a good thing for Google). But...it's no longer just about search. Sometimes you want the information to just come to you. Recommendations and discovery engines will deliver you more applicable results than a non-contextual search. How many of you have heard about a news headline on Facebook as part of your feed before you read the paper or see it on TV? This is how the new generation of workers live their daily lives...and as they enter the workforce, these trends and technologies are showing up in the enterprise too. A lot of the Web 2.0 technologies and solutions in the consumer world are geared for just that....consumers. But the core concepts that put them into the Web 2.0 category can be applied to the enterprise as well. And that is what we mean when we talk about Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in the workplace.  It provides a modern user experience by connecting the people, content and business processes inside and outside the enterprise. Enterprise 2.0 empowers users to collaborate more effectively, find and share information in the proper content and improves the overall business processes which they participate in. As we head into 2011, is your organization using Enterprise 2.0 capabilities to the fullest? Are you connecting your people, processes and content together to provide a modern user experience?

  Read the article

• Anatomy of a serialization killer

  - by Brian Donahue

  As I had mentioned last month, I have been working on a project to create an easy-to-use managed debugger. It's still an internal tool that we use at Red Gate as part of product support to analyze application errors on customer's computers, and as such, should be easy to use and not require installation. Since the project has got rather large and important, I had decided to use SmartAssembly to protect all of my hard work. This was trivial for the most part, but the loading and saving of results was broken by SA after using the obfuscation, rendering the loading and saving of XML results basically useless, although the merging and error reporting was an absolute godsend and definitely worth the price of admission. (Well, I get my Red Gate licenses for free, but you know what I mean!)My initial reaction was to simply exclude the serializable results class and all of its' members from obfuscation, and that was just dandy, but a few weeks on I decided to look into exactly why serialization had broken and change the code to work with SA so I could write any new code to be compatible with SmartAssembly and save me some additional testing and changes to the SA project.In simple terms, SA does all that it can to prevent serialization problems, for instance, it will not obfuscate public members of a DLL and it will exclude any types with the Serializable attribute from obfuscation. This prevents public members and properties from being made private and having the name changed. If the serialization is done inside the executable, however, public members have the access changed to private and are renamed. That was my first problem, because my types were in the executable assembly and implemented ISerializable, but did not have the Serializable attribute set on them!public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {        }The second problem caused by the pruning feature. Although RedFlagResults had public members, they were not truly properties, and used the GetObjectData() method of ISerializable to serialize the members. For that reason, SA could not exclude these members from pruning and further broke the serialization. public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions;                 #region ISerializable Members                 public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)                {                                info.AddValue("Exceptions", Exceptions);                }                 #endregionSo to fix this, it was necessary to make Exceptions a proper property by implementing get and set on it. Also, I added the Serializable attribute so that I don't have to exclude the class from obfuscation in the SA project any more. The DoNotPrune attribute means I do not need to exclude the class from pruning.[Serializable, SmartAssembly.Attributes.DoNotPrune]        public class RedFlagResults        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions {get;set;}        }Similarly, the Exception class gets the Serializable and DoNotPrune attributes applied so all of its' properties are excluded from obfuscation.Now my project has some protection from prying eyes by scrambling up the code so it's harder to reverse-engineer, without breaking anything. SmartAssembly has also provided the benefit of merging so that the end-user doesn't need to extract all of the DLL files needed by RedFlag into a directory, and can be run directly from the .zip archive. When an error occurs (hey, I'm only human!), an exception report can be sent to me so I can see what went wrong without having to, er, debug the debugger.

  Read the article

• How to future-proof my touch-enabled web application?

  - by Rice Flour Cookies

  I recently went out and purchased a touch-screen monitor with the intention of learning how to program touch-enabled web applications. I had reviewed the MDN documentation about touch events, as well as the W3C specification. To get started, I wrote a very short test page with two event handlers: one for the mousedown event and one for the touchstart event. I fired up the web page in IE and touched the document and found that only the mousedown event fired. I saw the same behavior with Firefox, only to find out later that Firefox can be set to enable the touchstart event using about:config. When touch events are enabled, the touchstart event fires, but not mousedown. Chrome was even stranger: it fired both events when I touched the document: touchstart and mousedown, in that order. Only on my Android phone does it appear to be the case that only the touchstart event fires when I touch the document. I did a a Google search and ended up on two interesting pages. First, I found the page on CanIUse for touch events: http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch Can I Use clearly indicates that IE does not support touch events as of this writing, and Firefox only supports touch events if they are manually enabled. Furthermore, all four browsers I mentioned treat the touch in a completely different way. It boils down to this: IE: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch disabled: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch enabled: touch event Chrome: touch event and simulated mouse click Android: touch event What is more frustrating is that Google also found a Microsoft page called RethinkIE. RethinkIE brags about touch support in IE; as a matter of fact, one of their slogans is "Touch the Web". It links to a number of touch-based application. I followed some of these links, and as best I can tell, it's just like CanIUse described; no proper touch support; just simulated mouse clicks. The MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Touch) and W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/) documentation describe a far richer interface; an interface that doesn't just simulate mouse clicks, but keeps track of multiple touches at once, the contact area, rotation, and force of each touch, and unique identifiers for each touch so that they can be tracked individually. I don't see how simulated mouse clicks can ever touch the above described functionality, which, once again, is part of the W3C specification, although it is listed as "non-normative", meaning that a browser can claim to be standards-compliant without implementing it. (Why bother making it part of the standard, then?) What motivated my research is that I've written an HTML5 application that doesn't work on Android because Android doesn't fire mouse events. I'm now afraid to try to implement touch for my application because the browsers all behave so differently. I imagine that at some time in the future, the browsers might start handling touch similarly, but how can I tell how they might be handled in the future short of writing code to handle the behavior of each individual browser? Is it possible to write code today that will work with touch-enabled browsers for years to come? If so, how?

  Read the article

• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

  - by user127817

  I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

  Read the article

• Introducing Oracle System Assistant

  - by B.Koch

  by Josh Rosen One of the challenges with today's servers is getting the server up and running and understanding what all of the steps are once you plug the server in for the first time. So many different pieces come into play: installing drivers, updating firmware, configuring RAID, and provisioning the operating system. All of these steps must be done before you can even start using the server. Finding the latest firmware and drivers, making sure you have the right versions, and knowing that all the different software and firmware components work together properly can be a real challenge. If not done correctly, such as if you separately downloading disk firmware or controller firmware that doesn't match the existing OS drivers, you could experience bugs, performance problems, and incompatibilities. Gone are the days of having to locate the tools and drivers media that shipped with the server only to find out that newer versions of software and firmware are available on the web. Oracle has solved these challenges in the new X3-2 family of servers by introducing Oracle System Assistant. Oracle System Assistant is an innovative tool that is built-in to every new x86 server. It provides step-by-step assistance with configuring the server, updating firmware and drivers, and provisioning the operating system. Once you have completed all of the steps in the Oracle System Assistant tool, the server is ready to use. Oracle System Assistant was designed to be easy and straightforward. Starting it is as simple as pressing F9 when the server is booting. You'll need a keyboard, monitor, and mouse or you can use the remote console feature of Oracle ILOM (Integrated Lights Out Manager) to access a virtual KVM to the server from any machine. From there Oracle System Assistant will walk you through each of the steps necessary to set up your server. After configuring the network settings for Oracle System Assistant, the next step is to check for any new software or firmware for the server. Oracle System Assistant connects back to Oracle using your My Oracle Support account and downloads any updates that were made available to you for this specific server. This is where you really start to see the innovation that went into Oracle System Assistant. Firmware for Oracle ILOM and BIOS, operating system drivers, and other system firmware (including for option cards and disk drivers) come as a single bundle, downloading as a single unit, that has been engineered and tested to work together by Oracle. Oracle System Assistant figures out the right combination for your server, so you don't have to. Now that the server has the latest firmware, Oracle System Assistant will next walk you through configuring the hardware. From Oracle System Assistant, you can configure many Oracle ILOM settings, including the network settings and initial user accounts. This ensures that ILOM is accessible and ready to use. Oracle System Assistant is where all parts of the server come together. In addition to communicating with Oracle ILOM and interacting with BIOS, Oracle System Assistant understands and can configure the storage subsystem. Before installing the operating system, Oracle System Assistant can detect the storage configuration and configure RAID for all disks in the system. At this point, the server is ready to be provisioned with the host operating system. You can use Oracle System Assistant to provision a supported OS, including Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, RHEL, SuSe Linux, and Windows. And by using Oracle System Assistant, you can be sure that the proper OS drivers are installed for each of the installed hardware components. With Oracle System Assistant, initial setup of the server has never been easier. If we can innovate around problems and find solutions to make our servers easier to manage, this reduces IT costs and makes managing servers simpler. I think with Oracle System Assistant we have done just that. Josh Rosen is a Principal Product Manager at Oracle and previously spent more than a decade as a developer and architect of system management software. Josh has worked on system management for many of Oracle's hardware products ranging from the earliest blade systems to the latest Oracle x86 servers.

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance – TechEd 2012 India

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India 2012 is just around the corner and I will be presenting there on two different session. SQL Server Performance Tuning is a very challenging subject that requires expertise in Database Administration and Database Development. I always have enjoyed talking about SQL Server Performance tuning subject. Just like doctors I like to call my every attempt to improve the performance of SQL Server queries and database server as a practice too. I have been working with SQL Server for more than 8 years and I believe that many of the performance tuning concept I have mastered. However, performance tuning is not a simple subject. However there are occasions when I feel stumped, there are occasional when I am not sure what should be the next step. When I face situation where I cannot figure things out easily, it makes me most happy because I clearly see this as a learning opportunity. I have been presenting in TechEd India for last three years. This is my fourth time opportunity to present a technical session on SQL Server. Just like every other year, I decided to present something different, something which I have spend years of learning. This time, I am going to present about parallel processes. It is widely believed that more the CPU will improve performance of the server. It is true in many cases. However, there are cases when limiting the CPU usages have improved overall health of the server. I will be presenting on the subject of Parallel Processes and its effects. I have spent more than a year working on this subject only. After working on various queries on multi-CPU systems I have personally learned few things. In coming TechEd session, I am going to share my experience with parallel processes and performance tuning. Session Details Title: Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance (Add to Calendar) Abstract: “More CPU More Performance” – A  very common understanding is that usage of multiple CPUs can improve the performance of the query. To get maximum performance out of any query – one has to master various aspects of the parallel processes. In this deep dive session, we will explore this complex subject with a very simple interactive demo. An attendee will walk away with proper understanding of CX_PACKET wait types, MAXDOP, parallelism threshold and various other concepts. Date and Time: March 23, 2012, 12:15 to 13:15 Location: Hotel Lalit Ashok - Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru – 560001, Karnataka, India. Add to Calendar Please submit your questions in the comments area and I will be for sure discussing them during my session. If I pick your question to discuss during my session, here is your gift I commit right now – SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

  Read the article

• Evaluating Solutions to Manage Product Compliance? Don’t Wait Much Longer

  - by Evelyn Neumayr

  By Kerrie Foy, Director PLM Product Marketing, Oracle Depending on severity, product compliance issues can cause various problems from run-away budgets to business closures. But effective policies and safeguards can create a strong foundation for innovation, productivity, market penetration and competitive advantage. If you’ve been putting off a systematic approach to product compliance, it is time to reconsider that decision. Why now?  No matter what industry, companies face a litany of worldwide and regional regulations that require proof of product compliance and environmental friendliness for market access.  For example, Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), a regulation that restricts the use of six dangerous materials used in the manufacture of electronic and electrical equipment, was originally adopted by the European Union in 2003 for implementation in 2006 and has evolved over time through various regional versions for North America, China, Japan, Korea, Norway and Turkey. In addition, the RoHS directive allowed for material exemptions used in Medical Devices, but that exemption ends in 2014. Additional regulations worth watching are the Battery Directive, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) directives. Additional regulations are expected from organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration in the US and similar organizations elsewhere. Meeting compliance requirements and also successfully investing in eco-friendly designs can be a major challenge. It may involve transforming business models, go-to-market strategies, supply networks, quality assurance policies and compliance processes.  Without a single source of truth for product data and without proper processes in place, ensuring product compliance burgeons into a crushing task that is cost-prohibitive and overwhelming.  However, the risk to consumer goodwill and satisfaction, revenue, business continuity, and market potential is too great not to solve the compliance challenge. Companies are beginning to adapt and thrive by implementing systematic approaches to product compliance that are more than functional bandages, they are revenue-generating engines. Consider working with Oracle to help you address your compliance needs. Many of the world’s most innovative leaders and pioneers are leveraging Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) portfolio of enterprise applications to manage the product value chain, centralize product data, automate processes, and launch more eco-friendly products to market faster.   Particularly, the Agile Product Governance & Compliance (PG&C) solution provides out-of-the-box functionality to integrate actionable regulatory information into the enterprise product record from the ideation to the disposal/recycling phase.  Agile PG&C is a comprehensive solution that makes product compliance per corporate initiatives and regulations more reliable and efficient. Throughout product lifecycles, use the solution to support full material disclosures, gain rapid visibility into non-compliance issues, efficiently manage declarations with your suppliers, feed compliance data into a corrective action if a product must be changed, and swiftly satisfy audits by showing all due diligence tracked in one solution. Given the compounding regulation and consumer focus on urgent environmental issues, now is the time to act. Implementing an enterprise-wide systematic approach to product compliance is a competitive investment. From the start, Agile PG&C enables companies to confidently design for compliance and sustainability, reduce the cost of compliance, minimize the risk of business interruption, deliver responsible products, and inspire new innovation.  Don’t wait any longer! To find out more about Agile Product Governance & Compliance download the data sheet, contact your sales representative, or call Oracle at 1-800-633-0738.

  Read the article

• Combining Scrum, TFS2010 and Email to keep everyone in the loop

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Often you will receive rich information from your Product Owner (Customer) about tasks. That information can be in the form of Word documents, HTML Emails and Pictures, but you generally receive them in the context of an Email. You need to keep these so your Team can refer to it later, and so you can send a “done” when the task has been completed. This preserves the “history” of the task and allows you to keep relevant partied included in any future conversation. At SSW we keep the original email so that we can reply Done and delete the email. But keeping it in your email does not help other members of the team if they complete the task and need to send the “done”. Worse yet, the description field in Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS 2010) does not support HTML and images, nor does the default task template support an “interested parties” or CC field. You can attach this content manually, but it can be time consuming. Figure: Description only supports plain text, and History supports HTML with no images   What should we do? At SSW we always follow the rules, and it just so happened that we have rules to both achieve this, and to make it easier. You should follow the existing Rules to Better Project Management  and attach the email to your task so you can refer to and reply to it later when you close the task: Do you know what Outlook add-ins you need? Describe the work item request in an email Use Outlook Add-in to move the email to a TFS Work Item When replying to an email with “done” you should follow: Do you update Team Companion template, so the email "subject" doesn't change? Do you update Team Companion template, so you can generate a proper "done" mail? Following these simple rules will help your Product Owner understand you better, and allow your team to more effectively collaborate with each other. An added bonus is that as we are keeping the email history in sync with TFS. When you “reply all” to the email all of the interested partied to the Task are also included. This notified those that may have been blocked by your task to keep up to date with its status. This has been published as Do you know to ensure that relevant emails are attached to tasks in our Rules to Better Scrum using TFS. What could we do better? I would like to see this process automated so that we capture the information correctly in the task without the need to use email. This would require a change to the process template in Team Foundation Server to add an “Interested Parties” field. Each reply to the email would need to be automatically processed into a Work Item. This could be done by adding a task identifier as the first item in the “Relates to” email header, and copying in an email address that you watch. This would then parse out the relevant information and add the new message to the history, update the “Interested parties” field and attach the Images. Upon reflection, it may even be possible, but more difficult to do this using ONLY the History field and including some of the header information in there to the build a done email with history. This would not currently deal with email “forks” well, but I think it would be adequate for our needs. It would be nice if we could find time to implement this, but currently it is but a pipe dream. Maybe Microsoft could implement something in the next version of Team Foundation Server, and in the mean time we have a process that works well. Technorati Tags: Scrum,SSW Rules,TFS 2010,TFS 2008

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – UNION ALL and ORDER BY – How to Order Table Separately While Using UNION ALL

  - by pinaldave

  I often see developers trying following syntax while using ORDER BY. SELECT Columns FROM TABLE1 ORDER BY Columns UNION ALL SELECT Columns FROM TABLE2 ORDER BY Columns However the above query will return following error. Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 5 Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘ORDER’. It is not possible to use two different ORDER BY in the UNION statement. UNION returns single resultsetand as per the Logical Query Processing Phases. However, if your requirement is such that you want your top and bottom query of the UNION resultset independently sorted but in the same resultset you can add an additional static column and order by that column. Let us re-create the same scenario. First create two tables and populated with sample data. USE tempdb GO -- Create table CREATE TABLE t1 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE t2 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); GO -- Sample Data Build INSERT INTO t1 (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, 'Col1-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Col3-t1'; INSERT INTO t2 (ID, Col1) SELECT 3, 'Col1-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 1, 'Col3-t2'; GO If we SELECT the data from both the table using UNION ALL . -- SELECT without ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 GO We will get the data in following order. However, our requirement is to get data in following order. If we need data ordered by Column1 we can ORDER the resultset ordered by Column1. -- SELECT with ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 ORDER BY ID GO Now to get the data in independently sorted in UNION ALL let us add additional column OrderKey and use ORDER BY  on that column. I think the description does not do proper justice let us see the example here. -- SELECT with ORDER BY - with ORDER KEY SELECT ID, Col1, 'id1' OrderKey FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1, 'id2' OrderKey FROM t2 ORDER BY OrderKey, ID GO The above query will give the desired result. Now do not forget to clean up the database by running the following script. -- Clean up DROP TABLE t1; DROP TABLE t2; GO Here is the complete script used in this example. USE tempdb GO -- Create table CREATE TABLE t1 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE t2 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); GO -- Sample Data Build INSERT INTO t1 (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, 'Col1-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Col3-t1'; INSERT INTO t2 (ID, Col1) SELECT 3, 'Col1-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 1, 'Col3-t2'; GO -- SELECT without ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 GO -- SELECT with ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 ORDER BY ID GO -- SELECT with ORDER BY - with ORDER KEY SELECT ID, Col1, 'id1' OrderKey FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1, 'id2' OrderKey FROM t2 ORDER BY OrderKey, ID GO -- Clean up DROP TABLE t1; DROP TABLE t2; GO I am sure there are many more ways to achieve this, what method would you use if you have to face the similar situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Build Your Own CE6 Kernel

  - by Kate Moss' Big Fan

  The Share Source Program in Windows CE provides many modules in %_WINCEROOT%\Private\ tree, and the kernel is one of them! Although it is not full source of kernel but it is good enough for tracing it, even tweak the kernel. Tracing the kernel and see how it works is lots of fun, but it is fascinated to modify and verify the change you made. So first comes first, where is the source of kernel? It's in your %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ And next question will be "How do I build it?", Some of you may say just "build -c" there and it should be good. If you are the owner of kernel and got full source, that is definitely the right answer, but none of them are applied to our case though. So what should I do? Let's dig deeper into the coreos\nk folder, there are a couples of subfolder, CELOG, KDSTUB, KERNEL and etc. KERNEL\ is the main component of kernel.dll, in the other word, most of the modify to kernel is going to happen here. And the good thing is, you could "build -c" in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ with no error at all. But before doing that, remember to backup eveything you are going to modify, including the source and binaries; remember, this is not something belong to you, and if you didn't restore them back later, it could end up confuse the subsequence QFE updates! Here is the steps Backup the source code, I will suggest the whole %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ Backup the binaries in common\oak\lib\, and again if you are not sure which files, backup the whole %_WINCEROOT%\common\oak\lib\ is the safest way. Do whatever modification you want in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ build -c in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel If everything went well so far, you should get a new nkmain.lib,nkmain.pdb, nkprmain.lib and nkprmain.pdb in %_WINCEROOT%\public\common\oak\lib\%_TGTCPU%\%WINCEDEBUG%\ Basically, you just rebuild your new kernel, the rest is to "blddemo clean -q" to have your new kernel SYSGEN'd and include in your OS Image. Or just "set WINCEREL=1" then "sysgen -p common nk nkprof" and "makeimg" if you can't wait another minutes for "blddemo clean -q" Tat sounds good, but some of you may not like the idea to alter any code in private folder, and not to mention how annoying to backup/restore files every time. Better idea? Yes, Microsoft provides a tool SYSGEN_CAPTURE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee504678.aspx for detail and usage) to creates Sources files for public drivers that you want to modify and build in your platform directory. In fact, not only public drivers, virtually anything in the %_WINCEROOT%\public\<project name>\cesysgen\makefile can be captured, and of course including kernel. So I am going to introduce a second way to build your own kernel by using SYSGEN_CAPTURE tool. Again the steps Create a folder in your BSP for building kernel, says %_TARGETPLATROOT%\SRC\Kernel. Use "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nk" and then you will get a SOURCES.KERN, you could also "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nkprof" to generate profiler enabled kernel. rename the SOURCE.KERN to SOURCES and copy one of the sample makefile into your kernel directory. For example the one in PRIVATE\WINCEOS\COREOS\NK\KERNEL\NKNORMAL. Copy the source files you want to modify from private\winceos\coreos\nk\kernel\ into your kernel directory. Modifying the SOURCES= macro to the source files you addes in step 4. For example, if you copied the vm.c, it is going to be SOURCES=vm.c Refer to the private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\sources.inc and add macro defines and proper include path in your SOURCES file. "set WINCEREL=1", "build -c" in your kernel directory and "makeimg", voila! Here is an example for the MACROS you need to add in x86 Here are the macros for x86 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DIN_KERNEL -DWINCEMACRO -DKERN_CORE # Machine independent defines CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDBGSUPPORT _COREOSROOT=$(_WINCEROOT)\private\winceos\coreos INCLUDES=$(_COREOSROOT)\inc;$(_COREOSROOT)\nk\inc !IFDEF DP_SETTINGS CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDP_SETTINGS=$(DP_SETTINGS) !ENDIF ASM_SAFESEH=1 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -Gs100000 -DENCODE_GS_COOKIE

  Read the article

• How to set default xrandr settings?

  - by echo-flow

  I'm trying to enable dual monitors in Ubuntu. This is working fine, but every time I do it, desktop effects is disabled. I think I've found the reason why, though: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Multihead/ As with the GNOME XRandR configuration method, setting Virtual to too large a value may result in a loss of hardware acceleration, and thus an inability to use Compiz and its desktop effects. When I use the GNOME monitor applet, or the Monitors configuration in the System menu, the default xrandr settings puts the second monitor to the right of the first, and, as I found with this bug, for most monitors this creates a virtual desktop larger than the maximum 2048 horizontal resolution needed for hardware acceleration on my netbook hardware. So, it seems like if I can modify xrandr's default settings so that it places the new desktop above or below (north or south of) the main LVDS display, then hardware acceleration, and therefore compiz will continue to work. Can anyone tell me, what is the easiest way to achieve this? UPDATE: I have confirmed that multihead support with desktop effects and hardware acceleration works when I move the external monitor display north of the main LVDS display. Right now this involves the following process: plugging in the external monitor, starting the Monitors configuration menu, desktop effects are disabled automatically (and all of the windows on my workspaces are moved to the first workspace), repositioning the external display so that it is north of LVDS display and clicking apply, and then navigating to the Appearance menu and telling it to reenable desktop effects. Is there a simpler way do this? UPDATE 2: OK, so I thought that perhaps the GNOME Monitors configuration screen was trying to be clever, and might be disbling desktop effects. So, I just tried using the xrandr command-line client instead, as follows: xrandr --output VGA1 --above LVDS1 When I do that, desktop effects are still disabled, and I need to manually reenable them. This, despite the fact that hardware acceleration works, and there is never a point where hardware acceleration stops working because the horizontal dimension of the virtual display is too large. So what program is trying to be clever, and is turning off desktop effects when it doesn't need to? And how do I make it stop? If there were a way to re-enable desktop effects from the command line, which I could then put into a script along with the proper xrandr invocation, I would accept that as a workaround. UPDATE 3: OK, here's my script to enable a second monitor with desktop effects. It might be evil, I'm not sure: second-monitor.sh xrandr --output VGA1 --above LVDS1 sleep 3 compiz --replace & The sleep statement might not be necessary. If there's a better way to do this, please let me know. UPDATE 4: This is a Dell Mini Inspiron 1012. Here are my system specifications: lspci -vv 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller Subsystem: Dell Device 041a Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 29 Region 0: Memory at f0b00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] Region 1: I/O ports at 18d0 [size=8] Region 2: Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Region 3: Memory at f0900000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller Subsystem: Dell Device 041a Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Region 0: Memory at f0b80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] Capabilities: <access denied> lsmod | grep i915 i915 287458 2 drm_kms_helper 29329 1 i915 drm 162409 3 i915,drm_kms_helper intel_agp 24375 2 i915 i2c_algo_bit 5028 1 i915 video 17375 1 i915

  Read the article

• Big Data – Basics of Big Data Architecture – Day 4 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we understood how Big Data evolution happened. Today we will understand basics of the Big Data Architecture. Big Data Cycle Just like every other database related applications, bit data project have its development cycle. Though three Vs (link) for sure plays an important role in deciding the architecture of the Big Data projects. Just like every other project Big Data project also goes to similar phases of the data capturing, transforming, integrating, analyzing and building actionable reporting on the top of  the data. While the process looks almost same but due to the nature of the data the architecture is often totally different. Here are few of the question which everyone should ask before going ahead with Big Data architecture. Questions to Ask How big is your total database? What is your requirement of the reporting in terms of time – real time, semi real time or at frequent interval? How important is the data availability and what is the plan for disaster recovery? What are the plans for network and physical security of the data? What platform will be the driving force behind data and what are different service level agreements for the infrastructure? This are just basic questions but based on your application and business need you should come up with the custom list of the question to ask. As I mentioned earlier this question may look quite simple but the answer will not be simple. When we are talking about Big Data implementation there are many other important aspects which we have to consider when we decide to go for the architecture. Building Blocks of Big Data Architecture It is absolutely impossible to discuss and nail down the most optimal architecture for any Big Data Solution in a single blog post, however, we can discuss the basic building blocks of big data architecture. Here is the image which I have built to explain how the building blocks of the Big Data architecture works. Above image gives good overview of how in Big Data Architecture various components are associated with each other. In Big Data various different data sources are part of the architecture hence extract, transform and integration are one of the most essential layers of the architecture. Most of the data is stored in relational as well as non relational data marts and data warehousing solutions. As per the business need various data are processed as well converted to proper reports and visualizations for end users. Just like software the hardware is almost the most important part of the Big Data Architecture. In the big data architecture hardware infrastructure is extremely important and failure over instances as well as redundant physical infrastructure is usually implemented. NoSQL in Data Management NoSQL is a very famous buzz word and it really means Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. This is because in Big Data Architecture the data is in any format. It can be unstructured, relational or in any other format or from any other data source. To bring all the data together relational technology is not enough, hence new tools, architecture and other algorithms are invented which takes care of all the kind of data. This is collectively called NoSQL. Tomorrow Next four days we will answer the Buzz Words – Hadoop. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

  Read the article

• Skewed: a rotating camera in a simple CPU-based voxel raycaster/raytracer

  - by voxelizr

  TL;DR -- in my first simple software voxel raycaster, I cannot get camera rotations to work, seemingly correct matrices notwithstanding. The result is skewed: like a flat rendering, correctly rotated, however distorted and without depth. (While axis-aligned ie. unrotated, depth and parallax are as expected.) I'm trying to write a simple voxel raycaster as a learning exercise. This is purely CPU based for now until I figure out how things work exactly -- fow now, OpenGL is just (ab)used to blit the generated bitmap to the screen as often as possible. Now I have gotten to the point where a perspective-projection camera can move through the world and I can render (mostly, minus some artifacts that need investigation) perspective-correct 3-dimensional views of the "world", which is basically empty but contains a voxel cube of the Stanford Bunny. So I have a camera that I can move up and down, strafe left and right and "walk forward/backward" -- all axis-aligned so far, no camera rotations. Herein lies my problem. Screenshot #1: correct depth when the camera is still strictly axis-aligned, ie. un-rotated. Now I have for a few days been trying to get rotation to work. The basic logic and theory behind matrices and 3D rotations, in theory, is very clear to me. Yet I have only ever achieved a "2.5 rendering" when the camera rotates... fish-eyey, bit like in Google Streetview: even though I have a volumetric world representation, it seems --no matter what I try-- like I would first create a rendering from the "front view", then rotate that flat rendering according to camera rotation. Needless to say, I'm by now aware that rotating rays is not particularly necessary and error-prone. Still, in my most recent setup, with the most simplified raycast ray-position-and-direction algorithm possible, my rotation still produces the same fish-eyey flat-render-rotated style looks: Screenshot #2: camera "rotated to the right by 39 degrees" -- note how the blue-shaded left-hand side of the cube from screen #2 is not visible in this rotation, yet by now "it really should"! Now of course I'm aware of this: in a simple axis-aligned-no-rotation-setup like I had in the beginning, the ray simply traverses in small steps the positive z-direction, diverging to the left or right and top or bottom only depending on pixel position and projection matrix. As I "rotate the camera to the right or left" -- ie I rotate it around the Y-axis -- those very steps should be simply transformed by the proper rotation matrix, right? So for forward-traversal the Z-step gets a bit smaller the more the cam rotates, offset by an "increase" in the X-step. Yet for the pixel-position-based horizontal+vertical-divergence, increasing fractions of the x-step need to be "added" to the z-step. Somehow, none of my many matrices that I experimented with, nor my experiments with matrix-less hardcoded verbose sin/cos calculations really get this part right. Here's my basic per-ray pre-traversal algorithm -- syntax in Go, but take it as pseudocode: fx and fy: pixel positions x and y rayPos: vec3 for the ray starting position in world-space (calculated as below) rayDir: vec3 for the xyz-steps to be added to rayPos in each step during ray traversal rayStep: a temporary vec3 camPos: vec3 for the camera position in world space camRad: vec3 for camera rotation in radians pmat: typical perspective projection matrix The algorithm / pseudocode: // 1: rayPos is for now "this pixel, as a vector on the view plane in 3d, at The Origin" rayPos.X, rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z = ((fx / width) - 0.5), ((fy / height) - 0.5), 0 // 2: rotate around Y axis depending on cam rotation. No prob since view plane still at Origin 0,0,0 rayPos.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(camRad.Y)) // 3: a temp vec3. planeDist is -0.15 or some such -- fov-based dist of view plane from eye and also the non-normalized, "in axis-aligned world" traversal step size "forward into the screen" rayStep.X, rayStep.Y, rayStep.Z = 0, 0, planeDist // 4: rotate this too -- 0,zstep should become some meaningful xzstep,xzstep rayStep.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(CamRad.Y)) // set up direction vector from still-origin-based-ray-position-off-rotated-view-plane plus rotated-zstep-vector rayDir.X, rayDir.Y, rayDir.Z = -rayPos.X - me.rayStep.X, -rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z + rayStep.Z // perspective projection rayDir.Normalize() rayDir.MultMat(pmat) // before traversal, the ray starting position has to be transformed from origin-relative to campos-relative rayPos.Add(camPos) I'm skipping the traversal and sampling parts -- as per screens #1 through #3, those are "basically mostly correct" (though not pretty) -- when axis-aligned / unrotated.

  Read the article

• Ubuntu 12.04 // Likewise Open // Unable to ever authenticate AD users

  - by Rob

  So Ubuntu 12.04, Likewise latest from the beyondtrust website. Joins domain fine. Gets proper information from lw-get-status. Can use lw-find-user-by-name to retrieve/locate users. Can use lw-enum-users to get all users. Attempting to login with an AD user via SSH generates the following errors in the auth.log file: Nov 28 19:15:45 hostname sshd[2745]: PAM unable to dlopen(pam_winbind.so): /lib/security/pam_winbind.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Nov 28 19:15:45 hostname sshd[2745]: PAM adding faulty module: pam_winbind.so Nov 28 19:15:51 hostname sshd[2745]: error: PAM: Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info for DOMAIN\\user.name from remote.hostname Nov 28 19:16:06 hostname sshd[2745]: Connection closed by 10.1.1.84 [preauth] Attempting to login via the LightDM itself generates similar errors in the auth.log file. Nov 28 19:19:29 hostname lightdm: PAM unable to dlopen(pam_winbind.so): /lib/security/pam_winbind.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Nov 28 19:19:29 hostname lightdm: PAM adding faulty module: pam_winbind.so Nov 28 19:19:47 hostname lightdm: pam_succeed_if(lightdm:auth): requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met by user "DOMAIN\user.name" Nov 28 19:19:52 hostname lightdm: [lsass-pam] [module:pam_lsass]pam_sm_authenticate error [login:DOMAIN\user.name][error code:40022] Nov 28 19:19:54 hostname lightdm: PAM unable to dlopen(pam_winbind.so): /lib/security/pam_winbind.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Nov 28 19:19:54 hostname lightdm: PAM adding faulty module: pam_winbind.so Attempting to login via a console on the system itself generates slightly different errors: Nov 28 19:31:09 hostname login[997]: PAM unable to dlopen(pam_winbind.so): /lib/security/pam_winbind.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Nov 28 19:31:09 hostname login[997]: PAM adding faulty module: pam_winbind.so Nov 28 19:31:11 hostname login[997]: [lsass-pam] [module:pam_lsass]pam_sm_authenticate error [login:DOMAIN\user.name][error code:40022] Nov 28 19:31:14 hostname login[997]: FAILED LOGIN (1) on '/dev/tty2' FOR 'DOMAIN\user.name', Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info Nov 28 19:31:31 hostname login[997]: FAILED LOGIN (2) on '/dev/tty2' FOR 'DOMAIN\user.name', Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info I am baffled. The errors obviously are correct, the file /lib/security/pam_winbind.so does not exist. If its a dependancy/required, surely it should be part of the package? I've installed/reinstalled, I've used the downloaded package from the beyondtrust website, i've used the repository, nothing seems to work, every method of installing this application generates the same errors for me. UPDATE : Hrmm, I thought likewise didn't use native winbind but its own modules. Installing winbind from apt-get uninstalls pbis-open (likewise) and generates failures when installing if pbis-open is installed first. Uninstalled winbind, reinstalled pbis-open, same issue as above. The file pam_winbind.so does not exist in that location. Setting up pbis-open-legacy (7.0.1.918) ... Installing Packages was successful This computer is joined to DOMAIN.LOCAL New libraries and configurations have been installed for PAM and NSS. Clearly it thinks it has installed it, but it hasn't. It may be a legacy issue with the previous attempt to configure domain integration manually with winbind. Does anyone have a working likewise-open installation and does the /etc/nsswitch.conf include references to winbind? Or do the /etc/pam.d/common-account or /etc/pam.d/common-password reference pam_winbind.so? I'm unsure if those entries are just legacy or setup by likewise. UPDATE 2 : Complete reinstall of OS fixed it and it worked seamlessly, like it was meant to and those 2 PAM files did NOT include entries for pam_winbind.so, so that was the underlying problem. Thanks for the assist.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153  | Next Page >