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• Issues printing through ssh tunnel and port forwarding

  - by simogasp

  I'm having some problems trying to print through a ssh tunnel. I'd like to print from my laptop to a network printer (Toshiba es453, for what matters) which is in a local network. I can reach the local network using a gateway. So far I did the following: ssh -N -L19100:<Printer_IP>:9100 <username>@<ssh_gateway> Basically i just mapped the port 19100 of my laptop directly to the input port of the printer, passing through the gateway. So far, so good. Then, i tried to install on my laptop a new printer with the GUI config tool of ubuntu, so that the new printer is on localhost at port 19100 (as APP Socket/HP Jet Direct) , then I provided the proper driver of the printer. In theory, once the tunnel is open I should be able to print from any program just selecting this printer. Of course, it does not work. :-) The document hangs in the queue with status Processing while in the shell where I set up the tunnel I get these errors on failing opening channels debug1: Local forwarding listening on ::1 port 19100. debug1: channel 0: new [port listener] debug1: Local forwarding listening on 127.0.0.1 port 19100. debug1: channel 1: new [port listener] debug1: Requesting [email protected] debug1: Entering interactive session. debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip] debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 3: new [direct-tcpip] channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out debug1: channel 2: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 19100 for 195.220.21.227 port 9100, connect from ::1 port 44434, nchannels 4 debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip] channel 3: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out debug1: channel 3: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 19100 for 195.220.21.227 port 9100, connect from ::1 port 44443, nchannels 4 channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out debug1: channel 2: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 19100 for 195.220.21.227 port 9100, connect from ::1 port 44493, nchannels 3 debug1: Connection to port 19100 forwarding to 195.220.21.227 port 9100 requested. debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip] As a further debugging test I tried the following. From a machine inside the local network I did a telnet <IP_printer> 9100, got access, wrote some random thing, closed the connection and correctly I got a print of what I had written. So the port and the ip of the printer should be correct. I tried the same from my laptop with the tunnel opened, the telnet succeeded but, again, the printer didn't print anything, getting the usual channel x: open failed: errors. I'm not a great expert on the matter, I just thought that in theory it was possible to do something like that, but maybe there is something that I didn't consider or I did wrong. Any clue? Thanks! Simone [update] As further debugging test, I tried to replicate the procedure from a machine in the local network. From that machine, I did ssh -N -L19100:<IP_printer>:9100 <username>@<ssh_gateway> (note that now the machine, the gateway and the printer are in the same local network) then I tried again the telnet test with telnet localhost 19100, I got access and everything, but I didn't get the print but the usual error channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out Maybe I am missing some other connection to be forwarded or maybe this is not allowed by the administrators. Of course, if I connect via ssh tunneling to the local machine from my laptop through the gateway, I can successfully print using the lpr command (from the local machine). But this is what I would like to avoid (yes, I'm lazy...:-), I would like to have a more 'elegant' and transparent way to do that.

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• Part 9: EBS Customizations, how to track

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  In the previous blogs we were concentrating on the preparation tasks. We have defined standards, we know about the tools and techniques we will start with. Additionally, we have defined the modification strategy, and how to handle such topics best. Now we are ready to take the requirements! Such requirements coming over in spreadsheets, word files (like GAP documents), or in any other format. As we have to assign some attributes, we start numbering all that and assign a short name to each of these requirements (=CEMLI reference). We may also have already a Functional person assigned, and we might involve someone from the tech team to estimate, and we like to assign a status such as 'planned', 'estimated' etc. All these data are usually kept in spreadsheets, but I would put them into a database (yes, I am from Oracle :). If you don't have any good looking and centralized application already, please give a try with Oracle APEX. It should be up and running in a day and the imported sheets are than manageable concurrently!  For one of my clients I have created this CEMLI-DB; in between enriched with a lot of additional functionality, but initially it was just a simple centralized CEMLI tracking application. Why I am pointing out again the centralized method to manage such data? Well, your data quality will dramatically increase, if you let your project members see (also review and update) "your" data.  APEX allows you to filter, sort, print, and also export. And if you can spend some time to define proper value lists, everyone will gain from. APEX allows you to work in 'agile' mode, means you can improve your application step by step. Let's say you like to reference a document, or even upload the same, you can do that. Or, you need to classify the CEMLIs by release, just add this release field, same for business area or CEMLI type. One CEMLI record may then look like this: Prepare one or two (online) reports, to be ready to present your "workload" to the project management. Use such extracts also when you work offline (to prioritize etc.). But as soon as you are again connected, feed the data back into the central application. Note: I have combined this application with an additional issue tracker.  Here the most important element is the CEMLI reference, which acts as link to any other application (if you are not using APEX also as issue tracker :).  Please spend a minute to define such a reference (see blog Part 8: How to name Customizations).   Summary: Building the bridge from Gap analyse to the development has to be done in a controlled way. Usually the information is provided differently, but it is suggested to collect all requirements centrally. Oracle APEX is a great solution to enter and maintain such information in a structured, but flexible way. APEX helped me a lot to work with distributed development teams during the complete development cycle.

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• Who Makes a Good Product Owner

  - by Robert May

  In general, the best product owners are those that care passionately about the customer of the product.  Note that I didn’t say about the product itself.  Actually, people that only care about the product, generally do not make good product owners.  Products only matter in relationship to their customers.  If a product doesn’t provide value to the customer, then the product has no value, no matter what a person might think of the product, and no matter what cool technologies exist inside of the product. A good product owner is also a good negotiator.  They recognize that many different priorities exist inside of a corporation, but that there can be only one list that developers work from.  A good product owner recognizes that its their job to help others around them prioritize (perhaps with a Product Council), but also understand that they alone have the final say about priorities and are willing to make the tough decisions required.  Deciding the priority between two perfectly valid stories is very difficult, especially when the stories are from two different departments! A good product owner is deeply interested in helping the team be successful.  They don’t seek to control the team, but instead seek to understand what the team can do and then work with the team to get the best product possible for the Customer.  A good product owner is never denigrating to team members, ever.  They recognize that such behavior would damage the trust that needs to be present between team members and product owners and will avoid it at all costs. In general, technical people (i.e. former or current developers) make poor product owners.  In their minds, they can’t separate implementation details from user functionality, so their stories end up sounding like implementation details.  For example, “The user enters their username on the password screen” is something that a technical product owner would write.  The proper wording for that story is “A user supplies the system with their credentials.”  Because technical people think different from the rest of the population, they are generally not a good fit. A good product owner is also a good writer.  Writing good stories demands good writing.  The art of persuasion, descriptiveness and just general good grammar are all required.  A good Product Owner must also be well spoken, since most of what will be conveyed will be conveyed with the spoken word, not just written word. A good product owner is a “People Person.”  They like talking to people and are very patient.  They don’t mind having questions repeated or fielding many questions, because they want to make sure that the ideas they’re conveying are properly understood so the customer gets the best product possible.  They are happy to answer any questions a team member may have and invite feedback and criticism of designs and stories, since they want a good product.  They really have little ego that gets in the way of building a great product. All of these qualities can be hard to find, but if you look close enough, you’ll find the right person in your organization.  Product owners can be found anywhere, not just in upper management.  Some of the best product owners are those that are very close to the customer.  In fact, check your customer support staff.  I’d bet that several great product owners are lurking there. Final note about what makes a good product owner.  You’re probably NOT going to find a good product owner in a manager, especially if they consider themselves a “Manager.”  Product owners don’t manage anything but the backlog, so be especially careful if the person you’re selecting for Product Owner is a manager. Up Next, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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• Best Design Pattern for Coupling User Interface Components and Data Structures

  - by szahn

  I have a windows desktop application with a tree view. Due to lack of a sound data-binding solution for a tree view, I've implemented my own layer of abstraction on it to bind nodes to my own data structure. The requirements are as follows: Populate a tree view with nodes that resemble fields in a data structure. When a node is clicked, display the appropriate control to modify the value of that property in the instance of the data structure. The tree view is populated with instances of custom TreeNode classes that inherit from TreeNode. The responsibility of each custom TreeNode class is to (1) format the node text to represent the name and value of the associated field in my data structure, (2) return the control used to modify the property value, (3) get the value of the field in the control (3) set the field's value from the control. My custom TreeNode implementation has a property called "Control" which retrieves the proper custom control in the form of the base control. The control instance is stored in the custom node and instantiated upon first retrieval. So each, custom node has an associated custom control which extends a base abstract control class. Example TreeNode implementation: //The Tree Node Base Class public abstract class TreeViewNodeBase : TreeNode { public abstract CustomControlBase Control { get; } public TreeViewNodeBase(ExtractionField field) { UpdateControl(field); } public virtual void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field) { Control.UpdateControl(field); UpdateCaption(FormatValueForCaption()); } public virtual void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field) { Control.SaveChanges(field); UpdateCaption(FormatValueForCaption()); } public virtual string FormatValueForCaption() { return Control.FormatValueForCaption(); } public virtual void UpdateCaption(string newValue) { this.Text = Caption; this.LongText = newValue; } } //The tree node implementation class public class ExtractionTypeNode : TreeViewNodeBase { private CustomDropDownControl control; public override CustomControlBase Control { get { if (control == null) { control = new CustomDropDownControl(); control.label1.Text = Caption; control.comboBox1.Items.Clear(); control.comboBox1.Items.AddRange( Enum.GetNames( typeof(ExtractionField.ExtractionType))); } return control; } } public ExtractionTypeNode(ExtractionField field) : base(field) { } } //The custom control base class public abstract class CustomControlBase : UserControl { public abstract void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field); public abstract void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field); public abstract string FormatValueForCaption(); } //The custom control generic implementation (view) public partial class CustomDropDownControl : CustomControlBase { public CustomDropDownControl() { InitializeComponent(); } public override void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field) { //Nothing to do here } public override void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field) { //Nothing to do here } public override string FormatValueForCaption() { //Nothing to do here return string.Empty; } } //The custom control specific implementation public class FieldExtractionTypeControl : CustomDropDownControl { public override void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field) { comboBox1.SelectedIndex = comboBox1.FindStringExact(field.Extraction.ToString()); } public override void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field) { field.Extraction = (ExtractionField.ExtractionType) Enum.Parse(typeof(ExtractionField.ExtractionType), comboBox1.SelectedItem.ToString()); } public override string FormatValueForCaption() { return string.Empty; } The problem is that I have "generic" controls which inherit from CustomControlBase. These are just "views" with no logic. Then I have specific controls that inherit from the generic controls. I don't have any functions or business logic in the generic controls because the specific controls should govern how data is associated with the data structure. What is the best design pattern for this?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 29, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 29, 2011Popular Releasespatterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 3.0: DLcalc 3.0 can perform Duckworth/Lewis Professional Edition calculations 100% accurately. It also produces over-by-over and ball-by-ball PAR score tables.Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 2.2.0.1: In this version: Custom Icons - now you can change the icons of the bookmarks. By default, whenever an image is added, the icon is automatically changed to a thumbnail of the picture. This can be turned off in the settings (Options... > Settings) Ability to remove items from the 'Recent' category Bugfixes - 'Choose' button in 'Edit Bookmark' now works Another bug fix: another problem in the 'Edit Bookmark' windowMedia Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET4.5 Preview: The Unity 3.0.1026.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. The major changes include: Unity projects updated to target .NET 4.5. Dynamic build plans modified to use compiled lambda expressions instead of Reflection.Emit Converting reflection to use the new TypeInfo for reflection. Projects updated to work with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 Preview Notes/Known Issues: The Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityServiceLocator class cannot be use...Managed Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 4: Detailed information on this release is available on the BCL team blog.Image Converter: Image Converter 0.3: New Features: - English and German support Technical Improvements: - Microsoft All Rules using Code Analysis Planned Features for future release: 1. Unit testing 2. Command line interface 3. Automatic UpdatesAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????，??????????????????????，???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????，???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...DotNetNuke® Events: 05.02.01: This release fixes any know bugs from any previous version. Events 05.02.01 will work for any DNN version 5.5.0 and up. Full details on the changes can be found at http://dnnevents.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)BUG FIXESAdded validation around category cookie RSS feed was missing an explicit close of the file when writing. Fixed. Added extra security into detail view .ICS Files did not include correct line folding. Fixed Cha...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.Path Copy Copy: 8.0: New version that mostly adds lots of requested features: 11340 11339 11338 11337 This version also features a more elaborate Settings UI that has several tabs. I tried to add some notes to better explain the use and purpose of the various options. The Path Copy Copy documentation is also on the way, both to explain how to develop custom plugins and to explain how to pre-configure options if you're a network admin. Stay tuned.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.0: Added: The new Client Blocks feaure of Views A new "move" js method for the TreeViews The NewHtmlCreated js event to the DataGrid Improved the ChoiceList structure that now allows also the selection list of a dropdown to be chosen with a lambda expression Improved the AcceptViewHintAttribute controller filter. Now a client can specify not only the name of a View or Partial View it prefers, but also to receive just the rough data in Json format. Fixed: Issue with partial thrust Cl...Free SharePoint Master Pages: Buried Alive (Halloween) Theme: Release Notes *Created for Halloween, you will find theme file, custom css file and images. *Created by Al Roome @AlstarRoome Features: Custom styling for web part Custom background *Screenshot https://s3.amazonaws.com/kkhipple/post/sharepoint-showcase-halloween.pngDevForce Application Framework: DevForce AF 2.0.3 RTW: PrerequisitesWPF 4.0 Silverlight 4.0 DevForce 2010 6.1.3.1 Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies API Documentation Source code License.txt Requirements.txt Release HighlightsNew: EventAggregator event forwarding New: EntityManagerInterceptor<T> to intercept EntityManger events New: IHarnessAware to allow for ViewModel setup when executed inside of the Development Harness New: Improved design time stability New: Support for add-in development New: CoroutineFns.To...NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.5: Minor change to accept special DTS stereo modes (LtRt, AB,...)NDepend TFS 2010 integration: version 0.5.0 beta 1: Only the activity and the VS plugin are avalaible right now. They basically work. Data types that are logged into tfs reports are subject to change. This is no big deal since data is not yet sent into the warehouse.Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...DotNetNuke® FAQ: 05.00.00: FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) 05.00.00 will work for any DNN version 5.6.1 and up. It is the first version which is rewritten in C#. The scope of this update is to fix all known issues and improve user interface. Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)BUG FIXESManage Categories button text was not localized Edit/Add FAQ Entry: button text was not localized ENHANCEMENTSAdded an option to select the control for category display: Listbox with checkboxes (flat category ...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.921.340): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New iconNew ProjectsAsynk: Asynk is a framework/application that allows existing applications to easily be extended with an offloaded asynchronous worker layer. Asynk is developed using C#.Blob Tower Defense: 3D tower defense game for Windows Phone 7. School project for Brno University of Technology, computer graphics class.Booz: Booz is... An extended version of the boo shell (booish2 to be precise). Offers additional commands like cd, md, ls etc. I hope this shell can be used to take the position of/surpass the native windows shell in the near future.CIMS: a sanction infomation system for sencience and technology of hustCrystalDot - Icon Collection / Pack (LGPL): .Net / Mono freundliche Varainte der Crystal-Icons von Everaldo Icon collection / pack for .NET and Mono designed by Everaldo - KDE style http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/dotetes: dotetes adalah teka teki silang tool dikembangkan dengan bahasa c#Emoe': This Project is a Windows Phone 7.1 application.Equation Inversion: Visual Studion 2008 Add-in for equation inversions.Exploring VMR Features on WEC7: This is the sample application helps you to do alpha blending the bitmap on camera streaming in Windows Embedded Compact 7 using Directshow video Renderer (VMR). It is a VS2008 based smart device project developed on C++. I have explained the sample application in the following blog link. http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=759 EzValidation: Custom validation extensions for ASP.NET MVC 3. Includes server and client side model based validation attributes for: -- Equal To -- Not Equal To -- Greater Than -- Greater Than or Equal To -- Less Than -- Less Than or Equal To Supports validating against: -- Another Model Field -- A Specific Value -- Current Date/Yesterday/Tomorrow (for Dates and Strings) Download & Install via NuGet "package-install ezvalidation"Flu.net: Flu.net is a tool that helps you creating your own fluent syntax for .NET Framework applications in a declarative fashion. It is aimed for infrastructures and other open-source projects use.For Chess Endgames: King vs. King Opposition Calculator: You must input the locations of 2 kings on a chessboard, and whose turn it is to move. The calculator will display which king has the opposition, and how it can be used or maintained.GameTrakXNA: This project aims to create a simple library to use the unique GameTrak controller within XNA and Flash.Google Speech Recognition Example: Google Speech Recognition contains a working example of application that uses google speech recognition API. App contains all necessary dlls to record, decode and send your voice request to google service and recieve a text representation of what you've said. It's developed in C#Interval Mandelbrot Explorer: Explore the Mandelbrot set using interval arithmetic.ISD training tasks: ISD training examples and tasksiTunesControlBar: The iTunesControlBar helps user control their iTunes Application while it is minimized. iTunesControlBar resides at the top of the screen, invisible when not used, and allows playback and volume control, library searches and media information without the need to bring up iTunes.iTurtle: A bunch of Powerscripts to automate server management in AD environment.M26WC - Mono 2.6 Wizard Control: Wizard which runs under Mono2.6 A fork of: http://aerowizard.codeplex.com/Microsoft Help Viewer 2: Help Viewer 2 is the help runtime for both Visual Studio 11 help and Windows 8 help. The code in this project will help you use and understand the HV2 runtime API.MONTRASEC: Monitoring Trafficking in human beings and Sexual Exploitation of Children: benchmarking for member state and EU reporting, turning the SIAMSECT templates into a user-friendly interface and reporting tool. MTF.NET Runtime: Managed Task Framework .NET Runtime The MTF.NET runtime software and resulting assemblies are required to run applications built using the Managed Task Framework.NET Professional (Visual Studio 2010 extension) software design editor. The MTF.NET team are committed to continuously improving the core MTF.NET runtime and ensuring it is always available free and fully transparent. Pandoras Box: A greenfield inversion of control project utilising the power and flexibility of expressions and preferring convention over configuration.Pass the Puzzle: Pass the Puzzle is a frantic word-guessing party game. The game displays a few letters, and the players must come up with words containing those letters. But beware: if the timer goes off, you lose! It is based on the folk party game Pass the Parcel and is written in C#.PerCiGal: Percigal is a project for the development of applications for managing your personal media library. It consists in - a windows application to use at home to catalog movies, TV series, cast and books, with the support of the Internet for information retrieval; - a web interface for viewing and cataloging everywhere your media; - an application for smartphones. Project Flying Carpet: Este jogo é um projeto para a cadeira Projeto de Jogos: Motores Jogos do curso de Jogos Digitais da Unisinos.proxy browser: sed leo Latin's Butterfly....Python Multiple Dispatch: Multiple dispatch (AKA multimethods) for Python 3 via a metaclass and type annotations.reDune: ?????????? ???? ? ????? «????????? ? ???????? ???????». ???????? ?? Dune2000 ?? Westwood ? Electronic Arts.Rereadable: Keep page from internet for read it latter.ServStop: ServStop is a .NET application that makes it easy to stop several system services at once. Now you don't have to change startup types or stop them one at a time. It has a simple list-based interface with the ability to save and load lists of user services to stop. Written in C#.SharePoint 2010 Audience Membership Workflow Activity (Full Trust): A simple SharePoint 2010 workflow activity / workflow condition to check whether the user initiating the workflow is a member of a specified audience. Farm-level .wsp solution, written in C#. Once installed, the workflow activity can be used in SharePoint Designer 2010 declarative workflows.SQL Server® to Firebird DB converter: Converts Microsoft SQL Server® database into Firebird database including entire structure and datastegitest: test projectSystem.Threading.Joins: The Joins project provides asynchronous concurrency semantics based on join calculus and modeled after the Microsoft Research C? (C Omega) project.TestAndroidGame: try dev a TestAndroidGametetribricks: block game Topographic Explorer: A project to import, convert, explore, manipulate, and save topographical maps. Looking to use C# and WPF.Trading: Under construction!!!Trombone: Trombone makes it easier for Windows Mobile Professional users to automate status reply through SMS. It's developed in Visual C# 2008.Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group: Repository for source code for the Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group's web site. The Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group is using the Community Kit for SharePoint. This project will house any modifications that are specific to our user group.World of Tanks RU tiny stats collection utilty.: Tiny utility to load players stats for World of Tanks RU server. Results saved to comma separated file.WS-Discovery Proxy: Attempt at creating general purpose WS-Discovery Proxy.Yamaha Tu?n Tr?c: This application is used to manage information for Yamaha Tu?n Tr?c

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• How to detect UTF-8-based encoded strings [closed]

  - by Diego Sendra

  A customer of asked us to build him a multi-language based support VB6 scraper, for which we had the need to detect UTF-8 based encoded strings to decode it later for proper displaying in application UI. It's necessary to point out that this need arises based on VB6 limitations to natively support UTF-8 in its controls, contrary to what it happens in .NET where you can tell a control that it should expect UTF-8 encoding. VB6 natively supports ISO 8859-1 and/or Windows-1252 encodings only, for which textboxes, dropdowns, listview controls, others can't be defined to natively support/expect UTF-8 as you can do in .NET considering what we just explained; so we would see weird symbols such as é, è among others, making it a whole mess at the time of displaying. So, next function contains whole UTF-8 encoded punctuation marks and symbols from languages like Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, French and others, based on an excellent UTF-8 based list we got from this link - Ref. http://home.telfort.nl/~t876506/utf8tbl.html Basically, the function compares if each and one of the listed UTF-8 encoded sentences, separated by | (pipe) are found in our passed string making a substring search first. Whether it's not found, it makes an alternative ASCII value based search to get a match. Say, a string like "Societé" (Society in english) would return FALSE through calling isUTF8("Societé") while it would return TRUE when calling isUTF8("SocietÈ") since È is the UTF-8 encoded representation of é. Once you got it TRUE or FALSE, you can decode the string through DecodeUTF8() function for properly displaying it, a function we found somewhere else time ago and also included in this post. Function isUTF8(ByVal ptstr As String) Dim tUTFencoded As String Dim tUTFencodedaux Dim tUTFencodedASCII As String Dim ptstrASCII As String Dim iaux, iaux2 As Integer Dim ffound As Boolean ffound = False ptstrASCII = "" For iaux = 1 To Len(ptstr) ptstrASCII = ptstrASCII & Asc(Mid(ptstr, iaux, 1)) & "|" Next tUTFencoded = "Ä|Ã…|Ç|É|Ñ|Ö|ÃŒ|á|Ã|â|ä|ã|Ã¥|ç|é|è|ê|ë|í|ì|î|ï|ñ|ó|ò|ô|ö|õ|ú|ù|û|ü|â€|°|¢|£|§|•|¶|ß|®|©|â„¢|´|¨|â‰|Æ|Ø|∞|±|≤|≥|Â¥|µ|∂|∑|âˆ|Ï€|∫|ª|º|Ω|æ|ø|¿|¡|¬|√|Æ’|≈|∆|«|»|…|Â|À|Ã|Õ|Å’|Å“|–|—|“|â€|‘|’|÷|â—Š|ÿ|Ÿ|â„|€|‹|›|ï¬|fl|‡|·|‚|„|‰|Â|Ú|Ã|Ë|È|Ã|ÃŽ|Ã|ÃŒ|Ó|Ô||Ã’|Ú|Û|Ù|ı|ˆ|Ëœ|¯|˘|Ë™|Ëš|¸|Ë|Ë›|ˇ" & _ "Å|Å¡|¦|²|³|¹|¼|½|¾|Ã|×|Ã|Þ|ð|ý|þ" & _ "â‰|∞|≤|≥|∂|∑|âˆ|Ï€|∫|Ω|√|≈|∆|â—Š|â„|ï¬|fl||ı|˘|Ë™|Ëš|Ë|Ë›|ˇ" tUTFencodedaux = Split(tUTFencoded, "|") If UBound(tUTFencodedaux) > 0 Then iaux = 0 Do While Not ffound And Not iaux > UBound(tUTFencodedaux) If InStr(1, ptstr, tUTFencodedaux(iaux), vbTextCompare) > 0 Then ffound = True End If If Not ffound Then 'ASCII numeric search tUTFencodedASCII = "" For iaux2 = 1 To Len(tUTFencodedaux(iaux)) 'gets ASCII numeric sequence tUTFencodedASCII = tUTFencodedASCII & Asc(Mid(tUTFencodedaux(iaux), iaux2, 1)) & "|" Next 'tUTFencodedASCII = Left(tUTFencodedASCII, Len(tUTFencodedASCII) - 1) 'compares numeric sequences If InStr(1, ptstrASCII, tUTFencodedASCII) > 0 Then ffound = True End If End If iaux = iaux + 1 Loop End If isUTF8 = ffound End Function Function DecodeUTF8(s) Dim i Dim c Dim n s = s & " " i = 1 Do While i <= Len(s) c = Asc(Mid(s, i, 1)) If c And &H80 Then n = 1 Do While i + n < Len(s) If (Asc(Mid(s, i + n, 1)) And &HC0) <> &H80 Then Exit Do End If n = n + 1 Loop If n = 2 And ((c And &HE0) = &HC0) Then c = Asc(Mid(s, i + 1, 1)) + &H40 * (c And &H1) Else c = 191 End If s = Left(s, i - 1) + Chr(c) + Mid(s, i + n) End If i = i + 1 Loop DecodeUTF8 = s End Function

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• Jersey non blocking client

  - by Pavel Bucek

  Although Jersey already have support for making asynchronous requests, it is implemented by standard blocking way - every asynchronous request is handled by one thread and that thread is released only after request is completely processed. That is OK for lots of cases, but imagine how that will work when you need to do lots of parallel requests. Of course you can limit (and its really wise thing to do, you do want control your resources) number of threads used for asynchronous requests, but you'll get another maybe not pleasant consequence - obviously processing time will incerase. There are few projects which are trying to deal with that problem, commonly named as async http clients. I didn't want to "re-implement a wheel" and I decided I'll use AHC - Async Http Client made by Jeanfrancois Arcand. There is also interesting implementation from Apache - HttpAsyncClient, but it is still in "very early stages of development" and others haven't been in similar or better shape as AHC. How this works? Non-blocking clients allow users to make same asynchronous requests as we can do with standard approach but implementation is different - threads are better utilized, they don't spend most of time in idle state. Simply described - when you make a request (send it over the network), you are waiting for reply from other side. And there comes main advantage of non-blocking approach - it uses these threads for further work, like making other requests or processing responses etc.. Idle time is minimized and your resources (threads) will be far better used. Who should consider using this? Everyone who is making lots of asynchronous requests. I haven't done proper benchmark yet, but some simple dumb tests are showing huge improvement in cases where lots of concurrent asynchronous requests are made in short period. Last but not least - this module is still experimental, so if you don't like something or if you have ideas for improvements/any feedback, feel free to comment this blog post, send mail to [email protected] or contact me personally. All feedback is greatly appreciated! maven dependency (will be present in java.net maven 2 repo by the end of the day): link: http://download.java.net/maven/2/com/sun/jersey/experimental/jersey-non-blocking-client <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.jersey.experimental</groupId> <artifactId>jersey-non-blocking-client</artifactId> <version>1.9-SNAPSHOT</version> </dependency> code snippet: ClientConfig cc = new DefaultNonBlockingClientConfig(); cc.getProperties().put(NonBlockingClientConfig.PROPERTY_THREADPOOL_SIZE, 10); // default value, feel free to change Client c = NonBlockingClient.create(cc); AsyncWebResource awr = c.asyncResource("http://oracle.com"); Future<ClientResponse> responseFuture = awr.get(ClientResponse.class); // or awr.get(new TypeListener<ClientResponse>(ClientResponse.class) { @Override public void onComplete(Future<ClientResponse> f) throws InterruptedException { ... } }); javadoc (temporary location, won't be updated): http://anise.cz/~paja/jersey-non-blocking-client/

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• 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

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• SQL SERVER – Select the Most Optimal Backup Methods for Server

  - by pinaldave

  Backup and Restore are very interesting concepts and one should be very much with the concept if you are dealing with production database. One never knows when a natural disaster or user error will surface and the first thing everybody wants is to get back on point in time when things were all fine. Well, in this article I have attempted to answer a few of the common questions related to Backup methodology. How to Select a SQL Server Backup Type In order to select a proper SQL Server backup type, a SQL Server administrator needs to understand the difference between the major backup types clearly. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let me offer it to you below. Select a Recovery Model First The very first question that you should ask yourself is: Can I afford to lose at least a little (15 min, 1 hour, 1 day) worth of data? Resist the temptation to save it all as it comes with the overhead – majority of businesses outside finances can actually afford to lose a bit of data. If your answer is YES, I can afford to lose some data – select a SIMPLE (default) recovery model in the properties of your database, otherwise you need to select a FULL recovery model. The additional advantage of the Full recovery model is that it allows you to restore the data to a specific point in time vs to only last backup time in the Simple recovery model, but it exceeds the scope of this article Backups in SIMPLE Recovery Model In SIMPLE recovery model you can select to do just Full backups or Full + Differential. Full Backup This is the simplest type of backup that contains all information needed to restore the database and should be your first choice. It is often sufficient for small databases, but note that it makes a big impact on the performance of your database Full + Differential Backup After Full, Differential backup picks up all of the changes since the last Full backup. This means if you made Full, Diff, Diff backup – the last Diff backup contains all of the changes and you don’t need the previous Differential backup. Differential backup is obviously smaller and carries less performance overhead Backups in FULL Recovery Model In FULL recovery model you can select Full + Transaction Log or Full + Differential + Transaction Log backup. You have to create Transaction Log backup, because at that time the log is being truncated. Otherwise your Transaction Log will grow uncontrollably. Full + Transaction Log Backup You would always need to perform a Full backup first. Then a series of Transaction log backup. Note that (in contrast to Differential) you need ALL transactions to log since the last Full of Diff backup to properly restore. Transaction log backups have the smallest performance overhead and can be performed often. Full + Differential + Transaction Log Backup If you want to ease the performance overhead on your server, you can replace some of the Full backup in the previous scenario with Differential. You restore scenario would start from Full, then the Last Differential, then all of the remaining transactions log backups Typical backup Scenarios You may say “Well, it is all nice – give me the examples now”. As you may already know, my favorite SQL backup software is SQLBackupAndFTP. If you go to Advanced Backup Schedule form in this program and click “Load a typical backup plan…” link, it will give you these scenarios that I think are quite common – see the image below. The Simplest Way to Schedule SQL Backups I hate to repeat myself, but backup scheduling in SQL agent leaves a lot to be desired. I do not know the simple way to schedule your SQL server backups than in SQLBackupAndFTP – see the image below. The whole backup scheduling with compression, encryption and upload to a Network Folder / HDD / NAS Drive / FTP / Dropbox / Google Drive / Amazon S3 takes just a few minutes – see my previous post for the review. Final Words This post offered an explanation for major backup types only. For more complicated scenarios or to research other options as usually go to MSDN. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• What Counts For a DBA – Decisions

  - by Louis Davidson

  It’s Friday afternoon, and the lead DBA, a very talented guy, is getting ready to head out for two well-earned weeks of vacation, with his family, when this error message pops up in his inbox: Msg 211, Level 23, State 51, Line 1. Possible schema corruption. Run DBCC CHECKCATALOG. His heart sinks. It’s ten…no eight…minutes till it’s time to walk out the door. He glances around at his coworkers, competent to handle many problems, but probably not up to the challenge of fixing possible database corruption. What does he do? After a few agonizing moments of indecision, he clicks shut his laptop. He’ll just wait and see. It was unlikely to come to anything; after all, it did say “possible” schema corruption, not definite. In that moment, his fate was sealed. The start of the solution to the problem (run DBCC CHECKCATALOG) had been right there in the error message. Had he done this, or at least took two of those eight minutes to delegate the task to a coworker, then he wouldn’t have ended up spending two-thirds of an idyllic vacation (for the rest of the family, at least) dealing with a problem that got consistently worse as the weekend progressed until the entire system was down. When I told this story to a friend of mine, an opera fan, he smiled and said it described the basic plotline of almost every opera or ‘Greek Tragedy’ ever written. The particular joy in opera, he told me, isn’t the warbly voiced leading ladies, or the plump middle-aged romantic leads, or even the music. No, what packs the opera houses in Italy is the drama of characters who, by the very nature of their life-experiences and emotional baggage, make all sorts of bad choices when faced with ordinary decisions, and so move inexorably to their fate. The audience is gripped by the spectacle of exotic characters doomed by their inability to see the obvious. I confess, my personal experience with opera is limited to Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Elmer Fudd is a great example of a bad decision maker, if ever one existed), but I was struck by my friend’s analogy. If all the DBA cubicles were a stage, I think we would hear many similarly tragic tales, played out to music: “Error handling? We write our code to never experience errors, so nah…“ “Backups failed today, but it’s okay, we’ll back up tomorrow (we’ll back up tomorrow)“ And similarly, they would leave their audience gasping, not necessarily at the beauty of the music, or poetry of the lyrics, but at the inevitable, grisly fate of the protagonists. If you choose not to use proper error handling, or if you choose to skip a backup because, hey, you haven’t had a server crash in 10 years, then inevitably, in that moment you expected to be enjoying a vacation, or a football game, with your family and friends, you will instead be sitting in front of a computer screen, paying for your poor choices. Tragedies are very much part of IT. Most of a DBA’s day to day work has limited potential to wreak havoc; paperwork, timesheets, random anonymous threats to developers, routine maintenance and whatnot. However, just occasionally, you, as a DBA, will face one of those decisions that really matter, and which has the possibility to greatly affect your future and the future of your user’s data. Make those decisions count, and you’ll avoid the tragic fate of many an operatic hero or villain.

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• How do I get FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3 to work with shaders in Direct3D11?

  - by Dominic

  Currently I'm going through some tutorials and learning DX11 on a DX10 machine (though I just ordered a new DX11 compatible computer) by means of setting the D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_ setting to 10_0 and switching the vertex and pixel shader versions in D3DX11CompileFromFile to "vs_4_0" and "ps_4_0" respectively. This works fine as I'm not using any DX11-only features yet. I'd like to make it compatible with DX9.0c, which naively I thought I could do by changing the feature level setting to 9_3 or something and taking the vertex/pixel shader versions down to 3 or 2. However, no matter what I change the vertex/pixel shader versions to, it always fails when I try to call D3DX11CompileFromFile to compile the vertex/pixel shader files when I have D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3 enabled. Maybe this is due to the the vertex/pixel shader files themselves being incompatible for the lower vertex/pixel shader versions, but I'm not expert enough to say. My shader files are listed below: Vertex shader: cbuffer MatrixBuffer { matrix worldMatrix; matrix viewMatrix; matrix projectionMatrix; }; struct VertexInputType { float4 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; PixelInputType LightVertexShader(VertexInputType input) { PixelInputType output; // Change the position vector to be 4 units for proper matrix calculations. input.position.w = 1.0f; // Calculate the position of the vertex against the world, view, and projection matrices. output.position = mul(input.position, worldMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, viewMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, projectionMatrix); // Store the texture coordinates for the pixel shader. output.tex = input.tex; // Calculate the normal vector against the world matrix only. output.normal = mul(input.normal, (float3x3)worldMatrix); // Normalize the normal vector. output.normal = normalize(output.normal); return output; } Pixel Shader: Texture2D shaderTexture; SamplerState SampleType; cbuffer LightBuffer { float4 ambientColor; float4 diffuseColor; float3 lightDirection; float padding; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; float4 LightPixelShader(PixelInputType input) : SV_TARGET { float4 textureColor; float3 lightDir; float lightIntensity; float4 color; // Sample the pixel color from the texture using the sampler at this texture coordinate location. textureColor = shaderTexture.Sample(SampleType, input.tex); // Set the default output color to the ambient light value for all pixels. color = ambientColor; // Invert the light direction for calculations. lightDir = -lightDirection; // Calculate the amount of light on this pixel. lightIntensity = saturate(dot(input.normal, lightDir)); if(lightIntensity > 0.0f) { // Determine the final diffuse color based on the diffuse color and the amount of light intensity. color += (diffuseColor * lightIntensity); } // Saturate the final light color. color = saturate(color); // Multiply the texture pixel and the final diffuse color to get the final pixel color result. color = color * textureColor; return color; }

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• Is Cloud Security Holding Back Social SaaS?

  - by Mike Stiles

  The true promise of social data co-mingling with enterprise data to influence and inform social marketing (all marketing really) lives in cloud computing. The cloud brings processing power, services, speed and cost savings the likes of which few organizations could ever put into action on their own. So why wouldn’t anyone jump into SaaS (Software as a Service) with both feet? Cloud security. Being concerned about security is proper and healthy. That just means you’re a responsible operator. Whether it’s protecting your customers’ data or trying to stay off the radar of regulatory agencies, you have plenty of reasons to make sure you’re as protected from hacking, theft and loss as you can possibly be. But you also have plenty of reasons to not let security concerns freeze you in your tracks, preventing you from innovating, moving the socially-enabled enterprise forward, and keeping up with competitors who may not be as skittish regarding SaaS technology adoption. Over half of organizations are transferring sensitive or confidential data to the cloud, an increase of 10% over last year. With the roles and responsibilities of CMO’s, CIO’s and other C’s changing, the first thing you should probably determine is who should take point on analyzing cloud software options, providers, and policies. An oft-quoted Ponemon Institute study found 36% of businesses don’t have a cloud security policy at all. So that’s as good a place to start as any. What applications and data are you comfortable housing in the cloud? Do you have a classification system for data that clearly spells out where data types can go and how they can be used? Who, both internally and at the cloud provider, will function as admins? What are the different levels of admin clearance? Will your security policies and procedures sync up with those of your cloud provider? The key is verifiable trust. Trust in cloud security is actually going up. 1/3 of organizations polled say it’s the cloud provider who should be responsible for data protection. And when you look specifically at SaaS providers, that expectation goes up to 60%. 57% “strongly agree” or “agree” there’s more confidence in cloud providers’ ability to protect data. In fact, some businesses bypass the “verifiable” part of verifiable trust. Just over half have no idea what their cloud provider does to protect data. And yet, according to the “Private Cloud Vision vs. Reality” InformationWeek Report, 82% of organizations say security/data privacy are one of the main reasons they’re still holding the public cloud at arm’s length. That’s going to be a tough position to maintain, because just as social is rapidly changing the face of marketing, big data is rapidly changing the face of enterprise IT. Netflix, who’s particularly big on the benefits of the cloud, says, "We're systematically disassembling the corporate IT components." An enterprise can never realize the full power of big data, nor get the full potential value out of it, if it’s unwilling to enable the integrations and dataset connections necessary in the cloud. Because integration is called for to reduce fragmentation, a standardized platform makes a lot of sense. With multiple components crafted to work together, you’re maximizing scalability, optimization, cost effectiveness, and yes security and identity management benefits. You can see how the incentive is there for cloud companies to develop and add ever-improving security features, making cloud computing an eventual far safer bet than traditional IT. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• Adding custom interfaces to your mock instance.

  - by mehfuzh

  Previously, i made a post  showing how you can leverage the dependent interfaces that is implemented by JustMock during the creation of mock instance. It could be a informative post that let you understand how JustMock behaves internally for class or interfaces implement other interfaces into it. But the question remains, how you can add your own custom interface to your target mock. In this post, i am going to show you just that. Today, i will not start with a dummy class as usual rather i will use two most common interfaces in the .NET framework  and create a mock combining those. Before, i start i would like to point out that in the recent release of JustMock we have extended the Mock.Create<T>(..) with support for additional settings though closure. You can add your own custom interfaces , specify directly the real constructor that should be called or even set the behavior of your target. Doing a fast forward directly to the point,  here goes the test code for create a creating a mock that contains the mix for ICloneable and IDisposable using the above mentioned changeset. var myMock = Mock.Create<IDisposable>(x => x.Implements<ICloneable>()); var myMockAsClonable = myMock as ICloneable; bool isCloned = false;   Mock.Arrange(() => myMockAsClonable.Clone()).DoInstead(() => isCloned = true);   myMockAsClonable.Clone();   Assert.True(isCloned);   Here, we are creating the target mock for IDisposable and also implementing ICloneable. Finally, using the “as” for getting the ICloneable reference accordingly arranging it, acting on it and asserting if the expectation is met properly. This is a very rudimentary example, you can do the same for a given class: var realItem = Mock.Create<RealItem>(x => {     x.Implements<IDisposable>();     x.CallConstructor(() => new RealItem(0)); }); var iDispose = realItem as IDisposable;     iDispose.Dispose(); Here, i am also calling the real constructor for RealItem class.  This is to mention that you can implement custom interfaces only for non-sealed classes or less it will end up with a proper exception. Also, this feature don’t require any profiler, if you are agile or running it inside silverlight runtime feel free to try it turning off the JM add-in :-). TIP :  Ability to  specify real constructor could be a useful productivity boost in cases for code change and you can re-factor the usage just by one click with your favorite re-factor tool.   That’s it for now and hope that helps Enjoy!!

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• Oracle Tutor: Installing Is Not Implementing or Why CIO's should care about End User Adoption

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  Eighteen months ago I showed Tutor and UPK Productive Day One overview to a CIO friend of mine. He works in a manufacturing business which had been recently purchased by a global conglomerate. He had a major implementation coming up, but said that the corporate team would be coming in to handle the project. I asked about their end user training approach, but it was unclear to him at the time. We were in touch over the course of the implementation project. The major activities were data conversion, how-to workshops, General Ledger realignment, and report definition. The message was "Here's how we do it at corporate, and here's how you are going to do it." In short, it was an application software installation. The corporate team had experience and confidence and the effort through go-live was smooth. Some weeks after cutover, problems with customer orders began to surface. Orders could not be fulfilled in a timely fashion. The problem got worse, and the corporate emergency team was called in. After many days of analysis, the issue was tracked down and resolved, but by then there were weeks of backorders, and their customer base was impacted in a significant way. It took three months of constant handholding of customers by the sales force for good will to be reestablished, and this itself diminished a new product sales push. I learned of these results in a recent conversation with the CIO. I asked him what the solution to the problem was, and he replied that it was twofold. The first component was a lack of understanding by customer service reps about how a particular data item in order entry was to be filled in, resulting in discrepant order data. The second component was that product planners were using this data, along with data from other sources, to fill in a spreadsheet based on the abandoned system. This spreadsheet was the primary input for planning data. The result of these two inaccuracies was that key parts were not being ordered to effectively meet demand and the lead time for finished goods was pushed out by weeks. I reminded him about the Productive Day One approach, and it's focus on methodology and tools for end user training. A more collaborative solution workshop would have identified proper applications use in the new environment. Using UPK to document correct transaction entry would have provided effective guidelines to the CSRs for data entry. Using Oracle Tutor to document the manual tasks would have eliminated the use of an out of date spreadsheet. As we talked this over, he said, "I wish I knew when I started what I know now." Effective end user adoption is the most critical and most overlooked success factor in applications implementations. When the switch is thrown at go-live, employees need to know how to use the new systems to do their jobs. Their jobs are made up of manual steps and systems steps which must be performed in the right order for the implementing organization to operate smoothly. Use Tutor to document the manual policies and procedures, use UPK to document the systems tasks, and develop this documentation in conjunction with a solution workshop. This is the path to develop effective end user training material for a smooth implementation. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum. Chuck Jones, Product Manager, Oracle Tutor and BPM

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• So You Want to Be a Social Media Director

  - by Mike Stiles

  Do you want to be a Social Media Director? Some say the title is already losing its relevance; that social should be a basic skill that is required and used no matter what your position is inside the enterprise. I suppose that’s visionary, and a fun thing for thought leaders to say. But in the vast majority of business organizations, we’re so far away from that reality that the thought of not having someone driving social’s implementation and guiding its proper usage conjures up images of anarchy. That said, social media has become so broad, so catch-all, and so extended across business functions, that today’s Social Media Director, depending on the size of their staff, must make jacks-of-all-trades look like one-trick-ponies. Just as the purview of the CMO has grown all-encompassing, the disciplines required of their heads of social are stacking up. Master of Content Every social pipeline you build must stay filled, with quantity and quality. Content takes time, and the job never stops. Never. And no, it’s not true that anybody can write. Master of Customer Experience You must have a passion for hearing from customers and making them really happy. Master of PR You must know how to communicate and leverage the trust you’ve built when crises strike. Couldn’t hurt to be a Master of Politics. Master of Social Technology So many social management tools on the market. You have to know what social tech ecosystem makes sense and avoid piecemeal point solutions. Master of Business Development Social for selling and prospecting is hot, and you have to know how to use social to do it. Master of Analytics Nothing else matters if you can’t prove social is helping the brand. That’s right, creative content guy has to also be a math and stats geek. Good luck with that. Master of Paid Media You’ve got to learn the language, learn the tactics, learn the vendors and learn how to measure results. Master of Education Guess who gets to teach everyone who has no clue how to use social for business. Master of Personal Likability You’ll be leading the voice, tone, image and personality of the brand. If you don’t instinctively know how to be liked by actual people, the brand will be starting from a deficit. How deep must you go in this parade of masteries? Again, that depends on your employer’s maturity level in social. Serious players recognize these as distinct disciplines requiring true experts for maximum effect. Less serious players will need you to execute personally in many of these areas. Do the best you can, and try to grow quickly at each. If you’re the sole person executing all social…well…you’re in the game of managing expectations and trying to socially educate your employer. The good news is, you should be making a certifiable killing. If you’re alone and your salary is modest, time to understand how many brands out there crave what you’ve mastered. Not to push back against thought leaders, but the need for brand social leadership has not gone away…not even a little bit. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Stefan Wagner, freeimages.com

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• SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

  - by AjarnMark

  Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

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• BizTalk Testing Series - The xpath Function

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Background While the xpath function in a BizTalk orchestration is a very powerful feature I have often come across the situation where someone has hard coded an xpath expression in an orchestration. If you have read some of my previous posts about testing I've tried to get across the general theme like test-driven or test-assisted development approaches where the underlying principle is that your building up your solution of small well tested units that are put together and the resulting solution is usually quite robust. You will be finding more bugs within your unit tests and fewer outside of your team. The thing I don't like about the xpath functions usual usage is when you come across an orchestration which has something like the below snippet in an expression or assign shape: string result = xpath(myMessage,"string(//Order/OrderItem/ProductName)"); My main issue with this is that the xpath statement is hard coded in the orchestration and you don't really know it works until you are running the orchestration. Some of the problems I think you end up with are: You waste time with lengthy debugging of the orchestration when your statement isn't working You might not know the function isn't working quite as expected because the testable unit around it is big You are much more open to regression issues if your schema changes     Approach to Testing The technique I usually follow is to hold the xpath statement as a constant in a helper class or to format a constant with a helper function to get the actual xpath statement. It is then used by the orchestration like follows. string result = xpath(myMessage, MyHelperClass.ProductNameXPathStatement); This means that because the xpath statement is available outside of the orchestration it now becomes testable in its own right. This means: I can test it in its own right I'm less likely to waste time tracking down problems caused by an error in the statement I can reduce the risk or regression issuess I'm now able to implement some testing around my xpath statements which usually are something like the following:    The test will use a sample xml file The sample will be validated against the schema The test will execute the xpath statement and then check the results are as expected     Walk-through BizTalk uses the XPathNavigator internally behind the xpath function to implement the queries you will usually use using the navigators select or evaluate functions. In the sample (link at bottom) I have a small solution which contains a schema from which I have generated a sample instance. I will then use this instance as the basis for my tests.     In the below diagram you can see the helper class which I've encapsulated my xpath expressions in, and some helper functions which will format the expression in the case of a repeating node which would want to inject an index into the xpath query.             I have then created a test class which has some functions to execute some queries against my sample xml file. An example of this is below.         In the test class I have a couple of helper functions which will execute the xpath expressions in a similar way to BizTalk. You could have a proper helper class to do this if you wanted.         You can see now in the BizTalk expression editor I can use these functions alongside the xpath function.         Conclusion I hope you can see with very little effort you can make your life much easier by testing xpath statements outside of an orchestration rather than using them directly hard coded into the orchestration.     This can also save you lots of pain longer term because your build should break if your schema changes unexpectedly causing these xpath tests to fail where as your tests around the orchestration will be more difficult to troubleshoot and workout the cause of the problem.     Sample Link The sample is available from the following link: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/testbtsxpathfunction     Other Tools On the subject of using the xpath function, if you don't already use it the below tool is very useful for creating your xpath statements (thanks BizBert) http://www.bizbert.com/bizbert/2007/11/30/XPath+The+Hidden+Language+Of+BizTalk.aspx

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• Who owns the IP rights of the software without written employment contract? Employer or employee? [closed]

  - by P T

  I am a software engineer who got an idea, and developed alone an integrated ERP software solution over the past 2 years. I got the idea and coded much of the software in my personal time, utilizing my own resources, but also as intern/employee at small wholesale retailer (company A). I had a verbal agreement with the company that I could keep the IP rights to the code and the company would have the "shop rights" to use "a copy" of the software without restrictions. Part of this agreement was that I was heavily underpaid to keep the rights. Recently things started to take a down turn in the company A as the company grew fairly large and new head management was formed, also new partners were brought in. The original owners distanced themselves from the business, and the new "greedy" group indicated that they want to claim the IP rights to my software, offering me a contract that would split the IP ownership into 50% co-ownership, completely disregarding the initial verbal agreements. As of now there was no single written job description and agreement/contract/policy that I signed with the company A, I signed only I-9 and W-4 forms. I now have an opportunity to leave the company A and form a new business with 2 partners (Company B), obviously using the software as the primary tool. There would be no direct conflict of interest as the company A sells wholesale goods. My core question is: "Who owns the code without contract? Me or the company A? (in FL, US)" Detailed questions: I am familiar with the "shop rights", I don't have any problem leaving a copy of the code in the company for them to use/enhance to run their wholesale business. What worries me, Can the company A make any legal claims to the software/code/IP and potential derived profits/interests after I leave and form a company B? Can applying for a copyright of the code at http://www.copyright.gov in my name prevent any legal disputes in the future? Can I use it as evidence for legal defense? Could adding a note specifying the company A as exclusive license holder clarify the arrangements? If I leave and the company A sues me, what evidence would they use against me? On what basis would the sue since their business is in completely different industry than software (wholesale goods). Every single source file was created/stored on my personal computer with proper documentation including a copyright notice with my credentials (name/email/addres/phone). It's also worth noting that I develop significant part of the software prior to my involvement with the company A as student. If I am forced to sign a contract and the company A doesn't honor the verbal agreement, making claims towards the ownership, what can I do settle the matter legally? I like to avoid legal process altogether as my budget for court battles is extremely limited at the moment. Would altering the code beyond recognition and using it for the company B prevent the company A make any copyright claims? My common sense tells me that what I developed is by default mine in terms of IP, unless there is a signed legal agreement stating otherwise. But looking online it may be completely backwards, this really worries me. I understand that this is not legal advice, and I know to get the ultimate answer I need to hire a lawyer. I am only hoping to get some valuable input/experience/advice/opinion from those who were in similar situation or are familiar with the topic. Thank you, PT

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• Using Teleriks new LINQ implementation to connect to MySQL

  Last week Telerik released a new LINQ implementation that is simple to use and produces domain models very fast. Built on top of the enterprise grade OpenAccess ORM, you can connect to any database that OpenAccess can connect to such as: SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Azure, VistaDB, etc. Today I will show you how to build a domain model using MySQL as your back end. To get started, you have to download MySQL 5.x and the MySQL Workbench and also, as my colleague Alexander Filipov at Telerik reminded me, make sure you install the MySQL .NET Connector, which is available here.  I like to use Northwind, ok it gives me the warm and fuzzies, so I ran a script to produce Northwind on my MySQL server. There are many ways you can get Northwind on your MySQL database, here is a helpful blog to get your started. I also manipulated the first record to indicate that I am in MySQL and gave a look via the MySQL Workbench. Ok, time to build our model! Start up the Domain Model wizard by right clicking on the project in Visual Studio (I have a Web project) and select Add|New Item and choose Telerik OpenAccess Domain Model from the new item list. When the wizard comes up, choose MySQL as your back end and enter in the name of your saved MySQL connection. If you dont have a saved MySQL connection set up in Visual Studio, click on New Connection and enter in the proper connection information. *Note, this is where you need to have the MySQL .NET connector installed. After you set your connection to the MySQL database server, you have to choose which tables to include in your model. Just for fun, I will choose all of them. Give your model a name, like NorthwindEntities and click finish. That is it. Now lets consume the model with ASP .net. I created a simple page that also has a GridView on it. On my page load I wrote this code, by now it should look very familiar, a simple LINQ query filtering customers by country (Germany) and binding the results to the grid.  1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: if (!IsPostBack) 4: { 5: //a reference to the data context 6: NorthwindEntities dat = new NorthwindEntities(); 7: //LINQ Statement 8: var result = from c in dat.Customers 9: where c.Country == "Germany" 10: select c; 11: //Databinding to the Gridview 12: GridView1.DataSource = result; 13: GridView1.DataBind(); 14: } 15: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre{ font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/}.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }.csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em;}.csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } F5 produces the following. Tomorrow Ill show how to take the same model and create an Astoria/OData data feed. Technorati Tags: MySQL Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Analytics in an Omni-Channel World

  - by David Dorf

  Retail has been around ever since mankind started bartering.  The earliest transactions were very specific to the individuals buying and selling, then someone had the bright idea to open a store.  Those transactions were a little more generic, but the store owner still knew his customers and what they wanted.  As the chains rolled out, customer intimacy was sacrificed for scale, and retailers began to rely on segments and clusters.  But thanks to the widespread availability of data and the technology to convert said data into information, retailers are getting back to details. The retail industry is following a maturity model for analytics that is has progressed through five stages, each delivering more value than the previous. Store Analytics Brick-and-mortar retailers (and pure-play catalogers as well) that collect anonymous basket-level data are able to get some sense of demand to help with allocation decisions.  Promotions and foot-traffic can be measured to understand marketing effectiveness and perhaps focus groups can help test ideas.  But decisions are influenced by the majority, using faceless customer segments and aggregated industry data points.  Loyalty programs help a little, but in many cases the cost outweighs the benefits. Web Analytics The Web made it much easier to collect data on specific, yet still anonymous consumers using cookies to track visits. Clickstreams and product searches are analyzed to understand the purchase journey, gauge demand, and better understand up-selling opportunities.  Personalization begins to allow retailers target market consumers with recommendations. Cross-Channel Analytics This phase is a minor one, but where most retailers probably sit today.  They are able to use information from one channel to bolster activities in another. However, there are technical challenges combining data silos so its not an easy task.  But for those retailers that are able to perform analytics on both sources of data, the pay-off is pretty nice.  Revenue per customer begins to go up as customers have a better brand experience. Mobile & Social Analytics Big data technologies are enabling a 360-degree view of the customer by incorporating psychographic data from social sites alongside traditional demographic data.  Retailers can track individual preferences, opinions, hobbies, etc. in order to understand a consumer's motivations.  Using mobile devices, consumers can interact with brands anywhere, anytime, accessing deep product information and reviews.  Mobile, combined with a loyalty program, presents an opportunity to put shopping into geographic context, understanding paths to the store, patterns within the store, and be an always-on advertising conduit. Omni-Channel Analytics All this data along with the proper technology represents a new paradigm in which the clock is turned back and retail becomes very personal once again.  Rich, individualized data better illuminates demand, allows for highly localized assortments, and helps tailor up-selling.  Interactions with all channels help build an accurate profile of each consumer, and allows retailers to tailor the retail experience to meet the heightened expectations of today's sophisticated shopper.  And of course this culminates in greater customer satisfaction and business profitability.

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• How to Mentor a Junior Developer

  - by Josh Johnson

  This title is a little broad but I may need to give a little background before I can ask my question properly. I know that similar questions have been asked here already. But in my case I'm not asking if I should be mentoring someone or if the person is a good fit for being a software developer. That is not my place to judge. I have not been asked outright, but it is apparent that myself and other fellow senior developers are to mentor the new developers that start here. I have no problem with this whatsoever and, in many cases, it lends me a fresh perspective on things and I end up learning in the process. Also, I remember how beneficial it was in the beginning of my career when someone would take some time to teach me something. When I say "new developer" they could be anywhere from fresh out of college to having a year or two of experience. Recently and in the past we've had people start here who seem to have an attitude toward development/programming which is different from mine and hard for me to reconcile; they seem to extract just enough information to get the task done but not really learn from it. I find myself going over and over the same issues with them. I understand that part of this could be a personality thing, but I feel it's my job to do my best and sort of push them out of the nest while they're under my wing, so to speak. How can I impart just enough information so that they will learn but not give so much as to solve the problem for them? Or perhaps: What's the proper response to questions that are designed to take the path of least resistance and, in essence, force them to learn instead of take the easy way out? These questions are probably more general teaching questions and don't have that much to do specifically with software development. Note: I do not get a say in what tasks they are working on. Management doles the task out and it could be anything from a very simple bug fix to starting an entire application by themselves. While this is not ideal by any means and obviously presents its own gauntlet of challenges, I feel it's a topic best left for another question. So the best I can do is help them with the problem at hand and try to help them break it down into simpler problems and also check their commit logs and point out mistakes that they made. My main objectives are to: Help them out and give them the tools they need to start becoming more self-reliant. Steer them in the right direction and break bad development habits early on. Lessen the amount of time I spend with them (the personality type described above seems to need much more one-on-one time and does not do well over IM or email. While that's generally fine, I can't always stop what I'm working on, break my stride, and help them debug an error on a moments notice; I have my own projects that need to get done).

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• Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part II, Translation

  - by Ralf Westphal

  In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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• Cellbi Silverlight Controls Giveaway (5 License to give away)

  - by mbcrump

  Cellbi recently updated their new Silverlight Controls to version 4 and to support Visual Studio 2010. I played with a couple of demos on their site and had to take a look. I headed over to their website and downloaded the controls. The first thing that I noticed was all of the special text effects and animations included. I emailed them asking if I could give away their controls in my January 2011 giveaway and they said yes. They also volunteered to give away 5 total license so the changes for you to win would increase.  I am very thankful they were willing to help the Silverlight community with this giveaway. So some quick rules below: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of Cellbi Silverlight Controls! (5 License to give away) Random winner will be announced on February 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump and @cellbi http://mcrump.me/cscfree ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit Cellbi because they made this possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark: The What's new in this release page is here. You can also check out the live demos here. Don’t worry about the Samples/Help Documentation. That is installed to your local HDD during the installation process. Begin by downloading the trial version and running the program. After everything is installed then you will see the following screen: After it is installed, you may want to take a look at your Toolbox in Visual Studio 2010. After you add the controls from the “Choose Items” in Silverlight and you will see that you now have access to all of these controls. At this point, to use the controls it’s as simple as drag/drop onto your Silverlight container. It will create the proper Namespaces for you. It’s hard to show with a static screenshot just how powerful the controls actually are so I will refer you to the demo page to learn more about them. Since all of these are animations/effects it just doesn’t work with a static screenshot. It is worth noting that the Sfx pack really focuses on the following core effects: I will show you the best route to get started building a new project with them below. The best page to start is the sample browser which you can access by going to SvFx Launcher. In my case, I want to build a new Carousel. I simple navigate to the Carousel that I want to build and hit the “Cs” code at the top. This launches Visual Studio 2010 and now I can copy/paste the XAML into my project. That is all there is to it. Hopefully this post was helpful and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win a set of the controls!  Subscribe to my feed

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• Part 7: EBS Modifications and Flagged Files in R12

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  Let me, based on my previous blog, explain the procedure of flagged files a bit better and facilitate the same with screenshots. Flagged files is a concept within the Oracle eBusiness Suite (EBS) release 12, where you flag a standard deployment file, let’s say a Forms file, a Package or a Java class file. When you run the patch analyse, the list of flagged files will be checked and in case one of these files gets patched, the analyse report will tell you. Note: This functionality is also available in release 11, here it is implemented and known as “applcust.txt”. You can flag as many files as you want, in whatever relationship they are with your customizations. In addition to the flag itself you can add a comment. You should use this comment to point to your customization reference (here XXAR_RPT_066 or XXAP_CUST_030). Consider the following two cases: You have created your own report, based on a standard report. In this case you will flag the report file itself, and the key views used. When a patch updates one of these files, you will be informed and can initiate a proper review and testing. (ex.: first line for ARXCTA.rdf) You have created an extensive personalization and because it is business critical you like to be informed if the page definition gets updated. In this case you register the PG.xml file as flagged file. (ex.: second line below for CreateExtBankAcctPG.xml) The menu path to register flagged files is the following: (R) System Administrator > (M) Oracle Applications Manager > Site Map > Maintenance > Register Flagged Files     Your DBA should now run the Patch Analyse every time he is going to apply a new patch. (R) System Administrator > (M) Oracle Applications Manager > Patch Wizard > Task “Recommend/Analyze Patches” The screenshot above shows the impact summary. For this blog entry the number “2” titled “Flagged Files Changed“ is in our focus. When you click the “2” you will get a similar screen like the first in this blog, showing you exactly the files which will get patched if you continue and apply this patch in this environment right now. Note: It is also shown that just 20% of all patch files will get applied. This situation might be different in case your environments are on a different patch level. For sure also the customization impact might then be different. The flagging step can be done directly in the Oracle Applications Manager.  Our developers are responsible for. To transport such a flag+comment we use a FNDLOAD script. It is suggested to put the flagged files data file directly into your CEMLI patch. Herewith the flagged files registration will be executed right at the same time when the patch gets applied. Process Steps: Developer: Builds CEMLI Reviews code and identifies key standard objects referenced Determines standard object files and flags them Creates FNDLOAD file and adds the same to the CEMLI patch DBA: Executes for every new Oracle standard patch the patch analyse in a representative environment Checks and retrieves the flagged files and comments Sends flagged file list back to development team for analyse / retest Developer: Analyses / Updates / Retests effected CEMLIs Prerequisite: The patch analyse has to be executed in an environment where flagged files have been registered. (If you run the patch analyse in a vanilla or outdated environment (compared to your PROD), the analyse will not be so helpful!) When to start with Flagged files? Start right now utilizing this feature. It is an invest to improve the production stability and fulfil your SLA!   Summary Flagged Files is a very helpful EBS R12 technique when analysing patches. Implement a procedure within your development process to maintain such flags. Let the DBA run the patch analyse in an environment with a similar patch and customization level as your current production.   Related Links: EBS Patching Procedures - Chapter 2-13 - Registered Flagged Files

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• SQL SERVER – #TechEdIn – Presenting Tomorrow on Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance at TechEd India 2012

  - by pinaldave

  Performance tuning is always a very hot topic when it is about SQL Server. 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. However, in India, it’s actually the very first time someone is presenting on this interesting subject, so this time I had the biggest challenge to present this session. Frequently enough, we get these two kind of questions: How to turn off parallelism as it is reducing performance? How to turn on parallelism as I want more performance? The reality is that not everyone knows what exactly is needed by their system. In this session, I have attempted to answer this very question. I’ve decided to provide a balanced view but stay away from theory, which leads us to say “It depends”. The session will have a clear message about this towards its end. Deck Details Slides: 45+ Demos: 7+ Bonus Quiz: 5 Images: 10+ Session delivery time: 52 Mins + 8 Mins of Q & A I have presented this session a couple of times to my friends and so far have received good feedback. Oftentimes, when people hear that I am going to present 45 slides, they all say it is too much to cover. However, when I am done with the session the usual reaction is that I truly gave justice to those slides. Action Item Here are a few of the action items for all of those who are going to attend this session: If you want to attend the session, just come early. There’s a good chance that you may not get a seat because right before me, there is a session from SQL Guru Vinod Kumar. He performs a powerful delivery of million concepts in just a little time. Quiz. I will be asking few questions during the session as well as before the session starts. If you get the correct answer, I will give unique learning material for you. You may not want to miss this learning opportunity at any cosst. 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 a 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. Attendees 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 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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