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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• SQL SERVER – Expanding Views – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 4 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following key word will force the query to use indexes created on views? a) ENCRYPTION b) SCHEMABINDING c) NOEXPAND d) CHECK OPTION Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Usually, the assumption is that Index on the table will use Index on the table and Index on view will be used by view. However, that is the misconception. It does not happen this way. In fact, if you notice the image, you will find the both of them (table and view) use both the index created on the table. The index created on the view is not used. The reason for the same as listed in BOL. The cost of using the indexed view may exceed the cost of getting the data from the base tables, or the query is so simple that a query against the base tables is fast and easy to find. This often happens when the indexed view is defined on small tables. You can use the NOEXPAND hint if you want to force the query processor to use the indexed view. This may require you to rewrite your query if you don’t initially reference the view explicitly. You can get the actual cost of the query with NOEXPAND and compare it to the actual cost of the query plan that doesn’t reference the view. If they are close, this may give you the confidence that the decision of whether or not to use the indexed view doesn’t matter. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 4. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Structured Error Handling SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – SQL Server Error Messages SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Functions SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Store Procedure Parameters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Easy Introduction to CHECK Options SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Views SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Constraints Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• PHP Web Services - Nice try

  Thanks to the membership in the O'Reilly User Group Programme the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (short: MSCC) recently received a welcome package with several book titles. Among them is the latest publication of Lorna Jane Mitchell - 'PHP Web Services: APIs for the Modern Web'. Following is the book review I put on Amazon: Nice try! Initially, I was astonished that a small book like 'PHP Web Services' would be able to cover all the interesting topics about APIs and Web Services, independently whether they are written in PHP or not. And unfortunately, the title isn't able to stand up to the readers (or at least my) expectations. Maybe as a light defense, there is no usual paragraph about the intended audience of that book, but still I have to admit that the first half (chapters 1 to 8) are well written and Lorna has her points on the various technologies. Also, the code samples in PHP are clean and easy to understand. With chapter 'Debugging Web Services' the book started to change my mind about the clarity of advice and the instructions on designing and developing good APIs. Eventually, this might be related to the fact that I'm used to other tools since years, like Telerik Fiddler as HTTP proxy in order to trace and inspect any kind of request/response handling. Including localhost monitoring, SSL certification acceptance, and the ability to debug mobile devices, especially iOS-based ones. Compared to Charles, Fiddler is available for free. What really got me off the hook is the following statement in chapter 10 about Service Type Decisions: "For users who have larger systems using technology stacks such as Java, C++, or .NET, it may be easier for them to integrate with a SOAP service." WHAT? A couple of pages earlier the author recommends to stay away from 'old-fashioned' API styles like SOAP (if possible). And on top of that I wonder why there are tons of documentation towards development of RESTful Web Services based on WebAPI. The ASP.NET stack clearly moves away from SOAP to JSON and REST since years! Honestly, as a software developer on the .NET stack this leaves a mixed feeling after all. As for the remaining chapters I simply consider them as 'blah blah' without any real value and lots of theoretical advice. Related to the chapter 13 about 'Documentation', I just had the 'pleasure' to write a C#-based client against a Java-based SOAP Web Service. Personally, I take the WSDL as the master reference in the first place and Visual Studio generates all the stub types involved in the communication. During the implementation and testing I came across a 'java.lang.NullPointerException' in various methods and for various method parameters. The WSDL and the generated types were declared as Nullable, so nothing to worry about, or? Well, I logged in a support ticket, and guess what was the response to that scenario? "The service definition in the WSDL is wrong, please refer to the documentation in order to use the methods and parameters correctly" - No comment! Lorna's title is a quick read and in some areas she has good advice on designing and implementing Web Services and APIs. But roughly 100 pages aren't enough to cover a vast topic like that. After all, nice try and I'm looking forward to an improved second edition. Honestly, I never thought that I would come across a poor review. In general, it's a good book but it clearly has a lack of depth, the PHP code samples are incomplete (closing tags missing), and there are too many assumptions and theoretical statements.

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• How to convert from amateur web app developer to professional web apper?

  - by Nilesh

  This is more of a practical question on web app development and deployment process. Here is some background information. I use PHP for server side scripting, javascript for client side. I use Netbeans and notepad++. I user Firefox and firebug for debugging and testing. The process I use is very amateurish, I code something in netbeans, something in notepad++ and since there is nothing to compile, I just refresh the firefox browser and test it. This is convenient and faster compared to the Java development enviornment where you would have to atleast compile and deploy the jar files before you could run them. I have been thinking of putting a formal process in my development and find it hard putting it together. There are so many things to do before you can deploy your final web app. I keep hearing jslint, compression, unit testing (selenium), Ant, YUI compressor etc but I am now looking for some steps that I can take to make me more organized. For e.g I use netbeans but don't use any projects within it. I directly update the files. I don't use any source control but use my Iomega backup that saves each save into a different version and at the end of the day I backup the dev directory to my Amazon s3 account. For me development environment is just a DEV directory, TEST is my intermediate stage and PROD is the final directory that gets pushed out to the server. But all these directories are in the same apache home. I have few php scripts that just copies the needed files into the production directory. Thats about it for my development approach. I know I am missing the following - Regression testing (manual or automated ??) - automated testing (selenium ??) - automated deployment (ANT ??) - source control (svn ??) - quality control (jslint ??) Can someone explain what are the missing steps and how to go about filling those steps in order to have more professional approach. I am looking for tools with example tutorials in streamlining the whole development to deployment stage. For me just getting a hang of database, server side and client side development all in synchronization was itself a huge accomplishment. And now I feel there is lot missing before you can produce quality web application. For e.g I see lot of mention about using automated testing but how to put in use with respect to javascript and php. How to use ANT for the deployment etc. Is this all too much for a single or two person development team? Is there a way to automate all the above so that I just keep coding in netbeans and then run a batch file that is configured once and run it everytime to produce the code in the production directory? Lot of these information is scattered on the web and here, if someone can guide I would be happy to consolidate here. Thank you for your patience :)

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• F# in ASP.NET, mathematics and testing

  - by DigiMortal

  Starting from Visual Studio 2010 F# is full member of .NET Framework languages family. It is functional language with syntax specific to functional languages but I think it is time for us also notice and study functional languages. In this posting I will show you some examples about cool things other people have done using F#. F# and ASP.NET As I am ASP/ASP.NET MVP I am – of course – interested in how people use different languages and technologies with ASP.NET. C# MVP Tomáš Petrícek writes about developing ASP.NET MVC applications using F#. He also shows how to use LINQ To SQL in F# (using F# PowerPack) and provides sample solution and Visual Studio 2010 template for F# MVC web applications. You may also find interesting how you can create controllers in F#. Excellent work, Tomáš! Vladimir Matveev has interesting example about how to use F# and ApplicationHost class to process ASP.NET requests ouside of IIS. This is simple and very straight-forward example and I strongly suggest you to take a look at it. Very cool example is project Strom in Codeplex. Storm is web services testing tool that is fully written on F#. Take a look at this site because Codeplex offers also source code besides binaries. Math Functional languages are strong in fields like mathematics and physics. When I wrote my C# example about BigInteger class I found out that recursive version of Fibonacci algorithm in C# is not performing well. In same time I made same experiment on F# and in F# there were no performance problems with recursive version. You can find F# version of Fibonacci algorithm from Bob Palmer’s blog posting Fibonacci numbers in F#. Although golden spiral is useful for solving many problems I looked for some practical code example and found one. Kean Walmsley published in his Through the Interface blog very interesting posting Creating Fibonacci spirals in AutoCAD using F#. There are also other cool examples you may be interested in. Using numerical components by Extreme Optimization  it is possible to make some numerical integration (quadrature method) using F# (also C# example is available). fsharp.it introduces factorials calculation on F#. Robert Pickering has made very good work on programming The Game of Life in Silverlight and F# – I definitely suggest you to try out this example as it is very illustrative too. Who wants something more complex may take a look at Newton basin fractal example in F# by Jonathan Birge. Testing After some searching and surfing I found out that there is almost everything available for F# to write tests and test your F# code. FsCheck - FsCheck is a port of Haskell's QuickCheck. Important parts of the manual for using FsCheck is almost literally "adapted" from the QuickCheck manual and paper. Any errors and omissions are entirely my responsibility. FsTest - This project is designed to Language Oriented Programming constructs around unit testing and behavior testing in F#. The goal of this project is to create a Domain Specific Language for testing F# code in a way that makes sense for functional programming. FsUnit - FsUnit makes unit-testing with F# more enjoyable. It adds a special syntax to your favorite .NET testing framework. xUnit.NET - xUnit.net is a developer testing framework, built to support Test Driven Development, with a design goal of extreme simplicity and alignment with framework features. It is compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 and later, and offers several runners: console, GUI, MSBuild, and Visual Studio integration via TestDriven.net, CodeRush Test Runner and Resharper. It also offers test project integration for ASP.NET MVC. Getting started Well, as a first thing you need Visual Studio 2010. Then take a look at these resources: F# samples @ MSDN Microsoft F# Developer Center @ MSDN F# Language Reference @ MSDN F# blog F# forums Real World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C# (Amazon) Happy F#-ing! :)

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• SQL SERVER – Query Hint – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 1 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following queries will return dirty data? a) SELECT * FROM Table1 (READUNCOMMITED) b) SELECT * FROM Table1 (NOLOCK) c) SELECT * FROM Table1 (DIRTYREAD) d) SELECT * FROM Table1 (MYLOCK) Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Most SQL people know what a “Dirty Record” is. You might also call that an “Intermediate record”. In case this is new to you here is a very quick explanation. The simplest way to describe the steps of a transaction is to use an example of updating an existing record into a table. When the insert runs, SQL Server gets the data from storage, such as a hard drive, and loads it into memory and your CPU. The data in memory is changed and then saved to the storage device. Finally, a message is sent confirming the rows that were affected. For a very short period of time the update takes the data and puts it into memory (an intermediate state), not a permanent state. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in the intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement needing that data waits until the lock is released. This is a safety feature so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in this intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE) needing that data must wait until the lock is released. This is a safety feature put in place so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 1. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Dirty Records and Table Hints SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Row Constructors SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding un-matching Records SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Efficient Query Writing Strategy SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding Apostrophes in String and Text SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard – Querying Special Characters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard Basics Recap Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Database – Beginning with Cloud Database As A Service

  - by Pinal Dave

  I love my weekend projects. Everybody does different activities in their weekend – like traveling, reading or just nothing. Every weekend I try to do something creative and different in the database world. The goal is I learn something new and if I enjoy my learning experience I share with the world. This weekend, I decided to explore Cloud Database As A Service – Morpheus. In my career I have managed many databases in the cloud and I have good experience in managing them. I should highlight that today’s applications use multiple databases from SQL for transactions and analytics, NoSQL for documents, In-Memory for caching to Indexing for search.  Provisioning and deploying these databases often require extensive expertise and time.  Often these databases are also not deployed on the same infrastructure and can create unnecessary latency between the application layer and the databases.  Not to mention the different quality of service based on the infrastructure and the service provider where they are deployed. Moreover, there are additional problems that I have experienced with traditional database setup when hosted in the cloud: Database provisioning & orchestration Slow speed due to hardware issues Poor Monitoring Tools High network latency Now if you have a great software and expert network engineer, you can continuously work on above problems and overcome them. However, not every organization have the luxury to have top notch experts in the field. Now above issues are related to infrastructure, but there are a few more problems which are related to software/application as well. Here are the top three things which can be problems if you do not have application expert: Replication and Clustering Simple provisioning of the hard drive space Automatic Sharding Well, Morpheus looks like a product build by experts who have faced similar situation in the past. The product pretty much addresses all the pain points of developers and database administrators. What is different about Morpheus is that it offers a variety of databases from MySQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch to Reddis as a service.  Thus users can pick and chose any combination of these databases.  All of them can be provisioned in a matter of minutes with a simple and intuitive point and click user interface.  The Morpheus cloud is built on Solid State Drives (SSD) and is designed for high-speed database transactions.  In addition it offers a direct link to Amazon Web Services to minimize latency between the application layer and the databases. Here are the few steps on how one can get started with Morpheus. Follow along with me.  First go to http://www.gomorpheus.com and register for a new and free account. Step 1: Signup It is very simple to signup for Morpheus. Step 2: Select your database   I use MySQL for my daily routine, so I have selected MySQL. Upon clicking on the big red button to add Instance, it prompted a dialogue of creating a new instance.   Step 3: Create User Now we just have to create a user in our portal which we will use to connect to a database hosted at Morpheus. Click on your database instance and it will bring you to User Screen. Over here you will notice once again a big red button to create a new user. I created a user with my first name.   Step 4: Configure your MySQL client I used MySQL workbench and connected to MySQL instance, which I had created with an IP address and user.   That’s it! You are connecting to MySQL instance. Now you can create your objects just like you would create on your local box. You will have all the features of the Morpheus when you are working with your database. Dashboard While working with Morpheus, I was most impressed with its dashboard. In future blog posts, I will write more about this feature.  Also with Morpheus you use the same process for provisioning and connecting with other databases: MongoDB, ElasticSearch and Reddis. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• OS Development. Only Few Particular Questions

  - by Total Anime Immersion

  I am new to this site as a member but have consulted its answers quite a lot of times. Besides my questions regarding OS Development hasn't been answered in any forum. In OS Dev. we make a bootloader. The org point is 7C00H. Why so? Why not 0000h? What are the last two signatures in the bootloader used for? People on every forum have answered that it is important for the system to recognize it as a bootable media. But I want a specific answer. What do each of those signatures do. I have the basic concept of a kernel. Point is.. it relates to different files required in a system. It sort of binds up everything that is individually developed. Now the thing is that that I have floating ideas in my mind regarding different aspects like keyboard, mouse, etc.. how do I put them all together? Which should I start with first? If possible please provide a step by step procedure of the startups of the kernel. Suppose I have developed my language entirely in C and Assembly. Now questions is will exe files work on my system.. if it doesn't then I have to create my own files and publish them. Which is a bad idea.. next step would be for me to go for a compiler for a language which I have designed myself. Now the point is.. How do I implement the compiler into my OS? After all this my final question is that.. How do you go about multitasking and multithreading? and I don't want to use int 21h as its dos specific.. how do I go about making files, renaming them, etc. and all assembly books teach 16 but programming.. how do i go about doing 32 bit or 64 bit with the knowledge I have.. if the basics and instructions are the same.. I don't mind.. but how do i go about otherwise? Don't tell me to give up the idea because I WON'T. And don't tell me it's too complex because I have a sharp knowledge of working of a system, C, Java, Assembly, C++ and python, C#, visual basic.. and not just basics but full fledged api developments.. but I really want to go deep into the systems part.. so I want professional help.. And I have gone through many OS project files but I want help particularly from this site as there are people with knowledge depth who can guide me the right way. And please don't suggest any books above 20$ and they should be available on flipkart as amazon charges massively for shipping and I prefer free shipping from flipkart.

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• Big Data – Data Mining with Hive – What is Hive? – What is HiveQL (HQL)? – Day 15 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the operational database in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand what is Hive and HQL in Big Data Story. Yahoo started working on PIG (we will understand that in the next blog post) for their application deployment on Hadoop. The goal of Yahoo to manage their unstructured data. Similarly Facebook started deploying their warehouse solutions on Hadoop which has resulted in HIVE. The reason for going with HIVE is because the traditional warehousing solutions are getting very expensive. What is HIVE? Hive is a datawarehouseing infrastructure for Hadoop. The primary responsibility is to provide data summarization, query and analysis. It  supports analysis of large datasets stored in Hadoop’s HDFS as well as on the Amazon S3 filesystem. The best part of HIVE is that it supports SQL-Like access to structured data which is known as HiveQL (or HQL) as well as big data analysis with the help of MapReduce. Hive is not built to get a quick response to queries but it it is built for data mining applications. Data mining applications can take from several minutes to several hours to analysis the data and HIVE is primarily used there. HIVE Organization The data are organized in three different formats in HIVE. Tables: They are very similar to RDBMS tables and contains rows and tables. Hive is just layered over the Hadoop File System (HDFS), hence tables are directly mapped to directories of the filesystems. It also supports tables stored in other native file systems. Partitions: Hive tables can have more than one partition. They are mapped to subdirectories and file systems as well. Buckets: In Hive data may be divided into buckets. Buckets are stored as files in partition in the underlying file system. Hive also has metastore which stores all the metadata. It is a relational database containing various information related to Hive Schema (column types, owners, key-value data, statistics etc.). We can use MySQL database over here. What is HiveSQL (HQL)? Hive query language provides the basic SQL like operations. Here are few of the tasks which HQL can do easily. Create and manage tables and partitions Support various Relational, Arithmetic and Logical Operators Evaluate functions Download the contents of a table to a local directory or result of queries to HDFS directory Here is the example of the HQL Query: SELECT upper(name), salesprice FROM sales; SELECT category, count(1) FROM products GROUP BY category; When you look at the above query, you can see they are very similar to SQL like queries. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Pig. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL – Step by Step Guide to Download and Install NuoDB – Getting Started with NuoDB

  - by Pinal Dave

  Let us take a look at the application you own at your business. If you pay attention to the underlying database for that application you will be amazed. Every successful business these days processes way more data than they used to process before. The number of transactions and the amount of data is growing at an exponential rate. Every single day there is way more data to process than before. Big data is no longer a concept; it is now turning into reality. If you look around there are so many different big data solutions and it can be a quite difficult task to figure out where to begin. Personally, I have been experimenting with a lot of different solutions which allow my database to scale immediately without much hassle while maintaining optimal database performance.  There are for sure some solutions out there, but for many I even have to learn their specific language and there is a lot of new exploration to do. Honestly, what I prefer is a product, which works with the language I know (SQL) and follows all the RDBMS concepts which I am familiar with (ACID etc.). NuoDB is one such solution.  It is an operational NewSQL database built on a patented emergent architecture with full support for SQL and ACID guarantees. In this blog post, I will explore how one can download and install NuoDB database. Step 1: Follow me and go to the NuoDB download page. Simply fill out the form, accept the online license agreement, and you will be taken directly to a page where you can select any platform you prefer to install NuoDB. In my example below, I select the Windows 64-bit platform as it is one of the most popular NuoDB platforms. (You can also run NuoDB on Amazon Web Services but I prefer to install it on my local machine for the purposes of this blog). Step 2: Once you have downloaded the NuoDB installer, double click on it to install it on the Windows platform. Here is the enlarged the icon of the installer. Step 3: Follow the wizard installation, as it is pretty straight forward and easy to do so. I have selected all the options to install as the overall installation is very simple and it does not take up much space. I have installed it on my C drive but you can select your preferred drive. It is quite possible that if you do not have 64 bit Java, it will throw following error. If you face following error, I suggest you to download 64-bit Java from here. Make sure that you download 64-bit Java from following link: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp If already have Java 64-bit installed, you can continue with the installation as described in following image. Otherwise, install Java and start from with Step 1. As in my case, I already have 64-bit Java installed – and you won’t believe me when I say that the entire installation of NuoDB only took me around 90 seconds. Click on Finish to end to exit the installation. Step 4: Once the installation is successful, NuoDB will automatically open the following two tabs – Console and DevCenter — in your preferred browser. On the Console tab you can explore various components of the NuoDB solution, e.g. QuickStart, Admin, Explorer, Storefront and Samples. We will see various components and their usage in future blog posts. If you follow these steps in this post, which I have followed to install NuoDB, you will agree that the installation of NuoDB is extremely smooth and it was indeed a pleasure to install a database product with such ease. If you have installed other database products in the past, you will absolutely agree with me. So download NuoDB and install it today, and in tomorrow’s blog post I will take the installation to the next level. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• using isight camera in macbookpro(8,2) on ubuntu 12.04 virtualbox VM

  - by Kurt Spindler

  I'm having a lot of trouble using the built-in isight camera on my macbookpro8,2 (early 2011) from an ubuntu 12.04 virtual machine, run inside VirtualBox. The following is the log I get when I try to run guvcview ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ guvcview guvcview 1.5.3 ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71 ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server socket jack server is not running or cannot be started video device: /dev/video0 Init. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in) (location: usb-0000:00:0b.0-1) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/10, { pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' } { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, vid:05ac pid:8509 driver:uvcvideo checking format: 1196444237 VIDIOC_G_COMP:: Invalid argument compression control not supported fps is set to 1/25 drawing controls no codec detected for H264 no codec detected for MP3 - (lavc) Checking video mode 960x540@32bpp : OK Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable write /home/ubuntu/.guvcviewrc OK free controls cleaned allocations - 100% Closing portaudio ...OK Closing GTK... OK ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Any help would be greatly appreciated. Only clue I have is that I initially was having problems, tried using the old method of fixing isights (involving installing isight-firmware-tools) before realizing that I just hadn't turned on the VM setting to allow the VM to access the webcam. :) Anyway, I wonder if installing that messed something up. However, I think this is a red herring because I've: shut down and turned back on the Mac, restarted the VM, tried a different VM (for which I never installed isight-firmware-tools, and created an entirely new ubuntu vm. All instances have had this problem. Similarly, other viewers, such as cheese, avplay, avconv have had all various kinds of errors.

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• SQL SERVER – Clustered Index and Primary Key – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 3 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following datatype is usually NOT the best choice for Primary Key and Clustered Index? a) INT b) BIGINT c) GUID d) SMALLINT Query Hints: BIG HINT POST The clustered index is the placement order of a table’s records in memory pages. When you insert new records, then each record will be inserted into the memory page in the order it belongs. In the figure below we see another new record (Major Disarray) being inserted, in sequence, between Jonny and Rick. Since there is no room in this memory page, some records will need to shift around. The page split occurs when Irenes’ record moves to the second page. Page splits are considered very bad for performance, and there are a number of techniques to reduce, or even eliminate, the risk of page splits. You can create a clustered index on the table on any field you choose. Sometime SQL will create a clustered index for you. Often times the field having the Primary Key makes a great candidate for the clustered index. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 3. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Statistics SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Page Split SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – The Clustered Index – Simple Understanding SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Geography Data Type – Calculating Distance Between Two Points on the Earth SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Sparse Data and Space Used by Sparse Data SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – System and Time Data Types SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Data Row Space Usage and NULL Storage Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment

  - by Bill Evjen

  This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had the MTV revolution of TV. It has created shorter attention spans, it made us more materialistic, narcissistic, and not easily impressed. Then we came to the Internet. The amount of content has expanded. It contains a ton of user-generated content, provides filtering, organization, distribution. We now have a problem. We are in the age of digital excess. We can access whatever we want. In conjunction with this – we are moving. The challenge we have now is curation. The trends  we see: rapid shift from scheduled to on demand consumption. A move to Internet protocols from cable Rapid fragmentation of media a transition from the TV set to a variety of screens Social connections bring mediators and amplifiers. TiVo – the shift to on demand It is because of a time-crunch Provides personal experiences Once old consumption habits are changed, there is no way back! Experiences are that people are loading up content and then bringing it with them on planes, to hotels, etc. Rapid fragmentation of media sources Many new professional content sources and channels, the rise of digital distribution, and the rise of user-generated content contribute to the wealth of content sources and abundant choice. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, hulu, Pandora, iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Voddler, Spotify (these companies didn’t exist 5 years ago). People now expect this kind of consumption. People are now thinking how to deliver all these tools. Transition from the TV set to multi-screens The TV screen has traditionally been the dominant consumption screen for TV and video. Now the PC, game consoles, and various mobile devices are rapidly becoming common video devices. Multi-screens are now the norm. Social connections becoming key mediators What increasingly funnels traffic on the web, social networking enablers, will become an integral part of the discovery, consumption and sharing model for Television. The revolution will be broadcasted on Facebook and Twitter. There is business disruption There are a lot of new entrants Rapid internationalization Increasing competition from existing media players A fragmenting audience base Web browser Freedom to access any site The fight over the walled garden Most devices are not powerful enough to support a full browser PC will always be present in the living room Wireless link between PC and TV Output 1080p, plays anything, secure Key players and their challenges Services Internet media is increasingly interconnected to social media and publicly shared UGC Content delivery moving to IPTV Rights management issues are creating silos and hindering a great user experience and growth Devices Devices are becoming people’s windows into all kinds of media from all kinds of sources There won’t be a consolidation of the device landscape, rather the opposite Finding the right niche makes the most sense. We are moving to an on demand world of streaming world. People want full access to anything.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-26

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Software Architecture for High Availability in the Cloud | Brian Jimerson Brian Jimerson looks at the paradigm shifts from machine-based architectures to cloud-based architectures when designing fault tolerance, and how enterprise applications need to be engineered to ensure the highest level of availability in the cloud. SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London - Special Oracle Discount Registration is now open for one of the premier SOA, Cloud, and Service Technology events. Once again, the Oracle community is well-represented in the session schedule. And now you can save on registration with a special Oracle discount code. Progress 4GL and DB to Oracle and cloud | Tom Laszewski "Getting from client/server based 4GLs and databases where the 4GL is tightly linked to the database to Oracle and the cloud is not easy," says cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski. "The least risky and expensive option...is to use the Progress OpenEdge DataServer for Oracle." Embrace 'big data' now or fall behind the competition, analyst warns | TechTarget TechTarget's Mark Brunelli's story says, in essence, that Big Data is not your fathers Business Intelligence. Calculating the Size (in Bytes and MB) of a Oracle Coherence Cache | Ricardo Ferreira Ferreira illustrates a programmatic way to use the Oracle Coherence API to calculate the total size of a specific cache that resides in the data grid. WebCenter Portal Tutorial Part 7: Integrating Discussions and Link service | Yannick Ongena The latest chapter in Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena's ongoing series. How to Setup JDeveloper workspace for ADF Fusion Applications to run Business Component Tester? | Jack Desai Helpful technical tips from yet another member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Team. Big Data for the Enterprise; Software Architecture for High Availability in the Cloud; Why Cloud Computing is a Paradigm Shift - And Why It Isn't This week on the OTN Solution Architect Homepage, along with an updated events list and this weeks list of selected community blog posts. Worst Practices for Big Data | Dain Hansen Dain Hansen shares some insight on what NOT to do if you want to captialize on Big Data. Free Virtual Developer Day - Oracle Fusion Development | Grant Ronald "The online conference will include seminars, hands-on lab and live chats with our technical staff including me!" says Grant Ronald. "And the best bit, it doesn't cost you a single penny. It's free and available right on your desktop." Penguin is Getting Ready for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 | Zeynep Koch Linux fan? Check out Zeynep Koch's post for a list of Linux-based sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Autoscaling | Frank Munz "Autoscaling on AWS can only be configured with lengthy commands from the command line but not from the web cased AWS console," says Frank Munz. "Getting all the parameters right can be tricky." He demonstrates one easy example in this video. Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers | Ultan O'Broin "These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight," says O'Broin. How Much Data Is Created Every Minute? [INFOGRAPHIC] | Mashable Explaining what the "Big" in Big Data really means -- and it's more than a little mind-boggling. Thought for the Day "Real, though miniature, Turing Tests are happening all the time, every day, whenever a person puts up with stupid computer software." — Jaron Lanier Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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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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• Impressions of my ASUS eee slate EP121 - Dual core 4GB, 64GB SSD

  - by tonyrogerson

  This thing is lovely, very nice bluetooth keyboard that has nice feedback on the keypress, there is no mouse but you can use the stylus or get yourself a bluetooth mouse, me, I've opted for a Microsoft ARC mouse which is a delight to use, the USB doors are a pain to open for the first time if like me you don't have any finger nails. It came as a suprise that the slate shows four processors, Dual Core with multi-threading, I didn't really look at the processor I was more interested in the amount of memory and the SSD; you don't get the full 4GB even with the 64 bit version of Windows 7 installed (which I immediately upgraded to Ultimate through my MSDN subscription). The box is extremely responsive - extremely, it loads Winword in literally a second. I've got office 2010 and onenote 2010 on there now; one problem is that on applying all (43) windows updates since the upgrade the machine is still sat on step 3 of 3 on the start up configuring updates screen after about an hour, you can't turn this machine off without using a paper clip to reset it and as I have just found you need a paper clip :). Installing Windows 7 SP1 was effortless. One of the first things I did on it was to reduce the size of the font, by default its set at 125%, my eye sight is ok :) so I've set that back down. Amazon Kindle for the PC works really well, plenty of text on the screen when viewed portrait, the case it comes with also allows the slate to stand up in various positions - portrait, horizontal - seems stable enough. The wireless works well, seems to have a better signal than my other two laptop machines which is good news. The gadget passed the pose test at work :). I use offline files to keep a copy of all my work stuff locally, I'm not sure what it is, well, its probably my server but whenever I try and sync it runs for a couple of minutes then fails with network name no longer contactable, funnily enough its fine from my big laptop so I can only guess this may be a driver type issue on the EP121 itself - very odd and very annoying. I do a lot of presenting and need to plug into a VGA project because most sites that's all that is offered, the EP121 has a mini-hdmi output which is great except for this scenario, hdmi is digital, vga is analogue, you will struggle to find a cost effective solution, I found HDFury and also a device HP do, however, a better solution appears to be getting a USB graphics adapter for instance the one I've ordered is the ClimaxDigital USB 2.0 to DVI,VGA or HDMI Adaptor which gives everything I need - VGA and DVI output and great resolution as well - ok, so fingers crossed because I'm presenting next Wednesday in Edinburgh and not taking my 300kg lenovo w700 (I'm sure my back just sighed in relief) - it certainly works really well on my LED TV, the install was simple - it just works! One of the several reasons for buying this piece of kit was to use it on my LED TV to remote into my main machine to check stuff whilst sat in my living room, also to watch webcasts and lecture videos in comfort away from my office, because of the wireless speed and limitation I'm opting for a USB network adapter from Belkin - that will also allow me to take advantage of my home gigabit network, there are only 2 usb ports on the slate so I'm going to knock up a hub so connecting it in is straight forward and simple, I'm also going to purchase a second power supply so I don't have to faff about with that either.I now have the developer x64 edition of SQL Server 2008 R2, yes everything :) - about 16GB left to play with on the machine now but that will be fine, I'll put AdventureWorks on there so I can play and demo stuff which is all I'm after from this, my development machine is significantly more powerful and meets my storage needs too.Travel test this weekend and next week, I'm in Dundee for my final exam for the masters degree.

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• 2013 Predictions for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  Its that time of year to roll out the predictions for next year.  I can't say I've really nailed it in the past, but feel free to look back at my 2012, 2011, and 2010 predictions.  I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering this year; just continued maturation of several technologies that are finally taking hold. 1. Next day delivery -- Amazon finally decided it wasn't worth fighting state taxes and instead decided to place distribution centers everywhere so they can potentially offer next-day deliveries.  Not to be outdone, Walmart is looking to leverage its huge physical presence to offer the same.  Clubs like ShopRunner are pushing delivery barriers as well, so the norm is shifting to free shipping in a few days or relatively cheap shipping overnight.  Retailers need be thinking about how to ship from physical stores. 2. Bring your own device -- Earlier this year Intuit bought AisleBuyer, a mobile self-checkout start-up, at least somewhat validating the BYOD approach.  Grocery stores, especially in Europe, have been supporting in-aisle self-scanning for a while and I'm betting it will find a home in certain verticals in the US too.  There's also the BYOD concept for employees.  Some retailers are considering issuing mobile devices at hiring along side the shirt and name-tag.  Employees become responsible for the hardware until they leave. 3. TV shopping -- Will Apple finally release a TV product in 2013?  Who knows?  But the industry isn't standing still. Companies like QVC and HSN are already successfully combining the TV and online experiences for shopping.  Comcast is partnering with Tivo to allow viewers to interact with ads with Paypal handing payment.  This will be a slow maturation, but expect TVs to get smarter and eventually become a new selling channel (pun intended) for retailers. 4. Privacy backlash -- It only takes one big incident to stir the public, and I'm betting we have one in 2013.  Facebook, Google, or Apple will test the boundaries of what the public is willing to accept.  It could involve a retailer using geo-location technology, or possibly video analytics.  And as is always the case, the offender will apologize, temporarily remove the technology, and wait 2-3 years for it to be generally accepted.  Privacy is a moving target. 5. More NFC -- I've come to the conclusion that adoption of any banking technology is going to be slow.  It was slow for credit cards, ATMs, and online billpay so why should it be any different for NFC?  Maybe, just maybe the iPhone 5S will have an NFC chip, but we're not going to see mainstream uptake for years.  Next year we'll continue to see incremental improvements from Isis, Google, and Paypal and a plethora of new startups, but don't toss your magstripe cards just yet. 6. In-store location -- The technologies for tracking people inside stores is really improving.  Retailers can track people using video cameras, infrared, and by the WiFi radios in mobile phones.  We're getting closer to the point where accuracy could be a shelf-facing, which will help retailers understand how people shop, where they spend time, and what displays attract them.  Expect CPG companies to get involved and partner with retailers, since the data benefits both parties.  Consumers will benefit by being directed right to the products they seek.  (In 2013 ARTS is forming a workteam to develop new standards in this area.) 7. M&A -- Looking back at 2012 there were some really big deals involving IBM, Oracle, JDA, and NCR and I expect that trend will likely continue as vendors add assets to bolster their portfolios.  Many retailers are due for an IT transformation to support anywhere, anytime shoppers, and one-stop-vendors can minimize complexity and costs. Predictions from other sources: Independent Retailer Stores Magazine IDC Insights Mobile Commerce Daily

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• October in Review

  - by Richard Bingham

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

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

  - by pinaldave

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

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Backward-compatible vs. forward-compatible: a tale of two clouds | William Vambenepe "There is the Cloud that provides value by requiring as few changes as possible. And there is the Cloud that provides value by raising the abstraction and operation level," says William Vambenepe. "The backward-compatible Cloud versus the forward-compatible Cloud." Vambenepe was a panelist on the recent ArchBeat podcast Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds. Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization) Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis investigates "how you can customize a standard BPM Task Flow through MDS Seeded customization." Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Music Festival If, after a day spent in sessions at Oracle Openworld, you want nothing more than to head back to your hotel for a quiet evening spent responding to email, please ignore the rest of this message. Because every night from Sept 30 to Oct 4 the streets of San Francisco will pulsate with music from a vast array of bands representing more musical styles than a single human brain an comprehend. It's the first ever Oracle Music Festival, baby, 7:00pm to 1:00am every night. Are those emails that important...? Resource Kit: Oracle Exadata - includes demos, videos, product datasheets, and technical white papers. This free resource kit includes several customer case study videos, two 3D product demos, several product datasheets, and three technical architecture white papers. Registration is required for the who don't already have a free Oracle.com membership account. Some execs contemplate making 'Bring Your Own Device' mandatory | ZDNet "Companies and agencies are recognizing that individual employees are doing a better job of handling and managing their devices than their harried and overworked IT departments – who need to focus on bigger priorities, such as analytics and cloud," says ZDNet SOA blogger Joe McKendrick. Podcast Show Notes: Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds All three parts of this discussion are now available. Featuring a panel of leading Oracle cloud computing experts, including Dr. James Baty, Mark T. Nelson, Ajay Srivastava, and William Vambenepe, the discussion covers an overview of the various flavors of cloud computing, the importance of standards, Why cloud computing is a paradigm shift—and why it isn't, and advice on what architects need to know to take advantage of the cloud. And for those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is also available. Amazon AMIs and Oracle VM templates (Cloud Migrations) Cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski shares an objective comparison of these two resources. IOUC : Blogs : Read the latest news on the global user group community - June 2012! The June 2012 edition of "Are You a Member Yet?"—the quarterly newsletter about Oracle user group communities around the world. Webcast: Introducing Identity Management 11g R2 - July 19 Date: Thursday, July 19, 2012 Time: 10am PT / 1pm ET Please join Oracle and customer executives for the launch of Oracle Identity Management 11g R2, the breakthrough technology that dramatically expands the reach of identity management to cloud and mobile environments. Thought for the Day "The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build." — Bjarne Stroustrup Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• The Raspberry Pi JavaFX In-Car System (Part 3)

  - by speakjava

  Ras Pi car pt3 Having established communication between a laptop and the ELM327 it's now time to bring in the Raspberry Pi. One of the nice things about the Raspberry Pi is the simplicity of it's power supply.  All we need is 5V at about 700mA, which in a car is as simple as using a USB cigarette lighter adapter (which is handily rated at 1A).  My car has two cigarette lighter sockets (despite being specified with the non-smoking package and therefore no actual cigarette lighter): one in the centre console and one in the rear load area.  This was convenient as my idea is to mount the Raspberry Pi in the back to minimise the disruption to the very clean design of the Audi interior. The first task was to get the Raspberry Pi to communicate using Wi-Fi with the ELM 327.  Initially I tried a cheap Wi-Fi dongle from Amazon, but I could not get this working with my home Wi-Fi network since it just would not handle the WPA security no matter what I did.  I upgraded to a Wi Pi from Farnell and this works very well. The ELM327 uses Ad-Hoc networking, which is point to point communication.  Rather than using a wireless router each connecting device has its own assigned IP address (which needs to be on the same subnet) and uses the same ESSID.  The settings of the ELM327 are fixed to an IP address of 192.168.0.10 and useing the ESSID, "Wifi327".  To configure Raspbian Linux to use these settings we need to modify the /etc/network/interfaces file.  After some searching of the web and a few false starts here's the settings I came up with: auto lo eth0 wlan0 iface lo inet loopback iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.13     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 iface wlan0 inet static     address 192.168.0.1     netmask 255.255.255.0     wireless-essid Wifi327     wireless-mode ad-ho0 After rebooting, iwconfig wlan0 reported that the Wi-Fi settings were correct.  However, ifconfig showed no assigned IP address.  If I configured the IP address manually using ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 then everything was fine and I was able to happily ping the IP address of the ELM327.  I tried numerous variations on the interfaces file, but nothing I did would get me an IP address on wlan0 when the machine booted.  Eventually I decided that this was a pointless thing to spend more time on and so I put a script in /etc/init.d and registered it with update-rc.d.  All the script does (currently) is execute the ifconfig line and now, having installed the telnet package I am able to telnet to the ELM327 via the Raspberry Pi.  Not nice, but it works. Here's a picture of the Raspberry Pi in the car for testing In the next part we'll look at running the Java code on the Raspberry Pi to collect data from the car systems.

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• Big Data – ClustrixDB – Extreme Scale SQL Database with Real-time Analytics, Releases Software Download – NewSQL

  - by Pinal Dave

  There are so many things to learn and there is so little time we all have. As we have little time we need to be selective to learn whatever we learn. I believe I know quite a lot of things in SQL but I still do not know what is around SQL. I have started to learn about NewSQL recently. If you wonder what is NewSQL I encourage all of you to read my blog post about NewSQL over here Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21. NewSQL databases are quickly becoming popular – providing the scale of NoSQL with the SQL features and transactions. As a part of learning NewSQL database, I have recently started to learn about ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB has been the most mature NewSQL database used by some of the largest internet sites in the world for over 3 years, with extensive SQL support. In addition to scale, it provides fast real-time analytics by bringing massively parallel processing (MPP), available only in warehousing databases, to the transactional database. The reason I am more intrigued about learning ClustrixDB is their recent announcement on Oct 31. ClustrixDB was only available as an appliance, but now with their software release on Oct 31, everyone can use it. It is now available as forever free for up to 12 cores with community support, and there is a 45 day trial for unlimited cluster sizes. With the forever free world, I am indeed interested in ClustrixDB now. I know that few of the leading eCommerce sites in the world uses them for their transactional database. Here are few of the details I have quickly noted for ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB allows user to: Scale by simply adding nodes to the cluster with a single command Run billions of transactions a day Run fast real-time analytics Achieve high-availability with recovery from node failure Manages itself Easily migrate from MySQL as it is nearly plug-and-play compatible, use MySQL drivers, tools and replication. While I was going through the documentation I realized that ClustrixDB also has extensive support for SQL features including complex queries involving joins on a dozen or more tables, aggregates, sorts, sub-queries. It also supports stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, partitioned and temporary tables, and fully online schema changes. It is indeed a very matured product and SQL solution. Indeed Clusterix sound very promising solution, I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand who are current customers of the Clustrix as they exist in the industry for quite a few years. Their client list is indeed very interesting and here is my quick research about them. Twoo.com – Europe’s largest social discovery (dating) site runs 4.4 Billion Transactions a day with table sizes over a Terabyte, on a 168 core cluster. EngageBDR – Top 3 in the online advertising category uses ClustrixDB to serve 6.9 billion ads a day through real-time bidding platform. Their reports went from 4 hours to 15 seconds. NoMoreRack – Top 2 fastest growing e-commerce company in US used ClustrixDB for high availability and fast growth through Amazon cloud. MakeMyTrip – India’s leading travel site runs on ClustrixDB with two clusters running as multi-master in Chennai and Bangalore. Many enterprises such as AOL, CSC, Rakuten, Symantec use ClustrixDB when their applications need scale. I must accept that I am impressed with the information I have learned so far and now is the time to do some hand’s on experience with their product. I want to learn this technology so in future when it is about NewSQL, I know what I am talking about. Read more why Clustrix explains why you ClustrixDB might be the right database for you. Download ClustrixDB with me today and install it on your machine so in future when we discuss the technical aspects of it, we all are on the same page. The software can be downloaded here. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Clustrix

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• Starting over and new to Ubuntu

  - by 2funnyyone

  We have been having repeated problems with our interent service and using windows xp & sp3 (users and premissions) I see no need for them. I started with computers long before windows. Every since sp 3 come out in 2009 I have had nothing but problems. I have lost so many computers to virius and trojans, we just stack them up. We are with Qwest/ Century link which is using advertising servers which I think is causing the problem. All the computers are networked together which is not how I set them up. I beleive Century link is networking them through assignment of a domain for our home. This causes all the computers to crash twice. This is getting expensive. We tried buying new harddrives but reinfect with hours of connecting to internet. I also beleive the modem, router and all computers are infected. I put combofix on this one and that is the only reason we are still online with this laptop. I am afraid to install new equipment because my partner and I are on SSDI and this cost a lot. I go to school at UOP and had to run off a flash and reboot this laptop to recovery every other day or so, this pass month. New plan is: We are getting ready to install new equipment but afraid to reinfect again. Need help to install new equipment. The plan is to use current internet services from Qwest/ now Century Link. The list of New equipment in order: Century link wireless modem is ZyXEL PK5000Z with 4 direct connect Ethernet ports Next Dell Optiplex 210L ( used auction purchase ) 2 gb ram 80 g hard drive Ubuntu 11.10 operating system Next Wireless D-Link router WBR-1310 with 4 direct connect Ethernet ports OK-------- Purchased Dell OEM disk for Repair or Reinstalling Windows XP Professional Operating system (2 roommates as well) All infected computers are Dell desktops or laptops with XP Pro Also purchasing Ubuntu 12.04 for 3 computers. We like the way it runs but still learning it. Questions 1] How do we fdisk the infected computers without infecting new system. We have Dos disks, but none have floppy dish drive. We do have a new floppy disk drive and usb adapter we purchased from Amazon. 2] We are thinking Avast internet security because of the boot scan. We want all software loaded before reconnecting. We can manually load our internet provider information. We purchased StopZilla $100 for 5 computers, but not sure that is what we need. But need how to setup ports security and services we will need. Really lost at this part. So we are safe when we go back on the internet. 3] Want to connect reloaded fdisk systems to router as public connection and no sharing. Do not want to network all computers. 4] Want parental/ ownership control from Ubuntu system for internet connection (Children and friends). Do we restrict at the modem and/ or router? Any help would be a blessing. I do not want to go alone on this anymore.

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• Hosted Monitoring

  - by Grant Fritchey

  The concept of using services to take the place of writing a lot of your own code goes way, way back in computing history. The fundamentals of the concept go back to the dawn of computing with places like IBM hosting time-shares for computing power that you could rent for short periods of time. But things really took off with the building of the Web. Now, all the growth with virtual machines, hosted machines, hosted services from vendors like Amazon and Microsoft, the need to keep all of your software locally on physical boxes is just going the way of the dodo. There will likely always be some pieces of software that you keep on machines on your property or on your person, but the concept of keeping fundamental services locally is going away. As someone put it to me once, if you were starting a business right now, would you bother setting up an Exchange server to manage your email or would you just go to one of the external mail services for everything? For most of us (who are not Exchange admins) the answer is pretty easy. With all this momentum to having external services manage more and more of the infrastructure that’s not business unique, why would you burn up a server and license instance setting up monitoring for your SQL Servers? Of course, some of you are dealing with hyper-sensitive data that might require, through law or treaty, that you lock it down and never expose it to the intertubes, but most of us are not. So, what if someone else took on the basic hassle of setting up monitoring on your systems? That’s what we’re working on here at Red Gate. Right now it’s a private test, but we’re growing it and developing it and it’ll be going to a public beta, probably (hopefully) this year. I’m running it on my machines right now. The concept is pretty simple. You put a relay on your server, poke a hole in your firewall for it, and we start monitoring your server using SQL Monitor. It’s actually shocking how easy it is to get going. You still have to adjust your alerting thresholds, but that’s a standard part of alerting. Your pain threshold and my pain threshold for any given alert may be different. But from there, we do all the heavy lifting, keeping your data online and available, providing you with access to the information about how your servers are behaving, everything. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m really excited by this. I think we’re getting to a place where we can really help the small and medium sized businesses get a monitoring solution in place, quickly and easily. All you crazy busy, and possibly accidental, DBAs and system admins finally can set up monitoring without taking all the time to configure systems, run installs, and all the rest. You just have to tweak your alerts and you’re ready to run. If you are interested in checking it out, you can apply for the closed beta through the Monitor web page.

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• Java 7 update 6 installation fails on Windows 7 when Chrome is default browser

  - by ali1234

  I am configuring a brand new Lenovo U410 system with Windows 7 Home Premium for a user. I received the system direct from the shop. As part of the configuration I installed Java using the online installer. This worked correctly. Later, due to a mistake I made, I needed to restore the system to factory default. The factory default FORMATS C:\ and puts back (supposedly) the exact factory configuration. However, after doing this, I was no longer able to install Java successfully using the same method I used before. Now, whenever I attempt to use the online Java installer, the following happens. First of all, a window always appears "Welcome to Java", "Downloading Java Installer...". After short time this window disappears and then one of three things happens: The very first time I do this after doing a factory reset, I get a Windows error report, which contains this information: Application Name: JavaSetup7u5.exe Application Version: 7.0.50.6 Application Timestamp: 4feacd84 Fault Module Name: JavaIC.dll Fault Module Version: 9.9.9.9 Fault Module Timestamp: 4f2343d6 Exception Offset: 000052cb Exception Code: c0000417 Exception Data: 00000000 OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 773c Additional Information 2: 773cd78cf06816f8246f359fa270f3bb Additional Information 3: f51a Additional Information 4: f51aaea7d22f36fa9e3a626b5a5cd1c3 2. Subsequent runs produce either this error message: "Error: Java(TM) installer - Downloaded file C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp\fx-runtime.exe is corrupt." or Nothing happens at all. I Believe this is a red herring. Running the installer again causes a different error because the files were downloaded and the installer crashed before it could clean up. This isn't the actual problem, as when this happens the installer deletes the downloaded files, and then when you run it for the third time, it downloads everything again and does the javaic.dll crash. I suspect the downloader is appending to the existing files or something, causing the corruption. I have tried all of the above as Administrator and as a normal user. I have tried reseting the system to factory defaults several times. I have tried downloading with Chrome and Internet Explorer 9. I have tried uninstalling all anti-virus software and disabling the windows firewall entirely. The only thing which makes a difference is running the installer in Windows XP compatibility mode, which allows the installation to complete. I know I can workaround this error by using the offline installer so please don't post that as an answer. I am looking for an explanation of the root cause. Additionally, if I use the offline installer, the updater does not work. The updater also does not work if I install in XP mode. The updater fails because it works by just downloading the newest online setup and running it. Also remember that the installers are digitally signed. The signitures verify correctly so there is no way in hell that this is caused by corrupted downloads. Some theories I have: The Java setup files on java.com actually changed in between the first successful install and my later attempts. Seems unlikely as none of the version numbers have changed. However, I have seen a couple of reports of this error which showed up in the past 24 hours. This looks like the most likely explanation right now: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1735645 - Oracle released 7 update 6 two days ago. Careful inspection of the installers reveal that they are in fact attempting to download .6, not .5 as the download page claims. Not actually correct. Only the update tool tries to install 7u6. The online installer still tries 7u5. However, 7u6 being released two days ago is too much of a coincidence to ignore. Update: The 7u6 online installer is available from Oracle technetwork. It crashes in exactly the same way. The factory reset software uses GMT-8 and I am on GMT-1. As a result, after factory reset, any software which cares to check would think that the system was restored 7 hours in the future, due to Window's awful policy of storing local time in the system clock. This could be confusing a certificate check or similar. Update: I discovered that this does cause Windows Update to fail. The workaround, setting the clock back before starting factory reset, does not enable Java to install correctly. The factory reset image isn't really the same as what is installed in the main partition when you buy the system. Naughty Lenovo. The installer appears to crash while installing or displaying something to do with the Ask.com toolbar. That seems to be what javaic.dll does. Microsoft Tuesday was the 14th. Some update in that could be causing this. However, I'm factory reseting the machine every time, so unless the patches get slipstreamed into the recovery image, or there is some mechanism by which they get silently installed even if updates are disabled, then I don't see how this can be the cause. Major breakthrough: The default browser on Lenovo systems is Google Chrome. I noticed that the JavaIC.dll "sponsor check" actually does a check on your default browser in order to decide which sponsor ad to display. Normally that would get you the Ask toolbar on IE9. But that toolbar doesn't work on Chrome, and so the installer tries to display a different ad. The different ad is what causes the crash. Changing the default browser to IE9 allows the installer to run correctly. So this looks like a genuine bug in the sponsor ad code in the installer, caused by a combination of Google Chrome default browser and not being in the US. (Installer also checks your location using IP geolocation service and displays different ads based on that.)

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