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• SQL User Group Events coming - Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester and Edinburgh

  - by tonyrogerson

  Neil Hambly and myself are presenting next week in Cambridge, Neil will be showing us how to use tools at hand to determine the current activity on your database servers and I'll be doing a talk around Disaster Recovery and High Availability and the options we have at hand.The User Group is growing in size and spread, there is a Southampton event planned for the 9th Dec - make sure you keep your eyes peeled for more details - the best place is the UK SQL Server User Group LinkedIn area.Want removing from this email list? Then just reply with remove please on the subject line.Cambridge SQL UG - 25th Nov, EveningEvening Meeting, More info and registerNeil Hambly on Determining the current activity of your Database Servers, Product demo from Red-Gate, Tony Rogerson on HA/DR/Scalability(Backup/Recovery options - clustering, mirroring, log shipping; scaling considerations etc.)Leeds SQL UG - 8th Dec, EveningEvening Meeting, More info and registerNeil Hambly will be talking about Index Views and Computed Columns for Performance, Tony Rogerson will be showing some advanced T-SQL techniques.Manchester SQL UG - 9th Dec, EveningEvening Meeting, More info and registerEnd of year wrap up, networking, drinks, some discussions - more info to follow soon.Edinburgh SQL UG - 9th Dec, EveningEvening Meeting, More info and registerSatya Jayanty will give an X factor for a DBAs life and Tony Rogerson will talk about SQL Server internals.Many thanks,Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVPUK SQL Server User Grouphttp://sqlserverfaq.com

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• Runaway version store in tempdb

  - by DavidWimbush

  Today was really a new one. I got back from a week off and found our main production server's tempdb had gone from its usual 200MB to 36GB. Ironically I spent Friday at the most excellent SQLBits VI and one of the sessions I attended was Christian Bolton talking about tempdb issues - including runaway tempdb databases. How just-in-time was that?! I looked into the file growth history and it looks like the problem started when my index maintenance job was chosen as the deadlock victim. (Funny how they almost make it sound like you've won something.) That left tempdb pretty big but for some reason it grew several more times. And since I'd left the file growth at the default 10% (aaargh!) the worse it got the worse it got. The last regrowth event was 2.6GB. Good job I've got Instant Initialization on. Since the Disk Usage report showed it was 99% unallocated I went into the Shrink Files dialogue which helpfully informed me the data file was 250MB.  I'm afraid I've got a life (allegedly) so I restarted the SQL Server service and then immediately ran a script to make the initial size bigger and change the file growth to a number of MB. The script complained that the size was smaller than the current size. Within seconds! WTF? Now I had to find out what was using so much of it. By using the DMV sys.dm_db_file_space_usage I found the problem was in the version store, and using the DMV sys.dm_db_task_space_usage and the Top Transactions by Age report I found that the culprit was a 3rd party database where I had turned on read_committed_snapshot and then not bothered to monitor things properly. Just because something has always worked before doesn't mean it will work in every future case. This application had an implicit transaction that had been running for over 2 hours.

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• How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

  - by David Atkinson

  Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

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• SQL SERVER – T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers

  - by pinaldave

  There are plenty of the things life one can make it simple. I really believe in the same. I was yesterday traveling for community related activity. On airport while returning I met a SQL Enthusiast. He asked me if there is any simple way to find maximum between two numbers in the SQL Server. I asked him back that what he really mean by Simple Way and requested him to demonstrate his code for finding maximum between two numbers. Here is his code: DECLARE @Value1 DECIMAL(5,2) = 9.22 DECLARE @Value2 DECIMAL(5,2) = 8.34 SELECT (0.5 * ((@Value1 + @Value2) + ABS(@Value1 - @Value2))) AS MaxColumn GO I thought his logic was accurate but the same script can be written another way. I quickly wrote following code for him and which worked just fine for him. Here is my code: DECLARE @Value1 DECIMAL(5,2) = 9.22 DECLARE @Value2 DECIMAL(5,2) = 8.34 SELECT CASE WHEN @Value1 > @Value2 THEN @Value1 ELSE @Value2 END AS MaxColumn GO He agreed that my code is much simpler but as per him there is some problem with my code which apparently he does not remember at this time. There are cases when his code will give accurate values and my code will not. I think his comment has value but both of us for the moment could not come up with any valid reason. Do you think any scenario where his code will work and my suggested code will not work? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Copy TFS Build Definitions between Projects and Collections

  - by Jakob Ehn

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2014/06/05/copy-tfs-build-definitions-between-projects-and-collections.aspxThe last couple of years it has become apparent that using multiple team projects in TFS is generally a bad idea. There are of course exceptions to this, but there are a lot ot things that becomes much easier to do when you put all of your projects and team in the same team project. Fellow ALM MVP Martin Hinshelwood has blogged about this several times, as well as other people in the community. In particular, using the backlog and portfolio management tools makes much more sense when everything is located in the same team project. Consolidating multiple team projects into one is not that easy unfortunately, it involves migrating source code, work items, reports etc.  Another thing that also need to be migrated is build definitions. It is possible to clone build definitions within the same team project using the TFS power tools. The Community TFS Build Manager also lets you clone build definitions to other team projects. But there is no tool that allows you to clone/copy a build definition to another collection. So, I whipped up a simple console application that let you do this. The tool can be downloaded from https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=EE034C9F620CD58D!8162&authkey=!ACTr56v1QVowzuE&ithint=file%2c.zip   Using CopyTFSBuildDefinitions You use the tool like this: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions  SourceCollectionUrl  SourceTeamProject  BuildDefinitionName  DestinationCollectionUrl  DestinationTeamProject [NewDefinitionName] Arguments SourceCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project with the build definition that you want to copy SourceTeamProject The name of the team project that contains the build definition BuildDefinitionName Name of the build definition DestinationCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project that you want to copy your build definition to DestinationTeamProject The name of the team project in the destination collection NewDefinitionName (Optional) Use this to override the name of the new build definition. If you don’t specify this, the name will the same as the original one Example: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions  https://jakob.visualstudio.com DemoProject  WebApplication.CI https://anotheraccount.visualstudio.com     Notes Since we are (potentially) create a build definition in a new collection, there is no guarantee that the various paths that are defined in the build definition exist in the new collection. For example, a build definition refers to server paths in TFVC or repos + branches in TFGit. It also refers to build controllers that definitely don’t exist in the new collection. So there will be some cleanup to do after you copy your build definitions. You can fix some of these using the Community TFS Build Manager, for example it is very easy to apply the correct build controller to a set of build definitions The problem stated above also applies to build process templates. However, the tool tries to find a build process template in the new team project with the same file name as the one that existed in the old team project. If it finds one, it will be used for the new build definition. Otherwise is will use the default build template If you want to run the tool for many build definitions, you can use this SQL scripts, compliments of Mr. Scrum/ALM MVP Richard Hundhausen to generate the necessary commands: USE Tfs_Collection GO SELECT 'CopyTFSBuildDefinitions.exe http://SERVER:8080/tfs/collection "' + P.ProjectName + '" "' + REPLACE(BD.DefinitionName,'\','') + '" http://NEWSERVER:8080/tfs/COLLECTION TEAMPROJECT'   FROM tbl_Project P        INNER JOIN tbl_BuildGroup BG on BG.TeamProject = P.ProjectUri        INNER JOIN tbl_BuildDefinition BD on BD.GroupId = BG.GroupId   ORDER BY P.ProjectName, BD.DefinitionName   Hope that helps, let me know if you have any problems with the tool or if you find it useful

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• Frank Ludolph's Last Day at Work

  - by mprove

  Hi Frank, today is your last day at Oracle. I cannot belief that retirement is an alternative to designing software and improving products for decades. I might figure it out myself in a couple of years. Our ways have crossed several times. And I am extremely thankful for that. I still remember my first session on an Apple Lisa. It must have been around 1985. I was still in school, and we were visiting the University of Hamburg to get some orientation on the departments. When I started I chose Informatics. And I suppose the Apple Lisa played a significant role in my decision. Is it fate that I later wrote about Apple Lisa? I’ve attended your presentation and public demo of the Lisa System at CHI ’98 in Los Angeles. Maybe a video still exists. I should look it up and publish it somewhere. You had also booth duty for Sun Microsystems – presenting HotJava Views, a user interface for a network computer. And you were handing out VHS tapes (!) of Starfire. I still have mine – but no player anymore. Then I joined Sun in 2002, and I guess I popped up in your office each time when I came to Santa Clara. The SEED mentoring program finally made it possible that we exchanged and discussed many ideas on the past and future of HCI. Dueling Interaction Models of Personal-Computing and Web-Computing at MEDICI 2007 is one of the results. But do you remember for instance also our jam session with Phil Clevenger on Hello World? Marvelous! I will miss you at Oracle. Enjoy your life and let’s stay in touch.Matthias

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• Announcing Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Author: Neela Chaudhari Every year at OpenWorld, Oracle announces the winners to its most prestigious awards in Middleware, the Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards. This year, we’ll be announcing the winners and highlighting a few of their original implementations during this key session in the Middleware stream: 11:45 AM on Tuesday, October 2nd, CON9162 Oracle Fusion Middleware: Meet This Year's Most Impressive Customer Projects in Moscone West, 3001. In addition, we’ll give a sneak peak of a few winners during GEN9394: Fusion Middleware General Session with Hasan Rizvi at 10:15 AM on Tuesday, October 2nd in Moscone West, Hall D! What kinds of customers win the Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards? Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. The winners are selected by a panel of judges that score each entry across multiple different scoring categories. This year, the following categories included: Oracle Exalogic Cloud Application Foundation Service Integration (SOA) and BPM WebCenter Identity Management Data Integration Application Development Framework and Fusion Development Business Analytics (BI, EPM and Exalytics) Last year at OpenWorld 2011 we had standing room only in our session, so come early!  We had over 30 innovative customers that won the award, including companies like BT, Choice Hotels, Electronic Arts, Clorox Company, ING, Dunkin Brands, Telenor, Haier, AT&T, Manpower, Herbal Life and many others. Did you miss your chance this year to nominate your company? Come join with us in the awards session to get an edge in your next year’s submission and watch for the next opportunity for 2013 on this blog. There’s other awards as part of Oracle’s Excellence awards program or subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware newsletter to get the latest reminders.

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• An introductory presentation about testing with MSTest, Visual Studio, and Team Foundation Server 2010

  - by Thomas Weller

  While it was very quiet here on my blog during the last months, this was not at all true for the rest of my professional life. The simple story is that I was too busy to find the time for authoring blog posts (and you might see from my previous ones that they’re usually not of the ‘Hey, I’m currently reading X’ or ‘I’m currently thinking about Y’ kind…). Anyway. Among the things I did during the last months were setting up a TFS environment (2010) and introducing a development team to the MSTest framework (aka. Visual Studio Unit Testing), some additional tools (e.g. Moq, Moles, White),  how this is supported in Visual Studio, and how it integrates into the broader context of the then new TFS environment. After wiping out all the stuff which was directly related to my former customer and reviewing/extending the Speaker notes, I thought I share this presentation (via Slideshare) with the rest of the world. Hopefully it can be useful to someone else out there… Introduction to testing with MSTest, Visual Studio, and Team Foundation Server 2010 View more presentations from Thomas Weller. Be sure to also check out the slide notes (either by viewing the presentation directly on Slideshare or - even better - by downloading it). They contain quite some additional information, hints, and (in my opinion) best practices.

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• "Give with Bing" - Help raise money for Sports relief while searching for whatever you want

  - by Testas

  While Sport Relief drives fundraising by challenging people to do physical activities such as running a mile, we’re introducing the ‘Bing Search Mile,’ which gives people the ability to search using Bing and raise money for charity. For every 10 searches made, Bing.com will donate 5p to Sport Relief 2010, enabling you, and your friends and family, to raise money just by searching with Bing until the end of March. With the average mile taking about 10 minutes to run, in the same time, you can make up to 150 searches online - that’s 75p raised for a good cause per ‘search mile’. And while you’re at it,  why not step it up a gear and aim to complete a ‘Search Mile’ each day or even a ‘Search Marathon’ over the 5 week campaign with your colleagues, friends and family? How to get involved: 1.      Visit GiveWithBing.com and download the Official Sport Relief Bing Counter. Once downloaded, the Sport Relief counter will count all the searches you do on Bing from that point on.  2.      Now that you’re registered (and signed in), invite your friends, family, colleagues or classmates to join in the fundraising with you – GiveWithBing.com automatically generates an email explaining how it works for you to send them – the more people who search with you, the more money you raise. People can also register a school 3.      Run your ‘search mile’ every day and watch how your searches turn into life-changing cash for charity, with every 10 searches equalling 5p for Sport Relief. You can check your progress by visiting your individual page (more info here).  This is such a positive initiative and I challenge everyone in the UK to invite their key contacts to be part of Give with Bing.   Chris

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• Brainless Backups

  - by Jesse

  I’m a software developer by trade which means to my friends and family I’m just a “computer guy”. It’s assumed that I know everything about every facet of computing from removing spyware to replacing hardware. I also can do all of this blindly over the phone or after hearing a five to ten word description of the problem over dinner ;-) In my position as CIO of my friends and families I’ve been in the unfortunate position of trying to recover music, pictures, or documents off of failed hard drives on more than one occasion. It’s not a great situation for anyone, and it’s always at these times that the importance of backups becomes so clear. Several months back a friend of mine found himself in this situation. The hard drive on his 8 year old laptop failed and took a good number of his digital photos with it. I think most folks can deal with losing some of their music and even some of their documents, but it really stings to lose pictures of past events and loved ones. After ordering a new laptop, my friend went out and bought an external hard drive so that he could start keeping a backup of his data. As fate would have it, several months later the drive in his new laptop failed and he learned the hard way that simply buying the external hard drive isn’t enough… you actually have to copy your stuff over every once in awhile! The importance of backup and recovery plans is (hopefully) well known in IT organizations. Well executed backup plans are in place, and hopefully the backup and recovery process is tested regularly. When you’re talking about users at home, however, the need for these backups is often understood far too late. Most typical users can’t be expected to remember to backup their data regularly and also don’t always have the know-how to setup automated backups. For my friends and family members in this situation I recommend tools like Dropbox, Carbonite, and Mozy. Here’s why I like them: They’re affordable: Dropbox and Mozy both have free offerings, though most people with lots of music and/or photos to backup will probably exceed the storage limitations of those free plans pretty quickly. Still, all three offer pretty affordable monthly or yearly plans. In my opinion, Carbonite’s unlimited storage plan for $50-$60 per year is the best value around. They’re easy to setup: Both Dropbox and Carbonite are very easy to get setup and start using. I’ve never used Mozy, but I imagine it’s similarly painless to get up and running. Backups are automatically “off-site”: A backup that is sitting on an external hard drive right next to your computer is great, but might not protect against flood damage, a power surge, or other disasters in that single location. These services exist “in the cloud” so to speak, helping mitigate those concerns. Granted, this kind of backup scheme requires some trust in the 3rd party to protect your data from both malicious people and disastrous events. This truly is a bit of a double edged sword, but I sleep well at night knowing that my data is being backed up and secured by a company made up of engineers that focus on the business of doing backups right. Backups are “brainless”: What I like most about services like these is that they work “automagically” in the background, watching for files to be updated and automatically backing up those changes. There’s no need to remember to plug in that external drive and copy your data over. Since starting to recommend these services to my friends and family I find myself wearing my “data recovery” hat far less often. The only way backups are effective for your standard computer user is if they’re completely automatic. Backups need to be brainless, or they just won’t work.

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• The Red Gate and .NET Reflector Debacle

  - by Rick Strahl

  About a month ago Red Gate – the company who owns the NET Reflector tool most .NET devs use at one point or another – decided to change their business model for Reflector and take the product from free to a fully paid for license model. As a bit of history: .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder as a free community tool to inspect .NET assemblies. Using Reflector you can examine the types in an assembly, drill into type signatures and quickly disassemble code to see how a particular method works.  In case you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve never looked at Reflector, here’s what it looks like drilled into an assembly from disk with some disassembled source code showing: Note that you get tons of information about each element in the tree, and almost all related types and members are clickable both in the list and source view so it’s extremely easy to navigate and follow the code flow even in this static assembly only view. For many year’s Lutz kept the the tool up to date and added more features gradually improving an already amazing tool and making it better. Then about two and a half years ago Red Gate bought the tool from Lutz. A lot of ruckus and noise ensued in the community back then about what would happen with the tool and… for the most part very little did. Other than the incessant update notices with prominent Red Gate promo on them life with Reflector went on. The product didn’t die and and it didn’t go commercial or to a charge model. When .NET 4.0 came out it still continued to work mostly because the .NET feature set doesn’t drastically change how types behave.  Then a month back Red Gate started making noise about a new Version Version 7 which would be commercial. No more free version - and a shit storm broke out in the community. Now normally I’m not one to be critical of companies trying to make money from a product, much less for a product that’s as incredibly useful as Reflector. There isn’t day in .NET development that goes by for me where I don’t fire up Reflector. Whether it’s for examining the innards of the .NET Framework, checking out third party code, or verifying some of my own code and resources. Even more so recently I’ve been doing a lot of Interop work with a non-.NET application that needs to access .NET components and Reflector has been immensely valuable to me (and my clients) if figuring out exact type signatures required to calling .NET components in assemblies. In short Reflector is an invaluable tool to me. Ok, so what’s the problem? Why all the fuss? Certainly the $39 Red Gate is trying to charge isn’t going to kill any developer. If there’s any tool in .NET that’s worth $39 it’s Reflector, right? Right, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is how Red Gate went about moving the product to commercial which borders on the downright bizarre. It’s almost as if somebody in management wrote a slogan: “How can we piss off the .NET community in the most painful way we can?” And that it seems Red Gate has a utterly succeeded. People are rabid, and for once I think that this outrage isn’t exactly misplaced. Take a look at the message thread that Red Gate dedicated from a link off the download page. Not only is Version 7 going to be a paid commercial tool, but the older versions of Reflector won’t be available any longer. Not only that but older versions that are already in use also will continually try to update themselves to the new paid version – which when installed will then expire unless registered properly. There have also been reports of Version 6 installs shutting themselves down and failing to work if the update is refused (I haven’t seen that myself so not sure if that’s true). In other words Red Gate is trying to make damn sure they’re getting your money if you attempt to use Reflector. There’s a lot of temptation there. Think about the millions of .NET developers out there and all of them possibly upgrading – that’s a nice chunk of change that Red Gate’s sitting on. Even with all the community backlash these guys are probably making some bank right now just because people need to get life to move on. Red Gate also put up a Feedback link on the download page – which not surprisingly is chock full with hate mail condemning the move. Oddly there’s not a single response to any of those messages by the Red Gate folks except when it concerns license questions for the full version. It puzzles me what that link serves for other yet than another complete example of failure to understand how to handle customer relations. There’s no doubt that that all of this has caused some serious outrage in the community. The sad part though is that this could have been handled so much less arrogantly and without pissing off the entire community and causing so much ill-will. People are pissed off and I have no doubt that this negative publicity will show up in the sales numbers for their other products. I certainly hope so. Stupidity ought to be painful! Why do Companies do boneheaded stuff like this? Red Gate’s original decision to buy Reflector was hotly debated but at that the time most of what would happen was mostly speculation. But I thought it was a smart move for any company that is in need of spreading its marketing message and corporate image as a vendor in the .NET space. Where else do you get to flash your corporate logo to hordes of .NET developers on a regular basis?  Exploiting that marketing with some goodwill of providing a free tool breeds positive feedback that hopefully has a good effect on the company’s visibility and the products it sells. Instead Red Gate seems to have taken exactly the opposite tack of corporate bullying to try to make a quick buck – and in the process ruined any community goodwill that might have come from providing a service community for free while still getting valuable marketing. What’s so puzzling about this boneheaded escapade is that the company doesn’t need to resort to underhanded tactics like what they are trying with Reflector 7. The tools the company makes are very good. I personally use SQL Compare, Sql Data Compare and ANTS Profiler on a regular basis and all of these tools are essential in my toolbox. They certainly work much better than the tools that are in the box with Visual Studio. Chances are that if Reflector 7 added useful features I would have been more than happy to shell out my $39 to upgrade when the time is right. It’s Expensive to give away stuff for Free At the same time, this episode shows some of the big problems that come with ‘free’ tools. A lot of organizations are realizing that giving stuff away for free is actually quite expensive and the pay back is often very intangible if any at all. Those that rely on donations or other voluntary compensation find that they amount contributed is absolutely miniscule as to not matter at all. Yet at the same time I bet most of those clamouring the loudest on that Red Gate Reflector feedback page that Reflector won’t be free anymore probably have NEVER made a donation to any open source project or free tool ever. The expectation of Free these days is just too great – which is a shame I think. There’s a lot to be said for paid software and having somebody to hold to responsible to because you gave them some money. There’s an incentive –> payback –> responsibility model that seems to be missing from free software (not all of it, but a lot of it). While there certainly are plenty of bad apples in paid software as well, money tends to be a good motivator for people to continue working and improving products. Reasons for giving away stuff are many but often it’s a naïve desire to share things when things are simple. At first it might be no problem to volunteer time and effort but as products mature the fun goes out of it, and as the reality of product maintenance kicks in developers want to get something back for the time and effort they’re putting in doing non-glamorous work. It’s then when products die or languish and this is painful for all to watch. For Red Gate however, I think there was always a pretty good payback from the Reflector acquisition in terms of marketing: Visibility and possible positioning of their products although they seemed to have mostly ignored that option. On the other hand they started this off pretty badly even 2 and a half years back when they aquired Reflector from Lutz with the same arrogant attitude that is evident in the latest episode. You really gotta wonder what folks are thinking in management – the sad part is from advance emails that were circulating, they were fully aware of the shit storm they were inciting with this and I suspect they are banking on the sheer numbers of .NET developers to still make them a tidy chunk of change from upgrades… Alternatives are coming For me personally the single license isn’t a problem, but I actually have a tool that I sell (an interop Web Service proxy generation tool) to customers and one of the things I recommend to use with has been Reflector to view assembly information and to find which Interop classes to instantiate from the non-.NET environment. It’s been nice to use Reflector for this with its small footprint and zero-configuration installation. But now with V7 becoming a paid tool that option is not going to be available anymore. Luckily it looks like the .NET community is jumping to it and trying to fill the void. Amidst the Red Gate outrage a new library called ILSpy has sprung up and providing at least some of the core functionality of Reflector with an open source library. It looks promising going forward and I suspect there will be a lot more support and interest to support this project now that Reflector has gone over to the ‘dark side’…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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• BizTalk: mapping with Xslt

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  BizTalk Map Editor (Mapper) is a good editor, especially in the last 2010 version of the BizTalk. But still sometimes it cannot do the tasks easily. It is time for the Xslt code, It is time to remember that the maps are executed by the Xslt engine.  Right-click the Mapper Grid (a field between the source and target schemas) and choose Properties /Custom XSLT Path.  Input here a name of the file with Xslt code. Only this code will be executed, forget the picture in the Mapper, all those links and functoids.  Let’s see the real-life example. There are two source Addresses. One is on the top level and the second is inside the Member_Address record with MaxOccurs=* . The target address is placed inside the Locator record with MaxOccurs=*. The requirement is to map all source address to the one target address structure. The source Xml document looks like: The result Xml should be like this: Try to do this mapping with the Mapper and you will spent good amount of time and the result map would be tricky. If we use the Xslt code, the mapping will be simple and unambiguous, like this: Simple, elegant.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Mobile Computing

  - by Clint Edmonson

  A while back, mashups were all the rage. The idea was to compose solutions that provided aggregation and integration across applications and services to make information more available, useful, and personal. Mashups ushered in the era of Web 2.0 in all it’s socially connected goodness. They taught us that to be successful, we needed to add web service APIs to our web applications. Web and client based mashups met with great success and have evolved even further with the introduction of the internet connected smartphone. Nothing is more available, useful, or personal than our smartphones. The current generation of cloud connected mobile computing mashups allow our mobilized workforces to receive, process, and react to information from disparate sources faster than ever before. Drivers Integration Reach Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of a prototypical mobile computing solution using Windows Azure: Ingredients Web Role – with the phone running a dedicated client application, the web role is responsible for serving up backend web services that implement the solution’s core connected functionality. Database – used to store core operational and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Access Control – this service is used to authenticate and manage users identity, roles, and groups, possibly in conjunction with 3rd identity providers such as Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. Worker Role – this role is used to handle the orchestration of long-running, complex, asynchronous operations. While much of the integration and interaction with other services can be handled directly by the mobile client application, it’s possible that the backend may need to integrate with 3rd party services as well. Offloading this work to a worker role better distributes computing resources and keeps the web roles focused on direct client interaction. Queues – these provide reliable, persistent messaging between applications and processes. They are an absolute necessity once asynchronous processing is involved. Queues facilitate the flow of distributed events and allow a solution to send push notifications back to mobile devices at appropriate times. Training & Resources These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode. Windows Azure Toolkit for Android The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to work with Windows Azure from native Android applications. The toolkit can be used for native Android applications developed using Eclipse and the Android SDK. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Building in Change: Project Construction in Asset Intensive Industries

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  According to a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Oracle, only 51% of project owners rated themselves as effective at delivering their projects to scope, budget, and schedule when confronted with change. In addition only 43% rated themselves as effective at anticipating potential change. Even with the best processes and technology in place, change is often an unavoidable part of the construction process. How organizations respond to change can mean the difference between delays and cost overruns, and projects being completed on schedule and on budget. Implementing Enterprise Project Portfolio Management and using a solution to help manage and automate those process can help asset intensive organizations: Govern project and program compliance and regulatory requirements for project success Unite project teams and stakeholders through collaboration and strong feedback methods to speed project completion Reduce the risk of cost and schedule overruns and any resulting penalties to deliver on time and on budget Effectively manage change throughout the project life cycle Ensure sufficient capacity, utilization, and availability of people, skills, and other resources to meet commitments. The results of the recent EIU survey, sponsored by Oracle:"Building in Change: Project Construction in Asset-Intensive Industries", will be revealed in an upcoming webinar with Hart Energy / Oil & Gas Investor, featuring the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oracle on April 11th at 1pm CST. Click here for further information or visit http://www.oilandgasinvestor.com/

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• How much Ruby should I learn before moving to Rails?

  - by Kevin

  Just a quick question.. I can never get a definitive answer when googling this, either. Some people say you can learn Rails without knowing any Ruby, but at some point you'll run into a brick wall and wish you knew Ruby and will have to go back to learn it..and some say to learn the "basics" of Ruby before learning Rails and it will make your life that much easier.. My current knowledge is low. I'm not a beginner, but I'm not pro, either. I went through the Learn Python The Hard Way online book in about a month, but I stopped once I got to the OOP side of Python (I know booleans, elif/if/else/statements, for loops, while loops, functions) I agree with learning the "basics" of Ruby before learning Rails, but what exactly are the "basics" of Ruby? Would I need to learn the whole OOP side of Ruby before I went on to Rails? Or would I just need to learn the Ruby syntax up to where I learned Python (booleans, elif/if/else/statements, for loops, while loops, functions) before I went on to Rails? Thanks!

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• One eye on my dinner and one eye on SQL server

  - by fatherjack

  LiveJournal Tags: RedGate,Work Life Balance,Tips and Tricks,SQL Server This is somewhere between a Tweet and a proper blog article - would that be a Bleet? Anyway, I was at a local restaurant yesterday and after placing my order I was thinking about having to get home and log in to check some SQL Servers and then the thought came to me that as we were near civilisation there was likely to be a 3G signal that might actually make using the web browser on my phone bearable. It was surprisingly fast on my HTC Desire, it was almost as good as Wi-Fi. RedGate SQL Monitor works fine on the default HTC browser and here is the proof, me checking the servers while I am waiting for the meal to arrive. Everything checked out OK so I had the evening free from SQL Server. You can get a free 14 day full trial of a SQL Monitor from RedGate here or find out more about it at The Future of Monitoring. Disclosure: I am a friend of RedGate and as such regularly make positive comments about their products. I don't get paid for it but I do get free licenses for testing and reviewing purposes.

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• F# and the rose-tinted reflection

  - by CliveT

  We're already seeing increasing use of many cores on client desktops. It is a change that has been long predicted. It is not just a change in architecture, but our notions of efficiency in a program. No longer can we focus on the asymptotic complexity of an algorithm by counting the steps that a single core processor would take to execute it. Instead we'll soon be more concerned about the scalability of the algorithm and how well we can increase the performance as we increase the number of cores. This may even lead us to throw away our most efficient algorithms, and switch to less efficient algorithms that scale better. We might even be willing to waste cycles in order to speculatively execute at the algorithm rather than the hardware level. State is the big headache in this parallel world. At the hardware level, main memory doesn't necessarily contain the definitive value corresponding to a particular address. An update to a location might still be held in a CPU's local cache and it might be some time before the value gets propagated. To get the latest value, and the notion of "latest" takes a lot of defining in this world of rapidly mutating state, the CPUs may well need to communicate to decide who has the definitive value of a particular address in order to avoid lost updates. At the user program level, this means programmers will need to lock objects before modifying them, or attempt to avoid the overhead of locking by understanding the memory models at a very deep level. I think it's this need to avoid statefulness that has led to the recent resurgence of interest in functional languages. In the 1980s, functional languages started getting traction when research was carried out into how programs in such languages could be auto-parallelised. Sadly, the impracticality of some of the languages, the overheads of communication during this parallel execution, and rapid improvements in compiler technology on stock hardware meant that the functional languages fell by the wayside. The one thing that these languages were good at was getting rid of implicit state, and this single idea seems like a solution to the problems we are going to face in the coming years. Whether these languages will catch on is hard to predict. The mindset for writing a program in a functional language is really very different from the way that object-oriented problem decomposition happens - one has to focus on the verbs instead of the nouns, which takes some getting used to. There are a number of hybrid functional/object languages that have been becoming more popular in recent times. These half-way houses make it easy to use functional ideas for some parts of the program while still allowing access to the underlying object-focused platform without a great deal of impedance mismatch. One example is F# running on the CLR which, in Visual Studio 2010, has because a first class member of the pack. Inside Visual Studio 2010, the tooling for F# has improved to the point where it is easy to set breakpoints and watch values change while debugging at the source level. In my opinion, it is the tooling support that will enable the widespread adoption of functional languages - without this support, people will put off any transition into the functional world for as long as they possibly can. Without tool support it will make it hard to learn these languages. One tool that doesn't currently support F# is Reflector. The idea of decompiling IL to a functional language is daunting, but F# is potentially so important I couldn't dismiss the idea. As I'm currently developing Reflector 6.5, I thought it wise to take four days just to see how far I could get in doing so, even if it achieved little more than to be clearer on how much was possible, and how long it might take. You can read what happened here, and of the insights it gave us on ways to improve the tool.

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• Fill a Flash Drive with Portable Software using Lupo PenSuite

  - by Asian Angel

  A flash drive full of portable software is helpful to have along wherever you go. The Lupo PenSuite lets you choose from three different versions to get the best fit for your everyday needs. Note: If running the full version you will need a 512 MB USB flash drive or larger. Using Lupo PenSuite The one window to watch for during the setup process is where you have the opportunity to add a specific language pack if needed. Outside of that all that you need to do is sit back and wait for the suite to be extracted. Note: Extraction times will vary based on version and extraction location. Here we browsed to our flash drive to extract it to… Once the setup process is complete locate and double click the Lupo_PenSuite.exe file. This one time window will present you the opportunity to start using the suite immediately, or go directly into the options. When the suite is active you will have a new system tray icon that operates as a start menu button. At the bottom you can monitor the remaining room on your flash drive, and use the close button to exit the suite (may display as a power button based on menu theme). A quick look at the set up inside the suite. There is a pre-configured area for organizing and storing your personal files. Prefer a classic style menu? Just select for it in the options (various tab) and enjoy a smaller streamlined look. Note: You can also change the theme for the regular menu and add a user pic. The suite provides access to your portable software and online sites. You get to enjoy the best of both as shown in the following examples. Websites will open using the suite’s portable Firefox install. VLC is ready to play your downloaded videos. The suite also has some very nice photo editing programs added in. Installing Additional Apps If one of your favorite programs is not included in the suite version, it only takes a few minutes to add it in. Go to the Additional Apps webpage, download the app(s), and extract them onto your hard-drive. Note: Link for additional apps webpage provided below. Add the extracted app(s) to the MyApps folder in the suite’s folder hierarchy. Click on ASuite in the suite’s start menu. Drag and drop the portable app’s exe file into the MyApps section in the ASuite window. Your new software’s shortcut should display as shown here. Close this window when finished. Checking the suite’s start menu will show your new software ready to be used. Conclusion If you need a good portable software collection to carry with you on a flash drive then Lupo PenSuite is definitely worth taking a look at. We tested Lupo PenSuite on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and it works great on all three. Another popular choice is PortableApps and you can check out our Review of that too they are essentially the same thing, each is just packaged differently. Links Download Lupo PenSuite (Full, Lite, & Zero versions) *Download links approximately one-third down the page. Download Additional Apps for Lupo PenSuite Download Additional Skins for Lupo PenSuite Start Menu View Video Tutorials *Has tutorial for easy updating of entire suite. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install and Run Applications from Your iPod, Flash Drive or Mp3 PlayerRebit Backup Software [Review]BitLocker To Go Encrypts Portable Flash Drives in Windows 7Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WaySpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoost TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases – Day 13 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Relational Database and NoSQL database in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases Supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (Yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (Yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (This post) Document Databases (This post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Spatial Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Key Value Pair Databases Key Value Pair Databases are also known as KVP databases. A key is a field name and attribute, an identifier. The content of that field is its value, the data that is being identified and stored. They have a very simple implementation of NoSQL database concepts. They do not have schema hence they are very flexible as well as scalable. The disadvantages of Key Value Pair (KVP) database are that they do not follow ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. Additionally, it will require data architects to plan for data placement, replication as well as high availability. In KVP databases the data is stored as strings. Here is a simple example of how Key Value Database will look like: Key Value Name Pinal Dave Color Blue Twitter @pinaldave Name Nupur Dave Movie The Hero As the number of users grow in Key Value Pair databases it starts getting difficult to manage the entire database. As there is no specific schema or rules associated with the database, there are chances that database grows exponentially as well. It is very crucial to select the right Key Value Pair Database which offers an additional set of tools to manage the data and provides finer control over various business aspects of the same. Riak Rick is one of the most popular Key Value Database. It is known for its scalability and performance in high volume and velocity database. Additionally, it implements a mechanism for collection key and values which further helps to build manageable system. We will further discuss Riak in future blog posts. Key Value Databases are a good choice for social media, communities, caching layers for connecting other databases. In simpler words, whenever we required flexibility of the data storage keeping scalability in mind – KVP databases are good options to consider. Document Database There are two different kinds of document databases. 1) Full document Content (web pages, word docs etc) and 2) Storing Document Components for storage. The second types of the document database we are talking about over here. They use Javascript Object Notation (JSON) and Binary JSON for the structure of the documents. JSON is very easy to understand language and it is very easy to write for applications. There are two major structures of JSON used for Document Database – 1) Name Value Pairs and 2) Ordered List. MongoDB and CouchDB are two of the most popular Open Source NonRelational Document Database. MongoDB MongoDB databases are called collections. Each collection is build of documents and each document is composed of fields. MongoDB collections can be indexed for optimal performance. MongoDB ecosystem is highly available, supports query services as well as MapReduce. It is often used in high volume content management system. CouchDB CouchDB databases are composed of documents which consists fields and attachments (known as description). It supports ACID properties. The main attraction points of CouchDB are that it will continue to operate even though network connectivity is sketchy. Due to this nature CouchDB prefers local data storage. Document Database is a good choice of the database when users have to generate dynamic reports from elements which are changing very frequently. A good example of document usages is in real time analytics in social networking or content management system. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various other Operational Databases supporting Big Data. 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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• Webinar: NoSQL - Data Center Centric Application Enablement

  - by Charles Lamb

  NoSQL - Data Center Centric Application Enablement AUGUST 6 WEBINAR About the Webinar The growth of Datacenter infrastructure is trending out of bounds, along with the pace in user activity and data generation in this digital era. However, the nature of the typical application deployment within the data center is changing to accommodate new business needs. Those changes introduce complexities in application deployment architecture and design, which cascade into requirements for a new generation of database technology (NoSQL) destined to ease that complexity. This webcast will discuss the modern data centers data centric application, the complexities that must be dealt with and common architectures found to describe and prescribe new data center aware services. Well look at the practical issues in implementation and overview current state of art in NoSQL database technology solving the problems of data center awareness in application development. REGISTER NOW>> MORE INFORMATION >> NOTE! All attendees will be entered to win a guest pass to the NoSQL Now! 2013 Conference & Expo. About the Speaker Robert Greene, Oracle NoSQL Product Management Robert GreeneRobert Greene is a principle product manager / strategist for Oracle’s NoSQL Database technology. Prior to Oracle he was the V.P. Technology for a NoSQL Database company, Versant Corporation, where he set the strategy for alignment with Big Data technology trends resulting in the acquisition of the company by Actian Corp in 2012. Robert has been an active member of both commercial and open source initiatives in the NoSQL and Object Relational Mapping spaces for the past 18 years, developing software, leading project teams, authoring articles and presenting at major conferences on these topics. In his previous life, Robert was an electronic engineer developing first generation wireless, spread spectrum based security systems.

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• Oracle Accelerate : Packaged CX Solutions for Growing Companies

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Oracle Accelerate is Oracle's approach for providing simple to deploy, packaged, enterprise-class software solutions to growing midsize organizations through its network of expert partners. They come with a fixed price, a fixed scope and can be industry- or country-specific. Here is a suggestion of Oracle Accelerate solutions specially tailored for EMEA based customers looking for growing their business with CX technology: Oracle Sales Cloud Birchman Consulting's Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud CSolutor Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud CapricornVentis Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud Oracle Sales Cloud for vertical industries Enigen’s Oracle Accelerate solution for Oracle Fusion CRM for Professional Services BPI's Oracle Accelerate solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Business Services Companies BPI's Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Insurance Companies BPI's Oracle Accelerate solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Engineering & Construction Companies BPI's Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Telecommunications Companies Fellow Consulting's Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Consumer Goods industry Fellow Consulting's Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Wholesale Distribution Fellow Consulting's Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle Sales Cloud for Life Science industry Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) CapricornVentis Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle RightNow Cloud Service for Retail Industry for Ireland CapricornVentis Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle RightNow Cloud Service for Retail Industry for the United Kingdom Enigen’s Oracle Accelerate Solution for Oracle RightNow Service Cloud for the United Kingdom DNASTREAM’s RapidLaunch Oracle Accelerate solution for RightNow Oracle Commerce (ATG) ProgiCommerce - an Oracle Accelerate solution for ATG Commerce delivered by PROGIWEB Spindrift Momentum - an Oracle Accelerate Solution for ATG Commerce for Retail Industry e2x RoadRunner - the ATG Oracle Accelerate solution for Manufacturing Industry e2x RoadRunner - the ATG Oracle Accelerate solution for Telecommunications Industry e2x RoadRunner - the ATG Oracle Accelerate solution for Retail Web Commerce

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• IIM Calcutta &ndash; EPBM 14 &ndash; Campus Visit &ndash; Day 4 &ndash; Managing Self, SDCC and Gari

  - by Ram Shankar Yadav

  …I’m becoming more of an addict of writing about my experiences, here in Kolkata! Today we started a bit of late at around 8 AM, did our breakfast and reached in class a bit late at around 9:50 AM, and here goes the surprise…. Today we had two lectures on “Managing Self” and two lectures on “Sustainable Development and Climate Change” (SDCC). Some of us got few self discipline lessons the moment they entered class and asked to “get out” :D So frankly speaking it was a nostalgic moment, which reminded us of Collage ;) We did a FIRO-B test as and got very good tips on managing ourselves and differentiate between “manager” and “leader” After the lunch we had our session on SDCC, in which the prof started by explaining “Credit Crisis”, and moved on to Sustainable Development and few great examples from industry and life~! After the class we went for shopping at Garihat Market, we ate Pani Puri and Moodi :P ..one more surprise…my room got flooded with lot of my new ePBM friends to take the copy of the pictures and we did lot of chit chat around anything and everything :D …so far so good…it’s an amazing experience for me and hopefully for others….who came out of their daily chores and went back to the nostalgic lanes of friendship, learning and most importantly “Happyness” ~~~ Cheers, ram :) EPBM 14 pics : http://epbm14.shutterfly.com/pictures

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• Does a 77 Year Old Person Like To Use iPhone Siri? Of course!

  - by Gopinath

  When Apple releases any product, they just work irrespective of age, capability and ability of the users. It’s in the DNA of Steve Jobs and his colleagues at Apple to build products that just work with out any learning curve. The recent iPhone is loaded with Siri, an intelligent personal assistant. But can a 77 year old person quickly learn to use Siri for his day to day activities? Lets hear from a son who trained his 77 year old dad to use Siri on iPhone He caught on much faster than I thought he might. I was feeling proud of him and believed Siri would be a real productivity help in his life — seeing that, at 77, my dad still works full time as a realtor. I was encouraged that he really liked and would use his new personal assistant. Or at least I was until my mom called later that night. "Your father and I were just practicing with his new phone," Sigh. Well Siri will be great for my dad…if and when he remembers how to find her. Apple products are not for just techies like Android mobiles, they are for everyone. You can read the full story over here This article titled,Does a 77 Year Old Person Like To Use iPhone Siri? Of course!, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates

  - by ETC

  The final round of IBM’s Watson against Ken Jenning and Brad Rutter ended last night with Watson coming out in a strong lead against its two human opponents. Read on to catch a video of the match and see just how quick Watson is on the draw. Watson tore through many of the answers, the little probability bar at the bottom of the screen denoting it was often 95%+ confident in its answers. Some of the more interesting stumbles were, like in the last matches, based on nuance. By far the biggest “What?” moment of the night, however, was when it answered the Daily Double question of “The New Yorker’s 1959 review of this said in its brevity and clarity, it is ‘unlike most such manuals, a book as well as a tool’”. Watson, inexplicably, answered “Dorothy Parker”. You can win them all, eh? Check out the video below to see Watson in action on its final day. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• symlink for dbus headers

  - by DarenW

  Source code for something that won't compile has the line #include but in real life that header file is in /usr/include/dbus-1.0/ Similarsituation exists for the dbus-c++ package. Why doesn't Ubuntu provide a symlink /usr/include/dbus pointing to the dbus-1.0 directory? Is this an bug in the dbus package? If intended, what it the purpose? Is it a proper fix to add a symlink myself? (Changing the source is not practical - there are many files, and they need to match what other people have.) update: ok, I totally misunderstood the situation, though it still comes down to a problem I think should be solved by a symlink. The dbus directory referred to in the #include statement is a deeper level directory under /usr/include/dbus-1.0/. The real problem is that the file dbus-arch-deps.h appears to be missing, but is actually stored in the weird location /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dbus-1.0/include/dbus/ so now - why doesn't ubuntu provide a symlink to this in /usr/include/dbus-1.0/dbus, or actually store it there?

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