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• Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 is Generally Available

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 We are pleased to announce that Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 is Generally Available as of October 25, 2013 Get smarter, more productive and the best value with Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24. Oracle CRM On Demand continues to be the most complete Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM solution available. Now, with Release 24, organizations of all types and sizes benefit from actionable insight anywhere, anytime, as well as key enhancements in mobility, embedded social, analytics, integration and extensibility, and ease of use.Next Generation Mobile and Desktop Solutions : Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 offers a complete set of mobile and desktop solutions that improve productivity by enabling reps to access and update information anywhere, anytime. Capabilities include: Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales (DMS) – A disconnected native iPad solution, DMS has been further streamlined mobile sales process by adding Structured Product Messaging to record brand specific call objectives, enhancements in HTML5 eDetailing including message response tracking and improvements in administration and configuration such as more field management options for read only fields, role management and enhanced logging. Oracle CRM On Demand Connected Mobile Sales. This add-on mobile service provides a configurable mobile solution on iOS, BlackBerry and now Android devices. You can access data from CRM On Demand in real time with a rich, native user experience, that is comfortable and familiar to current iOS, BlackBerry and Android users. New features also include Single Sign On to enhance security for mobile users.  Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop: This application centralizes essential CRM information in the familiar Microsoft Outlook environment,increasing user adoption and decreasing training costs. Users can manage CRM data while disconnected, then synchronize bi-directionally when they are back on the network. New in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Version 3 is the ability to synchronize by Books of Business, and improved Online Lookup. Mobile Browser Support: The following mobile device browsers are now supported: Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Windows 8 Tablets, and Google Android. Leverage the Social Enterprise Engaging customers via social channels is rapidly becoming a significant key to enhanced customer experience as it provides proactive customer service, targeted messaging and greater intimacy throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Listening to customers on the social channels can identify a customers’ sphere of influence and the real value they bring to their organization, or the impact they can have on the opportunity. Servicing the customer’s need is the first step towards loyalty to a brand, integrating with social channels allows us to maximize brand affinity and virally expand customer engagements thus increasing revenue. Oracle CRM On Demand is leveraging the Social Enterprise through its integration with Oracle’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) product suite by providing out-of-the-box integration with Social Engagement and Monitoring (SEM), Social Marketing (SM) and Oracle Social Network (OSN). With Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24, users are able to create a service request from a social post via SEM and have leads entered on a SM lead form automatically entered into Oracle CRM On Demand along with the campaign, streamlining the lead qualification process. Get Smarter with Actionable Insight The difference between making good decisions and great decisions depends heavily upon the quality, structure, and availability of information at hand. Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 expands upon its industry-leading analytics capabilities to provide greater business insight than ever before. New capabilities include flexible permissions on analytics reports folders, allowing for read only access to reports, and additional field and object coverage. Get More Productive with Powerful Tools Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 introduces a new set of powerful capabilities designed to maximize productivity. A significant new feature for customizing Oracle CRM On Demand is a JavaScript API. The JS API allows customers to add new buttons, suppress existing buttons and even change what happens when a user clicks an existing button. Other usability enhancements, such as personalized related information applets, extended case insensitive search provide users with better, more intuitive, experience. Additional privileges for viewing private activities and notes allow administrators to reassign records as needed, and Custom Object management. Workflow has been added to the Order Item object; and now tasks can be assigned to a relative user, such as an Account Owner, allowing more complex business processes to be automated and adhered to. Get the Best Value Oracle CRM On Demand delivers unprecedented value with the broadest set of capabilities from a single-provider solution, the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership, the most on-demand deployment options, the deepest CRM expertise and experience of any CRM provider, and the most secure CRM in the cloud. With Release 24, Oracle CRM On Demand now includes even more enterprise-grade security, integration, and extensibility features, along with enhanced industry editions to save you time and money. New features include: Business Process Administration: A new privilege has been added that allows administrators to override a Business Process Administration rule.This privilege permits users to edit a locked record, or unlock a record, in the event of a material change that needs to be reflected per corporatepolicy. Additionally, the Products Detailed object has been added to Business Process Administration, enabling record locking and logic to be applied. Expanded Integration: Oracle continues to improve Web Services each release, by adding more object coverage enabling customers and partners to easily integrate with CRM On Demand. Bottom Line Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 enables organizations to get smarter, get more productive, and get the best value, period. For more information on Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24, please visit oracle.com/crmondemand

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• Becoming a "maintenance developer"

  - by anon

  So I've kind of been getting angry about the current position I'm in, and I'd love to get other developers' input on this. I've been at my current place of employment for about 11 months now. When I began, I was working on all new features. I basically worked on an entire new web project for the first 5-6 months I was here. After this, I was moved to more of a service oriented role (which was still great, all new stuff for me), and I was in this role for about the past 5-6 months. Here's where the problem comes in. Basically, a couple of days ago I was made the support/maintenance guy. Now, we have an IT support team, so I'm not talking that kind of support, I'm talking more of a second level support guy (when the guys on the surface can't really get to the root of the issue), coupled with working on maintenance issues that have been lingering in the backlog for a while. To me, a developer with about 3 years of experience, this is kind of disheartening. With the type of work place this is, I wouldn't be surprised if these support issues take up most of my days, and I barely make it to working on maintenance issues. Also, most of these support issues aren't even related to code, they are more or less just knowing the system architecture, working with making sure services are running/getting started properly, handling/fixing bad data, etc. I'm a developer, so this part sucks. Also, even when I do have time to work maintenance, these are basically just bug fixes/improving bad code, so this sucks as well, however at least it's related to coding. Am I wrong for getting angry here? I don't want to really complain about it, but to be honest, I wasn't spoken to about this or anything, I was kind of just sent an e-mail letting me know I'm the guy for this type of thing, and that was that. The entire team took a few minutes to give me their "that sucks" talk, because they know how annoying it is to be on support for the type of work we do, so I know I'm not the only guy that knows it's not that great of an opportunity. I'm just kind of on the fence about how to move forward. Obviously I'm just going to continue working for the time being, no point making a bad impression on anybody, but I'd like to know how you guys would approach this situation, or how you think I should be feeling about it/how you guys would feel. Thanks guys.

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• Open port in gufw is closed, no incoming connection on deluge

  - by user66987

  I have a problem configuring gufw. I open ports on it, but when i test in deluge it shows as closed. Any help on setting up the firewall would be greatly appreciated. This is the output I get on the firewall in terminal: Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1346/dnsmasq tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 970/cupsd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:55521 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 17362/python tcp6 0 0 ::1:631 :::* LISTEN 970/cupsd tcp6 0 0 :::55521 :::* LISTEN 17362/python udp 0 0 10.0.0.125:1900 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:1900 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:1900 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53162 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53 0.0.0.0:* 1346/dnsmasq udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:68 0.0.0.0:* 1312/dhclient udp 0 0 10.0.0.125:36948 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:37240 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 10.0.0.125:6771 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:6771 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6771 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 10.0.0.125:50034 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:58340 0.0.0.0:* 982/avahi-daemon: r udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5353 0.0.0.0:* 982/avahi-daemon: r udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:56947 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:57059 0.0.0.0:* 17362/python udp6 0 0 :::49793 :::* 982/avahi-daemon: r udp6 0 0 :::5353 :::* 982/avahi-daemon: r kenneth@kenneth-K53U:~$ sudo ufw status Status: aktive Til Handling Fra --- -------- --- 6881:6891/tcp ALLOW Anywhere 6881:6891/udp ALLOW Anywhere 55521/tcp ALLOW Anywhere 6881:6891/tcp ALLOW Anywhere (v6) 6881:6891/udp ALLOW Anywhere (v6) 55521/tcp ALLOW Anywhere (v6) I also want to be able to use the firewall with linuxdc, so I need other ports open as well. This is connected to the firewall. Because when I turn off the firewall, the port is open. So this is not a problem with my modem. Do I need the firewall? The broadband modem has a hardware firewall. Update: Forgot to add. When my firewall is inactive, it closes ports after a time. So when I use linuxdc, I have to flush iptabels and activating it again. Is this supposed to do this when the firewall is deactivated? Update again: All my ports are closed now, flushing the iptable does not work anymore. I have uninstalled gufw, but still all my ports are closed. And to say it again, this has nothing to do with my broadband modem since it worked when I used windows 7. I need help to open the ports.

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• A*, Tile costs and heuristic; How to approach

  - by Kevin Toet

  I'm doing exercises in tile games and AI to improve my programming. I've written a highly unoptimised pathfinder that does the trick and a simple tile class. The first problem i ran into was that the heuristic was rounded to int's which resulted in very straight paths. Resorting a Euclidian Heuristic seemed to fixed it as opposed to use the Manhattan approach. The 2nd problem I ran into was when i tried added tile costs. I was hoping to use the value's of the flags that i set on the tiles but the value's were too small to make the pathfinder consider them a huge obstacle so i increased their value's but that breaks the flags a certain way and no paths were found anymore. So my questions, before posting the code, are: What am I doing wrong that the Manhatten heuristic isnt working? What ways can I store the tile costs? I was hoping to (ab)use the enum flags for this The path finder isnt considering the chance that no path is available, how do i check this? Any code optimisations are welcome as I'd love to improve my coding. public static List<Tile> FindPath( Tile startTile, Tile endTile, Tile[,] map ) { return FindPath( startTile, endTile, map, TileFlags.WALKABLE ); } public static List<Tile> FindPath( Tile startTile, Tile endTile, Tile[,] map, TileFlags acceptedFlags ) { List<Tile> open = new List<Tile>(); List<Tile> closed = new List<Tile>(); open.Add( startTile ); Tile tileToCheck; do { tileToCheck = open[0]; closed.Add( tileToCheck ); open.Remove( tileToCheck ); for( int i = 0; i < tileToCheck.neighbors.Count; i++ ) { Tile tile = tileToCheck.neighbors[ i ]; //has the node been processed if( !closed.Contains( tile ) && ( tile.flags & acceptedFlags ) != 0 ) { //Not in the open list? if( !open.Contains( tile ) ) { //Set G int G = 10; G += tileToCheck.G; //Set Parent tile.parentX = tileToCheck.x; tile.parentY = tileToCheck.y; tile.G = G; //tile.H = Math.Abs(endTile.x - tile.x ) + Math.Abs( endTile.y - tile.y ) * 10; //TODO omg wtf and other incredible stories tile.H = Vector2.Distance( new Vector2( tile.x, tile.y ), new Vector2(endTile.x, endTile.y) ); tile.Cost = tile.G + tile.H + (int)tile.flags; //Calculate H; Manhattan style open.Add( tile ); } //Update the cost if it is else { int G = 10;//cost of going to non-diagonal tiles G += map[ tile.parentX, tile.parentY ].G; //If this path is shorter (G cost is lower) then change //the parent cell, G cost and F cost. if ( G < tile.G ) //if G cost is less, { tile.parentX = tileToCheck.x; //change the square's parent tile.parentY = tileToCheck.y; tile.G = G;//change the G cost tile.Cost = tile.G + tile.H + (int)tile.flags; // add terrain cost } } } } //Sort costs open = open.OrderBy( o => o.Cost).ToList(); } while( tileToCheck != endTile ); closed.Reverse(); List<Tile> validRoute = new List<Tile>(); Tile currentTile = closed[ 0 ]; validRoute.Add( currentTile ); do { //Look up the parent of the current cell. currentTile = map[ currentTile.parentX, currentTile.parentY ]; currentTile.renderer.material.color = Color.green; //Add tile to list validRoute.Add( currentTile ); } while ( currentTile != startTile ); validRoute.Reverse(); return validRoute; } And my Tile class: [Flags] public enum TileFlags: int { NONE = 0, DIRT = 1, STONE = 2, WATER = 4, BUILDING = 8, //handy WALKABLE = DIRT | STONE | NONE, endofenum } public class Tile : MonoBehaviour { //Tile Properties public int x, y; public TileFlags flags = TileFlags.DIRT; public Transform cachedTransform; //A* properties public int parentX, parentY; public int G; public float Cost; public float H; public List<Tile> neighbors = new List<Tile>(); void Awake() { cachedTransform = transform; } }

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• Regular Expression Transformation

  The regular expression transformation exposes the power of regular expression matching within the pipeline. One or more columns can be selected, and for each column an individual expression can be applied. The way multiple columns are handled can be set on the options page. The AND option means all columns must match, whilst the OR option means only one column has to match. If rows pass their tests then rows are passed down the successful match output. Rows that fail are directed down the alternate output. This transformation is ideal for validating data through the use of regular expressions. You can enter any expression you like, or select a pre-configured expression within the editor. You can expand the list of pre-configured expressions yourself. These are stored in a Xml file, %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\nnn\DTS\PipelineComponents\RegExTransform.xml, where nnn represents the folder version, 90 for 2005, 100 for 2008 and 110 for 2012. If you want to use regular expressions to manipulate data, rather than just validating it, try the RegexClean Transformation. The component is provided as an MSI file, however for 2005/200 you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox by hand. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component?, just select Regular Expression Transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. Downloads The Regular Expression Transformation is available for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 (includes R2) and SQL Server 2012. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install multiple versions and use them side by side if you have more than one version of SQL Server installed. Regular Expression Transformation for SQL Server 2005 Regular Expression Transformation for SQL Server 2008 Regular Expression Transformation for SQL Server 2012 Version History SQL Server 2012Version 2.0.0.87 - SQL Server 2012 release. Includes upgrade support for both 2005 and 2008 packages to 2012. (5 Jun 2012) SQL Server 2008Version 2.0.0.87 - Release for SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. (10 Oct 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.1.0.93 - Added option for you to choose AND or OR logic when multiple columns have been selected. Previously behaviour was OR only. (31 Jul 2008) Version 1.0.0.76 - Installer update and improved exception handling. (28 Jan 2008) Version 1.0.0.41 - Update for user interface stability fixes. (2 Aug 2006) Version 1.0.0.24 - SQL Server 2005 RTM Refresh. SP1 Compatibility Testing. (12 Jun 2006) Version 1.0.0.9 - Public Release for SQL Server 2005 IDW 15 June CTP (29 Aug 2005) Screenshots  

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-21

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Real Architects of Los Angeles: OTN Architect Day in LA - Oct 25 No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Why IT is a profession in 'flux' | ZDNet I usuallly don't post two items from the same person in one day, but this post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick deals with some critical issues affecting those in IT. As McKendrick puts it: "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." Cloud, automation drive new growth in SOA governance market | ZDNet "SOA governance tools and processes learned over the past decade are now underpinning cloud projects as they scale across enterprises," reports Joe McKendrick. But there remains a lack of understanding about SOA Governance. For a broader discussion of the importance of IT governance check out the lastest OTN Archbeat Podcast: By Any Other Name: Governance and Architecture How I Simplified the Installation of Oracle Database on Oracle Linux 6 Michele Casey's update of Ginny Henningsen's original article. This version shows how to simplify the installation of Oracle Database 11g on Oracle Linux 6 by installing the oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall RPM package. Fault Handling Slides and Q&A | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen shares the slides and a Q&A transcript from a presentation he and fellow ACE Director Guido Schmutz gave at the recent Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne preview event organized by AMIS Technology. BPM ADF Task forms. Checking whether the current user is in a BPM Swimlane | Christopher Karl Chan "The tricky part here is that the ADF Task Details Form is in fact part of a separate J2EE application to the main workspace," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Christopher Karl Chan. "So if you try to use Java or Expression Language to get the logged in user you will only find anonymous and none of the BPM Roles you will be expecting. So what to do?" Don't guess—read the post and find out. Thought for the Day "The speed of change makes you wonder what will become of architecture. " — Tadao Ando Source: BrainyQuote

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-10-11

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Whiteboards, not red carpets. OTN Architect Day Los Angeles. Oct 25. Free event. Yes, it's TinselTown, but the stars at this event are experts in the use of Oracle technologies in today's architectures. This free event includes a full slate of technical sessions and peer interaction covering cloud computing, SOA, and engineered systems—and lunch is on us. Register now. Thursday October 25, 2012, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048 JDeveloper extensions where? | Peter Paul van de Beek "Where does the downloaded stuff go after you installed JDeveloper extensions, like SOA Composite Editor, Oracle BPM Studio, or AIA Service Constructor?" Peter Paul van de Beek has the answer. Using Apache Derby Database with WebLogic (the express way) | Frank Munz Another technical how-to video from Dr. Frank Munz. Compensation Hello World | Ronald van Luttikhuizen Oracle ACE Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen's post addresses several question that came up during the "Effective Fault Handling in SOA Suite 11g" session that he and fellow Oracle ACE Guido Schmutz presented at Oracle OpenWorld. Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: OAM and OIM 11g Academies Looking for technical how-to content covering Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Identity Manager? The people behind the Oracle Middleware Security blog have indexed relevant blog posts into what they call "Academies." "These indexes," the blog explains, "contain the articles we've written that we believe provide long lasting guidance on OAM and OIM. Posts covered in these series include articles on key aspects of OAM and OIM 11g, best practice architectural guidance, integrations, and customizations." Maximum Availability Whitepaper for IDM 11gR2 | Oracle Fusion Middleware Security The Oracle Fusion Middelware A-Team shares an overview of and a link to a new white paper: "Identity Management 11.1.2 Enterprise Deployment Blueprint." Thought for the Day "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are sure and the intelligent are full of doubt." — Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872 – February 2, 1970) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Five hours of Task Flow Overview Recordings Available

  - by Frank Nimphius

  In addition to the ADF Controller task flow documentation in Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework 11g Release 1 http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/web.1111/b31974/partpage3.htm#BABHIIAI The ADF Insider website … http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/learnmore/adfinsider-093342.html … hosts five online videos that explain how to build and work with ADF Controller task flows in Oracle ADF. ADF Task Flow - Overview (Part 1) This 90 minute recording introduces the concept of ADF unbounded and bounded task flows, as well as other ADF Controller features. The session starts with an overview of unbounded task flows, bounded task flows and the different activities that exist for developers to build complex application flows. Exception handling and the Train navigation model is also covered in this first part of a two part series. By example of developing a sample application, the recording guides viewers through building unbounded and bounded task flows. This session is continued in a second part. http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/taskflow-overview-p1/taskflow-overview-p1.html ADF Task Flow - Overview (Part 2) This 75 minute session continues where part 1 ended and completes the sample application that guides viewers through different aspects of unbounded and bounded task flow development. In this recording, memory scopes, save for later, task flow opening in dialogs and remote task flow calls are explained and demonstrated. If you are new to ADF Task Flow, then it is recommended to first watch part 1 of this series to be able to follow the explanation guided by the sample application. http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/taskflow-overview-p2/taskflow-overview-p2.html ADF Region Interaction - An Overview This session covers most of the options that exist for communicating between regions. It briefly discusses what it takes to build regions from bounded task flows before going into details using slides and samples. The following interaction is explained: contextual events, queue action in region, input parameters and PPR, drag and drop, shared Data Controls, parent action and region navigation listener. http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/adf-region-interaction/adf-region-interaction.html ADF Region Interaction - Contextual Events Contextual event is used as a communication channel between a parent view and its contained regions, as well as between regions. By example, this session explains how to set up contextual events, how to define producers and event listeners and how to define the payload message. http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/AdfInsiderContextualEvents/AdfInsiderContextualEvents.html

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• 2011 - ALMs for your development team and the people they work with.

  - by David V. Corbin

  Welcome to 2011, it is already shaping up to be a very exciting year. The title of the post is not about charitable giving, although that is also a great topic. Application Lifecycle Management and the Systems that support the environment is, and 2011 will be a year where I expect many teams to invest heavily in this area. For those not familiar with ALM, it can be simplified down to "A comprehensive view of all of the iteas, requirements, activities and artifacts that impact an application over the course of its lifecycle, from concept until decommissioning". Obviously, this encompases a large number of different areas even for relatively small and medium sized projects. In recent years, many teams have adapted methodoligies which address individual aspects of this; but the majority of this adoption has resulted in "islands of improvement" rather than the desired comprehensive outcome...Until now! Last year Microsoft released Team Foundation Server 2010 along with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition, and with these two in combination the situation has drastically changed. At last there is a single environment that is capable of handling all aspects of ALM, and is also capable of dealing with migration and integration with existing systems to make the transition to a single solution much easier. Thse possibilities (and practicalities) are nothing short of amazing, Architecture thru Testing integration? YES. Being able to correlate specific requirement items (and their history) to actual code (and code history)? YES. Identification of which tests will be potentially impacted by a given code change? YES. Resiliant Automated Testing of User Interfaces? YES. Automatic Deployment Management? YES. Integraton Level testing as part of (designated) Builds? YES. I could easily double or triple the above list, but these items should be enough to get you thinking about the "pain points" your team and organization currently face and the fact that there IS a way to relieve the pain. Over the course of the year, I am hoping to bring together some of the "best of breed" information, along with hosting (and participating in) discussions with various experts in the field. There are already a number of groups (including many on LinkedIn) that have an ALM focus, and I encourage everyone out to check them out. I will be posting a list of the ones I find most helpful in the not too distant future. As I said at the beginning, 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting (and productive) year. Why wait to start investigating and adopting ALM? ps: For those interested in becoming an "Alms Giver" in the charitable sense, I highly recommend checking out GiveCamp. A group of developers, designers and others get together to create a solution for a charity in just under 48 hours. I will be attending the GiveCamp in New York City on Jan 14-16, more information is available at nycgivecamp.org/

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• BizTalk 2010 Certification Exam

  - by Paul Petrov

  I took a shot at new (to me) certification exam for BizTalk 2010. I was able to pass it without any preparation just based on the experience. That does not mean this exam is a very simple one. Comparing to previous (2006 R2) it covers some new areas (like WCF) and has some demanding questions and situation to think about. But the most challenging factor is broad feature coverage. Overall, the impression that if BizTalk continues to grow in scope it’s better to create separate exams for core functionality and extended features (like EDI, RFID, LOB adapters) because it’s really hard to cover vast array of BizTalk capabilities. As far as required knowledge and questions allocation I think Microsoft description is on target. There were definitely more questions on deployment, configuration and administration aspects comparing to previous exam. WCF and WCF based adapters now play big role and this topic was covered well too. Extended functionality is claimed at 13% of the exam, I felt there were plenty of RFID questions but not many EDI, that’s why I thought it’d be useful to split exam into two to cover all of them equally. BRE is still there and good, cause it’s usually not very known/loved feature of the package. At the and, for those who plan to get certified, my advice would be to know all those areas of BizTalk for guaranteed passing: messaging and orchestrations, core adapters, routing, patterns; development of all artifacts and orchestrations; debugging and exceptions handling; packaging, deployment, tracking and administration; WCF bindings and adapters; BAM, BRE, RFID, EDI, etc. You may get by not knowing one smaller non-essential part (like I did with RFID, for example). In such case you better know all other areas very well to cover for the weak spot. If there more than one whiteouts in the knowledge it’s good idea to study and prepare: MSDN, blogs, virtual labs and good VM to play with can help when experience is not enough. So best wishes and good skill to you in passing this certification!

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• Real Time BI in the Real World

  - by tobin.gilman(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} One of my favorite BI offerings from Oracle is a solution called Oracle Real Time Decisions.  Whenever I mention this product in customer meetings, eyes light up.  There are some fascinating examples of customers using it to up-sell, cross-sell, increase customer retention, and reduce risk in real time, with off the charts return on investment. I plan to share some of those stories in a future blog.  In this post however, I want to share some far more common real time analytics use case scenarios that are being addressed with widely deployed Oracle BI and data integration technologies Not all real time BI applications require continuous learning, predictive modeling, and data mining.  Many simply require the ability to integrate, aggregate, and access information that is current (typically within in few minutes or a few seconds).  The use cases are infinite.  A few I've seen: ·         Purchasing agents need to match demand against available inventory ·         Manufacturing planners need to monitor current parts and material against scheduled build plans ·         Airline agents need to match ticket demand against flight schedules, ·         Human resources managers need to track the status of global hiring requisitions against current headcount authorizations...you get the idea. One way of doing this is to run reports or federated queries directly against transactional systems.  That approach can be viable if you only need to access simple data sets on rare occasions.  High volume and complex queries can quickly bog down performance of mission critical transactional systems.  There is an architecturally simple way of solving the problem, and it's being applied by real companies around the world to solve real needs in real time.    Cbeyond is an Atlanta, GA based  provider of voice, data and mobile business applications delivers.  They deliver real time information to its call center agents  as they are interacting with their customers. The data they need resides in production CRM and other transactional systems, but  instead or reporting directly off the those systems, data is first moved to an operational data store (ODS).  Rather than running data intensive, time consuming, and performance degrading batch ETL routines to populate the ODS, Cbeyond uses Oracle Golden Gate software to incrementally capture and move only the changed records from log files of the transactional systems every few minutes.  There is no impact on transactional system performance, and the information needed by call center representatives is up to date.  Oracle Business Intelligence software presents the information to services reps in a rich, visual, and highly interactive format. Avea is similar to Cbeyond.  They are a telecommunications company who integrates billing and customer information in an ODS that is accessed by their call center agents in real time using Oracle Golden Gate and Oracle Business Intelligence.  They've taken it a step further by using the ODS to feed a data warehouse.  The operational data store provides the current information needed by call center agents during "in flight" customer interactions.  The data warehouse is used for more sophisticated analysis of historical data.  For maximum performance, both the ODS and data warehouse run on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine. These are practical illustrations of companies addressing real time reporting and analysis needs using established business intelligence/data warehousing methodologies and tools common to many IT departments.  If real time BI could benefit your organization, you may be already be closer than you thought to having the pieces in place to solving the problem.    Give us a shout if you are interested in learning more or if you have an interesting use or approach to real-time BI.

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• Installed LibreOffice 4 with ppa, how do I remove it and go back to LibreOffice 3?

  - by MMA

  EDIT This question is not at all a duplicate of How to downgrade from LibreOffice 4.0 to 3.6? The above mentioned question talks about downgrading from a specific version of LibreOffice, namely from 4.0 to 3.6. The solutions mentioned are not the ones I am looking for. They will work but I wanted a general solution without using PPA or downloading .deb files for from a higher version to a lower version. The above solutions suggest either downloading .deb files for LibreOffice 3.6 or adding repository for it. Furthermore, some of the answers put out-of-proportion~(applicable for the solution, however) stress on use of synaptic, not general command-line-solution. That made me wonder, at this very moment, if I take a fresh computer, and install Ubuntu 12.04, LibreOffice installation will work without a hitch. Then why I can not install LibreOffice in my 12.04 machine today from simple command line? This answer to my question, clarified everything. I need to use ppa-purge so that this resets all packages from a PPA to the standard versions released for my distribution. Basically it is like a way to restore my system back to the way it was before my installed packages from a PPA. This article further elaborates the idea. The above mentioned answer worked perfectly for me. Actually, this was an education for me since it taught me how do downgrade a package that was added via PPA. I had upgraded from LibreOffice 3 to LibreOffice 4 using the PPA. Now since I found that LibreOffice 4 has some issues, including handling my native language, I want to move back to LibreOffice 3. In order to accomplish this, I removed the LibreOffice config directory from my home and then purged LibreOffice from my machine. sudo apt-get purge libreoffice-* Then I removed the relevant PPA's using the sudo apt-add-repository --remove command. And then ran sudo apt-get update. Now, when I try to install LibreOffice using the command sudo apt-get install libreoffice I get an avalanche of output about unmet dependencies, something like, The following packages have unmet dependencies: libreoffice : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.5.7-0ubuntu4) but it is not going to be installed (snipped) If I dig the issue further, by using the command, sudo apt-get install libreoffice-core I get The following packages have unmet dependencies: libreoffice-core : Depends: libreoffice-common (> 1:3.5.7) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libexttextcat0 (>= 2.2-8) but it is not going to be installed Depends: ure (>= 3.5.7~) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. Could you please tell me how do I install LibreOffice 3 in my machine? I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

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• ASP.NET Web Forms is bad, or what am I missing?

  - by iveqy

  Being a PHP guy myself I recently had to write a spider to an asp.net site. I was really surprised by the different approach to ajax and form-handling. For example, in the PHP sites I've worked with, a deletion of a database entry would be something like: GET delete.php?id=&confirm=yes and get a "success" back in some form (in the ajax case, probably a json reply). In this asp.net application you would instead post a form, including all inputs on the page, with a huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION. This would be more than 10 times as big as above. The reply would be the complete side again, with a footer containing some structured data for javascript to parse and display the result. Again, the whole page is sent, and then throwed away(?) since it's already displayed. Why not just send the footer with the data to parse (it's not json nor xml but a | separated list). I really can't see why you would design a system that way. Usually you've a fast client, and a somewhat fast server but a really slow connection. Why not keep the datatransfer to a minimum? Why those huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION? It seems that everything is done way to chatty and way to complicated. I really can't see the point and that usually means that I'm missing something. So please tell me, what are the reasons for this design and what benefits (and weaknesses) does it have? (Yes I know that __VIEWSTATE is used to tell what type of form-konfiguration should be sent back to the server. But WHY is this needed?) Please keep this discussion strictly technical and avoid flamewars. Update: Please excuse the somewhat rantish question. I tried to explain my view to be able to get a better answer. I am not saying that asp.net is bad, I am saying that I don't understand the meaning of those concepts. Usually that means that I've things to learn instead of the concepts beeing wrong. I appreciate the explanations about that "you don't have to do this way in asp.net", I'll read up on MVC and other .net technologies. However, there most be a reason for this site (the one I referred to) to be written the way it is. It's written by professionals for a big organisation with far more experience than what I've. Any explanation about their (possible) design choice would be welcome.

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• 3D Model not translating correctly (visually)

  - by ChocoMan

  In my first image, my model displays correctly: But when I move the model's position along the Z-axis (forward) I get this, yet the Y-axis doesnt change. An if I keep going, the model disappears into the ground: Any suggestions as to how I can get the model to translate properly visually? Here is how Im calling the model and the terrain in draw(): cameraPosition = new Vector3(camX, camY, camZ); // Copy any parent transforms. Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[mShockwave.Bones.Count]; mShockwave.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix[] ttransforms = new Matrix[terrain.Bones.Count]; terrain.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(ttransforms); // Draw the model. A model can have multiple meshes, so loop. foreach (ModelMesh mesh in mShockwave.Meshes) { // This is where the mesh orientation is set, as well // as our camera and projection. foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(modelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, modelPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); mesh.Draw(); } //Terrain test foreach (ModelMesh meshT in terrain.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in meshT.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = ttransforms[meshT.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(0) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(terrainPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, terrainPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); meshT.Draw(); DrawText(); } base.Draw(gameTime); } Im suspecting that there may be something wrong with how I'm handling my camera. The model rotates fine on its Y-axis.

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• Web Apps vs Web Services: 302s and 401s are not always good Friends

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  It is not very uncommon to have web sites that have web UX and services content. The UX part maybe uses WS-Federation (or some other redirect based mechanism). That means whenever an authorization error occurs (401 status code), this is picked by the corresponding redirect module and turned into a redirect (302) to the login page. All is good. But in services, when you emit a 401, you typically want that status code to travel back to the client agent, so it can do error handling. These two approaches conflict. If you think (like me) that you should separate UX and services into separate apps, you don’t need to read on. Just do it ;) If you need to mix both mechanisms in a single app – here’s how I solved it for a project. I sub classed the redirect module – this was in my case the WIF WS-Federation HTTP module and modified the OnAuthorizationFailed method. In there I check for a special HttpContext item, and if that is present, I suppress the redirect. Otherwise everything works as normal: class ServiceAwareWSFederationAuthenticationModule : WSFederationAuthenticationModule {     protected override void OnAuthorizationFailed(AuthorizationFailedEventArgs e)     {         base.OnAuthorizationFailed(e);         var isService = HttpContext.Current.Items[AdvertiseWcfInHttpPipelineBehavior.DefaultLabel];         if (isService != null)         {             e.RedirectToIdentityProvider = false;         }     } } Now the question is, how do you smuggle that value into the HttpContext. If it is a MVC based web service, that’s easy of course. In the case of WCF, one approach that worked for me was to set it in a service behavior (dispatch message inspector to be exact): public void BeforeSendReply( ref Message reply, object correlationState) {     if (HttpContext.Current != null)     {         HttpContext.Current.Items[DefaultLabel] = true;     } } HTH

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• efficient collision detection - tile based html5/javascript game

  - by Tom Burman

  Im building a basic rpg game and onto collisions/pickups etc now. Its tile based and im using html5 and javascript. i use a 2d array to create my tilemap. Im currently using a switch statement for whatever key has been pressed to move the player, inside the switch statement. I have if statements to stop the player going off the edge of the map and viewport and also if they player is about to land on a tile with tileID 3 then the player stops. Here is the statement: canvas.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) { console.log(e); var key = null; switch (e.which) { case 37: // Left if (playerX > 0) { playerX--; } if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerX++; } break; case 38: // Up if (playerY > 0) playerY--; if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerY++; } break; case 39: // Right if (playerX < worldWidth) { playerX++; } if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerX--; } break; case 40: // Down if (playerY < worldHeight) playerY++; if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerY--; } break; } viewX = playerX - Math.floor(0.5 * viewWidth); if (viewX < 0) viewX = 0; if (viewX+viewWidth > worldWidth) viewX = worldWidth - viewWidth; viewY = playerY - Math.floor(0.5 * viewHeight); if (viewY < 0) viewY = 0; if (viewY+viewHeight > worldHeight) viewY = worldHeight - viewHeight; }, false); My question is, is there a more efficient way of handling collisions, then loads of if statements for each key? The reason i ask is because i plan on having many items that the player will need to be able to pickup or not walk through like walls cliffs etc. Thanks for your time and help Tom

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• Should a server "be lenient" in what it accepts and "discard faulty input silently"?

  - by romkyns

  I was under the impression that by now everyone agrees this maxim was a mistake. But I recently saw this answer which has a "be lenient" comment upvoted 137 times (as of today). In my opinion, the leniency in what browsers accept was the direct cause of the utter mess that HTML and some other web standards were a few years ago, and have only recently begun to properly crystallize out of that mess. The way I see it, being lenient in what you accept will lead to this. The second part of the maxim is "discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification", and this feels borderline offensive. Any programmer who has banged their head on the wall when something fails silently will know what I mean. So, am I completely wrong about this? Should my program be lenient in what it accepts and swallow errors silently? Or am I mis-interpreting what this is supposed to mean? The original question said "program", and I take everyone's point about that. It can make sense for programs to be lenient. What I really meant, however, is APIs: interfaces exposed to other programs, rather than people. HTTP is an example. The protocol is an interface that only other programs use. People never directly provide the dates that go into headers like "If-Modified-Since". So, the question is: should the server implementing a standard be lenient and allow dates in several other formats, in addition to the one that's actually required by the standard? I believe the "be lenient" is supposed to apply to this situation, rather than human interfaces. If the server is lenient, it might seem like an overall improvement, but I think in practice it only leads to client implementations that end up relying on the leniency and thus failing to work with another server that's lenient in slightly different ways. So, should a server exposing some API be lenient or is that a very bad idea? Now onto lenient handling of user input. Consider YouTrack (a bug tracking software). It uses a language for text entry that is reminiscent of Markdown. Except that it's "lenient". For example, writing - foo - bar - baz is not a documented way of creating a bulleted list, and yet it worked. Consequently, it ended up being used a lot throughout our internal bugtracker. Next version comes out, and this lenient feature starts working slightly differently, breaking a bunch of lists that (mis)used this (non)feature. The documented way to create bulleted lists still works, of course. So, should my software be lenient in what user inputs it accepts?

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• Push-Based Events in a Services Oriented Architecture

  - by Colin Morelli

  I have come to a point, in building a services oriented architecture (on top of Thrift), that I need to expose events and allow listeners. My initial thought was, "create an EventService" to handle publishing and subscribing to events. That EventService can use whatever implementation it desires to actually distribute the events. My client automatically round-robins service requests to available service hosts which are determined using Zookeeper-based service discovery. So, I'd probably use JMS inside of EventService mainly for the purpose of persisting messages (in the event that a service host for EventService goes down before it can distribute the message to all of the available listeners). When I started considering this, I began looking into the differences between Queues and Topics. Topics unfortunately won't work for me, because (at least for now), all listeners must receive the message (even if they were down at the time the event was pushed, or hadn't made a subscription yet because they haven't completed startup (during deployment, for example) - messages should be queued until the service is available). However, I don't want EventService to be responsible for handling all of the events. I don't think it should have the code to react to events inside of it. Each of the services should do what it needs with a given event. This would indicate that each service would need a JMS connection, which questions the value of having EventService at all (as the services could individually publish and subscribe to JMS directly). However, it also couples all of the services to JMS (when I'd rather that there be a single service that's responsible for determining how to distribute events). What I had thought was to publish an event to EventService, which pulls a configuration of listeners from some configuration source (database, flat file, irrelevant for now). It replicates the message and pushes each one back into a queue with information specific to that listener (so, if there are 3 listeners, 1 event would become 3 events in JMS). Then, another thread in EventService (which is replicated, running on multiple hots) would be pulling from the queue, attempting to make the service call to the "listener", and returning the message to the queue (if the service is down), or discarding the message (if the listener completed successfully). tl;dr If I have an EventService that is responsible for receiving events and delegating service calls to "event listeners," (which are really just endpoints on other services), how should it know how to craft the service call? Should I create a generic "Event" object that is shared among all services? Then, the EventService can just construct this object and pass it to the service call. Or is there a better answer to this problem entirely?

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• Modelling highly specific business requirements

  - by AndyBursh

  How can one go about modelling highly specific business requirements, which have no precedent in the system? Take for example the following requirement: When a purchase order contains N lines, is over X value in total and is being recorded against project Y, an email needs to be sent to persons A and B with the details This requirement supplements other requirements surrounding purchase orders, but comes in at a much later date in response to some ongoing problem elsewhere in the business. Persons A and B are not part of any role or group in the system, and don't hold any specific responsibility; they are simply the two people the business has appointed to receive these emails in this very specific case. Projects are also data driven, so project Y has no special properties to distinguish it from any other project. The only way to identify it is to compare its identifier to a magic number. How can one go about modelling this kind of case without introducing too much additional complexity? That I can think of right now, there are a couple of options. Perform the checks and actions inline with the existing code. Here we find the correct spot in the code, check the conditions in the requirement and send the emails to hardcoded addresses. Of course this is fraught with issues. At the very least it stops working if one of these people leaves or changes their email address. At worst you have to ensure that any tests and test data are aware that additional actions are taken for a specific set of criteria. Introduce some form of events system. Here we introduce an eventing system, so that we might react to some event, and fulfil the requirement outside of the usual path of execution. This sounds like a cleaner solution than option 1, but the work involved is ultimately probably slightly overkill for this one small requirement. That said, having it in place does allow the system to handle these kinds of specific requirements consistently and easily in the future. Are there any other (good/better) ways of handling highly specific requirements? I mean other than telling the other parts of the business no!

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• In a state machine, is it a good idea to separate states and transitions?

  - by codablank1

  I have implemented a small state machine in this way (in pseudo code): class Input {} class KeyInput inherits Input { public : enum { Key_A, Key_B, ..., } } class GUIInput inherits Input { public : enum { Button_A, Button_B, ..., } } enum Event { NewGame, Quit, OpenOptions, OpenMenu } class BaseState { String name; Event get_event (Input input); void handle (Event e); //event handling function } class Menu inherits BaseState{...} class InGame inherits BaseState{...} class Options inherits BaseState{...} class StateMachine { public : BaseState get_current_state () { return current_state; } void add_state (String name, BaseState state) { statesMap.insert(name, state);} //raise an exception if state not found BaseState get_state (String name) { return statesMap.find(name); } //raise an exception if state or next_state not found void add_transition (Event event, String state_name, String next_state_name) { BaseState state = get_state(state_name); BaseState next_state = get_state(next_state_name); transitionsMap.insert(pair<event, state>, next_state); } //raise exception if couple not found BaseState get_next_state(Event event, BaseState state) { return transitionsMap.find(pair<event, state>); } void handle(Input input) { Event event = current_state.get_event(input) current_state.handle(event); current_state = get_next_state(event, current_state); } private : BaseState current_state; map<String, BaseState> statesMap; //map of all states in the machine //for each couple event/state, this map stores the next state map<pair<Event, BaseState>, BaseState> transitionsMap; } So, before getting the transition, I need to convert the key input or GUI input to the proper event, given the current state; thus the same key 'W' can launch a new game in the 'Menu' state or moving forward a character in the 'InGame' state; Then I get the next state from the transitionsMap and I update the current state Does this configuration seem valid to you ? Is it a good idea to separate states and transitions ? And I have some kind of trouble to represent a 'null state' or a 'null event'; What initial value can I give to the current state and which one should be returned by get_state if it fails ?

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• Why does my 3D model not translate the way I expect? [closed]

  - by ChocoMan

  In my first image, my model displays correctly: But when I move the model's position along the Z-axis (forward) I get this, yet the Y-axis doesnt change. An if I keep going, the model disappears into the ground: Any suggestions as to how I can get the model to translate properly visually? Here is how Im calling the model and the terrain in draw(): cameraPosition = new Vector3(camX, camY, camZ); // Copy any parent transforms. Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[mShockwave.Bones.Count]; mShockwave.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix[] ttransforms = new Matrix[terrain.Bones.Count]; terrain.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(ttransforms); // Draw the model. A model can have multiple meshes, so loop. foreach (ModelMesh mesh in mShockwave.Meshes) { // This is where the mesh orientation is set, as well // as our camera and projection. foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(modelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, modelPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); mesh.Draw(); } //Terrain test foreach (ModelMesh meshT in terrain.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in meshT.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = ttransforms[meshT.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(0) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(terrainPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, terrainPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); meshT.Draw(); DrawText(); } base.Draw(gameTime); } I'm suspecting that there may be something wrong with how I'm handling my camera. The model rotates fine on its Y-axis.

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• Data structures for a 2D multi-layered and multi-region map?

  - by DevilWithin

  I am working on a 2D world editor and a world format subsequently. If I were to handle the game "world" being created just as a layered set of structures, either in top or side views, it would be considerably simple to do most things. But, since this editor is meant for 3rd parties, I have no clue how big worlds one will want to make and I need to keep in mind that eventually it will become simply too much to check, handling and comparing stuff that are happening completely away from the player position. I know the solution for this is to subdivide my world into sub regions and stream them on the fly, loading and unloading resources and other data. This way I know a virtually infinite game area is achievable. But, while I know theoretically what to do, I really have a few questions I'd hoped to get answered for some hints about the topic. The logic way to handle the regions is some kind of grid, would you pick evenly distributed blocks with equal sizes or would you let the user subdivide areas by taste with irregular sized rectangles? In case of even grids, would you use some kind of block/chunk neighbouring system to check when the player transposes the limit or just put all those in a simple array? Being a region a different data structure than its owner "game world", when streaming a region, would you deliver the objects to the parent structures and track them for unloading later, or retain the objects in each region for a more "hard-limit" approach? Introducing the subdivision approach to the project, and already having a multi layered scene graph structure on place, how would i make it support the new concept? Would you have the parent node have the layers as children, and replicate in each layer node, a node per region? Or the opposite, parent node owns all the regions possible, and each region has multiple layers as children? Or would you just put the region logic outside the graph completely(compatible with the first suggestion in Q.3) When I say virtually infinite worlds, I mean it of course under the contraints of the variable sizes and so on. Using float positions, a HUGE world can already be made. Do you think its sane to think beyond that? Because I think its ok to stick to this limit since it will never be reached so easily.. As for when to stream a region, I'm implementing it as a collection of watcher cameras, which the streaming system works with to know what to load/unload. The problem here is, i will be needing some kind of warps/teleports built in for my game, and there is a chance i will be teleporting a player to a unloaded region far away. How would you approach something like this? Is it sane to load any region to memory which can be teleported to by a warp within a radius from the player? Sorry for the huge question, any answers are helpful!

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• What is the best way to implement collision detection using Bullet physics engine and a track generated from a curve?

  - by tigrou

  I am developing a small racing game were the track is generated from a curve. As said above, the track is generated, but not infinite. The track of one level could fit with no problem in memory and will contain a reasonably small amount of triangles. For collisions, I would like to use Bullet physics engine and know what is the best way to handle collisions with the track efficiently. NOTE : The track will be stored as a static rigid body (mass = 0). The player will be represented by a sphere shape for collisions. Here is some possibilities i have in mind : Create one rigid body, then, put all triangles of the track (except non collidable stuff) into it. Result : 1 body with many triangles (eg : 30000 triangles) Split the track into several sections (eg: 10 sections). Then, for each section, create a rigid body and put corresponding triangles in it. Result : small amount of bodies with relatively small amount of triangles (eg : 1500 triangles per section). Split the track into many sub-sections (eg : 1200 sections). Here one subsection = very small step when generating the curve. Again for each sub-section, create a body and put triangles in it. Result : many bodies with very small amount of triangles (eg : 20 triangles). Advantage : it could be possible to "extra data" to each of the subsection, that could be used when handling collisions. Same as 2, but only put sections N and N+1 in physics engine (where N = current section where the player is). When player reach section N+1, unload section N and load section N+2 and so on... Issue : harder to implement, problems if the player suddenly "jump" from one section to another (eg : player fly away from section N, and fall on section N + 4 that was underneath : no collision handled, player will fall into void ) Same as 4, but with many sub-sections. Issues : since subsections are very small there will be constantly new bodies added and removed to physics engine at runtime. Possibilities for player to accidently skip some sections and fall into the void are higher than 4.

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• .Net Application & Database Modularity/Reuse

  - by Martaver

  I'm looking for some guidance on how to architect an app with regards to modularity, separation of concerns and re-usability. I'm working on an application (ASP.Net, C#) that has distinctly generic chunks of functionality, that I'd love to be able to lift out, all layers, into re-usable components. This means the module handles the database schema, data access, API, everything so that the next time I want to use it I can just register the module and hook into it. Developing modules of re-usable functionality is a no-brainer, but what is really confusing me is what to do when it comes to handling a core re-usable database schema that serves the module's functionality. In an ideal world, I would register a module and it would ensure that the associated database schema exists in the DB. I would code on the assumption that the tables exist, calling the module's functionality through the DLL, agnostic of the database layer. Kind of like Enterprise Library's Caching/Logging Application Block, which can create a DB schema in the target DB to use as a data store. My Questions is: What do you think is the best way to achieve this, firstly, in terms design architecture, and secondly solution structure. What patterns/frameworks do you know that exist & support this kind of thing? My thoughts so far: I mostly use Entity Framework and SQL Server DB Projects. I thought about a 'black box' approach to modules of functionality. I could use use a code-first approach in EF4, and use the ObjectContext to create a database when the module is initialized. However this means that all of the entities that my module encapsulates would be disconnected from the rest of the application because they belonged to an abstracted ObjectContext. Further - Creating appropriate indexes and references between domain entities and the module's entities would be impossible to do practically. I've thought of adopting Enterprise Library and creating my own Application Blocks. I'm not sure how this would play nice with Entity Framework (if at all) though. I like the idea of building on proven patterns & practices to encapsulate established, reusable functionality. I thought of abandoning Entity Framework for the Module, and just creating a separate DB schema for the module with its own set of stored procedures & ADO.Net. Then deploying the script at run-time if interrogation shows that it doesn't exist. But once again, for application developing outside of the application, I would want to use Entity Framework and I would have to use the module separately, disconnected from the domain ObjectContext. Has anyone had experience developing these sorts of full-stack modules? What advice can you offer? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

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• Hadoop, NOSQL, and the Relational Model

  - by Phil Factor

  (Guest Editorial for the IT Pro/SysAdmin Newsletter)Whereas Relational Databases fit the world of commerce like a glove, it is useless to pretend that they are a perfect fit for all human endeavours. Although, with SQL Server, we’ve made great strides with indexing text, in processing spatial data and processing markup, there is still a problem in dealing efficiently with large volumes of ephemeral semi-structured data. Key-value stores such as Cassandra, Project Voldemort, and Riak are of great value for ephemeral data, and seem of equal value as a data-feed that provides aggregations to an RDBMS. However, the Document databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB are ideal for semi-structured data for which no fixed schema exists; analytics and logging are obvious examples. NoSQL products, such as MongoDB, tackle the semi-structured data problem with panache. MongoDB is designed with a simple document-oriented data model that scales horizontally across multiple servers. It doesn’t impose a schema, and relies on the application to enforce the data structure. This is another take on the old ‘EAV’ problem (where you don’t know in advance all the attributes of a particular entity) It uses a clever replica set design that allows automatic failover, and uses journaling for data durability. It allows indexing and ad-hoc querying. However, for SQL Server users, the obvious choice for handling semi-structured data is Apache Hadoop. There will soon be an ODBC Driver for Apache Hive .and an Add-in for Excel. Additionally, there are now two Hadoop-based connectors for SQL Server; the Apache Hadoop connector for SQL Server 2008 R2, and the SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) connector. We can connect to Hadoop process the semi-structured data and then store it in SQL Server. For one steeped in the culture of Relational SQL Databases, I might be expected to throw up my hands in the air in a gesture of contempt for a technology that was, judging by the overblown journalism on the subject, about to make my own profession as archaic as the Saggar makers bottom knocker (a potter’s assistant who helped the saggar maker to make the bottom of the saggar by placing clay in a metal hoop and bashing it). However, on the contrary, I find that I'm delighted with the advances made by the NoSQL databases in the past few years. Having the flow of ideas from the NoSQL providers will knock any trace of complacency out of the providers of Relational Databases and inspire them into back-fitting some features, such as horizontal scaling, with sharding and automatic failover into SQL-based RDBMSs. It will do the breed a power of good to benefit from all this lateral thinking.

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