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• Building the Ultimate SharePoint 2010 Development Environment

  - by Manesh Karunakaran

  It’s been more than a month since SharePoint 2010 RTMed. And a lot of people have downloaded and set up their very own SharePoint 2010 development rigs. And quite a few people have written blogs about setting up good development environments, there is even an MSDN article on it. Two of the blogs worth noting are from MVPs Sahil Malik and Wictor Wilén. Make sure that you check these out as well. Part of the bad side-effects of being a geek is the need to do the technical stuff the best way possible (pragmatic or otherwise), but the problem with this is that what is considered “best” is relative. Precisely the reason why you are reading this post now. Most of the posts that I read are out dated/need updations or are using the wrong OS’es or virtualization solutions (again, opinions vary) or using them the wrong way. Here’s a developer’s view of Building the Ultimate SharePoint 2010 Development Rig. If you are a sales guy, it’s time to close this window. Confusion 1: Which Host Operating System and Virtualization Solution to use? This point has been beaten to death in numerous blog posts in the past, if you have time to invest, read this excellent post by our very own SharePoint Joel on this subject. But if you are planning to build the Ultimate Development Rig, then Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V is the option that you should be looking at. I have been using this as my primary OS for about 6-7 months now, and I haven’t had any Driver issue or Application compatibility issue. In my experience all the Windows 7 drivers work fine with WIN2008 R2 also. You can enable Aero for eye candy (and the Windows 7 look and feel) and except for a few things like the Hibernation support (which a can be enabled if you really want it), Windows Server 2008 R2, is the best Workstation OS that I have used till date. But frankly the answer to this question of which OS to use depends primarily on one question - Are you willing to change your primary OS? If the answer to that is ‘Yes’, then Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V is the best option, if not look at vmWare or VirtualBox, both are equally good. Those who are familiar with a Virtual PC background might prefer Sun VirtualBox. Besides, these provide support for running 64 bit guest machines on 32 bit hosts if the underlying hardware is truly 64 bit. See my earlier post on this. Since we are going to make the ultimate rig, we will use Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, for reasons mentioned above. Confusion 2: Should I use a multi-(virtual) server set up? A lot of people use multiple servers for their development environments - like Wictor Wilén is suggesting - one server hosting the Active directory, one hosting SharePoint Server and another one for SQL Server. True, this mimics the production environment the best possible way, but as somebody who has fallen for this set up earlier, I can tell you that you don’t really get anything by doing this. Microsoft has done well to ensure that if you can do it on one machine, you can do it in a farm environment as well. Besides, when you run multiple Server class machine instances in parallel, there are a lot of unwanted processor cycles wasted for no good use. In my personal experience, as somebody who needs to switch between MOSS 2007/SharePoint 2010 environments from time to time, the best possible solution is to Make the host Windows Server 2008 R2 machine your Domain Controller (AD Server) Make all your Virtual Guest OS’es join this domain. Have each Individual Guest OS Image have it’s own local SQL Server instance. The advantages are that you can reuse the users and groups in each of the Guest operating systems, you can manage the users in one place, AD is light weight and doesn't take too much resources on your host machine and also having separate SQL instances for each of the Development images gives you maximum flexibility in terms of configuration, for example your SharePoint rigs can have simpler DB configurations, compared to your MS BI blast pits. Confusion 3: Which Operating System should I use to run SharePoint 2010 Now that’s a no brainer. Use Windows 2008 R2 as your Guest OS. When you are building the ultimate rig, why compromise? If you are planning to run Windows Server 2008 as your Guest OS, there are a few patches that you need to install at different times during the installation, for that follow the steps mentioned here Okay now that we have made our choices, let’s get to the interesting part of building the rig, Step 1: Prepare the host machine – Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Install Windows Server 2008 R2 on your best Desktop/Laptop. If you have read this far, I am quite sure that you are somebody who can install an OS on your own, so go ahead and do that. Make sure that you run the compatibility wizard before you go ahead and nuke your current OS. There are plenty of blogs telling you how to make a good Windows 2008 R2 Workstation that feels and behaves like a Windows 7 machine, follow one and once you are done, head to Step 2. Step 2: Configure the host machine as a Domain Controller Before we begin this, let me tell you, this step is completely optional, you don’t really need to do this, you can simply use the local users on the Guest machines instead, but if this is a much cleaner approach to manage users and groups if you run multiple guest operating systems.  This post neatly explains how to configure your Windows Server 2008 R2 host machine as a Domain Controller. Follow those simple steps and you are good to go. If you are not able to get it to work, try this. Step 3: Prepare the guest machine – Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Open Hyper-V Manager Choose to Create a new Guest Operating system Allocate at least 2 GB of Memory to the Guest OS Choose the Windows 2008 R2 Installation Media Start the Virtual Machine to commence installation. Once the Installation is done, Activate the OS. Step 4: Make the Guest operating systems Join the Domain This step is quite simple, just follow these steps below, Fire up Hyper-V Manager, open your Guest OS Click on Start, and Right click on ‘Computer’ and choose ‘Properties’ On the window that pops-up, click on ‘Change Settings’ On the ‘System Properties’ Window that comes up, Click on the ‘Change’ button Now a window named ‘Computer Name/Domain Changes’ opens up, In the text box titled Domain, type in the Domain name from Step 2. Click Ok and windows will show you the welcome to domain message and ask you to restart the machine, click OK to restart. If the addition to domain fails, that means that you have not set up networking in Hyper-V for the Guest OS to communicate with the Host. To enable it, follow the steps I had mentioned in this post earlier. Step 5: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 on the Guest Machine SQL Server 2008 R2 gets installed with out hassle on Windows Server 2008 R2. SQL Server 2008 needs SP2 to work properly on WIN2008 R2. Also SQL Server 2008 R2 allows you to directly add PowerPivot support to SharePoint. Choose to install in SharePoint Integrated Mode in Reporting Server Configuration. Step 6: Install KB971831 and SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisites Now install the WCF Hotfix for Microsoft Windows (KB971831) from this location, and SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisites from the SP2010 Installation media. Step 7: Install and Configure SharePoint 2010 Install SharePoint 2010 from the installation media, after the installation is complete, you are prompted to start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. If you are using a local instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, install the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64 before starting the wizard. If your development environment uses a remote instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or if it has a pre-existing installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 on which KB 970315 x64 has already been applied, this step is not necessary. With the wizard open, do the following: Install SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64. After the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64 installation is finished, complete the wizard. Alternatively, you can choose not to run the wizard by clearing the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard check box and closing the completed installation dialog box. Install SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64, and then manually start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard by opening a Command Prompt window and executing the following command: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared Debug\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN\psconfigui.exe The SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard may fail if you are using a computer that is joined to a domain but that is not connected to a domain controller. Step 8: Install Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 SDK Install Visual Studio 2010 Download and Install the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SDK Step 9: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint and Configure Reporting Services Pop-In the SQLServer 2008 R2 installation media once again and install PowerPivot for SharePoint. This will get added as another instance named POWERPIVOT. Configure Reporting Services by following the steps mentioned here, if you need to get down to the details on how the integration between SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 works, see Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010 an excellent article by Alan Le Marquand Step 10: Download and Install Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 SharePoint 2010 comes with a lot of cool stuff like PerformancePoint Services and BCS, if you need to try these out, you need to have data in your databases. So if you want to save yourself the trouble of creating sample data for your PerformancePoint and BCS experiments, download and install Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 from CodePlex. And you are done! Fire up your Visual Studio 2010 and Start Coding away!!

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• Database per application VS One big database for all applications

  - by Jorge Vargas

  Hello, I'm designing a few applications that will share 2 or 3 database tables and all of the other tables will be independent of each app. The shared databases contain mostly user information, and there might occur the case where other tables need to be shared, but that's my instinct speaking. I'm leaning over the one database for all applications solution because I want to have referential integrity, and I won't have to keep the same information up to date in each of the databases, but I'm probably going to end with a database of 100+ tables where only groups of ten tables will have related information. The database per application approach helps me keep everything more organized, but I don't know a way to keep the related tables in all databases up to date. So, the basic question is: which of both approaches do you recommend? Thanks, Jorge Vargas.

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• Data Integration 12c Raising the Big Data Roof at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Author: Dain Hansen, Director, Oracle It was an exciting OpenWorld 2013 for us in the Data Integration track. Our theme this year was all about ‘being future ready’ - previewing one of our biggest releases this year: Oracle Data Integration 12c. Just this week we followed up with this preview by announcing the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Mark Hurd's keynote on day one set the tone for the Data Integration sessions. Mark focused on big data analytics and the changing consumer expectations. Especially real-time insight is a key theme for Oracle overall and data integration products. In Mark Hurd's keynote we heard from key customers, such as Airbus and Thomson Reuters, how real-time analysis of operational data including machine data creates value, in some cases even saves lives. Thomas Kurian gave a deeper look into Oracle's big data and fast data solutions. In the initial lead Data Integration track session - Brad Adelberg, VP of Development, presented Oracle’s Data Integration 12c product strategy based on key trends from the initial OpenWorld keynotes. Brad talked about how Oracle's data integration products address the new data integration requirements that evolved with cloud computing, big data, and changing consumer expectations and how they set the key themes in our products’ road map. Brad explained why and how fast-time to value, high-performance and future-ready solutions is the top focus areas for product development. If you were not able to attend OpenWorld or this session I recommend reading the white paper: Five New Data Integration Requirements and How to Meet them with Oracle Data Integration, which provides an in-depth look into how Oracle addresses the new trends in the DI market. Following Brad’s session, Nick Wagner provided in depth review of Oracle GoldenGate’s latest features and roadmap. Nick discussed how Oracle GoldenGate’s tight integration with Oracle Database sets the product apart from the competition. We also heard that heterogeneity of the product is still a major focus for GoldenGate’s development and there will be more news on that front when there is a major release. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} After GoldenGate’s product strategy session, Denis Gray from the PM team presented Oracle Data Integrator’s product strategy session, talking about the latest and greatest on ODI. Another good session was delivered by long-time GoldenGate users, Comcast.  Jason Hurd and Amit Patel of Comcast talked about the various use cases they deploy Oracle GoldenGate throughout their enterprise, from database upgrades, feeding reporting systems, to active-active database synchronization.  The Comcast team shared many good tips on how to use GoldenGate for both zero downtime upgrades and active-active replication with conflict management requirement. One of our other important goals we had this year for the Data Integration track at OpenWorld was hearing from our customers. We ended day 1 on just that, with a wonderful award ceremony for Oracle Excellence Awards for Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation. The ceremony was held in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Congratulations to Royal Bank of Scotland and Yalumba Wine Company, the winners in the Data Integration category. You can find more information on the award and the winners in our previous blog post: 2013 Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware Innovation… Selected for their innovation use of Oracle’s Data Integration products; the winners for the Data Integration Category are Royal Bank of Scotland and The Yalumba Wine Company. Congratulations!!! Royal Bank of Scotland’s Market and International Banking division provides clients across the globe with seamless trading and competitive pricing, underpinned by a deep knowledge of risk management across the full spectrum of financial products. They handle millions of transactions daily to keep the lifeblood of their clients’ businesses flowing – whether through payment management solutions or through bespoke trade finance solutions. Royal Bank of Scotland is leveraging Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator along with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the Oracle Database for a variety of solutions. Mainly, Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator are used to feed their data warehouse – providing a real-time data integration solution that feeds transactional data to their analytics system in minutes to enable improved decision making with timely, accurate data for their business users. Oracle Data Integrator’s in-database transformation capabilities and its ability to integrate with Oracle GoldenGate for real-time data capture is the foundation of this implementation. This solution makes it such that changes happening in the analytics systems are available the same day they are deployed on the operational system with 100% data quality guaranteed. Additionally, the solution has helped to reduce their operational database size from 150GB to 10GB. Impressive! Now what if I told you this solution was built in 3 months and had a less than 6 month return on investment? That’s outstanding! The Yalumba Wine Company is situated in the Barossa Valley of Australia. It is the oldest family owned winery in Australia with a unique way of aging their wines in specially crafted 100 liter barrels. Did you know that “Yalumba” is Aboriginal for “all the land around”? The Yalumba Wine Company is growing rapidly, and was in need of introducing a more modern standard to the existing manufacturing processes to meet globalization demands, overall time-to-market, and better operational efficiency objectives of product development. The Yalumba Wine Company worked with a partner, Bristlecone to develop a unique solution whereby Oracle Data Integrator is leveraged to pull data from Salesforce.com and JD Edwards, in addition to their other pre-existing source systems, for consumption into their data warehouse. They have emphasized the overall ease of developing integration workflows with Oracle Data Integrator. The solution has brought better visibility for the business users, shorter data loading and transformation performance to their data warehouse with rapid incorporation of new data sources, and a solid future-proof foundation for their organization. Moving forward, they plan on leveraging more from Oracle’s Data Integration portfolio. Terrific! In addition to these two customers on Tuesday we featured many other important Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate customers. On Tuesday the GoldenGate panel included: Land O’Lakes, Smuckers, and Veolia Water. Besides giving us yummy nutrition and healthy water, these companies have another aspect in common. They all use GoldenGate to boost their ERP application. Please read the recap by Irem Radzik. On Wednesday, the ODI Panel included: Barry Ralston and Ryan Weber of Infinity Insurance, Paul Stracke of Paychex Inc., and Ian Wall of Vertex Pharmaceuticals for a session filled with interesting projects, use cases and approaches to leveraging Oracle Data Integrator. Please read the recap by Sandrine Riley for more. Thanks to everyone who joined with us and we hope to stay connected! To hear more about our Data Integration12c products join us in an upcoming webcast to learn more. Follow us www.twitter.com/ORCLGoldenGate or goto our website at www.oracle.com/goto/dataintegration

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• 8 Reasons Why Even Microsoft Agrees the Windows Desktop is a Nightmare

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Let’s be honest: The Windows desktop is a mess. Sure, it’s extremely powerful and has a huge software library, but it’s not a good experience for average people. It’s not even a good experience for geeks, although we tolerate it. Even Microsoft agrees about this. Microsoft’s Surface tablets with Windows RT don’t support any third-party desktop apps. They consider this a feature — users can’t install malware and other desktop junk, so the system will always be speedy and secure. Malware is Still Common Malware may not affect geeks, but it certainly continues to affect average people. Securing Windows, keeping it secure, and avoiding unsafe programs is a complex process. There are over 50 different file extensions that can contain harmful code to keep track of. It’s easy to have theoretical discussions about how malware could infect Mac computers, Android devices, and other systems. But Mac malware is extremely rare, and has  generally been caused by problem with the terrible Java plug-in. Macs are configured to only run executables from identified developers by default, whereas Windows will run everything. Android malware is talked about a lot, but Android malware is rare in the real world and is generally confined to users who disable security protections and install pirated apps. Google has also taken action, rolling out built-in antivirus-like app checking to all Android devices, even old ones running Android 2.3, via Play Services. Whatever the reason, Windows malware is still common while malware for other systems isn’t. We all know it — anyone who does tech support for average users has dealt with infected Windows computers. Even users who can avoid malware are stuck dealing with complex and nagging antivirus programs, especially since it’s now so difficult to trust Microsoft’s antivirus products. Manufacturer-Installed Bloatware is Terrible Sit down with a new Mac, Chromebook, iPad, Android tablet, Linux laptop, or even a Surface running Windows RT and you can enjoy using your new device. The system is a clean slate for you to start exploring and installing your new software. Sit down with a new Windows PC and the system is a mess. Rather than be delighted, you’re stuck reinstalling Windows and then installing the necessary drivers or you’re forced to start uninstalling useless bloatware programs one-by-one, trying to figure out which ones are actually useful. After uninstalling the useless programs, you may end up with a system tray full of icons for ten different hardware utilities anyway. The first experience of using a new Windows PC is frustration, not delight. Yes, bloatware is still a problem on Windows 8 PCs. Manufacturers can customize the Refresh image, preventing bloatware rom easily being removed. Finding a Desktop Program is Dangerous Want to install a Windows desktop program? Well, you’ll have to head to your web browser and start searching. It’s up to you, the user, to know which programs are safe and which are dangerous. Even if you find a website for a reputable program, the advertisements on that page will often try to trick you into downloading fake installers full of adware. While it’s great to have the ability to leave the app store and get software that the platform’s owner hasn’t approved — as on Android — this is no excuse for not providing a good, secure software installation experience for typical users installing typical programs. Even Reputable Desktop Programs Try to Install Junk Even if you do find an entirely reputable program, you’ll have to keep your eyes open while installing it. It will likely try to install adware, add browse toolbars, change your default search engine, or change your web browser’s home page. Even Microsoft’s own programs do this — when you install Skype for Windows desktop, it will attempt to modify your browser settings t ouse Bing, even if you’re specially chosen another search engine and home page. With Microsoft setting such an example, it’s no surprise so many other software developers have followed suit. Geeks know how to avoid this stuff, but there’s a reason program installers continue to do this. It works and tricks many users, who end up with junk installed and settings changed. The Update Process is Confusing On iOS, Android, and Windows RT, software updates come from a single place — the app store. On Linux, software updates come from the package manager. On Mac OS X, typical users’ software updates likely come from the Mac App Store. On the Windows desktop, software updates come from… well, every program has to create its own update mechanism. Users have to keep track of all these updaters and make sure their software is up-to-date. Most programs now have their act together and automatically update by default, but users who have old versions of Flash and Adobe Reader installed are vulnerable until they realize their software isn’t automatically updating. Even if every program updates properly, the sheer mess of updaters is clunky, slow, and confusing in comparison to a centralized update process. Browser Plugins Open Security Holes It’s no surprise that other modern platforms like iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows RT, and Windows Phone don’t allow traditional browser plugins, or only allow Flash and build it into the system. Browser plugins provide a wealth of different ways for malicious web pages to exploit the browser and open the system to attack. Browser plugins are one of the most popular attack vectors because of how many users have out-of-date plugins and how many plugins, especially Java, seem to be designed without taking security seriously. Oracle’s Java plugin even tries to install the terrible Ask toolbar when installing security updates. That’s right — the security update process is also used to cram additional adware into users’ machines so unscrupulous companies like Oracle can make a quick buck. It’s no wonder that most Windows PCs have an out-of-date, vulnerable version of Java installed. Battery Life is Terrible Windows PCs have bad battery life compared to Macs, IOS devices, and Android tablets, all of which Windows now competes with. Even Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 2 has bad battery life. Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air, which has very similar hardware to the Surface Pro 2, offers double its battery life when web browsing. Microsoft has been fond of blaming third-party hardware manufacturers for their poorly optimized drivers in the past, but there’s no longer any room to hide. The problem is clearly Windows. Why is this? No one really knows for sure. Perhaps Microsoft has kept on piling Windows component on top of Windows component and many older Windows components were never properly optimized. Windows Users Become Stuck on Old Windows Versions Apple’s new OS X 10.9 Mavericks upgrade is completely free to all Mac users and supports Macs going back to 2007. Apple has also announced their intention that all new releases of Mac OS X will be free. In 2007, Microsoft had just shipped Windows Vista. Macs from the Windows Vista era are being upgraded to the latest version of the Mac operating system for free, while Windows PCs from the same era are probably still using Windows Vista. There’s no easy upgrade path for these people. They’re stuck using Windows Vista and maybe even the outdated Internet Explorer 9 if they haven’t installed a third-party web browser. Microsoft’s upgrade path is for these people to pay $120 for a full copy of Windows 8.1 and go through a complicated process that’s actaully a clean install. Even users of Windows 8 devices will probably have to pay money to upgrade to Windows 9, while updates for other operating systems are completely free. If you’re a PC geek, a PC gamer, or someone who just requires specialized software that only runs on Windows, you probably use the Windows desktop and don’t want to switch. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean the Windows desktop is actually a good experience. Much of the burden falls on average users, who have to struggle with malware, bloatware, adware bundled in installers, complex software installation processes, and out-of-date software. In return, all they get is the ability to use a web browser and some basic Office apps that they could use on almost any other platform without all the hassle. Microsoft would agree with this, touting Windows RT and their new “Windows 8-style” app platform as the solution. Why else would Microsoft, a “devices and services” company, position the Surface — a device without traditional Windows desktop programs — as their mass-market device recommended for average people? This isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Windows RT. If you’re tech support for your family members and it comes time for them to upgrade, you may want to get them off the Windows desktop and tell them to get a Mac or something else that’s simple. Better yet, if they get a Mac, you can tell them to visit the Apple Store for help instead of calling you. That’s another thing Windows PCs don’t offer — good manufacturer support. Image Credit: Blanca Stella Mejia on Flickr, Collin Andserson on Flickr, Luca Conti on Flickr     

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• Tutorial: Getting Started with the NoSQL JavaScript / Node.js API for MySQL Cluster

  - by Mat Keep

  Tutorial authored by Craig Russell and JD Duncan  The MySQL Cluster team are working on a new NoSQL JavaScript connector for MySQL. The objectives are simplicity and high performance for JavaScript users: - allows end-to-end JavaScript development, from the browser to the server and now to the world's most popular open source database - native "NoSQL" access to the storage layer without going first through SQL transformations and parsing. Node.js is a complete web platform built around JavaScript designed to deliver millions of client connections on commodity hardware. With the MySQL NoSQL Connector for JavaScript, Node.js users can easily add data access and persistence to their web, cloud, social and mobile applications. While the initial implementation is designed to plug and play with Node.js, the actual implementation doesn't depend heavily on Node, potentially enabling wider platform support in the future. Implementation The architecture and user interface of this connector are very different from other MySQL connectors in a major way: it is an asynchronous interface that follows the event model built into Node.js. To make it as easy as possible, we decided to use a domain object model to store the data. This allows for users to query data from the database and have a fully-instantiated object to work with, instead of having to deal with rows and columns of the database. The domain object model can have any user behavior that is desired, with the NoSQL connector providing the data from the database. To make it as fast as possible, we use a direct connection from the user's address space to the database. This approach means that no SQL (pun intended) is needed to get to the data, and no SQL server is between the user and the data. The connector is being developed to be extensible to multiple underlying database technologies, including direct, native access to both the MySQL Cluster "ndb" and InnoDB storage engines. The connector integrates the MySQL Cluster native API library directly within the Node.js platform itself, enabling developers to seamlessly couple their high performance, distributed applications with a high performance, distributed, persistence layer delivering 99.999% availability. The following sections take you through how to connect to MySQL, query the data and how to get started. Connecting to the database A Session is the main user access path to the database. You can get a Session object directly from the connector using the openSession function: var nosql = require("mysql-js"); var dbProperties = {     "implementation" : "ndb",     "database" : "test" }; nosql.openSession(dbProperties, null, onSession); The openSession function calls back into the application upon creating a Session. The Session is then used to create, delete, update, and read objects. Reading data The Session can read data from the database in a number of ways. If you simply want the data from the database, you provide a table name and the key of the row that you want. For example, consider this schema: create table employee (   id int not null primary key,   name varchar(32),   salary float ) ENGINE=ndbcluster; Since the primary key is a number, you can provide the key as a number to the find function. function onSession = function(err, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   session.find('employee', 0, onData); }; function onData = function(err, data) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   console.log('Found: ', JSON.stringify(data));   ... use data in application }; If you want to have the data stored in your own domain model, you tell the connector which table your domain model uses, by specifying an annotation, and pass your domain model to the find function. var annotations = new nosql.Annotations(); function Employee = function(id, name, salary) {   this.id = id;   this.name = name;   this.salary = salary;   this.giveRaise = function(percent) {     this.salary *= percent;   } }; annotations.mapClass(Employee, {'table' : 'employee'}); function onSession = function(err, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   session.find(Employee, 0, onData); }; Updating data You can update the emp instance in memory, but to make the raise persistent, you need to write it back to the database, using the update function. function onData = function(err, emp) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   console.log('Found: ', JSON.stringify(emp));   emp.giveRaise(0.12); // gee, thanks!   session.update(emp); // oops, session is out of scope here }; Using JavaScript can be tricky because it does not have the concept of block scope for variables. You can create a closure to handle these variables, or use a feature of the connector to remember your variables. The connector api takes a fixed number of parameters and returns a fixed number of result parameters to the callback function. But the connector will keep track of variables for you and return them to the callback. So in the above example, change the onSession function to remember the session variable, and you can refer to it in the onData function: function onSession = function(err, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   session.find(Employee, 0, onData, session); }; function onData = function(err, emp, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   console.log('Found: ', JSON.stringify(emp));   emp.giveRaise(0.12); // gee, thanks!   session.update(emp, onUpdate); // session is now in scope }; function onUpdate = function(err, emp) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   } Inserting data Inserting data requires a mapped JavaScript user function (constructor) and a session. Create a variable and persist it: function onSession = function(err, session) {   var data = new Employee(999, 'Mat Keep', 20000000);   session.persist(data, onInsert);   } }; Deleting data To remove data from the database, use the session remove function. You use an instance of the domain object to identify the row you want to remove. Only the key field is relevant. function onSession = function(err, session) {   var key = new Employee(999);   session.remove(Employee, onDelete);   } }; More extensive queries We are working on the implementation of more extensive queries along the lines of the criteria query api. Stay tuned. How to evaluate The MySQL Connector for JavaScript is available for download from labs.mysql.com. Select the build: MySQL-Cluster-NoSQL-Connector-for-Node-js You can also clone the project on GitHub Since it is still early in development, feedback is especially valuable (so don't hesitate to leave comments on this blog, or head to the MySQL Cluster forum). Try it out and see how easy (and fast) it is to integrate MySQL Cluster into your Node.js platforms. You can learn more about other previewed functionality of MySQL Cluster 7.3 here

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• What CI server and Configuration Management tools I should use

  - by Bera

  Hi ! What CI server and Configuration Management tools I should use together for a truly development and deploy maintenance. There isn't the de facto rails sustainable environment, is there? Some assumptions: • code control version ok - git (de facto tool) • test framework ok - whatever (rspec is my choice) • code coverage and analysis ok - whatever (metric-fu, for example) • server stack ok - (Passenger for example) • issue tracker (RedMine) • etc, ... I'm want to play if integrity and moonshine projects, for me it's a good for beginning, isn't it? What do you think about this? Thanks, Bruno

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• How to have other divs with a flash liquid layout that fits to the page?

  - by brybam

  Basically the majority of my content is flash based. I designed it using Flash Builder (Flex) and Its in a liquid layout, (everything is in percents) and if im JUST embedding the flash content it scales to the page fine, and i have the flash content set to have a padding of 50 px. I put a header div in fine with no problems, but I have 2 problems, the first being the footer div seems to cover up the buttom of the flash content in IE, but it looks just fine in chrome. How can I solve this? I'm using the stock embed code that Flex provides, I tried to edit the css style for the div which I think is #flashContent and give it a min width and min height but it didnt seem to work, actually anything I did to #flashContent didn't seem to do anything, maybe its not the div i need to be adding that attribute to... And my other problem is I dont even know where to start when it comes to placing a div thats 280width by 600height colum to the right side of the flash content. If i could specify a size for the flash content, and the float it left, and float the colum right, and clear it with the container div id be just fine....But remember the flash content is set to 100% Scale (well techically 100%x80% because it looked better that way). Does anyone know how I can start to deal with creating a more complex scaleable flash layouts that includes other divs? ALL WELL MAINTAINING IE SUPPORT? IE is ruining my life. Here's the code I'm using: (or if it will help you visualize what im trying to do here's the page where im working on setting this up http://apumpkinpatch.com/textmashnew/) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head> <title>TextMixup</title> <meta name="google" value="notranslate"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <link href="css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js"></script> <script src="../appassets/scripts/jquery.titlealert.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19768131-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); function tabNotification() { $.titleAlert('New Message!', {interval:200,requireBlur:true,stopOnFocus:true}); } function joinNotification() { $.titleAlert('Joined Chat!', {interval:200,requireBlur:true,stopOnFocus:true}); } </script> <!-- BEGIN Browser History required section --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="history/history.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="history/history.js"></script> <!-- END Browser History required section --> <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var swfVersionStr = "10.2.0"; var xiSwfUrlStr = "playerProductInstall.swf"; var flashvars = {}; var params = {}; params.quality = "high"; params.bgcolor = "#ffffff"; params.allowscriptaccess = "sameDomain"; params.allowfullscreen = "true"; var attributes = {}; attributes.id = "TextMixup"; attributes.name = "TextMixup"; attributes.align = "middle"; swfobject.embedSWF( "TextMixup.swf", "flashContent", "100%", "80%", swfVersionStr, xiSwfUrlStr, flashvars, params, attributes); swfobject.createCSS("#flashContent", "display:block;text-align:left;"); </script> </head> <body> <div id="homebar"><a href="http://apumpkinpatch.com"><img src="../appassets/images/logo/logoHor_130_30.png" alt="APumpkinPatch HOME" width="130" height="30" hspace="10" vspace="3" border="0"/></a> </div> <div id="topad"> <script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-5824388356626461"; /* 728x90, textmash */ google_ad_slot = "1114351240"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90; //--> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script> </div> <div id="mainContainer"> <div id="flashContent"> <p> To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.0 or greater is installed. </p> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageHost = ((document.location.protocol == "https:") ? "https://" : "http://"); document.write("<a href='http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer'><img src='" + pageHost + "www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif' alt='Get Adobe Flash player' /></a>" ); </script> </div> <noscript> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="100%" height="80%" id="TextMixup"> <param name="movie" value="TextMixup.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <!--[if !IE]>--> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="TextMixup.swf" width="100%" height="80%"> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <!--<![endif]--> <!--[if gte IE 6]>--> <p> Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.0 or greater is not installed. </p> <!--<![endif]--> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"> <img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash Player" /> </a> <!--[if !IE]>--> </object> <!--<![endif]--> </object> </noscript> <div id="convosPreview">This is a div I would want to appear as a colum to the right of the flash content that can scale</div> <!---End mainContainer --> </div> <div id="footer"> <a href="../apps.html"><img src="../appassets/images/apps.png" hspace="5" vspace="5" alt="random chat app apumpkinpatch" width="228" height="40" border="0" /></a><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hjmnobclpbhnjcpdnpdnkbgdkbfifbao?hl=en-US#"><img src="../appassets/images/chromeapp.png" alt="chrome app random video chat apumpkinpatch" width="115" height="40" vspace="5" border="0" /></a><br /><br /> <a href="http://spacebarup.com" target="_blank">©2011 Space Bar</a> | <a href="../tos.html">TOS & Privacy Policy</a> | <a href="../help.html">FAQ & Help</a> | <a href="../tips.html">Important online safety tips</a> | <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/APumpkinPatchcom/164279206963001?sk=app_2373072738" target="_blank">Discussion Boards</a><br /> <p>You must be at least 18 years of age to access this web site.<br />APumpkinPatch.com is not responsible for the actions of any visitors of this site.<br />APumpkinPatch.com does not endorse or claim ownership to any of the content that is broadcast through this site. </p><h2>A Pumpkin Patch is BRAND NEW and will be developed a lot over the next few months adding video chat games, chat rooms, and more! Check back often it's going to be a lot of fun!</h2> </div> </body> </html> myCSS: html, body { height:100%; } body { text-align:center; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin:0; padding:0; overflow:auto; text-align:center; background-color: #ffffff; } object:focus { outline:none; } #homebar { clear:both; text-align: left; width: 100%; height: 40px; background-color:#333333; color:#CCC; overflow:hidden; box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); margin-bottom: 10px; } #mainContainer { height:auto; width:auto; clear:both; } #flashContent { display:none; height:auto; float:left; min-height: 500px; min-width: 340px; } /**this is the div i want to appear as a column net to the scaleable flash content **/ #convosPreview { float:right; width:280px; height:600px; }

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• How are .NET 4 GUIDs generated?

  - by mafutrct

  I am aware of the multitude of questions here as well as Raymond's excellent (as usual) post. However, since the algorithm to create GUIDs was changed apparently, I found it hard to get my hands on any up-to-date information. The MSDN seems to try and provide as few information as possible. What is known about how GUIDs are generated in .NET 4? What was changed, and how does it affect the security ("randomness") and integrity ("uniqueness")? One specific aspect I'm interested in: In v1, it seems to be about impossible to generate the same GUID on a single machine again since there was a timestamp and counter involved. In v4, this is no longer the case (I was told), so the chance to get the same GUID on a single machine ... increased?

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• Why is my Internet connection randomly dropping?

  - by Jeanno

  Ever since I have installed 12.04 (clean install not an upgrade), i have been having a drop in the Internet connection. The drop in the connection can be anything from 15 seconds to about 3 mins, and then the connection comes back. This behaviour happens while I am actively browsing the Internet, or if I wake up the computer and open Firefox (sometimes I have connection and sometimes I don't) . Please note that when the internet connection is on, it is not slow (as speedtest.net results show) In the beginning, I thought it was a problem with the driver r8169 for my RTL8111/8168B Ethernet card, so I downloaded the r8168 from Realtek website, followed the detailed instructions (blacklisted r8169, changed the file to '.bsh' ...), but still the same problem persisted. So I switched to a wireless connection, and I got the same problem with internet connection dropping randomly. Any ideas? Thanks in advance Output from 'lspci -v' Code: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?> 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000efff Memory behind bridge: f8000000-fa0fffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000d0000000-00000000dbffffff Capabilities: [88] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [a0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [140] Root Complex Link Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff Memory behind bridge: f4000000-f60fffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000c0000000-00000000cbffffff Capabilities: [88] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [a0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [140] Root Complex Link Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 52 Memory at f6108000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [8c] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Kernel driver in use: mei Kernel modules: mei 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at f6107000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0 Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 53 Memory at f6100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=0 Memory behind bridge: fa400000-fa4fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=04, subordinate=04, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000c000-0000cfff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000dc100000-00000000dc1fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=05, subordinate=05, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000b000-0000bfff Memory behind bridge: fa300000-fa3fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=06, subordinate=06, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000a000-0000afff Memory behind bridge: fa200000-fa2fffff Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23 Memory at f6106000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0 Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation P67 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?> Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt 00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42 I/O ports at f070 [size=8] I/O ports at f060 [size=4] I/O ports at f050 [size=8] I/O ports at f040 [size=4] I/O ports at f020 [size=32] Memory at f6105000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K] Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [a8] SATA HBA v1.0 Capabilities: [b0] PCI Advanced Features Kernel driver in use: ahci 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 5 Memory at f6104000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] I/O ports at f000 [size=32] Kernel modules: i2c-i801 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0dc5 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M] Memory at d8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M] I/O ports at e000 [size=128] Expansion ROM at fa000000 [disabled] [size=512K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?> Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?> Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?> Kernel driver in use: nouveau Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at fa080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0dc5 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M] Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M] Memory at c8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M] I/O ports at d000 [size=128] Expansion ROM at f6000000 [disabled] [size=512K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?> Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?> Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?> Kernel driver in use: nouveau Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb 02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 085b Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at f6080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 03:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 30 [XHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at fa400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [70] MSI: Enable- Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=8 Masked- Capabilities: [a0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff Capabilities: [150] Latency Tolerance Reporting Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 51 I/O ports at c000 [size=256] Memory at dc104000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K] Memory at dc100000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01 Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable- Count=4 Masked- Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 03-00-00-00-68-4c-e0-00 Kernel driver in use: r8168 Kernel modules: r8168 05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6315 Series Firewire Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 10 [OHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at fa300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K] I/O ports at b000 [size=256] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit+ Capabilities: [98] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [130] Device Serial Number 00-10-dc-ff-ff-cf-56-1a Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci Kernel modules: firewire-ohci 06:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362 SATA Controller (rev 10) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0]) Subsystem: Dell Device 04a7 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19 I/O ports at a040 [size=8] I/O ports at a030 [size=4] I/O ports at a020 [size=8] I/O ports at a010 [size=4] I/O ports at a000 [size=16] Memory at fa210000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512] Capabilities: [8c] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [50] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: ahci Note that my wireless card is not showing, I have the Ralink 3390 card (which apparently does not show up on Ubuntu for some reason), however I am able to connect to wireless network and connect to the internet (when it is working)

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• Using a portable USB monitor in Ubuntu 13.04 (AOC e1649Fwu - DisplayLink)

  Having access to a little bit of IT hardware extravaganza isn't that easy here in Mauritius for exactly two reasons - either it is simply not available or it is expensive like nowhere. Well, by chance I came across an advert by a local hardware supplier and their offer of the week caught my attention - a portable USB monitor. Sounds cool, and the specs are okay as well. It's completely driven via USB 2.0, has a light weight, the dimensions would fit into my laptop bag and the resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels is okay for a second screen. Long story, short ending: I called them and only got to understand that they are out of stock - how convenient! Well, as usual I left some contact details and got the regular 'We call you back' answer. Surprisingly, I didn't receive a phone call as promised and after starting to complain via social media networks they finally came back to me with new units available - and *drum-roll* still the same price tag as promoted (and free delivery on top as one of their employees lives in Flic en Flac). Guess, it was a no-brainer to get at least one unit to fool around with. In worst case it might end up as image frame on the shelf or so... The usual suspects... Ubuntu first! Of course, the packing mentions only Windows or Mac OS as supported operating systems and without hesitation at all, I hooked up the device on my main machine running on Ubuntu 13.04. Result: Blackout... Hm, actually not the situation I was looking for but okay can't be too difficult to get this piece of hardware up and running. Following the output of syslogd (or dmesg if you prefer) the device has been recognised successfully but we got stuck in the initialisation phase. Oct 12 08:17:23 iospc2 kernel: [69818.689137] usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pciOct 12 08:17:23 iospc2 kernel: [69818.800306] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -32Oct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 kernel: [69819.043620] usb 2-4: New USB device found, idVendor=17e9, idProduct=4107Oct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 kernel: [69819.043630] usb 2-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3Oct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 kernel: [69819.043636] usb 2-4: Product: e1649FwuOct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 kernel: [69819.043642] usb 2-4: Manufacturer: DisplayLinkOct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 kernel: [69819.043647] usb 2-4: SerialNumber: FJBD7HA000778Oct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 kernel: [69819.046073] hid-generic 0003:17E9:4107.0008: hiddev0,hidraw5: USB HID v1.10 Device [DisplayLink e1649Fwu] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-4/input1Oct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 5: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-4"Oct 12 08:17:24 iospc2 mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 5 was not an MTP deviceOct 12 08:17:30 iospc2 kernel: [69825.411220] [drm] vendor descriptor length:17 data:17 5f 01 00 15 05 00 01 03 00 04Oct 12 08:17:30 iospc2 kernel: [69825.498778] udl 2-4:1.0: fb1: udldrmfb frame buffer deviceOct 12 08:17:30 iospc2 kernel: [69825.498786] [drm] Initialized udl 0.0.1 20120220 on minor 1Oct 12 08:17:30 iospc2 kernel: [69825.498909] usbcore: registered new interface driver udl The device has been recognised as USB device without any question and it is listed properly: # lsusb...Bus 002 Device 005: ID 17e9:4107 DisplayLink ... A quick and dirty research on the net gave me some hints towards the udlfb framebuffer device for USB DisplayLink devices. By default this kernel module is blacklisted $ less /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf | grep udl#blacklist udlblacklist udlfb and it is recommended to load it manually. So, unloading the whole udl stack and giving udlfb a shot: Oct 12 08:22:31 iospc2 kernel: [70126.642809] usbcore: registered new interface driver udlfb But still no reaction on the external display which supposedly should have been on and green. Display okay? Test run on Windows Just to be on the safe side and to exclude any hardware related defects or whatsoever - you never know what happened during delivery. I moved the display to a new position on the opposite side of my laptop, installed the display drivers first in Windows Vista (I know, I know...) as recommended in the manual, and then finally hooked it up on that machine. Tada! Display has been recognised correctly and I have a proper choice between cloning and extending my desktop. Testing whether the display is working properly - using Windows Vista Okay, good to know that there is nothing wrong on the hardware side just software... Back to Ubuntu - Kernel too old Some more research on Google and various hits recommend that the original displaylink driver has been merged into the recent kernel development and one should manually upgrade the kernel image (and both header) packages for Ubuntu. At least kernel 3.9 or higher would be necessary, and so I went out to this URL: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ and I downloaded all the good stuff from the v3.9-raring directory. The installation itself is easy going via dpkg: $ sudo dpkg -i linux-image-3.9.0-030900-generic_3.9.0-030900.201304291257_amd64.deb$ sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.9.0-030900_3.9.0-030900.201304291257_all.deb$ sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.9.0-030900-generic_3.9.0-030900.201304291257_amd64.deb As with any kernel upgrades it is necessary to restart the system in order to use the new one. Said and done: $ uname -r3.9.0-030900-generic And now connecting the external display gives me the following output in /var/log/syslog: Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2314.984293] usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pciOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.096257] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -32Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.337105] usb 2-4: New USB device found, idVendor=17e9, idProduct=4107Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.337115] usb 2-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.337122] usb 2-4: Product: e1649FwuOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.337127] usb 2-4: Manufacturer: DisplayLinkOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.337132] usb 2-4: SerialNumber: FJBD7HA000778Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338292] udlfb: DisplayLink e1649Fwu - serial #FJBD7HA000778Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338299] udlfb: vid_17e9&pid_4107&rev_0129 driver's dlfb_data struct at ffff880117e59000Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338303] udlfb: console enable=1Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338306] udlfb: fb_defio enable=1Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338309] udlfb: shadow enable=1Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338468] udlfb: vendor descriptor length:17 data:17 5f 01 0015 05 00 01 03 00 04Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338473] udlfb: DL chip limited to 1500000 pixel modesOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.338565] udlfb: allocated 4 65024 byte urbsOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.343592] hid-generic 0003:17E9:4107.0009: hiddev0,hidraw5: USB HID v1.10 Device [DisplayLink e1649Fwu] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-4/input1Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 6: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-4"Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 6 was not an MTP deviceOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.426583] udlfb: 1366x768 @ 59 Hz valid modeOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.426589] udlfb: Reallocating framebuffer. Addresses will change!Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.428338] udlfb: 1366x768 @ 59 Hz valid modeOct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.428343] udlfb: set_par mode 1366x768Oct 12 17:51:36 iospc2 kernel: [ 2315.430620] udlfb: DisplayLink USB device /dev/fb1 attached. 1366x768 resolution. Using 4104K framebuffer memory Okay, that's looks more promising but still only blackout on the external screen... And yes, due to my previous modifications I swapped the blacklisted kernel modules: $ less /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf | grep udlblacklist udl#blacklist udlfb Silly me! Okay, back to the original situation in which udl is allowed and udlfb blacklisted. Now, the logging looks similar to this and the screen shows those maroon-brown and azure-blue horizontal bars as described on other online resources. Oct 15 21:27:23 iospc2 kernel: [80934.308238] usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pciOct 15 21:27:23 iospc2 kernel: [80934.420244] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -32Oct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 kernel: [80934.660822] usb 2-4: New USB device found, idVendor=17e9, idProduct=4107Oct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 kernel: [80934.660832] usb 2-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3Oct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 kernel: [80934.660838] usb 2-4: Product: e1649FwuOct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 kernel: [80934.660844] usb 2-4: Manufacturer: DisplayLinkOct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 kernel: [80934.660850] usb 2-4: SerialNumber: FJBD7HA000778Oct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 kernel: [80934.663391] hid-generic 0003:17E9:4107.0008: hiddev0,hidraw5: USB HID v1.10 Device [DisplayLink e1649Fwu] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-4/input1Oct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 5: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-4"Oct 15 21:27:24 iospc2 mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 5 was not an MTP deviceOct 15 21:27:25 iospc2 kernel: [80935.742407] [drm] vendor descriptor length:17 data:17 5f 01 00 15 05 00 01 03 00 04Oct 15 21:27:25 iospc2 kernel: [80935.834403] udl 2-4:1.0: fb1: udldrmfb frame buffer deviceOct 15 21:27:25 iospc2 kernel: [80935.834416] [drm] Initialized udl 0.0.1 20120220 on minor 1Oct 15 21:27:25 iospc2 kernel: [80935.836389] usbcore: registered new interface driver udlOct 15 21:27:25 iospc2 kernel: [80936.021458] [drm] write mode info 153 Next, it's time to enable the display for our needs... This can be done either via UI or console, just as you'd prefer it. Adding the external USB display under Linux isn't an issue after all... Settings Manager => Display Personally, I like the console. With the help of xrandr we get the screen identifier first $ xrandrScreen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3200 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm...DVI-0 connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm   1366x768       60.0*+ and then give it the usual shot with auto-configuration. Let the system decide what's best for your hardware... $ xrandr --output DVI-0 --off$ xrandr --output DVI-0 --auto And there we go... Cloned output of main display: New kernel, new display... The external USB display works out-of-the-box with a Linux kernel > 3.9.0. Despite of a good number of resources it is absolutely not necessary to create a Device or Screen section in one of Xorg.conf files. This information belongs to the past and is not valid on kernel 3.9 or higher. Same hardware but Windows 8 Of course, I wanted to know how the latest incarnation from Redmond would handle the new hardware... Flawless! Most interesting aspect here: I did not use the driver installation medium on purpose. And I was right... not too long afterwards a dialog with the EULA of DisplayLink appeared on the main screen. And after confirmation of same it took some more seconds and the external USB monitor was ready to rumble. Well, and not only that one... but see for yourself. This time Windows 8 was the easiest solution after all. Resume I can highly recommend this type of hardware to anyone asking me. Although, it's dimensions are 15.6" it is actually lighter than my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and it still fits into my laptop bag without any issues. From now on... no more single screen while developing software on the road!

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• HTG Explains: Just How Bad Are Android Tablet Apps?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Apple loves to criticize the state of Android tablet apps when pushing its own iPad tablets. But just how bad is the Android tablet app situation? Should you avoid Android tablets like the Nexus 7 because of the apps? It’s clear that Apple’s iPad is way ahead when it comes to the sheer quantity of tablet-optimized apps. It’s also clear that some popular apps — particularly touch-optimized games — only show up on iPad. But that’s not the whole story. The Basics First, let’s get an idea of the basic stuff that will work well for you on Android. An excellent web browser. Chrome has struggled with performance on Android, but hits its stride on the Nexus 7 (2013). Great, tablet-optimized apps for all of Google’s services, from YouTube to Gmail and Google Maps. Everything you need for reading, from Amazon’s Kindle app for eBooks, Flipboard and Feedly for new articles from websites, and other services like the popular Pocket read-it-later service. Apps for most popular media services, from Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube for videos to Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio for music. A few things aren’t available — you won’t find Apple’s iTunes and Amazon still doesn’t offer an Amazon Instant Video app for Android, while they do for iPad and even their own Android-based Kindle Fire devices. Android has very good app coverage when it comes to consuming content, whether you’re reading websites and ebooks or watching videos and listening to music. You can play almost any Android smartphone game, too. For content consumption, Android is better than something like Windows 8, which lacks apps for Google services like YouTube and still doesn’t have apps for popular media services like Spotify and Rdio. How Android Scales Smartphone Apps Let’s look at how Android scales smartphone apps. Now, bear with us here — we know “scaling” is a dirty word considering how poorly Apple’s iPad scales iPhone apps, but it’s not as bad on Android. When an iPad runs an iPhone app, it simply doubles the pixels and effectively zooms in. For example, if you had  Twitter app with five tweets visible at once on an iPhone and ran the same app on an iPad, the iPad would simply “zoom in” and enlarge the same screen — you’d still see five tweets, but each tweet would appear larger. This is why developers create optimized iPad apps with their own interfaces. It’s especially important on Apple’s iOS. Android devices come in all shapes and sizes, so Android apps have a smarter, more intelligent way to adapt to different screen sizes. Let’s say you have a Twitter app designed for smartphones and it only shows five tweets at once when run on a phone. If you ran the same app on a tablet, you wouldn’t see the same five tweets — you’d see ten or more tweets. Rather than simply zooming in, the app can show more content at the same time on a tablet, even if it was never optimized for tablet-size screens. While apps designed for smartphones aren’t generally ideal, they adapt much better on Android than they do on an iPad. This is particularly true when it comes to games. You’re capable of playing almost any Android smartphone game on an Android tablet, and games generally adapt very well to the larger screen. This gives you access to a huge catalog of games. It’s a great option to have, especially when you look at Microsoft’s Window 8 and consider how much better the touch-based app and game selection would be if Microsoft allowed its users to run Windows Phone games on Windows 8. 7-inch vs 10-inch Tablets The Twitter example above wasn’t just an example. The official Twitter app for Android still doesn’t have a tablet-optimized interface, so this is the sort of situation you’d have to deal with on an Android tablet. On the popular Nexus 7, Twitter is an example of a smartphone app that actually works fairly well — in portrait mode, you can see many more tweets on screen at the same time and none of the space really feels all that wasted. This is important to consider — smartphone apps like Twitter often scale quite well to 7-inch screens because a 7-inch screen is much closer in form factor to a smartphone than a 10-inch screen is. When you begin to look at 10-inch Android tablets that are the same size as an iPad, the situation changes. While the Twitter app works well enough on a Nexus 7, it looks horrible on a Nexus 10 or other 10-inch tablet. Running many smartphone-designed apps — possible with the exception of games — on a 10-inch tablet is a frustrating, poor experience. There’s much more white, empty space in the interface. It feels like you’re using a smartphone app on a large screen, and what’s the point of that? A tablet-optimized Twitter app for Android is finally on its way, but this same situation will repeat with many other types of apps. For example, Facebook doesn’t offer a tablet-optimized interface, but it’s okay on a Nexus 7 anyway. On a 10-inch screen, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as nice an experience. It goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter both offer iPad apps with interfaces designed for a tablet-size screen. Here’s another problematic app — the official Yelp app for Android. Even just using it on a 7-inch Nexus 7 will be a poor experience, while it would be much worse on a larger 10-inch tablet app. Now, it’s true that many — maybe even most — of the popular apps you might want to run today are optimized for Android tablets. But, when you look at the situation when it comes to popular apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp, it’s clear Android is still behind in a meaningful way. Price Let’s be honest. The thing that really makes Android tablets compelling — and the only reason Android tablets started seeing real traction after years of almost complete dominance by Apple’s iPads — is that Android tablets are available for so much cheaper than iPads. Google’s latest Nexus 7 (2013) is available for only $230. Apple’s non-retina iPad Mini is available at $300, which is already $70 more. In spite of that, the iPad Mini has much older, slower internals and a much lower resolution screen. It’s not as nice to look at when it comes to reading or watching movies, and the iPad Mini reportedly struggles to run Apple’s latest iOS 7. In contrast, the new Nexus 7 has a very high resolution screen, speedy internals, and runs Android very well with little-to-no lag in real use. We haven’t had any problems with it, unlike all the problems we unfortunately encountered with the first Nexus 7. For a really comparable experience to the current Nexus 7, you’d want to get one of Apple’s new retina iPad Minis. That would cost you $400, another $170 over the Nexus 7. In fact, it’s possible to regularly find sales on the Nexus 7, so if you waited you could get it for just $200 — half the price of the iPad mini with a comparable screen and internals. (In fairness, the iPad certainly has better hardware — but you won’t feel if it you’re just using your tablet to browse the web, watch videos, and do other typical tablet things.) This makes a tablet like the popular Nexus 7 a very good option for budget-conscious users who just want a high-quality device they can use to browse the web, watch videos, play games, and generally do light computing. There’s a reason we’re focusing on the Nexus 7 here. The combination of price and size brings it to a very good place. It’s awfully cheap for the high-quality experience you get, and the 7-inch screen means that even the non-tablet-optimized apps you may stumble across will often work fairly well. On the other hand, more expensive 10-inch Android tablets are still a tougher sell. For $400-$500, you’re getting awfully close to Apple’s full-size iPad price range and Android tablets don’t have as good an app ecosystem as an iPad. It’s hard to recommend an expensive, 10-inch Android tablet over a full-size iPad to average users. In summary, the Android app tablet app situation is nowhere near as bad as it was a few years ago. The success of the Nexus 7 proves that Android tablets can be compelling experiences, and there are a wide variety of strong apps. That said, more expensive 10-inch Android tablets that compete directly with the full-size iPad on price still don’t make much sense for most people.  Unless you have a specific reason for preferring an Android tablet, it’s tough not to recommend an iPad if you’re looking at spending $400+ on a 10-inch tablet. Image Credit: Christian Ghanime on Flickr, Christian Ghanime on Flickr     

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• Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

  - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com

  Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

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• Questions and considerations to ask client for designing a database

  - by Julia

  Hi guys! so as title says, I would like to hear your advices what are the most important questions to consider and ask end-users before designing database for their application. We are to make database-oriented app, with special attenion to pay on db security (access control, encryption, integrity, backups)... Database will also keep some personal information about people, which is considered sensitive by law regulations, so security must be good. I worked on school projects with databases, but this is first time working "in real world", where this db security has real implications. So I found some advices and questions to ask on internet, but here I always get best ones. All help appreciated! Thank you!

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• C# WMI Eventwatcher code stopped working on Windows 7 with security exception

  - by Flores

  This is code that worked fine on Windows XP for years. User is not local administrator. WqlEventQuery query = new WqlEventQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_ProcessStopTrace"); ConnectionOptions co = new ConnectionOptions(); co.EnablePrivileges = true; ManagementEventWatcher watcher = new ManagementEventWatcher(new ManagementScope(@"root\cimv2",co), query); watcher.EventArrived += StopEventArrived; watcher.Start(); This throws an SecurityException on Windows 7, Access Denied when running as a non admin. On XP this works fine without being admin. On this link MS states that 'Windows 7: Low-integrity users have read-only permissions for local WMI operations.'. I guess this is the problem. But I can't find any clue on how to change this.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 29, 2012Popular ReleasesDiscuzViet: DzX2.5TV Stable Version: Discuz-X2.5-TV-StableMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...Smart Thread Pool: SmartThreadPool 2.2.3: Release Changes Added MaxStackSize option to threadsImageServer: v1.1: This is the first version releasedChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0828.1800 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install di...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3391 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging Lot of fixes of project files, formatting, smart indent, colorization etc. Improved ...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording team All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Spelling, grammar and content revisions are in progress. Hotfix will be published.MakersEngine: MakersEngine BETA 0.1: First BETA build of MakersEngine Adding TrinityCore compiling support (this should run well on any system) SqlMgr will try to connect to your Database but it wont import anything.Win8GameKit: Windows 8 RTM Release: - Updated for Windows 8 RTM - Fixed Accelerometer Device Check. Gravity Pulse will not be available if no Accelerometer device is present. It will instead ignore any Power ups.SQL Server Keep Alive Service: SQL Server Keep Alive Service 1.0: This is the first official release. Please see the documentation for help https://sqlserverkeepalive.codeplex.com/documentation.ARSoft.Tools.Net - C#/.Net DNS client/server, SPF and SenderID Library: 1.7.0: New Features:Strong name for binary release LLMNR client One-shot Multicast DNS client Some new IPAddress extensions Response validation as described in draft-vixie-dnsext-dns0x20-00 Added support for Owner EDNS option (draft-cheshire-edns0-owner-option) Added support for LLQ EDNS option (draft-sekar-dns-llq) Added support for Update Lease EDNS option (draft-sekar-dns-ul) Changes:Updated to latest IANA parameters Adapted RFC6563 - Moving A6 to Historic Status Use IPv6 addre...7zbackup - PowerShell Script to Backup Files with 7zip: 7zBackup v. 1.8.1 Stable: Do you like this piece of software ? It took some time and effort to develop. Please consider a helping me with a donation Or please visit my blog Code : New work switch maxrecursionlevel to limit recursion depth while searching files to backup Code : rotate argument switch can now be set in selection file too Code : prefix argument switch can now be set in selection file too Code : prefix argument switch is checked against invalid file name chars Code : vars script file has now...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.62: Fix for issue #18525 - escaped characters in CSS identifiers get double-escaped if the character immediately after the backslash is not normally allowed in an identifier. fixed symbol problem with nuget package. 4.62 should have nuget symbols available again. Also want to highlight again the breaking change introduced in 4.61 regarding the renaming of the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dll to fix strong-name collisions between the DLL and the EXE. Please be aware of this change and...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.65: As some of you may know we were planning to release version 2.70 much later (the end of September). But today we have to release this intermediate version (2.65). It fixes a critical issue caused by a third-party assembly when running nopCommerce on a server with .NET 4.5 installed. No major features have been introduced with this release as our development efforts were focused on further enhancements and fixing bugs. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes p...New ProjectsAssociativy: Associativy aims to give a platform for building knowledge bases organized through associative connections. See: http://associativy.comAssociativy Administration: Administration module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Core: Core module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Frontend Engines: Frontend Engines module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Notions Demo Instance: Notions Demo Instance module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Tags Adapter: Tags Adapter module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Tests: Tests module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Web Services: Web Services module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.DotNMap: A type library that can be used to work with NMap scan results in .net.EFCompoundkeyWhere: ??????????, ??????????? ????????? ??????? Where ?? ?????????? ????? ? Entity FrameworkEntertainment Tools: These are tools for entertainment professionals.EntLib.com????????: ◆ 100% ??(Open Source - ?????)； ◆ ??.Net Framework 4.0； ◆ ?? ASP.NET、C# ?? ? SQL Server ???； ◆ ????????????????????； ◆ ?????????，?????????????；ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler is a simple but good enough replacement for SQL Server Profiler Fancy Thumb: Fancy Thumb helps you decorating your thumb drives, giving them fancy icons and names longer than what FAT(32) allows.GEBestBetAdder: GEBestBetAdder is a SharePoint utility which helps with the exporting and importing of keywords and best bets.Ginger Graphics Library: 3D GraphicsImageServer: This is a high performance, high extensible web server writen in ASP.NET C# for image automative processing.jPaint: This is a copy of mspaint, written on pure js + html + css.ListOfTales: This is simple application for store infromation about book))Metro air hockey: metro air hockeyMetro graphcalc: metro graphcalcMetro speedtest: metro speedtestMetro ToDos: metro todosMVC4 Starter Kit: The MVC4 Starter Kit is designed as a bare bone application that covers many of the concerns to be addressed during the first stage of development.MyProject1: MyProject1npantarhei contribute: use the npantarhei flowruntime configured by mef and design your flows within visualstudio 2012 using an integrated designer...PBRX: Powerbuilder to Ruby toolkit.PE file reader: readpe, a tool which parses a PE formatted file and displays the requested information. People: PeoplePocket Calculator: This is POC project that implements a simple WinForms Pocket Calculator that uses a Microsoft .NET 4.0.1 State Machine Workflow in the back-end.ProjectZ: Project Z handles the difficulties with Mologs.PSMNTVIS: this is a blabla test for some blabla code practice.Santry DotNetNuke Lightbox Ad Module: Module allows for you to place a modal ad lightbox module on your DotNetNuke page. It integrates with the HTML provider, and cookie management for display.Sevens' Stories: An album for Class Seven of Pingtan No.1 High School.SIS-TRANSPORTES: Projeto em desenvolvimento...SmartSpace: SmartSpaceSO Chat Star Leaderboard: Scrapes stars from chat.stackoverflow.com and calculates statistics and a leaderboard.testdd08282012git01: dtestdd08282012hg01: uiotestddtfs08282012: kltesttom08282012git01: fdsfdstesttom08282012hg01: ftesttom08282012tfs01: bvcvTransportadoraToledo: Projeto Integrado de SistemasVisual Studio Watchers: Custom Visual Studio visualizers.XNC: XNC is an (in-progress) XNA Framework like library for the C programming language.???: ?

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• Rails uniqueness constraint and matching db unique index for null column

  - by Dave

  I have the following in my migration file def self.up create_table :payment_agreements do |t| t.boolean :automatic, :default => true, :null => false t.string :payment_trigger_on_order t.references :supplier t.references :seller t.references :product t.timestamps end end I want to ensure that if a product_id is specified it is unique but I also want to allow null so I have the following in my model: validates :product_id, :uniqueness => true, :allow_nil => true Works great but I should then add an index to the migration file add_index :payment_agreements, :product_id, :unique => true Obviously this will throw an exception when two null values are inserted for product_id. I could just simply omit the index in the migration but then there's the chance that I'll get two PaymentAgreements with the same product_id as shown here: Concurrency and integrity My question is what is the best/most common way to deal with this problem

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• Does Team Foundation Server supports Checkpoints?

  - by marco.ragogna

  My dev team used in the past MKS Source Integrity source control and we are not evaluating to migrate to TFS 2010. Some concepts and meaning are a bit different and we need sometime to learn how to do the same things we do before in TFS or how to change our approach. First of all, we used to do Checkpoints for each software release. MKS in this case does a snapshot of all source code files. You can later compare different checkpoints to see the code differences, or extract a whole checkpoint as a build. Does TFS have a similar feature? Do you know where can I read something about it? Thanks in advance, Marco

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• Fixtures and inheritance in Symfony

  - by Tere

  Hi! I have a database schema in Symfony like this: Persona: actAs: { Timestampable: ~ } columns: primer_nombre: { type: string(255), notnull: true } segundo_nombre: { type: string(255) } apellido: { type: string(255), notnull: true } rut: { type: string(255) } email: { type: string(255) } email2: { type: string(255) } direccion: { type: string(400) } ciudad: { type: string(255) } region: { type: string(255) } pais: { type: string(255) } telefono: { type: string(255) } telefono2: { type: string(255) } fecha_nacimiento: { type: date } Alumno: inheritance: type: concrete extends: Persona columns: comentario: { type: string(255) } estado_pago: { type: string(255) } Alumno_Beca: columns: persona_id: { type: integer, primary: true } beca_id: { type: integer, primary: true } relations: Alumno: { onDelete: CASCADE, local: persona_id, foreign: id } Beca: { onDelete: CASCADE, local: beca_id, foreign: id } Beca: columns: nombre: { type: string(255) } monto: { type: double } porcentaje: { type: double } descripcion: { type: string(5000) } As you see, "alumno" has a concrete inheritance from "persona". Now I'm trying to create fixtures for this two tables, and I can't make Doctrine to load them. It gives me this error: SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1452 Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (eat/alumno__beca, CONSTRAINT alumno__beca_persona_id_alumno_id FOREIGN KEY (persona_id) REFERENCES alumno (id) ON DELETE CASCADE) Does someone know how to write a fixture for a table inherited from another? Thanks!

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• Distributed transactions

  - by javi

  Hello! I've a question regarding distributed transactions. Let's assume I have 3 transaction programs: Transaction A begin a=read(A) b=read(B) c=a+b write(C,c) commit Transaction B begin a=read(A) a=a+1 write(A,a) commit Transaction C begin c=read(C) c=c*2 write(A,c) commit So there are 5 pairs of critical operations: C2-A5, A2-B4, B4-C4, B2-C4, A2-C4. I should ensure integrity and confidentiality, do you have any idea of how to achieve it? Thank you in advance!

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• ACCESS VBA - DAO in VB - problem with creating relations

  - by Justin

  So take the following example: Sub CreateRelation() Dim db As Database Dim rel As Relation Dim fld As Field Set db = CurrentDb Set rel = db.CreateRelation("OrderID", "Orders", "Products") 'refrential integrity rel.Attributes = dbRelationUpdateCascade 'specify the key in the referenced table Set fld = rel.CreateField("OrderID") fld.ForeignName = "OrderID" rel.Fields.Append fld db.Relations.Append rel End Sub I keep getting the error, No unique index found for the referenced field of the primary table. if i include the vb before this sub to create in index on the field, it gives me the error: Index already exists. so i am trying to figure this out. if there are not any primary keys set, will that cause this not to work? i am confused by this, but i really really want to figure this out. So orderID is a FOREIGN KEY in the Products Table please help thanks justin

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• Android: How to restore List data when pressing the "back" button?

  - by Rob

  Hi there, My question is about restoring complex activity related data when coming back to the activity using the "back" button". Activity A has a ListView which is connected to ArrayAdapter serving as its data source - this happens in onCreate(). By default, if I move to activity B and press "back" to get back to activity A, does my list stay intact with all the data or do I just get visual "copy" of the screen but the data is lost? What can I do when more than activities are involved? Let's say activity A starts activity B which starts activity C and then I press "back" twice to get to A. How do I ensure the integrity of the A's data when it gets back to the foreground? PrefsManager does not seem to handle complex object very intuitively. Thanks, Rob

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• Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise, Part I

  - by dbayard

  Abstract: This blog post will show how we used Oracle R Enterprise to tackle a customer’s big calculation problem across a big data set. Overview: Databases are great for managing large amounts of data in a central place with rigorous enterprise-level controls.  R is great for doing advanced computations.  Sometimes you need to do advanced computations on large amounts of data, subject to rigorous enterprise-level concerns.  This blog post shows how Oracle R Enterprise enables R plus the Oracle Database enabled us to do some pretty sophisticated calculations across 1 million accounts (each with many detailed records) in minutes. The problem: A financial services customer of mine has a need to calculate the historical internal rate of return (IRR) for its customers’ portfolios.  This information is needed for customer statements and the online web application.  In the past, they had solved this with a home-grown application that pulled trade and account data out of their data warehouse and ran the calculations.  But this home-grown application was not able to do this fast enough, plus it was a challenge for them to write and maintain the code that did the IRR calculation. IRR – a problem that R is good at solving: Internal Rate of Return is an interesting calculation in that in most real-world scenarios it is impractical to calculate exactly.  Rather, IRR is a calculation where approximation techniques need to be used.  In this blog post, we will discuss calculating the “money weighted rate of return” but in the actual customer proof of concept we used R to calculate both money weighted rate of returns and time weighted rate of returns.  You can learn more about the money weighted rate of returns here: http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Money-weighted_return First Steps- Calculating IRR in R We will start with calculating the IRR in standalone/desktop R.  In our second post, we will show how to take this desktop R function, deploy it to an Oracle Database, and make it work at real-world scale.  The first step we did was to get some sample data.  For a historical IRR calculation, you have a balances and cash flows.  In our case, the customer provided us with several accounts worth of sample data in Microsoft Excel.      The above figure shows part of the spreadsheet of sample data.  The data provides balances and cash flows for a sample account (BMV=beginning market value. FLOW=cash flow in/out of account. EMV=ending market value). Once we had the sample spreadsheet, the next step we did was to read the Excel data into R.  This is something that R does well.  R offers multiple ways to work with spreadsheet data.  For instance, one could save the spreadsheet as a .csv file.  In our case, the customer provided a spreadsheet file containing multiple sheets where each sheet provided data for a different sample account.  To handle this easily, we took advantage of the RODBC package which allowed us to read the Excel data sheet-by-sheet without having to create individual .csv files.  We wrote ourselves a little helper function called getsheet() around the RODBC package.  Then we loaded all of the sample accounts into a data.frame called SimpleMWRRData. Writing the IRR function At this point, it was time to write the money weighted rate of return (MWRR) function itself.  The definition of MWRR is easily found on the internet or if you are old school you can look in an investment performance text book.  In the customer proof, we based our calculations off the ones defined in the The Handbook of Investment Performance: A User’s Guide by David Spaulding since this is the reference book used by the customer.  (One of the nice things we found during the course of this proof-of-concept is that by using R to write our IRR functions we could easily incorporate the specific variations and business rules of the customer into the calculation.) The key thing with calculating IRR is the need to solve a complex equation with a numerical approximation technique.  For IRR, you need to find the value of the rate of return (r) that sets the Net Present Value of all the flows in and out of the account to zero.  With R, we solve this by defining our NPV function: where bmv is the beginning market value, cf is a vector of cash flows, t is a vector of time (relative to the beginning), emv is the ending market value, and tend is the ending time. Since solving for r is a one-dimensional optimization problem, we decided to take advantage of R’s optimize method (http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/stats/html/optimize.html). The optimize method can be used to find a minimum or maximum; to find the value of r where our npv function is closest to zero, we wrapped our npv function inside the abs function and asked optimize to find the minimum.  Here is an example of using optimize: where low and high are scalars that indicate the range to search for an answer.   To test this out, we need to set values for bmv, cf, t, emv, tend, low, and high.  We will set low and high to some reasonable defaults. For example, this account had a negative 2.2% money weighted rate of return. Enhancing and Packaging the IRR function With numerical approximation methods like optimize, sometimes you will not be able to find an answer with your initial set of inputs.  To account for this, our approach was to first try to find an answer for r within a narrow range, then if we did not find an answer, try calling optimize() again with a broader range.  See the R help page on optimize()  for more details about the search range and its algorithm. At this point, we can now write a simplified version of our MWRR function.  (Our real-world version is  more sophisticated in that it calculates rate of returns for 5 different time periods [since inception, last quarter, year-to-date, last year, year before last year] in a single invocation.  In our actual customer proof, we also defined time-weighted rate of return calculations.  The beauty of R is that it was very easy to add these enhancements and additional calculations to our IRR package.)To simplify code deployment, we then created a new package of our IRR functions and sample data.  For this blog post, we only need to include our SimpleMWRR function and our SimpleMWRRData sample data.  We created the shell of the package by calling: To turn this package skeleton into something usable, at a minimum you need to edit the SimpleMWRR.Rd and SimpleMWRRData.Rd files in the \man subdirectory.  In those files, you need to at least provide a value for the “title” section. Once that is done, you can change directory to the IRR directory and type at the command-line: The myIRR package for this blog post (which has both SimpleMWRR source and SimpleMWRRData sample data) is downloadable from here: myIRR package Testing the myIRR package Here is an example of testing our IRR function once it was converted to an installable package: Calculating IRR for All the Accounts So far, we have shown how to calculate IRR for a single account.  The real-world issue is how do you calculate IRR for all of the accounts?This is the kind of situation where we can leverage the “Split-Apply-Combine” approach (see http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/815.html).  Given that our sample data can fit in memory, one easy approach is to use R’s “by” function.  (Other approaches to Split-Apply-Combine such as plyr can also be used.  See http://4dpiecharts.com/2011/12/16/a-quick-primer-on-split-apply-combine-problems/). Here is an example showing the use of “by” to calculate the money weighted rate of return for each account in our sample data set.  Recap and Next Steps At this point, you’ve seen the power of R being used to calculate IRR.  There were several good things: R could easily work with the spreadsheets of sample data we were given R’s optimize() function provided a nice way to solve for IRR- it was both fast and allowed us to avoid having to code our own iterative approximation algorithm R was a convenient language to express the customer-specific variations, business-rules, and exceptions that often occur in real-world calculations- these could be easily added to our IRR functions The Split-Apply-Combine technique can be used to perform calculations of IRR for multiple accounts at once. However, there are several challenges yet to be conquered at this point in our story: The actual data that needs to be used lives in a database, not in a spreadsheet The actual data is much, much bigger- too big to fit into the normal R memory space and too big to want to move across the network The overall process needs to run fast- much faster than a single processor The actual data needs to be kept secured- another reason to not want to move it from the database and across the network And the process of calculating the IRR needs to be integrated together with other database ETL activities, so that IRR’s can be calculated as part of the data warehouse refresh processes In our next blog post in this series, we will show you how Oracle R Enterprise solved these challenges.

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• Cloning java ArrayList and preventing it from modifications

  - by user222164

  I have a data structure like a database Rowset, which has got Rows and Rows have Columns. I need to initialize a Columns with null values, current code is to loop thru each column for a row and initialize values to NULL. Which is very inefficient if you have 100s or rows and 10s of column. So instead I am keeping a initialized ArrayList of columns are RowSet level, and then doing a clone of this Arraylist for individual rows, as I believe clone() is faster than looping thru each element. row.columnsValues = rowsset.NullArrayList.clone() Problem with this is NullArrayList can be accidentally modified after being cloned, thus sacrificing the integrity of ArrayList at RowSet level, to prevent I am doing 3 things 1) Delcaring ArrayList as final 2) Any elements I insert are final or null 3) Methods thurough this arrayList are passed to other arrays are declared a final. Sounds like a plan, do you see any holes ?

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• What software development process do you use and how do you implement it?

  - by clyfe

  Post only what you do use not what you would like to use, so we can see what is the most popular in real life. I am interested only in theese issues: Project Model (waterfall, agile...) How are requirements gathered (and stored)? Revision control - what software, what workflow Build automation, what software, where does it fit ? How is the testing done ? How is the documentation done ? How is the quality assurance done ? Please provide short objective answers, don't speak from the books. EXAMPLE: In my company we are a small team of 5 people and we develop webapps using ruby. agile PM cucumber requirements git SCM - Integration Manager Workflow integrity CI rspec automated tests the project lead creats the documentation skeleton then it is filled by the developers ensure quality by peer reviewing code and manual peer-testing

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• Backing Up Transaction Logs to Tape?

  - by David Stein

  I'm about to put my database in Full Recovery Model and start taking transaction log backups. I am taking a full nightly backup to another server and later in the evening this file and many others are backed up to tape. My question is this. I will take hourly (or more if necessary) t-log backups and store them on the other server as well. However, if my full backups are passing DBCC and integrity checks, do I need to put my T-Logs on tape? If someone wants point in time recovery to yesterday at 2pm, I would need the previous full backup and the transaction logs. However, other than that case, if I know my full back ups are good, is there value in keeping the previous day's transaction log backups?

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