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• Common SOA Problems by C2B2

  - by JuergenKress

  SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture and has only really come together as a concrete approach in the last 15 years or so, although the concepts involved have been around for longer. Oracle SOA Suite is based around the Service Component Architecture (SCA) devised by the Open SOA collaboration of companies including Oracle and IBM. SCA, as used in SOA suite, is designed as a way to crystallise the concepts of SOA into a standard which ensures that SOA principles like the separation of application and business logic are maintained. Orchestration or Integration? A common thing to see with many people who are beginning to either build a new SOA based infrastructure, or move an old system to be service oriented, is confusion in the purpose of SOA technologies like BPEL and enterprise service buses. For a lot of problems, orchestration tools like BPEL or integration tools like an ESB will both do the job and achieve the right objectives; however it’s important to remember that, although a hammer can be used to drive a screw into wood, that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it. Service Integration is the act of connecting components together at a low level, which usually results in a single external endpoint for you to expose to your customers or other teams within your organisation – a simple product ordering system, for example, might integrate a stock checking service and a payment processing service. Process Orchestration, however, is generally a higher level approach whereby the (often externally exposed) service endpoints are brought together to track an end-to-end business process. This might include the earlier example of a product ordering service and couple it with a business rules service and human task to handle edge-cases. A good (but not exhaustive) rule-of-thumb is that integrations performed by an ESB will usually be real-time, whereas process orchestration in a SOA composite might comprise processes which take a certain amount of time to complete, or have to wait pending manual intervention. BPEL vs BPMN For some, with pre-existing SOA or business process projects, this decision is effectively already made. For those embarking on new projects it’s certainly an important consideration for those using Oracle SOA software since, due to the components included in SOA Suite and BPM Suite, the choice of which to buy is determined by what they offer. Oracle SOA suite has no BPMN engine, whereas BPM suite has both a BPMN and a BPEL engine. SOA suite has the ESB component “Mediator”, whereas BPM suite has none. Decisions must be made, therefore, on whether just one or both process modelling languages are to be used. The wrong decision could be costly further down the line. Design for performance: Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: C2B2,SOA best practice,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Why is multithreading often preferred for improving performance?

  - by user1849534

  I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approaches here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that manages the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about multi-threading when they want to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's in fact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async approach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

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• OOF checklist

  - by Daniel Moth

  When going on vacation or otherwise being out of office (known as OOF in Microsoft), it is polite and professional that our absence creates the minimum disruption possible to the rest of the business, and especially our colleagues. Below is my OOF checklist - I try to do these as soon as I know I'll be OOF, rather than leave it for the night before. Let the relevant folks on the team know the planned dates of absence and check if anybody was expecting something from you during that timeframe. Reset expectations with them, and as applicable try to find another owner for individual activities that cannot wait. Go through your calendar for the OOF period and decline every meeting occurrence so the owner of the meeting knows that you won't be attending (similar to my post about responding to invites). If it is your meeting cancel it so that people don’t turn up without the meeting organizer being there. Do this even for meetings were the folks should know due to step #1. Over-communicating is a good thing here and keeps calendars all around up to date. Enter your OOF dates in whatever tool your company uses. Typically that is the notification to your manager. In your Outlook calendar, create a local Appointment (don't invite anyone) for the date range (All day event) setting the "Show As" dropdown to "Out of Office". This way, people won’t try to schedule meetings with you on that day. If you use Lync, set the status to "Off Work" for that period. If you won't be responding to email (which when on your vacation you definitely shouldn't) then in Outlook setup "Automatic Replies (Out of Office)" for that period. This way people won’t think you are rude when not replying to their emails. In your OOF message point to an alias (ideally of many people) as a fallback for urgent queries. If you want to proactively notify individuals of your OOFage then schedule and send a multi-day meeting request for the entire period. Remember to set the "Show As" to "Free" (so their calendar doesn’t show busy/oof to others), set the "Reminder" to "None" (so they don’t get a reminder about it), set "Low Importance", and uncheck both "Response Options" so if they don't want this on their calendar, it is just one click for them to get rid of it. Aside: I have another post with advice on sending invites. If you care about people who would not observe the above but could drop by your office, stick a physical OOF note at your office door or chair/monitor or desk. Have I missed any? Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Wrong statistics in AUX_STATS$ might puzzle the optimizer

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We do recommend the creation of System Statistics for quite a long time. Since Oracle 9i the optimizer works with a CPU and IO cost based model. And in order to give the optimizer some knowledge about the IO subsystem's performance and throughput - once System Statistics are collected - they'll get stored in AUX_STATS$. For this purpose in the old Oracle 9i days some default values had been defined - and you'll still find those defaults in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in AUX_STATS$. But these old values don't reflect the performance of modern IO systems. So it might be a good best practice post upgrade to create fresh System Statistics if you haven't done this before.  You can collect System Statistics with: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('start'); and end it later by executing: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('stop'); You could also run DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('interval', interval=>N) instead where N is the number of minutes when statistics gathering is stopped automatically. Please make sure you'll do this on a real workload period. It won't make sense to gather these values while the database is in an idle state. You should do this ideally for several hours. It doesn't affect performance in a negative way as the values are anyway collected in V$SYSSTAT and V$SESSTAT. And in case you'd like to delete the stats and revert to the old default values you'd simply execute:exec DBMS_STATS.DELETE_SYSTEM_STATS; The tricky thing in Oracle Database 11.2 - and that's why I'm actually writing this blog post today - is bug9842771. This leads to wrong values in AUX_STATS$ for SREADTIM and MREADTIM by factor 1000 guiding the optimizer sometimes into the totally wrong directon. The workaround is to overwrite these values manually and divide them by 1000. Use the DBMS_STATS.SET_SYSTEM_STATS procedure. See this MOS Note:9842771.8 for the above bug for some further information. This issue is fixed in Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 and above. To get some background information about the statistics collected in please read this section in the Oracle Database 11.2 Performance Tuning Guide. And gathering System Statistics might have some implication if you have mixed workloads - and interacts with DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT. For more information please read section 13.4.1.2.

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• Current State EA: Focus on the Integration!!!

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  A recent project has me at the front end of a large implementation effort covering multiple software components. In addition to the challenges of integrating 15-20 separate and new software components there is the challenge of integrating the portfolio into an existing environment. Like other clients I've worked with and other environments I've worked in for many years, this is typical. The applications are undocumented and under patched leading to a mystery for any architect leading change.  We can boil down most architecture development methodologies (ADM) into first understanding the current/baseline state and then envisioning one or more future states. Many pundits emphasize the need to focus on the future/target states. I agree since enterprise architecture (EA) is about where you are going and not so much where you have been. But to be effective in the future, I contend some focused time needs to be spent on the current state. And specifically on the integration. Integration is always the difficult part of a project (I might put it more coarsely at a cocktail party). While I don't have a case study, my anecdotal experience suggests poorly integrated application portfolios tend to cost more to operate and create entropy when trying to respond to new changes and opportunities. In the aforementioned project, I was able to get one of our EAs assigned to focus on just integration almost immediately. While we're still early in the process, this EA is uncovering all sorts of information that will greatly assist our future state planning for this solution. This information is driving early decision making that we anticipate will accelerate our efforts moving forward. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }

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• Parallel Port Problem in 12.04

  - by Frank Oberle

  I have a “dumb” printer attached to a parallel port in my machine which works fine under the “other” resident operating system (from Redmond) on the same machine. I recently added Ubuntu 12.04 as a dual boot on the machine, but Ubuntu doesn't seem to recognize the parallel port at all. All I need to set up a printer is a really plain-vanilla fixed pitch text-only generic driver, which is present, but no parallel ports show up. (The other printers, all on USB ports, seem to work just fine). Following what appeared to me to be the most reasonable of the many conflicting pieces of advice on the web, here's what I did: I added the following lines to /etc/modules parport_pc ppdev parport Then, after rebooting, I checked to see that the lines were still present, and they were. I ran dmesg | grep par and got the following references in the output that seemed like they might have to do with the parallel port: [ 14.169511] parport_pc 0000:03:07.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 [ 14.169516] PCI parallel port detected: 9710:9805, I/O at 0xce00(0xcd00), IRQ 21 [ 14.169577] parport0: PC-style at 0xce00 (0xcd00), irq 21, using FIFO [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP] [ 14.354254] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). [ 14.571358] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 16.588304] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.588756] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.673679] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1010 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675252] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675716] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.676636] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.677124] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 1545.725328] parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port I have no idea what any of that means, but the line “parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port ” seems unusual. I was still unable to add a printer for my old clunker, so I tried the direct approach, typing echo “Hello” > /dev/lp0 and received a Permission denied message. I then tried echo “Hello” > /dev/parport0 which didn't give me any message at all, but still didn't print anything. Running the command sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel gives the following: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 "unknown" "LPT #1" "" "" Checking the permissions for /dev/parport0, Owner, Group, and Other are all set to read and write. crw-rw---- 1 root lp 6, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/lp0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root lp 99, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/parport0 The output of the command lpinfo -v includes the following line: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 I've read several web postings that seem to suggest this has been a problem for several years, but the bug reports were closed because there wasn't enough information to address the issue (shades of Microsoft!). Any suggestions as to what I might be missing here?

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• Move Data into the Grid for Scalable, Predictable Response Times

  - by JuergenKress

  CloudTran is pleased to introduce the availability of the CloudTran Transaction and Persistence Manager for creating scalable, reliable data services on the Oracle Coherence In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG). Use of IMDG architectures has been key to handling today’s web-scale loads because it eliminates database latency by storing important and frequently access data in memory instead of on disk. The CloudTran product lets developers easily use an IMDG for full ACID-compliant transactions without having to be concerned about the location or spread of data. The system has its own implementation of fast, scalable distributed transactions that does NOT depend on XA protocols but still guarantees all ACID properties. Plus, CloudTran asynchronously replicates data going into the IMDG to back-end datastores and back-up data centers, again ensuring ACID properties. CloudTran can be accessed through Java Persistence API (JPA via TopLink Grid) and now, through a new Low-Level API, or LLAPI. This is ideal for use in SOA applications that need data reliability, high availability, performance, and scalability. Still in limited beta release, the LLAPI gives developers the ability to use standard put/remove logic available in Coherence and then wrap logic with simple Spring annotations or XML+AspectJ to start transactions. An important feature of LLAPI is the ability to join transactions. This is a common outcome for SOA applications that need to reduce network traffic by aggregating data into single cache entries and then doing SOA service processing in the node holding the data. This results in the need to orchestrate transaction processing across multiple service calls. CloudTran has the capability to handle these “multi-client” transactions at speed with no loss in ACID properties. Developing software around an IMDG like Oracle Coherence is an important choice for today’s web-scale applications and services. But this introduces new architectural considerations to maintain scalability in light of increased network loads and data movement. Without using CloudTran, developers are faced with an incredibly difficult task to ensure data reliability, availability, performance, and scalability when working with an IMDG. Working with highly distributed data that is entirely volatile while stored in memory presents numerous edge cases where failures can result in data loss. The CloudTran product takes care of all of this, leaving developers with the confidence and peace of mind that all data is processed correctly. For those interested in evaluating the CloudTran product and IMDGs, take a look at this link for more information: http://www.CloudTran.com/downloadAPI.php, or, send your questions to [email protected]. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: Coherence,cloudtran,cache,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Looking for an ultra portable laptop for Ubuntu

  - by prule

  Hi, I'm in the market for a new laptop, and portability is important since I really only use it when I'm travelling to and from work - primarily for programming. I've been searching high and low for something like this: less than 2kg hopefully Intel i5 (but negotiable) NO dvd drive - just don't need it 4G ram either 7200rpm disk or SSD (ssd preferable) 13 inch screen not too pricey (MacBook Air is about $1700 AUD) available in Australia The Dell Inspiron 13z and Lenovo Edge 13 look close, but I've not found anything that says I'm not going to have a fight with compatibility. The MacBook Air 13 looks like the PERFECT hardware, but I'm afraid it will just be easier to run MacOS than Ubuntu. I want to stay with Ubuntu, but the MacBook Air is only $1700 so I'm in danger of becoming another apple fanboi if I can't find anything competitive. Going through all the sites looking for stuff has been a huge waste of time System 76 doesn't deliver to Australia http://www.linux-laptop.net/ and http://www.linlap.com/ are hard work and not confidence inspiring http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/nsintro.html is hard work again, searching for every laptop they say has excellent compatibility on the web to find out what spec it is http://zareason.com/shop/Strata-Pro-13.html (at $1345 USD) looks interesting, but I've got no idea how much I'll get stung by customs importing Dell Inspiron 13z with i5, 4G, 320 7200rpm disk, ATI Mobility Radeon HD5430 - 1GB, Dell Wireless 1501 802.11b/g/n @ $1200 AUD seems like the only competitor but is it compatible? (Dell support offer no opinion - as far as they are concerned they only have 2 models that are certified for ubuntu) Am I worrying too much about the compatibility? Should I just go with Dell? Or switch to MacOS? (It would be good to have a searchable database that had the full machine specs, and compatibility - I'm thinking about building something... but I don't have much time right now...) Thanks. UPDATE I went with a MacBook Air. The price/weight/power was just right. Everything else was either too pricy (i5) or too heavy, or underpowered (SU7300 1.3GHz). Its a pity, because I didn't really want to leave Ubuntu. I'll still run it on my media center and spare (heavy) laptop.

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• Agile Documentation

  - by Nick Harrison

  We all know that one of the premises of the agile manifesto is to value Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation. This is a wonderful idea and it takes a tremendous burden off of project implementations. I have seen as many projects fail because of the maintenance weight of the project documentations as I have for any reason. But this goal as important as it is may not always be practical. Sometimes the client will simply insist on tedious documentation despite the arguments against it. This may be to calm a nervous client. This may be to satisfy an audit / compliance requirement. This may be a non-too subtle attempt at sabotaging the project. Ok, it is probably not an all out attempt to sabotage the project, but it will probably feel that way. So what can we do to keep to the spirit of the Agile Manifesto but still meet the needs of the client wanting the documentation? This is a good question that I have been puzzling over lately! I hope to explore some possible answers more fully here. A common theme that my solutions are likely to follow is the same theme that I often follow with simplifying complex business logic. Make it table driven! My thought is that the sought after documentation could be a report or reports out of a metadata repository. Reports are much easier to maintain than hand written documentation. Here are a few additional advantages that we can explore over time: Reports will take advantage of the fact that different people have different needs and different format requirements Reports and the supporting metadata are more easily validated and the validation can be automated. If the application itself uses this metadata than there never has to be a question as to whether or not the metadata is up to date. It is up to date or the application would not work. In many cases we should be able to automatically gather most of the Meta data that we need using reflection, system tables, etc. I think that this will lower the total cost of ownership for the documentation and may provide something useful beyond having a pretty document to look at.  What are your thoughts?

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• Was I wrong about JavaScript?

  - by jboyer

  Yes, I was. Recently, I’ve taken a good hard look at JavaScript. I’ve used it before but mostly in the capacity of web design. Using JQuery to make your web page do cool stuff is different than really creating a JavaScript application using all of the language constructs. What I’m finding as I use it more is that I may have been wrong about my assumptions about it. Let me explain.   I enjoyed doing cool stuff with JQuery but the limited experience with JavaScript as a language coupled with the bad things that I heard about it led me to not have any real interest in it. However, JavaScript is ubiquitous on the web and if I want to do any web development, which I do, I need to learn it. So here I am, diving deep into the language with the help of the JavaScript Fundamentals training course at Pluralsight (great training for a low price) and the JavaScript: The Good Parts book by Douglas Crockford.   Now, there are certainly parts of JavaScript that are bad. I think these are well known by any developer that uses it. The parts that I feel are especially egregious are the following: The global object null vs. undefined truthy and falsy limited (nearly nonexistent) scoping ‘==’ and ‘===’ (I just don’t get the reason for coercion)   However, what I am finding hiding under the covers of the bad things is a good language. I am finding that I am legitimately enjoying JavaScript. This I was not expecting. I’m not going to go into a huge dissertation on what I like about it, but some things include: Object literal notation dynamic typing functional style (JavaScript: The Good Parts describes it as LISP in C clothing) JSON (better than XML) There are parts of JavaScript that seem strange to OOP developers like myself. However, just because it is different or seems strange does not mean it is bad. Some differences are quite interesting and useful.   I feel that it is important for developers to challenge their assumptions and also to be able to admit when they are wrong on a topic. Many different situations can arise that lead to this, such as choosing the wrong technology for a problem’s solution, misunderstanding the requirements, etc. I decided to challenge my assumptions about JavaScript instead of moving straight into CoffeeScript or Dart. After exploring it, I find that I am beginning to enjoy it the more I use it. As long as there are those like Crockford to help guide me in the right way to code in JavaScript, I can create elegant and efficient solutions to problems and add another ‘arrow’ to the ‘quiver’, so to speak. I do still intend to learn CoffeeScript to see what the hub-bub is about, but now I no longer have to be afraid of JavaScript as a legitimate programming language.   Has something similar ever happened to you? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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• How to implement an intelligent enemy in a shoot-em-up?

  - by bummzack

  Imagine a very simple shoot-em-up, something we all know: You're the player (green). Your movement is restricted to the X axis. Our enemy (or enemies) is at the top of the screen, his movement is also restricted to the X axis. The player fires bullets (yellow) at the enemy. I'd like to implement an A.I. for the enemy that should be really good at avoiding the players bullets. My first idea was to divide the screen into discrete sections and assign weights to them: There are two weights: The "bullet-weight" (grey) is the danger imposed by a bullet. The closer the bullet is to the enemy, the higher the "bullet-weight" (0..1, where 1 is highest danger). Lanes without a bullet have a weight of 0. The second weight is the "distance-weight" (lime-green). For every lane I add 0.2 movement cost (this value is kinda arbitrary now and could be tweaked). Then I simply add the weights (white) and go to the lane with the lowest weight (red). But this approach has an obvious flaw, because it can easily miss local minima as the optimal place to go would be simply between two incoming bullets (as denoted with the white arrow). So here's what I'm looking for: Should find a way through bullet-storm, even when there's no place that doesn't impose a threat of a bullet. Enemy can reliably dodge bullets by picking an optimal (or almost optimal) solution. Algorithm should be able to factor in bullet movement speed (as they might move with different velocities). Ways to tweak the algorithm so that different levels of difficulty can be applied (dumb to super-intelligent enemies). Algorithm should allow different goals, as the enemy doesn't only want to evade bullets, he should also be able to shoot the player. That means that positions where the enemy can fire at the player should be preferred when dodging bullets. So how would you tackle this? Contrary to other games of this genre, I'd like to have only a few, but very "skilled" enemies instead of masses of dumb enemies.

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• Contract / Project / Line-Item hierarchy design considerations

  - by Ryan

  We currently have an application that allows users to create a Contract. A contract can have 1 or more Project. A project can have 0 or more sub-projects (which can have their own sub-projects, and so on) as well as 1 or more Line. Lines can have any number of sub-lines (which can have their own sub-lines, and so on). Currently, our design contains circular references, and I'd like to get away from that. Currently, it looks a bit like this: public class Contract { public List<Project> Projects { get; set; } } public class Project { public Contract OwningContract { get; set; } public Project ParentProject { get; set; } public List<Project> SubProjects { get; set; } public List<Line> Lines { get; set; } } public class Line { public Project OwningProject { get; set; } public List ParentLine { get; set; } public List<Line> SubLines { get; set; } } We're using the M-V-VM "pattern" and use these Models (and their associated view models) to populate a large "edit" screen where users can modify their contracts and the properties on all of the objects. Where things start to get confusing for me is when we add, for example, a Cost property to the Line. The issue is reflecting at the highest level (the contract) changes made to the lowest level. Looking for some thoughts as to how to change this design to remove the circular references. One thought I had was that the contract would have a Dictionary<Guid, Project> which would contain ALL projects (regardless of their level in hierarchy). The Project would then have a Guid property called "Parent" which could be used to search the contract's dictionary for the parent object. THe same logic could be applied at the Line level. Thanks! Any help is appreciated.

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• How to be successful at BDD Specifications Workshops?

  - by sigo

  Today we tried to introduce BDD in our software development process by having a specification workshop. For this workshop we had 2 developers, 1 tester and 1 business analyst. The workshop lasted 1h30 and by the end of it we managed to figure out some BDD scenarios for our new feature. We tried to focus on finding the scenarios that we could miss, and the difficult ones. At the end of the workshop some people were actually unhappy with the workshop. One developer felt he wasted his time as he was used to be given out the scenarios directly by the business analyst and review them with her. The business analyst didn't feel confident with our scenario coverage (Had a feeling that we could have missed out other important stuff) but more importantly felt that this workshop was also a waste of time as she could have figured out all these scenarios by herself and in a shorter period of time. So my question is how that kind of workshop can actually work. In the theory, given you have a new feature to develop, you put the tree 'amigos' (dev/tester/ba) in the same room so that they can collaborate together on writing the differents requirements for the new feature using examples. I can see all the benefits from that. Specially in term of knowledge sharing and common product/end goal/done vision. But in practice, we still think it is more cost effective to first have a BA to work on his own on the examples and only then to have the scenarios to be reviewed/reworked by the 3 'amigos'. By having the BA to work on his own, we actually feel more confident that we are less going to miss out stuff + we still get to review the scenarios afterward to double check. We don't think than simple brainstorming/deliberate discovery is actually enought to seriously cover all the requirement for a feature. The business analyst is actually the best person for that kind of stuff. The thing we just do is to review what she wrote and see if then we have a common understanding (which could then lead to rewrite some of her scenarios or add new ones she could have missed). This workshop lasted 1h30, and by the end of it, we didn't feel confident enought about wha we did...sure we could have spent more time on it but honestly most people get exhausted after 1h30 of brainstorming. So how can you get that to work effectively in practice ?

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• What to answer to a customer who asks which one of two equivalent technologies must be used?

  - by MainMa

  As a freelancer, I am often asked by my customers what they must choose between similar elements, neither of which being better than another. Examples: “Do I need my e-commerce website be in PHP or ASP.NET?” “Do I need to host this ordinary web service in Cloud or use an ordinary hosting service?” “Which one is better for my new website: MySQL or Oracle?” etc. There is maybe at most 1% of cases where the choice is relevant, and there is a real, objective reason to use one over another, based on the precise metrics and studies. In all other cases, it doesn't matter at all. It is totally, completely irrelevant, either because there are no implications¹, or because those implications are too small to be taken in account², or, finally, because it's impossible to predict those implications³. If you know one thing and not another one, the answer to those questions is easy: “You can either write the application in C# or Java, both being probably equivalent in your case. Note that I'm a C# developer, so if you choose Java, I would not be able to work on your project and you would need to find another freelancer.” When you know both technologies, you can't answer that. In this case, how to explain to the customer that the question he asks is subject to flamewar and has no real consequences on his project? In other words, how to explain that you've chosen to use one technology rather than an equivalent one for the reasons related to human resources, without giving the impression to be unprofessional or to not care about the project? ¹ Example: Is MySQL better (worse?), performance-wise, compared to Oracle, for a personal website which will be accessed by, oh, let's be optimistic, two people per day? ² Example: for a given project, I was asked to asset if Windows Azure hosting would be cheaper than the hosting of the same application on a well-known ASP.NET hosting provider. The cost revealed to be exactly the same. ³ Example: your customer have an idea of a future application (the idea itself being extremely vague). There is no business plan, no requirements, nothing at all. Just an idea. You are asked if Java is better than C# for this app. What do you answer?

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• Help with Strategy-game AI

  - by f20k

  Hi, I am developing a strategy-game AI (think: Final Fantasy Tactics), and I am having trouble coming up for the design of the AI. My main problem is determining which is the optimal thing for it to do. First let me describe the priority of what action I would like the AI to take: Kill nearest player unit Fulfill primary directive (kill all player units, kill target unit, survive for x turns) Heal ally unit / cast buffer Now the AI can do the following in its turn: Move - {Attack / Ability / Item} (either attack or ability or item) {Attack / Ability / Item} - Move Move closer (if targets not in range) {Attack / Ability / Item} (if move not available) Notes Abilities have various ranges / effects / costs / effects. Each ai unit has maybe 5-10 abilities to choose from. The AI will prioritize killing over safety unless its directive is to survive for x turns. It also doesn't care about ability cost much. While a player may want to save a big spell for later, the AI will most likely use it asap. Movement is on a (hex) grid num of player units: 3-6 num of ai units: 3-7 or more. Probably max 10. AI and player take turns controlling ONE unit, instead of all at the same time. Platform is Android (if program doesnt respond after some time, there will be a popup saying to Force Quit or Wait - which looks really bad!). Now comes the questions: The best ability to use would obviously be the one that hits the most targets for the most damage. But since each ability has different ranges, I won't know if they are in range without exploring each possible place I can move to. One solution would be to go through each possible places to move to, determine the optimal attack at that location - which gives me a list of optimal moves for each location. Then choose the optimal out of the list and execute it. But this will take a lot of CPU time. Is there a better solution? My current idea is to move as close as possible towards the closest, largest group of people, and determine the optimal attack/ability from there. I think this would be a lot less work for the CPU and still allow for wide-range attacks. Its sub-optimal but the AI will still seem 'smart'. Other notes/questions: Am I over-thinking/over-complicating it? Better solution? I am open to all sorts of suggestions I have taken a look at the spell-casting question, but it doesn't take into account the movement - so perhaps use that algo for each possible move location? The top answer mentioned it wasn't great for area-of-effect and group fights - so maybe requires more tweaking? Please, if you mention a graph/tree, let me know basically how to use it. E.g. Node means ability, level corresponds to damage, then search for the deepest node.

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• Which programming language to get into?

  - by user602479

  I'm ending my third term in a few weeks so I have some spare time coming up. I'd like to spend it seriously digging into programming. My problem: I'm not sure which language to begin with. Just to be clear, I don't want to start a language-y-compared-to-language-z discussion. There are a some other issues that play a major role. In my 5th term I'm going to be participating in a major practical course which will include either Java or C programming. It will take a lot of time and energy, as I found out while talking to a few students who passed the final exams (only 15% pass on their first try). Which practical course I will take is randomly decided. My skills so far are the absolute basics of Java and C programming. I know the different data types and how to handle them, objects, pointers, thread programming, etc. All of that is on a very low level, though. My question now is, what language should I start seriously practicing? Java: I did my first GUIs with this language. I'm familiar with Eclipse but I need a project to work on (which I don't have) to really keep me pushing. Besides that, I don't think it would help me if I have to do C in a year. C: As with Java, I can't think of a personal project to keep me working and keep me interested in programming. If I get assigned to Java in a year, this wouldn't give me any advantages either, would it? (No objects, etc.) Objective-C: I recently came up with this idea. I have a Mac; I'm not really familiar with Xcode but I have one or two personal projects I'd like to work on. Further, I would be working with objects (as in Java) and C language constructs which would both be great for this practical course in a year. What do you think I should begin with? Should I just stick to Java and hope for the best, force myself through C or start (nearly) completely from the beginning with Objective C? Maybe you folks could give me some good advice that would stop me from switching from one language to the next?

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• Problem Solving vs. Solution Finding

  - by ryanabr

  By enlarge, most developers fall into these two camps I will try to explain what I mean by way of example. A manager gives the developer a task that is communicated like this: “Figure out why control A is not loading on this form”. Now, right there it could be argued that the manager should probably have given better direction and said something more like: “Control A is not loading on the Form, fix it”. They might sound like the same thing to most people, but the first statement will have the developer problem solving the reason why it is failing. The second statement should have the developer looking for the solution to make it work, not focus on why it is broken. In the end, they might be the same thing, but I usually see the first approach take way longer than the second approach. The Problem Solver: The problem solver’s approach to fixing something that is broken is likely to take the error or behavior that is being observed and start to research it using a tool like Google, or any other search engine. 7/10 times this will yield results for the most common of issues. The challenge is in the other 30% of issues that will take the problem solver down the rabbit hole and cause them not to surface for days on end while every avenue is explored for the cause of the problem. In the end, they will probably find the cause of the issue and resolve it, but the cost can be days, or weeks of work. The Solution Finder: The solution finder’s approach to a problem will begin the same way the Problem Solver’s approach will. The difference comes in the more difficult cases. Rather than stick to the pure “This has to work so I am going to work with it until it does” approach, the Solution Finder will look for other ways to get the requirements satisfied that may or may not be using the original approach. For example. there are two area of an application of externally equivalent features, meaning that from a user’s perspective, the behavior is the same. So, say that for whatever reason, area A is now not working, but area B is working. The Problem Solver will dig in to see why area A is broken, where the Solution Finder will investigate to see what is the difference between the two areas and solve the problem by potentially working around it. The other notable difference between the two types of developers described is what point they reach before they re-emerge from their task. The problem solver will likely emerge with a triumphant “I have found the problem” where as the Solution Finder will emerge with the more useful “I have the solution”. Conclusion At the end of the day, users are what drives features in software development. With out users there is no need for software. In todays world of software development with so many tools to use, and generally tight schedules I believe that a work around to a problem that takes 8 hours vs. the more pure solution to the problem that takes 40 hours is a more fruitful approach.

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• Your Cinnamon Roll & Morning Coffee: Powered by Oracle Enterprise Manager

  - by Ruma Sanyal

  1024x768 Truth be told, as I was getting my morning coffee today, I was pondering the recent election results more than Oracle [there, I said it]. But then an email from Glen Hawkins from the Enterprise Management team hit my Inbox and I started viewing this video. It was about the world’s largest convenience store chain, 7-Eleven, focusing on creating the best Digital Guest Experience (DGE) for their customers. Turns out that Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) powers 7-Eleven’s DGE Middleware Platform as a Service solution that consists of Oracle SOA Suite, Exalogic, and Exadata. “We need to present a consistent view of 7-Eleven across all our endpoints: 10,000 stores & various digital entities like our websites and apps”, said Ronald Clanton, the DGE Program Director for 7-Eleven. As 7-Eleven was rolling out a loyalty program with mobile support across multiple geos, it had many complex business & technical requirements, including supporting a wide variety of different apps, 10M guests in NA alone, ability to support high speed transactions, and very aggressive timelines. A key requirement was shortening the cycle for provisioning new environments. Whereas with other vendors this would take a few weeks, Oracle consulting showed them how with OEM provisioning new environments would take half a day, which was quite impressive. 7-Eleven has started to roll out this new program and are delighted to report that some provisioning cycles are as low as 10 minutes which includes provisioning the full Oracle SOA suite, Exalogic and more. They are delighted with OEM’s reporting capabilities and customization thereof. Watch the video to see for yourself. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Think Before You Leap - Life is Dangerous for Change Agents

  - by technodrone

  So you want to introduce agile methods to your team... The following are some "lessons learned" when from someone who advocated agile/scrum to a group that was not ready for it. "Change agents, in my experience, face negative consequences. Sometimes, most of the time at the beginning, it's painful. This is the question you might have to ask yourself. Do you want to be a developer in scrum project or do you want be a scrum master managing the process? I think with proper mentoring/training, you can become good scrum master. But is that what you want? if yes, you can go ahead, take the training. if you want to be a developer, you may not need to be certified  as scrum master. You can just pick up from a book such as Mike Cohn new book Succeeding with Agile, I am reading it now. It's good. In my experience, I did waste my resources by trying to change the culture. It cost me lot. Instead, I should have focused on technical practices that are core to agile. Then look for teams that are good at agile. I would have saved lot of energy, and time. Try baby steps first yourself in the company, and next with the team, starting with technical practices like writing unit tests, SOLID principles, patterns, refactoring, continuous integration, pairing, and peer code reviews. These have inherent pull that can bring collaboration from a team.  Once you see team adaption in core practices, then you can introduce scrum concepts like user stories/task board etc.  This idea of Leading by example seems to be working for most of the agile folks. You can pitch core practices to the manager, and the team, and start showing them how you are doing.  You can put a road map for agile adaption and you can pitch to your manager. I would include need for scrum master training as part of the road map. " I thought about his advice for a couple of weeks and read about the pitfalls of technical debt and the team not having prior awareness of agile methods. The more I read and think about it the more I think he was right.  What do you think?

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• It's possible to fulfill the social necessity of a human being through a social game in 3D like IMVU?

  - by Totty

  (I'm not advertising nor promoting this game, as it's just an example of my experience and I would like to have your opinion about the matter if possible) I've been started researching "things" about games and I've decided to begin to play IMVU as a friend of mine said it's cool. At first it seemed just another 3d social game, not so cool.. But I've "tried to like" and after 1 day I can say I'm addicted to it! Yes; I will explain better: About the game: You can go in chat-rooms, move to positions. Some positions are like sitting in a sofa, floor, dancing alone or with a partner, kissing and more in this way. In the free version of the game there is no nudity. You can even listen to music, view youtube... The 3d graphics are quite low end, so it's not as real as the paid PC games of today. About my experience: At first I was going with my friend in chat-rooms, they seemed very nice. There were people talking about general stuff, quite like in a real life. Well, I begin to know some girls (yes, virtual girls commanded by a real girl, I hope!). Things happened: Some girls are just crazy, not like in real life, they make out in before even talking; Other girls you can speak a little bit, then they add you to their friend-list. Sometimes they invite to their virtual places. Some girls have really IMVU boyfriends only (but not in reality) and most of them don't even make up in the game, so it's really a level of commitment involved here! But from what my friend told they last for him, at least, about 3 days... Some others have real and IMVU boyfriends that are the same. Until now I haven't find a girl with different boyfriend in the IMVU and reality. Nor multiple boyfriends. There are rooms where the same people find each selves every day and speak about general stuff, relationships and so on... They are nice with you, they "feel" you and show careness. This is what amazes me, they treat you like a real human being and as being their friend in the real world. (of course it's not always like this) There are jealous girls too and competitiveness between females lol, I know you loled! This is kind of social. So today I closed my door in my room and I've played it all day long and guess what, I didn't feel a need to stay with a real person at all. Normally, If I would stay a full day alone I would get quite crazy... So the question is: It's just me that seemed to be able to fulfill my social needs or there is something more? thanks for your precious time for reading my full question,

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• Embracing Imperfection

  - by Johnm

  The pursuit of perfection is a road on which we often find ourselves traveling. It is an unpaved road filed with pot-holes and ruts that often destroy our stride. The shoulders of this road are lined with the bones and rotting carcasses of well planned projects, solutions and dreams of others who have dared the journey. Often the choice to engage in this travel is a compulsive one. We can't help but to pack our bags and make the trip. We justify it by equating it to the delivery of a quality product or service. We use our past travels as validation of our worthiness and value. Our shared experience, as tortured pilgrims of perfection, reveals that each odyssey that bewitched us resulted in a stark reminder of the very weaknesses and fears that we were attempting to mollify. The voice of the critic that berated us for the lack of craftsmanship was our own. Although, at the end of the journey our own critical voice was joined by the gnashing of teeth of those who could not reap the fruit of your labor due to its lack of timely delivery. There is another road in which to travel. It is the pursuit of embracing imperfection. The cost of traveling this route is your contribution to its eternal construction. Each segment is designed uniquely. At times it has the appearance of a patchwork quilt; while other times it is well organized and highly measured. In all cases, its construction has continually advanced and been utilized as each segment was delivered by its architect. Those who choose to select this spindle of these crossroads crack open the shells of their fears to reveal the vapor that is within. They construct their houses upon these shells. Through their hunger for mastery they wring every drop of nectar from failure and discard its husks to the ditches of this road. Through their efforts the thoroughfare begins to develop a personality of its own, a beautifully human one, rich with the strengths and weaknesses of all of its contributors. Like many of us, the pursuit of perfection has not served me well. In fact, I would say that it has been more damaging than it has been helpful. While the perfectionist in me occasionally makes its presence known, I consider myself a "recovering perfectionist". It is evident to me that there is immense beauty found in imperfection. I choose to embrace it. It is grounding. It is constructive. It is honest.

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• Avoiding the Black Hole of Leads

  - by Charles Knapp

  Sales says, "Marketing doesn’t deliver enough qualified leads. So, we generate 90% of our own leads." Meanwhile, Marketing says, "We generate most of the leads. But, Sales doesn’t contact them quickly enough, while the lead is still interested." According to Sirius Decisions: Up to 90% of leads never make it to closure Sales works on only 11% of the leads supplied by Marketing Only 18% of the leads Sales accepts convert to opportunities Yet, 45% of prospects typically buy a product from someone within 12 months The root cause of these commonplace complaints is a disconnect between the funnels of marketing and sales. Unfortunately, we often see companies with an assortment of poorly integrated marketing tools. It takes too long and too many people to move the data around, scrub it, upload it from one system to another, and get it routed to the right sales teams. As a result, leads fall through the cracks, contextual information is lost, and by the time sales actually contacts a customer it may be too late. Sales automation alone is not enough. Marketing automation (including social) is not enough. Sales and Marketing must work together. It’s time to connect the silos of marketing and sales pipelines and analytics. It’s time for integrated Sales and Marketing automation. Integrated pipelines improve lead quality and timeliness. Marketing systems can track a rich set of contextual information about a prospect–self-disclosed information about interests, content viewed, and so on. This insight can equip the sales rep with rich information to make a face-to-face conversation more relevant and more likely to convert to the next stage in the sales process. Integrated lead to revenue (LTR) management provides end-to-end visibility, enabling the company to measure what is working. Marketing can measure its impact on revenue and other business outcomes, and sales can harness and redirect marketing investments to areas where they most help achieve sales objectives. It’s a win-win play. Marketing delivers more leads that are qualified, cuts cost per lead, and demonstrates a strong Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). Sales spends more time with warm leads and less time on cold calls, achieves higher close rates, and delivers more revenue. Learn more by attending our Integrated Sales and Marketing session at the upcoming CloudWorld conferences. Or, visit our Sales and Marketing Cloud Service site for videos and other learning resources.

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• BI&EPM in Focus November 2013

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE IBM is Embracing Oracle Exalytics: The Velocity of Thought and Action (link) Customers Ambulance Victoria, Australia, uses analytics and modelling to serve the expanding needs of a growing population (link) Cablemás Selects Oracle to Speed Customer Data Insights (link) National Instruments Introduces New Business Intelligence Solutions—Runs Reports up to 30x Faster, and Expands Customer Insight (link) FLSmidth Ensures Precise, Transparent Financial Reporting at All Business Levels, Reduces Financial Consolidation Time by up to 40% (link) Enterprise Performance Management Partner Edgewater Ranzal Webinar Series Mitigate Your Biggest EPM Project Risk - Thursday, 21st November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Capital Planning in the Energy Industry - Tuesday, 26th November - Register here:  4.00 GMT Driving Value in the Retail Industry Using Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF)  - Tuesday, 10th December - Register here:  7.00 GMT Dec 11, Look Smarter Selling Hyperion Profitability & Cost Management (HPCM) Webcast (link) EPM System Infrastructure Tips & Tricks Support: November EPM Patch Set Updates released Business Analytics Monthly Index - October 2013 Hyperion Smart View Assistance with OBIEE 11.1.1.7 Hyperion Disclosure Management 11.1.2.3.330 PSU 17444967 [Doc ID 1592645.1] Hyperion Financial Close Management (FCM) 11.1.2.3.100 PSU 16989110 [Doc ID 1592644.1] Business  Intelligence BI-Apps Whitepaper: Packaged Analytic Applications: Accelerating Time and Value By Wayne Eckerson (link) BI Apps Blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics (link) Blog: Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing (link) Blog: Practical Uses of Business Scorecards, from Company-Wide to Process Specific (link) Nov 19, Big Data at Work Series: How Delphi Harnesses Big Data to Improve Warranty Response & Customer Satisfaction (link) Rittman Mead Blog: Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 – GoldenGate Integration Support: OBIEE Suite Bundle Patches (understand OBIEE naming convention) [Doc ID 1591422.1] Support Blog: Java update alert: Essbase Administration Services (EAS) 11.1.2.3 (link) Support Blog: OBIEE 11.1.1.7.131017 now available (link) /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• Failed to start up after upgrading software in ubuntu 10.10

  - by Landy

  I asked this question in SuperUser one hour ago, then I know this community so I moved the question here... I've been running Ubuntu 10.10 in a physical x86-64 machine. Today Update Manager reminded me that there are some updates to install and I confirmed the action. I should had read the update list but I didn't. I can only remember there is an update about cups. After the upgrading, Update Manager requires a restart and I confirmed too. But after the restart, the computer can't start up. There are errors in the console. Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... done. Begin: Mounting root file system ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ... done. [xxx]usb 1-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 [xxx]usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2 [xxx]hub 2-1:1.0: USB hub found [xxx]hub 2-1:1.0: 4 ports detected [xxx]usb 2-1.1: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 3 Gave up waiting for root device. Common probles: - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline) - Check rootdelay=(did the system wait long enough) - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?) - Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev) FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/modules.dep: No such file or directory FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/modules.dep: No such file or directory ALERT! /dev/sda1 does not exist. Dropping to a shell! BusyBox v1.15.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.15.3-1ubuntu5) built-in shell(ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. (initramfs)[cursor is here] At the moment, I can't input anything in the console. The keyboard doesn't work at all. What's wrong? How can I check boot args or "root=" as suggested? How can I fix this issue? Thanks. =============== PS1: the /dev/sda1 is type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev) PS2: the /dev/sda1 can be mounted and accessed successfully under SUSE 11 SP1 x64. PS3: From this link, I think the keyboard doesn't work because the USB driver is not loaded at that time.

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