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  • OEG11gR2 integration with OES11gR2 Authorization with condition

    - by pgoutin
    Introduction This OES use-case has been defined originally by Subbu Devulapalli (http://accessmanagement.wordpress.com/).  Based on this OES museum use-case, I have developed the OEG11gR2 policy able to deal with the OES authorization with condition. From an OEG point of view, the way to deal with OES condition is to provide with the OES request some Environmental / Context Attributes.   Museum Use-Case  All painting in the museum have security sensors, an alarm goes off when a person comes too close a painting. The employee designated for maintenance needs to use their ID and disable the alarm before maintenance. You are the Security Administrator for the museum and you have been tasked with creating authorization policies to manage authorization for different paintings. Your first task is to understand how paintings are organized. Asking around, you are surprised to see that there isno formal process in place, so you need to start from scratch. the museum tracks the following attributes for each painting 1. Name of the work 2. Painter 3. Condition (good/poor) 4. Cost You compile the list of paintings  Name of Painting  Painter  Paint Condition  Cost  Mona Lisa  Leonardo da Vinci  Good  100  Magi  Leonardo da Vinci  Poor  40  Starry Night  Vincent Van Gogh  Poor  75  Still Life  Vincent Van Gogh  Good  25 Being a software geek who doesn’t (yet) understand art, you feel that price(or insurance price) of a painting is the most important criteria. So you feel that based on years-of-experience employees can be tasked with maintaining different paintings. You decide that paintings worth over 50 cost should be only handled by employees with over 20 years of experience and employees with less than 10 years of experience should not handle any painting. Lets us start with policy modeling. All paintings have a common set of attributes and actions, so it will be good to have them under a single Resource Type. Based on this resource type we will create the actual resources. So our high level model is: 1) Resource Type: Painting which has action manage and the following four attributes a) Name of the work b) Painter c) Condition (good/poor) d) Cost 2) To keep things simple lets use painting name for Resource name (in real world you will try to use some identifier which is unique, because in future we may end up with more than one painting which has the same name.) 3) Create Resources based on the previous table 4) Create an identity attribute Experience (Integer) 5) Create the following authorization policies a) Allow employees with over 20 years experience to access all paintings b) Allow employees with 10 – 20 years of experience to access painting which cost less than 50 c) Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience OES Authorization Configuration We do need to create 2 authorization policies with specific conditions a) Allow employees with over 20 years experience to access all paintings b) Allow employees with 10 – 20 years of experience to access painting which cost less than 50 c) Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience We don’t need an explicit policy for Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience, because Oracle Entitlements Server will automatically deny if there is no matching policy. OEG Policy The OEG policy looks like the following The 11g Authorization filter configuration is similar to :  The ${PAINTING_NAME} and ${USER_EXPERIENCE} variables are initialized by the "Retrieve from the HTTP header" filters for testing purpose. That's to say, under Service Explorer, we need to provide 2 attributes "Experience" & "Painting" following the OES 11g Authorization filter described above.

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  • HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration.

    - by darrenm
    Since we released hardware crypto acceleration for SPARC T4 and Intel AES-NI support we have had a common question come up: 'How do I test without the hardware crypto acceleration?'. Initially this came up just for development use so developers can do unit testing on a machine that has hardware offload but still cover the code paths for a machine that doesn't (our integration and release testing would run on all supported types of hardware anyway).  I've also seen it asked in a customer context too so that we can show that there is a performance gain from the hardware crypto acceleration, (not just the fact that SPARC T4 much faster performing processor than T3) and measure what it is for their application. With SPARC T2/T3 we could easily disable the hardware crypto offload by running 'cryptoadm disable provider=n2cp/0'.  We can't do that with SPARC T4 or with Intel AES-NI because in both of those classes of processor the encryption doesn't require a device driver instead it is unprivileged user land callable instructions. Turns out there is away to do this by using features of the Solaris runtime loader (ld.so.1). First I need to expose a little bit of implementation detail about how the Solaris Cryptographic Framework is implemented in Solaris 11.  One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.  The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax() and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so, and the unfortunately misnamed due to historical reasons libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  For SPARC T4 that would be: export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" and for Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes" This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  It also works for the Oracle DB and Java JCE.  However does not work for the default enabled OpenSSL "t4" or "aes-ni" engines (unfortunately) because they do explicit calls to getisax() themselves rather than using multiple ELF cap sections. However we can still use OpenSSL to demonstrate this by explicitly selecting "pkcs11" engine  using only a single process and thread.  $ openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 54170.81k 187416.00k 489725.70k 805445.63k 1018880.00k $ LD_HWCAP="-aes" openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 29376.37k 58328.13k 79031.55k 86738.26k 89191.77k We can clearly see the difference this makes in the case where AES offload to the SPARC T4 was disabled. The "t4" engine is faster than the pkcs11 one because there is less overhead (again on a SPARC T4-1 using only a single process/thread - using -multi you will get even bigger numbers). $ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 85526.61k 89298.84k 91970.30k 92662.78k 92842.67k Yet another cool feature of the Solaris linker/loader, thanks Rod and Ali. Note these above openssl speed output is not intended to show the actual performance of any particular benchmark just that there is a significant improvement from using hardware acceleration on SPARC T4. For cryptographic performance benchmarks see the http://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ postings.

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  • Centralized Project Management Brings Needed Cost Controls to Growing Brazilian Firm

    - by Melissa Centurio Lopes
    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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; 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;} Fast growth and a significant increase in business activities were creating project management challenges for CPqD, a developer of innovative information and communication technologies for large Brazilian organizations. To bring greater efficiency and centralized project management capabilities to its operations, CPqD chose Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. “Oracle Primavera is an essential tool for our day-to-day business, and I notice the effort Oracle makes to constantly innovate and to add more functionality in an increasingly shorter period of time,” says Márcio Alexandre da Silva, IT department project coordinator, CPqD. He explains that before CPqD implemented the Oracle solution, the company did not have a corporate view of projects. “Our project monitoring was decentralized and restricted to each coordinator,” the project coordinator says. “With the Oracle solution, we achieved actual shared management, more control, and budgets that stay within projections.” Among the benefits that CPqD now enjoys are The ability to more effectively identify how employees are allocated, enabling managers to increase or reduce resources based on project scope, as well as secure the resources required for unexpected projects and demands A 75 percent reduction in the time it takes to collect project data and indicators—automated and centralized collection means project coordinators no longer have to manually compile information that was spread among various systems Read the complete CPqD company snapshot Read more in the October Edition of the quarterly Information InDepth EPPM Newsletter 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; 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;}

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  • Design pattern for logging changes in parent/child objects saved to database

    - by andrew
    I’ve got a 2 database tables in parent/child relationship as one-many. I’ve got three classes representing the data in these two tables: Parent Class { Public int ID {get; set;} .. other properties } Child Class { Public int ID {get;set;} Public int ParentID {get; set;} .. other properties } TogetherClass { Public Parent Parent; Public List<Child> ChildList; } Lastly I’ve got a client and server application – I’m in control of both ends so can make changes to both programs as I need to. Client makes a request for ParentID and receives a Together Class for the matching parent, and all of the child records. The client app may make changes to the children – add new children, remove or modify existing ones. Client app then sends the Together Class back to the server app. Server app needs to update the parent and child records in the database. In addition I would like to be able to log the changes – I’m doing this by having 2 separate tables one for Parent, one for child; each containing the same columns as the original plus date time modified, by whom and a list of the changes. I’m unsure as to the best approach to detect the changes in records – new records, records to be deleted, records with no fields changed, records with some fields changed. I figure I need to read the parent & children records and compare those to the ones in the Together Class. Strategy A: If Together class’s child record has an ID of say 0, that indicates a new record; insert. Any deleted child records are no longer in the Together Class; see if any of the comparison child records are not found in the Together class and delete if not found (Compare using ID). Check each child record for changes and if changed log. Strategy B: Make a new Updated TogetherClass UpdatedClass { Public Parent Parent {get; set} Public List<Child> ListNewChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> DeletedChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> ExistingChild {get;set;} // used for no changes and modified rows } And then process as per the list. The reason why I’m asking for ideas is that both of these solutions don’t seem optimal to me and I suspect this problem has been solved already – some kind of design pattern ? I am aware of one potential problem in this general approach – that where Client App A requests a record; App B requests same record; A then saves changes; B then saves changes which may overwrite changes A made. This is a separate locking issue which I’ll raise a separate question for if I’ve got trouble implementing. The actual implementation is c#, SQL Server and WCF between client and server - sharing a library containing the class implementations. Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I tried searching various terms without finding a match though.

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  • JavaOne Latin America 2012 Trip Report

    - by reza_rahman
    JavaOne Latin America 2012 was held at the Transamerica Expo Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil on December 4-6. The conference was a resounding success with a great vibe, excellent technical content and numerous world class speakers. Some notable local and international speakers included Bruno Souza, Yara Senger, Mattias Karlsson, Vinicius Senger, Heather Vancura, Tori Wieldt, Arun Gupta, Jim Weaver, Stephen Chin, Simon Ritter and Henrik Stahl. Topics covered included the JCP/JUGs, Java SE 7, HTML 5/WebSocket, CDI, Java EE 6, Java EE 7, JSF 2.2, JMS 2, JAX-RS 2, Arquillian and JavaFX. Bruno Borges and I manned the GlassFish booth at the Java Pavilion on Tuesday and Webnesday. The booth traffic was decent and not too hectic. We met a number of GlassFish adopters including perhaps one of the largest GlassFish deployments in Brazil as well as some folks migrating to Java EE from Spring. We invited them to share their stories with us. We also talked with some key members of the local Java community. Tuesday evening we had the GlassFish party at the Tribeca Pub. The party was definitely a hit and we could have used a larger venue (this was the first time we had the GlassFish party in Brazil). Along with GlassFish enthusiasts, a number of Java community leaders were there. We met some of the same folks again at the JUG leader's party on Wednesday evening. On Thursday Arun Gupta, Bruno Borges and I ran a hands-on-lab on JAX-RS, WebSocket and Server-Sent Events (SSE) titled "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". This is the same Java EE 7 lab run at JavaOne San Francisco. The lab provides developers a first hand glipse of how an HTML 5 powered Java EE application might look like. We had an overflow crowd for the lab (at one point we had about twenty people standing) and the lab went very well. The slides for the lab are here: Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket from Reza Rahman The actual contents for the lab is available here. Give me a shout if you need help getting it up and running. I gave two solo talks following the lab. The first was on JMS 2 titled "What’s New in Java Message Service 2". This was essentially the same talk given by JMS 2 specification lead Nigel Deakin at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JMS 2 simplified API, JMSContext injection, delivery delays, asynchronous send, JMS resource definition in Java EE 7, standardized configuration for JMS MDBs in EJB 3.2, mandatory JCA pluggability and the like. The session went very well, there was good Q & A and someone even told me this was the best session of the conference! The slides for the talk are here: What’s New in Java Message Service 2 from Reza Rahman My last talk for the conference was on JAX-RS 2 in the keynote hall. Titled "JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API" this was basically the same talk given by the specification leads Santiago Pericas-Geertsen and Marek Potociar at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JAX-RS 2 client API, asyncronous processing, filters/interceptors, hypermedia support, server-side content negotiation and the like. The talk went very well and I got a few very kind complements afterwards. The slides for the talk are here: JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API from Reza Rahman On a more personal note, Sao Paulo has always had a special place in my heart as the incubating city for Sepultura and Soulfy -- two of my most favorite heavy metal musical groups of all time! Consequently, the city has a perpertually alive and kicking metal scene pretty much any given day of the week. This time I got to check out a solid performance by local metal gig Republica at the legendary Manifesto Bar. I also wanted to see a Dio Tribute at the Blackmore but ran out of time and energy... Overall I enjoyed the conference/Sao Paulo and look forward to going to Brazil again next year!

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  • MVC Portable Areas &ndash; Static Files as Embedded Resources

    - by Steve Michelotti
    This is the third post in a series related to build and deployment considerations as I’ve been exploring MVC Portable Areas: #1 – Using Web Application Project to build portable areas #2 – Conventions for deploying portable area static files #3 – Portable area static files as embedded resources In the last post, I walked through a convention for managing static files.  In this post I’ll discuss another approach to manage static files (e.g., images, css, js, etc.).  With this approach, you *also* compile the static files as embedded resources into the assembly similar to the *.aspx pages. Once again, you can set this to happen automatically by simply modifying your *.csproj file to include the desired extensions so you don’t have to remember every time you add a file: 1: <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> 2: <ItemGroup> 3: <EmbeddedResource Include="**\*.aspx;**\*.ascx;**\*.gif;**\*.css;**\*.js" /> 4: </ItemGroup> 5: </Target> We now need a reliable way to serve up these static files that are embedded in the assembly. There are a couple of ways to do this but one way is to simply create a Resource controller whose job is dedicated to doing this. 1: public class ResourceController : Controller 2: { 3: public ActionResult Index(string resourceName) 4: { 5: var contentType = GetContentType(resourceName); 6: var resourceStream = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName); 7:   8: return this.File(resourceStream, contentType); 9: return View(); 10: } 11:   12: private static string GetContentType(string resourceName) 13: { 14: var extention = resourceName.Substring(resourceName.LastIndexOf('.')).ToLower(); 15: switch (extention) 16: { 17: case ".gif": 18: return "image/gif"; 19: case ".js": 20: return "text/javascript"; 21: case ".css": 22: return "text/css"; 23: default: 24: return "text/html"; 25: } 26: } 27: } In order to use this controller, we need to make sure we’ve registered the route in our portable area registration (shown in lines 5-6): 1: public class WidgetAreaRegistration : PortableAreaRegistration 2: { 3: public override void RegisterArea(System.Web.Mvc.AreaRegistrationContext context, IApplicationBus bus) 4: { 5: context.MapRoute("ResourceRoute", "widget1/resource/{resourceName}", 6: new { controller = "Resource", action = "Index" }); 7:   8: context.MapRoute("Widget1", "widget1/{controller}/{action}", new 9: { 10: controller = "Home", 11: action = "Index" 12: }); 13:   14: RegisterTheViewsInTheEmbeddedViewEngine(GetType()); 15: } 16:   17: public override string AreaName 18: { 19: get { return "Widget1"; } 20: } 21: } In my previous post, we relied on a custom Url helper method to find the actual physical path to the static file like this: 1: <img src="<%: Url.AreaContent("/images/arrow.gif") %>" /> Hello World! However, since we are now embedding the files inside the assembly, we no longer have to worry about the physical path. We can change this line of code to this: 1: <img src="<%: Url.Resource("Widget1.images.arrow.gif") %>" /> Hello World! Note that I had to fully quality the resource name (with namespace and physical location) since that is how .NET assemblies store embedded resources. I also created my own Url helper method called Resource which looks like this: 1: public static string Resource(this UrlHelper urlHelper, string resourceName) 2: { 3: var areaName = (string)urlHelper.RequestContext.RouteData.DataTokens["area"]; 4: return urlHelper.Action("Index", "Resource", new { resourceName = resourceName, area = areaName }); 5: } This method gives us the convenience of not having to know how to construct the URL – but just allowing us to refer to the resource name. The resulting html for the image tag is: 1: <img src="/widget1/resource/Widget1.images.arrow.gif" /> so we can always request any image from the browser directly. This is almost analogous to the WebResource.axd file but for MVC. What is interesting though is that we can encapsulate each one of these so that each area can have it’s own set of resources and they are easily distinguished because the area name is the first segment of the route. This makes me wonder if something like this ResourceController should be baked into portable areas itself. I’m definitely interested in anyone has any opinions on it or have taken alternative approaches.

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  • Joy! | Important Information About Your iPad 3G

    - by Jeff Julian
    Looks like I was one of the lucky 114,000 who AT&T lost their email to “hackers”.  Why is “hackers” in “double quotes”.  I can just imagine some executive at AT&T in their “Oh No, We Messed Up Meeting” saying, what happened?  Then someone replied, well we have had a breach and “hackers” broke in (using the quote in the air gesture) and stole our iPad 3G customers emails. Oh well, I am sure my email has been sold and sold again by many different vendors, why not AT&T now.  At least Dorothy Attwood could have gave us her email to give to someone else instead of blinking it through a newsletter system. June 13, 2010 Dear Valued AT&T Customer, Recently there was an issue that affected some of our customers with AT&T 3G service for iPad resulting in the release of their customer email addresses. I am writing to let you know that no other information was exposed and the matter has been resolved.  We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, you can continue to use your AT&T 3G service on your iPad with confidence. Here’s some additional detail: On June 7 we learned that unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.  The self-described hackers wrote software code to randomly generate numbers that mimicked serial numbers of the AT&T SIM card for iPad – called the integrated circuit card identification (ICC-ID) – and repeatedly queried an AT&T web address.   When a number generated by the hackers matched an actual ICC-ID, the authentication page log-in screen was returned to the hackers with the email address associated with the ICC-ID already populated on the log-in screen. The hackers deliberately went to great efforts with a random program to extract possible ICC-IDs and capture customer email addresses.  They then put together a list of these emails and distributed it for their own publicity. As soon as we became aware of this situation, we took swift action to prevent any further unauthorized exposure of customer email addresses.  Within hours, AT&T disabled the mechanism that automatically populated the email address. Now, the authentication page log-in screen requires the user to enter both their email address and their password. I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk.  The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad.  AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected. While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website. AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites.   We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law. AT&T acted quickly to protect your information – and we promise to keep working around the clock to keep your information safe.  Thank you very much for your understanding, and for being an AT&T customer. Sincerely, Dorothy Attwood Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T Technorati Tags: AT&T,iPad 3G,Email

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  • Restrict number of characters to be typed for af:autoSuggestBehavior

    - by Arunkumar Ramamoorthy
    When using AutoSuggestBehavior for a UI Component, the auto suggest list is displayed as soon as the user starts typing in the field. In this article, we will find how to restrict the autosuggest list to be displayed till the user types in couple of characters. This would be more useful in the low latency networks and also the autosuggest list is bigger. We could display a static message to let the user know that they need to type in more characters to get a list for picking a value from. Final output we would expect is like the below image Lets see how we can implement this. Assuming we have an input text for the users to enter the country name and an autosuggest behavior is added to it. <af:inputText label="Country" id="it1"> <af:autoSuggestBehavior /> </af:inputText> Also, assuming we have a VO (we'll name it as CountryView for this example), with a view criteria to filter out the VO based on the bind variable passed. Now, we would generate View Impl class from the java node (including bind variables) and then expose the setter method of the bind variable to client interface. In the View layer, we would create a tree binding for the VO and the method binding for the setter method of the bind variable exposed above, in the pagedef file As we've already added an input text and an autosuggestbehavior for the test, we would not need to build the suggested items for the autosuggest list.Let us add a method in the backing bean to return us List of select items to be bound to the autosuggest list. padding: 5px; background-color: #fbfbfb; min-height: 40px; width: 544px; height: 168px; overflow: auto;"> public List onSuggest(String searchTerm) { ArrayList<SelectItem> selectItems = new ArrayList<SelectItem>(); if(searchTerm.length()>1) { //get access to the binding context and binding container at runtime BindingContext bctx = BindingContext.getCurrent(); BindingContainer bindings = bctx.getCurrentBindingsEntry(); //set the bind variable value that is used to filter the View Object //query of the suggest list. The View Object instance has a View //Criteria assigned OperationBinding setVariable = (OperationBinding) bindings.get("setBind_CountryName"); setVariable.getParamsMap().put("value", searchTerm); setVariable.execute(); //the data in the suggest list is queried by a tree binding. JUCtrlHierBinding hierBinding = (JUCtrlHierBinding) bindings.get("CountryView1"); //re-query the list based on the new bind variable values hierBinding.executeQuery(); //The rangeSet, the list of queries entries, is of type //JUCtrlValueBndingRef. List<JUCtrlValueBindingRef> displayDataList = hierBinding.getRangeSet(); for (JUCtrlValueBindingRef displayData : displayDataList){ Row rw = displayData.getRow(); //populate the SelectItem list selectItems.add(new SelectItem( (String)rw.getAttribute("Name"), (String)rw.getAttribute("Name"))); } } else{ SelectItem a = new SelectItem("","Type in two or more characters..","",true); selectItems.add(a); } return selectItems; } So, what we are doing in the above method is, to check the length of the search term and if it is more than 1 (i.e 2 or more characters), the return the actual suggest list. Otherwise, create a read only select item new SelectItem("","Type in two or more characters..","",true); and add it to the list of suggested items to be displayed. The last parameter for the SelectItem (boolean) is to make it as readOnly, so that users would not be able to select this static message from the displayed list. Finally, bind this method to the input text's autosuggestbehavior's suggestedItems property. <af:inputText label="Country" id="it1"> <af:autoSuggestBehavior suggestedItems="#{AutoSuggestBean.onSuggest}"/> </af:inputText>

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  • WPF: Running code when Window rendering is completed

    - by Ilya Verbitskiy
    WPF is full of surprises. It makes complicated tasks easier, but at the same time overcomplicates easy  task as well. A good example of such overcomplicated things is how to run code when you’re sure that window rendering is completed. Window Loaded event does not always work, because controls might be still rendered. I had this issue working with Infragistics XamDockManager. It continued rendering widgets even when the Window Loaded event had been raised. Unfortunately there is not any “official” solution for this problem. But there is a trick. You can execute your code asynchronously using Dispatcher class.   Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => Trace.WriteLine("DONE!", "Rendering")), DispatcherPriority.ContextIdle, null);   This code should be added to your Window Loaded event handler. It is executed when all controls inside your window are rendered. I created a small application to prove this idea. The application has one window with a few buttons. Each button logs when it has changed its actual size. It also logs when Window Loaded event is raised, and, finally, when rendering is completed. Window’s layout is straightforward.   1: <Window x:Class="OnRendered.MainWindow" 2: xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 3: xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 4: Title="Run the code when window rendering is completed." Height="350" Width="525" 5: Loaded="OnWindowLoaded"> 6: <Window.Resources> 7: <Style TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> 8: <Setter Property="Padding" Value="7" /> 9: <Setter Property="Margin" Value="5" /> 10: <Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment" Value="Center" /> 11: <Setter Property="VerticalAlignment" Value="Center" /> 12: </Style> 13: </Window.Resources> 14: <StackPanel> 15: <Button x:Name="Button1" Content="Button 1" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged" /> 16: <Button x:Name="Button2" Content="Button 2" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged" /> 17: <Button x:Name="Button3" Content="Button 3" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged" /> 18: <Button x:Name="Button4" Content="Button 4" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged" /> 19: <Button x:Name="Button5" Content="Button 5" SizeChanged="OnSizeChanged" /> 20: </StackPanel> 21: </Window>   SizeChanged event handler simply traces that the event has happened.   1: private void OnSizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: Button button = (Button)sender; 4: Trace.WriteLine("Size has been changed", button.Name); 5: }   Window Loaded event handler is slightly more interesting. First it scheduler the code to be executed using Dispatcher class, and then logs the event.   1: private void OnWindowLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => Trace.WriteLine("DONE!", "Rendering")), DispatcherPriority.ContextIdle, null); 4: Trace.WriteLine("Loaded", "Window"); 5: }   As the result I had seen these trace messages.   1: Button5: Size has been changed 2: Button4: Size has been changed 3: Button3: Size has been changed 4: Button2: Size has been changed 5: Button1: Size has been changed 6: Window: Loaded 7: Rendering: DONE!   You can find the solution in GitHub.

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  • Is It Worth It To Learn Experimental Languages

    - by Xander Lamkins
    I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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  • How Do You Actually Model Data?

    Since the 1970’s Developers, Analysts and DBAs have been able to represent concepts and relations in the form of data through the use of generic symbols.  But what is data modeling?  The first time I actually heard this term I could not understand why anyone would want to display a computer on a fashion show runway. Hey, what do you expect? At that time I was a freshman in community college, and obviously this was a long time ago.  I have since had the chance to learn what data modeling truly is through using it. Data modeling is a process of breaking down information and/or requirements in to common categories called objects. Once objects start being defined then relationships start to form based on dependencies found amongst other existing objects.  Currently, there are several tools on the market that help data designer actually map out objects and their relationships through the use of symbols and lines.  These diagrams allow for designs to be review from several perspectives so that designers can ensure that they have the optimal data design for their project and that the design is flexible enough to allow for potential changes and/or extension in the future. Additionally these basic models can always be further refined to show different levels of details depending on the target audience through the use of three different types of models. Conceptual Data Model(CDM)Conceptual Data Models include all key entities and relationships giving a viewer a high level understanding of attributes. Conceptual data model are created by gathering and analyzing information from various sources pertaining to a project during the typical planning phase of a project. Logical Data Model (LDM)Logical Data Models are conceptual data models that have been expanded to include implementation details pertaining to the data that it will store. Additionally, this model typically represents an origination’s business requirements and business rules by defining various attribute data types and relationships regarding each entity. This additional information can be directly translated to the Physical Data Model which reduces the actual time need to implement it. Physical Data Model(PDMs)Physical Data Model are transformed Logical Data Models that include the necessary tables, columns, relationships, database properties for the creation of a database. This model also allows for considerations regarding performance, indexing and denormalization that are applied through database rules, data integrity. Further expanding on why we actually use models in modern application/database development can be seen in the benefits that data modeling provides for data modelers and projects themselves, Benefits of Data Modeling according to Applied Information Science Abstraction that allows data designers remove concepts and ideas form hard facts in the form of data. This gives the data designers the ability to express general concepts and/or ideas in a generic form through the use of symbols to represent data items and the relationships between the items. Transparency through the use of data models allows complex ideas to be translated in to simple symbols so that the concept can be understood by all viewpoints and limits the amount of confusion and misunderstanding. Effectiveness in regards to tuning a model for acceptable performance while maintaining affordable operational costs. In addition it allows systems to be built on a solid foundation in terms of data. I shudder at the thought of a world without data modeling, think about it? Data is everywhere in our lives. Data modeling allows for optimizing a design for performance and the reduction of duplication. If one was to design a database without data modeling then I would think that the first things to get impacted would be database performance due to poorly designed database and there would be greater chances of unnecessary data duplication that would also play in to the excessive query times because unneeded records would need to be processed. You could say that a data designer designing a database is like a box of chocolates. You will never know what kind of database you will get until after it is built.

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  • Abstraction, Politics, and Software Architecture

    Abstraction can be defined as a general concept and/or idea that lack any concrete details. Throughout history this type of thinking has led to an array of new ideas and innovations as well as increased confusion and conspiracy. If one was to look back at our history they will see that abstraction has been used in various forms throughout our past. When I was growing up I do not know how many times I heard politicians say “Leave no child left behind” or “No child left behind” as a major part of their campaign rhetoric in regards to a stance on education. As you can see their slogan is a perfect example of abstraction because it only offers a very general concept about improving our education system but they do not mention how they would like to do it. If they did then they would be adding concrete details to their abstraction thus turning it in to an actual working plan as to how we as a society can help children succeed in school and in life, but then they would not be using abstraction. By now I sure you are thinking what does abstraction have to do with software architecture. You are valid in thinking this way, but abstraction is a wonderful tool used in information technology especially in the world of software architecture. Abstraction is one method of extracting the concepts of an idea so that it can be understood and discussed by others of varying technical abilities and backgrounds. One ways in which I tend to extract my architectural design thoughts is through the use of basic diagrams to convey an idea for a system or a new feature for an existing application. This allows me to generically model an architectural design through the use of views and Unified Markup Language (UML). UML is a standard method for creating a 4+1 Architectural View Models. The 4+1 Architectural View Model consists of 4 views typically created with UML as well as a general description of the concept that is being expressed by a model. The 4+1 Architectural View Model: Logical View: Models a system’s end-user functionality. Development View: Models a system as a collection of components and connectors to illustrate how it is intended to be developed.  Process View: Models the interaction between system components and connectors as to indicate the activities of a system. Physical View: Models the placement of the collection of components and connectors of a system within a physical environment. Recently I had to use the concept of abstraction to express an idea for implementing a new security framework on an existing website. My concept would add session based management in order to properly secure and allow page access based on valid user credentials and last user activity.  I created a basic Process View by using UML diagrams to communicate the basic process flow of my changes in the application so that all of the projects stakeholders would be able to understand my idea. Additionally I created a Logical View on a whiteboard while conveying the process workflow with a few stakeholders to show how end-user will be affected by the new framework and gaining additional input about the design. After my Logical and Process Views were accepted I then started on creating a more detailed Development View in order to map how the system will be built based on the concept of components and connections based on the previously defined interactions. I really did not need to create a Physical view for this idea because we were updating an existing system that was already deployed based on an existing Physical View. What do you think about the use of abstraction in the development of software architecture? Please let me know.

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  • How do I get my character to move after adding to JFrame?

    - by A.K.
    So this is kind of a follow up on my other JPanel question that got resolved by playing around with the Layout... Now my MouseListener allows me to add a new Board(); object from its class, which is the actual game map and animator itself. But since my Board() takes Key Events from a Player Object inside the Board Class, I'm not sure if they are being started. Here's my Frame Class, where SideScroller S is the player object: package OurPackage; //Made By A.K. 5/24/12 //Contains Frame. import java.awt.BorderLayout; import java.awt.Button; import java.awt.CardLayout; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Container; import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.GridBagLayout; import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.Rectangle; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import java.awt.event.KeyEvent; import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter; import java.awt.event.MouseEvent; import java.awt.event.MouseListener; import javax.swing.*; import javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicOptionPaneUI.ButtonActionListener; public class Frame implements MouseListener { public static boolean StartGame = false; JFrame frm = new JFrame("Action-Packed Jack"); ImageIcon img = new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("/Images/ActionJackTitle.png")); ImageIcon StartImg = new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("/Images/JackStart.png")); public Image Title; JLabel TitleL = new JLabel(img); public JPanel TitlePane = new JPanel(); public JPanel BoardPane = new JPanel(); JPanel cards; JButton StartB = new JButton(StartImg); Board nBoard = new Board(); static Sound nSound; public Frame() { frm.setLayout(new GridBagLayout()); cards = new JPanel(new CardLayout()); nSound = new Sound("/Sounds/BunchaJazz.wav"); TitleL.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(970, 420)); frm.add(TitleL); frm.add(cards); cards.setSize(new Dimension(150, 45)); cards.setLayout(new GridBagLayout ()); cards.add(StartB); StartB.addMouseListener(this); StartB.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(150, 45)); frm.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frm.setSize(1200, 420); frm.setVisible(true); frm.setResizable(false); frm.setLocationRelativeTo(null); frm.pack(); } public static void main(String[] args) { SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { new Frame(); } }); } public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) { nSound.play(); StartB.setContentAreaFilled(false); cards.remove(StartB); frm.remove(TitleL); frm.remove(cards); frm.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 1)); frm.add(nBoard); //Add Game "Tiles" Or Content. x = 1200 nBoard.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(1200, 420)); cards.revalidate(); frm.validate(); } @Override public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void mouseExited(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void mousePressed(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } }

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  • Managing game state / 'what to update' within an XNA game 'screen'

    - by codinghands
    Note - having read through other GDev questions suggested when writing this question I'm confident this isn't a dupe. Of course, it's 3am and I'm likely wrong, so please mod as such if so. I'm trying to figure out how best to manage state within my game screens - please bare with me though! At the moment I'm using a heavily modified version of the fantastic game state management example on the XNA site available here. This is working perfectly for my 'Screens' - 'IntroScreen' with some shiny logos, 'TitleScreen' and a 'MenuScreen' stacked on top for the title and menu, 'PlayScreen' for the actual gameplay, etc. Each screen has the a bunch of sprites, and an 'Update' and 'Draw', managed by a 'ScreenManager'. In addition to the above, and as suggested as an answer to my other question here, most screens have a 'GameProcessQueue' class full of 'GameProcess'es which lets me do just about anything (animations, youbetcha!), in any order, in sequence or parallel. Why mention all this? When I talk about managing game state I'm thinking more for complex scenarios within a 'Screen'. 'TitleScreen', 'MenuScreen' and the like are all relatively simple. 'Play Screen' less so. How do people manage the different 'states' within the screen (or whatever you call it) that 'does' gameplay? (for me, the 'PlayScreen') I've thought about the following: Enum of different states in the Screen, 'activeState' enum-type variable, switching on the enum in the Screen Update() loop to determine what Screen Update 'sub'-function is called. I can see this getting hairy pretty fast though as screens get more complex and with the 'PlayScreen' becoming a behemoth mega-class. 'State' class with Update loop - a Screen can have any number of 'States', 1+ of which are 'active'. Screen update loop calls update on all active states. States themselves know which screen they belong to, and may even belong to a 'StateManager' which handles transitioning from one state to the next. Once a state is over it's removed from the ScreenState list. The Screen doesn't need a bunch of GameProcessQueues, each State has its own. Abstract Screen further to be more flexible - I can see the similarities between what I've got (game 'Screens' handled by a ScreenManager) and what I want (states within a screen, and a mechanism to manage them). However at the moment I see 'Screens' as high level and very distinct ('PlayScreen' with baddies != 'MenuScreen' with 4 words and event handlers), where as my proposed 'States' are more intrinsically tied to a specific screen with complex requirements. I think. This is for a turn-based board game, so it's easier to define things as a discrete series of steps (IntroAnimation - P1Turn - P2Turn - P1Turn ... - GameOver - .... Obviously with an open-world RPG things are very different, but any advice in this scenario is appreciated. If I'm just going OOP-crazy please say so. Similarly I'm concious there's a huge amount on this site re: state management. But as my first 'serious' game after a couple of false starts I'd like to get this right, and would rather be harassed and modded down than never ask :)

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  • Heading out to Dallas GiveCamp 2011

    - by dotgeek
    The day has finally arrived for twelve local charities here in the Dallas area, when they’ll get some help from various local Developers with their website initiative needs at this years Dallas GiveCamp. I’m really looking forward to helping out at this year event and what I hope will be the start of many more GiveCamps to follow. Similar to Habitat for Humanity, where people gather to help build and improve homes for people in need, GiveCamp brings together programmers and equips them with the virtual tools they need to build and improve their existing websites. Tonight is when things will kickoff for this weekends events and teams will start working on their various projects. The building continues on through the night then and all the way through until Sunday afternoon. The end goal for the teams and charities is to have a completed and working website for each charity to begin using and turn over all the production code and digital assets to them. None of this would be possible with out the great sponsors we have returning once again and their donations of various products to help these charities out with their projects, like Telerik's CMS product Sitefinity 4.0, paired with a year of hosting from Verio to mention just a few of them. Just like the skilled builders who might help train volunteers in the use of a nail gun in building a house. Training is also available here on site for the Developers and these local Charities. Giving them all the skills in how to manage and use these products, from site development and then into actual production is a key to the success of this weekends event.     Tonight's training sessions will kick off with a real treat from Giovanni Gallucci, as he speaks about Social Media for NPOs and then later Gabe Sumner from Telerik will begin a training session on Sitefinity for Developers. These training sessions will continue through out the weekend with .Net Nuke and Mojo Portal sessions also planned as well. If you’re a developer and would like to help out in the future, then check in your area and with your local User Groups to find out if you already have a GiveCamp near you to help out. If you don’t have one available, then consider starting up a local GiveCamp and then you too can help Code it Forward. About GiveCamp GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend. During GiveCamp, developers are welcome to go home in the evenings or camp out all weekend long. There are usually food and drink provided at the event. There are sometimes even game systems set up for when you and your need a little break! Overall, it’s a great opportunity for people to work together, developing new friendships, and doing something important for their community. At GiveCamp, there is an expectation of “What Happens at GiveCamp, Stays at GiveCamp”. Therefore, all source code must be turned over to the charities at the end of the weekend (developers cannot ask for payment) and the charities are responsible for maintaining the code moving forward (charities cannot expect the developers to maintain the codebase).

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  • Process Is The New App by Leon Smiers

    - by JuergenKress
    Process-on-the-Fly #2 - Process is the New App The next generation of business process management and business rules management tools is so powerful that it actually can be seen as the successor to custom-built applications. Being able to define detailed process, flows, decision trees and business helps on both the business and IT side to create powerful, differentiating solutions that would have required extensive custom coding in the past. Now much of the definition can be done ‘on the fly,’ using visual models and (semi) natural language in the nearest proximity to the business. Over the years, ERP systems have been customized to enter organization-specific functionality into the ERP application. This leads to better support for the business, but at the same time involves higher costs for maintenance, high dependency on the personnel involved in this customization, long timelines to deliver change to the system and increased risk involved in upgrading the ERP system. However, the best of both worlds can be created by bringing back the functionality to out-of-the-box usage of the ERP system and at the same time introducing change and flexibility by means of externalized 'Process Apps' in direct connection with the ERP system. The ERP system (or legacy bespoke system, for that matter) is used as originally intended and designed, resulting in more predictable behavior of the system related to usage and performance, and clearly can be maintained in a more standardized and cost-effective way. The Prrocess App externalizes the needed functionality into a highly customizable application outside the ERP for which it is supported by rules engines, task inboxes and can be delivered to different channels. The reasons for needing Process Apps may include the following: The ERP system just doesn't deliver this functionality in a specific industry; the volatility of changing certain functionality is high; or an umbrella type of functionality across (ERP) silos is needed. An example of bringing all this together is around the hiring process for a new employee at a university. Oracle PeopleSoft HCM could be used as the HR system to store all employee details. In the hiring process, an authorization scheme is involved for getting the approval to create a contract for the employee-to-be. In the university world, this authorization scheme is complex and involves faculties/colleges (with different organizational structures) and cross-faculty organizational structures. Including such an authorization scheme into PeopleSoft would require a lot of customization. By adding a handle inside PeopleSoft towards an externalized authorization Process App, the execution of the authorization of the employee is done outside the ERP: in a tool that is aimed to deliver approval schemes via a worklist-type of application. The Process App here works as an add-on to the PeopleSoft system, but can also be extended to support the full lifecycle of the end-to-end hiring process with the possibility to involve multiple applications. The actual core functionality is kept in the supporting ERP systems, while at the same time the Process App acts as an umbrella function to control the end-to-end flow and give insight into the efficiency of the end-to-end process. How to get there? 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: Capgemini,Leon Smiers,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Clever memory usage through the years

    - by Ben Emmett
    A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

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  • How to ace Skype Interviews

    - by FelixWehmeyer
    Many companies these days opt to include a Skype interview in the recruitment process, as it comes close to a face-to-face interview without the time and costs involved for both the company and the candidate. In some cases during the recruitment process at Oracle you also might be asked to conduct a Skype interview. To help you get started with this, we researched some websites to give you several tips and tricks. What most of the bloggers say about this topic is collected in this article to help you prepare. It is all about Technology The bit that can make a Skype interview more complicated than a face-to-face or phone interview is the fact you are using additional technology. Always check the video and audio capabilities of your computer to make sure they work properly. Be prepared for connections to be limited during the interview. Using a webcam can also be confusing, if you do not have a lot of experience using it. Make sure you look at the camera and not the monitor to avoid the impression you are looking away. Practice If you do not feel comfortable using the camera, do a mock interview with a friend or family member before you have the actual interview. Be aware that facial impressions or reactions come across differently on a monitor, so make sure to practice how you  come across during the interview. Good lighting in the room also helps you make you look the best for the interviewer. You and your room Dress code, as in any face-to-face interview,is important to think about. Dress the same way as you would for face-to-face interviews and avoid patterns or informal clothing. Another tip,is to be aware of your surroundings. Make sure the room you use looks good on camera, making sure it is neat and tidy, also think about how the walls look behind you. Also make sure you do not get distracted during the interview by anyone or anything, as this will directly have an impact on your interview and your ability to focus and concentrate. What is in a name What goes for any account that you share during the recruitment process, either your email address or Skype name, is to make sure it comes across as professional. Try to avoid using nicknames or strange words in your accounts, stick to using a first name – last name or an abbreviation of the same. If you would like to read more about this topic, have a look at the links below which we used as inspiration for this blog article. 7 Deadly Skype Interview Sins is fun to read and to gives you some good advice to keep in mind. ·         http://www.inc.com/guides/201103/4-tips-for-conducting-a-job-interview-using-skype.html ·         http://blog.simplyhired.com/2012/05/5-tips-to-a-great-skype-interview.html ·         http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/07/11/skype.interview.tips.cb/index.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5648281_prepare-skype-interview.html

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  • As a person getting into mobile development, what's the best mobile platform in terms of profitability? [closed]

    - by Kyle Loman
    I realize this question can range very far so would love to hear any and all opinions on this. However, I'll be honest and say that I have been thinking of this in terms of most profitable. I know how this may sound either way but this is one of my main sticking points. I realize that I'm not guaranteed a single cent and success is never guaranteed but I'm going into this with the thought of making something out of it both financially and also for my own interest. I know that iOS gets a lot of attention on this front but Android commands a lot more market share. However, I know there are drawbacks to Android too, whether it's in the actual development process and programming (though I've heard conflicting reports on this, such as how easy/difficult it is for to address screen res in different devices) or the app ecosystem being flooded. But iOS's app ecosystem has been described as too saturated and harder to compete in for that reason. Since Windows Phone has fewer apps than both of those two, that might be the best place to start in order to be closer to the ground floor of the store and be noticed more? Less saturation = better chances of sales or differentiating? Something like the gold rush during the first years of the iOS App Store (not exactly but at least in concept)? Would it be that despite fewer users on the platform, there's more exposure due to less competition so that may translate to better success at sales? Plus, I know MS is in it for the long haul so I'm not too fearful of something like WebOS going away. Obviously RIM isn't very popular nowadays but I read a recent article that says Blackberry actually has the apps that make the most money, any thoughts on that: http://gigaom.com/mobile/which-mobile-oss-apps-make-most-money-surprise-its-blackberry/ Again, this is all I've heard or known about so if there's anything to add or correct here, please do. In addition, this has actually affected my next personal phone upgrade. I'm eligible for a carrier discount now and I've had my eye on the iPhone 5. However, the Lumia 920 is the one I'm holding out for and I'm open to trying an Android but I'm not sure I can wait that long for any new Nexus or even the Razr HD. Even the new Lumia in November is making me antsy, I'm so close to just getting an iPhone 5. But when I say this has affected my phone choice, I'd want to be able to carry the apps I write with me so that I'm able to pull my phone out to show people without having to carry around a second device to do so. So that's why I'd like to make my personal phone match the main platform I'm developing for. Of course, I will likely expand to other platforms if I gain any decent success but the one I target now would serve well as my personal phone I carry around so that I can use it as a marketing tool, in a sense, showing people my apps if the opportunity presents itself. So what's the best mobile platform to choose, and especially in regards to most lucrative? As said previously, this would influence my personal phone choice greatly. Thanks in advance and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way - I understand there are trade-offs and other factors that may balance this out but making some revenue is key among that. For some background, I have done software development and know programming language concepts so I'm not entirely new to it and I do get the notion of being familiar with these things so that I can translate this skill among a variety of languages but I'm currently just having difficulty choosing my first main mobile platform based on the criteria I've outlined above.

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

    - by Chris George
    The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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  • Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?

    - by Xander Lamkins
    I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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  • dynamic? I'll never use that ... or then again, maybe it could ...

    - by adweigert
    So, I don't know about you, but I was highly skeptical of the dynamic keywork when it was announced. I thought to myself, oh great, just another move towards VB compliance. Well after seeing it being used in things like DynamicXml (which I use for this example) I then was working with a MVC controller and wanted to move some things like operation timeout of an action to a configuration file. Thinking big picture, it'd be really nice to have configuration for all my controllers like that. Ugh, I don't want to have to create all those ConfigurationElement objects... So, I started thinking self, use what you know and do something cool ... Well after a bit of zoning out, self came up with use a dynamic object duh! I was thinking of a config like this ...<controllers> <add type="MyApp.Web.Areas.ComputerManagement.Controllers.MyController, MyApp.Web"> <detail timeout="00:00:30" /> </add> </controllers> So, I ended up with a couple configuration classes like this ...blic abstract class DynamicConfigurationElement : ConfigurationElement { protected DynamicConfigurationElement() { this.DynamicObject = new DynamicConfiguration(); } public DynamicConfiguration DynamicObject { get; private set; } protected override bool OnDeserializeUnrecognizedAttribute(string name, string value) { this.DynamicObject.Add(name, value); return true; } protected override bool OnDeserializeUnrecognizedElement(string elementName, XmlReader reader) { this.DynamicObject.Add(elementName, new DynamicXml((XElement)XElement.ReadFrom(reader))); return true; } } public class ControllerConfigurationElement : DynamicConfigurationElement { [ConfigurationProperty("type", Options = ConfigurationPropertyOptions.IsRequired | ConfigurationPropertyOptions.IsKey)] public string TypeName { get { return (string)this["type"]; } } public Type Type { get { return Type.GetType(this.TypeName, true); } } } public class ControllerConfigurationElementCollection : ConfigurationElementCollection { protected override ConfigurationElement CreateNewElement() { return new ControllerConfigurationElement(); } protected override object GetElementKey(ConfigurationElement element) { return ((ControllerConfigurationElement)element).Type; } } And then had to create the meat of the DynamicConfiguration class which looks like this ...public class DynamicConfiguration : DynamicObject { private Dictionary<string, object> properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase); internal void Add<T>(string name, T value) { this.properties.Add(name, value); } public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { var propertyName = binder.Name; result = null; if (this.properties.ContainsKey(propertyName)) { result = this.properties[propertyName]; } return true; } } So all being said, I made a base controller class like a good little MVC-itizen ...public abstract class BaseController : Controller { protected BaseController() : base() { var configuration = ManagementConfigurationSection.GetInstance(); var controllerConfiguration = configuration.Controllers.ForType(this.GetType()); if (controllerConfiguration != null) { this.Configuration = controllerConfiguration.DynamicObject; } } public dynamic Configuration { get; private set; } } And used it like this ...public class MyController : BaseController { static readonly string DefaultDetailTimeout = TimeSpan.MaxValue.ToString(); public MyController() { this.DetailTimeout = TimeSpan.Parse(this.Configuration.Detail.Timeout ?? DefaultDetailTimeout); } public TimeSpan DetailTimeout { get; private set; } } And there I have an actual use for the dynamic keyword ... never thoguht I'd see the day when I first heard of it as I don't do much COM work ... oh dont' forget this little helper extension methods to find the controller configuration by the controller type.public static ControllerConfigurationElement ForType<T>(this ControllerConfigurationElementCollection collection) { Contract.Requires(collection != null); return ForType(collection, typeof(T)); } public static ControllerConfigurationElement ForType(this ControllerConfigurationElementCollection collection, Type type) { Contract.Requires(collection != null); Contract.Requires(type != null); return collection.Cast<ControllerConfigurationElement>().Where(element => element.Type == type).SingleOrDefault(); } Sure, it isn't perfect and I'm sure I can tweak it over time, but I thought it was a pretty cool way to take advantage of the dynamic keyword functionality. Just remember, it only validates you did it right at runtime, which isn't that bad ... is it? And yes, I did make it case-insensitive so my code didn't have to look like my XML objects, tweak it to your liking if you dare to use this creation.

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  • How views are changing in future versions of SQL

    - by Rob Farley
    April is here, and this weekend, SQL v11.0 (previous known as Denali, now known as SQL Server 2012) reaches general availability. And so I thought I’d share some news about what’s coming next. I didn’t hear this at the MVP Summit earlier this year (where there was lots of NDA information given, but I didn’t go), so I think I’m free to share it. I’ve written before about CTEs being query-scoped views. Well, the actual story goes a bit further, and will continue to develop in future versions. A CTE is a like a “temporary temporary view”, scoped to a single query. Due to globally-scoped temporary objects using a two-hashes naming style, and session-scoped (or ‘local’) temporary objects a one-hash naming style, this query-scoped temporary object uses a cunning zero-hash naming style. We see this implied in Books Online in the CREATE TABLE page, but as we know, temporary views are not yet supported in the SQL Server. However, in a breakaway from ANSI-SQL, Microsoft is moving towards consistency with their naming. We know that a CTE is a “common table expression” – this is proving to be a more strategic than you may have appreciated. Within the Microsoft product group, the term “Table Expression” is far more widely used than just CTEs. Anything that can be used in a FROM clause is referred to as a Table Expression, so long as it doesn’t actually store data (which would make it a Table, rather than a Table Expression). You can see this is not just restricted to the product group by doing an internet search for how the term is used without ‘common’. In the past, Books Online has referred to a view as a “virtual table” (but notice that there is no SQL 2012 version of this page). However, it was generally decided that “virtual table” was a poor name because it wasn’t completely accurate, and it’s typically accepted that virtualisation and SQL is frowned upon. That page I linked to says “or stored query”, which is slightly better, but when the SQL 2012 version of that page is actually published, the line will be changed to read: “A view is a stored table expression (STE)”. This change will be the first of many. During the SQL 2012 R2 release, the keyword VIEW will become deprecated (this will be SQL v11 SP1.5). Three versions later, in SQL 14.5, you will need to be in compatibility mode 140 to allow “CREATE VIEW” to work. Also consistent with Microsoft’s deprecation policy, the execution of any query that refers to an object created as a view (rather than the new “CREATE STE”), will cause a Deprecation Event to fire. This will all be in preparation for the introduction of Single-Column Table Expressions (to be introduced in SQL 17.3 SP6) which will finally shut up those people waiting for a decent implementation of Inline Scalar Functions. And of course, CTEs are “Common” because the Table Expression definition needs to be repeated over and over throughout a stored procedure. ...or so I think I heard at some point. Oh, and congratulations to all the new MVPs on this April 1st. @rob_farley

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  • Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]

    - by Wes Miller
    More social curiosity than actual programming question... (I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.) Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends. A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion. Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons. As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc. Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y ); Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer. Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go? And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...) I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading. Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB. Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?

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  • Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

    - by Hazzard
    I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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