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• Certificate Revocation checking affecting system performance [migrated]

  - by Colm Clarke

  I have a .NET 3.5 desktop application that had been showing periodic slow downs in functionality whenever the test machine it was on was out of the office. I managed to replicate the error on a machine in the office without an internet connection, but it was only when i used ANTS performance profiler that i got a clearer picture of what was going on. In ANTS I saw a "Waiting for synchronization" taking up to 16 seconds that corresponded to the delay I could see in the application when NHibernate tried to load the System.Data.SqlServerCE.dll assembly. If I tried the action again immediately it would work with no delay but if I left it for 5 minutes then it would be slow to load again the next time I tried it. From my research so far it appears to be because the SqlServerCE dll is signed and so the system is trying to connect to get the certificate revocation lists and timing out. Disabling the "Automatically detect settings" setting in the Internet Options LAN settings makes the problem go away, as does disabling the "Check for publishers certificate revocation". But the admins where this application will be deployed are not going to be happy with the idea of disabling certificate checking on a per machine or per user basis so I really need to get the application level disabling of the CRL check working. There is the well documented bug in .net 2.0 which describes this behaviour, and offers a possible fix with a config file element. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <runtime> <generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/> </runtime> </configuration> This is NOT working for me however even though I am using .net 3.5. The SQLServerCE dll is being loaded dynamically by NHibernate and I wonder if the fact that it's dynamic could somehow be why the setting isn't working, but I don't know how I could check that. Can anyone offer suggestions as to why the config setting might not work? Or is there another way I could disable the check at the application level, perhaps a CAS policy setting that I can use to set an exception for the application when it's installed? Or is there something I can change in the application to up the trust level or something like that? I have also tried using to no advantage ServicePointManager.CheckCertificateRevocationList = false; http://rusanu.com/2009/07/24/fix-slow-application-startup-due-to-code-sign-validation/ I have also tried those registry settings out and unfortunately they didn't help. The dlls that appear to be the cause of the hold up are native SQL Server CE dlls, and looking at the stack traces in ProcMon mscorwks.dll doesn't appear to be involved even though the checks on crypto and cert registry keys are being done under the .NET application. It's definitely still something to do with publisher certificate checking because unticking "Check for publisher revocation certificate" still works but something odd is going on.

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• gcc segmentation fault on Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Yuval F

  I am trying to compile a C program on Ubuntu precise 12.04. Here's the program: #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { printf("Hello World!"); return 0; } My gcc version is 4.6.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5). Initially it did not find cc1 so I added a soft link. Now I get this message when I try to compile: gcc: internal compiler error: Segmentation fault (program cc1) Compiling the same program with g++ works fine. I tried reinstalling build-essential, but to no avail. What am I missing? EDIT: I tried reinstalling according to @gertyvdijk's suggestion. As it did not help, here is the output of apt-cache policy gcc-4.6: gcc-4.6: Installed: 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 Candidate: 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 Version table: *** 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 0 500 http://il.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status and the output of ls -l /usr/bin/gcc: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Mar 13 2012 /usr/bin/gcc -> gcc-4.6 EDIT #2: here's a verbose compiler output: gcc -v aaa.c Using built-in specs. COLLECT_GCC=gcc COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/lto-wrapper Target: x86_64-linux-gnu Configured with: ../src/configure -v --with-pkgversion='Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5' --with-bugurl=file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.6/README.Bugs --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,objc,obj-c++ --prefix=/usr --program-suffix=-4.6 --enable-shared --enable-linker-build-id --with-system-zlib --libexecdir=/usr/lib --without-included-gettext --enable-threads=posix --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.6 --libdir=/usr/lib --enable-nls --with-sysroot=/ --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-libstdcxx-debug --enable-libstdcxx-time=yes --enable-gnu-unique-object --enable-plugin --enable-objc-gc --disable-werror --with-arch-32=i686 --with-tune=generic --enable-checking=release --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu --target=x86_64-linux-gnu Thread model: posix gcc version 4.6.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5) COLLECT_GCC_OPTIONS='-v' '-mtune=generic' '-march=x86-64' /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/cc1 -quiet -v -imultilib . -imultiarch x86_64-linux-gnu aaa.c -quiet -dumpbase aaa.c -mtune=generic -march=x86-64 -auxbase aaa -version -fstack-protector -o /tmp/ccHfcXMs.s gcc: internal compiler error: Segmentation fault (program cc1) Please submit a full bug report, with preprocessed source if appropriate. See <file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.6/README.Bugs> for instructions.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #035

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Row Overflow Data Explanation  In SQL Server 2005 one table row can contain more than one varchar(8000) fields. One more thing, the exclusions has exclusions also the limit of each individual column max width of 8000 bytes does not apply to varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary(max), text, image or xml data type columns. Comparison Index Fragmentation, Index De-Fragmentation, Index Rebuild – SQL SERVER 2000 and SQL SERVER 2005 An old but like a gold article. Talks about lots of concepts related to Index and the difference from earlier version to the newer version. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this article just to understand how SQL Server has moved forward with the technology. Improvements in TempDB SQL Server 2005 had come up with quite a lots of improvements and this blog post describes them and explains the same. If you ask me what is my the most favorite article from early career. I must point out to this article as when I wrote this one I personally have learned a lot of new things. Recompile All The Stored Procedure on Specific TableI prefer to recompile all the stored procedure on the table, which has faced mass insert or update. sp_recompiles marks stored procedures to recompile when they execute next time. This blog post explains the same with the help of a script.  2008 SQLAuthority Download – SQL Server Cheatsheet You can download and print this cheat sheet and use it for your personal reference. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I will see if I can update this SQL Server cheat sheet. Difference Between DBMS and RDBMS What is the difference between DBMS and RDBMS? DBMS – Data Base Management System RDBMS – Relational Data Base Management System or Relational DBMS High Availability – Hot Add Memory Hot Add CPU and Hot Add Memory are extremely interesting features of the SQL Server, however, personally I have not witness them heavily used. These features also have few restriction as well. I blogged about them in detail. 2009 Delete Duplicate Rows I have demonstrated in this blog post how one can identify and delete duplicate rows. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers – Solution The question I put forth in my previous article was – In single login why the trigger fires multiple times; it should be fired only once. I received numerous answers in thread as well as in my MVP private news group. Now, let us discuss the answer for the same. The answer is – It happens because multiple SQL Server services are running as well as intellisense is turned on. Blog post demonstrates how we can do the same with the help of SQL scripts. Management Studio New Features I have selected my favorite 5 features and blogged about it. IntelliSense for Query Editing Multi Server Query Query Editor Regions Object Explorer Enhancements Activity Monitors Maximum Number of Index per Table One of the questions I asked in my user group was – What is the maximum number of Index per table? I received lots of answers to this question but only two answers are correct. Let us now take a look at them in this blog post. 2010 Default Statistics on Column – Automatic Statistics on Column The truth is, Statistics can be in a table even though there is no Index in it. If you have the auto- create and/or auto-update Statistics feature turned on for SQL Server database, Statistics will be automatically created on the Column based on a few conditions. Please read my previously posted article, SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update, for the specific conditions when Statistics is updated. 2011 T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers In this blog post there are two different scripts listed which demonstrates way to find the maximum number between two numbers. I need your help, which one of the script do you think is the most accurate way to find maximum number? Find Details for Statistics of Whole Database – DMV – T-SQL Script I was recently asked is there a single script which can provide all the necessary details about statistics for any database. This question made me write following script. I was initially planning to use sp_helpstats command but I remembered that this is marked to be deprecated in future. 2012 Introduction to Function SIGN SIGN Function is very fundamental function. It will return the value 1, -1 or 0. If your value is negative it will return you negative -1 and if it is positive it will return you positive +1. Let us start with a simple small example. Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. An invalid floating point operation occurred If you run any of the above functions they will give you an error related to invalid floating point. Honestly there is no workaround except passing the function appropriate values. SQRT of a negative number will give you result in real numbers which is not supported at this point of time as well LOG of a negative number is not possible (because logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential function and the exponential function is NEVER negative). Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function SQL Server 2012 has introduced the new function IsValidDetailed(). This function has made my life very easy. In simple words, this function will check if the spatial object passed is valid or not. If it is valid it will give information that it is valid. If the spatial object is not valid it will return the answer that it is not valid and the reason for the same. This makes it very easy to debug the issue and make the necessary correction. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Ubuntu Preseed set Norwegian Keyboard?

  - by Vangelis Tasoulas

  It's been a couple of days now that I am trying to make a fully automated unattended installation. I managed to make it work with Ubuntu/Cobbler and a preseed file, but I cannot set the correct keyboard layout which is Norwegian in this case. I am doing the tests on a virtual machine and when I am going with a normal manual installation (no preseed) everything is working fine. When I am using the preseed file, I always end up with an "English (US)" keyboard no matter the many different options I have tried. I can change it manually with the "dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration" command, but that's not the case. It should be handled automatically using the preseed file. I am using DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 when the grub is loading, and as I see in "/var/log/installer/syslog" file after the installation has finished, the preseeding commands are accepted. Can anyone help on this? The preseed file I am using is following: d-i debian-installer/country string NO d-i debian-installer/language string en_US:en d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US.UTF-8 d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false d-i keyboard-configuration/layout select Norwegian d-i keyboard-configuration/variant select Norwegian d-i keyboard-configuration/modelcode string pc105 d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string no d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select no d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto d-i netcfg/get_hostname string myhostname d-i netcfg/get_domain string simula.no d-i hw-detect/load_firmware boolean true d-i mirror/country string manual d-i mirror/http/hostname string ftp.uninett.no d-i mirror/http/directory string /ubuntu d-i mirror/http/proxy string http://10.0.1.253:3142/ d-i mirror/codename string precise d-i mirror/suite string precise d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true d-i time/zone string Europe/Oslo d-i clock-setup/ntp boolean true d-i clock-setup/ntp-server string 10.0.1.254 d-i partman-auto/method string lvm partman-auto-lvm partman-auto-lvm/new_vg_name string vg0 d-i partman-auto/purge_lvm_from_device boolean true d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true d-i partman-md/device_remove_md boolean true d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true d-i partman-lvm/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select 30atomic d-i partman/default_filesystem string ext4 d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true d-i partman/choose_partition select finish d-i partman/confirm boolean true d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true d-i partman/mount_style select uuid d-i passwd/root-login boolean false d-i passwd/make-user boolean true d-i passwd/user-fullname string vangelis d-i passwd/username string vangelis d-i passwd/user-password-crypted password $6$asdafdsdfasdfasdf d-i passwd/user-uid string d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean false d-i passwd/user-default-groups string adm cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare d-i user-setup/encrypt-home boolean false d-i apt-setup/restricted boolean true d-i apt-setup/universe boolean true d-i apt-setup/backports boolean true d-i apt-setup/services-select multiselect security d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.ubuntu.com d-i apt-setup/security_path string /ubuntu tasksel tasksel/first multiselect Basic Ubuntu server, OpenSSH server d-i pkgsel/include string build-essential htop vim nmap ntp d-i pkgsel/upgrade select safe-upgrade d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none d-i pkgsel/updatedb boolean true d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true d-i finish-install/keep-consoles boolean false d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note d-i cdrom-detect/eject boolean true d-i debian-installer/exit/halt boolean false d-i debian-installer/exit/poweroff boolean false

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• Workshops, online content show how Oracle infuses simplicity, mobility, extensibility into user experience

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema & Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle has made a huge investment into the user experience of its many different software product families, and recent releases showcase big changes and features that aim to promote end user engagement and efficiency by streamlining navigation and simplifying the user interface. But making Oracle’s enterprise software great-looking and usable doesn’t stop when Oracle products go out the door. The Applications User Experience (UX) team recognizes that our customers may need to customize software to fit their work processes. And that’s why we provide tools such as user experience design patterns to help you maintain the Oracle user experience as you tailor your application to fit your business needs. Often, however, customers may need some context around user experience. How has the Oracle user experience been designed and constructed? Why is a good user experience important for users? How does understanding what goes into the user experience benefit the people who purchase the software for users? There’s a short answer to these questions, and you can read about it on Usable Apps. But truly understanding Oracle’s investment and seeing how it applies across product families occasionally requires a deeper dive into the Oracle user experience, especially if you’re an influencer or decision-maker about Oracle products. To help frame these decisions, the Communications & Outreach team has developed several targeted workshops that explore what Oracle means when it talks about user experience, and provides a roadmap into where the Oracle user experience is going. These workshops require non-disclosure agreements, and have been delivered to Oracle sales folks, Oracle partners, Oracle ACE Directors and ACEs, and a few customers. Some of these audience members have been developers or have a technical background; just as many did not. Here’s a breakdown of the kind of training you can get around the Oracle user experience from the OAUX Communications & Outreach team.For Partners: George Papazzian, Principal, Naviscent with Joyce Ohgi, Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications HCM Pre-Sales Seminar:  In concert with Worldwide Alliances  and  Channels under Applications Partner Enablement Director Jonathan Vinoskey’s guidance, the Applications User Experience team delivers a two-day workshop.  Day one focuses on Oracle Fusion Applications HCM and pre-sales strategy, and Day two focuses on positioning and leveraging Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience.  The next workshops will occur on the following dates: December 4-5, 2013 @ Manchester, UK January 29-30, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia February 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico (email: Shannon Whiteman) March 11-12, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates April 1-2, 2014 @ Chicago, Illinois Partner Advisory Board: A two-day board meeting in the U.S. and U.K. to discuss four main user experience areas for Oracle Fusion Applications: simplicity, visualization & analytics, mobility, & futures. This event is limited to Oracle Diamond Partners, UX bloggers, and key UX influencers and requires legal documentation.  We will be talking about the Oracle applications UX strategy and roadmap. Partner Implementation Training on User Interface: How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps:  In this two-day, hands-on workshop built around Oracle’s Application Development Framework, learn how to build desktop and mobile user interfaces and mobile user interfaces based on Oracle’s experience with Fusion Applications. This workshop is for partners with a technology background who are looking for ways to tailor Fusion Applications using ADF, or have built their own custom solutions using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs. Nov 5-6, 2013 @ Redwood Shores, CA, USA January 28-29th, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia, USA February 25-26, 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico March 9-10, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates To register, contact [email protected] Simplified UI Customization & Extensibility:  Pilot workshop:  We will be reviewing the proposed content for communicating the user experience tool kit available with the next release of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Our core focus will be on what toolkit components our system implementors and independent software vendors will need to respond to customer demand, whether they are extending Fusion Applications, or building custom applications, that will need to leverage the simplified UI. Dec 11th, 2013 @ Reading, UK For information: contact [email protected] Private lab tour and demos: Interested in seeing what’s going on in the Apps UX Labs?  If you are headed to the San Francisco Bay Area, let us know. We can arrange a spin through our usability labs at headquarters. OAUX Expo: This open-house forum gives partners a look at what the UX team is working on, and showcases the next-generation user experiences in a demo environment where attendees can see and touch the applications. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For CustomersAngela Johnston, Gozel Aamoth, Teena Singh, and Yen Chan, Oracle Lab tours: See demos of soon-to-be-released products, and take a spin on usability research equipment such as our eye-tracker. Watch this video to get an idea of what you’ll see. Get our newsletter: Learn about newly released products and see where you can meet us at user group conferences. Participate in a feedback session: Join a focus group or customer feedback session to get an early look at user experience designs for the next generation of software, and provide your thoughts on how well it will work. Join the OUAB: The Oracle Usability Advisory Board meets several times a year to discuss trends in the workforce and provide direction on user experience designs. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Developers (customers, partners, and consultants): Plinio Arbizu, SP Solutions, Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, EiSTechnoogies, Praveen Pillalamarri, EiSTechnologies How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps: This workshop is for attendees with a strong technology background who are looking for ways to tailor customer software using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs.  See above for dates and times. UX design patterns web site: Cut the length of your project down by months. Use these patterns to build out the task flow you need to develop for your users. The patterns have already been usability-tested and represent the best practices that the Oracle UX research team has found in its studies. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Oracle Sales Mike Klein, Jeremy Ashley, Brent White, Oracle Contact your local sales person for more information about the Oracle user experience and the training available from the Applications User Experience Communications & Outreach team. See customer-friendly user experience collateral ranging from the new simplified UI in Oracle Fusion Applications Release 7, to E-Business Suite user experience highlights, to Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards user experience highlights.   Receive access to the same pre-sales and implementation training we provide to partners. For Oracle Sales only: Oracle-only training on the Oracle Fusion Applications UX Innovation Sales Kit.

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• The blocking nature of aggregates

  - by Rob Farley

  I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here.  In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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• The blocking nature of aggregates

  - by Rob Farley

  I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here.  In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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• Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service

  - by Elton Stoneman

  We're in the process of delivering an enabling project to expose on-premise WCF services securely to Internet consumers. The Azure Service Bus Relay is doing the clever stuff, we register our on-premise service with Azure, consumers call into our .servicebus.windows.net namespace, and their requests are relayed and serviced on-premise. In theory it's all wonderfully simple; by using the relay we get lots of protocol options, free HTTPS and load balancing, and by integrating to ACS we get plenty of security options. Part of our delivery is a suite of sample consumers for the service - .NET, jQuery, PHP - and this set of posts will cover setting up the service and the consumers. Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service In theory, this is ultra-straightforward. In practice, and on a dev laptop it is - but in a corporate network with firewalls and proxies, it isn't, so we'll walkthrough some of the pitfalls. Note that I'm using the "old" Azure portal which will soon be out of date, but the new shiny portal should have the same steps available and be easier to use. We start with a simple WCF service which takes a string as input, reverses the string and returns it. The Part 1 version of the code is on GitHub here: on GitHub here: IPASBR Part 1. Configuring Azure Service Bus Start by logging into the Azure portal and registering a Service Bus namespace which will be our endpoint in the cloud. Give it a globally unique name, set it up somewhere near you (if you’re in Europe, remember Europe (North) is Ireland, and Europe (West) is the Netherlands), and  enable ACS integration by ticking "Access Control" as a service: Authenticating and authorizing to ACS When we try to register our on-premise service as a listener for the Service Bus endpoint, we need to supply credentials, which means only trusted service providers can act as listeners. We can use the default "owner" credentials, but that has admin permissions so a dedicated service account is better (Neil Mackenzie has a good post On Not Using owner with the Azure AppFabric Service Bus with lots of permission details). Click on "Access Control Service" for the namespace, navigate to Service Identities and add a new one. Give the new account a sensible name and description: Let ACS generate a symmetric key for you (this will be the shared secret we use in the on-premise service to authenticate as a listener), but be sure to set the expiration date to something usable. The portal defaults to expiring new identities after 1 year - but when your year is up *your identity will expire without warning* and everything will stop working. In production, you'll need governance to manage identity expiration and a process to make sure you renew identities and roll new keys regularly. The new service identity needs to be authorized to listen on the service bus endpoint. This is done through claim mapping in ACS - we'll set up a rule that says if the nameidentifier in the input claims has the value serviceProvider, in the output we'll have an action claim with the value Listen. In the ACS portal you'll see that there is already a Relying Party Application set up for ServiceBus, which has a Default rule group. Edit the rule group and click Add to add this new rule: The values to use are: Issuer: Access Control Service Input claim type: http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier Input claim value: serviceProvider Output claim type: net.windows.servicebus.action Output claim value: Listen When your service namespace and identity are set up, open the Part 1 solution and put your own namespace, service identity name and secret key into the file AzureConnectionDetails.xml in Solution Items, e.g: <azure namespace="sixeyed-ipasbr">    <!-- ACS credentials for the listening service (Part1):-->   <service identityName="serviceProvider"            symmetricKey="nuR2tHhlrTCqf4YwjT2RA2BZ/+xa23euaRJNLh1a/V4="/>  </azure> Build the solution, and the T4 template will generate the Web.config for the service project with your Azure details in the transportClientEndpointBehavior:           <behavior name="SharedSecret">             <transportClientEndpointBehavior credentialType="SharedSecret">               <clientCredentials>                 <sharedSecret issuerName="serviceProvider"                               issuerSecret="nuR2tHhlrTCqf4YwjT2RA2BZ/+xa23euaRJNLh1a/V4="/>               </clientCredentials>             </transportClientEndpointBehavior>           </behavior> , and your service namespace in the Azure endpoint:         <!-- Azure Service Bus endpoints -->          <endpoint address="sb://sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net/net"                   binding="netTcpRelayBinding"                   contract="Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services.IFormatService"                   behaviorConfiguration="SharedSecret">         </endpoint> The sample project is hosted in IIS, but it won't register with Azure until the service is activated. Typically you'd install AppFabric 1.1 for Widnows Server and set the service to auto-start in IIS, but for dev just navigate to the local REST URL, which will activate the service and register it with Azure. Testing the service locally As well as an Azure endpoint, the service has a WebHttpBinding for local REST access:         <!-- local REST endpoint for internal use -->         <endpoint address="rest"                   binding="webHttpBinding"                   behaviorConfiguration="RESTBehavior"                   contract="Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services.IFormatService" /> Build the service, then navigate to: http://localhost/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services/FormatService.svc/rest/reverse?string=abc123 - and you should see the reversed string response: If your network allows it, you'll get the expected response as before, but in the background your service will also be listening in the cloud. Good stuff! Who needs network security? Onto the next post for consuming the service with the netTcpRelayBinding.  Setting up network access to Azure But, if you get an error, it's because your network is secured and it's doing something to stop the relay working. The Service Bus relay bindings try to use direct TCP connections to Azure, so if ports 9350-9354 are available *outbound*, then the relay will run through them. If not, the binding steps down to standard HTTP, and issues a CONNECT across port 443 or 80 to set up a tunnel for the relay. If your network security guys are doing their job, the first option will be blocked by the firewall, and the second option will be blocked by the proxy, so you'll get this error: System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException: Unable to reach sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net via TCP (9351, 9352) or HTTP (80, 443) - and that will probably be the start of lots of discussions. Network guys don't really like giving servers special permissions for the web proxy, and they really don't like opening ports, so they'll need to be convinced about this. The resolution in our case was to put up a dedicated box in a DMZ, tinker with the firewall and the proxy until we got a relay connection working, then run some traffic which the the network guys monitored to do a security assessment afterwards. Along the way we hit a few more issues, diagnosed mainly with Fiddler and Wireshark: System.Net.ProtocolViolationException: Chunked encoding upload is not supported on the HTTP/1.0 protocol - this means the TCP ports are not available, so Azure tries to relay messaging traffic across HTTP. The service can access the endpoint, but the proxy is downgrading traffic to HTTP 1.0, which does not support tunneling, so Azure can’t make its connection. We were using the Squid proxy, version 2.6. The Squid project is incrementally adding HTTP 1.1 support, but there's no definitive list of what's supported in what version (here are some hints). System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityNegotiationException: The X.509 certificate CN=servicebus.windows.net chain building failed. The certificate that was used has a trust chain that cannot be verified. Replace the certificate or change the certificateValidationMode. The evocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. - by this point we'd given up on the HTTP proxy and opened the TCP ports. We got this error when the relay binding does it's authentication hop to ACS. The messaging traffic is TCP, but the control traffic still goes over HTTP, and as part of the ACS authentication the process checks with a revocation server to see if Microsoft’s ACS cert is still valid, so the proxy still needs some clearance. The service account (the IIS app pool identity) needs access to: www.public-trust.com mscrl.microsoft.com We still got this error periodically with different accounts running the app pool. We fixed that by ensuring the machine-wide proxy settings are set up, so every account uses the correct proxy: netsh winhttp set proxy proxy-server="http://proxy.x.y.z" - and you might need to run this to clear out your credential cache: certutil -urlcache * delete If your network guys end up grudgingly opening ports, they can restrict connections to the IP address range for your chosen Azure datacentre, which might make them happier - see Windows Azure Datacenter IP Ranges. After all that you've hopefully got an on-premise service listening in the cloud, which you can consume from pretty much any technology.

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• New Process For Receiving Oracle Certification Exam Results

  - by Brandye Barrington

  On November 15, 2012, Oracle Certification exam results will be available directly from Oracle's certification portal, CertView. After completing an exam at a testing center, you will login to CertView to access and print your exam scores by selecting the See My New Exam Results Now link or the Print My New Exam Results Now link from the homepage. This will provide access to all certification and exam history in one place through Oracle, providing tighter integration with other activities at Oracle. This change in policy will also increase security around data privacy. AUTHENTICATE YOUR CERTVIEW ACCOUNT NOW One very important step you must take is to authenticate your CertView account BEFORE taking your exam. This way, if there are any issues with authorization, you have time to get these sorted out before testing. Keep in mind that it can take up to 3 business days for a CertView account to be manually authenticated, so completing this process before testing is key! You will need to create a web account at PearsonVUE prior to registering for your exam and you will need to create an Oracle Web Account prior to authenticating your CertView account. The CertView account will be available for authentication within 30 minutes of creating a Pearson VUE web account at certview.oracle.com. GETTING YOUR EXAM RESULTS FROM ORACLE Before taking the scheduled exam, you should authenticate your account at certview.oracle.com using the email address and Oracle Testing ID in your Pearson VUE profile. You will be required to have an Oracle Web Account to authenticate your CertView account. After taking the exam, you will receive an email from Oracle indicating that your exam results are available at certview.oracle.com If you have previously authenticated your CertView account, you will simply click on the link in the email, which will take you to CertView, login and select See My New Exam Results Now. If you have not authenticated your CertView account before receiving this notification email, you will be required to authenticate your CertView account before accessing your exam results. Authentication requires an Oracle Web Account user name and password and the following information from your Pearson VUE profile: email address and Oracle Testing ID. Click on the link in the email to authenticate your CertView account You will be given the option to create an Oracle Web Account if you do no already have one.  After account authentication, you will be able to login to CertView and select See My New Exam Results Now to view your exam results or Print My New Exam Results Now to print your exam results. As always, if you need assistance with your CertView account, please contact Oracle Certification Support. YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED More Information FAQ: Receiving Exam Scores FAQ: How Do I Log Into CertView? FAQ: How To Get Exam Results FAQ: Accessing Exam Results in CertView FAQ: How Will I Know When My Exam Results Are Available? FAQ: What If I Don't Get An Exam Results Email Alert? FAQ: How To Download and Print Exam Score Reports FAQ: What If I Think My Exam Results Are Wrong In CertView? FAQ: Is Oracle Changing The Way That Exams Are Scored?

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• Where to draw the line between development-led security and administration-led security?

  - by haylem

  There are cases where you have the opportunity, as a developer, to enforce stricter security features and protections on a software, though they could very well be managed at an environmental level (ie, the operating system would take care of it). Where would you say you draw the line, and what elements do you factor in your decision? Concrete Examples User Management is the OS's responsibility Not exactly meant as a security feature, but in a similar case Google Chrome used to not allow separate profiles. The invoked reason (though it now supports multiple profiles for a same OS user) used to be that user management was the operating system's responsibility. Disabling Web-Form Fields A recurrent request I see addressed online is to have auto-completion be disabled on form fields. Auto-completion didn't exist in old browsers, and was a welcome feature at the time it was introduced for people who needed to fill in forms often. But it also brought in some security concerns, and so some browsers started to implement, on top of the (obviously needed) setting in their own preference/customization panel, an autocomplete attribute for form or input fields. And this has now been introduced into the upcoming HTML5 standard. For browsers who do not listen to this attribute, strange hacks *\ are offered, like generating unique IDs and names for fields to avoid them from being suggested in future forms (which comes with another herd of issues, like polluting your local auto-fill cache and not preventing a password from being stored in it, but instead probably duplicating its occurences). In this particular case, and others, I'd argue that this is a user setting and that it's the user's desire and the user's responsibility to enable or disable auto-fill (by disabling the feature altogether). And if it is based on an internal policy and security requirement in a corporate environment, then substitute the user for the administrator in the above. I assume it could be counter-argued that the user may want to access non-critical applications (or sites) with this handy feature enabled, and critical applications with this feature disabled. But then I'd think that's what security zones are for (in some browsers), or the sign that you need a more secure (and dedicated) environment / account to use these applications. * I obviously don't deny the ingenuity of the people who were forced to find workarounds, just the necessity of said workarounds. Questions That was a tad long-winded, so I guess my questions are: Would you in general consider it to be the application's (hence, the developer's) responsiblity? Where do you draw the line, if not in the "general" case?

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• Advice Needed: Developers blocked by waiting on code to merge from another branch using GitFlow

  - by fogwolf

  Our team just made the switch from FogBugz & Kiln/Mercurial to Jira & Stash/Git. We are using the Git Flow model for branching, adding subtask branches off of feature branches (relating to Jira subtasks of Jira features). We are using Stash to assign a reviewer when we create a pull request to merge back into the parent branch (usually develop but for subtasks back into the feature branch). The problem we're finding is that even with the best planning and breakdown of feature cases, when multiple developers are working together on the same feature, say on the front-end and back-end, if they are working on interdependent code that is in separate branches one developer ends up blocking the other. We've tried pulling between each others' branches as we develop. We've also tried creating local integration branches each developer can pull from multiple branches to test the integration as they develop. Finally, and this seems to work possibly the best for us so far, though with a bit more overhead, we have tried creating an integration branch off of the feature branch right off the bat. When a subtask branch (off of the feature branch) is ready for a pull request and code review, we also manually merge those change sets into this feature integration branch. Then all interested developers are able to pull from that integration branch into other dependent subtask branches. This prevents anyone from waiting for any branch they are dependent upon to pass code review. I know this isn't necessarily a Git issue - it has to do with working on interdependent code in multiple branches, mixed with our own work process and culture. If we didn't have the strict code-review policy for develop (true integration branch) then developer 1 could merge to develop for developer 2 to pull from. Another complication is that we are also required to do some preliminary testing as part of the code review process before handing the feature off to QA.This means that even if front-end developer 1 is pulling directly from back-end developer 2's branch as they go, if back-end developer 2 finishes and his/her pull request is sitting in code review for a week, then front-end developer 2 technically can't create his pull request/code review because his/her code reviewer can't test because back-end developer 2's code hasn't been merged into develop yet. Bottom line is we're finding ourselves in a much more serial rather than parallel approach in these instance, depending on which route we go, and would like to find a process to use to avoid this. Last thing I'll mention is we realize by sharing code across branches that haven't been code reviewed and finalized yet we are in essence using the beta code of others. To a certain extent I don't think we can avoid that and are willing to accept that to a degree. Anyway, any ideas, input, etc... greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• What Would a CyberWar Do To Your Business?

  - by Brian Dayton

  In mid-February the Bipartisan Policy Center in the United States hosted Cyber ShockWave, a simulation of how the country might respond to a catastrophic cyber event. An attack takes place, they can't isolate where it came from or who did it, simulated press reports and market impacts...and the participants in the exercise have to brief the President and advise him/her on what to do. Last week, Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff who participated in the exercise summarized his findings in Federal Computer Weekly. The article, given FCW's readership and the topic is obviously focused on the public sector and US Federal policies. However, it touches on some broader issues that impact the private sector as well--which are applicable to any government and country/region-- such as: ·         How would the US (or any) government collaborate to identify and defeat such an attack? Chertoff calls this out as a current gap. How do the public and private sector collaborate today? How would the massive and disparate collection of agencies and companies act together in a crunch? ·         What would the impact on industries and global economies be? Chertoff, and a companion article in Government Computer News, only touch briefly on the subject--focusing on the impact on capital markets. "There's no question this has a disastrous impact on the economy," said Stephen Friedman, former director of the National Economic Council under President George W. Bush who played the role of treasury secretary. "You have financial markets shut down at this point, ordinary transactions are dramatically depleted, there's no question that this has a major impact on consumer confidence." That Got Me Thinking ·         How would it impact Oracle's customers? I know they have business continuity plans--is this one of their scenarios? What if it's not? How would it impact manufacturing lines, ATM networks, customer call centers... ·         How would it impact me and the companies I rely on? The supermarket down the street, my Internet Service Provider, the service station where I bought gas last night.   I sure don't have any answers, and neither do Chertoff or the participants in the exercise. "I have to tell you that ... we are operating in a bit of unchartered territory." said Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general who played the role of attorney general in the exercise.    But it is a good thing that governments and businesses are considering this scenario and doing what they can to prevent it from happening.

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• Lubuntu: neither shut-down nor restart works

  - by Rantanplan

  aI have a freshly installed Lubuntu 14.04.1 (installed with forcepae option on a laptop with Pentium M processor). The only problem that I have found so far is that I cannot shut-down or restart the laptop. It always continues showing "Lubuntu" and some dots. Pressing Esc it says wait-for-state stop/waiting * Stopping rsync daemon rsync [OK] * Asking all remaining processes to terminate… [OK] * Killing all remaining processes… [fail] ModemManager [597] : <info> Caught signal, shutting down… ModemManager [597] : <info> ModemManager is shut down nm-dispatcher.action: Could not get the system bus. Make sure the message bus daemon is running! Message: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken. * Deactivating swap… [OK] * Will now halt The cursor remains blinking but the only way to switch it off is to hold the power-off key pressed for some seconds. I tried sudo shutdown -h now, sudo halt and sudo poweroff resulting in the same problem. I also tried to add acpi=force in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" in /etc/default/grub and run sudo update-grub; then, using the taskbar's shot-down button lead to a direct stop of the laptop equal to holding the power-off key pressed for some seconds. Next I followed the answer http://askubuntu.com/a/202481/288322. Now, I directly receive some messages during shut-down starting wait-for-state stop/waiting * Stopping rsync daemon rsync [OK] * Asking all remaining processes to terminate… [OK] [ 240.944277] INFO: task kworker/0:2:24: block for more than 120 seconds. [ 240.944461] Tainted: G S 3.13.0-34-generic #60-Ubuntu [ 240.944623] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_tasks_timeout_secs" disables this message. followed by some more similar lines and then: * Killing all remaining processes… [fail] ModemManager [576] : <info> Caught signal, shutting down… nm-dispatcher.action: Caught signal 15, shutting down... ModemManager [576] : <info> ModemManager is shut down * Deactivating swap… [OK] * Will now halt [ 600.944276] INFO: task kworker/0:2:24: block for more than 120 seconds. [ 600.944458] Tainted: G S 3.13.0-34-generic #60-Ubuntu [ 600.944619] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_tasks_timeout_secs" disables this message. Then, nothing more was coming during the next 5 minutes. If you know where can I find relevant error information, I will be happy to search for them.

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• Girl's Day 2012 in Potsdam

  - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt: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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Every year in April 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: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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} , technical enterprises and other organisations are invited to organise an open day for girls – called Girl´s Day. It has become a tradition for Oracle for more than 6 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: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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} years, to participate in this special day and to encourage girls to discover technical work environments.   On the 26th of April 2012, 27 pupils aged 12 to 15 came to Oracle’s office in Potsdam in order to obtain interesting insights about Oracle´s business practices. An interactive 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: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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} four-hour program was specifically organized for all participants. At first, all pupils got to know Oracle as an enterprise with it’s different departments and it’s particular „business language“. What is hardware and software? Why do companies need a database? Questions as such were tailored and simply illustrated by 13 colleagues from the areas of Sales, Sales Consulting, Support and Recruitment.   Followed by a short introduction about career paths from our female colleagues and their respective departments, the girls decided, according to their interests, which business area they would like to get more insights from. Based on their decision the groups were set up and the girls than discovered the work places. This helped everyone to dive deep into the everyday work life, how the offices are structured and how communication with clients is done via web conferences. All girls were encouraged to take part in the conference together with their Oracle advisor. 12 o´clock – lunch time. Besides a well-prepared buffet 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: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-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} , all girls had now the opportunity to get all open questions clarified or to ask questions they did not dare to ask in front of a big group. After the lunch break, Anja Raack from the Graduate Recruitment team presented more about recruitment topics and gave useful advice on how to write professional emails.   After a short group assignment, where all participants had to identify common mistakes done in an email, a quiz completed this special day. All 5 groups showed a lot of enthusiasm during this game but no one had to worry as every single participant was rewarded with a prize and certificate.   To sum it up, we were very proud to host the girls for half a day and were impressed by their dedication. Hopefully, sooner or later, we will see some of them coming back to Oracle – either for the next Girl´s Day or one of our entry level positions. This day has shown that everyone can start a challenging career within an exciting industry. What matters is dedication and commitment to strive for the best.  Do you want to find out more about our job opportunities? Follow us on http://campus.oracle.com.

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• Creating a Training Lab on Windows Azure

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2013/06/17/153149.aspxThis week we are preparing for a training course that Alan Smith will be running for the support teams at one of my customers around Windows Azure. In order to facilitate the training lab we have a few prerequisites we need to handle. One of the biggest ones is that although the support team all have MSDN accounts the local desktops they work on are not ideal for running most of the labs as we want to give them some additional developer background training around Azure. Some recent Azure announcements really help us in this area: MSDN software can now be used on Azure VM You don't pay for Azure VM's when they are no longer used  Since the support team only have limited experience of Windows Azure and the organisation also have an Enterprise Agreement we decided it would be best value for money to spin up a training lab in a subscription on the EA and then we can turn the machines off when we are done. At the same time we would be able to spin them back up when the users need to do some additional lab work once the training course is completed. In order to achieve this I wanted to create a powershell script which would setup my training lab. The aim was to create 18 VM's which would be based on a prebuilt template with Visual Studio and the Azure development tools. The script I used is described below The Start & Variables The below text will setup the powershell environment and some variables which I will use elsewhere in the script. It will also import the Azure Powershell cmdlets. You can see below that I will need to download my publisher settings file and know some details from my Azure account. At this point I will assume you have a basic understanding of Azure & Powershell so already know how to do this. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestrictedcls $startTime = get-dateImport-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1"# Azure Publisher Settings $azurePublisherSettings = '<Your settings file>.publishsettings'  # Subscription Details $subscriptionName = "<Your subscription name>" $defaultStorageAccount = "<Your default storage account>"  # Affinity Group Details $affinityGroup = '<Your affinity group>' $dataCenter = 'West Europe' # From Get-AzureLocation  # VM Details $baseVMName = 'TRN' $adminUserName = '<Your admin username>' $password = '<Your admin password>' $size = 'Medium' $vmTemplate = '<The name of your VM template image>' $rdpFilePath = '<File path to save RDP files to>' $machineSettingsPath = '<File path to save machine info to>'    Functions In the next section of the script I have some functions which are used to perform certain actions. The first is called CreateVM. This will do the following actions: If the VM already exists it will be deleted Create the cloud service Create the VM from the template I have created Add an endpoint so we can RDP to them all over the same port Download the RDP file so there is a short cut the trainees can easily access the machine via Write settings for the machine to a log file  function CreateVM($machineNo) { # Specify a name for the new VM $machineName = "$baseVMName-$machineNo" Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName"       # Get the Azure VM Image      $myImage = Get-AzureVMImage $vmTemplate   #If the VM already exists delete and re-create it $existingVm = Get-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName if($existingVm -ne $null) { Write-Host "VM already exists so deleting it" Remove-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName }   "Creating Service" $serviceName = "bupa-azure-train-$machineName" Remove-AzureService -Force -ServiceName $serviceName New-AzureService -Location $dataCenter -ServiceName $serviceName   Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName" New-AzureQuickVM -Windows -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -ImageName $myImage.ImageName -InstanceSize $size -AdminUsername $adminUserName -Password $password  Write-Host "Updating the RDP endpoint for $machineName" Get-AzureVM -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName ` | Add-AzureEndpoint -Name RDP -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3389 -PublicPort 550 ` | Update-AzureVM    Write-Host "Get the RDP File for machine $machineName" $machineRDPFilePath = "$rdpFilePath\$machineName.rdp" Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -LocalPath "$machineRDPFilePath"   WriteMachineSettings "$machineName" "$serviceName" }    The delete machine settings function is used to delete the log file before we start re-running the process.  function DeleteMachineSettings() { Write-Host "Deleting the machine settings output file" [System.IO.File]::Delete("$machineSettingsPath"); }    The write machine settings function will get the VM and then record its details to the log file. The importance of the log file is that I can easily provide the information for all of the VM's to our infrastructure team to be able to configure access to all of the VM's    function WriteMachineSettings([string]$vmName, [string]$vmServiceName) { Write-Host "Writing to the machine settings output file"   $vm = Get-AzureVM -name $vmName -ServiceName $vmServiceName $vmEndpoint = Get-AzureEndpoint -VM $vm -Name RDP   $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder $sb.Append("Service Name: "); $sb.Append($vm.ServiceName); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("VM: "); $sb.Append($vm.Name); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("RDP Public Port: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Port); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("Public DNS: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Vip); $sb.AppendLine(""); [System.IO.File]::AppendAllText($machineSettingsPath, $sb.ToString());  } # end functions    Rest of Script In the rest of the script it is really just the bit that orchestrates the actions we want to happen. It will load the publisher settings, select the Azure subscription and then loop around the CreateVM function and create 16 VM's  Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile $azurePublisherSettings Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName -CurrentStorageAccount $defaultStorageAccount Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName  DeleteMachineSettings    "Starting creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" $numberOfVMs = 16  for ($index=1; $index -le $numberOfVMs; $index++) { $vmNo = "$index" CreateVM($vmNo); }    "Finished creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" # Give it a Minute Start-Sleep -s 60  $endTime = get-date "Script run time " + ($endTime - $startTime)    Conclusion As you can see there is nothing too fancy about this script but in our case of creating a small isolated training lab which is not connected to our corporate network then we can easily use this to provision the lab. Im sure if this is of use to anyone you can easily modify it to do other things with the lab environment too. A couple of points to note are that there are some soft limits in Azure about the number of cores and services your subscription can use. You may need to contact the Azure support team to be able to increase this limit. In terms of the real business value of this approach, it was not possible to use the existing desktops to do the training on, and getting some internal virtual machines would have been relatively expensive and time consuming for our ops team to do. With the Azure option we are able to spin these machines up for a temporary period during the training course and then throw them away when we are done. We expect the costing of this test lab to be very small, especially considering we have EA pricing. As a ball park I think my 18 lab VM training environment will cost in the region of $80 per day on our EA. This is a fraction of the cost of the creation of a single VM on premise.

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• Github Organization Repositories, Issues, Multiple Developers, and Forking - Best Workflow Practices

  - by Jim Rubenstein

  A weird title, yes, but I've got a bit of ground to cover I think. We have an organization account on github with private repositories. We want to use github's native issues/pull-requests features (pull requests are basically exactly what we want as far as code reviews and feature discussions). We found the tool hub by defunkt which has a cool little feature of being able to convert an existing issue to a pull request, and automatically associate your current branch with it. I'm wondering if it is best practice to have each developer in the organization fork the organization's repository to do their feature work/bug fixes/etc. This seems like a pretty solid work flow (as, it's basically what every open source project on github does) but we want to be sure that we can track issues and pull requests from ONE source, the organization's repository. So I have a few questions: Is a fork-per-developer approach appropriate in this case? It seems like it could be a little overkill. I'm not sure that we need a fork for every developer, unless we introduce developers who don't have direct push access and need all their code reviewed. In which case, we would want to institute a policy like that, for those developers only. So, which is better? All developers in a single repository, or a fork for everyone? Does anyone have experience with the hub tool, specifically the pull-request feature? If we do a fork-per-developer (or even for less-privileged devs) will the pull-request feature of hub operate on the pull requests from the upstream master repository (the organization's repository?) or does it have different behavior? EDIT I did some testing with issues, forks, and pull requests and found that. If you create an issue on your organization's repository, then fork the repository from your organization to your own github account, do some changes, merge to your fork's master branch. When you try to run hub -i <issue #> you get an error, User is not authorized to modify the issue. So, apparently that work flow won't work.

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• Guide to MySQL & NoSQL, Webinar Q&A

  - by Mat Keep

  0 0 1 959 5469 Homework 45 12 6416 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} Yesterday we ran a webinar discussing the demands of next generation web services and how blending the best of relational and NoSQL technologies enables developers and architects to deliver the agility, performance and availability needed to be successful. Attendees posted a number of great questions to the MySQL developers, serving to provide additional insights into areas like auto-sharding and cross-shard JOINs, replication, performance, client libraries, etc. So I thought it would be useful to post those below, for the benefit of those unable to attend the webinar. Before getting to the Q&A, there are a couple of other resources that maybe useful to those looking at NoSQL capabilities within MySQL: - On-Demand webinar (coming soon!) - Slides used during the webinar - Guide to MySQL and NoSQL whitepaper  - MySQL Cluster demo, including NoSQL interfaces, auto-sharing, high availability, etc.  So here is the Q&A from the event  Q. Where does MySQL Cluster fit in to the CAP theorem? A. MySQL Cluster is flexible. A single Cluster will prefer consistency over availability in the presence of network partitions. A pair of Clusters can be configured to prefer availability over consistency. A full explanation can be found on the MySQL Cluster & CAP Theorem blog post.  Q. Can you configure the number of replicas? (the slide used a replication factor of 1) Yes. A cluster is configured by an .ini file. The option NoOfReplicas sets the number of originals and replicas: 1 = no data redundancy, 2 = one copy etc. Usually there's no benefit in setting it >2. Q. Interestingly most (if not all) of the NoSQL databases recommend having 3 copies of data (the replication factor).    Yes, with configurable quorum based Reads and writes. MySQL Cluster does not need a quorum of replicas online to provide service. Systems that require a quorum need > 2 replicas to be able to tolerate a single failure. Additionally, many NoSQL systems take liberal inspiration from the original GFS paper which described a 3 replica configuration. MySQL Cluster avoids the need for a quorum by using a lightweight arbitrator. You can configure more than 2 replicas, but this is a tradeoff between incrementally improved availability, and linearly increased cost. Q. Can you have cross node group JOINS? Wouldn't that run into the risk of flooding the network? MySQL Cluster 7.2 supports cross nodegroup joins. A full cross-join can require a large amount of data transfer, which may bottleneck on network bandwidth. However, for more selective joins, typically seen with OLTP and light analytic applications, cross node-group joins give a great performance boost and network bandwidth saving over having the MySQL Server perform the join. Q. Are the details of the benchmark available anywhere? According to my calculations it results in approx. 350k ops/sec per processor which is the largest number I've seen lately The details are linked from Mikael Ronstrom's blog The benchmark uses a benchmarking tool we call flexAsynch which runs parallel asynchronous transactions. It involved 100 byte reads, of 25 columns each. Regarding the per-processor ops/s, MySQL Cluster is particularly efficient in terms of throughput/node. It uses lock-free minimal copy message passing internally, and maximizes ID cache reuse. Note also that these are in-memory tables, there is no need to read anything from disk. Q. Is access control (like table) planned to be supported for NoSQL access mode? Currently we have not seen much need for full SQL-like access control (which has always been overkill for web apps and telco apps). So we have no plans, though especially with memcached it is certainly possible to turn-on connection-level access control. But specifically table level controls are not planned. Q. How is the performance of memcached APi with MySQL against memcached+MySQL or any other Object Cache like Ecache with MySQL DB? With the memcache API we generally see a memcached response in less than 1 ms. and a small cluster with one memcached server can handle tens of thousands of operations per second. Q. Can .NET can access MemcachedAPI? Yes, just use a .Net memcache client such as the enyim or BeIT memcache libraries. Q. Is the row level locking applicable when you update a column through memcached API? An update that comes through memcached uses a row lock and then releases it immediately. Memcached operations like "INCREMENT" are actually pushed down to the data nodes. In most cases the locks are not even held long enough for a network round trip. Q. Has anyone published an example using something like PHP? I am assuming that you just use the PHP memcached extension to hook into the memcached API. Is that correct? Not that I'm aware of but absolutely you can use it with php or any of the other drivers Q. For beginner we need more examples. Take a look here for a fully worked example Q. Can I access MySQL using Cobol (Open Cobol) or C and if so where can I find the coding libraries etc? A. There is a cobol implementation that works well with MySQL, but I do not think it is Open Cobol. Also there is a MySQL C client library that is a standard part of every mysql distribution Q. Is there a place to go to find help when testing and/implementing the NoSQL access? If using Cluster then you can use the [email protected] alias or post on the MySQL Cluster forum Q. Are there any white papers on this?  Yes - there is more detail in the MySQL Guide to NoSQL whitepaper If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to use the comments below!

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• Get Information to Your Blog with Microsoft Broadcaster

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you often have people ask you for advice about technology, or do you write tech-focused blog or newsletter?  Here’s how you can get information to share with your readers about Microsoft technology with Microsoft Broadcaster. Microsoft Broadcaster is a new service from Microsoft to help publishers, bloggers, developers, and other IT professionals find relevant information and resources from Microsoft.  You can use it to help discover things to write about, or simply discover new information about the technology you use.  Broadcaster will also notify you when new resources are available about the topics that interest you.  Let’s look at how you could use this to expand your blog and help your users. Getting Started Head over to the Microsoft Broadcaster site (link below), and click Join to get started. Sign in with your Windows Live ID, or create a new account if you don’t already have one. Near the bottom of the page, add information about your blog, newsletter, or group that you want to share Broadcaster information with.  Click Add when you’re done entering information.  You can enter as many sites or groups as you wish. When you’ve entered all of your information, click the Apply button at the bottom of the page.  Broadcaster will then let you know your information has been submitted, but you’ll need to wait several days to see if you are approved or not. Our application was approved about 2 days after applying, though this may vary.  When you’re approved, you’ll receive an email letting you know.  Return to the Broadcaster website (link below), but this time, click Sign in. Accept the terms of use by clicking I Accept at the bottom of the page. Confirm that your information entered previously is correct, and then click Configure my keywords at the bottom of the page. Now you can pick the topics you want to stay informed about.  Type keywords in the textbox, and it will bring up relevant topics with IntelliSense. Here we’ve added several topics to keep up with. Next select the Microsoft Products you want to keep track of.  If the product you want to keep track of is not listed, make sure to list it in the keywords section as above. Finally, select the types of content you wish to see, including articles, eBooks, webcasts, and more. Finally, when everything’s entered, click Configure My Alerts at the bottom of the page. Broadcaster can automatically email you when new content is found.  If you would like this, click Subscribe.  Otherwise, simply click Access Dashboard to go ahead and find your personalized content. If you choose to receive emails of new content, you’ll have to configure it with Windows Live Alerts.  Click Continue to set this up. Select if you want to receive Messenger alerts, emails, and/or text messages when new content is available.  Click Save when you’re finished. Finally, select how often you want to be notified, and then click Access Dashboard to view the content currently available. Finding Content For Your Blog, Site, or Group Now you can find content specified for your interests from the dashboard.  To access the dashboard in the future, simply go to the Broadcaster site and click Sign In. Here you can see available content, and can search for different topics or customize the topics shown. You’ll see snippets of information from various Microsoft videos, articles, whitepapers, eBooks, and more, depending on your settings.  Click the link at the top of the snippet to view the content, or right-click and copy the link to use in emails or on social networks like Twitter. If you’d like to add this snippet to your website or blog, click the Download content link at the bottom.   Now you can preview what the snippet will look like on your site, and change the width or height to fit your site.  You can view and edit the source code of the snippet from the box at the bottom, and then copy it to use on your site. Copy the code, and paste it in the HTML of a blog post, email, webpage, or anywhere else you wish to share it.  Here we’re pasting it into the HTML editor in Windows Live Writer so we can post it to a blog. After adding a title and opening paragraph, we have a nice blog post that only took a few minutes to put together but should still be useful for our readers.  You can check out the blog post we created at the link below. Readers can click on the links, which will direct them to the content on Microsoft’s websites. Conclusion If you frequently need to find educational and informative content about Microsoft products and services, Broadcaster can be a great service to keep you up to date.  The service worked quite good in our tests, and generally found relevant content to our keywords.  We had difficulty embedding links to eBooks that were listed by Broadcaster, but everything else worked for us.  Now you can always have high quality content to help your customers, coworkers, friends, and more, and you just might find something that will help you, too! Link Microsoft Broadcaster (registration required) Example Post at Techinch.com with Content from Microsoft Broadcaster Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Create An Electronic Business Card In Outlook 2007Mysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPAnnouncing the How-To Geek BlogsNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineHow To Create and Publish Blog Posts in Word 2010 & 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Fix Common Inkjet Printer Errors Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 What is HTML5? 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• ACORD LOMA 2010: Building Insurance Companies in the Clouds

  - by [email protected]

  Chuck Johnston, vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance, participated in a featured speaking session at ACORD LOMA 2010. He provides an update on his discussions with insurers at the show and after his presentation. Every year I always make a point of walking the show floor at the ACORD LOMA technology conference to visit with colleagues and competitors, and try to get a feel for which way the industry will move over the next 12 months. Insurers are looking for substance in cloud (computing), trying to mix business with pleasure (monetizing social networks), and expect differentiation through commodity (Software as a Service). The disconnect at this show is that most vendors are still struggling with creating a clear path from Facebook to customer intimacy, SaaS to core cost savings and clouds to ubiquitous presence. Vendors need to find new ways to help insurers find the real value in these potentially disruptive technologies by understanding the changes coming to the insurance business and how these new technologies impact the new insurance business. Oracle's approach to understanding the evolving insurance industry comes from a discussion with our customers in our Insurance CIO Council, where one of our customers suggested we buy an insurance company to really understand our customers. We have decided to do the next best thing and build our own model of an insurance company, Alamere Insurance, that uses the latest technologies to transform its own business. Alamere will never issue an actual policy, but it does give us a framework to consider the impacts of changes in the insurance landscape and how Oracle technology meets the challenge or needs to evolve to help our customers be successful. In preparing for my talk at the conference using Alamere as my organizing theme, I found myself reading actuarial memoranda on CSO table changes and articles on underwriting theory that really made me think about my customer's problems first and foremost, and then how Oracle technology can provide answers. As much as I prefer techno-thrillers and sci-fi novels to actuarial papers for plane reading, I got very excited about the idea of putting myself back in the customer shoes I haven't worn in a decade, and really looking at how Oracle can power the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise. Talking to customers and industry people after the session, the idea of Alamere seemed to excite people and I got a lot of suggestions as to what lines of business we should model and where we should focus first on technology uptake. One customer said to a colleague that Oracle's attempt to "share their pain" was unique among vendors. More about Alamere, and the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise next time. Chuck Johnston is vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance.

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Deploying ASP.NET MVC 3 web application to server where ASP.NET MVC 3 is not installed

  - by mbridge

  You can built sample application on ASP.NET MVC 3 for deploying it to your hosting first. To try it out first put it to web server where ASP.NET MVC 3 installed. In this posting I will tell you what files you need and where you can find them. Here are the files you need to upload to get application running on server where ASP.NET MVC 3 is not installed. Also you can deploying ASP.NET MVC 3 web application to server where ASP.NET MVC 3 is not installed like this example: you can change reference to System.Web.Helpers.dll to be the local one so it is copied to bin folder of your application. First file in this list is my web application dll and you don’t need it to get ASP.NET MVC 3 running. All other files are located at the following folder: C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\ If there are more files needed in some other scenarios then please leave me a comment here. And… don’t forget to convert the folder in IIS to application. While developing an application locally, this isn’t a problem. But when you are ready to deploy your application to a hosting provider, this might well be a problem if the hoster does not have the ASP.NET MVC assemblies installed in the GAC. Fortunately, ASP.NET MVC is still bin-deployable. If your hosting provider has ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 installed, then you’ll only need to include the MVC DLL. If your hosting provider is still on ASP.NET 3.5, then you’ll need to deploy all three. It turns out that it’s really easy to do so. Also, ASP.NET MVC runs in Medium Trust, so it should work with most hosting providers’ Medium Trust policies. It’s always possible that a hosting provider customizes their Medium Trust policy to be draconian. Deployment is easy when you know what to copy in archive for publishing your web site on ASP.NET MVC 3 or later versions. What I like to do is use the Publish feature of Visual Studio to publish to a local directory and then upload the files to my hosting provider. If your hosting provider supports FTP, you can often skip this intermediate step and publish directly to the FTP site. The first thing I do in preparation is to go to my MVC web application project and expand the References node in the project tree. Select the aforementioned three assemblies and in the Properties dialog, set Copy Local to True. Now just right click on your application and select Publish. This brings up the following Publish wizard Notice that in this example, I selected a local directory. When I hit Publish, all the files needed to deploy my app are available in the directory I chose, including the assemblies that were in the GAC. Another ASP.NET MVC 3 article: - New Features in ASP.NET MVC 3 - ASP.NET MVC 3 First Look

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• Get to Know a Candidate (2 of 25): Merlin Miller&ndash;American Third Position Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Meet Merlin Miller of American Third Position Party In addition to being American Third Position Party nominee, Miller is an independent film maker.  He is a graduate of West Point and has commanded two units in the United States Army.  After military service he worked as an industrial engineering manager for Michelin Tire.  He learned about film making by earning an MFA from the University of Southern California. Mr. Miller is on the ballot in: CO, NJ, and TN. In the 2000’s, Miller began taking an increasingly paleoconservative political stance.  He claimed that Hollywood “ surreptitiously seeks to destroy our European-American heritage and our Christian-based traditional values, and replace them with values that debase these traditional values and elevate minorities as paragons of virtue and wisdom....Today’s motion pictures, in concert with other forms of mass media entertainment, are the greatest enemies to the well-being of our progeny and the future of our country.” Miller states that he "doesn't like" interracial marriage; however, he does not support outlawing interracial marriage, either.  Miller has denied being anti-Semitic, instead claiming that he merely opposes "favoritism" granted to Jews in the film industry.  He also opposes illegal immigration and what he refers to as "wide open borders" in the United States. The American Third Position Party (A3P) is a third positionist American political party which promotes white supremacy.  It was officially launched in January 2010 (although in November 2009 it filed papers to get on a ballot in California) partially to channel the right-wing populist resentment engendered by the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and the policies of the Obama administration and defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of white Americans. The party takes a strong stand against immigration and globalization, and strongly supports an anti-interventionist foreign policy. Although the party does not support labor unions, they do strongly support the labor rights of the American working class on a platform of placing American workers first over illegal immigrant workers and banning of overseas corporate relocation of American industry and technology Third Position or Third Alternative refers to a revolutionary nationalist political position that emphasizes its opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right", instead claiming to syncretize radical ideas from both ends of the political spectrum Learn more about Merlin Miller and American Third Position Party on Wikipedia.

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• Spotlight on an office - Dublin!

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  In this third instalment of our monthly topic ‘Spotlight on an Office’, we visit Dublin, Ireland Oracle has 5 offices in Dublin all in the EastPoint Business Park close to Dublin City centre. In Dublin there are currently 1,000 people working for Oracle. You’ll find, among others, a large part of OracleDirect, our inside sales organization, part of our EMEA Finance organization and employees from Product and Systems Development who work on the heart of Oracle’s products. Facilities EastPoint Business Park is located next to the Irish Financial Service Centre (IFSC) and is only one train stop away from Dublin city centre. This seafront business park and nearby amenities cater for staff’s needs, which include a Sandwich Bar, a Coffee Shop and a small Convenience Store and Newsagent. Moreover there is a Physical Therapy Clinic and Beauty Salon onsite, Pilates and Boot Camp classes, weekly WeightWatcher Classes, five football / tennis courts and an outdoor chess board. When the sun is shining On sunny days comfy, colourful beanbags are spread throughout the park to relax and every Wednesday there is the Irish Village Market providing staff with a variety of delicious gourmet foods from all over the world. Friday afternoons after work are often used by Oracle employees to start the weekend socializing in The Epicenter Cafe Bar & Venue. In the office In the Oracle offices, you have an open floor design and an open door policy which makes it really easy to walk over to your colleagues or a manager to discuss your projects and keep informed with what is going on. This way you also have a great chance to bond with your colleagues. In two of the Oracle buildings there are subsidized canteens especially for Oracle employees with chefs cooking something special everyday! One of the best things about Oracle in Dublin is that it is really multinational. Currently there are more than 25 languages spoken by Oracle employees. So you will work with colleagues from all around the globe, every day, which makes it a really interesting and exciting experience. Sport & Social There is also a dedicated Sport and Social Club, Oraclub. They organize many sport and social activities. It doesn’t matter which sport is your favourite, Oraclub caters for like-minded individuals and makes sure you can play or watch your favourite sport. Furthermore, Oraclub organizes exhibition matches to get you acquainted with some other sports. Last year the Gaelic Warriors (A Wheelchair Rugby club) held an exhibition match. Oraclub also offer Oracle parties, language courses and offer discounts on many events! So whether you want to go to a Robbie Williams concert, an exhibition of Van Gogh or a match of the Irish Rugby team, Oraclub is there for everyone! There are also plenty of possibilities to get involved in volunteering. Want to know more about the current vacancies in Dublin? Check https://campus.oracle.com for all of our vacancies.

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• Using Oracle BPM to Extend Oracle Applications

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Author: Srikant Subramaniam, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Fusion Middleware Customers often modify applications to meet their specific business needs - varying regulatory requirements, unique business processes, product mix transition, etc. Traditional implementation practices for such modifications are typically invasive in nature and introduce risk into projects, affect time-to-market and ease of use, and ultimately increase the costs of running and maintaining the applications. Another downside of these traditional implementation practices is that they literally cast the application in stone, making it difficult for end-users to tailor their individual work environments to meet specific needs, without getting IT involved. For many businesses, however, IT lacks the capacity to support such rapid business changes. As a result, adopting innovative solutions to change the economics of customization becomes an imperative rather than a choice. Let's look at a banking process in Siebel Financial Services and Oracle Policy Automation (OPA) using Oracle Business Process Management. This approach makes modifications simple, quick to implement and easy to maintain/upgrade. The process model is based on the Loan Origination Process Accelerator, i.e., a set of ready to deploy business solutions developed by Oracle using Business Process Management (BPM) 11g, containing customizable and extensible pre-built processes to fit specific customer requirements. This use case is a branch-based loan origination process. Origination includes a number of steps ranging from accepting a loan application, applicant identity and background verification (Know Your Customer), credit assessment, risk evaluation and the eventual disbursal of funds (or rejection of the application). We use BPM to model all of these individual tasks and integrate (via web services) with: Siebel Financial Services and (simulated) backend applications: FLEXCUBE for loan management, Background Verification and Credit Rating. The process flow starts in Siebel when a customer applies for loan, switches to OPA for eligibility verification and product recommendations, before handing it off to BPM for approvals. OPA Connector for Siebel simplifies integration with Siebel’s web services framework by saving directly into Siebel the results from the self-service interview. This combination of user input and product recommendation invokes the BPM process for loan origination. At the end of the approval process, we update Siebel and the financial app to complete the loop. We use BPM Process Spaces to display role-specific data via dashboards, including the ability to track the status of a given process (flow trace). Loan Underwriters have visibility into the product mix (loan categories), status of loan applications (count of approved/rejected/pending), volume and values of loans approved per processing center, processing times, requested vs. approved amount and other relevant business metrics. Summary Oracle recommends the use of Fusion Middleware as an extensions platform for applications. This approach makes modifications simple, quick to implement and easy to maintain/upgrade applications (by moving customizations away from applications to the process layer). It is also easier to manage processes that span multiple applications by using Oracle BPM. Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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• Oracle Leader in Transportation Management

  - by John Murphy

  Oracle Named a Leader in the Transportation Management Systems Market by Leading Analyst Firm Redwood Shores, Calif. – October 15, 2012 News Facts Gartner, Inc. has placed Oracle Transportation Management in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2012 report, “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS).” (1) Gartner Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. According to the report, “Multiple subcomponents make up a comprehensive TMS across planning (for example, load consolidation, routing, mode selection and carrier selection) and execution (for example, tendering loads to carriers, shipment track and trace, and freight audit and payment).” Built on modern, flexible, Internet based architecture, Oracle Transportation Management is a global transportation and logistics operations system that allows companies to minimize cost, optimize service levels, support sustainability initiatives, and create flexible business process automation within their transportation and logistics networks. With a share of 26% of worldwide software revenue for 2011, Oracle is also number one in TMS vendor share according to Gartner’s report, “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016.” (2) Supporting Quote “Shippers and logistics service providers face increasingly complex challenges as they try to reduce costs, secure capacity and improve overall freight efficiency,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president, logistics product strategy, Oracle. “We believe our high standing in both Gartner reports is a reflection of Oracle’s commitment to addressing these challenges by delivering the industry’s broadest and deepest transportation management platform. With a flexible and modern platform, we are able to support customers with both basic transportation needs, as well as those with highly complex logistics requirements.” Supporting Resources Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016 Oracle Transportation Management (1) Gartner, Inc., “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems,” by C. Dwight Klappich, August 23, 2012 (2) Gartner, Inc., “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016,” by Chad Eschinger and C. Dwight Klappich, September 24, 2012. About Oracle Applications Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go towww.oracle.com/applications About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. ###   Karen [email protected] Simon JonesBlanc & [email protected]

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• SQL SERVER – Create a Very First Report with the Report Wizard

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. What is the report Wizard? In today’s world automation is all around you. Henry Ford began building his Model T automobiles on a moving assembly line a century ago and changed the world. The moving assembly line allowed Ford to build identical cars quickly and cheaply. Henry Ford said in his autobiography “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Today you can buy a car straight from the factory with your choice of several colors and with many options like back up cameras, built-in navigation systems and heated leather seats. The assembly lines now use robots to perform some tasks along with human workers. When you order your new car, if you want something special, not offered by the manufacturer, you will have to find a way to add it later. In computer software, we also have “assembly lines” called wizards. A wizard will ask you a series of questions, often branching to specific questions based on earlier answers, until you get to the end of the wizard. These wizards are used for many things, from something simple like setting up a rule in Outlook to performing administrative tasks on a server. Often, a wizard will get you part of the way to the end result, enough to get much of the tedious work out of the way. Once you get the product from the wizard, if the wizard is not capable of doing something you need, you can tweak the results. Create a Report with the Report Wizard Let’s get started with your first report!  Launch SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) from the Start menu under SQL Server 2012. Once SSDT is running, click New Project to launch the New Project dialog box. On the left side of the screen expand Business Intelligence and select Reporting Services. Configure the properties as shown in . Be sure to select Report Server Project Wizard as the type of report and to save the project in the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Project folder. Click OK and wait for the Report Wizard to launch. Click Next on the Welcome screen.  On the Select the Data Source screen, make sure that New data source is selected. Type JProCo as the data source name. Make sure that Microsoft SQL Server is selected in the Type dropdown. Click Edit to configure the connection string on the Connection Properties dialog box. If your SQL Server database server is installed on your local computer, type in localhost for the Server name and select the JProCo database from the Select or enter a database name dropdown. Click OK to dismiss the Connection Properties dialog box. Check Make this a shared data source and click Next. On the Design the Query screen, you can use the query builder to build a query if you wish. Since this post is not meant to teach you T-SQL queries, you will copy all queries from files that have been provided for you. In the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Resources folder open the sales by employee.sql file. Copy and paste the code from the file into the Query string Text Box. Click Next. On the Select the Report Type screen, choose Tabular and click Next. On the Design the Table screen, you have to figure out the groupings of the report. How do you do this? Well, you often need to know a bit about the data and report requirements. I often draw the report out on paper first to help me determine the groups. In the case of this report, I could group the data several ways. Do I want to see the data grouped by Year and Month? Do I want to see the data grouped by Employee or Category? The only thing I know for sure about this ahead of time is that the TotalSales goes in the Details section. Let’s assume that the CIO asked to see the data grouped first by Year and Month, then by Category. Let’s move the fields to the right-hand side. This is done by selecting Page > Group or Details >, as shown in, and click Next. On the Choose the Table Layout screen, select Stepped and check Include subtotals and Enable drilldown, as shown in. On the Choose the Style screen, choose any color scheme you wish (unlike the Model T) and click Next. I chose the default, Slate. On the Choose the Deployment Location screen, change the Deployment folder to Chapter 3 and click Next. At the Completing the Wizard screen, name your report Employee Sales and click Finish. After clicking Finish, the report and a shared data source will appear in the Solution Explorer and the report will also be visible in Design view. Click the Preview tab at the top. This report expects the user to supply a year which the report will then use as a filter. Type in a year between 2006 and 2013 and click View Report. Click the plus sign next to the Sales Year to expand the report to see the months, then expand again to see the categories and finally the details. You now have the assembly line report completed, and you probably already have some ideas on how to improve the report. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your own data sources and data sets in SSRS. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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