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Apps UX Launches Blueprints for Mobile User Experiences

- by mvaughan

By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceAt Oracle OpenWorld 2012 this year, the Oracle Applications User Experience (Apps UX) team announced the release of Mobile User Experience Functional Design Patterns. These patterns are designed to work directly with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware, specifically, ADF Mobile. The Oracle Application Development Framework for mobile users enables developers to build one application that can be deployed to multiple mobile device platforms. These same mobile design patterns provide the guidance for Oracle teams to develop Fusion Mobile expenses. Application developers can use Oracle’s mobile design patterns to design iPhone, Android, or browser-based smartphone applications. We are sharing our mobile design patterns and their baked-in, scientifically proven usability to enable Oracle customers and partners to build mobile applications quickly.A different way of thinking and designing. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences for Apps UX, says mobile design has to be compelling. “It needs to be optimized for the device, and be visually rich and simple,” she said. “What is really key is that you are designing for a user’s most personal device, the device that they will have with them at all times of the day.”Katy Massucco, director of the overall design patterns site, said: “You need to start with a simplified task flow. Everything should be a natural interaction. The action should be relevant and leveraging the device. It should be seamless.”She suggests that developers identify the essential tasks that a user would want to do while mobile. “They need to understand the user and the context,” she added. ?A sample inline action design patternWhat people are sayingReactions to the release of the design patterns have been positive. Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fusion User Experience Advocate (FXA), has already demo’ed Fusion Mobile Expenses widely. Fellow Oracle Ace Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen, called it a “cool demo by @debralilley of the new mobile expenses app.” FXA member Floyd Teter says he is already cooking up some plans for using mobile design patterns. We hope to see those ideas at Collaborate or ODTUG in 2013. For another perspective on why user experience is such an important focus for mobile applications, check out this video by John King, Director, and Monty Latiolais, President, both from ODTUG, or the Oracle Development Tools User Group.In a separate interview by e-mail, Latiolais wrote: “I enjoy the fact we can take something that, in the past, has been largely subjective, and now apply to it a scientifically proven look and feel. Trusting Oracle’s UX Design Patterns, the presentation really can become one less thing to worry about. As someone with limited ADF experience, that is extremely beneficial.”?King, who was also interviewed by e-mail, wrote: “User Experience is about making the task at hand as easy and error-free as possible. Oracle's UX labs worked hard to make the User Experience in the new Fusion Applications as good as possible; ADF makes adding tested, consistent, user experiences a declarative exercise by leveraging that work. As we move applications onto mobile platforms, user experience is the driving factor. Customers are "spoiled" by a bevy of fantastic applications, and ours cannot disappoint them. Creating applications that enable users to quickly and effectively accomplish whatever task is at hand takes thought and practice. Developers must become ’power users’ and then create applications that they and their users will love.”

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jqGrid - dynamically load different drop down values for different rows depending on another column value

- by Renso

Goal: As we all know the jqGrid examples in the demo and the Wiki always refer to static values for drop down boxes. This of course is a personal preference but in dynamic design these values should be populated from the database/xml file, etc, ideally JSON formatted. Can you do this in jqGrid, yes, but with some custom coding which we will briefly show below (refer to some of my other blog entries for a more detailed discussion on this topic). What you CANNOT do in jqGrid, referrign here up and to version 3.8.x, is to load different drop down values for different rows in the jqGrid. Well, not without some trickery, which is what this discussion is about. Issue: Of course the issue is that jqGrid has been designed for high performance and thus I have no issue with them loading a reference to a single drop down values list for every column. This way if you have 500 rows or one, each row only refers to a single list for that particuolar column. Nice! SO how easy would it be to simply traverse the grid once loaded on gridComplete or loadComplete and simply load the select tag's options from scratch, via ajax, from memory variable, hard coded etc? Impossible! Since their is no embedded SELECT tag within each cell containing the drop down values (remeber it only has a reference to that list in memory), all you will see when you inspect the cell prior to clicking on it, or even before and on beforeEditCell, is an empty <TD></TD>. When trying to load that list via a click event on that cell will temporarily load the list but jqGrid's last internal callback event will remove it and replace it with the old one, and you are back to square one. Solution: Yes, after spending a few hours on this found a solution to the problem that does not require any updates to jqGrid source code, thank GOD! Before we get into the coding details, the solution here can of course be customized to suite your specific needs, this one loads the entire drop down list that would be needed across all rows once into global variable. I then parse this object that contains all the properties I need to filter the rows depending on which ones I want the user to see based off of another cell value in that row. This only happens when clicking the cell, so no performance penalty. You may of course to load it via ajax when the user clicks the cell, but I found it more effecient to load the entire list as part of jqGrid's normal editoptions: { multiple: false, value: listingStatus } colModel options which again keeps only a reference to the sinlge list, no duplciation. Lets get into the meat and potatoes of it. var acctId = $('#Id').val(); var data = $.ajax({ url: $('#ajaxGetAllMaterialsTrackingLookupDataUrl').val(), data: { accountId: acctId }, dataType: 'json', async: false, success: function(data, result) { if (!result) alert('Failure to retrieve the Alert related lookup data.'); } }).responseText; var lookupData = eval('(' + data + ')'); var listingCategory = lookupData.ListingCategory; var listingStatus = lookupData.ListingStatus; var catList = '{'; $(lookupData.ListingCategory).each(function() { catList += this.Id + ':"' + this.Name + '",'; }); catList += '}'; var lastsel; var ignoreAlert = true; $(item) .jqGrid({ url: listURL, postData: '', datatype: "local", colNames: ['Id', 'Name', 'Commission Rep', 'Business Group', 'Order Date', 'Edit', 'TBD', 'Month', 'Year', 'Week', 'Product', 'Product Type', 'Online/ Magazine', 'Materials', 'Special Placement', 'Logo', 'Image', 'Text', 'Contact Info', 'Everthing In', 'Category', 'Status'], colModel: [ { name: 'Id', index: 'Id', hidden: true, hidedlg: true }, { name: 'AccountName', index: 'AccountName', align: "left", resizable: true, search: true, width: 100 }, { name: 'OnlineName', index: 'OnlineName', align: 'left', sortable: false, width: 80 }, { name: 'ListingCategoryName', index: 'ListingCategoryName', width: 85, editable: true, hidden: false, edittype: "select", editoptions: { multiple: false, value: eval('(' + catList + ')') }, editrules: { required: false }, formatoptions: { disabled: false} } ], jsonReader: { root: "List", page: "CurrentPage", total: "TotalPages", records: "TotalRecords", userdata: "Errors", repeatitems: false, id: "0" }, rowNum: $rows, rowList: [10, 20, 50, 200, 500, 1000, 2000], imgpath: jQueryImageRoot, pager: $(item + 'Pager'), shrinkToFit: true, width: 1455, recordtext: 'Traffic lines', sortname: 'OrderDate', viewrecords: true, sortorder: "asc", altRows: true, cellEdit: true, cellsubmit: "remote", cellurl: editURL + '?rows=' + $rows + '&page=1', loadComplete: function() { }, gridComplete: function() { }, loadError: function(xhr, st, err) { }, afterEditCell: function(rowid, cellname, value, iRow, iCol) { var select = $(item).find('td.edit-cell select'); $(item).find('td.edit-cell select option').each(function() { var option = $(this); var optionId = $(this).val(); $(lookupData.ListingCategory).each(function() { if (this.Id == optionId) { if (this.OnlineName != $(item).getCell(rowid, 'OnlineName')) { option.remove(); return false; } } }); }); }, search: true, searchdata: {}, caption: "List of all Traffic lines", editurl: editURL + '?rows=' + $rows + '&page=1', hiddengrid: hideGrid Here is the JSON data returned via the ajax call during the jqGrid function call above (NOTE it must be { async: false}: {"ListingCategory":[{"Id":29,"Name":"Document Imaging & Management","OnlineName":"RF Globalnet"} ,{"Id":1,"Name":"Ancillary Department Hardware","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"} ,{"Id":2,"Name":"Asset Tracking","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"} ,{"Id":3,"Name":"Asset Tracking","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"} ,{"Id":4,"Name":"Asset Tracking","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"} ,{"Id":5,"Name":"Document Imaging & Management","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"} ,{"Id":6,"Name":"Document Imaging & Management","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"} ,{"Id":7,"Name":"EMR/EHR Software","OnlineName":"Healthcare Technology Online"}]} I only need the Id and Name for the drop down list, but the third column in the JSON object is important, it is the only that I match up with the OnlineName in the jqGrid column, and then in the loop during afterEditCell simply remove the ones I don't want the user to see. That's it!

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Heterogeneous Datacenter Management with Enterprise Manager 12c

- by Joe Diemer

The following is a Guest Blog, contributed by Bryce Kaiser, Product Manager at Blue MedoraWhen I envision a perfect datacenter, it would consist of technologies acquired from a single vendor across the entire server, middleware, application, network, and storage stack - Apps to Disk - that meets your organization’s every IT requirement with absolute best-of-breed solutions in every category. To quote a familiar motto, your datacenter would consist of "Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together". In almost all cases, practical realities dictate something far less than the IT Utopia mentioned above. You may wish to leverage multiple vendors to keep licensing costs down, a single vendor may not have an offering in the IT category you need, or your preferred vendor may quite simply not have the solution that meets your needs. In other words, your IT needs dictate a heterogeneous IT environment. Heterogeneity, however, comes with additional complexity. The following are two pretty typical challenges:1) No End-to-End Visibility into the Enterprise Wide Application Deployment. Each vendor solution which is added to an infrastructure may bring its own tooling creating different consoles for different vendor applications and platforms.2) No Visibility into Performance Bottlenecks. When multiple management tools operate independently, you lose diagnostic capabilities including identifying cross-tier issues with database, hung-requests, slowness, memory leaks and hardware errors/failures causing DB/MW issues. As adoption of Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) has increased, especially since the release of Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle has seen an increase in the number of customers who want to leverage their investments in EM to manage non-Oracle workloads. Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of glass view into their entire datacenter. By creating a highly extensible framework via the Oracle EM Extensibility Development Kit (EDK), Oracle has provided the tooling for business partners such as my company Blue Medora as well as customers to easily fill gaps in the ecosystem and enhance existing solutions. As mentioned in the previous post on the Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, customers have access to an assortment of Oracle and Partner provided solutions through this Exchange, which is accessed at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emextensibility. Currently, there are over 80 Oracle and partner provided plug-ins across the EM 11g and EM 12c versions. Blue Medora is one of those contributing partners, for which you will find 3 of our solutions including our flagship plugin for VMware. Let's look at Blue Medora’s VMware plug-in as an example to what I'm trying to convey. Here is a common situation solved by true visibility into your entire stack:Symptoms• My database is bogging down, however the database appears okay internally. Maybe it’s starved for resources?• My OS tooling is showing everything is “OK”. Something doesn’t add up. Root cause• Through the VMware plugin we can see the problem is actually on the virtualization layer Solution• From within Enterprise Manager -- the same tool you use for all of your database tuning -- we can overlay the data of the database target, host target, and virtual machine target for a true picture of the true root cause. Here is the console view: Perhaps your monitoring conditions are more specific to your environment. No worries, Enterprise Manager still has you covered. With Metric Extensions you have the “Next Generation” of User-Defined Metrics, which easily bring the power of your existing management scripts into a single console while leveraging the proven Enterprise Manager framework. Simply put, Oracle Enterprise manager boasts a growing ecosystem that provides the single pane of glass for your entire datacenter from the database and beyond. Bryce can be contacted at [email protected]

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Move over DFS and Robocopy, here is SyncToy!

- by andywe

Ever since Windows 2000, I have always had the need to replicate data to multiple endpoints with the same content. Until DFS was introduced, the method of thinking was to either manually copy the data location by location, or to batch script it with xcopy and schedule a task. Even though this worked (and still does today), it was cumbersome, and intensive on the network, especially when dealing with larger amounts of data. Then along came robocopy, as an internal tool written by an enterprising programmer at Microsoft. We used it quite a bit, especially when we could not use DFS in the early days. It was received so well, it made it into the public realm. At least now we could have the ability to determine what files had changed and only replicate those. Well, over time there has been evolution of this ideal. DFS is obviously the Windows enterprise class service to do this, along with BrancheCache..however you don’t always need or want the power of DFS, especially when it comes to small datacenter installations, or remote offices. I have specific data sets that are on closed or restricted networks, that either have a security need for this, or are in remote countries where bandwidth is a premium. FOr this, I use the latest evolution for one off replication names Synctoy. Synctoy is from Microsoft, seemingly released in 2009, that wraps a nice GUI around setting up a paired set of folders (remember the mobile briefcase from Windows 98?), and allowing you the choice of synchronization methods. 1 way, or 2 way. Simply create a paired set of folders on the source and destination, choose your options for content, exclude any file types you don’t want to replicate, and click run. Scheduling is even easier. MS has included a wrapper for doing just this so all you enter in your task schedule in the SynToyCMD.exe, a –R as an argument, and the time schedule. No more complicated command lines or scripts. I find this especially useful when I use MS backup to back up a system volume, but only want subsets of backup information of a data share and ONLY when that dataset has changed. Not relying on full backups and incremental. An example of this is my application installation master share. I back this up with SyncToy because I do not need multiple backup copies..one copy elsewhere suffices to back it up. At home, very useful for your pictures, videos, music, ect..the backup is online and ready to access, not waiting for you to restore a backup file, and no need to institute a domain simply to have DFS.' Do note there is a risk..if you accidently delete a file and do not catch this before the next sync, then depending on your SyncToy settings, you can indeed lose that file as the destination updates..so due diligence applies. I make it a rule to sync manly one way…I use my master share for making changes, and allow the schedule to follow suit. Any real important file I lock down as read only through file permissions so it cannot be deleted unless I intervene. Check out the tool and have some fun! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=15155

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How to fix: Ubuntu 12.04 reboots after loading with elilo

- by Casey

I have an HP p6-2120 with CPU: AMD A6-3620 APU with Radeon Graphics RAM: 6GB BIOS: HO2_710.ROM v7.10 [AMI v7.10 4/19/2012] Disk: SATA1 (/dev/sda) - 1 TB (windows) Disk: SATA2 (/dev/sdb) - 1 TB partitioned using "parted -a optimal /dev/sdb" as follows: .. 1049KB 201MB FAT32 boot flag set .. 201MB 60GB ext2 (/) .. 68GB 78GB linux-swap(v1) (swap) .. 78GB 790GB ext4 (/home) .. - rest is "free" space reserved for other purposes (eventually) ubuntu: 12.04.1 LTS [specifically: Release 12.04 (precise) 64-bit] kernel: linux 3.2.0-29-generic I created a bootable EFI USB from the ISO (64-bit) which I downloaded. I can run and install from the USB without any problems. The BIOS is an EFI bios that appears to be capable of booting in either EFI or Legacy mode. Initially, I did the "standard" install with NOTHING on disk2, and let the installer configure everything. The net result of this was that when I started the computer and forced it into "boot" menu mode, it DOES NOT recognize SATA2 as an EFI drive, and when I attempt to "legacy" boot from it, I get the message "ERROR: No Boot Disk has been detected." The "standard" install created one large partition that consumed the entire disk. At that point, I manually partitioned the disk (using sudo parted -a optimal /dev/sdb) as described above. I selected the "other" install, and changed the /dev/sdb1 to "bios_grub", /dev/sdb2 as "/" (ext4), /dev/sdb3 as swap, and /dev/sdb4 as "/home". [Note: fearing that possibly elilo did not recognize ext4, I switched /dev/sdb2 to ext2 and re-insalled] The net result was that the install appeared to trash the /dev/sdb1 partition so that it was NOT readable by anything. I re-formated /dev/sdb1 as FAT32 and set the boot flag. I repeated the install ignoring the messages about no bios_grub partition. After several attempts to get GRUB2 to work, I switched to elilo. I downloaded the most recent version and copied it (elilo-3.14-ia64.efi) to /dev/sdb1/efi/boot/bootx64.efi. (The BIOS boot loader did not recognize it either as elilo-3.14.ia64.efi or as elilo.efi. Based on the advice in one of the web-pages I found, I renamed it to bootx64.efi. This worked.) In that same directory (/efi/boot), I copied the file pointed to the link in /dev/sdb2/vmlinuz to /efi/boot/vmlinuz, and the file pointed to the link in /dev/sdb2/initrd.img to /efi/boot/initrd.img. I created an elilo.conf file as follows: timeout=5000 prompt default=linux-boot image=vmlinuz label=linux-boot read-only initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/sdb2 The /efi/boot directory contains 4 files: bootx64.efi elilo.conf vmlinuz initrd.img When I power-cycle the computer and force the boot menu, drive2 shows up as an EFI bootable drive. When I select it, I get the elilo prompt. Pressing , it appears to load the kernal (I have tried it with verbose=5, and there is a long string of messages with the final one a command line to load the kernel and a series of several dots that fly by) then the screen goes blank, and it reboots the computer. [Note: I have also tried substituting the UUID as found in the /etc/fstab of the installed system for the root directory. This had no effect.] This is a brief synopsis of several nights of fiddling with this. I would deeply appreciate any help you can give.

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Cloud Computing Pricing - It's like a Hotel

- by BuckWoody

I normally don't go into the economics or pricing side of Distributed Computing, but I've had a few friends that have been surprised by a bill lately and I wanted to quickly address at least one aspect of it. Most folks are used to buying software and owning it outright - like buying a car. We pay a lot for the car, and then we use it whenever we want. We think of the "cloud" services as a taxi - we'll just pay for the ride we take an no more. But it's not quite like that. It's actually more like a hotel. When you subscribe to Azure using a free offering like the MSDN subscription, you don't have to pay anything for the service. But when you create an instance of a Web or Compute Role, Storage, that sort of thing, you can think of the idea of checking into a hotel room. You get the key, you pay for the room. For Azure, using bandwidth, CPU and so on is billed just like it states in the Azure Portal. so in effect there is a cost for the service and then a cost to use it, like water or power or any other utility. Where this bit some folks is that they created an instance, played around with it, and then left it running. No one was using it, no one was on - so they thought they wouldn't be charged. But they were. It wasn't much, but it was a surprise.They had the hotel room key, but they weren't in the room, so to speak. To add to their frustration, they had to talk to someone on the phone to cancel the account. I understand the frustration. Although we have all this spelled out in the sign up area, not everyone has the time to read through all that. I get that. So why not make this easier? As an explanation, we bill for that time because the instance is still running, and we have to tie up resources to be available the second you want them, and that costs money. As far as being able to cancel from the portal, that's also something that needs to be clearer. You may not be aware that you can spin up instances using code - and so cancelling from the Portal would allow you to do the same thing. Since a mistake in code could erase all of your instances and the account, we make you call to make sure you're you and you really want to take it down. Not a perfect system by any means, but we'll evolve this as time goes on. For now, I wanted to make sure you're aware of what you should do. By the way, you don't have to cancel your whole account not to be billed. Just delete the instance from the portal and you won't be charged. You don't have to call anyone for that. And just FYI - you can download the SDK for Azure and never even hit the online version at all for learning and playing around. No sign-up, no credit card, PO, nothing like that. In fact, that's how I demo Azure all the time. Everything runs right on your laptop in an emulated environment.

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4 Ways Your Brand Can Jump From the Edge of Space

- by Mike Stiles

Can your brand’s social media content captivate the world and make it hold its collective breath? Can you put something on the screen that’s so compelling that your audience can’t look away? Will they want to make sure their friends see it so they can talk about it? If not, you’re probably not with Red Bull. I was impressed with Red Bull’s approach to social content even before Felix Baumgartner’s stunning skydive from the edge of space. And then they did this. According to Visible Measures, videos of the jump scored 50 million views in 4 days. 1,700 clips were generated from both official and organic sources. The live stream was the most watched YouTube Stream of all time (8 million concurrent viewers). The 2nd most watched live stream was…Felix’ first attempt Oct. 9. Are you ready to compete with that? I ask that question because some brands are still out there tying themselves up in knots about whether or not they should tweet. The public’s time and attention are scarce commodities, commodities they value greatly. The competition amongst brands for that time and attention is intense and going up like Felix’s capsule. If you still view your press releases as “content,” you won’t even be counted as being among the competition. Here are 5 lessons learned from Red Bull’s big leap: 1. They have a total understanding of their target market and audience. Not only do they have an understanding of it, they do something about it. They act on it. They fill the majority of their thoughts with what the audience wants. They hunger for wild applause from that audience. They want to do things that embrace the audience’s lifestyle and immerse in it so the target will identify the brand as “one of them.” Takeaway: BE your target market. 2. They deliver content that strikes the audience right where they emotionally live. If you want your content to have impact, you have to make your audience’s heart race, or make them tear up, or make them laugh. Label them “data points” all you want, but humans are emotional creatures. No message connects that’s not carried in on an emotion. Takeaway: You’re on the inside. If your content doesn’t make you say “wow,” it’s unlikely it will register with fans. 3. They put aside old school marketing and don’t let their content be degraded into a commercial. Their execs seem to understand the value in keeping a lid on the hard sell. So many brands just can’t bring themselves to disconnect advertising and social content. The result is, otherwise decent content gets contaminated with a desperation the viewer can smell a mile away. Think the Baumgartner skydive didn’t do Red Bull any good since he wasn’t drinking one on the way down while singing a jingle? Analysis company Taykey discovered that at the peak of the skydive buzz, about 1% of all online conversation was about the jump. Mentions of Red Bull constituted 1/3 of 1% of all Internet activity. Views of other Red Bull videos also shot up. Takeaway: Chill out with the ads. Your brand will get full credit for entertaining/informing fans in a relevant way, provided you do it. 4. They don’t hesitate to ask, “What can we do next”? Most corporate cultures are a virtual training facility for “we can’t do that.” Few are encouraged to innovate or think big, if think at all. Thinking big involves faith, and work. It means freedom and letting employees run a little wild with their ideas. There will always be the opportunity to let fear of everything that moves creep in and kill grand visions dead in their tracks. Experimenting must be allowed. Failure must be allowed. Red Bull didn’t think big. They thought mega. They tried to outdo themselves. Felix could have gone ahead and jumped halfway up, thinking, “This is still relatively high up. Good enough.” But that wouldn’t have left us breathless. Takeaway: Go for it. Jump. In putting up social properties and gathering fans of your brand, you’ve basically invited people to a party. A good host doesn’t just set out warm beer and stale chips because that’s inexpensive and easy. Be on the lookout for ways to make your guests walk away saying, “That was epic.”

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Get to Know a Candidate (3 of 25): Virgil Goode–Constitution 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 Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party Goode was served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1997 to 2009. He represented the 5th congressional district of Virginia. Goode was born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Alice Clara (née Besecker) and Virgil Hamlin Goode. He has spent most of his life in Rocky Mount. Goode graduated with a B.A. from the University of Richmond (Phi Beta Kappa) and with a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He also is a member of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity and served in the Army National Guard from 1969 to 1975. Goode grew up as a Democrat. He entered politics soon after graduating from law school. At the age of 27, he won a special election to the state Senate from a Southside district as an independent after the death of the Democratic incumbent. One of his major campaign focuses at the time was advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment. Soon after being elected, he joined the Democrats. Goode wore his party ties very loosely. He became famous for his support of the tobacco industry, expressing his fear that "his elderly mother would be denied 'the one last pleasure' of smoking a cigarette on her hospital deathbed." He was an ardent defender of gun rights while being an enthusiastic supporter of L. Douglas Wilder, who later became the first elected black governor in the history of the United States. At the Democratic Party's state political convention in 1985, Goode nominated Wilder for lieutenant governor. However, while governor, Wilder cracked down on the sale of guns in the state. After the 1995 elections resulted in a 20–20 split between Democrats and Republicans in the State Senate, Goode seriously considered voting with the Republicans on organizing the chamber. Had he done so, the State Senate would have been under Republican control for the first time since Reconstruction (the Republicans ultimately won control outright in 1999). Goode's actions at the time "forced his party to share power with Republican lawmakers in the state legislature," which further upset the Democratic Party. Goode is on the ballot in CA, FL, ID, IO, LA, MI, MN, MS, MI, NJ, NM, NY, NV, ND, OH, SC, SD, TN, UT, VA, WA, WI, WY. He is a write-in candidate in CA, CT, DC, GA, IL, IN, ME, MD, MA, MO, NC, TX, VT, WV Constitution Party This party was founded as the “U.S. Taxpayers’ Party” and considers itself conservative. The party's platform is predicated on the principles of the nation's founding documents. The party puts a large focus on immigration, calling for stricter penalties towards illegal immigrants and a moratorium on legal immigration until all federal subsidies to immigrants are discontinued.The party absorbed the American Independent Party, originally founded for George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign. The American Independent Party of California has been an affiliate of the Constitution Party since its founding; however, current party leadership is disputed and the issue is in court to resolve this conflict. The Constitution Party has some substantial support from the Christian Right and in 2010 achieved major party status in Colorado. Learn more about Virgil Goode and Constitution Party on Wikipedia.

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Capgemini Global Business Process Management Report

- by JuergenKress

Welcome to the Capgemini Global Business Process Management (BPM) Report. This report is an exploration of key trends in BPM as seen by CXOs across a broad selection of sectors and geographies. BPM is perhaps at a tipping point - it’s certainly at an exciting stage in its evolution. As both an engineer and an Operational Research practitioner in my early career, and subsequently as a consultant, I have seen BPM through its development over the last 26 years. BPM has its roots in management practices such as Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering & Model Based Development; but the advent of the new generation of sophisticated modelling and process execution technologies has greatly enhanced BPM’s power to truly transform businesses. This has created one of the most rapidly growing and attractive market sectors for both services and technology. We see BPM as a critical management discipline that when executed against clear, cross organizational business objectives, can deliver exceptional value to that organization. However, we also see that the potential for BPM is not well understood. Our decision to conduct this global survey stemmed from discussions with our clients. We sought to gain a better impression of their understanding of BPM, how they measure its value, and how far it is prioritized within their Business and Technology Transformation efforts. This research confirms our belief that BPM needs to be a jointly owned Business and IT discipline. It also demonstrates that it is starting to gain significant traction in the market and investments are starting to pay dividends to the early adopters. At Capgemini we are being asked by our clients to help them simplify and improve their business models and the technology that supports them and we are already seeing BPM become an integral and key part of this proposition. Business Process Management is becoming ever more relevant to both large and small organizations in the current economic climate. At a time when many different market sectors are facing slow revenue growth, customer churn and increased pressures on costs, BPM becomes a critical weapon in the battle for efficiency and effectiveness in processes. Furthermore, in a challenging and changing business environment that is characterized by uncertainty, it allows organizations to adapt, be more agile and fleet of foot. Capgemini is seeing strong demand for BPM services in markets such as the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and France; and there are clear signs of increased interest in other geographies such as, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Australia. In sector terms, the financial services industry has led the way in BPM adoption over the recent past, driven by increased focus on customer- centricity and regulatory compliance. Other sectors, public sector, utilities, telco, retail and manufacturing are now not only catching up, but are starting o use BPM in new ways to create new business models to serve customers and outsmart the competition. The research findings also show however that this is a complex landscape, and we are not seeing adoption of BPM in a clear and consistent way. This report also looks at some of the barriers to adoption, with organizational silos being a major obstacle. Waters are further muddied by fragmented budgets, lack of clear governance and ownership and internal politics. The objective of our investment in this research project was to shed some light on these elements with a view to assisting organizations to create strategies that avoid or at least mitigate some of these barriers to success. Management of change in such endea vours is a key part in enabling the appropriate alignment of business and technology to support their transformation efforts. I hope that you find this report of benefit in the further adoption of Business Process Management. Get the full report here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Capgemini,bpm report,bpm market,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Where Twitter Stands Heading Into 2013

- by Mike Stiles

As Twitter continued throughout 2012 to be a stage on which global politics and culture played itself out, the company itself underwent some adjustments that give us a good indication of what users and brands can expect from the platform in 2013. The power of the network did anything but fade. Celebrities continued to use it to connect one-on-one. Even the Pope signed on this year. It continued to fuel revolutions. It played an exponentially large factor in this US Presidential election. And around the world, the freedom to speak was challenged as users were fired, sued, sometimes even jailed for their tweets. Expect more of the same in 2013, as Twitter has entrenched itself, for individuals, causes and brands, as the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to message the masses so some measure of impact can come from it. It’s changed everything, and it’s not finished. These fun facts reveal the position of strength with which Twitter enters 2013: It now generates a billion tweets every 2.5 days It has 500 million+ users The average Twitter user has tweeted 307 times 32% of everyone using the Internet uses Twitter It’s expected to bring in $540 million in ad revenue by 2014 11 new accounts are created every second High-level Executive Summary: people love it, people use it, and they’re going to keep loving and using it. Whether or not outside developers love it is a different matter. 2012 marked a shift from welcoming the third party support that played at least some role in Twitter being so warmly embraced, to discouraging anything that replicates what Twitter can do itself…or plans to do itself. It’s not the open playground it once was. Now Twitter must spend 2013 proving it can innovate in-house and keep us just as entranced. Likewise, Twitter is distancing itself from Facebook. Images from the #1 platform’s Instagram don’t work on Twitter anymore, and Twitter’s rolling out their own photo filter product. Where the two have lived in a “plenty of room for everybody” symbiosis up to now, 2013 could see the giants ramping up a full-on rivalry. Twitter is exhibiting a deliberate strategy. Updates have centered on more visually appealing search results, and making finding and sharing content easier. Deals have been cut with some media entities so their content stands out. CEO Dick Costolo has said tweets aren’t the attraction, they’re what leads you to content. Twitter aims to be a key distributor of media and info. Add the addition of former News Corp. President Peter Chernin to the board, and their hashtag landing page experience for events, and their media behemoth ambitions get pretty clear. There are challenges ahead and Costolo has also laid those out; entry into China, figuring out how to have Twitter deliver both comprehensive and relevant, targeted experiences, and the visualization of big data. What does this mean for corporations? They can expect a more media-rich evolution and growing emphases on imagery. They can expect more opportunities to create great media content and leverage Twitter for its distribution. And they can expect new ways to surface in searches. Are brands diving in? 56% of customer tweets to companies get completely and totally ignored. Ugh. A study Twitter recently conducted with Compete shows people who see tweets from retailers are more likely to buy a product. And, the more retailer tweets they see, the more likely they are to purchase on the retail site. As more of those tweets point to engaging media content from the brand, the results should get even better. Twitter appears ready for 2013. Enterprise brands have some work to do. @mikestilesPhoto Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

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Approach for packing 2D shapes while minimizing total enclosing area

- by Dennis

Not sure on my tags for this question, but in short .... I need to solve a problem of packing industrial parts into crates while minimizing total containing area. These parts are motors, or pumps, or custom-made components, and they have quite unusual shapes. For some, it may be possible to assume that a part === rectangular cuboid, but some are not so simple, i.e. they assume a shape more of that of a hammer or letter T. With those, (assuming 2D shape), by alternating direction of top & bottom, one can pack more objects into the same space, than if all tops were in the same direction. Crude example below with letter "T"-shaped parts: ***** xxxxx ***** x ***** *** ooo * x vs * x vs * x vs * x o * x * xxxxx * x * x o xxxxx xxx Right now we are solving the problem by something like this: using CAD software, make actual models of how things fit in crate boxes make estimates of actual crate dimensions & write them into Excel file (1) is crazy amount of work and as the result we have just a limited amount of possible entries in (2), the Excel file. The good things is that programming this is relatively easy. Given a combination of products to go into crates, we do a lookup, and if entry exists in the Excel (or Database), we bring it out. If it doesn't, we say "sorry, no data!". I don't necessarily want to go full force on making up some crazy algorithm that given geometrical part description can align, rotate, and figure out best part packing into a crate, given its shape, but maybe I do.. Question Well, here is my question: assuming that I can represent my parts as 2D (to be determined how), and that some parts look like letter T, and some parts look like rectangles, which algorithm can I use to give me a good estimate on the dimensions of the encompassing area, while ensuring that the parts are packed in a minimal possible area, to minimize crating/shipping costs? Are there approximation algorithms? Seeing how this can get complex, is there an existing library I could use? My thought / Approach My naive approach would be to define a way to describe position of parts, and place the first part, compute total enclosing area & dimensions. Then place 2nd part in 0 degree orientation, repeat, place it at 180 degree orientation, repeat (for my case I don't think 90 degree rotations will be meaningful due to long lengths of parts). Proceed using brute force "tacking on" other parts to the enclosing area until all parts are processed. I may have to shift some parts a tad (see 3rd pictorial example above with letters T). This adds a layer of 2D complexity rather than 1D. I am not sure how to approach this. One idea I have is genetic algorithms, but I think those will take up too much processing power and time. I will need to look out for shape collisions, as well as adding extra padding space, since we are talking about real parts with irregularities rather than perfect imaginary blocks. I'm afraid this can get geometrically messy fairly fast, and I'd rather keep things simple, if I can. But what if the best (practical) solution is to pack things into different crate boxes rather than just one? This can get a bit more tricky. There is human element involved as well, i.e. like parts can go into same box and are thus a constraint to be considered. Some parts that are not the same are sometimes grouped together for shipping and can be considered as a common grouped item. Sometimes customers want things shipped their way, which adds human element to constraints. so there will have to be some customization.

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A Reusable Builder Class for .NET testing

- by Liam McLennan

When writing tests, other than end-to-end integration tests, we often need to construct test data objects. Of course this can be done using the class’s constructor and manually configuring the object, but to get many objects into a valid state soon becomes a large percentage of the testing effort. After many years of painstakingly creating builders for each of my domain objects I have finally become lazy enough to bother to write a generic, reusable builder class for .NET. To use it you instantiate a instance of the builder and configuring it with a builder method for each class you wish it to be able to build. The builder method should require no parameters and should return a new instance of the type in a default, valid state. In other words the builder method should be a Func<TypeToBeBuilt>. The best way to make this clear is with an example. In my application I have the following domain classes that I want to be able to use in my tests: public class Person { public string Name { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } public bool IsAndroid { get; set; } } public class Building { public string Street { get; set; } public Person Manager { get; set; } } The builder for this domain is created like so: build = new Builder(); build.Configure(new Dictionary<Type, Func<object>> { {typeof(Building), () => new Building {Street = "Queen St", Manager = build.A<Person>()}}, {typeof(Person), () => new Person {Name = "Eugene", Age = 21}} }); Note how Building depends on Person, even though the person builder method is not defined yet. Now in a test I can retrieve a valid object from the builder: var person = build.A<Person>(); If I need a class in a customised state I can supply an Action<TypeToBeBuilt> to mutate the object post construction: var person = build.A<Person>(p => p.Age = 99); The power and efficiency of this approach becomes apparent when your tests require larger and more complex objects than Person and Building. When I get some time I intend to implement the same functionality in Javascript and Ruby. Here is the full source of the Builder class: public class Builder { private Dictionary<Type, Func<object>> defaults; public void Configure(Dictionary<Type, Func<object>> defaults) { this.defaults = defaults; } public T A<T>() { if (!defaults.ContainsKey(typeof(T))) throw new ArgumentException("No object of type " + typeof(T).Name + " has been configured with the builder."); T o = (T)defaults[typeof(T)](); return o; } public T A<T>(Action<T> customisation) { T o = A<T>(); customisation(o); return o; } }

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The best computer ever

- by Jeff

(This is a repost from my personal blog… wow… I need to write more technical stuff!) About three years and three months ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it turned out to be the best computer I've ever owned. You might think that every computer with better specs is automatically better than the last, but that hasn't been my experience. My first one was a Sony, back in the Pentium III days, and it cost an astonishing $2,500. That was even more ridiculous in 1999 dollars. It had a dial-up modem, and a CD-ROM, built-in! It may have even played DVD's. A few years later I bought an HP, and it ended up being a pile of shit. The power connector inside came loose from the board, and on occasion would even short. In 2005, I bought a Dell, and it wasn't bad. It had a really high resolution screen (complete with dead pixels, a problem in those days), and it was the first laptop I felt I could do real work on. When 2006 rolled around, Apple started making computers with Intel CPU's, and I bought the very first one the week it came out. I used Boot Camp to run Windows. I still have it in its box somewhere, and I used it for three years. The current 17" was new in 2009. The goodness was largely rooted in having a big screen with lots of dots. This computer has been the source of hundreds of blog posts, tens of thousands of lines of code, video and photo editing, and of course, a whole lot of Web surfing. It connected to corpnet at Microsoft, WiFi in Hawaii and has presented many a deck. It has traveled with me tens of thousands of miles. Last year, I put a solid state drive in it, and it was like getting a new computer. I can boot up a Windows 7 VM in about 19 seconds. Having 8 gigs of RAM has always been fantastic. Everything about it has been fast and fun. When new, the battery (when not using VM's) could get as much as 10 hours. I can still do 7 without much trouble. After 460 charge cycles, the battery health is still between 85 and 90%. The only real negative has been the size and weight. It's only an inch thick, but naturally it's pretty big with a 17" screen. You don't get battery life like that without a huge battery, either, so it's heavy. It was never a deal breaker, but sometimes a long haul across a large airport, you know you're carrying it. Today, Apple announced a new, thinner and lighter 15" laptop, with twice the RAM and CPU cores, and four times the screen resolution. It basically handles my size and weight issues while retaining the resolution, and it still costs less than my 17" did. So I ordered one. Three years is an excellent run, but I kind of budgeted for a new workhorse this year anyway. So if you're interested in a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig hard drive (sorry, I'm keeping the SSD), I have one to sell. They've apparently discontinued the 17", which is going to piss off the video community. It's in excellent condition, with a few minor scratches, but I take care of my stuff.

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What Counts for a DBA: Humility

- by drsql

In football (the American sort, naturally,) there are a select group of players who really hope to never have their names called during the game. They are members of the offensive line, and their job is to protect other players so they can deliver the ball to the goal to score points. When you do hear their name called, it is usually because they made a mistake and the player that they were supposed to protect ended up flat on his back admiring the clouds in the sky instead of advancing towards the goal to scoring point. Even on the rare occasion their name is called for a good reason, it is usually because they were making up for a teammate who had made a mistake and they covered up for them. The role of offensive lineman is a very good analogy for the role of the admin DBA. As a DBA, you are called on to be barely visible and rarely heard, protecting the company data assets tenaciously, even though the enemies to our craft surround us on all sides:. Developers: Cries of ‘foul!’ often ensue when the DBA says that they want data integrity to be stringently enforced and that documentation is needed so they can support systems, mostly because every error occurrence in the enterprise will be initially blamed on the database and fall to the DBA to troubleshoot. Insisting too loudly may bring those cries of ‘foul’ that somewhat remind you of when your 2 year old daughter didn't want to go to bed. The result of this petulance is that the next "enemy" gets involved. Managers: The concerns that motivate DBAs to argue will not excite the kind of manager who gets his technical knowledge from a glossy magazine filled with buzzwords, charts, and pretty pictures. However, the other programmers in the organization will tickle the buzzword void with a stream of new-sounding ideas and technologies constantly, along with warnings that if we did care about data integrity and document things, the budget would explode! In contrast, the arguments for integrity of data and supportability tend to be about as exciting as watching grass grow, and far too many manager types seem to prefer to smoke it than watch it. Packaged Applications: The DBA is rarely given a chance to review a new application that is being demonstrated for the enterprise, and rarer still is the DBA that gets a veto of an application because the database it uses has clearly been created by an architect that won't read a data modeling book because he is already married. More often than not this leads to hours of work for the DBA trying to performance-tune a database with a menagerie of rules that must be followed to stay within the application support agreement, such as no changing indexes on a third party schema even though there are 10 billion rows instead of the 10 thousand when the system was last optimized. Hardware Failures: Physical disks, networking devices, memory, and backup devices all come with a measure known as ‘mean time before failure’ and it is never listed in centuries or eons. More like years, and the term ‘mean’ indicates that half of the devices are expected to fail before that, which by my calendar means any hour of any day that it wants to fail it will. But the DBA sucks it up and does the task at hand with a humility that makes them nearly invisible to all but the most observant person in the organization. The best DBAs I know are so proactive in their relentless pursuit of perfection that they detect many of the bugs (which they seldom caused) in the system well before they become a problem. In the end the DBA gets noticed for one of same two reasons as the offensive lineman. You make a mistake, like dropping a critical production database that had never been backed up; or when a system crashes for any reason whatsoever and they are on the spot with troubleshooting and system restoration plans that have been well thought out, tested, and tested again. Not because there is any glory in it, but because it is what they do. Note: The characteristics of the professions referred to in this blog are meant to be overstated stereotypes for humorous effect, and even some DBAs aren't quite this perfect. If you are reading this far and haven’t hand written a 10 page flaming comment about how you are a _______ and you aren’t like this, that is awesome. Not every situation applies to everyone, but if you have never worked with a bad packaged app, a magazine trained manager, programmers that aren’t team players, or hardware that occasionally failed, relax and go have a unicorn sandwich before you wake up.

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Oracle at ARM TechCon

- by Tori Wieldt

ARM TechCon is a technical conference for hardware and software engineers, Oct. 30-Nov 1 in Santa Clara, California. Days two and three of the conference will be geared towards systems designers and software developers, those interested in building ARM processor-based modules, boards, and systems. It will cover all of the hardware and software, tools, ranging from low-power design, networking and connectivity, open source software, and security. Oracle is a sponsor of ARM TechCon, and will present three Java sessions and a hands-on-lab: "Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert? Java and the Raspberry Pi" - The Raspberry Pi, an ARM-powered single board computer running a full Linux distro off an SD card has caused a huge wave of interest among developers. This session looks at how Java can be used on a device such as this. Using Java SE for embedded devices and a port of JavaFX, the presentation includes a variety of demonstrations of what the Raspberry Pi is capable of. The Raspberry Pi also provides GPIO line access, and the session covers how this can be used from Java applications. Prepare to be amazed at what this tiny board can do. (Angela Caicedo, Java Evangelist) "Modernizing the Explosion of Advanced Microcontrollers with Embedded Java" - This session explains why Oracle Java ME Embedded is the right choice for building small, connected, and intelligent embedded solutions, such as industrial control applications, smart sensing, wireless connectivity, e-health, or general machine-to-machine (M2M) functionality---extending your business to new areas, driving efficiency, and reducing cost. The new Oracle Java ME Embedded product brings the benefits of Java technology to microcontroller platforms. It is a full-featured, complete, compliant software runtime with value-add features targeted to the embedded space and has the ability to interface with additional hardware components, remote manageability, and over-the-air software updates. It is accompanied by a feature-rich set of tools free of charge. (Fareed Suliman, Java Product Manager) "Embedded Java in Smart Energy and Healthcare" - This session covers embedded Java products and technologies that enable smart and connect devices in the Smart Energy and Healthcare/Medical industries. (speaker Kevin Lee) "Java SE Embedded Development on ARM Made Easy" - This Hands-on Lab aims to show that developers already familiar with the Java develop/debug/deploy lifecycle can apply those same skills to develop Java applications, using Java SE Embedded, on embedded devices. (speaker Jim Connors) In the Oracle booth #603, you can see the following demos: Industry Solutions with JavaThis exhibit consists of a number of industry solutions and how they can be powered by Java technology deployed on embedded systems. Examples in consumer devices, home gateways, mobile health, smart energy, industrial control, and tablets all powered by applications running on the Java platform are shown. Some of the solutions demonstrate the ability of Java to connect intelligent devices at the edge of the network to the datacenter or the cloud as a total end-to-end platform.Java in M2M with QualcommThis station will exhibit a new M2M solutions platform co-developed by Oracle and Qualcomm that enables wireless communications for embedded smart devices powered by Java, and share the types of industry solutions that are possible. In addition, a new platform for wearable devices based on the ARM Cortex M3 platform is exhibited.Why Java for Embedded?Demonstration platforms will show how traditional development environments, tools, and Java programming skills can be used to create applications for embedded devices. The advantages that Java provides because of the runtime's abstraction of software from hardware, modularity and scalability, security, and application portability and manageability are shared with attendees. Drop by and see why Java is an optimal applications platform for embedded systems.

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What is Happening vs. What is Interesting

- by Geertjan

Devoxx 2011 was yet another confirmation that all development everywhere is either on the web or on mobile phones. Whether you looked at the conference schedule or attended sessions or talked to speakers at any point at all, it was very clear that no development whatsoever is done anymore on the desktop. In fact, that's something Tim Bray himself told me to my face at the speakers dinner. No new developments of any kind are happening on the desktop. Everyone who is currently on the desktop is working overtime to move all of their applications to the web. They're probably also creating a small subset of their application on an Android tablet, with an even smaller subset on their Android phone. Then you scratch that monolithic surface and find some interesting results. Without naming any names, I asked one of these prominent "ah, forget about the desktop" people at the Devoxx speakers dinner (and I have a witness): "Yes, the desktop is dead, but what about air traffic control, stock trading, oil analysis, risk management applications? In fact, what about any back office application that needs to be usable across all operating systems? Here there is no concern whatsoever with 100% accessibility which is, after all, the only thing that the web has over the desktop, (except when there's a network failure, of course, or when you find yourself in the 3/4 of the world where there's bandwidth problems)? There are 1000's of hidden applications out there that have processing requirements, security requirements, and the requirement that they'll be available even when the network is down or even completely unavailable. Isn't that a valid use case and aren't there 1000's of applications that fall into this so-called niche category? Are you not, in fact, confusing consumer applications, which are increasingly web-based and mobile-based, with high-end corporate applications, which typically need to do massive processing, of one kind or another, for which the web and mobile worlds are completely unsuited?" And you will not believe what the reply to the above question was. (Again, I have a witness to this discussion.) But here it is: "Yes. But those applications are not interesting. I do not want to spend any of my time or work in any way on those applications. They are boring." I'm sad to say that the leaders of the software development community, including those in the Java world, either share the above opinion or are led by it. Because they find something that is not new to be boring, they move on to what is interesting and start talking like the supposedly-boring developments don't even exist. (Kind of like a rapper pretending classical music doesn't exist.) Time and time again I find myself giving Java desktop development courses (at companies, i.e., not hobbyists, or students, but companies, i.e., the places where dollars are earned), where developers say to me: "The course you're giving about creating cross-platform, loosely coupled, and highly cohesive applications is really useful to us. Why do we never find information about this topic at conferences? Why can we never attend a session at a conference where the story about pluggable cross-platform Java is told? Why do we get the impression that we are uncool because we're not on the web and because we're not on a mobile phone, while the reason for that is because we're creating $1000,000 simulation software which has nothing to gain from being on the web or on the mobile phone?" And then I say: "Because nobody knows you exist. Because you're not submitting abstracts to conferences about your very interesting use cases. And because conferences tend to focus on what is new, which tends to be web related (especially HTML 5) or mobile related (especially Android). Because you're not taking the responsibility on yourself to tell the real stories about the real applications being developed all the time and every day. Because you yourself think your work is boring, while in fact it is fascinating. Because desktop developers are working from 9 to 5 on the desktop, in secure environments, such as banks and defense, where you can't spend time, nor have the interest in, blogging your latest tip or trick, as opposed to web developers, who tend to spend a lot of time on the web anyway and are therefore much more inclined to create buzz about the kind of work they're doing." So, next time you look at a conference program and wonder why there's no stories about large desktop development projects in the program, here's the short answer: "No one is going to put those items on the program until you start submitting those kinds of sessions. And until you start blogging. Until you start creating the buzz that the web developers have been creating around their work for the past 10 years or so. And, yes, indeed, programmers get the conference they deserve." And what about Tim Bray? Ask yourself, as Google's lead web technology evangelist, how many desktop developers do you think he talks to and, more generally, what his frame of reference is and what, clearly, he considers to be most interesting.

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My .NET Technology picks for 2011

- by shiju

My Technology predictions for 2011 Cloud computing and Mobile application development will be the hottest trends for 2011. I hope that Windows Azure will be very hot in year 2011 and lot of cloud computing adoption will be happen with Windows Azure on 2011. Web application scalability will be the big challenge for Architects in the next year and architecture approaches like CQRS will get some attention on next year. Architects will look on different options for web application scalability and adoption of NoSQL and Document databases will be more in the year 2011. The following are the my technology picks for .Net stack Windows Azure Windows Azure will be one of the hottest technologies of 2011. Adoption of Cloud and Windows Azure will get big attention on next year. The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud–computing platform that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. No need to invest upfront on expensive infrastructure. Pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t. We handle all the patches and maintenance — all in a secure environment with over 99.9% uptime. Silverlight 5 Silverlight is becoming a common technology for variety of development platforms. You can develop Silverlight applications for web, desktop and windows phone. The new Silverlight 5 beta will be available during the starting quarter of the next year with new capabilities and lot of new features. Silverlight 5 will be powerful development platform for both web-based business apps and rich media solutions. We can expect final version of Silverlight 5 on end of 2011. Windows Phone 7 Development Tools Mobile application development will be very hot in year 2011 and Windows Phone 7 will be one of the hottest technologies of next year. You can get introduction on Windows Phone 7 Development Tools from somasegar’s blog post and MSDN documentation available from here. EF Code First I am a big fan of Entity Framework’s Code First approach and hope that Code First approach will attract more people onto Entity Framework 4. EF Code First lets you focus on domain model which will enable Domain-Driven Development for applications. I hope that DDD fans will love the EF Code First approach. The Entity Framework 4 now supports three types of approaches and these will attract different types of developer audience. ASP.NET MVC 3 The ASP.NET MVC 3 will be the hottest technology of Microsoft web stack on the next year. ASP.NET developers will widely move to the ASP.NET MVC Framework from their WebForms development. The new Razor view engine is great and it will increase the adoption of ASP.NET MVC 3. Razor the will improve the productivity when working with ASP.NET MVC 3 Views. You can build great web applications using ASP.NET MVC 3 and jQuery with better maintainability, generation of clean HTML and even better performance. In my opinion, the best technology stack for web development is ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework 4 Code First as ORM. On the next year, you can expect more articles from my blog on ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework 4 Code First. RavenDB NoSQL and Document databases will get more attention on the coming year and RavenDB will be the most notable document database in the .NET stack. RavenDB is an Open Source (with a commercial option) document database for the .NET/Windows platform developed by Ayende Rahien. RavenDB is .NET focused document database which comes with a fully functional .NET client API and supports LINQ. I have written few articles on RavenDB and you can read it from here. Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Many people didn't realized the power of MEF. The MEF lets you create extensible applications and provides a great solution for the runtime extensibility problem. I hope that .NET developers will more adopt the MEF on the next year for their .NET applications. You can get an excellent introduction on MEF from Anoop Madhusudanan’s blog post MEF or Managed Extensibility Framework – Creating a Zoo and Animals

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Tip #19 Module Private Visibility in OSGi

- by ByronNevins

I hate public and protected methods and classes. It requires so much work to change them in a huge project like GlassFish. Not to mention that you may well have to support those APIs forever. They are highly overused in GlassFish. In fact I'd bet that > 95% of classes are marked as public for no good reason. It's just (bad) habit is my guess. private and default visibility (I call it package-private) is easier to maintain. It is much much easier to change such classes and methods around. If you have ANY public method or public class in GlassFish you'll need to grep through a tremendous amount of source code to find all callers. But even that won't be theoretically reliable. What if a caller is using reflection to access public methods? You may never find such usages. If you have package private methods, it's easy. Simply grep through all the code in that one package. As long as that package compiles ok you're all set. There can' be any compile errors anywhere else. It's a waste of time to even look around or build the "outside" world. So you may be thinking: "Aha! I'll just make my module have one giant package with all the java files. Then I can use the default visibility and maintenance will be much easier. But there's a problem. You are wasting a very nice feature of java -- organizing code into separate packages. It also makes the code much more encapsulated. Unfortunately to share code between the packages you have no choice but to declare public visibility. What happens in practice is that a module ends up having tons of public classes and methods that are used exclusively inside the module. Which finally brings me to the point of this blog: If Only There Was A Module-Private Visibility Available Well, surprise! There is such a mechanism. If your project is running under OSGi that is. Like GlassFish does! With this mechanism you can easily add another level of visibility by telling OSGi exactly which public you want to be exposed outside of the module. You get the best of both worlds: Better encapsulation of your code so that maintenance is easier and productivity is increased. Usage of public visibility inside the module so that you can encapsulate intra-module better with packages. How I do this in GlassFish: Carefully plan out at least one package that will contain "true" publics. This is the package that will be exported by OSGi. I recommend just one package. Here is how to tell OSGi to use it in GlassFish -- edit osgi.bundle like so:-exportcontents: org.glassfish.mymodule.truepublics; version=${project.osgi.version} Now all publics declared in any other packages will be visible module-wide but not outside the module. There is one caveat: Accessing "module-private" items outside of the module is controlled at run-time, not compile-time. The compiler has no clue that a public in a dependent module isn't really public. it will happily compile it. At runtime you will definitely see fireworks. The good news is that you don't have to wait for the code path that tries to use the "module-private" items to fire. OSGi will complain loudly when that module gets loaded. OSGi will refuse to load it. You will see an error like this: remote failure: Error while loading FOO: Exception while adding the new configuration : Error occurred during deployment: Exception while loading the app : org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Unresolved constraint in bundle com.oracle.glassfish.miscreant.code [115]: Unable to resolve 115.0: missing requirement [115.0] osgi.wiring.package; (osgi.wiring.package=org.glassfish.mymodule.unexported). Please see server.log for more details. That is if you accidentally change code in module B to use a public that is really a "module-private" in module A, then you will see the error immediately when you try to test whatever you were changing in module B.

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Clone a VirtualBox Machine

I just installed VirtualBox, which I want to try out based on recommendations from peers for running a server from within my Windows 7 x64 OS. Ive never used VirtualBox, so Im certainly no expert at it, but I did want to share my experience with it thus far. Specifically, my intention is to create a couple of virtual machines. One I intend to use as a build server, for which a virtual machine makes sense because I can easily move it around as needed if there are hardware issues (its worth noting my need for setting up a build server at the moment is a result of a disk failure on the old build server). The other VM I want to set up will act as a proxy server for the issue tracking system were using at Code Project, Axosoft OnTime. They have a Remote Server application for this purpose, and since the OnTime install is 300 miles away from my location, the Remote Server should speed up my use of the OnTime client by limiting the chattiness with the database (at least, thats the hope). So, I need two VMs, and Im lazy. I dont want to have to install the OS and such twice. No problem, it should be simple to clone a virtualbox machine, or clone a virtualbox hard drive, right? Well unfortunately, if you look at the UI for VirtualBox, theres no such command. Youre left wondering How do I clone a VirtualBox machine? or the slightly related How do I clone a VirtualBox hard drive? If youve used VirtualPC, then you know that its actually pretty easy to copy and move around those VMs. Not quite so easy with VirtualBox. Finding the files is easy, theyre located in your user folder within the .VirtualBox folder (possibly within a HardDisks folder). The disks have a .vdi extension and will be pretty large if youve installed anything. The one shown here has just Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it nothing else. If you copy the .vdi file and rename it, you can use the Virtual Media Manager to view it and you can create a new machine and choose the new drive to attach to. Unfortunately, if you simply make a copy of the drive, this wont work and youll get an error that says something to the effect of: Cannot register the hard disk PATH with UUID {id goes here} because a hard disk PATH2 with UUID {same id goes here} already exists in the media registry (PATH to XML file). There are command line tools you can use to do this in a way that avoids this error. Specifically, the c:\Program File\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe program is used for all command line access to VirtualBox, and to copy a virtual disk (.vdi file) you would call something like this: VBoxManage clonehd Disk1.vdi Disk1_Copy.vdi However, in my case this didnt work. I got basically the same error I showed above, along with some debug information for line 628 of VBoxManageDisk.cpp. As my main task was not to debug the C++ code used to write VirtualBox, I continued looking for a simple way to clone a virtual drive. I found it in this blog post. The Secret setvdiuuid Command VBoxManage has a whole bunch of commands you can use with it just pass it /? to see the list. However, it also has a special command called internalcommands that opens up access to even more commands. The one thats interesting for us here is the setvdiuuid command. By calling this command and passing in the file path to your vdi file, it will reset the UUID to a new (random, apparently) UUID. This then allows the virtual media manager to cope with the file, and lets you set up new machines that reference the newly UUIDd virtual drive. The full command line would be: VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid MyCopy.vdi The following screenshot shows the error when trying clonehd as well as the successful use of setvdiuuid. Summary Now that I can clone machines easily, its a simple matter to set up base builds of any OS I might need, and then fork from there as needed. Hopefully the GUI for VirtualBox will be improved to include better support for copying machines/disks, as this is Im sure a very common scenario. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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What Counts For a DBA – Depth

- by Louis Davidson

SQL Server offers very simple interfaces to many of its features. Most people could open up SSMS, connect to a server, write a simple query and see the results. Even several of the core DBA tasks are deceptively straightforward. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to perform a basic database backup or run a trace (even using the newfangled Extended Events!). However, appearances can be deceptive, and often times it is really important that a DBA understands not just the basics of how to perform a task, but why we do a task, and how that task works. As an analogy, consider a child walking into a darkened room. Most would know that they need to turn on the light, and how to do it, so they flick the switch. But what happens if light fails to shine forth. Most would immediately tell you that you need to consider changing the light bulb. So you hop in the car and take them to the local home store and instruct them to buy a replacement. Confronted with a 40 foot display of light bulbs, how will they decide which of the hundreds of types of bulbs, of different types, fittings, shapes, colors, power and efficiency ratings, is the right choice? Obviously the main lesson the child is going to learn this day is how to use their cell phone as a flashlight so they don’t have to ask for help the next time. Likewise, when the metaphorical toddlers who use your database server have issues, they will instinctively know something is wrong, and may even have some idea what caused it, but will have no depth of knowledge to figure out the right solution. That is where the DBA comes in and attempts to save the day. However, when one looks beneath the shiny UI, SQL Server has its own “40 foot display of light bulbs”, in the form of the tremendous number of tools and the often-bewildering amount of information they can present to the DBA, to help us find issues. Unfortunately, resorting to guesswork, to trying different “bulbs” over and over, hoping to stumble on the answer. This is where the right depth of knowledge goes a long way. If we need to write a SELECT statement, then knowing the syntax and where to find the data is not enough. Knowledge of indexes and query plans is essential. Without it, we might hit on a query that “works”, but we are basically still a user, not a programmer, because we have no real control over our platform. Is that level of knowledge deep enough? Probably not, since knowledge of the underlying metadata and structures would be very useful in helping us make sense of any query plan. Understanding the structure of an index makes the “key lookup” operator not sound like what you do when someone tapes your car key to the ceiling. So is even this level of understanding deep enough? Do we need to understand the memory architecture used to process the query? It might be a comforting level of knowledge, and will doubtless come in handy at some point, but is not strictly necessary in most cases. Beyond that lies (more or less) full knowledge of SQL language and the intricacies of every step the SQL Server engine takes to process our query. My personal theory is that, as a professional, our knowledge of a given task should extend, at a minimum, one level deeper than is strictly necessary to perform the task. Anything deeper can be left to the ridiculously smart, or obsessive, or both. As an example. tasked with storing an integer value between 0 and 99999999, it’s essential that I know that choosing an Integer over Decimal(8,0) will likely offer performance benefits. It is then useful that I also understand the value of adding a CHECK constraint, to make sure the values are valid to the desired range; and comforting that I know a little about the underlying processors, registers and computer math. Anything further, I leave to the likes of Joe Chang, whose recent blog post on the topic offers depth by the bucketful!

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No Wireless Networks, BCM4313 [duplicate]

- by TalonPlz

This question already has an answer here: How to Install Broadcom Wireless Drivers (BCM43xx) 38 answers Just bought this little Asus 10 inch laptop that came with Ubuntu 12.04. Everything at my home was fine: Wireless identified and connected. As soon as I went to my girlfriend's house the trouble started. I couldn't connect to wireless (authentication... times out and asks for authentication) I started doing internet searching, tried a few solutions posted on line using terminal commands. No solutions. I decided to upgraded to 12.10-13.04 and that left me with a worse problem: I can no longer see ANY networks what so ever. Wireless card is ON, with out a doubt. Wired connection works. I have been fumbling with driver versions to no .avail, and have no idea which driver I am currently running I have a vague idea of what terminal lines to run: lshw: resources: irq:17 memory:f7d00000-f7dfffff *-network description: Wireless interface product: BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth2 version: 01 serial: dc:85:de:56:c4:ea width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=6.20.155.1 (r326264) latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abg resources: irq:17 memory:f7d00000-f7d03fff iwconfig: eth1 no wireless extensions. eth2 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off lo no wireless extensions. I am new and excited to start my Ubuntu and Linux life and this is only the first of my few hic cups i am sure! :) Thanks all UPDATE: Report from 2nd answer talon@Black1015E:~$ sudo apt-get remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source [sudo] password for talon: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package 'bcmwl-kernel-source' is not installed, so not removed 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. talon@Black1015E:~$ wget http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb --2013-10-22 18:50:32-- http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb Resolving us.archive.ubuntu.com (us.archive.ubuntu.com)... 2001:67c:1562::15, 2001:67c:1562::13, 2001:67c:1562::14, ... Connecting to us.archive.ubuntu.com (us.archive.ubuntu.com)|2001:67c:1562::15|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1181334 (1.1M) [application/x-debian-package] Saving to: ‘bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb’ 100%[======================================>] 1,181,334 3.37MB/s in 0.3s 2013-10-22 18:50:33 (3.37 MB/s) - ‘bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb’ saved [1181334/1181334] talon@Black1015E:~$ arvh No command 'arvh' found, did you mean: Command 'arch' from package 'coreutils' (main) arvh: command not found talon@Black1015E:~$ arch x86_64 talon@Black1015E:~$ sudo dpkg -i bcmwl*.deb Selecting previously unselected package bcmwl-kernel-source. (Reading database ... 171895 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking bcmwl-kernel-source (from bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ... Setting up bcmwl-kernel-source (5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3) ... Loading new bcmwl-5.100.82.112+bdcom DKMS files... First Installation: checking all kernels... Building only for 3.8.0-32-generic Building for architecture x86_64 Building initial module for 3.8.0-32-generic Done. wl: Running module version sanity check. - Original module - No original module exists within this kernel - Installation - Installing to /lib/modules/3.8.0-32-generic/updates/dkms/ depmod........ DKMS: install completed. Error: Module b43 is not currently loaded Error: Module b43legacy is not currently loaded Error: Module ssb is not currently loaded Error: Module bcm43xx is not currently loaded Error: Module brcm80211 is not currently loaded Error: Module brcmfmac is not currently loaded update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.8.0-32-generic rebooting now

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Cloud – the forecast is improving

- by Rob Farley

There is a lot of discussion about “the cloud”, and how that affects people’s data stories. Today the discussion enters the realm of T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by Jorge Segarra. Over the years, companies have invested a lot in making sure that their data is good, and I mean every aspect of it – the quality of it, the security of it, the performance of it, and more. Experts such as those of us at LobsterPot Solutions have helped these companies with this, and continue to work with clients to make sure that data is a strong part of their business, not an oversight. Whether business intelligence systems are being utilised or not, every business needs to be able to rely on its data, and have the confidence in it. Data should be a foundation upon which a business is built. In the past, data had been stored in paper-based systems. Filing cabinets stored vital information. Today, people have server rooms with storage of various kinds, recognising that filing cabinets don’t necessarily scale particularly well. It’s easy to ‘lose’ data in a filing cabinet, when you have people who need to make sure that the sheets of paper are in the right spot, and that you know how things are stored. Databases help solve that problem, but still the idea of a large filing cabinet continues, it just doesn’t involve paper. If something happens to the physical ‘filing cabinet’, then the problems are larger still. Then the data itself is under threat. Many clients have generators in case the power goes out, redundant cables in case the connectivity dies, and spare servers in other buildings just in case they’re required. But still they’re maintaining filing cabinets. You see, people like filing cabinets. There’s something to be said for having your data ‘close’. Even if the data is not in readable form, living as bits on a disk somewhere, the idea that its home is ‘in the building’ is comforting to many people. They simply don’t want to move their data anywhere else. The cloud offers an alternative to this, and the human element is an obstacle. By leveraging the cloud, companies can have someone else look after their filing cabinet. A lot of people really don’t like the idea of this, partly because the administrators of the data, those people who could potentially log in with escalated rights and see more than they should be allowed to, who need to be trusted to respond if there’s a problem, are now a faceless entity in the cloud. But this doesn’t mean that the cloud is bad – this is simply a concern that some people may have. In new functionality that’s on its way, we see other hybrid mechanisms that mean that people can leverage parts of the cloud with less fear. Companies can use cloud storage to hold their backup data, for example, backups that have been encrypted and are therefore not able to be read by anyone (including administrators) who don’t have the right password. Companies can have a database instance that runs locally, but which has its data files in the cloud, complete with Transparent Data Encryption if needed. There can be a higher level of control, making the change easier to accept. Hybrid options allow people who have had fears (potentially very justifiable) to take a new look at the cloud, and to start embracing some of the benefits of the cloud (such as letting someone else take care of storage, high availability, and more) without losing the feeling of the data being close. @rob_farley

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The long road to bug-free software

- by Tony Davis

The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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Consolidation in a Database Cloud

- by B R Clouse

Consolidation of multiple databases onto a shared infrastructure is the next step after Standardization. The potential consolidation density is a function of the extent to which the infrastructure is shared. The three models provide increasing degrees of sharing: Server: each database is deployed in a dedicated VM. Hardware is shared, but most of the software infrastructure is not. Standardization is often applied incompletely since operating environments can be moved as-is onto the shared platform. The potential for VM sprawl is an additional downside. Database: multiple database instances are deployed on a shared software / hardware infrastructure. This model is very efficient and easily implemented with the features in the Oracle Database and supporting products. Many customers have moved to this model and achieved significant, measurable benefits. Schema: multiple schemas are deployed within a single database instance. The most efficient model, it places constraints on the environment. Usually this model will be implemented only by customers deploying their own applications. (Note that a single deployment can combine Database and Schema consolidations.) Customer value: lower costs, better system utilization In this phase of the maturity model, under-utilized hardware can be used to host more workloads, or retired and those workloads migrated to consolidation platforms. Customers benefit from higher utilization of the hardware resources, resulting in reduced data center floor space, and lower power and cooling costs. And, the OpEx savings from Standardization are multiplied, since there are fewer physical components (both hardware and software) to manage. Customer value: higher productivity The OpEx benefits from Standardization are compounded since not only are there fewer types of things to manage, now there are fewer entities to manage. In this phase, customers discover that their IT staff has time to move away from "day-to-day" tasks and start investing in higher value activities. Database users benefit from consolidating onto shared infrastructures by relieving themselves of the requirement to maintain their own dedicated servers. Also, if the shared infrastructure offers capabilities such as High Availability / Disaster Recovery, which are often beyond the budget and skillset of a standalone database environment, then moving to the consolidation platform can provide access to those capabilities, resulting in less downtime. Capabilities / Characteristics In this phase, customers will typically deploy fixed-size clusters and consolidate on a cluster until that cluster is deemed "full," at which point a new cluster is built. Customers will define one or a few cluster architectures that are used wherever possible; occasionally there may be deployments which must be handled as exceptions. The "full" policy may be based on number of databases deployed on the cluster, or observed peak workload, etc. IT will own the provisioning of new databases on a cluster, making the decision of when and where to place new workloads. Resources may be managed dynamically, e.g., as a priority workload increases, it may be given more CPU and memory to handle the spike. Users will be charged at a fixed, relatively coarse level; or in some cases, no charging will be applied. Activities / Tasks Oracle offers several tools to plan a successful consolidation. Real Application Testing (RAT) has a feature to help plan and validate database consolidations. Enterprise Manager 12c's Cloud Management Pack for Database includes a planning module. Looking ahead, customers should start planning for the Services phase by defining the Service Catalog that will be made available for database services.

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Free hosting solution for a very low-traffic website [duplicate]

- by user966939

This question already has an answer here: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? 4 answers I run a very low-traffic website (about 40 users, basically all of which are daily active on the site). I don't see it changing anytime soon either, as there is no way to sign up on the site right now. Until now I have just been using a sub-directory on a friend's host (shared), to host the web site. But in only a few weeks from now, his subscription will end, and he has no plans on renewing it. So of course this means I'll have to move on to something else. But I don't think I'll find someone who'd be willing to share a... shared host with me again. And besides, the software used on that server is ancient (PHP 4.4.9 + MySQL 4.1.22). There's one obvious solution that comes to mind, I guess: choose a better host and pay for it myself. The problem here is that I have no real fixed income, as I'm only a student. So even if the pricing is dirt cheap, I just can't be certain I will be able to afford it, every single month, for... at least 2 years maybe? So I've looked at free hosting solutions instead. The least requirement I had was that it was completely free of ads. But no matter where I look, I always find something in a corner or two ("what can you expect from a free host?" - yeah I know, but I guess it was worth a shot). For example, on Byethost (one of the free hosts I tried), if you trigger a PHP error while error reporting is set to E_ALL, you will spawn some hidden ad... Besides Byethost, I've tried 000Webhost, x10Hosting, 2Freehosting/1Freehosting, Wink.ws, and they are only worse. Okay, I'm running low on ideas. But! What if I just hosted the site myself, on my own computer? That could work. I actually do have my computer on practically 24/7. But not really. Sometimes I need to reboot it, and sometimes we even have power outages. And what if the hardware needs an upgrade? It's not such a big deal for me if the site went down, because I know what's going on; but what about the users? If I do decide to host it myself, is there some way to show users an alternate page instead of them just seeing a generic "server not found" page in the browser when the site is not accessible? Or is there something I have been missing out on? Is there a different kind of "web hosting" solution out there that I haven't heard of? Here is what I'm really looking for: Free (as in, no costs) NO ads Bandwidth enough for a low-traffic forum with roughly 40 users (Semi-)Up-to-date PHP and MySQL (at least not older than a year) No standard (non-extension) PHP functions turned off - such as sleep() The mbstring extension is enabled Disk space: at least 5 MB At least one MySQL database Some bonus points would be: Max execution time of PHP scripts can be set Remote access to MySQL database What would be the best solution for me? Is there one?

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