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• Oracle OpenWorld Update: Oracle GoldenGate for High Availability

  - by Doug Reid

  0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} One of our primary themes this year for the Oracle OpenWorld Sessions featuring Oracle GoldenGate is High Availability. This is a pretty wide theme, but the focus will be on ways of maximizing uptime for critical systems during planned and unplanned events. We have a number of very informative sessions dedicated to exploring this theme in detail; from deep product implementation strategies up to lessons learned by our customers when using Oracle GoldenGate to meet strict SLAs. We kick this track off with our Customer Panel on Zero Downtime Operations on Monday, which I overviewed in my last posting. This is followed by Comcast, who will be hosting a sessions at 1:45PM in Moscone West 3014. Their session will discuss using Oracle GoldenGate to reduce downtime during a database upgrade. Here’s an overview: CON8571 - Oracle Database Upgrade with Oracle GoldenGate: Best Practices from Comcast Does your business demand high availability? In this session, Comcast, among the largest telecom firms in the world, shares tips on how to achieve zero downtime while upgrading to Oracle Database 11g Release 2, using a combination of Oracle technologies: Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Database’s Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Recovery Manager (Oracle RMAN) features, Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Active Data Guard. This successful upgrade took place on a mission-critical system that handles more than 60 million business requests and service calls a day. You’ll also hear how Comcast leverages Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services, including an Oracle Solution Support Center, to maximize performance and availability of its Oracle technologies. On Tuesday, Joydip Kundu (Director of Software Development) will be presenting “Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Guard: Working Together Seamlessly” at 10:15AM in Moscone South 3005. This session focuses on how both modes of Oracle GoldenGate extract (Classic and Integrated Capture) can be used with Oracle Data Guard for disaster recovery purposes or to offload extract processing. That afternoon at 1:15PM Comcast takes the stage again to discuss firsthand lessons learned implementing Oracle GoldenGate in a heterogeneous, highly available environment. Here’s a rundown of their session: CON8750 - High-Volume OLTP with Oracle GoldenGate: Best Practices from Comcast Does your business demand high availability in a mission-critical environment? In this session, Comcast, one of the largest telecom firms, shares best practices for leveraging Oracle GoldenGate to replicate high-volume online transaction processing data from Tandem NSK SQL/MX to Teradata. Hear critical success factors from Comcast for overall platform and component architectures as well as configuration and tuning techniques. Learn how it met the challenges of replication in a complex heterogeneous environment. You’ll also hear how Comcast leverages Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services, including an Oracle Solution Support Center, to provide mission-critical support for maximized performance and availability of its Oracle environment. The final session on the high availability track will be hosted by Patricia Mcelroy (Distinguished Product Manager) and Stephan Haisly (Principle Member of Technical Staff). Their session (CON8401 - Tuning and Troubleshooting Oracle GoldenGate on Oracle Database) covers techniques for performance tuning and troubleshooting of Oracle GoldenGate on Oracle Database. Using various types of workloads (OLTP, batch, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise), the presentation steps through the process of monitoring and troubleshooting the configuration to maximize performance and replication throughput within and between Oracle clouds. Join us at our sessions or stop by our demo pods in Moscone south and meet the product management and development teams.

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• Evaluating Oracle Data Mining Has Never Been Easier - Evaluation "Kit" Available

  - by chberger

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Now you can quickly and easily get set up to starting using Oracle Data Mining for evaluation purposes. Just go to the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) and follow these simple steps. Oracle Data Mining Evaluation "Kit" Instructions Step 1: Download and Install the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Anyone can download and install the Oracle Database for free for evaluation purposes. Read OTN web site for details. 11.2.0.1.0 DB is the minimum, 11.2.0.2 is better and naturally 11.2.0.3 is best if you are a current customer and on active support. Either 32-bit or 64-bit is fine. 4GB of RAM or more works fine for SQL Developer and the Oracle Data Miner GUI extension. Downloading the database and installing it should take just about an hour or so, depending on your network and computer. For more instructions on setting up Oracle Data Mining see: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/odm/dataminerworkflow-168677.html When you install the Oracle Database, the Sample Examples data should also be installed e.g.:Release 2 Examples win32_11gR2_examples.zip (565,154,740 bytes). Contains examples of how to use the Oracle Database. Download if you are new to Oracle and want to try some of the examples presented in the Documentation Step 2: Install SQL Developer 3.1 (the Oracle Data Mining Extension installs automatically) Step 3. Follow the four free step-by-step Oracle-by-Examples e-training lessons: Setting Up Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 This tutorial covers the process of setting up Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 for use within Oracle SQL Developer 3.0. Using Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2 This tutorial covers the use of Oracle Data Miner to perform data mining against Oracle Database 11g Release 2. In this lesson, you examine and solve a data mining business problem by using the Oracle Data Miner graphical user interface (GUI). Star Schema Mining Using Oracle Data Miner This tutorial covers the use of Oracle Data Miner to perform star schema mining against Oracle Database 11g Release 2. Text Mining Using Oracle Data Miner This tutorial covers the use of Oracle Data Miner to perform text mining against Oracle Database 11g Release 2. That’s it! Easy, fun and the fastest way to get started evaluating Oracle Data Mining. Enjoy! Charlie

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• Organizational characteristics that impact the selection of Development Methodology concepts applied to a project

  Based on my experience, no one really follows a specific methodology exactly as it is formally designed. In fact, the key concepts of a few methodologies are usually combined to form a hybrid methodology for each project based on the current organizational makeup and the project need/requirements to be accomplished. Organizational characteristics that impact the selection of methodology concepts applied to a project. Prior subject knowledge pertaining to a project can be critical when deciding on what methodology or combination of methodologies to apply to a project. For example, if a project is very straight forward, and the development staff has experience in developing  that are similar, then the waterfall method could possibly be the best choice because little to no research is needed  in order to complete the project tasks and there is very little need for changes to occur.  On the other hand, if the development staff has limited subject knowledge or the requirements/specification of the project could possibly change as the project progresses then the use of spiral, iterative, incremental, agile, or any combination would be preferred. The previous methodologies used by an organization typically do not change much from project to project unless the needs of a project dictate differently. For example, if the waterfall method is the preferred development methodology then most projects will be developed by the waterfall method. Depending on the time allotted to a project each day can impact the selection of a development methodology. In one example, if the staff can only devote a few hours a day to a project then the incremental methodology might be ideal because modules can be added to the final project as they are developed. On the other hand, if daily time allocation is not an issue, then a multitude of methodologies could work well for a project. Project characteristics that impact the selection of methodology concepts applied to a project. The type of project being developed can often dictate the type of methodology used for the project. Based on my experience, projects that tend to have a lot of user interaction, follow a more iterative, incremental, or agile approach typically using a prototype that develops into a final project. These methodologies desire back and forth communication between users, clients, and developers to allow for requirements to change and functionality to be enhanced. Conversely, limited interaction applications or automated services can still sometimes get away with using the waterfall or transactional approach. The timeline of a project can also force an organization to prefer a particular methodology over the rest. For instance, if the project must be completed within 24 hours, then there is very little time for discussions back and forth between clients, users and the development team. In this scenario, the waterfall method would be perfect because the only interaction with the client occurs prior to a development project to outline the system requirements, and the development team can quickly move through the software development stages in order to complete the project within the deadline. If the team had more time, then the other methodologies could also be considered because there is more time for client and users to review the project and make changes as they see fit, and/or allow for more time to review the project in order to enhance the business performance and functionality. Sometimes the client and or user involvement can dictate the selection of methodologies applied to a project. One example of this is if a client is highly motivated to get a project completed and desires to play an active part in the development process then the agile development approach would work perfectly with this client because it allows for frequent interaction between clients, users and the development team. The inverse of this situation is a client that just wants to provide the project requirements and only wants to get involved when the project is to be delivered. In this case the waterfall method would work well because there is no room for changes and no back and forth between the users, clients or the development team.

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• Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, Part 2

  - by [email protected]

  In my last post, Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, we explored using DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL and DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL to enable moving a model from one system to another. In this post, we'll look at two distributed scenarios that make use of this capability and a tip for easily moving models from one machine to another using only Oracle Database, not an external file transport mechanism, such as FTP. The first scenario, consider a company with geographically distributed business units, each collecting and managing their data locally for the products they sell. Each business unit has in-house data analysts that build models to predict which products to recommend to customers in their space. A central telemarketing business unit also uses these models to score new customers locally using data collected over the phone. Since the models recommend different products, each customer is scored using each model. This is depicted in Figure 1.Figure 1: Target instance importing multiple remote models for local scoring In the second scenario, consider multiple hospitals that collect data on patients with certain types of cancer. The data collection is standardized, so each hospital collects the same patient demographic and other health / tumor data, along with the clinical diagnosis. Instead of each hospital building it's own models, the data is pooled at a central data analysis lab where a predictive model is built. Once completed, the model is distributed to hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices who can score patient data locally.Figure 2: Multiple target instances importing the same model from a source instance for local scoring Since this blog focuses on model export and import, we'll only discuss what is necessary to move a model from one database to another. Here, we use the package DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER, which can move files between Oracle databases. The script is fairly straightforward, but requires setting up a database link and directory objects. We saw how to create directory objects in the previous post. To create a database link to the source database from the target, we can use, for example: create database link SOURCE1_LINK connect to <schema> identified by <password> using 'SOURCE1'; Note that 'SOURCE1' refers to the service name of the remote database entry in your tnsnames.ora file. From SQL*Plus, first connect to the remote database and export the model. Note that the model_file_name does not include the .dmp extension. This is because export_model appends "01" to this name.  Next, connect to the local database and invoke DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE and import the model. Note that "01" is eliminated in the target system file name.  connect <source_schema>/<password>@SOURCE1_LINK; BEGIN  DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                                 'name =''MY_MINING_MODEL'''); END; connect <target_schema>/<password>; BEGIN  DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE ('MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '01.dmp',                               'SOURCE1_LINK',                               'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp' );  DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT'); END; To clean up afterward, you may want to drop the exported .dmp file at the source and the transferred file at the target. For example, utl_file.fremove('&directory_name', '&model_file_name' || '.dmp');

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• T-SQL Tuesday #21 - Crap!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) ever popular T-SQL Tuesday series is being held on Wednesday this time, and the topic is… SHIT CRAP. No, not fecal material.  But crap code.  Crap SQL.  Crap ideas that you thought were good at the time, or were forced to do due (doo-doo?) to lack of time. The challenge for me is to look back on my SQL Server career and find something that WASN'T crap.  Well, there's a lot that wasn't, but for some reason I don't remember those that well.  So the additional challenge is to pick one particular turd that I really wish I hadn't squeezed out.  Let's see if this outline fits the bill: An ETL process on text files; That had to interface between SQL Server and an AS/400 system; That didn't use SSIS (should have) or BizTalk (ummm, no) but command-line scripting, using Unix utilities(!) via: xp_cmdshell; That had to email reports and financial data, some of it sensitive Yep, the stench smell is coming back to me now, as if it was yesterday… As to why SSIS and BizTalk were not options, basically I didn't know either of them well enough to get the job done (and I still don't).  I also had a strict deadline of 3 days, in addition to all the other responsibilities I had, so no time to learn them.  And seeing how screwed up the rest of the process was: Payment files from multiple vendors in multiple formats; Sent via FTP, PGP encrypted email, or some other wizardry; Manually opened/downloaded and saved to a particular set of folders (couldn't change this); Once processed, had to be placed BACK in the same folders with the original archived; x2 divisions that had to run separately; Plus an additional vendor file in another format on a completely different schedule; So that they could be MANUALLY uploaded into the AS/400 system (couldn't change this either, even if it was technically possible) I didn't feel so bad about the solution I came up with, which was naturally: Copy the payment files to the local SQL Server drives, using xp_cmdshell Run batch files (via xp_cmdshell) to parse the different formats using sed, a Unix utility (this was before Powershell) Use other Unix utilities (join, split, grep, wc) to process parsed files and generate metadata (size, date, checksum, line count) Run sqlcmd to execute a stored procedure that passed the parsed file names so it would bulk load the data to do a comparison bcp the compared data out to ANOTHER text file so that I could grep that data out of the original file Run another stored procedure to import the matched data into SQL Server so it could process the payments, including file metadata Process payment batches and log which division and vendor they belong to Email the payment details to the finance group (since it was too hard for them to run a web report with the same data…which they ran anyway to compare the emailed file against…which always matched, surprisingly) Email another report showing unmatched payments so they could manually void them…about 3 months afterward All in "Excel" format, using xp_sendmail (SQL 2000 system) Copy the unmatched data back to the original folder locations, making sure to match the file format exactly (if you've ever worked with ACH files, you'll understand why this sucked) If you're one of the 10 people who have read my blog before, you know that I love the DOS "for" command.  Like passionately.  Like fairy-tale love.  So my batch files were riddled with for loops, nested within other for loops, that called other batch files containing for loops.  I think there was one section that had 4 or 5 nested for commands.  It was wrong, disturbed, and completely un-maintainable by anyone, even myself.  Months, even a year, after I left the company I got calls from someone who had to make a minor change to it, and they called me to talk them out of spraying the office with an AK-47 after looking at this code.  (for you Star Trek TOS fans) The funniest part of this, well, one of the funniest, is that I made the deadline…sort of, I was only a day late…and the DAMN THING WORKED practically unchanged for 3 years.  Most of the problems came from the manual parts of the overall process, like forgetting to decrypt the files, or missing/late files, or saved to the wrong folders.  I'm definitely not trying to toot my own horn here, because this was truly one of the dumbest, crappiest solutions I ever came up with.  Fortunately as far as I know it's no longer in use and someone has written a proper replacement.  Today I would knuckle down and do it in SSIS or Powershell, even if it took me weeks to get it right. The real lesson from this crap code is to make things MAINTAINABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE.  sed scripting regular expressions doesn't fit that criteria in any way.  If you ever find yourself under pressure to do something fast at all costs, DON'T DO IT.  Stop and consider long-term maintainability, not just for yourself but for others on your team.  If you can't explain the basic approach in under 5 minutes, it ultimately won't succeed.  And while you may love to leave all that crap behind, it may follow you anyway, and you'll step in it again.   P.S. - if you're wondering about all the manual stuff that couldn't be changed, it was because the entire process had gone through Six Sigma, and was deemed the best possible way.  Phew!  Talk about stink!

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• Top 10 Linked Blogs of 2010

  - by Bill Graziano

  Each week I send out a SQL Server newsletter and include links to interesting blog posts.  I’ve linked to over 500 blog posts so far in 2010.  Late last year I started storing those links in a database so I could do a little reporting.  I tend to link to posts related to the OLTP engine.  I also try to link to the individual blogger in the group blogs.  Unfortunately that wasn’t possible for the SQLCAT and CSS blogs.  I also have a real weakness for posts related to PASS. These are the top 10 blogs that I linked to during the year ordered by the number of posts I linked to. Paul Randal – Paul writes extensively on the internals of the relational engine.  Lots of great posts around transactions, transaction log, disaster recovery, corruption, indexes and DBCC.  I also linked to many of his SQL Server myths posts. Glenn Berry – Glenn writes very interesting posts on how hardware affects SQL Server.  I especially like his posts on the various CPU platforms.  These aren’t necessarily topics that I’m searching for but I really enjoy reading them. The SQLCAT Team – This Microsoft team focuses on the largest and most interesting SQL Server installations.  The regularly publish white papers and best practices. SQL Server CSS Team – These are the top engineers from the Microsoft Customer Service and Support group.  These are the folks you finally talk to after your case has been escalated about 20 times.  They write about the interesting problems they find. Brent Ozar – The posts I linked to mostly focused on the relational engine: CPU, NUMA, SSD drives, performance monitoring, etc.  But Brent writes about a real variety of topics including blogging, social networking, speaking, the MCM, SQL Azure and anything else that seems to strike his fancy.  His posts are always well written and though provoking. Jeremiah Peschka – A number of Jeremiah’s posts weren’t about SQL Server.  He’s very active in the “NoSQL” area and I linked to a number of those posts.  I think it’s important for people to know what other technologies are out there. Brad McGehee – Brad writes about being a DBA including maintenance plans, DBA checklists, compression and audit. Thomas LaRock – I linked to a variety of posts from PBM to networking to 24 Hours of PASS to TDE.  Just a real variety of topics.  Tom always writes with an interesting style usually mixing in a movie theme and/or bacon. Aaron Bertrand – Many of my links this year were Denali features.  He also had a great series on bad habits to kick. Michael J. Swart – This last one surprised me.  There are some well known SQL Server bloggers below Michael on this list.  I linked to posts on indexes, hierarchies, transactions and I/O performance and a variety of other engine related posts.  All are interesting and well thought out.  Many of his non-SQL posts are also very good.  He seems to have an interest in puzzles and other brain teasers.  Michael, I won’t be surprised again!

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• Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database: A Robust Infrastructure for your Applications

  - by Ruma Sanyal

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 It has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Well, this is also true for your application infrastructure. Not only are the various components that constitute your infrastructure, like database and application server critical, the integration between these things [whether coming out of the box from your vendor or done in-house] is paramount. Imagine your database being down and your application server not knowing about it and as a result your application waiting indefinitely for a database response – not a great situation if high availability is critical to your application. Or one of your database nodes is very busy, but your application server doesn’t have the intelligence to decipher that – it keeps pinging the busy node when it can in fact get a response from another idle node much faster. This is what Oracle WebLogic and Database integration provides: Intelligent integration out of the box. Tight integration between Oracle WebLogic and Database makes your infrastructure robust enough that not only does each of your infrastructure component provide you with improved RASP [reliability availability, scalability, and performance] but these components work together to offer improved performance & availability, better resource sharing, inherent scalability, ease of configuration and automated management for your entire infrastructure. Oracle WebLogic Server is the only application server with this degree of integration to Oracle Database. With Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, we introduced Active GridLink for Real Application Clusters (RAC). In conjunction with Oracle Database, this powerful software technology simplifies management, increases availability, and ensures fast connection failover with runtime connection, load balancing and affinity capabilities. With the release of Oracle Database 12c this summer, even tighter integration between Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.2) and Oracle Database 12c has been achieved and this further optimizes the integration for a global cloud environment. Read about these capabilities in detail in the Oracle WebLogic-Database Integration Whitepaper. Get in depth ‘how-to’ details from this YouTube video on the topic from our resident expert, Monica Roccelli. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Can't connect to VPN on Ubuntu 12.04

  - by 12rad

  I'm having a lot of trouble connecting to VPN. This used to work on my machine, but i recently did an update and it's stopped working. I'm not sure what the problem is. My question is how do i debug this? I'm not able to narrow it down to a specific problem. This is what i get when i tail the syslogs. Would appreciate any help! Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> Starting VPN service 'pptp'... Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' started (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp), PID 6132 Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' appeared; activating connections Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN plugin state changed: starting (3) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN connection 'NAME VPN' (Connect) reply received. Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pppd[6136]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.5/nm-pptp-pppd-plugin.so loaded. Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pppd[6136]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: timeout set to 15 seconds Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (NO CARRIER) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (NO DIALTONE) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (ERROR) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (NO ANSWER) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (BUSY) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (Username/Password Incorrect) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: send (AT^M) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[main:pptp.c:314]: The synchronous pptp option is NOT activated Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: expect (OK) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_rep:pptp_ctrl.c:251]: Sent control packet type is 1 'Start-Control-Connection-Request' Nov 6 23:42:53 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:739]: Received Start Control Connection Reply Nov 6 23:42:53 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:773]: Client connection established. Nov 6 23:42:53 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_rep:pptp_ctrl.c:251]: Sent control packet type is 7 'Outgoing-Call-Request' Nov 6 23:42:54 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:858]: Received Outgoing Call Reply. Nov 6 23:42:54 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:897]: Outgoing call established (call ID 0, peer's call ID 13077). Nov 6 23:42:54 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 warn[decaps_hdlc:pptp_gre.c:231]: The ppp mode is synchronous, yet no pptp --sync option is specified! Nov 6 23:43:07 meera chat[6139]: alarm Nov 6 23:43:07 meera chat[6139]: Failed Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Script chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat-ztisp finished (pid 6139), status = 0x3 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Connect script failed Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Waiting for 1 child processes... Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: script /usr/sbin/pptp 204.197.218.90 --nolaunchpppd --loglevel 0 --logstring nm-pptp-service-6132, pid 6138 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 warn[decaps_hdlc:pptp_gre.c:204]: short read (-1): Input/output error Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 warn[decaps_hdlc:pptp_gre.c:216]: pppd may have shutdown, see pppd log Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[callmgr_main:pptp_callmgr.c:234]: Closing connection (unhandled) Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Script /usr/sbin/pptp 204.197.218.90 --nolaunchpppd --loglevel 0 --logstring nm-pptp-service-6132 finished (pid 6138), status = 0x0 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_rep:pptp_ctrl.c:251]: Sent control packet type is 12 'Call-Clear-Request' Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[call_callback:pptp_callmgr.c:79]: Closing connection (call state) Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Exit. Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <warn> VPN plugin failed: 1 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN plugin state changed: stopped (6) Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN plugin state change reason: 0 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <warn> error disconnecting VPN: Could not process the request because no VPN connection was active.

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• Duke's Choice Award Ceremony

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The 2012 Duke's Choice Awards winners and their creative, Java-based technologies and Java community contributions were honored after the Sunday night JavaOne keynotes. Sharat Chander, Group Director for Java Technology Outreach, presented the awards. "Having the community participate directly in both submission and selection truly shows how we are driving exposure of the innovation happening in the Java community," he said. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop Project The Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. AgroSense Project Improving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. JDuchess Rather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), JDuchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. Jelastic, Inc. Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. Liquid Robotics Robotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect. London Java Community The second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. NATO The first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. Parleys.com E-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Student Nokia Developer Group This year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed. You can read more about the winners in the current issue of Java Magazine.

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• Pull Request Changes, Multi-Selection in Advanced View, and Advertisement Changes

  [Do you tweet? Follow us on Twitter @matthawley and @adacole_msft] We deployed a new version of the CodePlex website today. Pull Request Changes In this release, we have begun to re-focus on Pull Requests to ensure a productive experience between the project users and developers. We feel we made significant progress in this area for this release and look forward to using your feedback to drive future iterations. One of the biggest hurdles people have indicated is the inability to see what a pull request includes without pulling the source down from a Mercurial client. With today’s changes, any user has the ability to view a pull request, the changesets / changes included, and perform an inline diff of the file. When a pull request is made, the CodePlex website will query for all outgoing changes from the fork to the main repository for a point-in-time comparison. Because of this point-in-time comparison… All existing pull requests created prior to this release will not have changesets associated with them. If new commits are pushed to the fork while a pull request is active, they will not appear associated with the pull request. The pull request will need to be re-submitted for them to appear. Once a pull request is created, you can “View the Pull Request” which takes you to a page that looks like As you may notice, we now display a lot more detailed information regarding that pull request including who it was requested by and when, the associated changesets, the description, who it’s assigned to (we’ll come back to this) and the listing of summarized file changes. What you’ll also notice, is that each modified file has the ability to view a diff of all changes made. When you click “(view diff)” for a file, an inline diff experience appears. This new experience allows you to quickly navigate through all of the modified files as well as viewing the various change blocks for each file. You’ll also notice as you browse through each file’s changes, we update the URL to include the file path so you can quickly send a direct link to a pull request’s file. Clicking “(close diff)” will bring you back to the original pull request view. View this pull request live on WikiPlex. Pull Request Review Assignment Another new feature we added for pull requests is the ability for project members to assign pull requests for review. Any project member has the ability to assign (and re-assign if needed) a pull request to a project member. Once the assignment has been made, that project member will be notified via email of the assignment. Once they complete the review of the pull request, they can either accept or deny it similarly to the previous process. Multi-Selection in Advanced View Filters One of the more recent requests we have heard from users is the ability multi-select advanced view filters for work items. We are happy to announce this is now possible. Simply control-click the multiple options for each filter item and your work item query will be refined as such. Should you happen to unselect all options for a given filter, it will automatically reset to the default option for that filter. Furthermore, the “Direct Link” URL will be updated to include the multi-selected options for each filter. Note: The “Direct Link” feature was released in our previous deployment, just never written about. It allows you to capture the current state of your query and send it to other individuals. Advertisement Changes Very recently, the advertiser (The Lounge) we partnered to provide advertising revenue for projects, or donated to charity, was acquired by Lake Quincy Media. There has been no change in the advertising platform offering, and all projects have been converted over to using the new infrastructure. Project owners should note the new contact information for getting paid. The CodePlex team values your feedback, and is frequently monitoring Twitter, our Discussions and Issue Tracker for new features or problems. If you’ve not visited the Issue Tracker recently, please take a few moments to log an idea or vote for the features you would most like to see implemented on CodePlex.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Social Web / Big Media

  - by Clint Edmonson

  With the rise of social media there’s been an explosion of special interest media web sites on the web. From athletics to board games to funny animal behaviors, you can bet there’s a group of people somewhere on the web talking about it. Social media sites allow us to interact, share experiences, and bond with like minded enthusiasts around the globe. And through the power of software, we can follow trends in these unique domains in real time. Drivers Reach Scalability Media hosting Global distribution Solution Here’s a sketch of how a social media application might be built out on Windows Azure: Ingredients Traffic Manager (optional) – can be used to provide hosting and load balancing across different instances and/or data centers. Perfect if the solution needs to be delivered to different cultures or regions around the world. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model has extensibility points to hook into other identity providers as well. Web Role – hosts the core of the web application and presents a central social hub users. Database – used to store core operational, functional, and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Tables (optional) – for semi-structured data streams that don’t need relational integrity such as conversations, comments, or activity streams, tables provide a faster and more flexible way to store this kind of historical data. Blobs (optional) – users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• 13 Things From the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know

  - by Mike Stiles

  Oracle held its first annual Oracle Social Summit, “The School for the Socially Gifted,” this past week in Las Vegas.  If anyone came to the event uncertain as to why Oracle has such an interest in social, and what its plans for social are, they left with an entirely new vision of where social is headed, and why.For those unable to attend, I was able to keep my MacBook charged just long enough to capture some of the more pertinent takeaways.1. The social enterprise is inevitable.  Social technology is disrupting the hierarchies of big companies.  It’s a revolution in corporate structures, just as it has been in various governments.  It’s not crazy to ask yourself if your CEO is the next Mubarak.  (David Kilpatrick Author of “The Facebook Effect” and founder of the Techonomy Conference) 2. The social enterprise represents collaboration on steroids.  It’s tapping into the power of your people, as opposed to keeping them “in their place.”  3. 1 in every 7 humans on earth is an active Facebook user.  75% have posted a negative comment after a poor customer experience.  The average user will inform 53 people of a bad experience.4. Checking social media is the 2nd biggest use of phones now.  Reading posts from brands is 4th.5. 70% of marketers have little or no understanding of the social conversations happening around their brand.6. Advertising, when done well, is content we care about, preferably informed by those we trust.7. Acquiring low-quality fans through gimmicks, or focusing purely on fan acquisition is a mistake.  And relying purely on organic distribution is a mistake.  (John Yi, Head of Marketing Partnerships – Facebook)8. Using all this newfound data and insight serves to positively affect the customer experience.  It allows organizations to now leverage the investments they’ve made in social up to now.9. Social is not a marketing utopia where everything is free.  It’s pay to play.  The paid component is about driving attention.  10. We are only in the infancy of ad-targeting opportunities in social.  There’s an evolution underway from interest-based targeting to action-based targeting.11. There’s actually very little overlap of the people following you on different social platforms.  Don’t assume it’s the same audience on each.12. People who can create content and who also have an understanding of what drives that content are growing increasingly valuable.13. Oracle Social’s future is enterprise SRM, integrated across marketing, selling, service, HR and every other corner of the organization.And in case you thought those were the only gems to come out of the summit, you may want to keep an eye out for Tuesday’s Social Spotlight, ever so aptly titled “13 More Things from the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know.”

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• Create a Remote Git Repository from an Existing XCode Repository

  - by codeWithoutFear

  Introduction Distributed version control systems (VCS’s), like Git, provide a rich set of features for managing source code.  Many development tools, including XCode, provide built-in support for various VCS’s.  These tools provide simple configuration with limited customization to get you up and running quickly while still providing the safety net of basic version control. I hate losing (and re-doing) work.  I have OCD when it comes to saving and versioning source code.  Save early, save often, and commit to the VCS often.  I also hate merging code.  Smaller and more frequent commits enable me to minimize merge time and effort as well. The work flow I prefer even for personal exploratory projects is: Make small local changes to the codebase to create an incrementally improved (and working) system. Commit these changes to the local repository.  Local repositories are quick to access, function even while offline, and provides the confidence to continue making bold changes to the system.  After all, I can easily recover to a recent working state. Repeat 1 & 2 until the codebase contains “significant” functionality and I have connectivity to the remote repository. Push the accumulated changes to the remote repository.  The smaller the change set, the less likely extensive merging will be required.  Smaller is better, IMHO. The remote repository typically has a greater degree of fault tolerance and active management dedicated to it.  This can be as simple as a network share that is backed up nightly or as complex as dedicated hardware with specialized server-side processing and significant administrative monitoring. XCode’s out-of-the-box Git integration enables steps 1 and 2 above.  Time Machine backups of the local repository add an additional degree of fault tolerance, but do not support collaboration or take advantage of managed infrastructure such as on-premises or cloud-based storage. Creating a Remote Repository These are the steps I use to enable the full workflow identified above.  For simplicity the “remote” repository is created on the local file system.  This location could easily be on a mounted network volume. Create a Test Project My project is called HelloGit and is located at /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit.  Be sure to commit all outstanding changes.  XCode always leaves a single changed file for me after the project is created and the initial commit is submitted. Clone the Local Repository We want to clone the XCode-created Git repository to the location where the remote repository will reside.  In this case it will be /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit. Open the Terminal application. Clone the local repository to the remote repository location: git clone /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Convert the Remote Repository to a Bare Repository The remote repository only needs to contain the Git database.  It does not need a checked out branch or local files. Go to the remote repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Indicate the repository is “bare”: git config --bool core.bare true Remove files, leaving the .git folder: rm -R * Remove the “origin” remote: git remote rm origin Configure the Local Repository The local repository should reference the remote repository.  The remote name “origin” is used by convention to indicate the originating repository.  This is set automatically when a repository is cloned.  We will use the “origin” name here to reflect that relationship. Go to the local repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit Add the remote: git remote add origin /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Test Connectivity Any changes made to the local Git repository can be pushed to the remote repository subject to the merging rules Git enforces. Create a new local file: date > date.txt /li> Add the new file to the local index: git add date.txt Commit the change to the local repository: git commit -m "New file: date.txt" Push the change to the remote repository: git push origin master Now you can save, commit, and push/pull to your OCD hearts’ content! Code without fear! --Don

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• SQLAuthority News – Stay Connected and Social Media

  - by pinaldave

  I think I have finally gotten back my faith in social media. If you are following my blog I am sure you are aware of my views on social media – SQLAuthority News – Social Media Confusion – Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Me. I was not happy about how social media was evolving. Whenever I go to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, I noticed the same updates everywhere. I just thought I was wasting my time doing the same thing everywhere. I strongly believe that there is no dictator on internet. Nobody has authority over others, everybody can express their ideas as long as it is not violating others privacy and it is not morally wrong. I have decided that instead of trying to improve the world, I should change myself and adjust my needs. Here are few things I have done to relieve my social media confusion. Twitter I un-followed people who were taking up my time with too many updates. I un-followed people who hardly updated at all. I did not follow anybody else’s list, as I have no control over who other people follow. I follow not only serious SQL people but some fun stuff as well. I removed all my friends who were on Facebook and repeating the same updates on Twitter. I engage with them on Facebook. I followed people who are very conversational on Twitter. I let anybody follow me. I update all my blog posts through at least five tweets online. I decided to re-tweet at least five of my favorite tweets of the day, this way I force myself to remain active in the community. Follow me on Twitter! LinkedIn I updated my career and professional info on LinkedIn. I keep my LinkedIn profile updated with my latest jobs and career news. I let anybody connect with me on LinkedIn. I specify my email address in my profile, keeping it easy for those who want to add me. I read all the profile related updates of my connections – it is very valuable to know who is where and what changes are happening. I do not add my personal tweets or comments in LinkedIn profile. I just keep it professional. Link with me at LinkedIn Facebook I use Facebook only for personal friends. I visit all of my friends at regular intervals and make sure that they are really my friends. I often remove my friends from my Twitter list who are sending duplicate updates. I upload my family photos as well as family updates on Facebook, making sure that only my approved friends are able to read my updates. I keep my Facebook very personal and I often chat with my friends on Facebook chat. I am no longer confused about social media and I think I am using it appropriately. As I said, one cannot decide for others how to use social media, you can only decide for yourself. I have finally found my peace with social media. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Professional Developers, may I join you?

  - by Ben

  I currently work in technical support for a software/hardware company and for the most part it's a good job, but it's feeling more and more like I'm getting 'stuck' here. No raises in the 5 years I've been here, and lately there seems to be more hiring from the outside than promotion from within. The work I do is more technical than end-user support, as we deal primarily with our field technicians who have a little more technical skill than the general user base. As a result I get into much more technical support issues... often tracking down bugs in our software, finding performance bottlenecks in our database schema, etc. The work I'm most proud of are the development projects I've come up with on my own, and worked on during lunch breaks and slow periods in Support. Over the years I've written a number of useful utilities for the company. Diagnostic type applications that several departments use and appreciate. These include apps that simulate our various hardware devices, log file analysis, time-saving utilities for our work processes, etc. My best projects have been the hardware simulation programs, which are the type of thing we probably wouldn't have put a full-time developer on had anyone thought to do it, but they've ended up being popular and useful enough to be used by development, QA, R&D, and Support. They allow us to interface our software with simulated hardware, rather than clutter up our work areas with bulky, hard to acquire equipment. Since starting here my life has moved forward (married, kid, one more on the way), but it feels like my career has not. I still earn what I earned walking in the door my first day. Company budget is tight, bonuses have gone down, and no raises or cost of living / inflation adjustments either. As the sole source of income for my family I feel I need to do more, and I'd like to have a more active role in creating something at work, not just cleaning up other people's mistakes. I enjoy technical work, and I think development is the next logical step in my career. I'd like to bring some "legitimacy" to my part-time development work, and make myself a more skilled and valuable employee. Ultimately if this can help me better support my family, that would be ideal. Can I make the jump to professional developer? I have an engineering degree, but no formal education in computer science. I write WinForms apps using the .NET framework, do some freelance web development, have volunteered to write software for a nonprofit, and have started experimenting with programming microcontrollers. I enjoy learning new things in the limited free time I have available. I think I have the aptitude to take on a development role, even in an 'apprentice' capacity if such an option is possible. Have any of you moved into development like this? Do any of you developers have any advice or cautionary tales? Are there better career options I haven't thought of? I welcome any and all related comments and thank you in advance for posting them.

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• How the number of indexes built on a table can impact performances?

  - by Davide Mauri

  We all know that putting too many indexes (I’m talking of non-clustered index only, of course) on table may produce performance problems due to the overhead that each index bring to all insert/update/delete operations on that table. But how much? I mean, we all agree – I think – that, generally speaking, having many indexes on a table is “bad”. But how bad it can be? How much the performance will degrade? And on a concurrent system how much this situation can also hurts SELECT performances? If SQL Server take more time to update a row on a table due to the amount of indexes it also has to update, this also means that locks will be held for more time, slowing down the perceived performance of all queries involved. I was quite curious to measure this, also because when teaching it’s by far more impressive and effective to show to attended a chart with the measured impact, so that they can really “feel” what it means! To do the tests, I’ve create a script that creates a table (that has a clustered index on the primary key which is an identity column) , loads 1000 rows into the table (inserting 1000 row using only one insert, instead of issuing 1000 insert of one row, in order to minimize the overhead needed to handle the transaction, that would have otherwise ), and measures the time taken to do it. The process is then repeated 16 times, each time adding a new index on the table, using columns from table in a round-robin fashion. Test are done against different row sizes, so that it’s possible to check if performance changes depending on row size. The result are interesting, although expected. This is the chart showing how much time it takes to insert 1000 on a table that has from 0 to 16 non-clustered indexes. Each test has been run 20 times in order to have an average value. The value has been cleaned from outliers value due to unpredictable performance fluctuations due to machine activity. The test shows that in a  table with a row size of 80 bytes, 1000 rows can be inserted in 9,05 msec if no indexes are present on the table, and the value grows up to 88 (!!!) msec when you have 16 indexes on it This means a impact on performance of 975%. That’s *huge*! Now, what happens if we have a bigger row size? Say that we have a table with a row size of 1520 byte. Here’s the data, from 0 to 16 indexes on that table: In this case we need near 22 msec to insert 1000 in a table with no indexes, but we need more that 500msec if the table has 16 active indexes! Now we’re talking of a 2410% impact on performance! Now we can have a tangible idea of what’s the impact of having (too?) many indexes on a table and also how the size of a row also impact performances. That’s why the golden rule of OLTP databases “few indexes, but good” is so true! (And in fact last week I saw a database with tables with 1700bytes row size and 23 (!!!) indexes on them!) This also means that a too heavy denormalization is really not a good idea (we’re always talking about OLTP systems, keep it in mind), since the performance get worse with the increase of the row size. So, be careful out there, and keep in mind the “equilibrium” is the key world of a database professional: equilibrium between read and write performance, between normalization and denormalization, between to few and too may indexes. PS Tests are done on a VMWare Workstation 7 VM with 2 CPU and 4 GB of Memory. Host machine is a Dell Precsioni M6500 with i7 Extreme X920 Quad-Core HT 2.0Ghz and 16Gb of RAM. Database is stored on a SSD Intel X-25E Drive, Simple Recovery Model, running on SQL Server 2008 R2. If you also want to to tests on your own, you can download the test script here: Open TestIndexPerformance.sql

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• Get Your Enterprise Working With Oracle On Track Communication 1.0

  - by Josh Lannin

  The On Track Development team is very pleased to announce that today On Track is available for our customers to download and evaluate.  To learn more about what On Track does start with our whitepaper and datasheet.   If you are a developer, take a look at our documentation and samples posted to our OTN page. For this first blog post, I’ll be speaking to several notable points about our product. Graceful Escalation via Conversations: On Track addresses the “Collaboration Problem” through a single guiding principle – graceful escalation – within the construct of a Conversation. In On Track, collaboration is based on a context (called a “Conversation”) that gracefully escalates in form, structure, and content, as dictated by the particular needs of a given collaboration.  Within that context, On Track provides a rich set of tools to choose from.  These tools provide for communication, coordination, content management, organization, decision making, and analysis -- all essential aspects of collaboration, but not all of them are essential all of the time.  Every collaborative interaction will evolve differently.  Some will evolve to represent work spreading over the course of years and involving a large, distributed team, while others may involve few people and not evolve at all.  Regardless, all collaborative contexts are built from the same parts, utilize the same concepts, and start the same way.  The principle of graceful escalation is that you only use the tools and structure you need; so you only incur the complexity you need. Purposeful Collaboration: Through application integration, On Track Conversations bring enterprise application users the communication and collaboration capabilities required to complete business process.  By association with specific processes or business objects conversations extend the possible interactions and broaden participation to internal or external non-application users and provide a sophisticated interaction experience, all the while enhancing the data set within the owning application.  Purposeful collaboration not only needs to happen in the context of applications, it must support a full range of real-time and long-running interactions to provide the greatest value. Multi Client, Multi Modal: This On Track 1.0 product release includes the same day availability of  multiple clients, including iPhone and iPad applications which are now available on the Apple Store, a fully capable and accessible Outlook Add-In, along with our browser web client.  With each client we have sought to leverage the strengths of each unique device- our iPhone client supports picture and voice posts, the iPad is optimized for meeting room situations and document viewing, and our Outlook add-in allows you to take emails in context and bring them into On Track.  In addition to supporting a diverse array of clients, On Track provides a unified multi modal experience support starting with basic messages moving through to integrated documents with live annotations, snapshots, application sharing, and voice. Next Generation Web Architecture: We believe On Track will help move the bar higher for what users can expect from all web applications, most notably ones that involve real-time activity.  On Track is built from the ground up with an innovative, real-time architecture that leverages the extensive push capabilities of our server.  Whether you are receiving a new message, viewing where crowds of people are collaborating, or doing live annotation on a document with a set of people, that information comes to you immediately without refreshes or moving back and forth between pages.  We’ve leveraged this core architecture across the product experience and raised the user experience bar for this type of application.  As well these capabilities are based on open standards and protocols, and are fully extensible by anyone- enabling sophisticated integrations to be created with a wide variety of both legacy and next-generation applications. Agile Product Development: As a product team we operate using continuous feedback and modified agile development methodologies.  We have thousands of active internal Oracle users who have helped pilot our product for critical business functions, and the On Track product development team uses our product as our primary vehicle for all our collaboration.  Additionally we been working with early access customers who are adopting our technology and providing us valuable feedback - which our process has rapidly realized in improvements to our software.  On Track agility extends to our server as well, which is built to scale, and is very simple to install and configure. We are pleased to make this product announcement and encourage you to join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, as well as checking back here for the latest product information.

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• Communication between state machines with hidden transitions

  - by slartibartfast

  The question emerged for me in embedded programming but I think it can be applied to quite a number of general networking situations e.g. when a communication partner fails. Assume we have an application logic (a program) running on a computer and a gadget connected to that computer via e.g. a serial interface like RS232. The gadget has a red/green/blue LED and a button which disables the LED. The LEDs color can be driven by software commands over the serial interface and the state (red/green/blue/off) is read back and causes a reaction in the application logic. Asynchronous behaviour of the application logic with regard to the LED color down to a certain delay (depending on the execution cycle of the application) is tolerated. What we essentially have is a resource (the LED) which can not be reserved and handled atomically by software because the (organic) user can at any time press the button to interfere/break the software attempt to switch the LED color. Stripping this example from its physical outfit I dare to say that we have two communicating state machines A (application logic) and G (gadget) where G executes state changes unbeknownst to A (and also the other way round, but this is not significant in our example) and only A can be modified at a reasonable price. A needs to see the reaction and state of G in one piece of information which may be (slightly) outdated but not inconsistent with respect to the short time window when this information was generated on the side of G. What I am looking for is a concise method to handle such a situation in embedded software (i.e. no layer/framework like CORBA etc. available). A programming technique which is able to map the complete behaviour of both participants on classical interfaces of a classical programming language (C in this case). To complicate matters (or rather, to generalize), a simple high frequency communication cycle of A to G and back (IOW: A is rapidly polling G) is out of focus because of technical restrictions (delay of serial com, A not always active, etc.). What I currently see as a general solution is: the application logic A as one thread of execution an adapter object (proxy) PG (presenting G inside the computer), together with the serial driver as another thread a communication object between the two (A and PG) which is transactionally safe to exchange The two execution contexts (threads) on the computer may be multi-core or just interrupt driven or tasks in an RTOS. The com object contains the following data: suspected state (written by A): effectively a member of the power set of states in G (in our case: red, green, blue, off, red_or_green, red_or_blue, red_or_off...etc.) command data (written by A): test_if_off, switch_to_red, switch_to_green, switch_to_blue operation status (written by PG): operation_pending, success, wrong_state, link_broken new state (written by PG): red, green, blue, off The idea of the com object is that A writes whichever (set of) state it thinks G is in, together with a command. (Example: suspected state="red_or_green", command: "switch_to_blue") Notice that the commands issued by A will not work if the user has switched off the LED and A needs to know this. PG will pick up such a com object and try to send the command to G, receive its answer (or a timeout) and set the operation status and new state accordingly. A will take back the oject once it is no longer at operation_pending and can react to the outcome. The com object could be separated of course (into two objects, one for each direction) but I think it is convenient in nearly all instances to have the command close to the result. I would like to have major flaws pointed out or hear an entirely different view on such a situation.

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• Nominations now open for the Oracle FMW Excellence Awards 2014

  - by Greg Jensen

  2014 Oracle Excellence Award NominationsWho Is the Innovative Leader for Identity Management? •    Is your organization leveraging one of Oracle’s Identity and Access Management solutions in your production environment?•    Are you a leading edge organization that has adopted a forward thinking approach to Identity and Access Management processes across the organization?•    Are you ready to promote and highlight the success of your deployment to your peers? •    Would you a chance to win FREE registration to Oracle OpenWorld 2014? Oracle is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2014 Oracle Excellence Awards: Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation.  The Oracle Excellence Awards for Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation honor organizations using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique business value.  This year, the awards will recognize customers across nine distinct categories, including Identity and Access Management.  Oracle customers, who feel they are pioneers in their implementation of at least one of the Oracle Identity and Access Management offerings in a production environment or active deployment, should submit a nomination.  If submitted by June 20th, 2014, you will have a chance to win a FREE registration to Oracle OpenWorld 2014 (September 28 - October 2) in San Francisco, CA.  Top customers will be showcased at Oracle OpenWorld and featured in Oracle publications.   The  Identity and Access Management Nomination Form Additional benefits to nomineesNominating your organization opens additional opportunities to partner with Oracle such as:•    Promotion of your Customer Success StoriesProvides a platform for you to share the success of your initiatives and programs to peer groups raising the overall visibility of your team and your organization as a leader in security•    Social Media promotion (Video, Blog & Podcast)Reach the masses of Oracle’s customers through sharing of success stories, or customer created blog content that highlights the advanced thought leadership role in security with co-authored articles on Oracle Blog page that reaches close to 100,000 subscribers. There are numerous options to promote activities on Facebook, Twitter and co-branded activities using Video and Audio. •    Live speaking opportunities to your peersAs a technology leader within your organization, you can represent your organization at Oracle sponsored events (online, in person or webcasts) to help share the success of your organizations efforts building out your team/organization brand and success. •    Invitation to the IDM Architect ForumOracle is able to invite the right customers into the IDM Architect Forum which is an invite only group of customers that meet monthly to hear technology driven presentations from their own peers (not from Oracle) on today’s trends.  If you want to hear privately what some of the most successful companies in every industry are doing about security, this is the forum to be in. All presentations are private and remain within the forum, and only members can see take advantage of the lessons gained from these meetings.  To date, there are 125 members. There are many more advantages to partnering with Oracle, however, it can start with the simple nomination form for Identity and Access Management category of the 2014 Oracle Excellence Award Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• Enterprise Manager in EPM 11.1.2.x...a game of hide and seek!

  - by THE

  Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} guest article: Maurice Bauhahn: Users of Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management 11.1.2.0 and 11.1.2.1 may puzzle why the URL http://<servername>:7001/em may not conjure up Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. This powerful tool has been installed by default...but WebLogic may not have been 'Extended' to allow you to call it up (we are hopeful this ‘Extend’  step will not be needed with 11.1.2.2). The explanation is on pages 425 and following of the following document: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/epm-tips-issues-1-72-427329.pdf A close look at the screen dumps in that section reveals a somewhat scary prospect, however: the non-AdminServer servlets had all failed (see the red down-arrow icons to the right of their names) after the configuration! Of course you would want to avoid that scenario! A rephrasing of the instructions might help: Ensure the WebLogic AdminServer is not running (in a default scenario that would mean port 7001 is not active). Ensure you have logged into the computer as the installing owner of EPM. Since Enterprise Manager uses a LOT of resources, be sure that there is adequate free RAM to accommodate the added load. On the machine where WebLogic AdminServer is set up (typically the Foundation Services machine), run \Oracle\Middleware\wlserver_10.3\common\bin\config (config.sh on Unix). Select the 'Extend an existing WebLogic domain' option, and click the 'Next' button. Select the domain being used by EPM System. - Typically, the default domain is created under /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/domains and is named EPMSystem. - Click 'Next'. Under 'Extend my domain automatically to support the following added products' - place a check mark before 'Oracle Enterprise Manager - 11.1.1.0 [oracle_common]' to select it. - Continue accepting the defaults by clicking 'Next' on each page until - on the last page you click 'Extend'. - The system will grind for a few minutes while it configures (deploys?) EM. - Start the AdminServer. Sometimes there is contention in the startup order of the various servlets (resulting in some not coming up). To avoid that problem on Microsoft Windows machines you may start and stop services via the following analogous command line commands to those run on Linux/Unix (these more carefully space out timings of these events): Ensure EPM is up:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\start.bat Ensure WebLogic is up:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\bin\startWebLogic.cmd Shut down WebLogic:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\bin\stopWebLogic.cmd Shut down EPM:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\stop.bat  Now you should be able to more successfully troubleshoot with the EM tool:

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• Critical Threads Optimization

  - by Rafael Vanoni

  Background One of the more common issues we've been seeing in the field is the growing difficulty in optimizing performance of multi-threaded applications. A good portion of this difficulty is due to the increasing complexity of modern processors that present various degrees of sharing relationships between hardware components. Take any current CMT processor and you'll find any number of CPUs sharing execution pipelines, floating point units, caches, etc. Consequently, applying the traditional recipe of one software thread for each CPU will have varying degrees of success, according to the layout of the underlying hardware. On top of this increasing complexity we've also seen processors with features that aim at dynamically resourcing software threads according to their utilization. Intel's Turbo Boost allows processors to increase their operating frequency if there is enough thermal headroom available and the processor isn't fully utilized. More recently, the SPARC T4 processor introduced dynamic threading, allowing each core to dynamically allocate more resources to its active CPUs. Both cases are in essence recognizing that current processors will be running a wide mix of workloads, some will be designed for throughput, others for low latency. The hardware is providing mechanisms to dynamically resource threads according to their runtime behavior. We're very aware of these challenges in Solaris, and have been working to provide the best out of box performance while providing mechanisms to further optimize applications when necessary. The Critical Threads Optimzation was introduced in Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 as one such mechanism that allows customers to both address issues caused by contention over shared hardware resources and explicitly take advantage of features such as T4's dynamic threading. What it is The basic idea is to allow performance critical threads to execute with more exclusive access to hardware resources. For example, when deploying an application that implements a producer/consumer model, it'll likely be advantageous to give the producer more exclusive access to the hardware instead of having it competing for resources with all the consumers. In the case of a T4 based system, we may want to have a producer running by itself on a single core and create one consumer for each of the remaining CPUs. With the Critical Threads Optimization we're extending the semantics of scheduling priorities (which thread should run first) to include priority over shared resources (which thread should have more "space"). Now the scheduler will not only run higher priority threads first: it will also provide them with more exclusive access to hardware resources if they are available. How does it work ? Using the previous example in Solaris 11, all you'd have to do would be to place the producer in the Fixed Priority (FX) scheduling class at priority 60, or in the Real Time (RT) class at any priority and Solaris will try to give it more "hardware space". On both Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 this can be achieved through the existing priocntl(1,2) and priocntlset(2) interfaces. If your application already assigns these priorities to performance critical threads, there's no additional step you need to take. One important aspect of this optimization is that it requires some level of idleness in the system, either as a result of sizing the application before hand or through periods of transient idleness during runtime. If the system is fully committed, the scheduler will put all the available CPUs to work.Best practices If you're an application developer, we encourage you to look into assigning the right priorities for the different threads in your application. Solaris provides different scheduling classes (Time Share, Interactive, Fair Share, Fixed Priority and Real Time) that offer different policies and behaviors. It is not always simple to figure out which set of threads are critical to the performance of a workload, and it may not always be feasible to take advantage of this optimization, but we believe that this can be correctly (and safely) done during development. Overall, the out of box performance in Solaris should meet your workload's requirements. If you are looking into that extra bit of performance, then the Critical Threads Optimization may be what you're looking for.

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• disks not ready in array causes mdadm to force initramfs shell

  - by RaidPinata

  Okay, this is starting to get pretty frustrating. I've read most of the other answers on this site that have anything to do with this issue but I'm still not getting anywhere. I have a RAID 6 array with 10 devices and 1 spare. The OS is on a completely separate device. At boot only three of the 10 devices in the raid are available, the others become available later in the boot process. Currently, unless I go through initramfs I can't get the system to boot - it just hangs with a blank screen. When I do boot through recovery (initramfs), I get a message asking if I want to assemble the degraded array. If I say no and then exit initramfs the system boots fine and my array is mounted exactly where I intend it to. Here are the pertinent files as near as I can tell. Ask me if you want to see anything else. # mdadm.conf # # Please refer to mdadm.conf(5) for information about this file. # # by default (built-in), scan all partitions (/proc/partitions) and all # containers for MD superblocks. alternatively, specify devices to scan, using # wildcards if desired. #DEVICE partitions containers # auto-create devices with Debian standard permissions # CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes # automatically tag new arrays as belonging to the local system HOMEHOST <system> # instruct the monitoring daemon where to send mail alerts MAILADDR root # definitions of existing MD arrays # This file was auto-generated on Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:50:41 -0700 # by mkconf $Id$ ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid6 num-devices=10 metadata=1.2 spares=1 name=Craggenmore:data UUID=37eea980:24df7b7a:f11a1226:afaf53ae Here is fstab # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # / was on /dev/sdc2 during installation UUID=3fa1e73f-3d83-4afe-9415-6285d432c133 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sdc3 during installation UUID=c4988662-67f3-4069-a16e-db740e054727 none swap sw 0 0 # mount large raid device on /data /dev/md0 /data ext4 defaults,nofail,noatime,nobootwait 0 0 output of cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : active raid6 sda[0] sdd[10](S) sdl[9] sdk[8] sdj[7] sdi[6] sdh[5] sdg[4] sdf[3] sde[2] sdb[1] 23441080320 blocks super 1.2 level 6, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [10/10] [UUUUUUUUUU] unused devices: <none> Here is the output of mdadm --detail --scan --verbose ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid6 num-devices=10 metadata=1.2 spares=1 name=Craggenmore:data UUID=37eea980:24df7b7a:f11a1226:afaf53ae devices=/dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sde,/dev/sdf,/dev/sdg,/dev/sdh,/dev/sdi,/dev/sdj,/dev/sdk,/dev/sdl,/dev/sdd Please let me know if there is anything else you think might be useful in troubleshooting this... I just can't seem to figure out how to change the boot process so that mdadm waits until the drives are ready to build the array. Everything works just fine if the drives are given enough time to come online. edit: changed title to properly reflect situation

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• XNA RenderTarget2D Sample

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I remember being scared of render targets when I first started with XNA. They seemed like weird magic and I didn’t understand them at all. There’s nothing to be frightened of, though, and they are pretty easy to learn how to use. The first thing you need to know is that when you’re drawing in XNA, you aren’t actually drawing to the screen. Instead you’re drawing to this thing called the “back buffer”. Internally, XNA maintains two sections of graphics memory. Each one is exactly the same size as the other and has all the same properties (such as surface format, whether there’s a depth buffer and/or a stencil buffer, and so on). XNA flips between these two sections of memory every update-draw cycle. So while you are drawing to one, it’s busy drawing the other one on the screen. Then the current update-draw cycle ends, it flips, and the section you were just drawing to gets drawn to the screen while the one that was being drawn to the screen before is now the one you’ll be drawing on. This is what’s meant by “double buffering”. If you drew directly to the screen, the player would see all of those draws taking place as they happened and that would look odd and not very good at all. Those two sections of graphics memory are render targets. All a render target is, is a section of graphics memory to which things can be drawn. In addition to the two that XNA maintains automatically, you can also create and set your own using RenderTarget2D and GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget. Using render targets lets you do all sorts of neat post-processing effects (like bloom) to make your game look cooler. It also just lets you do things like motion blur and lets you create mirrors in 3D games. There are quite a lot of things that render targets let you do. To go along with this post, I wrote up a simple sample for how to create and use a RenderTarget2D. It’s available under the terms of the Microsoft Public License and is available for download on my website here: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/RenderTarget2DSample.zip . Other than the ‘using’ statements, every line is commented in detail so that it should (hopefully) be easy to follow along with and understand. If you have any questions, leave a comment here or drop me a line on Twitter. One last note. While creating the sample I came across an interesting quirk. If you start by creating a Windows Game, and then make a copy for Windows Phone 7, the drop-down that lets you choose between drawing to a WP7 device and the WP7 emulator stays grayed-out. To resolve this, you need to right click on the Windows Phone 7 version in the Solution Explorer, and choose “Set as StartUp Project”. The bar will then become active, letting you change the target you which to deploy to. If you want another version to be the one that starts up when you press F5 to start debugging, just go and right-click on that version and choose “Set as StartUp Project” for it once you’ve set the WP7 target (device or emulator) that you want.

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• 11.10 desktop alerts (volume change and terminal bell) stopped working but all other audio still works

  - by FlabbergastedPickle

  All, My sound works just fine in 11.10 64-bit install on HP dm1-4050 Sandy Bridge notebook (e.g. audio works in Banshee, flash, games, browser, Thunderbird email notification, etc.), but the core desktop notifications (e.g. pressing a tab in a terminal where there is more than one option should trigger a terminal bell, or changing volume using volume keys should be accompanied with the supporting "quack" that the volume app makes) do not work. I've intentionally disabled login sound as explained here on ask ubuntu but even enabling it back makes no difference. These notifications did work before just fine and I am not sure when did the actually stop working but it must've been fairly recently. Only things I did were trying to install some ppa edge xorg drivers for my intel card (a separate issue) but also reverted them all with ppa-purge once I discovered they did not improve anything. Other thing I did was check volume settings with alsamixer and did alsactl store for the soundcard after I did some experimenting with volume settings for PCM (on my laptop PCM at 100% crackles so I had to lower it and make pulseaudio ignore its setting as per ask ubuntu's page). That said, neither of these should have any bearing on the said notifications since the volume is up and they clearly work everywhere else but the core desktop events. The system ready drum sound when Ubuntu boots and user reaches the login screen also does not work. The guest login behaves exactly same as mine. Audio works (including the login sound since I've not disabled it for the guest account), but no quacks when changing the volume or terminal bell sounds... I've tried copying ubuntu sounds to /usr/share/sounds/ as suggested on ask ubuntu and that did not work. I also tried using dconf-editor to check sound theme settings and tried both freedesktop (which is what it was set to) and ubuntu, as suggested on ask ubuntu. This did not work either. I tried purging the ~/.pulse folder and the /tmp/*pulse* entries, rebooting and restarting pulseaudio with -D flag. While audio came back on and behaved just fine in all aspects (e.g. one can adjust volume levels, play music, games, in-browser sound stuff, and other app alerts) except for the system ready drum sound (at the login screen), and any system event (terminal bell and volume change quack sound). It is interesting that the quack sound works inside system settings-sound when adjusting levels there, but it does not when volume is changed via top bar's volume settings... I do recall that at one point yesterday when I was restarting pulseaudio the quacks that accompany volume change did start working but I have no idea what caused that. This was also when I first realized those alerts were not working. After rebooting it was again gone. I did compile my own 3.0.14-rt31 kernel a little while ago as instructed on one of the wiki's for the 11.10 rt kernel. Everything works as before except for the said sound alerts. I am not sure if this began happening since I started using the rt kernel though and yesterday's momentary ability to hear those quacks while changing the volume make me believe that the kernel is not one responsible for this problem. One more thing I can think of is that I used alsoft-conf tool to configure buffering on the OpenAL (due to TA Spring's choppy audio) and changed in there default audio device to ALSA. I also tried reverting it to Pulseaudio as the only allowed output but the bottom part of the Backend tab always reverts to ALSA even when I select Pulseaudio. The pulseaudio does remain as the only active choice on top. This, however, once again does not make any sense in terms of preventing desktop audio alerts when everything else including OpenAL games plays sound just fine... So, there you have it, as verbose as I could make it :-). I tried all I could find on this issue and had no luck so far... Any ideas?

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• Data management in unexpected places

  - by Ashok_Ora

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Data management in unexpected places When you think of network switches, routers, firewall appliances, etc., it may not be obvious that at the heart of these kinds of solutions is an engine that can manage huge amounts of data at very high throughput with low latencies and high availability. Consider a network router that is processing tens (or hundreds) of thousands of network packets per second. So what really happens inside a router? Packets are streaming in at the rate of tens of thousands per second. Each packet has multiple attributes, for example, a destination, associated SLAs etc. For each packet, the router has to determine the address of the next “hop” to the destination; it has to determine how to prioritize this packet. If it’s a high priority packet, then it has to be sent on its way before lower priority packets. As a consequence of prioritizing high priority packets, lower priority data packets may need to be temporarily stored (held back), but addressed fairly. If there are security or privacy requirements associated with the data packet, those have to be enforced. You probably need to keep track of statistics related to the packets processed (someone’s sure to ask). You have to do all this (and more) while preserving high availability i.e. if one of the processors in the router goes down, you have to have a way to continue processing without interruption (the customer won’t be happy with a “choppy” VoIP conversation, right?). And all this has to be achieved without ANY intervention from a human operator – the router is most likely to be in a remote location – it must JUST CONTINUE TO WORK CORRECTLY, even when bad things happen. How is this implemented? As soon as a packet arrives, it is interpreted by the receiving software. The software decodes the packet headers in order to determine the destination, kind of packet (e.g. voice vs. data), SLAs associated with the “owner” of the packet etc. It looks up the internal database of “rules” of how to process this packet and handles the packet accordingly. The software might choose to hold on to the packet safely for some period of time, if it’s a low priority packet. Ah – this sounds very much like a database problem. For each packet, you have to minimally · Look up the most efficient next “hop” towards the destination. The “most efficient” next hop can change, depending on latency, availability etc. · Look up the SLA and determine the priority of this packet (e.g. voice calls get priority over data ftp) · Look up security information associated with this data packet. It may be necessary to retrieve the context for this network packet since a network packet is a small “slice” of a session. The context for the “header” packet needs to be stored in the router, in order to make this work. · If the priority of the packet is low, then “store” the packet temporarily in the router until it is time to forward the packet to the next hop. · Update various statistics about the packet. In most cases, you have to do all this in the context of a single transaction. For example, you want to look up the forwarding address and perform the “send” in a single transaction so that the forwarding address doesn’t change while you’re sending the packet. So, how do you do all this? Berkeley DB is a proven, reliable, high performance, highly available embeddable database, designed for exactly these kinds of usage scenarios. Berkeley DB is a robust, reliable, proven solution that is currently being used in these scenarios. First and foremost, Berkeley DB (or BDB for short) is very very fast. It can process tens or hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. It can be used as a pure in-memory database, or as a disk-persistent database. BDB provides high availability – if one board in the router fails, the system can automatically failover to another board – no manual intervention required. BDB is self-administering – there’s no need for manual intervention in order to maintain a BDB application. No need to send a technician to a remote site in the middle of nowhere on a freezing winter day to perform maintenance operations. BDB is used in over 200 million deployments worldwide for the past two decades for mission-critical applications such as the one described here. You have a choice of spending valuable resources to implement similar functionality, or, you could simply embed BDB in your application and off you go! I know what I’d do – choose BDB, so I can focus on my business problem. What will you do? /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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