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• Big Data – Interacting with Hadoop – What is PIG? – What is PIG Latin? – Day 16 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the HIVE in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand what is PIG and PIG Latin in Big Data Story. Yahoo started working on Pig for their application deployment on Hadoop. The goal of Yahoo to manage their unstructured data. What is Pig and What is Pig Latin? Pig is a high level platform for creating MapReduce programs used with Hadoop and the language we use for this platform is called PIG Latin. The pig was designed to make Hadoop more user-friendly and approachable by power-users and nondevelopers. PIG is an interactive execution environment supporting Pig Latin language. The language Pig Latin has supported loading and processing of input data with series of transforming to produce desired results. PIG has two different execution environments 1) Local Mode – In this case all the scripts run on a single machine. 2) Hadoop – In this case all the scripts run on Hadoop Cluster. Pig Latin vs SQL Pig essentially creates set of map and reduce jobs under the hoods. Due to same users does not have to now write, compile and build solution for Big Data. The pig is very similar to SQL in many ways. The Ping Latin language provide an abstraction layer over the data. It focuses on the data and not the structure under the hood. Pig Latin is a very powerful language and it can do various operations like loading and storing data, streaming data, filtering data as well various data operations related to strings. The major difference between SQL and Pig Latin is that PIG is procedural and SQL is declarative. In simpler words, Pig Latin is very similar to SQ Lexecution plan and that makes it much easier for programmers to build various processes. Whereas SQL handles trees naturally, Pig Latin follows directed acyclic graph (DAG). DAGs is used to model several different kinds of structures in mathematics and computer science. DAG Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Zookeeper. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Ad-hoc taxonomy: owning the chess set doesn't mean you decide how the little horsey moves

  - by Roger Hart

  There was one of those little laugh-or-cry moments recently when I heard an anecdote about content strategy failings at a major online retailer. The story goes a bit like this: successful company in a highly commoditized marketplace succeeds on price and largely ignores its content team. Being relatively entrepreneurial, the founders are still knocking around, and occasionally like to "take an interest". One day, they decree that clothing sold on the site can no longer be described as "unisex", because this sounds old fashioned. Sad now. Let me just reiterate for the folks at the back: large retailer, commoditized market place, differentiating on price. That's inherently unstable. Sooner or later, they're going to need one or both of competitive differentiation and significant optimization. I can't speak for the latter, since I'm hypothesizing off a raft of rumour, but one of the simpler paths to the former is to become - or rather acknowledge that they are - a content business. Regardless, they need highly-searchable terminology. Even in the face of tooth and claw resistance to noticing the fundamental position content occupies in driving sales (and SEO) on the web, there's a clear information problem here. Dilettante taxonomy is a disaster. Ok, so this is a small example, but that kind of makes it a good one. Unisex probably is the best way of describing clothing designed to suit either men or women interchangeably. It certainly takes less time to type (and read). It's established terminology, and as a single word, it's significantly better for web readability than a phrasal workaround. Something like "fits men or women" is short, by could fall foul of clause-level discard in web scanning. It's not an adjective, so for intuitive reading it's never going to be near the start of a title or description. It would also clutter up search results, and impose cognitive load in list scanning. Sorry kids, it's just worse. Even if "unisex" were an archaism (which it isn't), the only thing that would weigh against its being more usable and concise terminology would be evidence that this archaism were hurting conversions. Good luck with that. We once - briefly - called one of our products a "Can of worms". It was a bundle in a bug-tracking suite, and we thought it sounded terribly cool. Guess how well that sold. We have information and content professionals for a reason: to make sure that whatever we put in front of users is optimised to meet user and business goals. If that thinking doesn't inform style guides, taxonomy, messaging, title structure, and so forth, you might as well be finger painting.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: High-Performance Computing (HPC)

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: High-Performance Computing (also called Technical Computing) at its most simplistic is a layout of computer workloads where a “head node” accepts work requests, and parses them out to “worker nodes'”. This is useful in cases such as scientific simulations, drug research, MatLab work and where other large compute loads are required. It’s not the immediate-result type computing many are used to; instead, a “job” or group of work requests is sent to a cluster of computers and the worker nodes work on individual parts of the calculations and return the work to the scheduler or head node for the requestor in a batch-request fashion. This is typical to the way that many mainframe computing use-cases work. You can use commodity-based computers to create an HPC Cluster, such as the Linux application called Beowulf, and Microsoft has a server product for HPC using standard computers, called the Windows Compute Cluster that you can read more about here. The issue with HPC (from any vendor) that some organization have is the amount of compute nodes they need. Having too many results in excess infrastructure, including computers, buildings, storage, heat and so on. Having too few means that the work is slower, and takes longer to return a result to the calling application. Unless there is a consistent level of work requested, predicting the number of nodes is problematic. Implementation: Recently, Microsoft announced an internal partnership between the HPC group (Now called the Technical Computing Group) and Windows Azure. You now have two options for implementing an HPC environment using Windows. You can extend the current infrastructure you have for HPC by adding in Compute Nodes in Windows Azure, using a “Broker Node”.  You can then purchase time for adding machines, and then stop paying for them when the work is completed. This is a common pattern in groups that have a constant need for HPC, but need to “burst” that load count under certain conditions. The second option is to install only a Head Node and a Broker Node onsite, and host all Compute Nodes in Windows Azure. This is often the pattern for organizations that need HPC on a scheduled and periodic basis, such as financial analysis or actuarial table calculations. References: Blog entry on Hybrid HPC with Windows Azure: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/12/13/high-performance-computing-on-premise-and-in-the-windows-azure-cloud.aspx  Links for further research on HPC, includes Windows Azure information: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ncdevguy/archive/2011/02/16/handy-links-for-hpc-and-azure.aspx 

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• Improving CSS With .LESS

  Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a syntax used to describe the look and feel of the elements in a web page. CSS allows a web developer to separate the document content - the HTML, text, and images - from the presentation of that content. Such separation makes the markup in a page easier to read, understand, and update; it can result in reduced bandwidth as the style information can be specified in a separate file and cached by the browser; and makes site-wide changes easier to apply. For a great example of the flexibility and power of CSS, check out CSS Zen Garden. This website has a single page with fixed markup, but allows web developers from around the world to submit CSS rules to define alternate presentation information. Unfortunately, certain aspects of CSS's syntax leave a bit to be desired. Many style sheets include repeated styling information because CSS does not allow the use of variables. Such repetition makes the resulting style sheet lengthier and harder to read; it results in more rules that need to be changed when the website is redesigned to use a new primary color. Specifying inherited CSS rules, such as indicating that a elements (i.e., hyperlinks) in h1 elements should not be underlined, requires creating a single selector name, like h1 a. Ideally, CSS would allow for nested rules, enabling you to define the a rules directly within the h1 rules. .LESS is a free, open-source port of Ruby's LESS library. LESS (and .LESS, by extension) is a parser that allows web developers to create style sheets using new and improved language features, including variables, operations, mixins, and nested rules. Behind the scenes, .LESS converts the enhanced CSS rules into standard CSS rules. This conversion can happen automatically and on-demand through the use of an HTTP Handler, or done manually as part of the build process. Moreover, .LESS can be configured to automatically minify the resulting CSS, saving bandwidth and making the end user's experience a snappier one. This article shows how to get started using .LESS in your ASP.NET websites. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• How to bill a client for frequently-interrupted time

  - by Greg

  I find that when I'm working on hourly-billable projects (in particular, those that are research/design/architecture-oriented as opposed to straight coding) that I'm easily distracted by any number of things (email, grab a drink (loss of focus, but nature happens), link off the webpage I was reading, wandering mind (easy when the job calls for a lot of thinking), etc.) This results in very fragmented time, far too incremental IMO to accurately track with a timeclock, and some time very gray. I frequently end up billing for only some fraction of the elapsed time I spent in order to feel fair, but sometimes it takes a really long time to put in an 8-hour day. By contrast, when I've worked for salary I've not worried about whether I'm actively working at any given minute, I just get the job done, and I've never had anything but stellar reviews/feedback from past salaried employers, so I think I get the job done well. I personally believe in an 80/20 cycle: I get 80% of my work done during an inspired 20% of my time. But I have to screw around the other 80% of the time in order to get that first 20%. So the question: what billing/time-tracking policy can I adopt in order to be fair to my hourly customers without having to write off my own less-productive 80% that a salaried employer is willing to overlook in light of the complete package? Note: This question is not about how to be more productive or focused. It's about how to work around whatever salient limitations that I have in a way that's both fair to me and to my customers. Update: A little clarification (to pre-emptively stop some righteous indignation): I currently have a half dozen different project/client groups. It's not a great situation and I'm working at reducing it down to two, but that's my current reality. It's very easy to get off on a thread related to a different project than the one I'm clocking, and I'm not always conscious of it at the time. [I did not intend the question to mean that I was off playing games or making personal calls, etc., and have adjusted wording above to be clearer. Most of the time. I am only human, and sometimes the mind does force you to take a break! :-)]

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 21 (sys.dm_db_partition_stats)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_partition_stats DMV returns page count and row count information for each table or index within your database. Lets have a quick look at this DMV so we can review some of the results. **NOTE: I am going to create an ‘ObjectName’ column in our result set so that we can more easily identify tables. SELECT object_name(object_id) ObjectName, * FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats As stated above, the first column in our result set is an Object name based on the object_id column of this result set. The partition_id column refers to the partition_id of the index in question. Each index will have at least 1 unique partition_id and will have more depending on if the object has been partitioned. The index_id column relates back to the sys.indexes table and uniquely identifies an index on a given object. A value of 0 (zero) in this column would indicate the object is a HEAP and a value of 1 (one) would signify the Clustered Index. Next is the partition_number which would signify the number of the partition for a particular object_id. Since none of my tables in my result set have been partitioned, they all display 1 for the partition_number. Next we have the in_row_data_page_count which tells us the number of data pages used to store in-row data for a given index. The in_row_used_page_count is the number of pages used to store and manage the in-row data. If we look at the first row in the result set, we will see we have 700 for this column and 680 for the previous. This means that just to manage the data (not store it) is requiring 20 pages. The next column in_row_reserved_page_count is how many pages have been reserved, regardless if they are being used or not. The next 2 columns are used for storing LOB (Large Object) data which could be text, image, varchar(max), or varbinary(max) columns. The next two columns, row_overflow, represent pages used for data that exceed the 8,060 byte row size limit for the in-row data pages. The next columns used_page_count and reserved_page_count represent the sum of the in_row, lob, and row_overflow columns discussed earlier. Lastly is a row_count column which displays the number of rows that are in a particular index. This DMV is a very powerful resource for identifying page and row count information. By knowing the page counts for indexes within your database, you are able to easily calculate the size of indexes. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187737.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• Oracle Coherence 3.5 : Create Internet-scale applications using Oracle's high-performance data grid

  - by frederic.michiara

  Oracle Coherence Coherence provides replicated and distributed (partitioned) data management and caching services on top of a reliable, highly scalable peer-to-peer clustering protocol. Coherence has no single points of failure; it automatically and transparently fails over and redistributes its clustered data management services when a server becomes inoperative or is disconnected from the network. When a new server is added, or when a failed server is restarted, it automatically joins the cluster and Coherence fails back services to it, transparently redistributing the cluster load. Coherence includes network-level fault tolerance features and transparent soft re-start capability to enable servers to self-heal. For the ones looking at an easy reading and first good approach to Oracle Coherence, I would recommend reading the following book : Overview of Oracle Coherence 3.5 Build scalable web sites and Enterprise applications using a market-leading data grid product Design and implement your domain objects to work most effectively with Coherence and apply Domain Driven Designs (DDD) to Coherence applications Leverage Coherence events and continuous queries to provide real-time updates to client applications Successfully integrate various persistence technologies, such as JDBC, Hibernate, or TopLink, with Coherence Filled with numerous examples that provide best practice guidance, and a number of classes you can readily reuse within your own applications This book is targeted to Architects and developers, and as in our team we're more about Solutions Architects than developers I found interest in this book as it help to understand better Oracle Coherence and its value. The only point I may not agree with the authors is that Oracle Coherence is not an alternative to Oracle RAC in providing High Availability, but combining both Oracle RAC and Oracle Coherence will help Architects and Customers to reach higher level of service and high-availability. This book is available on https://www.packtpub.com/oracle-coherence-3-5/book Need to find out about Table of contents : https://www.packtpub.com/toc/oracle-coherence-35-table-contents Discover a sample chapter : https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/6125_Oracle%20Coherence_SampleChapter.pdf Read also articles from the Authors on http://www.packtpub.com/ : Working with Aggregators in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Working with Value Extractors and Simplifying Queries in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Querying the Data Grid in Coherence 3.5: Obtaining Query Results and Using Indexes Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 1 Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 2 For more information on Oracle Coherence : What Oracle Coherence Can Do for You... : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/coherencedatagrid/coherence_solutions.html Oracle Coherence on OTN : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/index.html Oracle Coherence Knowledge Base : http://coherence.oracle.com/display/COH/Oracle+Coherence+Knowledge+Base+Home

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• Recruitment Drive - Things Don't Always Go As Planned - Stay Flexible by Kalyan Neelagiri

  - by david.talamelli

  I am one of the Recruiters for Oracle and work in our India Recruitment Team. When we are hiring for multiple positions we often hold Recruitment Events to interview a large number of people as effectively as possible. These Events are often held on the weekend as many people are not free to attend an all day event during the working week. Just recently during a recruitment campaign we were running I was tasked to set up a Recruitment Event for some roles we were hiring for. I have set up and run weekend recruitment events in the past which have all run smoothly. However, this time arranging this recruitment event was quite a challenge for me. The planned event was taking place on a Saturday. I had almost sent out the confirmed scheduled list of candidates to the respective hiring team on Friday and was on track for the event to take place, but unfortunately there was breaking news in the media that there was a strike called in the city because of some political agitations and protests taking place on the event day. The hiring manager had rushed to me asking for my thoughts and ideas. I was in two minds on what to do. One on hand I was not ready to cancel the event because of all the work that so many people had put into getting this prepared and also I did not want to reschedule the event at the last minute if I did not need to. On the other hand I understood it may be best to reschedule the event as people may not be able to attend based on the political protests taking place on the day. In the end I decided to gather and check for other options because this might cause confusion and a problem for the scheduled candidates to drive in to the venue. So we had concluded to reschedule our event plans and moved the event to the next week. The good news is that we successfully executed this recruitment drive the following Saturday. We were glad that 100% of the candidates we able to make it to the new interview date and despite all the agitations in the city we were successful in hiring people for all the roles we had open. Things do not always go as planned. The best laid plans can sometimes be for nought based on external factors outside of our control. What this experience has taught me is that rather than focus on the negatives when you are thrown a curveball the best approach is to stay flexible and focus on finding ways to reach your outcome. Your plans may need to change but you can still achieve the results you are after if you have the right mind set.

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• Nokia vs. The World

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I’m looking forward to the launch of the Nokia Lumia 920. Why? Well, it stacks up better than the competition for one thing. Then there’s also that security problem that certain other phones have. Mostly, though, it’s because I love my Lumia 900 and the 920, with Windows Phone 8, will be even better. Before I got my Lumia 900, I just took it as given that smart phone cameras couldn’t be good. The Lumia taught me that smart phone cameras can be good if the manufacturer treats them as an important component worth spending time and money on (rather than some thing that consumers expect such that they’d better throw one in). I’m extremely pleased with the quality of pictures that my Lumia 900 gives me as well as the range of settings it provides (you can delve in to tell it a film speed, an f-stop, and a whole range of other settings). And the image stabilization features in the Lumia 920 deliver far better results than the others. Nokia has had great maps for a long time and they continue to improve. Even better, they made a deal that puts many of their excellent maps into Windows Phone 8 itself. There are still Nokia-exclusive features such as Nokia City Lens, of course. But by giving the core OS a great set of fundamental map data and technologies, they help ensure that customers know that buying a Windows Phone 8 will give them a great map experience no matter who made the phone. I’ll be getting a 920, myself, but the HTC and Samsung devices that have been announced have some compelling features, too, and it’s great to know that people who buy one of these won’t need to worry about where their maps might lead them. I’m looking forward to the NFC capabilities and Qi wireless charging my Lumia 920 will have. With the availability of DirectX and C++ programming on Windows Phone 8, I’m also excited about all the great games that will be added to the Windows Phone environment. I love my Xbox Phone. I love my Office phone. I love my Facebook phone. I love my GPS phone. I love my camera phone. I love my SkyDrive phone. In short, I love my Windows Phone!

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• Some of my favourite Visual Studio 2012 things&ndash;Teams

  - by Aaron Kowall

  Getting the balance right for when and how many team projects to create has always been a bit of a balance.  On large initiatives, there are often teams who work toward a common system.  These teams often have quite a bit of autonomy, but need to roll up to some higher level initiative.  In TFS 2010, people were often tempted to create separate Team Projects for each of the sub-teams and then do some magic with reporting and cross-team queries to get the consolidated view.  My recommendation was always to use Areas as a means of separating work across the team, but that always resulted in a large number of queries that need to be maintained and just seemed confusing.  When doing anything you had to remember to filter the query or view by Area in order to get correct results. Along with the awesome web access portal that comes in TFS 2012 (which I will cover details of in another post) the product group has introduced the concept of Teams.  A team is a sub-group within a TFS 2012 Team Project which allows us to more easily divide work along team boundaries. Technically, a Team is defined by an Area Path and a TFS Group, both of which could be done in TFS 2012.  However, by allowing for creation of a ‘Team’ in TFS 2012, the web portal is able to do a bunch of ‘magic’ for us.  We can view the project site (backlog, taskboard, etc) for the the team, we can assign items to the team and we can view the burndown for the team.  Basically, all the stuff that we had to prepare manually we now get created and managed for us with a nice UI. When you create a Team Project in TFS 2012, a ‘Default’ team is created with the same name as the Team Project.  So, if you only have 1 team working on the project, you are set.  If you want to divide the work into additional teams, you can create teams by using the Team Web Client. Teams are created using the ‘Administer Server’ icon in the top right of the web site.   You can select the team site by using the team chooser: Once you have selected a team, the Product Backlog, TaskBoard, Burndown Charts, etc. are all filtered to that team. NOTE: You always have the ability to choose the ‘Default’ team to see items for the entire project. PS: It’s been a long while since I shared on this blog.  To help with that I’m in a blogging challenge with some other developer and agilist friends.  Please check out their blogs as well: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Dylan Smith: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/optikal Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com   Technorati Tags: TFS 2012,Agile,Team

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• RTS Movement + Navigation + Destination

  - by Oliver Jones

  I'm looking into building my own simple RTS game, and I'm trying to get my head around the movement of single, and multi selected units. (Developing in Unity) After much research, I now know that its a bigger task than I thought. So I need to break it down. I already have an A* navigation system with static obstacles taken into account. I don't want to worry about dynamic local avoidance right now. So I guess my first break down question would be: How would I go about moving mutli units to the same location. Right now - my units move to the location, but because they're all told to go to the same location, they start to 'fight' over one another to get there. I think theres two paths to go down: 1) Give each individual unit a separate destination point that is close to the 'master' destination point - and get the units to move to that. 2) Group my selected units in a flock formation, and move that entire flock group towards the destination point. Question about each path: 1a) How can I go about finding a suitable destination point that is close to the master destination? What happens if there isn't a suitable destination point? 1b) Would this be more CPU heavy? As it has to compute a path for each unit? (40 unit count). 2a) Is this a good idea? Not giving the units themselves a destination, but instead the flock (which holds the units within). The units within the flock could then maintain a formation (local avoidance) - though, again local avoidance is not an issue at this current time. 2b) Not sure what results I would get if I have a flock of 5 units, or a flock of 40 units, as the radius would be greater - which might mess up my A* navigation system. In other words: A flock of 2 units will be able to move down an alleyway, but a flock of 40 wont. But my nav system won't take that into account. I would appreciate any feedback. Kind regards, Ollie Jones

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 25 (sys.dm_db_missing_index_details)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_missing_index_details Dynamic Management View is used to return information about missing indexes on your SQL Server instances. These indexes are ones that the optimizer has identified as indexes it would like to use but did not have. You may also see these same indexes indicated in other tools such as query execution plans or the Database tuning advisor. Let’s execute this DMV so we can review the information it provides us. I do not have any missing index information for my AdventureWorks2012 database, but for the purposes of illustrating the result set of this DMV, I will present the results from my msdb database. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_missing_index_details The first column presented is the index_handle which uniquely identifies a particular missing index. The next two columns represent the database_id and the object_id for the particular table in question. Next is the ‘equality_columns’ column which gives you a list of columns (comma separated) that would be beneficial to the optimizer for equality operations. By equality operation I mean for any queries that would use a filter or join condition such as WHERE A = B. The next column, ‘inequality_columns’, gives you a comma separated list of columns that would be beneficial to the optimizer for inequality operations. An inequality operation is anything other than A = B. For example, “WHERE A != B”, “WHERE A > B”, “WHERE A < B”, and “WHERE A <> B” would all qualify as inequality. Next is the ‘included_columns’ column which list all columns that would be beneficial to the optimizer for purposes of providing a covering index and preventing key/bookmark lookups. Lastly is the ‘statement’ column which lists the name of the table where the index is missing. This DMV can help you identify potential indexes that could be added to improve the performance of your system. However, I will advise you not to just take the output of this DMV and create an index for everything you see. Everything listed here should be analyzed and then tested on a Development or Test system before implementing into a Production environment. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345434.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP Video card not recognized properly

  - by PastorLarry

  I have an ASUS ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP in this system (yeah, I know how old it is). I've been on Ubuntu since 10.04, and the system has never properly recognized the card. I have always had the VESA drivers installed. Now that I have the time to address the problem, 12.04 was listing the card as "Unknown" under the System Settings. Meanwhile, Sysinfo recognizes the card as: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 Pro AGP [Radeon HD 4600 Series] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 0028 So I know that this card should be using the radeon driver (or even the radeonhd driver). However, when I installed the mesa-utils package, the card is suddenly reported as: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300) So now, I'm completely at a loss. It seems that the llvmpipe stuff has to do with OpenGL, but it still appears that I don't have the proper video driver installed. That being said, anyone know what I can do to force the system to recognize the card and use the radeon driver? [EDIT 05.28] I did look at some other information, including glxinfo and a couple of other commands (it was REALLY late, so I don't remember the other commands) and I got these: glxinfo | grep vendor: server glx vendor string: SGI client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI OpenGL vendor string: X.org glxinfo | grep renderer: OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730 One of the other commands gave a whole lot of info and near the end stated that the activation string for the radeon driver was "modprobe radeon". I've tried that from sudo and as root, but it doesn't seem to change anything. I'm at a complete loss. I've even added the xorg-edgers ppa to my Software Sources and updated and rebooted the system, but nothing has changed. Most of all, I can't seem to find any documentation on this issue, as it seems that it's assumed that the radeon driver will install automatically, no questions asked. I feel like such a newbie. Does anyone have any ideas on this? [edit 05.28] results of lsmod | grep radeon (in a more readable format than the comment below): radeon 733693 3 ttm 65344 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 45466 1 radeon drm 197692 5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 radeon [edit 05.29] This is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" So here is my question. Can I simply change the name of the driver in the device section to "radeon" instead of "fglrx" and have the radeon driver work? Or is ther a way to use this as a tmeplate and change the appropriate lines and activate the radeon driver through this file?

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• Microsoft Desktop Player is a Valuable Tool for IT Pro’s

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you are an IT Professional, a new education tool introduced by Microsoft is the MS Desktop Player. Today we take a look at what it has to offer, from Webcasts, White Papers, Training Videos, and more. Microsoft Desktop Player You can run the player from the website (shown here) or download the application for use on your local machine (link below). It allows you to easily access MS training and information in a central interface. To get the Desktop version, download the .msi file from the site… And run through the installer…   When you first start out, enter in if you’re an IT Pro, Developer and your role. Then you can decide on the resources you’re looking for such as Exchange Server, SharePoint, Windows 7, Security…etc. Here is an example of checking out a Podcast on Office 2007 setup and configuration from TechNet radio. Under Settings you can customize your search results and local resources. This helps you narrow down pertinent information for your needs. If you find something you really like, hover the pointer over the screen and you can add it to your library, share it, send feedback, and check for additional resources. If you don’t need items in your library they can be easily deleted. Under the News tab you get previews of Microsoft news items, clicking on it will open the full article in a separate browser. While you’re watching a presentation you can show or hide the details related to it. Conclusion Microsoft Desktop Player is currently in Beta, but has a lot of cool features to offer for your learning needs. You can easily find Podcasts, Webcasts, and more without having to browse all over the place. In our experience we didn’t notice any bugs, and what it offers so far works well. If you’re a geek who’s constantly browsing TechNet and other Microsoft learning sites, this helps keep everything consolidated in one app.  Download Microsoft Desktop Player Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesBuilt-in Quick Launch Hotkeys in Windows VistaNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineHow to Get Virtual Desktops on Windows XPWindows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool

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• Achieving Zero Downtime Deployment

  - by MattW

  I am trying to achieve zero downtime deployments so I can deploy less during off hours and more during "slower" hours - or anytime, in theory. My current setup, somewhat simplified: Web Server A (.NET App) Web Server B (.NET App) Database Server (SQL Server) My current deployment process: "Stop" the sites on both Web Server A and B Upgrade the database schema for the version of the app being deployed Update Web Server A Update Web Server B Bring everything back online Current Problem This leads to a small amount of downtime each month - about 30 mins. I do this during off hours, so it isn't a huge problem - but it is something I'd like to get away from. Also - there is no way to really go 'back'. I don't generally make rollback DB scripts - only upgrade scripts. Leveraging The Load Balancer I'd love to be able to upgrade one Web Server at a time. Take Web Server A out of the load balancer, upgrade it, put it back online, then repeat for Web Server B. The problem is the database. Each version of my software will need to execute against a different version of the database - so I am sort of "stuck". Possible Solution A current solution I am considering is adopting the following rules: Never delete a database table. Never delete a database column. Never rename a database column. Never reorder a column. Every stored procedure must be versioned. Meaning - 'spFindAllThings' will become 'spFindAllThings_2' when it is edited. Then it becomes 'spFindAllThings_3' when edited again. Same rule applies to views. While, this seems a bit extreme - I think it solves the problem. Each version of the application will be hitting the DB in a non breaking way. The code expects certain results from the views/stored procedures - and this keeps that 'contract' valid. The problem is - it just seeps sloppy. I know I can clean up old stored procedures after the app is deployed for awhile, but it just feels dirty. Also - it depends on all of the developers following these rule, which will mostly happen, but I imagine someone will make a mistake. Finally - My Question Is this sloppy or hacky? Is anybody else doing it this way? How are other people solving this problem?

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• Oracle Releases New Mainframe Re-Hosting in Oracle Tuxedo 11g

  - by Jason Williamson

  I'm excited to say that we've released our next generation of Re-hosting in 11g. In fact I'm doing some hands-on labs now for our Systems Integrators in Italy in a couple of weeks and targeting Latin America next month. If you are an SI, or Rehosting firm and are looking to become an Oracle Partner or get a better understanding of Tuxedo and how to use the workbench for rehosting...drop me a line. Oracle Tuxedo Application Runtime for CICS and Batch 11g provides a CICS API emulation and Batch environment that exploits the full range of Oracle Tuxedo's capabilities. Re-hosted applications run in a multi-node, grid environment with centralized production control. Also, enterprise integration of CICS application services benefits from an open and SOA-enabled framework. Key features include: CICS Application Runtime: Can run IBM CICS applications unchanged in an application grid, which enables the distribution of large workloads across multiple processors and nodes. This simplifies CICS administration and can scale to over 100,000 users and over 50,000 transactions per second. 3270 Terminal Server: Protects business users from change through support for tn3270 terminal emulation. Distributed CICS Resource Management: Simplifies deployment and administration by allowing customers to run CICS regions in a distributed configuration. Batch Application Runtime: Provides robust IBM JES-like job management that enables local or remote job submissions. In addition, distributed batch initiators can enable parallelization of jobs and support fail-over, shortening the batch window and helping to meet stringent SLAs. Batch Execution Environment: Helps to run IBM batch unchanged and also supports JCL functionality and all common batch utilities. Oracle Tuxedo Application Rehosting Workbench 11g provides a set of automated migration tools integrated around a central repository. The tools provide high precision which results in very low error rates and the ability to handle large applications. This enables less expensive, low-risk migration projects. Key capabilities include: Workbench Repository and Cataloguer: Ensures integrity of the migrated application assets through full dependency checking. The Cataloguer generates and maintains all relevant meta-data on source and target components. File Migrator: Supports reliable migration of datasets and flat files to an ISAM or Oracle Database 11g. This is done through the automated migration utilities for data unloading, reloading and validation. It also generates logical access functions to shield developers from data repository changes. DB2 Migrator: Similarly, this tool automates the migration of DB2 schema and data to Oracle Database 11g. COBOL Migrator: Supports migration of IBM mainframe COBOL assets (OLTP and Batch) to open systems. Adapts programs for compiler dialects and data access variations. JCL Migrator: Supports migration of IBM JCL jobs to a Tuxedo ART environment, maintaining the flow and characteristics of batch jobs.

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• Simple tips to design a Customer Journey Map

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  “A model can abstract to a level that is comprehensible to humans, without getting lost in details.” -The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. Inception using Post-it, StoryBoards, Lego or Mindmaping Techniques The first step in a Customer Experience project is to describe customer interactions creating a customer journey map. Modeling is never easy, so to succeed on this effort, it is very convenient that your CX´s team have some “abstract thinking” skills. Besides is very helpful to consult a Business Service Design offered by an Interactive Agency to lead your inception process. Initially, you may start by a free discussion using post-it cards; storyboards; even lego or any other brainstorming technique you like. This will help you to get your mind into the path followed by the customer to purchase your product or to consume any business service you actually offer to your customers, or plan to offer in the near future. (from www.servicedesigntools.org) Colorful Mind Maps are very useful to document and share meeting ideas. Some Mind Maps software providers as ThinkBuzzan provide trial versions, and you will find more mindmapping options on this post by Mashable. Finally to produce a quick one, I do recommend Wise, an entirely online mindmaping service. On my view the best results in terms of communication will always come for an artistic hand-made drawing. Customer Experience Mind Map Example Making your first Customer Journey Map To add some more formalization to your thoughts, there is a wide offering for designing Customer Journey Maps. A Customer Map can be represented as an oriented graph in which another follows each step. The one below is the most simple Customer Journey you can draw. Nothing more than a couple of pictures, numbers and lines to design the customer steps sequence in the purchase process. Very simple Customer Journey for Social Mobile Shopping There are a lot of Customer Journey templates much more sophisticated available  in the Web using a variety of styles, as per example this one with a focus on underlining emotional experience, or this other worksheet template. Representing different interaction devices on the vertical axis, and touchpoints / requirements and existing gaps horizontally  is today´s most common format for Customer Journeys. From Customer Journey Maps to CX Technology Adoption Plans Once you have your map ready, you can start to identify the IT infrastructure requirements for your CXProject. By analyzing customer problems and improvement opportunities with maps, you will then identify the technology gaps and the new investment requirements in your IT infrastructure. Deeping step by step from the more abstract to the more concrete is the best guarantee to take the right IT investment decisions.  ¡Remember to keep your initial customer journey safe on your pocket in every one of your CX´s project meetings- that´s you map to success!

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• Logic for capturing unique characteristics in an object array. C# LINQ [closed]

  - by Shawn H.

  Given the following "response" or array of objects, what would be the most efficient way to get the desired results. There must be an easier way than the exhaustive and tedious way I'm doing it now. A LINQ solution would be fantastic. Situation #1 <things> <thing id="1"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> <thing id="2"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> <thing id="3"> <feature>Tall</feature> <feature>Wide</feature> </thing> <thing id="4"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> </things> Result: Wide Situation #2 <things> <thing id="1"> <feature>Short</feature> </thing> <thing id="2"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> <thing id="3"> <feature>Tall</feature> <feature>Wide</feature> </thing> <thing id="4"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> </things> Result: Wide, Short, Tall Situation #3 <things> <thing id="1"> <feature>Tall</feature> <feature>Thin</feature> </thing> <thing id="2"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> <thing id="3"> <feature>Tall</feature> <feature>Wide</feature> </thing> <thing id="4"> <feature>Tall</feature> </thing> </things> Result: Wide, Thin Thanks.

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• ASP.NET ViewState Tips and Tricks #2

  - by João Angelo

  If you need to store complex types in ViewState DO implement IStateManager to control view state persistence and reduce its size. By default a serializable object will be fully stored in view state using BinaryFormatter. A quick comparison for a complex type with two integers and one string property produces the following results measured using ASP.NET tracing: BinaryFormatter: 328 bytes in view state IStateManager: 28 bytes in view state BinaryFormatter sample code: // DO NOT [Serializable] public class Info { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } } public class ExampleControl : WebControl { protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) { base.OnLoad(e); if (!this.Page.IsPostBack) { this.User = new Info { Id = 1, Name = "John Doe", Age = 27 }; } } public Info User { get { object o = this.ViewState["Example_User"]; if (o == null) return null; return (Info)o; } set { this.ViewState["Example_User"] = value; } } } IStateManager sample code: // DO public class Info : IStateManager { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } private bool isTrackingViewState; bool IStateManager.IsTrackingViewState { get { return this.isTrackingViewState; } } void IStateManager.LoadViewState(object state) { var triplet = (Triplet)state; this.Id = (int)triplet.First; this.Name = (string)triplet.Second; this.Age = (int)triplet.Third; } object IStateManager.SaveViewState() { return new Triplet(this.Id, this.Name, this.Age); } void IStateManager.TrackViewState() { this.isTrackingViewState = true; } } public class ExampleControl : WebControl { protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) { base.OnLoad(e); if (!this.Page.IsPostBack) { this.User = new Info { Id = 1, Name = "John Doe", Age = 27 }; } } public Info User { get; set; } protected override object SaveViewState() { return new Pair( ((IStateManager)this.User).SaveViewState(), base.SaveViewState()); } protected override void LoadViewState(object savedState) { if (savedState != null) { var pair = (Pair)savedState; this.User = new Info(); ((IStateManager)this.User).LoadViewState(pair.First); base.LoadViewState(pair.Second); } } }

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• Live CD / Live USB much faster than full install

  - by user29347

  I've observed it on both laptops I own! HP Compaq nx6125 and Ubuntu 11.04 x64 - somewhat solved Lenovo Thinkpad T500 and Ubuntu 11.10 x64 - help needed! I'm still struggling with the Thinkpad to get performance level similar to that of 10 y.o. laptops... All in all a really serious issue with multiple versions of Ubuntu that renders computers with perfectly compatible hardware unusable, as far as out of the box experience is concerned. Troubleshooting resultant issues seems to be a hard case even for users with some experience with installing graphics drivers. EDIT: I can't really post additional details. Two different ubuntu versions, two laptops, two different set of graph. drivers (OS vs ATI prop.) - all with the same symptoms. Also I can't stress enough how massive the performance degradation is compared to a healthy system. For that reason I ask for input from people who may know roughly what are we dealing with here. I can post more details if we were to focus on my current Thinkpad T500. In that case my current system details: Lenovo Thinkpad T500 Ubuntu 11.10 x64 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (also see the "What I have already tried" section about Intel graphics tested) ATI Catalyst 11.10 drivers OCZ Agility 3 SSD but! same with the default driver for ATI the card same with the prop. driver for the ATI card from Jockey (Additional drivers applet) What I have already tried: 0. Switching to Intel integrated card (Intel GMA 4500M HD) with the default driver - same effects = may indicate not driver related problem but a problem with something of global influence like e.g. nomodeset or other I don't even know about. (What you can read above) ATI Catalyst 11.10 and radeon.modeset=0 boot parameter + disabled Wait for VBlank. Unity 2D Ubuntu 10.04 LTS tested (ubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-i386.iso): Both live USB and installed version blazing fast! (on the default drivers - without even installing the proprietary fglrx drivers). re2 a) seems to give me the only significant results (still poor) - perfect Unity elements performance with the same crawling stuttering/lagging when dragging windows around. re2 b) this happens often http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b68/Bucic/ubuntuforumsorg/Screenshotat2011-10-28083140.png re2 c) Sometimes I am able to witness a normal performance when dragging a window around but only for a second or two. When I try to shake it longer it starts to lag and it will keep lagging like that with an increased probability of what you see in the sshot in point re2 b). re2 d) I can't establish the radeon.modeset=0 influence though. Once it seems to work be smooth with it, the other time - without it. Really can't tell.

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• Search and Browse Database Objects with Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  I was tempted to throw in another Dora the Explorer Map reference here, but I came to my senses.Having trouble finding something? Maybe you’re just getting older? I know I am. But still, it’d be nice if my favorite database tool could help me out a bit. Hmmm, what’s this ‘Find Database Object‘ thing over here…sounds like a search mechanism of some sort? You can access this panel from the ‘View‘ menu. It’s a good bit down the screen, so I don’t blame you if you haven’t seen it before. It makes finding ‘stuff’ in your database so much easier. Let’s say I want to find my ‘beer’ objects. I simply need to type my search string and the context (in this case I want it to search EVERYTHING), and hit enter. The search results are listed below and clicking on an object automatically opens it! I know it seems very simple, but I get asked this question a LOT. It will even search through your PL/SQL code! Finding too much? Be sure to toggle off the ‘%’ wildcard check box before doing a search. Working on a Project? I bet you use common column names, or codes, throughout your tables. You could take advantage of this knowledge and use the Find Database Object panel as a substitute connection tree or schema browser. Working on your HR project and want to look at your employee objects? Do a column search for your column ID/key. Sometimes thinking outside the box actually works! Don’t be afraid to tackle a problem from a weird angle, or re-purpose your tools. I do it all the time And I drive the developers nuts trying to do things with the tools they were never designed to do. But I digress. Back to your coding!

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• SQL SERVER – Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Let us recap the puzzles here quickly. Puzzle 1: Why following code when executed in SSMS displays result as a * (Star)? SELECT CAST(634 AS VARCHAR(2)) Puzzle 2: Write the shortest code that produces results as 1 without using any numbers in the select statement. Bonus Q: How many different Operating System (OS) NuoDB support? As I mentioned earlier the participation was nothing but Amazing. I will write about the winners and the best answers in short time. Meanwhile I will give to the point answers to above puzzles. Solution 1: When you convert character or binary expressions (char, nchar, nvarchar, varchar,binary, or varbinary) to an expression of a different data type, data can be truncated, only partially displayed, or an error is returned because the result is too short to display. Conversions to char, varchar, nchar, nvarchar, binary, and varbinary are truncated, except for the conversions shown in the following table. Reference of the text and table from MSDN. Solution 2: The shortest code to produce answer 1 : SELECT EXP($) or SELECT COS($) or SELECT DAY($) When SELECT $ it gives us the result as 0.00 and the EXP of the same is 1. I believe it is pretty neat. There were plenty other answers but this was the shortest. Another shorter answer would be PRINT EXP($) but no one has proposed that as in original Question I have explicitly mentioned SELECT in the original question. Bonus Answer: 5 OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux, Solaris, Joyent SmartOS Reference Please do read every single comment here. Do leave a comment which one do you think is the best comment out of all the comments. Meanwhile if there is a better solution and I have missed it do let me know as we still have time to correct it. I will be selecting the winner before the weekend as I am going through each and every of 350 comment. I will be selecting the best comments along with the winning comment. If our selection matches – one of you may still win something cool.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• Refreshing imported MySQL data with MySQL for Excel

  - by Javier Rivera

  Welcome to another blog post from the MySQL for Excel Team. Today we're going to talk about a new feature included since MySQL for Excel 1.3.0, you can install the latest GA or maintenance version using the MySQL Installer or optionally you can download directly any GA or non-GA version from the MySQL Developer Zone.As some users suggested in our forums we should be maintaining the link between tables and Excel not only when editing data through the Edit MySQL Data option, but also when importing data via Import MySQL Data. Before 1.3.0 this process only provided you with an offline copy of the Table's data into Excel and you had no way to refresh that information from the DB later on. Now, with this new feature we'll show you how easy is to work with the latest available information at all times. This feature is transparent to you (it doesn't require additional steps to work as long as the users had the Create an Excel Table for the imported MySQL table data option enabled. To ensure you have this option checked, click over Advanced Options... after the Import Data dialog is displayed). The current blog post assumes you already know how to import data into excel, you could always take a look at our previous post How To - Guide to Importing Data from a MySQL Database to Excel using MySQL for Excel if you need further reference on that topic. After importing Data from a MySQL Table into Excel, you can refresh the data in 3 ways.1. Simply right click over the range of the imported data, to show the pop-up menu: Click over the Refresh button to obtain the latest copy of the data in the table. 2. Click the Refresh button on the Data ribbon: 3. Click the Refresh All button in the Data ribbon (beware this will refresh all Excel tables in the Workbook): Please take a note of a couple of details here, the first one is about the size of the table. If by the time you refresh the table new columns had been added to it, and you originally have imported all columns, the table will grow to the right. The same applies to rows, if the table has new rows and you did not limit the results , the table will grow to to the bottom of the sheet in Excel. The second detail you should take into account is this operation will overwrite any changes done to the cells after the table was originally imported or previously refreshed: Now with this new feature, imported data remains linked to the data source and is available to be updated at all times. It empowers the user to always be able to work with the latest version of the imported MySQL data. We hope you like this this new feature and give it a try! Remember that your feedback is very important for us, so drop us a message with your comments, suggestions for this or other features and follow us at our social media channels: MySQL on Windows (this) Blog: https://blogs.oracle.com/MySqlOnWindows/ MySQL for Excel forum: http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?172 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mysql YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MySQLChannel Thanks!

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• XNA running slow when making a texture

  - by Anthony

  I'm using XNA to test an image analysis algorithm for a robot. I made a simple 3D world that has a grass, a robot, and white lines (that are represent the course). The image analysis algorithm is a modification of the Hough line detection algorithm. I have the game render 2 camera views to a render target in memory. One camera is a top down view of the robot going around the course, and the second camera is the view from the robot's perspective as it moves along. I take the rendertarget of the robot camera and convert it to a Color[,] so that I can do image analysis on it. private Color[,] TextureTo2DArray(Texture2D texture, Color[] colors1D, Color[,] colors2D) { texture.GetData(colors1D); for (int x = 0; x < texture.Width; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < texture.Height; y++) { colors2D[x, y] = colors1D[x + (y * texture.Width)]; } } return colors2D; } I want to overlay the results of the image analysis on the robot camera view. The first part of the image analysis is finding the white pixels. When I find the white pixels I create a bool[,] array showing which pixels were white and which were black. Then I want to convert it back into a texture so that I can overlay on the robot view. When I try to create the new texture showing which ones pixels were white, then the game goes super slow (around 10 hz). Can you give me some pointers as to what to do to make the game go faster. If I comment out this algorithm, then it goes back up to 60 hz. private Texture2D GenerateTexturesFromBoolArray(bool[,] boolArray,Color[] colorMap, Texture2D textureToModify) { for(int i =0;i < screenWidth;i++) { for(int j =0;j<screenHeight;j++) { if (boolArray[i, j] == true) { colorMap[i+(j*screenWidth)] = Color.Red; } else { colorMap[i + (j * screenWidth)] = Color.Transparent; } } } textureToModify.SetData<Color>(colorMap); return textureToModify; } Each Time I run draw, I must set the texture to null, so that I can modify it. public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { Vector2 topRightVector = ((SimulationMain)Game).spriteRectangleManager.topRightVector; Vector2 scaleFactor = ((SimulationMain)Game).config.scaleFactorScreenSizeToWindow; this.spriteBatch.Begin(); // Start the 2D drawing this.spriteBatch.Draw(this.textureFindWhite, topRightVector, null, Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, scaleFactor, SpriteEffects.None, 0); this.spriteBatch.End(); // Stop drawing. GraphicsDevice.Textures[0] = null; } Thanks for the help, Anthony G.

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• Using TPL and PLINQ to raise performance of feed aggregator

  - by DigiMortal

  In this posting I will show you how to use Task Parallel Library (TPL) and PLINQ features to boost performance of simple RSS-feed aggregator. I will use here only very basic .NET classes that almost every developer starts from when learning parallel programming. Of course, we will also measure how every optimization affects performance of feed aggregator. Feed aggregator Our feed aggregator works as follows: Load list of blogs Download RSS-feed Parse feed XML Add new posts to database Our feed aggregator is run by task scheduler after every 15 minutes by example. We will start our journey with serial implementation of feed aggregator. Second step is to use task parallelism and parallelize feeds downloading and parsing. And our last step is to use data parallelism to parallelize database operations. We will use Stopwatch class to measure how much time it takes for aggregator to download and insert all posts from all registered blogs. After every run we empty posts table in database. Serial aggregation Before doing parallel stuff let’s take a look at serial implementation of feed aggregator. All tasks happen one after other. internal class FeedClient {     private readonly INewsService _newsService;     private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255;       public FeedClient()     {          ObjectFactory.Initialize(container =>          {              container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true;          });           _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>();     }       public void Execute()     {         var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs();           for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++)         {              ImportFeed(blogs[index]);         }     }       private void ImportFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         if(blog == null)             return;         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl))             return;           var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat;           feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri);           if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss)             ImportRssFeed(blog);         if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom)             ImportAtomFeed(blog);                 }       private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items)         {             SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         }     }       private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Entries)         {             SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         }     } } Serial implementation of feed aggregator downloads and inserts all posts with 25.46 seconds. Task parallelism Task parallelism means that separate tasks are run in parallel. You can find out more about task parallelism from MSDN page Task Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) and Wikipedia page Task parallelism. Although finding parts of code that can run safely in parallel without synchronization issues is not easy task we are lucky this time. Feeds import and parsing is perfect candidate for parallel tasks. We can safely parallelize feeds import because importing tasks doesn’t share any resources and therefore they don’t also need any synchronization. After getting the list of blogs we iterate through the collection and start new TPL task for each blog feed aggregation. internal class FeedClient {     private readonly INewsService _newsService;     private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255;       public FeedClient()     {          ObjectFactory.Initialize(container =>          {              container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true;          });           _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>();     }       public void Execute()     {         var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs();                var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count];           for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++)         {             tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]);             tasks[index].Start();         }           Task.WaitAll(tasks);     }       private void ImportFeed(object blogObject)     {         if(blogObject == null)             return;         var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject;         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl))             return;           var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat;           feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri);           if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss)             ImportRssFeed(blog);         if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom)             ImportAtomFeed(blog);                }       private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog)     {          var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);          var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items)          {              SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);          }     }     private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Entries)         {             SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         }     } } You should notice first signs of the power of TPL. We made only minor changes to our code to parallelize blog feeds aggregating. On my machine this modification gives some performance boost – time is now 17.57 seconds. Data parallelism There is one more way how to parallelize activities. Previous section introduced task or operation based parallelism, this section introduces data based parallelism. By MSDN page Data Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) data parallelism refers to scenario in which the same operation is performed concurrently on elements in a source collection or array. In our code we have independent collections we can process in parallel – imported feed entries. As checking for feed entry existence and inserting it if it is missing from database doesn’t affect other entries the imported feed entries collection is ideal candidate for parallelization. internal class FeedClient {     private readonly INewsService _newsService;     private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255;       public FeedClient()     {          ObjectFactory.Initialize(container =>          {              container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true;          });           _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>();     }       public void Execute()     {         var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs();                var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count];           for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++)         {             tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]);             tasks[index].Start();         }           Task.WaitAll(tasks);     }       private void ImportFeed(object blogObject)     {         if(blogObject == null)             return;         var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject;         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl))             return;           var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat;           feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri);           if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss)             ImportRssFeed(blog);         if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom)             ImportAtomFeed(blog);                }       private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri);           feed.Channel.Items.AsParallel().ForAll(a =>         {             SaveRssFeedItem(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         });      }        private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog)      {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri);           feed.Entries.AsParallel().ForAll(a =>         {              SaveAtomFeedEntry(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         });      } } We did small change again and as the result we parallelized checking and saving of feed items. This change was data centric as we applied same operation to all elements in collection. On my machine I got better performance again. Time is now 11.22 seconds. Results Let’s visualize our measurement results (numbers are given in seconds). As we can see then with task parallelism feed aggregation takes about 25% less time than in original case. When adding data parallelism to task parallelism our aggregation takes about 2.3 times less time than in original case. More about TPL and PLINQ Adding parallelism to your application can be very challenging task. You have to carefully find out parts of your code where you can safely go to parallel processing and even then you have to measure the effects of parallel processing to find out if parallel code performs better. If you are not careful then troubles you will face later are worse than ones you have seen before (imagine error that occurs by average only once per 10000 code runs). Parallel programming is something that is hard to ignore. Effective programs are able to use multiple cores of processors. Using TPL you can also set degree of parallelism so your application doesn’t use all computing cores and leaves one or more of them free for host system and other processes. And there are many more things in TPL that make it easier for you to start and go on with parallel programming. In next major version all .NET languages will have built-in support for parallel programming. There will be also new language constructs that support parallel programming. Currently you can download Visual Studio Async to get some idea about what is coming. Conclusion Parallel programming is very challenging but good tools offered by Visual Studio and .NET Framework make it way easier for us. In this posting we started with feed aggregator that imports feed items on serial mode. With two steps we parallelized feed importing and entries inserting gaining 2.3 times raise in performance. Although this number is specific to my test environment it shows clearly that parallel programming may raise the performance of your application significantly.

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