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• Danke für die gute Zusammenarbeit im FY12

  - by A&C Redaktion

  Liebe Oracle Partner, und schon wieder ist ein Geschäftsjahr zu Ende gegangen. Als erstes möchte ich Ihnen, unseren Partnern, sagen: Sie leisten seit Jahren einen fundamentalen Beitrag zum Erfolg von Oracle – auch im Fiskaljahr 2012. Herzlichen Dank dafür! Wenn wir auf das letzte Jahr zurückblicken, gab es unter dem Motto „Oracle on Oracle“ herausragende Produktvorstellungen, Events und Partner Programme. Zu den wichtigsten technischen Innovationen gehörte sicherlich die Oracle Database Appliance speziell für kleinere Unternehmen. Auch die Daten-Explosion, zu der wir jeden Tag beitragen, stellt für alle Unternehmen eine Herausforderung dar. Um diese „Big Data“ effizient zu verwalten, haben wir die Exa-Familie erweitert. So stehen neben der Exadata Database Machine nun auch Exalogic und Exalytics – mit zuverlässiger Hardware, ausgereifter Software und Support aus einer Hand – je nach Bedarf zur Verfügung. Da ist für jeden Kunden was dabei. Die Oracle Optimized Solutions unserer VADs waren ein weiteres wichtiges Thema, speziell für den Mittelstand, über das wir auch hier im Blog berichtet haben. Für ISVs wurden die Exastack Ready und Exastack Optimized Programme entwickelt. Speziell für Partner wurden Partner Sales Books zu den Fokus-Themen, wie beispielsweise Cloud Computing, erstellt. Im OPN stehen Ihnen mehr als 30 deutschsprachige Marketing-Kits zur Verfügung, um Sie bei der täglichen Vertriebsarbeit zu unterstützen. Und mit dem überarbeiteten und erweiterten Solutions Catalog im OPN können Sie von Endkunden ganz einfach nach Ihrem Lösungsangebot gefunden werden. Dies sind nur einige Beispiele, wie wir versuchen, Sie bei Ihrem Geschäft zu unterstützen. Ich hoffe, wir schaffen das auch weiterhin so gut wie bisher. Was das neue Fiskaljahr bringt, erfahren Sie beim EMEA Partner Kickoff am 29. Juni 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: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;} und demnächst hier im Blog. Aber soviel sei schon verraten: Meine Glückszahl ist die 13 – und Ihre? Herzlichst, Ihre Silvia Kaske Senior Direktor Alliances & Channel Tech Europe North Oracle Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG

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• Danke für die gute Zusammenarbeit im FY12

  - by A&C Redaktion

  Liebe Oracle Partner, und schon wieder ist ein Geschäftsjahr zu Ende gegangen. Als erstes möchte ich Ihnen, unseren Partnern, sagen: Sie leisten seit Jahren einen fundamentalen Beitrag zum Erfolg von Oracle – auch im Fiskaljahr 2012. Herzlichen Dank dafür! Wenn wir auf das letzte Jahr zurückblicken, gab es unter dem Motto „Oracle on Oracle“ herausragende Produktvorstellungen, Events und Partner Programme. Zu den wichtigsten technischen Innovationen gehörte sicherlich die Oracle Database Appliance speziell für kleinere Unternehmen. Auch die Daten-Explosion, zu der wir jeden Tag beitragen, stellt für alle Unternehmen eine Herausforderung dar. Um diese „Big Data“ effizient zu verwalten, haben wir die Exa-Familie erweitert. So stehen neben der Exadata Database Machine nun auch Exalogic und Exalytics – mit zuverlässiger Hardware, ausgereifter Software und Support aus einer Hand – je nach Bedarf zur Verfügung. Da ist für jeden Kunden was dabei. Die Oracle Optimized Solutions unserer VADs waren ein weiteres wichtiges Thema, speziell für den Mittelstand, über das wir auch hier im Blog berichtet haben. Für ISVs wurden die Exastack Ready und Exastack Optimized Programme entwickelt. Speziell für Partner wurden Partner Sales Books zu den Fokus-Themen, wie beispielsweise Cloud Computing, erstellt. Im OPN stehen Ihnen mehr als 30 deutschsprachige Marketing-Kits zur Verfügung, um Sie bei der täglichen Vertriebsarbeit zu unterstützen. Und mit dem überarbeiteten und erweiterten Solutions Catalog im OPN können Sie von Endkunden ganz einfach nach Ihrem Lösungsangebot gefunden werden. Dies sind nur einige Beispiele, wie wir versuchen, Sie bei Ihrem Geschäft zu unterstützen. Ich hoffe, wir schaffen das auch weiterhin so gut wie bisher. Was das neue Fiskaljahr bringt, erfahren Sie beim EMEA Partner Kickoff am 29. Juni 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: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;} und demnächst hier im Blog. Aber soviel sei schon verraten: Meine Glückszahl ist die 13 – und Ihre? Herzlichst, Ihre Silvia Kaske Senior Direktor Alliances & Channel Tech Europe North Oracle Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG

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• Review: A Quick Look at Reflector

  - by James Michael Hare

  I, like many, was disappointed when I heard that Reflector 7 was not free, and perhaps that’s why I waited so long to try it and just kept using my version 6 (which continues to be free).  But though I resisted for so long, I longed for the better features that were being developed, and began to wonder if I should upgrade.  Thus, I began to look into the features being offered in Reflector 7.5 to see what was new. Multiple Editions Reflector 7.5 comes in three flavors, each building on the features of the previous version: Standard – Contains just the Standalone application ($70) VS – Same as Standard but adds Reflector Object Browser for Visual Studio ($130) VSPro – Same as VS but adds ability to set breakpoints and step into decompiled code ($190) So let’s examine each of these features. The Standalone Application (Standard, VS, VSPro editions) Popping open Reflector 7.5 and looking at the GUI, we see much of the same familiar features, with a few new ones as well: Most notably, the disassembler window now has a tabbed window with navigation buttons.  This makes it much easier to back out of a deep-dive into many layers of decompiled code back to a previous point. Also, there is now an analyzer which can be used to determine dependencies for a given method, property, type, etc. For example, if we select System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient and hit the Analyze button, we’d see a window with the following nodes we could expand: This gives us the ability to see what a given type uses, what uses it, who exposes it, and who instantiates it. Now obviously, for low-level types (like DateTime) this list would be enormous, but this can give a lot of information on how a given type is connected to the larger code ecosystem. One of the other things I like about using Reflector 7.5 is that it does a much better job of displaying iterator blocks than Reflector 6 did. For example, if you were to take a look at the Enumerable.Cast() extension method in System.Linq, and dive into the CastIterator in Reflector 6, you’d see this: But now, in Reflector 7.5, we see the iterator logic much more clearly: This is a big improvement in the quality of their code disassembler and for me was one of the main reasons I decided to take the plunge and get version 7.5. The Reflector Object Browser (VS, VSPro editions) If you have the .NET Reflector VS or VSPro editions, you’ll find you have in Visual Studio a Reflector Object Browser window available where you can select and decompile any assembly right in Visual Studio. For example, if you want to take a peek at how System.Collections.Generic.List<T> works, you can either select List<T> in the Reflector Object Browser, or even simpler just select a usage of it in your code and CTRL + Click to dive in. – And it takes you right to a source window with the decompiled source: Setting Breakpoints and Stepping Into Decompiled Code (VSPro) If you have the VSPro edition, in addition to all the things said above, you also get the additional ability to set breakpoints in this decompiled code and step through it as if it were your own code: This can be a handy feature when you need to see why your code’s use of a BCL or other third-party library isn’t working as you expect. Summary Yes, Reflector is no longer free, and yes, that’s a bit of a bummer. But it always was and still is a very fine tool. If you still have Reflector 6, you aren’t forced to upgrade any longer, but getting the nicer disassembler (especially for iterator blocks) and the handy VS integration is worth at least considering upgrading for.  So I leave it up to you, these are some of the features of Reflector 7.5, what’s your thoughts? Technorati Tags: .NET,Reflector

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• Get to Know a Candidate (16 of 25): Stewart Alexander&ndash;Socialist Party USA

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Alexander is an American democratic socialist politician and a resident of California. Alexander was the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 2006. He received 43,319 votes, 0.5% of the total. In August 2010, Alexander declared his candidacy for the President of the United States with the Socialist Party and Green Party. In January 2011, Alexander also declared his candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party. Stewart Alexis Alexander was born to Stewart Alexander, a brick mason and minister, and Ann E. McClenney, a nurse and housewife.  While in the Air Force Reserve, Alexander worked as a full-time retail clerk at Safeway Stores and then began attending college at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Stewart began working overtime as a stocking clerk with Safeway to support himself through school. During this period he married to Freda Alexander, his first wife. They had one son. He was honorably discharged in October 1976 and married for the second time. He left Safeway in 1978 and for a brief period worked as a licensed general contractor. In 1980, he went to work for Lockheed Aircraft but quit the following year.  Returning to Los Angeles, he became involved in several civic organizations, including most notably the NAACP (he became the Labor and Industry Chairman for the Inglewood South Bay Branch of the NAACP). In 1986 he moved back to Los Angeles and hosted a weekly talk show on KTYM Radio until 1989. The show dealt with social issues affecting Los Angeles such as gangs, drugs, and redevelopment, interviewing government officials from all levels of government and community leaders throughout California. He also worked with Delores Daniels of the NAACP on the radio and in the street. The Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) is a multi-tendency democratic-socialist party in the United States. The party states that it is the rightful continuation and successor to the tradition of the Socialist Party of America, which had lasted from 1901 to 1972. The party is officially committed to left-wing democratic socialism. The Socialist Party USA, along with its predecessors, has received varying degrees of support, when its candidates have competed against those from the Republican and Democratic parties. Some attribute this to the party having to compete with the financial dominance of the two major parties, as well as the limitations of the United States' legislatively and judicially entrenched two-party system. The Party supports third-party candidates, particularly socialists, and opposes the candidates of the two major parties. Opposing both capitalism and "authoritarian Communism", the Party advocates bringing big business under public ownership and democratic workers' self-management. The party opposes unaccountable bureaucratic control of Soviet communism. Alexander has Ballot Access in: CO, FL, NY, OH (write-in access in: IN, TX) Learn more about Stewart Alexander and Socialist Party USA on Wikipedia.

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• HP and Microsoft: That&rsquo;s What Friends Are For ?

  - by andrewbrust

  Today, HP pre-announced the second coming out for its recently acquired Palm webOS mobile operating system.  I happen to think webOS is quite good, and when the Palm Pre first came out, I thought it a worthwhile phone.  I was worried though that the platform would never attract the developer mindshare it needed to be competitive, and that turned out to be the case.  But then HP acquired Palm and announced it would be revamping the webOS offering, not only on phones, but also on tablets.  It later announced that it would also use webOS as an embedded solution on HP printers. The timing of this came shortly after HP had announced it would be producing a “Slate” product running Windows 7. After the Palm deal, HP became vague about whether the Windows-powered slate would actually come out.  They did, in fact, bring the Slate 500 to market, but by some accounts, they only built 5000 units. Another recent awkward moment between HP and Microsoft: HP withdrew itself from the Windows Home Server ecosystem.  That one hurt, as they were the dominant OEM there.  But Microsoft’s decision to kill Drive Extender had driven away many parties, not just HP. On Wednesday, HP came out with their TouchPad, and new phone models.  Not a nice thing for Windows Phone 7, but other OEMs are taking a wait and see attitude there too, I suppose.  There was one more zinger though, and it was bigger: HP announced they’d be porting webOS to PCs. No Windows Phone 7? OK. No Windows Home Server?  Whatcha gonna do?  But no Windows 7 either?  From HP?  What comes after that, no ink and toner? Some people think Microsoft’s been around too long to be relevant.  But HP started out making oscilloscopes!  The notion that HP is too cool for Windows school is a it far-fetched.  This is the company that bought EDS. This is the company that bought Compaq.  And Compaq was the company that bought Digital Equipment Corporation.  Somehow, I don’t think the VT 220 outclasses Windows PCs. What could possibly be going on?  My sense is that HP wants to put webOS on PCs that also have Windows, and that people will buy because they have Windows.  And for every one of those sold, HP gets to count, technically speaking, another webOS unit in the install base.  webOS is really nice, as I said.  But being good isn’t good enough when you are trying to get market share.  Number of units shipped matters.  The question is whether counting PCs with webOS installed, but dormant, is helpful to HP’s cause.  Seems like a funny way to account for market share, and a strange way to treat a big partner in Redmond.

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• SQLAuthority News – Amazon Gift Card Raffle for Beta Tester Feedback for NuoDB

  - by pinaldave

  As regular readers know I’ve been spending some time working with the NuoDB beta software. They contacted me last week and asked if I would give you a chance to try their new web-based console for their scalable, SQL-compliant database. They have just put out their final beta release, Beta 9.  It contains a preview of a new web-based “NuoConsole” that will replace and extend the functionality of their current desktop version.  I haven’t spent any time with the new console yet but a really quick look tells me it should make it easier to do deeper monitoring than the older one. It also looks like they have added query-level reporting through the console. I will try to play with it soon. NuoDB is doing a last, big push to get some more feedback from developers before they release their 1.0 product sometime in the next several weeks. Since the console is new, they are especially interested in some quick feedback on it before general availability. For SQLAuthority readers only, NuoDB will raffle off three $50 Amazon gift cards in exchange for your feedback on the NuoConsole preview. Here’s how to Enter Download NuoDBeta 9 here You must build a domain before you can start the console. Launch the Web Console. Windows Code: start java -jar jarnuodbwebconsole.jar Mac, Linux, Solaris, Unix Code: java -jar jar/nuodbwebconsole.jar Access the Web Console: Code: http://localhost:8080 When you have tried it out, go to a short (8 question) survey to enter the raffle Click here for the survey You must complete the survey before midnight EDT on October 17, 2012. Here’s what else they are saying about this last beta before general availability: Beta 9 now supports the Zend PHP framework so that PHP developers can directly integrate web applications with NuoDB. Multi-threaded HDFS support – NuoDB Storage Managers can now be configured to persist data to the high performance Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS). Beta 9 optimizes for multi-thread I/O streams at maximum performance. This enhancement allows users to make Hadoop their core storage with no extra effort which is a pretty cool idea. Improved Performance –On a single transaction node, Beta 9 offers performance comparable with MySQL and MariaDB. As additional nodes are added, NuoDB performance improves significantly at near linear scale. Query & Explain Plan Logging – Beta 9 introduces SQL explain plans for your queries. Qualify queries with the word “EXPLAIN” and NuoDB will respond with the details of the execution plan allowing performance optimization to SQL. Through the NuoConsole, you can now kill hung or long running queries. Java App Server Support – Beta 9 now supports leading Web JEE app servers including JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. They’ve also reported: Improved PHP/PDO drivers Support for Drupal Faster Ruby on Rails driver The Hibernate Dialect supports version 4.1 And good news for my readers: numerous SQL enhancements They will share the results of the web console feedback with me.  I’ll let you know how it goes. Also the winner of their last contest was Jaime Martínez Lafargue!  Do leave a comment here once you complete the survey.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL Authority Tagged: NuoDB

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• Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review-again.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Windows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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• Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Weindows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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• SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at an IO-related wait types. From Book On-Line: Occurs while waiting for I/O operations to complete. This wait type generally represents non-data page I/Os. Data page I/O completion waits appear as PAGEIOLATCH_* waits. IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. This is a good indication that IO needs to be looked over here. Reducing IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue concerning the IO, one should look at the following things related to IO subsystem: Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of files – LDF and MDF on a separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk),etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as the configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on development (test environment) set up and as soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very possible that there are no proper indexes in the system and there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the two articles that I wrote; they are about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Types, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

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• Podcast Show Notes: Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up - Part 1

  - by Bob Rhubart

  OK, I know last week I promised you a program featuring Oracle ACE Directors Mike van Alst (IT-Eye) and Jordan Braunstein (TUSC) and The Definitive Guide to SOA: Oracle Service Bus author Jeff Davies. But things happen. In this case, what happened was Collaborate 10 in Las Vegas. Prior to the event I asked Oracle ACE Director and OAUG board member Floyd Teter to see if he could round up a couple of people at the event for an impromtu interview over Skype (I was here in Cleveland) to get their impressions of the event. Listen to Part 1 Floyd, armed with his brand new iPad, went above and beyond the call of duty. At the appointed hour, which turned out to be about hour after the close of Collaborate 10,  Floyd had gathered nine other people to join him in a meeting room somewhere in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Here’s the entire roster: Floyd Teter - Project Manager at Jet Propulsion Lab, OAUG Board Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Mark Rittman - EMEA Technical Director and Co-Founder, Rittman Mead,  ODTUG Board Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Chet Justice - OBI Consultant at BI Wizards Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Elke Phelps - Oracle Applications DBA at Humana, OAUG SIG Chair Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Book | Oracle ACE Profile Paul Jackson - Oracle Applications DBA at Humana Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Book Srini Chavali - Enterprise Database & Tools Leader at Cummins, Inc Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Dave Ferguson – President, Oracle Applications Users Group LinkedIn | OAUG Profile John King - Owner, King Training Resources Website | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Gavyn Whyte - Project Portfolio Manager at iFactory Consulting Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix John Nicholson - Channels & Alliances at Greenlight Technologies Website | LinkedIn Big thanks to Floyd for assembling the panelists and handling the on-scene MC/hosting duties.  Listen to Part 1 On a technical note, this discussion was conducted over Skype, using Floyd’s iPad, placed in the middle of the table.  During the call the audio was fantastic – the iPad did a remarkable job. Sadly, the Technology Gods were not smiling on me that day. The audio set-up that I tested successfully before the call failed to deliver when we first connected – I could hear the folks in Vegas, but they couldn’t hear me. A frantic, last-minute adjustment appeared to have fixed that problem, and the audio in my headphones from both sides of the conversation was loud and clear.  It wasn’t until I listened to the playback that I realized that something was wrong. So the audio for Vegas side of the discussion has about the same fidelity as a cell phone. It’s listenable, but disappointing when compared to what it sounded like during the discussion. Still, this was a one shot deal, and the roster of panelists and the resulting conversation was too good and too much fun to scrap just because of an unfortunate technical glitch.   Part 2 of this Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up will run next week. After that, it’s back on track with the previously scheduled program. So stay tuned: RSS del.icio.us Tags: oracle,otn,collborate 10,c10,oracle ace program,archbeat,arch2arch,oaug,odtug,las vegas Technorati Tags: oracle,otn,collborate 10,c10,oracle ace program,archbeat,arch2arch,oaug,odtug,las vegas

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• Get to Know a Candidate (9 of 25): Gary Johnson&ndash;Libertarian Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Johnson served as the 29th Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, as a member of the Republican Party, and is known for his low-tax libertarian views and his strong emphasis on personal health and fitness. While a student at the University of New Mexico in 1974, Johnson sustained himself financially by working as a door-to-door handyman. In 1976 he founded Big J Enterprises, which grew from this one-person venture to become one of New Mexico's largest construction companies. He entered politics for the first time by running for Governor of New Mexico in 1994 on a fiscally conservative, low-tax, anti-crime platform. Johnson won the Republican Party of New Mexico's gubernatorial nomination, and defeated incumbent Democratic governor Bruce King by 50% to 40%. He cut the 10% annual growth in the budget: in part, due to his use of the gubernatorial veto 200 times during his first six months in office, which gained him the nickname "Governor Veto". Johnson sought re-election in 1998, winning by 55% to 45%. In his second term, he concentrated on the issue of school voucher reforms, as well as campaigning for marijuana decriminalization and opposition to the War on Drugs. During his tenure as governor, Johnson adhered to a stringent anti-tax and anti-bureaucracy policy driven by a cost–benefit analysis rationale, setting state and national records for his use of veto powers: more than the other 49 contemporary governors put together. Term-limited, Johnson could not run for re-election at the end of his second term. As a fitness enthusiast, Johnson has taken part in several Ironman Triathlons, and he climbed Mount Everest in May 2003. After leaving office, Johnson founded the non-profit Our America Initiative in 2009, a political advocacy committee seeking to promote policies such as free enterprise, foreign non-interventionism, limited government and privatization. The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States. It is also identified by many as the fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects the ideas of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated markets, a less powerful state, strong civil liberties (including support for Same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights), cannabis legalization and regulation, separation of church and state, open immigration, non-interventionism and neutrality in diplomatic relations (i.e., avoiding foreign military or economic entanglements with other nations), freedom of trade and travel to all foreign countries, and a more responsive and direct democracy. Members of the Libertarian Party have also supported the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, and similar trade agreements, as well as the United States' exit from the United Nations, WTO, and NATO. Although there is not an officially labeled political position of the party, it is considered by many to be more right-wing than the Democratic Party but more left-wing than the Republican Party when comparing the parties' positions to each other, placing it at or above the center. In the 30 states where voters can register by party, there are over 282,000 voters registered as Libertarians. Hundreds of Libertarian candidates have been elected or appointed to public office, and thousands have run for office under the Libertarian banner. The Libertarian Party has many firsts in its credit, such as being the first party to get an electoral vote for a woman in a United States presidential election. Learn more about Gary Johnson and Libertarian Party on Wikipedia.

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• SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

  - by pinaldave

  I have been dreaming of writing book for really long time, and I finally got the chance – in fact, two chances!  I recently wrote two books: SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] and SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle].  I had a lot of fun writing these two books, even though sometimes I had to sacrifice some family time and time for other personal development to write the books. The good side of writing book is that when the efforts put in writing books are recognize by books readers and kind organizations like expressor studio. Book Signing Event Book writing is a complex process.  Even after you spend months, maybe years, writing the material you still have to go through the editing and fact checking processes.  And, once the book is out there, there is no way to take back all the copies to change mistakes or add something you forgot.  Most of the time it is a one-way street. Book Signing Event Just like every author, I had a dream that after the books were written, they would be loved by people and gain acceptance by an audience. My first book, SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, is extremely popular because it helps lots of people learn various fundamental topics. My second book covers beginning to learn SQL Server Wait Stats, which is a relatively new subject. This book has had very good acceptance in the community. Book Signing Event Helping my community is my primary focus, so I was happy to see this year’s SQLPASS tag line: ‘This is a Community.‘ At the event, the expressor studio guys came up with a very novel idea. They had previously used my books and they had found them very useful. They got 100 copies of the book and decided to give it away to community folks. They invited me and my co-author Rick Morelan to hold a book signing event. We did a book signing on Thursday between 1 pm and 2 pm. Book Signing Event This event was one of the best events for me. This was my first book signing event outside of India. I reached the book signing location around 20 minutes before the scheduled time and what I saw was a big line for the book signing event. I felt very honored looking at the crowd and all the people around the event location. I felt very humbled when I saw some of my very close friends standing in the line to get my signature. It was really heartwarming to see so many enthusiasts waiting for more than an hour to get my signature. While standing in line I had the chance to have a conversation with every single person who showed up for the signature. I made sure that I repeated every single name and wrote it in every book with my signature. There is saying that if we write a name once we will remember it forever. I want to remember all of you who saw me at the book signing. Your comments were wonderful, your feedback was amazing and you were all very supportive. Book Signing Event I have made a note of every conversation I had with all of you when I was signing the books. Once again, I just want to express my thanks for coming to my book signing event. The whole experience was very humbling. On the top of it, I want to thank the expressor studio people who made it possible, who organized the whole signing event. I am so thankful to them for facilitating the whole experience, which is going to be hard to beat by any future experience. My books Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Learning Never Ends – Becoming Student Again

  - by pinaldave

  From my past few blog posts you may see a pattern – learning.  I finished my own college education a few years ago, but I firmly believe that learning should never stop.  We can learn on the job, or from outside reading, but we should always try to be learning new things.  It keeps the brain sharp!  In fact, I often find myself learning new things from reviewing old material.  If you have been reading my blog lately, you will recognize the name Koenig Solutions. You might also be rolling your eyes at me and my enthusiasm for learning and training.  College was hard work, why continue it?  Didn’t we all get educations so that we could get jobs and go on vacation? Of course, having a job means that you cannot take vacations all the time.  I have often asked my friend who owns Koenig, jokingly, when he is going to open a Koenig center in Bangalore. I relocated to Bangalore 1.5 years ago, so I wanted a center I could walk to anytime.  Last week I was very happy to hear that they have opened a center in Bangalore. Pinal Dave at Friend’s Company I could not let a new center open without visiting it and congratulating my friend, so I recently stopped by.  I was immediately taken by the desire to go back to “school” and learn something new.  I have signed up to take a continuing education course through the new Koenig center and here is the exciting part: I will be blogging about it so that you all can be inspired to learn, too!  Keep checking back here for further updates and blog posts about my learning experience. However, what is the fun to attend the session in the town where you stay. I indeed visited their center in Bangalore but I have opted to learn the course in another city. Well, more information about the same in near future. Pinal Dave is going to be a student again Honestly, why not learn new things and become more confident?  When we have more education we will become better at our jobs, which can lead to more confidence and efficiency, but may also have more physical rewards – like a raise or promotion.  We don’t always have to focus on shallow rewards like money and recognition, so think about how much more you will enjoy your work when you know more about it.  Koenig is offering training for new certificates in SQL Server 2012, and I am planning on investigating these for sure. I feel good that I am going to be a student again and will be learning new stuff. As I said I will blog my experience as I go. I hope that my continuing education blog posts will inspire you, my readers, to go out and learn more.  I am serious about my education and my goal is to prove how serious I am here, on my blog. I am a big fan of Learning and Sharing and I hope this series will inspire you to learn new technology which can help you progress in your career and help balance your life with work. Note: This blog post is about what inspired me to sign up for learning course. Becoming student should be the attitude of a lifetime. This post is not about a career change. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Query Hint – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 1 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following queries will return dirty data? a) SELECT * FROM Table1 (READUNCOMMITED) b) SELECT * FROM Table1 (NOLOCK) c) SELECT * FROM Table1 (DIRTYREAD) d) SELECT * FROM Table1 (MYLOCK) Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Most SQL people know what a “Dirty Record” is. You might also call that an “Intermediate record”. In case this is new to you here is a very quick explanation. The simplest way to describe the steps of a transaction is to use an example of updating an existing record into a table. When the insert runs, SQL Server gets the data from storage, such as a hard drive, and loads it into memory and your CPU. The data in memory is changed and then saved to the storage device. Finally, a message is sent confirming the rows that were affected. For a very short period of time the update takes the data and puts it into memory (an intermediate state), not a permanent state. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in the intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement needing that data waits until the lock is released. This is a safety feature so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in this intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE) needing that data must wait until the lock is released. This is a safety feature put in place so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 1. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Dirty Records and Table Hints SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Row Constructors SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding un-matching Records SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Efficient Query Writing Strategy SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding Apostrophes in String and Text SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard – Querying Special Characters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard Basics Recap Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Updating Data in A Columnstore Index

  - by pinaldave

  So far I have written two articles on Columnstore Indexes, and both of them got very interesting readership. In fact, just recently I got a query on my previous article on Columnstore Index. Read the following two articles to get familiar with the Columnstore Index. They will give you a reference to the question which was asked by a certain reader: SQL SERVER – Fundamentals of Columnstore Index SQL SERVER – How to Ignore Columnstore Index Usage in Query Here is the reader’s question: ” When I tried to update my table after creating the Columnstore index, it gives me an error. What should I do?” When the Columnstore index is created on the table, the table becomes Read-Only table and it does not let any insert/update/delete on the table. The basic understanding is that Columnstore Index will be created on the table that is very huge and holds lots of data. If a table is small enough, there is no need to create a Columnstore index. The regular index should just help it. The reason why Columnstore index was needed is because the table was so big that retrieving the data was taking a really, really long time. Now, updating such a huge table is always a challenge by itself. If the Columnstore Index is created on the table, and the table needs to be updated, you need to know that there are various ways to update it. The easiest way is to disable the Index and enable it. Consider the following code: USE AdventureWorks GO -- Create New Table CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]( [SalesOrderID] [int] NOT NULL, [SalesOrderDetailID] [int] NOT NULL, [CarrierTrackingNumber] [nvarchar](25) NULL, [OrderQty] [smallint] NOT NULL, [ProductID] [int] NOT NULL, [SpecialOfferID] [int] NOT NULL, [UnitPrice] [money] NOT NULL, [UnitPriceDiscount] [money] NOT NULL, [LineTotal] [numeric](38, 6) NOT NULL, [rowguid] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL, [ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GO -- Create clustered index CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX [CL_MySalesOrderDetail] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] ( [SalesOrderDetailID]) GO -- Create Sample Data Table -- WARNING: This Query may run upto 2-10 minutes based on your systems resources INSERT INTO [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] SELECT S1.* FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail S1 GO 100 -- Create ColumnStore Index CREATE NONCLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [MySalesOrderDetail] (UnitPrice, OrderQty, ProductID) GO -- Attempt to Update the table UPDATE [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] SET OrderQty = OrderQty +1 WHERE [SalesOrderID] = 43659 GO /* It will throw following error Msg 35330, Level 15, State 1, Line 2 UPDATE statement failed because data cannot be updated in a table with a columnstore index. Consider disabling the columnstore index before issuing the UPDATE statement, then rebuilding the columnstore index after UPDATE is complete. */ A similar error also shows up for Insert/Delete function. Here is the workaround. Disable the Columnstore Index and performance update, enable the Columnstore Index: -- Disable the Columnstore Index ALTER INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] DISABLE GO -- Attempt to Update the table UPDATE [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] SET OrderQty = OrderQty +1 WHERE [SalesOrderID] = 43659 GO -- Rebuild the Columnstore Index ALTER INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] REBUILD GO This time it will not throw an error while the update of the table goes successfully. Let us do a cleanup of our tables using this code: -- Cleanup DROP INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail] GO TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail GO DROP TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail GO In the next post we will see how we can use Partition to update the Columnstore Index. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Mandatory look back at 2010

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Yeah, it's one of those posts, sorry. First, the mildly depressing: the most popular post on this blog this year with 47,000 hits was a post from last year about a fix to a bug in ASP.NET. A content-less post except for that link to the KB article that people should have found by going directly to the support site in the first place. Then, the really depressing: the second most popular post this year with 34,000 hits was a post from 2005 about how to display message boxes on a web page. I mean come on. This was kind of fun five years ago and it did solve one of the most common n00b mistakes VB programmers trying to move to the web were making. But come on, we've traveled about 4.7 billion miles around the Earth since then. Do people still do that kind of stuff? I should probably put a big red banner on top of this post. Oh [supernatural entity of your choice]. Hand me that gun, please. Third most popular post with 24,000 hits is from 2004. It's about how to set a session variable before redirecting. That problem has been fixed a long time ago. Oh well. Fourth most popular post. 21,000 hits. 2007. How to work around a stupid bug in ASP.NET Ajax 1.0. Fixed in ASP.NET 3.5? ASP.NET Ajax 1.0? Need I say more? The fifth one (20,000 hits) is an old post as well but I'm kind of fond of it: it's about that photo album handler I've been organically growing for a few years. It reminds me that I need to refresh it and make a new release. Good SEO title too. Back to insanity with the sixth one (16,000) that's about working around a bug in IE6. IE6. Please just refuse to pander to that browser any more. It's about time. Let's move on, please. Actually, the first post from 2010 is 15th in the list. We have a trio of these actually with server-side image resizing and FluentPath. So what happened? Well, I like the ad money, but not to the point that I'm going to write my stuff to inflate it. Actually I think if I tried I would fail miserably (I mean, I would fail worse). What really happened this year was new stuff: Orchard, FluentPath and the stuff with the Netduino. That stuff needs time to get off the ground but my hope is that it's going to be useful in the long run and that five years from now I'll be lamenting on how well those posts are still doing. So, no regret. 2010 was a good year. Oh, and I was on This Developer's Life this year! Yay! Anyways, thank you all for reading me. Please continue doing that. And happy 2011!

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• Implementing features in an Entity System

  - by Bane

  After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

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• Subscribable World Cup 2010 Calendar

  - by jamiet

  I bang on quite a lot on this blog about ways in which data can get published over the web and one of the most interesting ways, in my opinion, of publishing data in a structured manner that is well understood is to use the iCalendar specification. There isn’t much information in the world that doesn’t have some concept of “when” so iCalendar is a great way of distributing that information. You have probably used iCalendar at some point without even knowing about it. All files with a .ics suffix are iCalendar format files and that is why you can happily import them into Outlook, Hotmail Calendar, Google Calendar etc… where they can be parsed and have the semantic data (when, where and who) extracted from them. Importing of iCalendar format data is really only half the trick though; in my opinion the real value of iCalendar-formatted calendar is the ability to subscribe to them. Subscribing has a simple benefit over importing but that single benefit is of massive importance: a subscriber to an iCalendar calendar can periodically check to see if any updates have been made and, if they have, automatically update the local copy. The real benefit to the user is the productivity gain – a single update to an iCalendar means that all subscribers are automatically made aware of the change and there is zero effort on the part of the subscriber; as my former colleague Howard van Rooijen is fond of saying, “work smarter not harder” – nowhere is this edict more ably demonstrated than subscribing versus importing of calendars. If you want to read some more thoughts about iCalendar then go and read my past blog post Calendar syndication - My big hope for 2009's breakthrough technology or better still go and seek out Jon Udell who speaks very authoritatively on the issue of iCalendar. With this subject of iCalendar on my mind I was interested to discover (via Steve Clayton’s blog post Download the world cup fixtures) that the BBC had made a .ics file available containing all of the matches in the upcoming World Cup. As you can probably guess this was a file that was made available so that it could be imported into your calendar of choice. It had one obvious downside though, right now nobody knows who is going to be playing in the knock-out stages so the calendar looks like this: with no teams being named after 25th June. How much more useful would this calendar have been if the BBC had made it possible to subscribe to the calendar instead, thus the calendar could be updated with the teams for the knock out stages when they are known and every subscriber would have a permanently up-to-date record of all the fixtures in their calendar. Better still, the calendar could be updated with match results as well or perhaps even post a match report from the BBC sport pages; when calendars are made subscribable a sea of opportunity opens up for distribution of information. So with that in mind I have decided to go one better than the BBC. I have imported their .ics into a brand new Hotmail calendar and made it publicly available at the following URLs: HTML http://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/index.html iCalendar webcal://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/calendar.ics The link you’re really interested in is the second one - click on that and it should open up in your calendar software of choice. Or, if you want to view it in an online calendar such as Hotmail Calendar or Google Calendar, copy and paste that URL into the appropriate place. I shall endeavour to keep the calendar updated throughout the World Cup and even if I don’t you’re no worse off than if you had imported the BBC’s .ics file so why not give it a try? If I do keep it up to date then you will have a permanent record of the 2010 World Cup available in your calendar. Forever. If you have your calendar synced to your smartphone then you’ll be carrying match reports around with you without you having to do a single thing. Surely that’s worth a quick click isn’t it?   If you have any thoughts let me have them in the comments below. Thanks for reading. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• SQL SERVER – Basic Calculation and PEMDAS Order of Operation

  - by pinaldave

  After thinking a long time, I have decided to write about this blog post. I had no plan to create a blog post about this subject but the amount of conversation this one has created on my Facebook page, I decided to bring up a few of the question and concerns discussed on the Facebook page. There are more than 10,000 comments here so far. There are lots of discussion about what should be the answer. Well, as far as I can tell there is a big debate going on on Facebook, for educational purpose you should go ahead and read some of the comments. They are very interesting and for sure teach some new stuff. Even though some of the comments are clearly wrong they have made some good points and I believe it for sure develops some logic. Here is my take on this subject. I believe the answer is 9 as I follow PEMDAS  Order of Operation. PEMDAS stands for  parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. PEMDAS is commonly known as BODMAS in India. BODMAS stands for Brackets, Orders (ie Powers and Square Roots, etc), Division, Multiplication,  Addition and Subtraction. PEMDAS and BODMAS are almost same and both of them follow the operation order from LEFT to RIGHT. Let us try to simplify above statement using the PEMDAS or BODMAS (whatever you prefer to call). Step 1: 6 ÷ 2 (1+2) (parentheses first) Step 2: = 6 ÷ 2 * (1+2) (adding multiplication sign for further clarification) Step 3: = 6 ÷ 2* (3) (single digit in parentheses – simplify using operator) Step 4: = 6 ÷ 2 * 3 (Remember next Operation should be LEFT to RIGHT) Step 5: = 3 * 3 (because 6 ÷ 2 = 3; remember LEFT to RIGHT) Step 6: = 9 (final answer) Some often find Step 4 confusing and often ended up multiplying 2 and 3 resulting Step 5 to be 6 ÷ 6, this is incorrect because in this case we did not follow the order of LEFT to RIGHT. When we do not follow the order of operation from LEFT to RIGHT we end up with the answer 1 which is incorrect. Let us see what SQL Server returns as a result. I executed following statement in SQL Server Management Studio SELECT 6/2*(1+2) It is clear that SQL Server also thinks that the answer should be 9. Let us go ahead and ask Google what will be the answer of above question in Google I have searched for the following term: 6/2(1+2) The result also says the answer should be 9. If you want a further reference here is a great video which describes why the answer should be 9 and not 1. And here is a fantastic conversation on Google Groups. Well, now what is your take on this subject? You are welcome to share constructive feedback and your answer may be different from my answer. NOTE: A healthy conversation about this subject is indeed encouraged but if there is a single bad word or comment is flaming it will be deleted without any notification (it does not matter how valuable information it contains). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Entity Framework 4, WCF &amp; Lazy Loading Tip

  - by Dane Morgridge

  If you are doing any work with Entity Framework and custom WCF services in EFv1, everything works great.  As soon as you jump to EFv4, you may find yourself getting odd errors that you can’t seem to catch.  The problem is almost always has something to do with the new lazy loading feature in Entity Framework 4.  With Entity Framework 1, you didn’t have lazy loading so this problem didn’t surface.  Assume I have a Person entity and an Address entity where there is a one-to-many relationship between Person and Address (Person has many Addresses). In Entity Framework 1 (or in EFv4 with lazy loading turned off), I would have to load the Address data by hand by either using the Include or Load Method: var people = context.People.Include("Addresses"); or people.Addresses.Load(); Lazy loading works when the first time the Person.Addresses collection is accessed: 1: var people = context.People.ToList(); 2:  3: // only person data is currently in memory 4:  5: foreach(var person in people) 6: { 7: // EF determines that no Address data has been loaded and lazy loads 8: int count = person.Addresses.Count(); 9: } 10:  Lazy loading has the useful (and sometimes not useful) feature of fetching data when requested.  It can make your life easier or it can make it a big pain.  So what does this have to do with WCF?  One word: Serialization. When you need to pass data over the wire with WCF, the data contract is serialized into either XML or binary depending on the binding you are using.  Well, if I am using lazy loading, the Person entity gets serialized and during that process, the Addresses collection is accessed.  When that happens, the Address data is lazy loaded.  Then the Address is serialized, and the Person property is accessed, and then also serialized and then the Addresses collection is accessed.  Now the second time through, lazy loading doesn’t kick in, but you can see the infinite loop caused by this process.  This is a problem with any serialization, but I personally found it trying to use WCF. The fix for this is to simply turn off lazy Loading.  This can be done at each call by using context options: context.ContextOptions.LazyLoadingEnabled = false; Turning lazy loading off will now allow your classes to be serialized properly.  Note, this is if you are using the standard Entity Framework classes.  If you are using POCO,  you will have to do something slightly different.  With POCO, the Entity Framework will create proxy classes by default that allow things like lazy loading to work with POCO.  This proxy basically creates a proxy object that is a full Entity Framework object that sits between the context and the POCO object.  When using POCO with WCF (or any serialization) just turning off lazy loading doesn’t cut it.  You have to turn off the proxy creation to ensure that your classes will serialize properly: context.ContextOptions.ProxyCreationEnabled = false; The nice thing is that you can do this on a call-by-call basis.  If you use a new context for each set of operations (which you should) then you can turn either lazy loading or proxy creation on and off as needed.

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• Oracle Employees Support New World Record for IYF Children's Hour

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 960 students ‘crouched’, ‘touched’ and ‘set’ under the watchful eye of International Rugby Referee Alain Roland, and supported by Oracle employees, to successfully set a new world record for the World’s Largest Scrum to raise funds and awareness for the Irish Youth Foundation. Last year Oracle Employees supported the Irish Youth Foundation by donating funds from their payroll through the Giving Tree Appeal. We were the largest corporate donor to the IYF by raising €3075. To acknowledge our generosity the IYF asked Oracle Leadership in Society team members to participate in their most recent campaign which was to break the Guinness Book of Records by forming the World’s Largest Rugby Scrum. This was a wonderful opportunity for Oracle’s Leadership in Society to promote the charity, support education and to make a mark in the Corporate Social Responsibility field. The students who formed the scrum also gave up their lunch money and raised a total of €3000. This year we hope Oracle Employees will once again support the IYF with the challenge to match that amount. On the 24th of October the sun shone down on the streaming lines of students entering the field. 480 students were decked out in bright red Oracle T-Shirts against the other 480 in blue and white jerseys - all ready to form a striking scrum. Ryan Tubridy the host of the event made the opening announcement and with the blow of a whistle the Scum began. 960 students locked tight together with the Leinster players also at each side. Leinster Manager Matt O’Connor was there along with presenters Ryan Tubridy and George Hook to assist with getting the boys in line and keeping the shape of the scrum. In accordance with Guinness Book of Records rules, the ball was fed into the scrum properly by Ireland and Leinster scrum-half, Eoin Reddan, and was then passed out the line to his Leinster team mates including Ian Madigan, Brendan Macken and Jordi Murphy, also proudly sporting the Oracle T-Shirt. The new World Record was made, everyone gave a big cheer and thankfully nobody got injured! Thank you to everyone in Oracle who donated last year through the Giving Tree Appeal. Your generosity has gone a long way to support local groups both. Last year’s donation was so substantial that the IYF were able to spread it across two youth groups: The first being Ballybough Youth Project in Dublin. The funding gave them the chance to give 24 young people from their project the chance to get away from the inner city and the problems and issues they face in their daily life by taking a trip to the Cavan Centre to spend a weekend away in a safe and comfortable environment; a very rare holiday in these young people’s lives. The Rahoon Family Centre. Used the money to help secure the long term sustainability of their project. They act as an educational/social/fun project that has been working with disadvantaged children for the past 16 years. Their aim is to change young people’s future with fun /social education and supporting them so they can maximize their creativity and potential. We hope you can help support this worthy cause again this year, so keep an eye out for the Children’s Hour and Giving Tree Appeal! About the Irish Youth Foundation The IYF provides opportunities for marginalised children and young people facing difficult and extreme conditions to experience success in their lives. It passionately believes that achievement starts with opportunity. The IYF’s strategy is based on providing safe places where children can go after school; to grow, to learn and to play; and providing opportunities for teenagers from under-served communities to succeed and excel in their lives. The IYF supports innovative grassroots projects operated by dedicated professionals who understand young people and care about them. This allows the IYF to focus on supporting young people at risk of dropping out of school and, in particular, on the critical transition from primary to secondary school; and empowering teenagers from disadvantaged neighborhoods to become engaged in their local communities. Find out more here www.iyf.ie

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• FairWarning Privacy Monitoring Solutions Rely on MySQL to Secure Patient Data

  - by Rebecca Hansen

  FairWarning® solutions have audited well over 120 billion events, each of which was processed and stored in a MySQL database. FairWarning is the world's leading supplier of privacy monitoring solutions for electronic health records, relied on by over 1,200 Hospitals and 5,000 Clinics to keep their patients' data safe. In January 2014, FairWarning was awarded the highest commendation in healthcare IT as the first ever Category Leader for Patient Privacy Monitoring in the "2013 Best in KLAS: Software & Services" report[1]. FairWarning has used MySQL as their solutions’ database from their start in 2005 to worldwide expansion and market leadership. FairWarning recently migrated their solutions from MyISAM to InnoDB and updated from MySQL 5.5 to 5.6. Following are some of benefits they’ve had as a result of those changes and reasons for their continued reliance on MySQL (from FairWarning MySQL Case Study). Scalability to Handle Terabytes of Data FairWarning's customers have a lot of data: On average, FairWarning customers receive over 700,000 events to be processed daily. Over 25% of their customers receive over 30 million events per day, which equates to over 1 billion events and nearly one terabyte (TB) of new data each month. Databases range in size from a few hundred GBs to 10+ TBs for enterprise deployments (data are rolled off after 13 months). Low or Zero Admin = Few DBAs "MySQL has not required a lot of administration. After it's been tuned, configured, and optimized for size on initial setup, we have very low administrative costs. I can scale and add more customers without adding DBAs. This has had a big, positive impact on our business.” - Chris Arnold, FairWarning Vice President of Product Management and Engineering. Performance Schema  As the size of FairWarning's customers has increased, so have their tables and data volumes. MySQL 5.6’ new maintenance and management features have helped FairWarning keep up. In particular, MySQL 5.6 performance schema’s low-level metrics have provided critical insight into how the system is performing and why. Support for Mutli-CPU Threads MySQL 5.6' support for multiple concurrent CPU threads, and FairWarning's custom data loader allow multiple files to load into a single table simultaneously vs. one at a time. As a result, their data load time has been reduced by 500%. MySQL Enterprise Hot Backup Because hospitals and clinics never stop, FairWarning solutions can’t either. FairWarning changed from using mysqldump to MySQL Enterprise Hot Backup, which has reduced downtime, restore time, and storage requirements. For many of their larger customers, restore time has decreased by 80%. MySQL Enterprise Edition and Product Roadmap Provide Complete Solution "MySQL's product roadmap fully addresses our needs. We like the fact that MySQL Enterprise Edition has everything included; there's no need to purchase separate modules."  - Chris Arnold Learn More>> FairWarning MySQL Case Study Why MySQL 5.6 is an Even Better Embedded Database for Your Products presentation Updating Your Products to MySQL 5.6, Best Practices for OEMs on-demand webinar (audio and / or slides + Q&A transcript) MyISAM to InnoDB – Why and How on-demand webinar (same stuff) Top 10 Reasons to Use MySQL as an Embedded Database white paper [1] 2013 Best in KLAS: Software & Services report, January, 2014. © 2014 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

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• St. Louis ALT.NET

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis .NET User Group and a regular attendee of their meetings, but always wished there was a local group that discussed more advanced .NET topics. (That’s not a criticism of the group - I appreciate that they want to server developers with a broad range of skill levels). That’s why I was thrilled when Nicholas Cloud started a St. Louis ALT.NET group in 2010. Here’s the “about us” statement from the group’s web site: The ALT.NET community is a loosely coupled, highly cohesive group of like-minded individuals who believe that the best developers do not align themselves with platforms and languages, but with principles and ideas. In 2007, David Laribee created the term "ALT.NET" to explain this "alternative" view of the Microsoft development universe--a view that challenged the "Microsoft-only" approach to software development. He distilled his thoughts into four key developer characteristics which form the basis of the ALT.NET philosophy: You're the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc. You're not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It's the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.) The St. Louis ALT.NET meetup group is a place where .NET developers can learn, share, and critique approaches to software development on the .NET stack. We cater to the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and want to help all St. Louis .NET developers achieve a superior level of software craftsmanship. I don’t see a lot of ALT.NET talk in blogs these days. The movement was harmed early on by the negative attitudes of some of its early leaders, including jerk moves like the Entity Framework “vote of no confidence”, but I do see occasional mentions of local groups like the St. Louis one. I think ALT.NET has been successful at bringing some of its ideas into the .NET world, including heavily influencing ASP.NET MVC and raising the general level of software craftsmanship for developers working on the Microsoft stack. The ideas and ideals live on, they’re just not branded as “this is ALT.NET!” In the past 18 months, St. Louis ALT.NET meetups have discussed topics like: NHibernate F# and other functional languages AOP CoffeeScript “How Ruby Is Making Me a Stronger C# Developer” Using rake for builds CQRS .NET dynamic programming micro web frameworks – Nancy & Jessica Git ALT.NET doesn’t mean (to me, anyway) “alternatives to .NET”, but “alternatives for .NET”. We look at how things are done in Ruby and other languages/platforms, but always with the idea “What can I learn from this to take back to my “day job” with .NET?”. Meetings are held at 7PM on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the offices of Professional Employment Group. PEG is located at 999 Executive Parkway (Suite 100 – lower level) in Creve Coeur (South of Olive off of Mason Road - Here's a map). Food is not supplied (sorry if you’re a big fan of the Papa John’s Crust-Lovers’ Pizza that’s a staple of user group meetings), but attendees are encouraged to come early and bring/share beer, so that’s cool. Thanks to Nick for organizing, and to Professional Employment Group for lending their offices. Please visit the meetup site for more information.

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• Secret Agent Man

  - by Bil Simser

  Just a quick one this morning as we all get started in the week. Something that comes into play (sometimes in a big way) is the user agent string your browser gives off. So for example using the User-Agent field in the request header, you can determine what browser the user is running and act accordingly.Internet Explorer 9 modified the UA string slightly so just in case you're looking for it here are the user agent strings for IE9 (in various modes):Internet Explorer 9 Mode: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)Internet Explorer 8 Mode: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; MS-RTC LM 8; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; Zune 4.7)Internet Explorer 7 Mode: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; MS-RTC LM 8; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; Zune 4.7)Internet Explorer 9 (Compatibility Mode): Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; MS-RTC LM 8; InfoPath.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; Zune 4.7)A couple of things to note here:This was from a 64-bit Windows 7 client so that might account for the WOW64 in the agent string (I don't have a 32-bit client to test from)Various applications and platforms add to the UA string just like they do in previous IE releases. So for example you can see I have various .NET versions installed as well as Zune. You can take advantage of this by querying the UA string for compatibilities and present options accordingly to the end user.As applications will continue to add and modify this string you'll want to query the string for parts not the entire string. For example if you want to detect if you're coming from IE running  on a Windows Phone 7 just look for "iemobile" in the user agent stringHappy hacking!

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• Ongoing confusion about ivars and properties in objective C

  - by Earl Grey

  After almost 8 months being in ios programming, I am again confused about the right approach. Maybe it is not the language but some OOP principle I am confused about. I don't know.. I was trying C# a few years back. There were fields (private variables, private data in an object), there were getters and setters (methods which exposed something to the world) ,and properties which was THE exposed thing. I liked the elegance of the solution, for example there could be a class that would have a property called DailyRevenue...a float...but there was no private variable called dailyRevenue, there was only a field - an array of single transaction revenues...and the getter for DailyRevenue property calculated the revenue transparently. If somehow the internals of daily revenue calculation would change, it would not affect somebody who consumed my DailyRevenue property in any way, since he would be shielded from getter implementation. I understood that sometimes there was , and sometimes there wasn't a 1-1 relationship between fields and properties. depending on the requirements. It seemed ok in my opinion. And that properties are THE way to acces the data in object. I know the difference betweeen private, protected, and public keyword. Now lets get to objectiveC. On what factor should I base my decision about making someting only an ivar or making it as a property? Is the mental model the same as I describe above? I know that ivars are "protected" by default, not "private" asi in c#..But thats ok I think, no big deal for my presnet level of understanding the whole ios development. The point is ivars are not accesible from outside (given i don't make them public..but i won't). The thing that clouds my clear understanding is that I can have IBOutlets from ivars. Why am I seeing internal object data in the UI? *Why is it ok?* On the other hand, if I make an IBOutlet from property, and I do not make it readonly, anybody can change it. Is this ok too? Let's say I have a ParseManager object. This object would use a built in Foundation framework class called NSXMLParser. Obviously my ParseManager will utilize this nsxmlparser's capabilities but will also do some additional work. Now my question is, who should initialize this NSXMLParser object and in which way should I make a reference to it from the ParseManager object, when there is a need to parse something. A) the ParseManager -1) in its default init method (possible here ivar - or - ivar+ppty) -2) with lazyloading in getter (required a ppty here) B) Some other object - who will pass a reference to NSXMLParser object to the ParseManager object. -1) in some custom initializer (initWithParser:(NSXMLPArser *) parser) when creating the ParseManager object.. A1 - the problem is, we create a parser and waste memory while it is not yet needed. However, we can be sure that all methods that are part ot ParserManager object, can use the ivar safely, since it exists. A2 - the problem is, the nsxmlparser is exposed to outside world, although it could be read only. Would we want a parser to be exposed in some scenario? B1 - this could maybe be useful when we would want to use more types of parsers..i dont know... I understand that architectural requirements and and language is not the same. But clearly the two are in relation. How to get out of that mess of my? Please bear with me, I wasn't able to come up with a single ultimate question. And secondly, it's better to not scare me with some superadvanced newspeak that talks about some crazy internals (what the compiler does) and edge cases.

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