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• Attempted to read or write protected memory

  - by Interfector

  I have a sample ASP.NET MVC 3 web application that is following Jonathan McCracken's Test-Drive Asp.NET MVC (great book , by the way) and I have stumbled upon a problem. Note that I'm using MVCContrib, Rhino and NUnit. [Test] public void ShouldSetLoggedInUserToViewBag() { var todoController = new TodoController(); var builder = new TestControllerBuilder(); builder.InitializeController(todoController); builder.HttpContext.User = new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity("John Doe"), null); Assert.That(todoController.Index().AssertViewRendered().ViewData["UserName"], Is.EqualTo("John Doe")); } The code above always throws this error: System.AccessViolationException : Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. The controller action code is the following: [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() { ViewData.Model = Todo.ThingsToBeDone; ViewBag.UserName = HttpContext.User.Identity.Name; return View(); } From what I have figured out, the app seems to crash because of the two assignements in the controller action. However, I cannot see how there are wrong!? Can anyone help me pinpoint the solution to this problem. Thank you.

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• Floating point precision in Visual C++

  - by Luigi Giaccari

  HI, I am trying to use the robust predicates for computational geometry from Jonathan Richard Shewchuk. I am not a programmer, so I am not even sure of what I am saying, I may be doing some basic mistake. The point is the predicates should allow for precise aritmthetic with adaptive floating point precision. On my computer: Asus pro31/S (Core Due Centrino Processor) they do not work. The problem may stay in the fact the my computer may use some improvements in the floating point precision taht conflicts with the one used by Shewchuk. The author says: /* On some machines, the exact arithmetic routines might be defeated by the / / use of internal extended precision floating-point registers. Sometimes / / this problem can be fixed by defining certain values to be volatile, / / thus forcing them to be stored to memory and rounded off. This isn't / / a great solution, though, as it slows the arithmetic down. */ Now what I would like to know is that there is a way, maybe some compiler option, to turn off the internal extended precision floating-point registers. I really appriaciate your help

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• Can I use POSIX signals in my Perl program to create event-driven programming?

  - by Shiftbit

  Is there any POSIX signals that I could utilize in my Perl program to create event-driven programming? Currently, I have multi-process program that is able to cross communicate but my parent thread is only able to listen to listen at one child at a time. foreach (@proc) { sysread(${$_}{'read'}, my $line, 100); #problem here chomp($line); print "Parent hears: $line\n"; } The problem is that the parent sits in a continual wait state until it receives it a signal from the first child before it can continue on. I am relying on 'pipe' for my intercommunication. My current solution is very similar to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2558098/how-can-i-use-pipe-to-facilitate-interprocess-communication-in-perl If possible I would like to rely on a $SIG{...} event or any non-CPAN solution. Update: As Jonathan Leffler mentioned, kill can be used to send a signal: kill USR1 = $$; # send myself a SIGUSR1 My solution will be to send a USR1 signal to my child process. This event tells the parent to listen to the particular child. child: kill USR1 => $parentPID if($customEvent); syswrite($parentPipe, $msg, $buffer); #select $parentPipe; print $parentPipe $msg; parent: $SIG{USR1} = { #get child pid? sysread($array[$pid]{'childPipe'}, $msg, $buffer); }; But how do I get my the source/child pid that signaled the parent? Have the child Identify itself in its message. What happens if two children signal USR1 at the same time?

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• Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

  - by Christine Randle

  By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

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• Stand-Up Desk 2012 Update

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the more popular topics here on my technical blog doesn't have to do with technology, per-se - it's about the choice I made to go to a stand-up desk work environment. If you're interested in the history of those, check here: Stand-Up Desk Part One Stand-Up Desk Part Two I have made some changes and I was asked to post those here.Yes, I'm still standing - I think the experiment has worked well, so I'm continuing to work this way. I've become so used to it that I notice when I sit for a long time. If I'm flying, or driving a long way, or have long meetings, I take breaks to stand up and move around. That being said, I don't stand as much as I did. I started out by standing the entire day - which did not end well. As you can read in my second post, I found that sitting down for a few minutes each hour worked out much better. And over time I would say that I now stand about 70-80% of the day, depending on the day. Some days I don't even notice I'm standing, so I don't sit as often. Other days I find that I really tire quickly - so I sit more often. But in both cases, I stand more than I sit. In the first post you can read about how I used a simple coffee-table from Ikea to elevate my desktop to the right height. I then adjusted the height where I stand by using a small plastic square and some carpet. Over time I found this did not work as well as I'd like. The primary reason is that the front of these are at the same depth - so my knees would hit the desk or table when I sat down. Also, the desk was at a certain height, and I had to adjust, rather than the other way around.  Also, I like a lot of surface area on top of a desk - almost more of a table. Routing cables and wiring was a pain, and of course moving it was out of the question.   So I've changed what I use. I found a perfect solution for what I was looking for - industrial wire shelving: I bought one, built only half of it (for the right height I wanted) and arranged the shelves the way I wanted. I then got a 5'x4' piece of wood from Lowes, and mounted it to where the top was balanced, but had an over-hang  I could get my knees under easily.My wife sewed a piece of fake-leather for the top. This arrangement provides the following benefits: Very strong Rolls easily, wheels can lock to prevent rolling Long, wide shelves Wire-frame allows me to route any kind of wiring and other things all over the desk I plugged in my UPS and ran it's longer power-cable to the wall outlet. I then ran the router's LAN connection along that wire, and covered both with a large insulation sleeve. I then plugged in everything to the UPS, and routed all the wiring. I can now roll the desk almost anywhere in the room so that I can record, look out the window, get closer to or farther away from the door and more. I put a few boxes on the shelves as "drawers" and tidied that part up. Even my printer fits on a shelf. Laser-dog not included - some assembly required In the second post you can read about the bar-stool I purchased from Target for the desk. I cheaped-out on this one, and it proved to be a bad choice. Because I had to raise it so high, and was constantly sitting on it and then standing up, the gas-cylinder in it just gave out. So it became a very short stool that I ended up getting rid of. In the end, this one from Ikea proved to be a better choice: And so this arrangement is working out perfectly. I'm finding myself VERY productive this way. I hope these posts help you if you decide to try working at a stand-up desk. Although I was skeptical at first, I've found it to be a very healthy, easy way to code, design and especially present over a web-cam. It's natural to stand to speak when you're presenting, and it feels more energetic than sitting down to talk to others.

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• Very slow compile times on Visual Studio

  - by johnc

  We are getting very slow compile times, which can take upwards of 20+ minutes on dual core 2GHz, 2G Ram machines. A lot of this is due to the size of our solution which has grown to 70+ projects, as well as VSS which is a bottle neck in itself when you have a lot of files. (swapping out VSS is not an option unfortunately, so I don't want this to descend into a VSS bash) We are looking at combing projects (not nice, as we like the separation of concerns, but is a good opportunity to refactor away some dead wood). We are also looking at having multiple solutions to achieve greater separation of concerns and quicker compile times for each element of the application. This I can see will become a dll hell as we try to keep things in synch. I am interested to know how other teams have dealt with this scaling issue, what do you do when your code base reaches a critical mass that you are wasting half the day watching the status bar deliver compile messages UPDATE Apologies, I neglected to mention this is a C# solution. Thanks for all the cpp suggestions, but it's been a few years since I've had to worry about headers. At a distance I say I miss C++, but I'm not sure I want to go back EDIT: Nice suggestions that have helped so far (not saying there aren't other nice suggestions below, just what has helped) New 3GHz laptop - the power of lost utilization works wonders when whinging to management Disable Anti Virus during compile 'Disconnecting' from VSS (actually the network) during compile - I may get us to remove VS-VSS integration altogether and stick to using the VSS UI Still not rip-snorting through a compile, but every bit helps. Orion did mention in a comment that generics may have a play also. From my tests there does appear to be a minimal performance hit, but not high enough to sure - compile times can be inconsistent due to disc activity. Due to time limitations, my tests didn't include as many Generics, or as much code, as would appear in live system, so that may accumulate. I wouldn't avoid using generics where they are supposed to be used, just for compile time performance WORKAROUND We are testing the practice of building new areas of the application in new solutions, importing in the latest dlls as required, them integrating them into the larger solution when we are happy with them. We may also do them same to existing code by creating temporary solutions that just encapsulate the areas we need to work on, and throwing them away after reintegrating the code. We need to weigh up the time it will take to reintegrate this code against the time we gain by not having Rip Van Winkle like experiences with rapid recompiling during development.

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• If Then Statement Condition Being Ignored With Optimisations On

  - by Matma

  I think im going mad but can some show me what im missing, it must be some stupidly simple i just cant see the wood for the trees. BOTH side of this if then else statement are being executed? Ive tried commenting out the true side and moving the condition to a seperate variable with the same result. However if i explicitly set the condition to 1=0 or 1=1 then the if then statement is operating as i would expect. i.e. only executing one side of the equation... The only time ive seen this sort of thing is when the compiler has crashed and is no longer compiling (without visible indication that its not) but ive restarted studio with the same results, ive cleaned the solution, built and rebuilt with no change? please show me the stupid mistake im making using vs2005 if it matters. Dim dset As DataSet = New DataSet If (CboCustomers.SelectedValue IsNot Nothing) AndAlso (CboCustomers.SelectedValue <> "") Then Dim Sql As String = "Select sal.SalesOrderNo As SalesOrder,cus.CustomerName,has.SerialNo, convert(varchar,sal.Dateofpurchase,103) as Date from [dbo].[Customer_Table] as cus " & _ " inner join [dbo].[Hasp_table] as has on has.CustomerID=cus.CustomerTag " & _ " inner join [dbo].[salesorder_table] as sal On sal.Hasp_ID =has.Hasp_ID Where cus.CustomerTag = '" & CboCustomers.SelectedValue.ToString & "'" Dim dap As SqlDataAdapter = New SqlDataAdapter(Sql, FormConnection) dap.Fill(dset, "dbo.Customer_Table") DGCustomer.DataSource = dset.Tables("dbo.Customer_Table") Else Dim erm As String = "wtf" End If EDIT: i have found that this is something to do with the release config settings im using, i guesing its the optimisations bit. does anyone know of any utils/addons for vs that show if a line has been optimised out. delphi, my former language showed blue dots in the left margin to show that it was a compiled line, no dot meaning it wasnt compiled in, is there anything like that for vs? alternatively can someone explain how optimisations would affect this simple if statement causeing it to run both sides? EDIT2: using this thread as possible causes/solutions : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2135509/bug-only-occurring-when-compile-optimization-enabled. It does the same with release = optimisations on, x86, x64 and AnyCPU Goes away with optimisations off. Im using V2005 on a x64 win7 machine, if that matters. Thanks

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• SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Usual Solution – Wait Type – Day 6 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  CXPACKET has to be most popular one of all wait stats. I have commonly seen this wait stat as one of the top 5 wait stats in most of the systems with more than one CPU. Books On-Line: Occurs when trying to synchronize the query processor exchange iterator. You may consider lowering the degree of parallelism if contention on this wait type becomes a problem. CXPACKET Explanation: When a parallel operation is created for SQL Query, there are multiple threads for a single query. Each query deals with a different set of the data (or rows). Due to some reasons, one or more of the threads lag behind, creating the CXPACKET Wait Stat. There is an organizer/coordinator thread (thread 0), which takes waits for all the threads to complete and gathers result together to present on the client’s side. The organizer thread has to wait for the all the threads to finish before it can move ahead. The Wait by this organizer thread for slow threads to complete is called CXPACKET wait. Note that not all the CXPACKET wait types are bad. You might experience a case when it totally makes sense. There might also be cases when this is unavoidable. If you remove this particular wait type for any query, then that query may run slower because the parallel operations are disabled for the query. Reducing CXPACKET wait: We cannot discuss about reducing the CXPACKET wait without talking about the server workload type. OLTP: On Pure OLTP system, where the transactions are smaller and queries are not long but very quick usually, set the “Maximum Degree of Parallelism” to 1 (one). This way it makes sure that the query never goes for parallelism and does not incur more engine overhead. EXEC sys.sp_configure N'cost threshold for parallelism', N'1' GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE GO Data-warehousing / Reporting server: As queries will be running for long time, it is advised to set the “Maximum Degree of Parallelism” to 0 (zero). This way most of the queries will utilize the parallel processor, and long running queries get a boost in their performance due to multiple processors. EXEC sys.sp_configure N'cost threshold for parallelism', N'0' GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE GO Mixed System (OLTP & OLAP): Here is the challenge. The right balance has to be found. I have taken a very simple approach. I set the “Maximum Degree of Parallelism” to 2, which means the query still uses parallelism but only on 2 CPUs. However, I keep the “Cost Threshold for Parallelism” very high. This way, not all the queries will qualify for parallelism but only the query with higher cost will go for parallelism. I have found this to work best for a system that has OLTP queries and also where the reporting server is set up. Here, I am setting ‘Cost Threshold for Parallelism’ to 25 values (which is just for illustration); you can choose any value, and you can find it out by experimenting with the system only. In the following script, I am setting the ‘Max Degree of Parallelism’ to 2, which indicates that the query that will have a higher cost (here, more than 25) will qualify for parallel query to run on 2 CPUs. This implies that regardless of the number of CPUs, the query will select any two CPUs to execute itself. EXEC sys.sp_configure N'cost threshold for parallelism', N'25' GO EXEC sys.sp_configure N'max degree of parallelism', N'2' GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE GO Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Additionally a must read comment of Jonathan Kehayias. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and I no way claim it to be accurate. I suggest you all to read the online book for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats over here is generic and it varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on the development server before implementing on the production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLIO Writes

  - by Grant Fritchey

  SQLIO is a fantastic utility for testing the abilities of the disks in your system. It has a very unfortunate name though, since it's not really a SQL Server testing utility at all. It really is a disk utility. They ought to call it DiskIO because they'd get more people using I think. Anyway, branding is not the point of this blog post. Writes are the point of this blog post. SQLIO works by slamming your disk. It performs as mean reads as it can or it performs as many writes as it can depending on how you've configured your tests. There are much smarter people than me who will get into all the various types of tests you should run. I'd suggest reading a bit of what Jonathan Kehayias (blog|twitter) has to say or wade into Denny Cherry's (blog|twitter) work. They're going to do a better job than I can describing all the benefits and mechanisms around using this excellent piece of software. My concerns are very focused. I needed to set up a series of tests to see how well our product SQL Storage Compress worked. I wanted to know the effects it would have on a system, the disk for sure, but also memory and CPU. How to stress the system? SQLIO of course. But when I set it up and ran it, following the documentation that comes with it, I was seeing better than 99% compression on the files. Don't get me wrong. Our product is magnificent, wonderful, all things great and beautiful, gets you coffee in the morning and is made mostly from bacon. But 99% compression. No, it's not that good. So what's up? Well, it's the configuration. The default mechanism is to load up a file, something large that will overwhelm your disk cache. You're instructed to load the file with a character 0x0. I never got a computer science degree. I went to film school. Because of this, I didn't memorize ASCII tables so when I saw this, I thought it was zero's or something. Nope. It's NULL. That's right, you're making a very large file, but you're filling it with NULL values. That's actually ok when all you're testing is the disk sub-system. But, when you want to test a compression and decompression, that can be an issue. I got around this fairly quickly. Instead of generating a file filled with NULL values, I just copied a database file for my tests. And to test it with SQL Storage Compress, I used a database file that had already been run through compression (about 40% compression on that file if you're interested). Now the reads were taken care of. I am seeing very realistic performance from decompressing the information for reads through SQLIO. But what about writes? Well, the issue is, what does SQLIO write? I don't have access to the code. But I do have access to the results. I did two different tests, just to be sure of what I was seeing. First test, use the .DAT file as described in the documentation. I opened the .DAT file after I was done with SQLIO, using WordPad. Guess what? It's a giant file full of air. SQLIO writes NULL values. What does that do to compression? I did the test again on a copy of an uncompressed database file. Then I ran the original and the SQLIO modified copy through ZIP to see what happened. I got better than 99% compression out of the SQLIO modified file (original file of 624,896kb went to 275,871kb compressed, after SQLIO it went to 608kb compressed). So, what does SQLIO write? It writes air. If you're trying to test it with compression or maybe some other type of file storage mechanism like dedupe, you need to know this because your tests really won't be valid. Should I find some other mechanism for testing? Yeah, if all I'm interested in is establishing performance to my own satisfaction, yes. But, I want to be able to compare my results with other people's results and we all need to be using the same tool in order for that to happen. SQLIO is the common mechanism that most people I know use to establish disk performance behavior. It'd be better if we could get SQLIO to do writes in some other fashion. Oh, and before I go, I get to brag a bit. Measuring IOPS, SQL Storage Compress outperforms my disk alone by about 30%.

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• Causes of sudden massive filesystem damage? ("root inode is not a directory")

  - by poolie

  I have a laptop running Maverick (very happily until yesterday), with a Patriot Torx SSD; LUKS encryption of the whole partition; one lvm physical volume on top of that; then home and root in ext4 logical volumes on top of that. When I tried to boot it yesterday, it complained that it couldn't mount the root filesystem. Running fsck, basically every inode seems to be wrong. Both home and root filesystems show similar problems. Checking a backup superblock doesn't help. e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) lithe_root was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. Resize inode not valid. Recreate? no Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Root inode is not a directory. Clear? no Root inode has dtime set (probably due to old mke2fs). Fix? no Inode 2 is in use, but has dtime set. Fix? no Inode 2 has a extra size (4730) which is invalid Fix? no Inode 2 has compression flag set on filesystem without compression support. Clear? no Inode 2 has INDEX_FL flag set but is not a directory. Clear HTree index? no HTREE directory inode 2 has an invalid root node. Clear HTree index? no Inode 2, i_size is 9581392125871137995, should be 0. Fix? no Inode 2, i_blocks is 40456527802719, should be 0. Fix? no Reserved inode 3 (<The ACL index inode>) has invalid mode. Clear? no Inode 3 has compression flag set on filesystem without compression support. Clear? no Inode 3 has INDEX_FL flag set but is not a directory. Clear HTree index? no .... Running strings across the filesystems, I can see there are what look like filenames and user data there. I do have sufficiently good backups (touch wood) that it's not worth grovelling around to pull back individual files, though I might save an image of the unencrypted disk before I rebuild, just in case. smartctl doesn't show any errors, neither does the kernel log. Running a write-mode badblocks across the swap lv doesn't find problems either. So the disk may be failing, but not in an obvious way. At this point I'm basically, as they say, fscked? Back to reinstalling, perhaps running badblocks over the disk, then restoring from backup? There doesn't even seem to be enough data to file a meaningful bug... I don't recall that this machine crashed last time I used it. At this point I suspect a bug or memory corruption caused it to write garbage across the disks when it was last running, or some kind of subtle failure mode for the SSD. What do you think would have caused this? Is there anything else you'd try?

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• Pre-rentrée Oracle Open World 2012 : à vos agendas

  - by Eric Bezille

  A maintenant moins d'un mois de l’événement majeur d'Oracle, qui se tient comme chaque année à San Francisco, fin septembre, début octobre, les spéculations vont bon train sur les annonces qui vont y être dévoilées... Et sans lever le voile, je vous engage à prendre connaissance des sujets des "Key Notes" qui seront tenues par Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian (responsable des développements logiciels) et John Fowler (responsable des développements systèmes) afin de vous donner un avant goût. Stratégie et Roadmaps Oracle Bien entendu, au-delà des séances plénières qui vous donnerons  une vision précise de la stratégie, et pour ceux qui seront sur place, je vous engage à ne pas manquer les séances d'approfondissement qui auront lieu dans la semaine, dont voici quelques morceaux choisis : "Accelerate your Business with the Oracle Hardware Advantage" avec John Fowler, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Why Oracle Softwares Runs Best on Oracle Hardware" , avec Bradley Carlile, le responsable des Benchmarks, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-13:15pm "Engineered Systems - from Vision to Game-changing Results", avec Robert Shimp, le lundi 1er Octobre 1:45pm-2:45pm "Database and Application Consolidation on SPARC Supercluster", avec Hugo Rivero, responsable dans les équipes d'intégration matériels et logiciels, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle’s SPARC Server Strategy Update", avec Masood Heydari, responsable des développements serveurs SPARC, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Solaris 11 Strategy, Engineering Insights, and Roadmap", avec Markus Flier, responsable des développements Solaris, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap", avec Wim Coekaerts, responsable des développement Oracle VM et Oracle Linux, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Big Data: The Big Story", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks, responsable du développement produits Big Data, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Scaling with the Cloud: Strategies for Storage in Cloud Deployments", avec Christine Rogers,  Principal Product Manager, et Chris Wood, Senior Product Specialist, Stockage , le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am Retours d'expériences et témoignages Si Oracle Open World est l'occasion de partager avec les équipes de développement d'Oracle en direct, c'est aussi l'occasion d'échanger avec des clients et experts qui ont mis en oeuvre  nos technologies pour bénéficier de leurs retours d'expériences, comme par exemple : "Oracle Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM at ACCOR", avec les témoignages d'Eric Wyttynck, directeur IT Multichannel & CRM  et Pascal Massenet, VP Loyalty & CRM systems, sur les bénéfices non seulement métiers, mais également projet et IT, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Tips from AT&T: Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, and SPARC Enterprise", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Creating a Maximum Availability Architecture with SPARC SuperCluster", avec le témoignage de Carte Wright, Database Engineer à CKI, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Multitenancy: Everybody Talks It, Oracle Walks It with Pillar Axiom Storage", avec le témoignage de Stephen Schleiger, Manager Systems Engineering de Navis, le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Oracle Exadata for Database Consolidation: Best Practices", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle ayant participé à la mise en oeuvre d'un grand client du monde bancaire, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle Exadata Customer Panel: Packaged Applications with Oracle Exadata", animé par Tim Shetler, VP Product Management, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Big Data: Improving Nearline Data Throughput with the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System", avec le témoignage du CTO de CSC, Alan Powers, le jeudi 4 Octobre, 12:45pm-1:45pm "Building an IaaS Platform with SPARC, Oracle Solaris 11, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC", avec le témoignage de Syed Qadri, Lead DBA et Michael Arnold, System Architect d'US Cellular, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Transform Data Center TCO with Oracle Optimized Servers: A Customer Panel", avec les témoignages notamment d'AT&T et Liberty Global, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Data Warehouse and Big Data Customers’ View of the Future", avec The Nielsen Company US, Turkcell, GE Retail Finance, Allianz Managed Operations and Services SE, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Extreme Storage Scale and Efficiency: Lessons from a 100,000-Person Organization", le témoignage de l'IT interne d'Oracle sur la transformation et la migration de l'ensemble de notre infrastructure de stockage, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm Echanges avec les groupes d'utilisateurs et les équipes de développement Oracle Si vous avez prévu d'arriver suffisamment tôt, vous pourrez également échanger dès le dimanche avec les groupes d'utilisateurs, ou tous les soirs avec les équipes de développement Oracle sur des sujets comme : "To Exalogic or Not to Exalogic: An Architectural Journey", avec Todd Sheetz - Manager of DBA and Enterprise Architecture, Veolia Environmental Services, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 2:30pm-3:30pm "Oracle Exalytics and Oracle TimesTen for Exalytics Best Practices", avec Mark Rittman, de Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 10:30am-11:30am "Introduction of Oracle Exadata at Telenet: Bringing BI to Warp Speed", avec Rudy Verlinden & Eric Bartholomeus - Managers IT infrastructure à Telenet, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 1:15pm-2:00pm "The Perfect Marriage: Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with Oracle Exadata", avec Melanie Polston, directeur, Data Management, de Novation et Charles Kim, Managing Director de Viscosity, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 9:00am-10am "Oracle’s Big Data Solutions: NoSQL, Connectors, R, and Appliance Technologies", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks et les équipes de développement Oracle, le lundi 1er Octobre, 6:15pm-7:00pm Testez et évaluez les solutions Et pour finir, vous pouvez même tester les technologies au travers du Oracle DemoGrounds, (1133 Moscone South pour la partie Systèmes Oracle, OS, et Virtualisation) et des "Hands-on-Labs", comme : "Deploying an IaaS Environment with Oracle VM", le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Virtualize and Deploy Oracle Applications in Minutes with Oracle VM: Hands-on Lab", le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm (il est fortement conseillé d'avoir suivi le "Hands-on-Labs" précédent avant d'effectuer ce Lab. "x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "StorageTek Tape Analytics: Managing Tape Has Never Been So Simple", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System: Power and Ease", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for SPARC with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c", le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Managing Storage in the Cloud", le mardi 2 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "Learn How to Write MapReduce on Oracle’s Big Data Platform", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Oracle Big Data Analytics and R", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Reduce Risk with Oracle Solaris Access Control to Restrain Users and Isolate Applications", le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am "Managing Your Data with Built-In Oracle Solaris ZFS Data Services in Release 11", le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Virtualizing Your Oracle Solaris 11 Environment", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Large-Scale Installation and Deployment of Oracle Solaris 11", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 3:30pm-4:30pm En conclusion, une semaine très riche en perspective, et qui vous permettra de balayer l'ensemble des sujets au coeur de vos préoccupations, de la stratégie à l'implémentation... Cette semaine doit se préparer, pour tailler votre agenda sur mesure, à travers les plus de 2000 sessions dont je ne vous ai fait qu'un extrait, et dont vous pouvez retrouver l'ensemble en ligne.

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• Service Broker, not ETL

  - by jamiet

  I have been very quiet on this blog of late and one reason for that is I have been very busy on a client project that I would like to talk about a little here. The client that I have been working for has a website that runs on a distributed architecture utilising a messaging infrastructure for communication between different endpoints. My brief was to build a system that could consume these messages and produce analytical information in near-real-time. More specifically I basically had to deliver a data warehouse however it was the real-time aspect of the project that really intrigued me. This real-time requirement meant that using an Extract transformation, Load (ETL) tool was out of the question and so I had no choice but to write T-SQL code (i.e. stored-procedures) to process the incoming messages and load the data into the data warehouse. This concerned me though – I had no way to control the rate at which data would arrive into the system yet we were going to have end-users querying the system at the same time that those messages were arriving; the potential for contention in such a scenario was pretty high and and was something I wanted to minimise as much as possible. Moreover I did not want the processing of data inside the data warehouse to have any impact on the customer-facing website. As you have probably guessed from the title of this blog post this is where Service Broker stepped in! For those that have not heard of it Service Broker is a queuing technology that has been built into SQL Server since SQL Server 2005. It provides a number of features however the one that was of interest to me was the fact that it facilitates asynchronous data processing which, in layman’s terms, means the ability to process some data without requiring the system that supplied the data having to wait for the response. That was a crucial feature because on this project the customer-facing website (in effect an OLTP system) would be calling one of our stored procedures with each message – we did not want to cause the OLTP system to wait on us every time we processed one of those messages. This asynchronous nature also helps to alleviate the contention problem because the asynchronous processing activity is handled just like any other task in the database engine and hence can wait on another task (such as an end-user query). Service Broker it was then! The stored procedure called by the OLTP system would simply put the message onto a queue and we would use a feature called activation to pick each message off the queue in turn and process it into the warehouse. At the time of writing the system is not yet up to full capacity but so far everything seems to be working OK (touch wood) and crucially our users are seeing data in near-real-time. By near-real-time I am talking about latencies of a few minutes at most and to someone like me who is used to building systems that have overnight latencies that is a huge step forward! So then, am I advocating that you all go out and dump your ETL tools? Of course not, no! What this project has taught me though is that in certain scenarios there may be better ways to implement a data warehouse system then the traditional “load data in overnight” approach that we are all used to. Moreover I have really enjoyed getting to grips with a new technology and even if you don’t want to use Service Broker you might want to consider asynchronous messaging architectures for your BI/data warehousing solutions in the future. This has been a very high level overview of my use of Service Broker and I have deliberately left out much of the minutiae of what has been a very challenging implementation. Nonetheless I hope I have caused you to reflect upon your own approaches to BI and question whether other approaches may be more tenable. All comments and questions gratefully received! Lastly, if you have never used Service Broker before and want to kick the tyres I have provided below a very simple “Service Broker Hello World” script that will create all of the objects required to facilitate Service Broker communications and then send the message “Hello World” from one place to anther! This doesn’t represent a “proper” implementation per se because it doesn’t close down down conversation objects (which you should always do in a real-world scenario) but its enough to demonstrate the capabilities! @Jamiet ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /*This is a basic Service Broker Hello World app. Have fun! -Jamie */ USE MASTER GO CREATE DATABASE SBTest GO --Turn Service Broker on! ALTER DATABASE SBTest SET ENABLE_BROKER GO USE SBTest GO -- 1) we need to create a message type. Note that our message type is -- very simple and allowed any type of content CREATE MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage VALIDATION = NONE GO -- 2) Once the message type has been created, we need to create a contract -- that specifies who can send what types of messages CREATE CONTRACT HelloContract (HelloMessage SENT BY INITIATOR) GO --We can query the metadata of the objects we just created SELECT * FROM   sys.service_message_types WHERE name = 'HelloMessage'; SELECT * FROM   sys.service_contracts WHERE name = 'HelloContract'; SELECT * FROM   sys.service_contract_message_usages WHERE  service_contract_id IN (SELECT service_contract_id FROM sys.service_contracts WHERE name = 'HelloContract') AND        message_type_id IN (SELECT message_type_id FROM sys.service_message_types WHERE name = 'HelloMessage'); -- 3) The communication is between two endpoints. Thus, we need two queues to -- hold messages CREATE QUEUE SenderQueue CREATE QUEUE ReceiverQueue GO --more querying metatda SELECT * FROM sys.service_queues WHERE name IN ('SenderQueue','ReceiverQueue'); --we can also select from the queues as if they were tables SELECT * FROM SenderQueue   SELECT * FROM ReceiverQueue   -- 4) Create the required services and bind them to be above created queues CREATE SERVICE Sender   ON QUEUE SenderQueue CREATE SERVICE Receiver   ON QUEUE ReceiverQueue (HelloContract) GO --more querying metadata SELECT * FROM sys.services WHERE name IN ('Receiver','Sender'); -- 5) At this point, we can begin the conversation between the two services by -- sending messages DECLARE @conversationHandle UNIQUEIDENTIFIER DECLARE @message NVARCHAR(100) BEGIN   BEGIN TRANSACTION;   BEGIN DIALOG @conversationHandle         FROM SERVICE Sender         TO SERVICE 'Receiver'         ON CONTRACT HelloContract WITH ENCRYPTION=OFF   -- Send a message on the conversation   SET @message = N'Hello, World';   SEND  ON CONVERSATION @conversationHandle         MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage (@message)   COMMIT TRANSACTION END GO --check contents of queues SELECT * FROM SenderQueue   SELECT * FROM ReceiverQueue   GO -- Receive a message from the queue RECEIVE CONVERT(NVARCHAR(MAX), message_body) AS MESSAGE FROM ReceiverQueue GO --If no messages were received and/or you can't see anything on the queues you may wish to check the following for clues: SELECT * FROM sys.transmission_queue -- Cleanup DROP SERVICE Sender DROP SERVICE Receiver DROP QUEUE SenderQueue DROP QUEUE ReceiverQueue DROP CONTRACT HelloContract DROP MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage GO USE MASTER GO DROP DATABASE SBTest GO

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• April Oracle Database Events

  - by Mandy Ho

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} April 17-18, 2012 – Moscow, Russia Oracle Develop Conference The Oracle database developer conference, Oracle Develop, will visit Moscow, Russia and Hyderabad, India this spring. Oracle Develop includes a database development track, which contains .NET sessions and hands-on lab led by an Oracle .NET product manager. Register today before the event fills up. http://www.oracle.com/javaone/ru-en/index.html Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} April 24, 26 – San Diego, CA & San Jose, CA ISC2 Leadership Regional Event Series Oracle at (ISC)2 Security Leadership Series: Herding Clouds -- Managing Cloud Security Concerns and Expectations Join us for his interactive day-long session where industry leaders, including Oracle solution experts, will talk about how to: dispel the top Cloud security myths minimize "rogue Cloud" implementations identify potential compliance pitfalls and how to avoid them develop contract language for your cloud providers manage users across your fractured datacenter leverage existing technologies to protect data as it moves from the enterprise to the cloud http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=146972&src=7239493&src=7239493&Act=228 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} April 22-26, 2012 – Las Vegas, NV IOUG Collaborate 12 From April 22-26, 2012, Oracle takes Las Vegas. Thousands of Oracle professionals will descend upon the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for a weeks worth of education sessions, networking opportunities and more, at the only user-driven and user-run Oracle conference - COLLABORATE 12.  Your COLLABORATE 12 - IOUG Forum registration comes complete with a bonus- a full day Deep Dive education program on Sunday! Choose from numerous hot topics, including Real World Performance, High Availability and more, presented by legendary and seasoned Oracle pros, including Tom Kyte and Craig Shallahamer. http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=143637&src=7360364&src=7360364&Act=5 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) Regional Events: April 16, 2012 – Columbus, Ohio Ohio Oracle Users Group Higher Performance PL/PQL and Oracle Database 11g PL/SQL New Features – Featuring Steven Feuerstein http://www.ooug.org/ Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} April 26, 2012- Irving, TX Dallas Oracle Users Group Oracle Database Forum: 5-7PM Oracle Corporation, 6031 Connection Drive Irving, TX http://memberservices.membee.com/538/irmevents.aspx?id=64 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Apr 30, 2012- Los Angeles, CA Real World Performance Tour A full day of real world database performance with: Tom Kyte, author of the ever popular AskTom Blog, Andrew Holdsworth, head of Oracle's Real World Performance Team, and Graham Wood, renowned Oracle Database performance architect. Through discussion, debate and demos, they’ll show you how to master performance engineering topics like: Best practices for designing hardware architectures and how to spot and fix bad design. How to develop applications that deliver the fastest possible performance without sacrificing accuracy.  New for 2012! Updates on Enterprise Manager, Exadata, and what these technologies mean to your current systems. http://www.ioug.org/Events/ADayofRealWorldPerformance/tabid/194/Default.aspx

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• How to create a virtual network with Azure Connect

  - by Herve Roggero

  If you are trying to establish a virtual network between machines located in disparate networks, you can either use VPN, Virtual Network or Azure Connect. If you want to establish a connection between machines located in Windows Azure, you should consider using the Virtual Network service. If you want to establish a connection between local machines and Virtual Machines in Windows Azure, you may be able to use your existing VPN device (assuming you have one), as long as the device is supported by Microsoft. If the VPN device you are using isn’t supported, or if you are trying to create a virtual network between machines from disparate networks (such as machines located in another cloud provider), you can use Azure Connect. This blog post explains how Azure Connect can help you create virtual networks between multiple servers in the cloud, various servers in different cloud environments, and on-premise. Note: Azure Connect is currently in Technical Preview. About Azure Connect Let’s do a quick review of Azure Connect. This technology implements an IPSec tunnel from machines to to a relay service located in the Microsoft cloud (Azure). So in essence, Azure Connect doesn’t provide a point-to-point connection between machines; the network communication is tunneled through the relay service. The relay service in turn offers a mechanism to enforce basic communication rules that you define through Groups. We will review this later. You could network two or more VMs in the Azure cloud (although you should consider using a Virtual Network if you go this route), or servers in the Azure cloud and other machines in the Amazon cloud for example, or even two or more on-premise servers located in different locations for which a direct network connection is not an option. You can place any number of machines in your topology. Azure Connect gives you great flexibility on how you want to build your virtual network across various environments. So Azure Connect makes sense when you want to: Connect machines located in different cloud providers Connect on-premise machines running in different locations Connect Azure VMs with on-premise (if you do not have a VPN device, or if your device is not supported) Connect Azure Roles (Worker Roles, Web Roles) with on-premise servers or in other cloud providers The diagram below shows you a high level network topology that involves machines in the Windows Azure cloud, other cloud providers and on-premise. You should note that the only required component in this diagram is the Relay itself. The other machines are optional (although your network is useful only if you have two or more machines involved). Relay agents are currently available in three geographic areas: US, Europe and Asia. You can change which region you want to use in the Windows Azure management portal. High Level Network Topology With Azure Connect Azure Connect Agent Azure Connect establishes a virtual network and creates virtual adapters on your machines; these virtual adapters communicate through the Relay using IPSec. This is achieved by installing an agent (the Azure Connect Agent) on all the machines you want in your network topology. However, you do not need to install the agent on Worker Roles and Web Roles; that’s because the agent is already installed for you. Any other machine, including Virtual Machines in Windows Azure, needs the agent installed.  To install the agent, simply go to your Windows Azure portal (http://windows.azure.com) and click on Networks on the bottom left panel. You will see a list of subscriptions under Connect. If you select a subscription, you will be able to click on the Install Local Endpoint icon on top. Clicking on this icon will begin the download and installation process for the agent. Activating Roles for Azure Connect As previously mentioned, you do not need to install the Azure Connect Agent on Worker Roles and Web Roles because it is already loaded. However, you do need to activate them if you want the roles to participate in your network topology. To do this, you will need to click on the Get Activation Token icon. The activation token must then be copied and placed in the configuration file of your roles. For more information on how to perform this step, visit MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg432964.aspx. Firewall Rules Note that specific firewall rules must exist to allow the agent to communicate through the Relay. You will need to allow TCP 443 and ICMPv6. For additional information, please visit MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg433061.aspx. CA Certificates You can optionally require agents to sign their activation request with the Relay using a trusted certificate issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). Click on Activation Options to learn more. Groups To create your network topology you must first create a group. A group represents a logical container of endpoints (or machines) that can communicate through the Relay. You can create multiple groups allowing you to manage network communication differently. For example you could create a DEVELOPMENT group and a PRODUCTION group. To add an endpoint you must first install an agent that will create a virtual adapter on the machine on which it is installed (as discussed in the previous section). Once you have created a group and installed the agents, the machines will appear in the Windows Azure management portal and you can start assigning machines to groups. The next figure shows you that I created a group called LocalGroup and assigned two machines (both on-premise) to that group. Groups and Computers in Azure Connect As I mentioned previously you can allow these machines to establish a network connection. To do this, you must enable the Interconnected option in the group. The following diagram shows you the definition of the group. In this topology I chose to include local machines only, but I could also add worker roles and web roles in the Azure Roles section (you must first activate your roles, as discussed previously). You could also add other Groups, allowing you to manage inter-group communication. Defining a Group in Azure Connect Testing the Connection Now that my agents have been installed on my two machines, the group defined and the Interconnected option checked, I can test the connection between my machines. The next screenshot shows you that I sent a PING request to DEVLAP02 from DEVDSK02. The PING request was successful. Note however that the time is in the hundreds of milliseconds on average. That is to be expected because the machines are connecting through the Relay located in the cloud. Going through the Relay introduces an extra hop in the communication chain, so if your systems rely on high performance, you may want to conduct some basic performance tests. Sending a PING Request Through The Relay Conclusion As you can see, creating a network topology between machines using the Azure Connect service is simple. It took me less than five minutes to create the above configuration, including the time it took to install the Azure Connect agents on the two machines. The flexibility of Azure Connect allows you to create a virtual network between disparate environments, as long as your operating systems are supported by the agent. For more information on Azure Connect, visit the MSDN website at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg432997.aspx. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting, a company specialized in cloud computing products and services. Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" from Apress and runs the Azure Florida Association (on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4177626). For more information on Blue Syntax Consulting, visit www.bluesyntax.net. Special Thanks I would like thank those that helped me figure out how Azure Connect works: Marcel Meijer - http://blogs.msmvps.com/marcelmeijer/ Michael Wood - Http://www.mvwood.com Glenn Block - http://www.codebetter.com/glennblock Yves Goeleven - http://cloudshaper.wordpress.com/ Sandrino Di Mattia - http://fabriccontroller.net/ Mike Martin - http://techmike2kx.wordpress.com

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• I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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• Which functions in the C standard library commonly encourage bad practice?

  - by Ninefingers

  Hello all, This is inspired by this question and the comments on one particular answer in that I learnt that strncpy is not a very safe string handling function in C and that it pads zeros, until it reaches n, something I was unaware of. Specifically, to quote R.. strncpy does not null-terminate, and does null-pad the whole remainder of the destination buffer, which is a huge waste of time. You can work around the former by adding your own null padding, but not the latter. It was never intended for use as a "safe string handling" function, but for working with fixed-size fields in Unix directory tables and database files. snprintf(dest, n, "%s", src) is the only correct "safe strcpy" in standard C, but it's likely to be a lot slower. By the way, truncation in itself can be a major bug and in some cases might lead to privilege elevation or DoS, so throwing "safe" string functions that truncate their output at a problem is not a way to make it "safe" or "secure". Instead, you should ensure that the destination buffer is the right size and simply use strcpy (or better yet, memcpy if you already know the source string length). And from Jonathan Leffler Note that strncat() is even more confusing in its interface than strncpy() - what exactly is that length argument, again? It isn't what you'd expect based on what you supply strncpy() etc - so it is more error prone even than strncpy(). For copying strings around, I'm increasingly of the opinion that there is a strong argument that you only need memmove() because you always know all the sizes ahead of time and make sure there's enough space ahead of time. Use memmove() in preference to any of strcpy(), strcat(), strncpy(), strncat(), memcpy(). So, I'm clearly a little rusty on the C standard library. Therefore, I'd like to pose the question: What C standard library functions are used inappropriately/in ways that may cause/lead to security problems/code defects/inefficiencies? In the interests of objectivity, I have a number of criteria for an answer: Please, if you can, cite design reasons behind the function in question i.e. its intended purpose. Please highlight the misuse to which the code is currently put. Please state why that misuse may lead towards a problem. I know that should be obvious but it prevents soft answers. Please avoid: Debates over naming conventions of functions (except where this unequivocably causes confusion). "I prefer x over y" - preference is ok, we all have them but I'm interested in actual unexpected side effects and how to guard against them. As this is likely to be considered subjective and has no definite answer I'm flagging for community wiki straight away. I am also working as per C99.

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• how to use SQL wildcard % with Queryset extra>select?

  - by tylias

  I'm trying to add weights to search terms I'm using to filter a queryset. Using the '%' wildcard is causing me some problems. I'm using the extra() modifier to add a weight parameter to the queryset, which I will be using to inform a sort ordering. (See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.1/ref/models/querysets/#extra-select-none-where-none-params-none-tables-none-order-by-none-select-params-none ) Here's the gist of the code: def viewname(request) ... exact_matchstrings="" exact_matchstrings.append("(accountprofile.first_name LIKE '" + term + "')") exact_matchstrings.append("(accountprofile.first_name LIKE '" + term + '\%' + "')") extraquerystring = " + ".join(exact_matchstrings) return_queryset = return_queryset.extra( select = { 'match_weight': extraquerystring }, ) The effect I'm going for is that if the search term matches exactly, the weight associated with the record is 2, but if the term merely starts with the search term and isn't an exact match, the weight is 1. (for example, if 'term' = 'Jon', an entry with first_name='Jon' gets a weight of 2 but an entry with an entry with first_name = 'Jonathan' gets a weight of 1.) I can test the statement in SQL and it seems to work well enough. If I make this SQL query from the mysql shell, no problem: select (first_name like "Carl") + (first_name like "Car%") from accountprofile; But trying to run it via the extra() modifier in my view code and evaluating the resulting queryset gives me the following error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<console>", line 1, in <module> File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 68, in __repr__ data = list(self[:REPR_OUTPUT_SIZE + 1]) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 83, in __len__ self._result_cache.extend(list(self._iter)) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 238, in iterator for row in self.query.results_iter(): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/sql/query.py", line 287, in results_iter for rows in self.execute_sql(MULTI): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/sql/query.py", line 2369, in execute_sql cursor.execute(sql, params) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/backends/util.py", line 22, in execute sql = self.db.ops.last_executed_query(self.cursor, sql, params) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/backends/__init__.py", line 217, in last_executed_query return smart_unicode(sql) % u_params ValueError: unsupported format character ''' (0x27) at index 309 I've tried it escaping and not escaping % wildcard but that doesn't solve the problem. Doesn't seem to affect it at all, really. Any ideas?

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• Installing my sdist from PyPI puts the files in the wrong places

  - by Tartley

  Hey. My problem is that when I upload my Python package to PyPI, and then install it from there using pip, my app breaks because it installs my files into completely different locations than when I simply install the exact same package from a local sdist. Installing from the local sdist puts files on my system like this: /Python27/ Lib/ site-packages/ gloopy-0.1.alpha-py2.7.egg/ (egg and install info files) data/ (images and shader source) doc/ (html) examples/ (.py scripts that use the library) gloopy/ (source) This is much as I'd expect, and works fine (e.g. my source can find my data dir, because they lie next to each other, just like they do in development.) If I upload the same sdist to PyPI and then install it from there, using pip, then things look very different: /Python27/ data/ (images and shader source) doc/ (html) Lib/ site-packages/ gloopy-0.1.alpha-py2.7.egg/ (egg and install info files) gloopy/ (source files) examples/ (.py scripts that use the library) This doesn't work at all - my app can't find its data files, plus obviously it's a mess, polluting the top-level /python27 directory with all my junk. What am I doing wrong? How do I make the pip install behave like the local sdist install? Is that even what I should be trying to achieve? Details I have setuptools installed, and also distribute, and I'm calling distribute_setup.use_setuptools() WindowsXP, Python2.7. My development directory looks like this: /gloopy /data (image files and GLSL shader souce read at runtime) /doc (html files) /examples (some scripts to show off the library) /gloopy (the library itself) My MANIFEST.in mentions all the files I want to be included in the sdist, including everything in the data, examples and doc directories: recursive-include data *.* recursive-include examples *.py recursive-include doc/html *.html *.css *.js *.png include LICENSE.txt include TODO.txt My setup.py is quite verbose, but I guess the best thing is to include it here, right? I also includes duplicate references to the same data / doc / examples directories as are mentioned in the MANIFEST.in, because I understand this is required in order for these files to be copied from the sdist to the system during install. NAME = 'gloopy' VERSION= __import__(NAME).VERSION RELEASE = __import__(NAME).RELEASE SCRIPT = None CONSOLE = False def main(): import sys from pprint import pprint from setup_utils import distribute_setup from setup_utils.sdist_setup import get_sdist_config distribute_setup.use_setuptools() from setuptools import setup description, long_description = read_description() config = dict( name=name, version=version, description=description, long_description=long_description, keywords='', packages=find_packages(), data_files=[ ('examples', glob('examples/*.py')), ('data/shaders', glob('data/shaders/*.*')), ('doc', glob('doc/html/*.*')), ('doc/_images', glob('doc/html/_images/*.*')), ('doc/_modules', glob('doc/html/_modules/*.*')), ('doc/_modules/gloopy', glob('doc/html/_modules/gloopy/*.*')), ('doc/_modules/gloopy/geom', glob('doc/html/_modules/gloopy/geom/*.*')), ('doc/_modules/gloopy/move', glob('doc/html/_modules/gloopy/move/*.*')), ('doc/_modules/gloopy/shapes', glob('doc/html/_modules/gloopy/shapes/*.*')), ('doc/_modules/gloopy/util', glob('doc/html/_modules/gloopy/util/*.*')), ('doc/_modules/gloopy/view', glob('doc/html/_modules/gloopy/view/*.*')), ('doc/_static', glob('doc/html/_static/*.*')), ('doc/_api', glob('doc/html/_api/*.*')), ], classifiers=[ 'Development Status :: 1 - Planning', 'Intended Audience :: Developers', 'License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License', 'Operating System :: Microsoft :: Windows', 'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7', ], # see classifiers http://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=list_classifiers ) config.update(dict( author='Jonathan Hartley', author_email='[email protected]', url='http://bitbucket.org/tartley/gloopy', license='New BSD', ) ) if '--verbose' in sys.argv: pprint(config) setup(**config) if __name__ == '__main__': main()

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• Efficient list compacting

  - by Patrik

  Suppose you have a list of unsigned ints. Suppose some elements are equal to 0 and you want to push them back. Currently I use this code (list is a pointer to a list of unsigned ints of size n for (i = 0; i < n; ++i) { if (list[i]) continue; int j; for (j = i + 1; j < n && !list[j]; ++j); int z; for (z = j + 1; z < n && list[z]; ++z); if (j == n) break; memmove(&(list[i]), &(list[j]), sizeof(unsigned int) * (z - j))); int s = z - j + i; for(j = s; j < z; ++j) list[j] = 0; i = s - 1; } Can you think of a more efficient way to perform this task? The snippet is purely theoretical, in the production code, each element of list is a 64 bytes struct EDIT: I'll post my solution. Many thanks to Jonathan Leffler. void RemoveDeadParticles(int * list, int * n) { int i, j = *n - 1; for (; j >= 0 && list[j] == 0; --j); for (i = 0; i < j; ++i) { if (list[i]) continue; memcpy(&(list[i]), &(list[j]), sizeof(int)); list[j] = 0; for (; j >= 0 && list[j] == 0; --j); if (i == j) break; } *n = i + 1; }

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• Setup routing and iptables for new VPN connection to redirect **only** ports 80 and 443

  - by Steve

  I have a new VPN connection (using openvpn) to allow me to route around some ISP restrictions. Whilst it is working fine, it is taking all the traffic over the vpn. This is causing me issues for downloading (my internet connection is a lot faster than the vpn allows), and for remote access. I run an ssh server, and have a daemon running that allows me to schdule downloads via my phone. I have my existing ethernet connection on eth0, and the new VPN connection on tun0. I believe I need to setup the default route to use my existing eth0 connection on the 192.168.0.0/24 network, and set the default gateway to 192.168.0.1 (my knowledge is shaky as I haven't done this for a number of years). If that is correct, then I'm not exactly sure how to do it!. My current routing table is: Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface MSS Window irtt 0.0.0.0 10.51.0.169 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 tun0 0 0 0 10.51.0.1 10.51.0.169 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 tun0 0 0 0 10.51.0.169 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 tun0 0 0 0 85.25.147.49 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 eth0 0 0 0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0 0 0 0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 0 0 0 After fixing the routing, I believe I need to use iptables to configure prerouting or masquerading to force everything for destination port 80 or 443 over tun0. Again, I'm not exactly sure how to do this! Everything I've found on the internet is trying to do something far more complicated, and trying to sort the wood from the trees is proving difficult. Any help would be much appreciated. UPDATE So far, from the various sources, I've cobbled together the following: #!/bin/sh DEV1=eth0 IP1=`ifconfig|perl -nE'/dr:(\S+)/&&say$1'|grep 192.` GW1=192.168.0.1 TABLE1=internet TABLE2=vpn DEV2=tun0 IP2=`ifconfig|perl -nE'/dr:(\S+)/&&say$1'|grep 10.` GW2=`route -n | grep 'UG[ \t]' | awk '{print $2}'` ip route flush table $TABLE1 ip route flush table $TABLE2 ip route show table main | grep -Ev ^default | while read ROUTE ; do ip route add table $TABLE1 $ROUTE ip route add table $TABLE2 $ROUTE done ip route add table $TABLE1 $GW1 dev $DEV1 src $IP1 ip route add table $TABLE2 $GW2 dev $DEV2 src $IP2 ip route add table $TABLE1 default via $GW1 ip route add table $TABLE2 default via $GW2 echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr ip rule add from $IP1 lookup $TABLE1 ip rule add from $IP2 lookup $TABLE2 ip rule add fwmark 1 lookup $TABLE1 ip rule add fwmark 2 lookup $TABLE2 iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV1 -j SNAT --to-source $IP1 iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV2 -j SNAT --to-source $IP2 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j CONNMARK --restore-mark iptables -A OUTPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j CONNMARK --restore-mark iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $DEV1 -m state --state NEW -j CONNMARK --set-mark 1 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $DEV2 -m state --state NEW -j CONNMARK --set-mark 2 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m connmark --mark 1 -j MARK --set-mark 1 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m connmark --mark 2 -j MARK --set-mark 2 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m state --state NEW -m connmark ! --mark 0 -j CONNMARK --save-mark iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i $DEV2 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j CONNMARK --set-mark 2 iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i $DEV2 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j CONNMARK --set-mark 2 route del default route add default gw 192.168.0.1 eth0 Now this seems to be working. Except it isn't! Connections to the blocked websites are going through, connections not on ports 80 and 443 are using the non-VPN connection. However port 80 and 443 connections that aren't to the blocked websites are using the non-VPN connection too! As the general goal has been reached, I'm relatively happy, but it would be nice to know why it isn't working exactly right. Any ideas? For reference, I now have 3 routing tables, main, internet, and vpn. The listing of them is as follows... Main: default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 10.38.0.1 via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.38.0.206 85.removed via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.73 metric 1 Internet: default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 10.38.0.1 via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.38.0.206 85.removed via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.73 metric 1 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 scope link src 192.168.0.73 VPN: default via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.1 via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.38.0.206 85.removed via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.73 metric 1

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• .htaccess file size causes 500 Internal Server Error

  - by moobot

  As soon as my .htaccess goes over approx 8410 bytes, I get a 500 Internal Server Error. I don't think this is due to a bad redirect, as I have experimented with redirects in the .htaccess and then with just text that is commented out #. (no actual commands in the .htaccess file) Is there anything obvious that can cause this? Update: The site is on WordPress. Here are the redirects I was originally trying to add: RewriteEngine On ## 301 Redirects of old URLs to new # 301 Redirect 1 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^accesseries/underlay/prod_37\.html$ /product-category/accessories/underlays? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 2 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^accessories/acoustic-underlay/prod_29\.html$ /product/acoustic-underlay/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 3 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^accessories/cat_4\.html$ /product-category/accessories/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 4 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-flooring/accessories/cat_8\.html$ /product-category/accessories/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 5 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-flooring/bamboo-floor/natural-strandwoven-bamboo-semi-gloss-wide-board-135mm-click/prod_151\.html$ /product/natural-strand-woven-bamboo-semi-gloss-wide-board-135mm-click/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 6 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-flooring/bamboo-floor/strandwoven-chocolate-135mm-bamboo-flooring/prod_174\.html$ /product/strand-woven-chocolate-135mm-bamboo-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 7 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-flooring/bamboo-floor/strand-woven-kempas-bamboo-flooring/prod_173\.html$ /product/strand-woven-kempas-bamboo-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 8 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-flooring/bamboo-floor/strandwoven-walnut-wired-135mm-bamboo-flooring/prod_176\.html$ /product/strand-woven-walnut-wired-135mm-bamboo-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 9 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-flooring/cat_7\.html$ /product-category/bamboo-floor/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 10 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-bamboo-installation/info_8\.html$ /bamboo-installation/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 11 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=cart$ [NC] RewriteRule ^cart\.php$ /cart/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 12 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^contact-us/info_2\.html$ /contact-us/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 13 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^faqs/info_9\.html$ /faqs/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 14 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-floating-timber-floor/black-butt-engineered-floating-timber/prod_213\.html$ /product/black-butt-engineered-floating-timber/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 15 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-floating-timber-floor/doussie-engineered-floating-timber/prod_208\.html$ /product/doussie-engineered-floating-timber/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 16 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-floating-timber-floor/smoked-oak-engineered-floating-timber/prod_217\.html$ /product/smoked-oak-engineered-floating-timber/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 17 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=thanks$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 18 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=13$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/samples/bamboo-flooring-samples/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 19 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=18$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/bamboo-plastic-composite/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 20 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=2$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/bamboo-floor/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 21 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=20$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /products/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 22 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=3$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/floating-timber-floor/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 23 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=5$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/laminate-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 24 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=6$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/accessories/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 25 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewCat&catId=saleItems$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/clearance-sale/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 26 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewDoc&docId=3$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /faqs/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 27 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewDoc&docId=4$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /faqs/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 28 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=137$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/laminate-flooring-goustein-wood/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 29 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=164$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/modern-black-brushed-finish-strand-woven-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 30 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=165$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/lime-wash-strand-woven-bamboo-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 31 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=168$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/country-bark/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 32 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=173$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product-category/bamboo-floor/14mm-bamboo-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 33 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=178$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/blue-gum-136-floating-timber/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 34 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=199$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/jarrah-laminate-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 35 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=205$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/elm-12mm-laminate-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 36 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=209$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/iroko-engineered-floating-timber/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 37 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=222$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/european-oak-engineered-floating-timber-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 38 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=236$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/black-forest-5mm-vinyl-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 39 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=65$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/stair-nose/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 40 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^act=viewProd&productId=83$ [NC] RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /product/laminate-flooring-warm-teak/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 41 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-flooring/12mm-laminate-flooring/blackbutt/prod_156\.html$ /product/blackbutt-12mm-laminate-floor/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 42 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-flooring/12mm-laminate-flooring/tasmanian-oak/prod_171\.html$ /product/tasmanian-oak/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 43 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-flooring/8-3mm-laminate-flooring/laminate-flooring-warm-teak/prod_8\.html$ /product/laminate-flooring-warm-teak/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 44 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-flooring/accessories/cat_6\.html$ /product-category/accessories/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 45 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-flooring/cat_5\.html$ /product-category/laminate-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 46 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-flooring/country-classic-12mm-laminate/cat_19\.html$ /product-category/laminate-flooring/12mm-country-classic-laminate-floor/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 47 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-laminate-installation/info_7\.html$ /laminate-installation/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 48 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^privacy-policy/info_4\.html$ /faqs/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 49 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^-quotation-request/info_5\.html$ /quotation-request/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 50 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^rainbow-flooring/cat_16\.html$ /product-category/rainbow-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 51 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^rainbow-flooring/walnut-rainbow-flooring/prod_112\.html$ /product/walnut-rainbow-flooring/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 52 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/12mm-laminate-floor-samples/kempas-laminate-floor-sample/prod_195\.html$ /product/kempas-laminate-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 53 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/12mm-laminate-floor-samples/spotted-gum-laminate-floor-sample/prod_196\.html$ /product/spotted-gum-laminate-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 54 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/12mm-laminate-floor-samples/tasmanian-oak-laminate-floor-sample/prod_197\.html$ /product/tasmanian-oak-laminate-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 55 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/bamboo-flooring-samples/cat_13\.html$ /product-category/samples/bamboo-flooring-samples/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 56 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/bamboo-flooring-samples/rosewood-strandwoven-bamboo-floor-135mm-click-sample/prod_191\.html$ /product/rosewood-strand-woven-bamboo-floor-135mm-click-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 57 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/cat_9\.html$ /samples/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 58 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/floating-timber-floor-samples/iroko-engineered-floating-timber-floor-sample/prod_223\.html$ /product/iroko-engineered-floating-timber-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 59 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/floating-timber-floor-samples/jarrah-engineered-floating-timber-sample/prod_224\.html$ /product/jarrah-engineered-floating-timber-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 60 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/floating-timber-floor-samples/merbau-engineered-floating-timber-sample/prod_226\.html$ /product/merbau-engineered-floating-timber-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 61 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/floating-timber-floor-samples/spotted-gum-engineered-floating-timber-sample/prod_228\.html$ /product/spotted-gum-engineered-floating-timber-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 62 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^samples/floating-timber-floor-samples/sydney-blue-gum-engineered-floating-timber-sample/prod_220\.html$ /product/sydney-blue-gum-engineered-floating-timber-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 63 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^shop\.php/-laminate-flooring/accessories/laminate-flooring-accessories-click-stairnose/prod_251\.html$ /product/stair-nose/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 64 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^shop\.php/-laminate-flooring/country-classic-12mm-laminate/country-classic-polar-white/prod_243\.html$ /product/country-classic-polar-white/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 65 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^shop\.php/samples/12mm-laminate-floor-samples/country-classic-polar-white/prod_244\.html$ /product/country-classic-polar-white-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 66 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^shop\.php/samples/12mm-laminate-floor-samples/rustic-oak-12mm-laminate-floor/prod_248\.html$ /product/rustic-oak-12mm-laminate-floor-sample/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 67 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^shop\.php/samples/vinyl-flooring-samples/cat_25\.html$ /product-category/samples/vinyl-flooring-samples/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 68 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^shop\.php/vinyl-flooring/cat_24\.html$ /product-category/vinyl-floor/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 69 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^solardeck-tiles/cat_22\.html$ /product-category/solardeck-tiles/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 70 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^solardeck-tiles/solardeck-tiles/prod_206\.html$ /product/solardeck-tiles/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] # 301 Redirect 71 RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^terms-conditions/info_3\.html$ /faqs/? [R=301,NE,NC,L] I'm getting errors like this in my log: Invalid command 'aminate-flooring/tasmanian-oak/prod_171\\.html$', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration, referer: http://www.xxxxxxxx.com/laminate-installation/ Invalid command ',NE,NC,L]', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration Invalid command ',L]#', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

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• Listing common SQL Code Smells.

  - by Phil Factor

  Once you’ve done a number of SQL Code-reviews, you’ll know those signs in the code that all might not be well. These ’Code Smells’ are coding styles that don’t directly cause a bug, but are indicators that all is not well with the code. . Kent Beck and Massimo Arnoldi seem to have coined the phrase in the "OnceAndOnlyOnce" page of www.C2.com, where Kent also said that code "wants to be simple". Bad Smells in Code was an essay by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler, published as Chapter 3 of the book ‘Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code’ (ISBN 978-0201485677) Although there are generic code-smells, SQL has its own particular coding habits that will alert the programmer to the need to re-factor what has been written. See Exploring Smelly Code   and Code Deodorants for Code Smells by Nick Harrison for a grounding in Code Smells in C# I’ve always been tempted by the idea of automating a preliminary code-review for SQL. It would be so useful to trawl through code and pick up the various problems, much like the classic ‘Lint’ did for C, and how the Code Metrics plug-in for .NET Reflector by Jonathan 'Peli' de Halleux is used for finding Code Smells in .NET code. The problem is that few of the standard procedural code smells are relevant to SQL, and we need an agreed list of code smells. Merrilll Aldrich made a grand start last year in his blog Top 10 T-SQL Code Smells.However, I'd like to make a start by discovering if there is a general opinion amongst Database developers what the most important SQL Smells are. One can be a bit defensive about code smells. I will cheerfully write very long stored procedures, even though they are frowned on. I’ll use dynamic SQL occasionally. You can only use them as an aid for your own judgment and it is fine to ‘sign them off’ as being appropriate in particular circumstances. Also, whole classes of ‘code smells’ may be irrelevant for a particular database. The use of proprietary SQL, for example, is only a ‘code smell’ if there is a chance that the database will have to be ported to another RDBMS. The use of dynamic SQL is a risk only with certain security models. As the saying goes,  a CodeSmell is a hint of possible bad practice to a pragmatist, but a sure sign of bad practice to a purist. Plamen Ratchev’s wonderful article Ten Common SQL Programming Mistakes lists some of these ‘code smells’ along with out-and-out mistakes, but there are more. The use of nested transactions, for example, isn’t entirely incorrect, even though the database engine ignores all but the outermost: but it does flag up the possibility that the programmer thinks that nested transactions are supported. If anything requires some sort of general agreement, the definition of code smells is one. I’m therefore going to make this Blog ‘dynamic, in that, if anyone twitters a suggestion with a #SQLCodeSmells tag (or sends me a twitter) I’ll update the list here. If you add a comment to the blog with a suggestion of what should be added or removed, I’ll do my best to oblige. In other words, I’ll try to keep this blog up to date. The name against each 'smell' is the name of the person who Twittered me, commented about or who has written about the 'smell'. it does not imply that they were the first ever to think of the smell! Use of deprecated syntax such as *= (Dave Howard) Denormalisation that requires the shredding of the contents of columns. (Merrill Aldrich) Contrived interfaces Use of deprecated datatypes such as TEXT/NTEXT (Dave Howard) Datatype mis-matches in predicates that rely on implicit conversion.(Plamen Ratchev) Using Correlated subqueries instead of a join   (Dave_Levy/ Plamen Ratchev) The use of Hints in queries, especially NOLOCK (Dave Howard /Mike Reigler) Few or No comments. Use of functions in a WHERE clause. (Anil Das) Overuse of scalar UDFs (Dave Howard, Plamen Ratchev) Excessive ‘overloading’ of routines. The use of Exec xp_cmdShell (Merrill Aldrich) Excessive use of brackets. (Dave Levy) Lack of the use of a semicolon to terminate statements Use of non-SARGable functions on indexed columns in predicates (Plamen Ratchev) Duplicated code, or strikingly similar code. Misuse of SELECT * (Plamen Ratchev) Overuse of Cursors (Everyone. Special mention to Dave Levy & Adrian Hills) Overuse of CLR routines when not necessary (Sam Stange) Same column name in different tables with different datatypes. (Ian Stirk) Use of ‘broken’ functions such as ‘ISNUMERIC’ without additional checks. Excessive use of the WHILE loop (Merrill Aldrich) INSERT ... EXEC (Merrill Aldrich) The use of stored procedures where a view is sufficient (Merrill Aldrich) Not using two-part object names (Merrill Aldrich) Using INSERT INTO without specifying the columns and their order (Merrill Aldrich) Full outer joins even when they are not needed. (Plamen Ratchev) Huge stored procedures (hundreds/thousands of lines). Stored procedures that can produce different columns, or order of columns in their results, depending on the inputs. Code that is never used. Complex and nested conditionals WHILE (not done) loops without an error exit. Variable name same as the Datatype Vague identifiers. Storing complex data  or list in a character map, bitmap or XML field User procedures with sp_ prefix (Aaron Bertrand)Views that reference views that reference views that reference views (Aaron Bertrand) Inappropriate use of sql_variant (Neil Hambly) Errors with identity scope using SCOPE_IDENTITY @@IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT (Neil Hambly, Aaron Bertrand) Schemas that involve multiple dated copies of the same table instead of partitions (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Scalar UDFs that do data lookups (poor man's join) (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Code that allows SQL Injection (Mladen Prajdic) Tables without clustered indexes (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Use of "SELECT DISTINCT" to mask a join problem (Nick Harrison) Multiple stored procedures with nearly identical implementation. (Nick Harrison) Excessive column aliasing may point to a problem or it could be a mapping implementation. (Nick Harrison) Joining "too many" tables in a query. (Nick Harrison) Stored procedure returning more than one record set. (Nick Harrison) A NOT LIKE condition (Nick Harrison) excessive "OR" conditions. (Nick Harrison) User procedures with sp_ prefix (Aaron Bertrand) Views that reference views that reference views that reference views (Aaron Bertrand) sp_OACreate or anything related to it (Bill Fellows) Prefixing names with tbl_, vw_, fn_, and usp_ ('tibbling') (Jeremiah Peschka) Aliases that go a,b,c,d,e... (Dave Levy/Diane McNurlan) Overweight Queries (e.g. 4 inner joins, 8 left joins, 4 derived tables, 10 subqueries, 8 clustered GUIDs, 2 UDFs, 6 case statements = 1 query) (Robert L Davis) Order by 3,2 (Dave Levy) MultiStatement Table functions which are then filtered 'Sel * from Udf() where Udf.Col = Something' (Dave Ballantyne) running a SQL 2008 system in SQL 2000 compatibility mode(John Stafford)

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• Fragmented Log files could be slowing down your database

  - by Fatherjack

  Something that is sometimes forgotten by a lot of DBAs is the fact that database log files get fragmented in the same way that you get fragmentation in a data file. The cause is very different but the effect is the same – too much effort reading and writing data. Data files get fragmented as data is changed through normal system activity, INSERTs, UPDATEs and DELETEs cause fragmentation and most experienced DBAs are monitoring their indexes for fragmentation and dealing with it accordingly. However, you don’t hear about so many working on their log files. How can a log file get fragmented? I’m glad you asked. When you create a database there are at least two files created on the disk storage; an mdf for the data and an ldf for the log file (you can also have ndf files for extra data storage but that’s off topic for now). It is wholly possible to have more than one log file but in most cases there is little point in creating more than one as the log file is written to in a ‘wrap-around’ method (more on that later). When a log file is created at the time that a database is created the file is actually sub divided into a number of virtual log files (VLFs). The number and size of these VLFs depends on the size chosen for the log file. VLFs are also created in the space added to a log file when a log file growth event takes place. Do you have your log files set to auto grow? Then you have potentially been introducing many VLFs into your log file. Let’s get to see how many VLFs we have in a brand new database. USE master GO CREATE DATABASE VLF_Test ON ( NAME = VLF_Test, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test.mdf', SIZE = 100, MAXSIZE = 500, FILEGROWTH = 50 ) LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5MB, MAXSIZE = 250MB, FILEGROWTH = 5MB ); go USE VLF_Test go DBCC LOGINFO; The results of this are firstly a new database is created with specified files sizes and the the DBCC LOGINFO results are returned to the script editor. The DBCC LOGINFO results have plenty of interesting information in them but lets first note there are 4 rows of information, this relates to the fact that 4 VLFs have been created in the log file. The values in the FileSize column are the sizes of each VLF in bytes, you will see that the last one to be created is slightly larger than the others. So, a 5MB log file has 4 VLFs of roughly 1.25 MB. Lets alter the CREATE DATABASE script to create a log file that’s a bit bigger and see what happens. Alter the code above so that the log file details are replaced by LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 1GB, MAXSIZE = 25GB, FILEGROWTH = 1GB ); With a bigger log file specified we get more VLFs What if we make it bigger again? LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5GB, MAXSIZE = 250GB, FILEGROWTH = 5GB ); This time we see more VLFs are created within our log file. We now have our 5GB log file comprised of 16 files of 320MB each. In fact these sizes fall into all the ranges that control the VLF creation criteria – what a coincidence! The rules that are followed when a log file is created or has it’s size increased are pretty basic. If the file growth is lower than 64MB then 4 VLFs are created If the growth is between 64MB and 1GB then 8 VLFs are created If the growth is greater than 1GB then 16 VLFs are created. Now the potential for chaos comes if the default values and settings for log file growth are used. By default a database log file gets a 1MB log file with unlimited growth in steps of 10%. The database we just created is 6 MB, let’s add some data and see what happens. USE vlf_test go -- we need somewhere to put the data so, a table is in order IF OBJECT_ID('A_Table') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE A_Table go CREATE TABLE A_Table ( Col_A int IDENTITY, Col_B CHAR(8000) ) GO -- Let's check the state of the log file -- 4 VLFs found EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- We can go ahead and insert some data and then check the state of the log file again INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 500 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO -- insert 500 rows and we get 22 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- Let's insert more rows INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 2000 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO 10 -- insert 2000 rows, in 10 batches and we suddenly have 107 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); Well, that escalated quickly! Our log file is split, internally, into 107 fragments after a few thousand inserts. The same happens with any logged transactions, I just chose to illustrate this with INSERTs. Having too many VLFs can cause performance degradation at times of database start up, log backup and log restore operations so it’s well worth keeping a check on this property. How do we prevent excessive VLF creation? Creating the database with larger files and also with larger growth steps and actively choosing to grow your databases rather than leaving it to the Auto Grow event can make sure that the growths are made with a size that is optimal. How do we resolve a situation of a database with too many VLFs? This process needs to be done when the database is under little or no stress so that you don’t affect system users. The steps are: BACKUP LOG YourDBName TO YourBackupDestinationOfChoice Shrink the log file to its smallest possible size DBCC SHRINKFILE(FileNameOfTLogHere, TRUNCATEONLY) * Re-size the log file to the size you want it to, taking in to account your expected needs for the coming months or year. ALTER DATABASE YourDBName MODIFY FILE ( NAME = FileNameOfTLogHere, SIZE = TheSizeYouWantItToBeIn_MB) * – If you don’t know the file name of your log file then run sp_helpfile while you are connected to the database that you want to work on and you will get the details you need. The resize step can take quite a while This is already detailed far better than I can explain it by Kimberley Tripp in her blog 8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx. The result of this will be a log file with a VLF count according to the bullet list above. Knowing when VLFs are being created By complete coincidence while I have been writing this blog (it’s been quite some time from it’s inception to going live) Jonathan Kehayias from SQLSkills.com has written a great article on how to track database file growth using Event Notifications and Service Broker. I strongly recommend taking a look at it as this is going to catch any sneaky auto grows that take place and let you know about them right away. Hassle free monitoring of VLFs If you are lucky or wise enough to be using SQL Monitor or another monitoring tool that let’s you write your own custom metrics then you can keep an eye on this very easily. There is a custom metric for VLFs (written by Stuart Ainsworth) already on the site and there are some others there are very useful so take a moment or two to look around while you are there. Resources MSDN – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179355(v=sql.105).aspx Kimberly Tripp from SQLSkills.com – http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx Thomas LaRock at Simple-Talk.com – http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/monitoring-sql-server-virtual-log-file-fragmentation/ Disclosure I am a Friend of Red Gate. This means that I am more than likely to say good things about Red Gate DBA and Developer tools. No matter how awesome I make them sound, take the time to compare them with other products before you contact the Red Gate sales team to make your order.

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• Try a sample: Using the counter predicate for event sampling

  - by extended_events

  Extended Events offers a rich filtering mechanism, called predicates, that allows you to reduce the number of events you collect by specifying criteria that will be applied during event collection. (You can find more information about predicates in Using SQL Server 2008 Extended Events (by Jonathan Kehayias)) By evaluating predicates early in the event firing sequence we can reduce the performance impact of collecting events by stopping event collection when the criteria are not met. You can specify predicates on both event fields and on a special object called a predicate source. Predicate sources are similar to action in that they typically are related to some type of global information available from the server. You will find that many of the actions available in Extended Events have equivalent predicate sources, but actions and predicates sources are not the same thing. Applying predicates, whether on a field or predicate source, is very similar to what you are used to in T-SQL in terms of how they work; you pick some field/source and compare it to a value, for example, session_id = 52. There is one predicate source that merits special attention though, not just for its special use, but for how the order of predicate evaluation impacts the behavior you see. I’m referring to the counter predicate source. The counter predicate source gives you a way to sample a subset of events that otherwise meet the criteria of the predicate; for example you could collect every other event, or only every tenth event. Simple CountingThe counter predicate source works by creating an in memory counter that increments every time the predicate statement is evaluated. Here is a simple example with my favorite event, sql_statement_completed, that only collects the second statement that is run. (OK, that’s not much of a sample, but this is for demonstration purposes. Here is the session definition: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.counter = 2)ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS) You can find general information about the session DDL syntax in BOL and from Pedro’s post Introduction to Extended Events. The important part here is the WHERE statement that defines that I only what the event where package0.count = 2; in other words, only the second instance of the event. Notice that I need to provide the package name along with the predicate source. You don’t need to provide the package name if you’re using event fields, only for predicate sources. Let’s say I run the following test queries: -- Run three statements to test the sessionSELECT 'This is the first statement'GOSELECT 'This is the second statement'GOSELECT 'This is the third statement';GO Once you return the event data from the ring buffer and parse the XML (see my earlier post on reading event data) you should see something like this: event_name sql_text sql_statement_completed SELECT ‘This is the second statement’ You can see that only the second statement from the test was actually collected. (Feel free to try this yourself. Check out what happens if you remove the WHERE statement from your session. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) Percentage Sampling OK, so that wasn’t particularly interesting, but you can probably see that this could be interesting, for example, lets say I need a 25% sample of the statements executed on my server for some type of QA analysis, that might be more interesting than just the second statement. All comparisons of predicates are handled using an object called a predicate comparator; the simple comparisons such as equals, greater than, etc. are mapped to the common mathematical symbols you know and love (eg. = and >), but to do the less common comparisons you will need to use the predicate comparators directly. You would probably look to the MOD operation to do this type sampling; we would too, but we don’t call it MOD, we call it divides_by_uint64. This comparator evaluates whether one number is divisible by another with no remainder. The general syntax for using a predicate comparator is pred_comp(field, value), field is always first and value is always second. So lets take a look at how the session changes to answer our new question of 25% sampling: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test_25 ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.divides_by_uint64(package0.counter,4))ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS)GO Here I’ve replaced the simple equivalency check with the divides_by_uint64 comparator to check if the counter is evenly divisible by 4, which gives us back every fourth record. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to test this session. Why order matters I indicated at the start of this post that order matters when it comes to the counter predicate – it does. Like most other predicate systems, Extended Events evaluates the predicate statement from left to right; as soon as the predicate statement is proven false we abandon evaluation of the remainder of the statement. The counter predicate source is only incremented when it is evaluated so whether or not the counter is incremented will depend on where it is in the predicate statement and whether a previous criteria made the predicate false or not. Here is a generic example: Pred1: (WHERE statement_1 AND package0.counter = 2)Pred2: (WHERE package0.counter = 2 AND statement_1) Let’s say I cause a number of events as follows and examine what happens to the counter predicate source. Iteration Statement Pred1 Counter Pred2 Counter A Not statement_1 0 1 B statement_1 1 2 C Not statement_1 1 3 D statement_1 2 4 As you can see, in the case of Pred1, statement_1 is evaluated first, when it fails (A & C) predicate evaluation is stopped and the counter is not incremented. With Pred2 the counter is evaluated first, so it is incremented on every iteration of the event and the remaining parts of the predicate are then evaluated. In this example, Pred1 would return an event for D while Pred2 would return an event for B. But wait, there is an interesting side-effect here; consider Pred2 if I had run my statements in the following order: Not statement_1 Not statement_1 statement_1 statement_1 In this case I would never get an event back from the system because the point at which counter=2, the rest of the predicate evaluates as false so the event is not returned. If you’re using the counter target for sampling and you’re not getting the expected events, or any events, check the order of the predicate criteria. As a general rule I’d suggest that the counter criteria should be the last element of your predicate statement since that will assure that your sampling rate will apply to the set of event records defined by the rest of your predicate. Aside: I’m interested in hearing about uses for putting the counter predicate criteria earlier in the predicate statement. If you have one, post it in a comment to share with the class. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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

  - by mvaughan

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

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