Search Results

Search found 11199 results on 448 pages for 'self modifying'.

Page 418/448 | < Previous Page | 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425  | Next Page >

  • Oracle EMEA News Digest - May 2014

    - by Steve Walker
    Systems Oracle introduced a technology preview of an OpenStack® distribution that allows Oracle Linux and Oracle VM users to work with the open source cloud software. This provides customers with additional choices and interoperability while taking advantage of the efficiency, performance, scalability, and security of Oracle Linux and Oracle VM. The distribution is delivered as part of the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Premier Support offerings, at no additional cost. Oracle plans to work further with the OpenStack community to develop and enhance its enterprise-class capabilities to meet customer demands. Also in the Open Source arena, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL Fabric. MySQL Fabric provides an integrated system that makes it simpler to manage groups of MySQL databases. It delivers both high availability - via failure detection and failover - and scalability through automated data sharding. Oracle Database, Middleware and Technology The company made two announcements for Oracle Tuxedo, the #1 application server for C, C++, COBOL and Java deployments in private cloud or traditional data center environments. With enhanced management and monitoring features and tighter integration with Oracle technologies, the latest release of Oracle Tuxedo 12c enables organizations to dramatically increase application throughput, while reducing total cost of ownership and time to market for new application development and deployment. Oracle also introduced the latest release of its mainframe application rehosting platform, Oracle Tuxedo ART 12c, to help organizations speed up migration projects and accelerate the adoption of the new environment by current IT staff. It enables organizations to accelerate the rehosting of IBM mainframe applications and greatly enhance management and supportability of the rehosted applications while reducing costs and risk. Applications According to new Oracle studies, B2B and B2C commerce professionals find integrated, omni-channel customer experiences increasingly valuable to their organizations, and are continuing to invest in technologies and digital content strategies to facilitate them. The studies—one for B2B and one for B2C—surveyed e-commerce professionals in business and technology departments from around the world. Although the priorities, success metrics, and technology investments differed between the two groups, customer acquisition and retention emerged as common themes across B2B and B2C. Growing market share and enhancing customer experience are cited as top investment areas for all e-commerce professionals. In product news, Oracle announced the latest release of Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications (version 11.1.1.8.1, in case anyone asks). It includes prebuilt connectors between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards. Additionally, a new Oracle Human Resources Analytics module for developing and maintaining a skilled workforce has been introduced. In use at more than 4,000 companies worldwide, Oracle BI Applications support leading enterprise applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Oracle's Siebel CRM, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offering high-performing analytics at a lower cost. Industries For the Communications Industry, Oracle has launched a new release of the Oracle Communications Core Session Manager. This gives CSPs a new way to design, deploy and manage complex networking services and embrace next-generation technology, It provides them with an immediate entry point for  network function virtualization (NFV) efforts, allowing them to realize immediate benefits associated with network virtualization – including increased service agility and improved network resource sharing. And for the Utilities Industry, Oracle is releasing solutions with new business features and enhanced technical architecture that help position utilities for success now and into the future. Oracle has provided new releases for its customer information system,  meter data management system, customer self-service solution and mobile workforce management solution.

    Read the article

  • Persevering & Friday Night Big Ideas

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    by Jim Lein, Oracle Midsize Programs Every successful company, personal accomplishment, and philanthropic endeavor starts with one good idea. I have my best ideas on Friday evenings. The creative side of my brain is stimulated by end of week endorphins. Free thinking. Anything is possible. But, as my kids love to remind me, most of Dad's Friday Night Big Ideas (FNBIs) fizzle on the drawing board. Usually there's one barrier blocking the way that seems insurmountable by noon on Monday. For example, trekking the 486 mile Colorado Trail is on my bucket list. Since I have a job, I'll have to do it in bits and pieces--day hikes, weekends, and a vacation week here and there. With my trick neck, backpacking is not an option. How to survive equip myself for overnight backcountry travel was that one seemingly insurmountable barrier.  Persevering Lewis and Clark wouldn't have given up so I explored options and, as I blogged about back in December, I had an FNBI to hire llamas to carry my load. Last weekend, that idea came to fruition. Early Saturday morning, I met up with Bill, the owner of Antero Llamas, for an overnight training expedition along segment 14 of the Colorado Trail with a string of twelve llamas. It was a crash course on learning how to saddle, load, pasture, and mediate squabbles. Amazingly, we left the trailhead with me, the complete novice, at the lead. Instead of trying to impart three decades of knowledge on me in two days, Bill taught me two things: "Go With the Flow" and "Plan B". It worked. There were times I would be lost in thought for long stretches of time until one snort would remind me that I had a string of twelve llamas trailing behind. A funny thing happened along the trail... Up until last Saturday, my plan had been to trek all 28 segments of the trail east to west and sequentially. Out of some self-imposed sense of decorum. That plan presented myriad logistical challenges such as impassable snow pack on the Continental Divide when segment 6 is up next. On Sunday, as we trekked along the base of 14,000 ft peaks, I applied Bill's llama handling philosophy to my quest and came up with a much more realistic and enjoyable strategy for achieving my goal.  Seize opportunities to hike regardless of order. Define my own segments. Go west to east for awhile if it makes more sense. Let the llamas carry more creature comforts. Chill out.  I will still set foot on all 486 miles of the trail. Technically, the end result will be the same.And I and my traveling companions--human and camelid--will enjoy the journey more. Much more. Got Big Ideas of Your Own? Check out Tongal. This growing Oracle customer works with brands to crowd source fantastic ideas for promoting products and services. Your great idea could earn you cash.  Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Jim Lein I evangelize Oracle's enterprise solutions for growing midsize companies. I recently celebrated 15 years with Oracle, having joined JD Edwards in 1999. I'm based in Evergreen, Colorado and love relating stories about creativity and innovation whether they be about software, live music, or the mountains. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle.

    Read the article

  • Oracle BI Applications for Industry Sectors

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Oracle BI Applications already provide pre-built line-of-business analytic applications to over 4,000 customers: these expose the data otherwise locked inside ERP and CRM applications, giving the business user the analytics they need, and a greater ability to self-service ad-hoc queries. Now you can also take advantage of the pre-built Oracle BI Applications approach for industry sector specific analytics to streamline your client’s operations, offer better services, and increase profit margins. Find out more at http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/business-analytics/analytic-applications/industry/overview/index.html. Retail Education Oracle Retail Merchandising Analytics Oracle Student Information Analytics Oracle Retail Customer Analytics Public Sector Financial Services Oracle Tax Analytics Oracle Financial Analytics Manufacturing Health Care Oracle Manufacturing Analytics Oracle Enterprise Healthcare Analytics Asset Intensive Oracle Clinical Development Analytics Oracle Enterprise Asset Management Analytics Oracle Operating Room Analytics Related Links Health Sciences Analytic Applications for Your Business Role Oracle Health Sciences Clinical Development Analytics Analytic Applications for Your Product Line Oracle Argus Analytics Oracle Business Intelligence Tools and Technology Communication Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine "The adoption of Oracle Financial Services Analytic Applications is of great significance to the bank's transition to more rigorous and risk-averse management practices."Yang Changxue, Project Manager Oracle Communications Data Model /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:"Table Grid"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:59; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt:solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

    Read the article

  • Is a university education really worth it for a good programmer?

    - by Jon Purdy
    The title says it all, but here's the personal side of it: I've been doing design and programming for about as long as I can remember. If there's a programming problem, I can figure it out. (Though admittedly StackOverflow has allowed me to skip the figuring out and get straight to the doing in many instances.) I've made games, esoteric programming languages, and widgets and gizmos galore. I'm currently working on a general-purpose programming language. There's nothing I do better than programming. However, I'm just as passionate about design. Thus when I felt leaving high school that my design skills were lacking, I decided to attend university for New Media Design and Imaging, a digital design-related major. For a year, I diligently studied art and programmed in my free time. As the next year progressed, however, I was obligated to take fewer art and design classes and more technical classes. The trouble was of course that these classes were geared toward non-technical students, and were far beneath my skill level at the time. No amount of petitioning could overcome the institution's reluctance to allow me to test out of such classes, and the major offered no promise for any greater challenge in the future, so I took the extreme route: I switched into the technical equivalent of the major, New Media Interactive Development. A lot of my credits moved over into the new major, but many didn't. It would have been infeasible to switch to a more rigorous technical major such as Computer Science, and having tutored Computer Science students at every level here, I doubt I would be exposed to anything that I haven't already or won't eventually find out on my own, since I'm so involved in the field. I'm now on track to graduate perhaps a year later than I had planned, which puts a significant financial strain on my family and my future self. My schedule continues to be bogged down with classes that are wholly unnecessary for me to take. I'm being re-introduced to subjects that I've covered a thousand times over, simply because I've always been interested in it all. And though I succeed in avoiding the cynical and immature tactic of failing to complete work out of some undeserved sense of superiority, I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned by the lack of intellectual stimulation. Further, my school requires students to complete a number of quarters of co-op work experience proportional to their major. My original major required two quarters, but my current requires three, delaying my graduation even more. To top it all off, college is putting a severe strain on my relationship with my very close partner of a few years, so I've searched diligently for co-op jobs in my area, alas to no avail. I'm now in my third year, and approaching that point past which I can no longer handle this. Either I keep my head down, get a degree no matter what it takes, and try to get a job with a company that will pay me enough to do what I love that I can eventually pay off my loans; or I cut my losses now, move wherever there is work, and in six months start paying off what debt I've accumulated thus far. So the real question is: is a university education really more than just a formality? It's a big decision, and one I can't make lightly. I think this is the appropriate venue for this kind of question, and I hope it sticks around for the sake of others who might someday find themselves in similar situations. My heartfelt thanks for reading, and in advance for your help.

    Read the article

  • Joy! | Important Information About Your iPad 3G

    - by Jeff Julian
    Looks like I was one of the lucky 114,000 who AT&T lost their email to “hackers”.  Why is “hackers” in “double quotes”.  I can just imagine some executive at AT&T in their “Oh No, We Messed Up Meeting” saying, what happened?  Then someone replied, well we have had a breach and “hackers” broke in (using the quote in the air gesture) and stole our iPad 3G customers emails. Oh well, I am sure my email has been sold and sold again by many different vendors, why not AT&T now.  At least Dorothy Attwood could have gave us her email to give to someone else instead of blinking it through a newsletter system. June 13, 2010 Dear Valued AT&T Customer, Recently there was an issue that affected some of our customers with AT&T 3G service for iPad resulting in the release of their customer email addresses. I am writing to let you know that no other information was exposed and the matter has been resolved.  We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, you can continue to use your AT&T 3G service on your iPad with confidence. Here’s some additional detail: On June 7 we learned that unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.  The self-described hackers wrote software code to randomly generate numbers that mimicked serial numbers of the AT&T SIM card for iPad – called the integrated circuit card identification (ICC-ID) – and repeatedly queried an AT&T web address.   When a number generated by the hackers matched an actual ICC-ID, the authentication page log-in screen was returned to the hackers with the email address associated with the ICC-ID already populated on the log-in screen. The hackers deliberately went to great efforts with a random program to extract possible ICC-IDs and capture customer email addresses.  They then put together a list of these emails and distributed it for their own publicity. As soon as we became aware of this situation, we took swift action to prevent any further unauthorized exposure of customer email addresses.  Within hours, AT&T disabled the mechanism that automatically populated the email address. Now, the authentication page log-in screen requires the user to enter both their email address and their password. I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk.  The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad.  AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected. While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website. AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites.   We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law. AT&T acted quickly to protect your information – and we promise to keep working around the clock to keep your information safe.  Thank you very much for your understanding, and for being an AT&T customer. Sincerely, Dorothy Attwood Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T Technorati Tags: AT&T,iPad 3G,Email

    Read the article

  • Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise, Part I

    - by Kathryn Perry
    A guest post by Jon Chorley, Oracle's Chief Sustainability Officer & Vice President, SCM Product Strategy During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise.  What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise.  Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources.  Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems. In my next post, I will share examples of companies that have made that shift and talk more about the distributed orchestration process.

    Read the article

  • Building a personal website using Silverlight.

    - by mbcrump
    I’ve always believed that as a developer you should always have a hobby project going on. I think a hobby project needs to contain at least one of following things: Something that you have never done before. Something that you are interested in. Something that you can work on in your spare time without affecting your *paying* job. I decided my hobby project would be an entire web application written in Silverlight that could be used as a self-promotion/marketing tool. This goal of the site is to provide information on the work that I’ve done to conferences, future employers and anyone else that wanted to learn more about me. Before I go any further, if you just want to check out the site then it is located at http://michaelcrump.info. So, what did I use to create it? MVVM Light – I’m a big fan of this software. The item and project templates plus code snippets make this a huge win for any SL/WPF/WP7 application. Jetpack Theme by Microsoft – I suck at designing so I used this template to help speed up this project. ComponentOne 3rd Party Controls – I have a license and really like several of their products. A User Control that Jeremy Likness created called DynamicXaml (used with his permission). I had created my own version of this a while back, but Jeremy’s implementation was simply better. Main Page – Designed to create my “brand”. This was built for a quick glimpse of who I am and what do I do.  Blog – The best marketing tool for a developer is their blog. I decided to go with an HTML page displaying my site and the user could pop into full-screen if desired. I also included my feed and Silverlight-Zone. (Another site I work on) Online – This page links to sites that I have been featured on as well as community involvement and awards. I also have a web service that I can update this information without re-compiling the Silverlight App. Projects – I’ve been wanting to use a CoverFlow for a really long time now. =) This page list several hobby projects as well as a few professional projects.  Resume Page – This page only exist because I got tired of sending companies my resume in e-mail. I can now provide a deep link to this page and the recruiter can print, search or save my resume. The PDF of my resume exist in a folder that I can easily update without recompiling the app. Contact Page – Just a contact page with a web service that sends the email. The Send button becomes disabled after a successful send. I thought of adding captcha to this page but in the end didn’t think it was worth it. Looking back at this app, I’m happy with how it turned out. I love Silverlight and I am already thinking of my next hobby project. (Thinking another Windows Phone 7 app or MVC3).  Subscribe to my feed

    Read the article

  • Valuing "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation"

    - by tom.spitz
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} I subscribe to the tenets put forth in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development - http://agilemanifesto.org. As Oracle's chief methodologist, that might seem a self-deprecating attitude. After all, the agile manifesto tells us that we should value "individuals and interactions" over "processes and tools." My job includes process development. I also subscribe to ideas put forth in a number of subsequent works including Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Boehm/Turner, Addison-Wesley) and Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Highsmith, Addison-Wesley). Both of these books talk about finding the right balance between "agility and discipline" or between a "predictive and adaptive" project approach. So there still seems to be a place for us in creating the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) to become the "single method framework that supports the successful implementation of every Oracle product." After all, the real idea is to apply just enough ceremony and produce just enough documentation to suit the needs of the particular project that supports an enterprise in moving toward its desired future state. The thing I've been struggling with - and the thing I'd like to hear from you about right now - is the prevalence of an ongoing obsession with "documents." OUM provides a comprehensive set of guidance for an iterative and incremental approach to engineering and implementing software systems. Our intent is first to support the information technology system implementation and, as necessary, support the creation of documentation. OUM, therefore, includes a supporting set of document templates. Our guidance is to employ those templates, sparingly, as needed; not create piles of documentation that you're not gonna (sic) need. In other words, don't serve the method, make the method serve you. Yet, there seems to be a "gimme" mentality in some circles that if you give me a sample document - or better yet - a repository of samples - then I will be able to do anything cheaply and quickly. The notion is certainly appealing AND reuse can save time. Plus, documents are a lowest common denominator way of packaging reusable stuff. However, without sustained investment and management I've seen "reuse repositories" turn quickly into garbage heaps. So, I remain a skeptic. I agree that providing document examples that promote consistency is helpful. However, there may be too much emphasis on the documents themselves and not enough on creating a system that meets the evolving needs of the business. How can we shift the emphasis toward working software and away from our dependency on documents - especially on large, complex implementation projects - while still supporting the need for documentation? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

    Read the article

  • MPI Cluster Debugger launch integration in VS2010

    Let's assume that you have all the HPC bits installed and that you have existing MPI code (or you created a "Hello World" project using the MPI project template). Of course, you create a single MPI application and at runtime it will correspond to multiple processes (of the same app) launched on multiple nodes (i.e. machines) on the cluster. So how do you debug such a situation by simply hitting the familiar "F5" keystroke (i.e. Debug - Start Debugging)?WATCH IT INSTEAD OF READING ABOUT ITIf you can't bear to read through all the details below, just watch this 19-minute screencast explaining this VS2010 feature. Alternatively, or even additionally, keep on reading.REQUIREMENTWhen you debug an MPI application, you would want the copying of resources from your client machine (where Visual Studio is installed) to each compute node (where Windows HPC Server is installed) to take place automatically for you. 'Resources' in the previous sentence includes your application binary, plus any binary or data dependencies it may have, plus PDBs if needed, plus the debug CRT of the correct bitness, plus msvsmon for remote debugging to work. You would also want, after copying is complete, to have your app and msvsmon launched and attached so that you can hit breakpoints back in Visual Studio on your client machine. All these thing that you would want are delivered in VS2010.STEPS TO F51. In your MPI project where you have placed a breakpoint go to Project Properties - Configuration Properties - Debugging. Ensure the "Debugger to launch" combo box value is set to MPI Cluster Debugger.2. There are a whole bunch of properties here and typically you can ignore all of them except one: Run Environment. By default it is set to run 1 process on your local machine and if you change the number after that to, for example, 4 it will launch 4 processes of your app on your local machine.You want this to run on your cluster though, so go to the dropdown arrow at the end of the Run Environment cell and open it to expose the "Edit Hpc node" menu which opens the Node Selector dialog:In this dialog you can enter (or pick from a list) the cluster head node name and then the number of processes you want to execute on the cluster and then hit OK and… you are done.3. Press F5 and watch your breakpoint get hit (after giving it some time for copying, remote execution, attachment and symbol resolution to take place).GOING DEEPERIn the MPI Cluster Debugger project properties above, you can see many additional properties to the Run Environment. They are all optional, but you may want to understand them in order to fine tune your cluster debugging. Read all about each one of these on the MSDN page Configuration Properties for the MPI Cluster Debugger.In the Node Selector dialog above you can see more options than just the Head Node name and Number of Process to run. They should be self-explanatory but I also cover them in depth in my screencast showing you an example of why you would choose to schedule processes per core versus per node. You can also read about these options on MSDN as part of the page How to: Configure and Launch the MPI Cluster Debugger.To read through an example that touches on MPI project creation, project properties, node selector, and also usage of MPI with OpenMP plus MPI with PPL, read the MSDN page Walkthrough: Launching the MPI Cluster Debugger in Visual Studio 2010.Happy MPI debugging! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

    Read the article

  • Spritebatch drawing sprite with jagged borders

    - by Mutoh
    Alright, I've been on the making of a sprite class and a sprite sheet manager, but have come across this problem. Pretty much, the project is acting like so; for example: Let's take this .png image, with a transparent background. Note how it has alpha-transparent pixels around it in the lineart. Now, in the latter link's image, in the left (with CornflowerBlue background) it is shown the image drawn in another project (let's call it "Project1") with a simpler sprite class - there, it works. The right (with Purple background for differentiating) shows it drawn with a different class in "Project2" - where the problem manifests itself. This is the Sprite class of Project1: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace WindowsGame2 { class Sprite { Vector2 pos = new Vector2(0, 0); Texture2D image; Rectangle size; float scale = 1.0f; // --- public float X { get { return pos.X; } set { pos.X = value; } } public float Y { get { return pos.Y; } set { pos.Y = value; } } public float Width { get { return size.Width; } } public float Height { get { return size.Height; } } public float Scale { get { return scale; } set { if (value < 0) value = 0; scale = value; if (image != null) { size.Width = (int)(image.Width * scale); size.Height = (int)(image.Height * scale); } } } // --- public void Load(ContentManager Man, string filename) { image = Man.Load<Texture2D>(filename); size = new Rectangle( 0, 0, (int)(image.Width * scale), (int)(image.Height * scale) ); } public void Become(Texture2D frame) { image = frame; size = new Rectangle( 0, 0, (int)(image.Width * scale), (int)(image.Height * scale) ); } public void Draw(SpriteBatch Desenhista) { // Desenhista.Draw(image, pos, Color.White); Desenhista.Draw( image, pos, new Rectangle( 0, 0, image.Width, image.Height ), Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0 ); } } } And this is the code in Project2, a rewritten, pretty much, version of the previous class. In this one I added sprite sheet managing and, in particular, removed Load and Become, to allow for static resources and only actual Sprites to be instantiated. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Mobby_s_Adventure { // Actually, I might desconsider this, and instead use static AnimationLocation[] and instanciated ID and Frame; // For determining the starting frame of an animation in a sheet and being able to iterate through // the Rectangles vector of the Sheet; class AnimationLocation { public int Location; public int FrameCount; // --- public AnimationLocation(int StartingRow, int StartingColumn, int SheetWidth, int NumberOfFrames) { Location = (StartingRow * SheetWidth) + StartingColumn; FrameCount = NumberOfFrames; } public AnimationLocation(int PositionInSheet, int NumberOfFrames) { Location = PositionInSheet; FrameCount = NumberOfFrames; } public static int CalculatePosition(int StartingRow, int StartingColumn, SheetManager Sheet) { return ((StartingRow * Sheet.Width) + StartingColumn); } } class Sprite { // The general stuff; protected SheetManager Sheet; protected Vector2 Position; public Vector2 Axis; protected Color _Tint; public float Angle; public float Scale; protected SpriteEffects _Effect; // --- // protected AnimationManager Animation; // For managing the animations; protected AnimationLocation[] Animation; public int AnimationID; protected int Frame; // --- // Properties for easy accessing of the position of the sprite; public float X { get { return Position.X; } set { Position.X = Axis.X + value; } } public float Y { get { return Position.Y; } set { Position.Y = Axis.Y + value; } } // --- // Properties for knowing the size of the sprite's frames public float Width { get { return Sheet.FrameWidth * Scale; } } public float Height { get { return Sheet.FrameHeight * Scale; } } // --- // Properties for more stuff; public Color Tint { set { _Tint = value; } } public SpriteEffects Effect { set { _Effect = value; } } public int FrameID { get { return Frame; } set { if (value >= (Animation[AnimationID].FrameCount)) value = 0; Frame = value; } } // --- // The only things that will be constantly modified will be AnimationID and FrameID, anything else only // occasionally; public Sprite(SheetManager SpriteSheet, AnimationLocation[] Animations, Vector2 Location, Nullable<Vector2> Origin = null) { // Assign the sprite's sprite sheet; // (Passed by reference! To allow STATIC sheets!) Sheet = SpriteSheet; // Define the animations that the sprite has available; // (Passed by reference! To allow STATIC animation boundaries!) Animation = Animations; // Defaulting some numerical values; Angle = 0.0f; Scale = 1.0f; _Tint = Color.White; _Effect = SpriteEffects.None; // If the user wants a default Axis, it is set in the middle of the frame; if (Origin != null) Axis = Origin.Value; else Axis = new Vector2( Sheet.FrameWidth / 2, Sheet.FrameHeight / 2 ); // Now that we have the axis, we can set the position with no worries; X = Location.X; Y = Location.Y; } // Simply put, draw the sprite with all its characteristics; public void Draw(SpriteBatch Drafter) { Drafter.Draw( Sheet.Texture, Position, Sheet.Rectangles[Animation[AnimationID].Location + FrameID], // Find the rectangle which frames the wanted image; _Tint, Angle, Axis, Scale, _Effect, 0.0f ); } } } And, in any case, this is the SheetManager class found in the previous code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Mobby_s_Adventure { class SheetManager { protected Texture2D SpriteSheet; // For storing the sprite sheet; // Number of rows and frames in each row in the SpriteSheet; protected int NumberOfRows; protected int NumberOfColumns; // Size of a single frame; protected int _FrameWidth; protected int _FrameHeight; public Rectangle[] Rectangles; // For storing each frame; // --- public int Width { get { return NumberOfColumns; } } public int Height { get { return NumberOfRows; } } // --- public int FrameWidth { get { return _FrameWidth; } } public int FrameHeight { get { return _FrameHeight; } } // --- public Texture2D Texture { get { return SpriteSheet; } } // --- public SheetManager (Texture2D Texture, int Rows, int FramesInEachRow) { // Normal assigning SpriteSheet = Texture; NumberOfRows = Rows; NumberOfColumns = FramesInEachRow; _FrameHeight = Texture.Height / NumberOfRows; _FrameWidth = Texture.Width / NumberOfColumns; // Framing everything Rectangles = new Rectangle[NumberOfRows * NumberOfColumns]; int ID = 0; for (int i = 0; i < NumberOfRows; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < NumberOfColumns; j++) { Rectangles[ID] = new Rectangle ( _FrameWidth * j, _FrameHeight * i, _FrameWidth, _FrameHeight ); ID++; } } } public SheetManager (Texture2D Texture, int NumberOfFrames): this(Texture, 1, NumberOfFrames) { } } } For even more comprehending, if needed, here is how the main code looks like (it's just messing with the class' capacities, nothing actually; the result is a disembodied feet walking in place animation on the top-left of the screen and a static axe nearby): using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; using System.Threading; namespace Mobby_s_Adventure { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; static List<Sprite> ToDraw; static Texture2D AxeSheet; static Texture2D FeetSheet; static SheetManager Axe; static Sprite Jojora; static AnimationLocation[] Hack = new AnimationLocation[1]; static SheetManager Feet; static Sprite Mutoh; static AnimationLocation[] FeetAnimations = new AnimationLocation[2]; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; this.TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(100); this.IsFixedTimeStep = true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // Loading logic ToDraw = new List<Sprite>(); AxeSheet = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sheet"); FeetSheet = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Feet Sheet"); Axe = new SheetManager(AxeSheet, 1); Hack[0] = new AnimationLocation(0, 1); Jojora = new Sprite(Axe, Hack, new Vector2(100, 100), new Vector2(5, 55)); Jojora.AnimationID = 0; Jojora.FrameID = 0; Feet = new SheetManager(FeetSheet, 8); FeetAnimations[0] = new AnimationLocation(1, 7); FeetAnimations[1] = new AnimationLocation(0, 1); Mutoh = new Sprite(Feet, FeetAnimations, new Vector2(0, 0)); Mutoh.AnimationID = 0; Mutoh.FrameID = 0; } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // Update logic Mutoh.FrameID++; ToDraw.Add(Mutoh); ToDraw.Add(Jojora); base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Purple); // Drawing logic spriteBatch.Begin(); foreach (Sprite Element in ToDraw) { Element.Draw(spriteBatch); } spriteBatch.Draw(Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sheet"), new Rectangle(50, 50, 55, 60), Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } Please help me find out what I'm overlooking! One thing that I have noticed and could aid is that, if inserted the equivalent of this code spriteBatch.Draw( Content.Load<Texture2D>("Image Location"), new Rectangle(X, Y, images width, height), Color.White ); in Project2's Draw(GameTime) of the main loop, it works. EDIT Ok, even if the matter remains unsolved, I have made some more progress! As you see, I managed to get the two kinds of rendering in the same project (the aforementioned Project2, with the more complex Sprite class). This was achieved by adding the following code to Draw(GameTime): protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Purple); // Drawing logic spriteBatch.Begin(); foreach (Sprite Element in ToDraw) { Element.Draw(spriteBatch); } // Starting here spriteBatch.Draw( Axe.Texture, new Vector2(65, 100), new Rectangle ( 0, 0, Axe.FrameWidth, Axe.FrameHeight ), Color.White, 0.0f, new Vector2(0, 0), 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0f ); // Ending here spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } (Supposing that Axe is the SheetManager containing the texture, sorry if the "jargons" of my code confuse you :s) Thus, I have noticed that the problem is within the Sprite class. But I only get more clueless, because even after modifying its Draw function to this: public void Draw(SpriteBatch Drafter) { /*Drafter.Draw( Sheet.Texture, Position, Sheet.Rectangles[Animation[AnimationID].Location + FrameID], // Find the rectangle which frames the wanted image; _Tint, Angle, Axis, Scale, _Effect, 0.0f );*/ Drafter.Draw( Sheet.Texture, Position, new Rectangle( 0, 0, Sheet.FrameWidth, Sheet.FrameHeight ), Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, Scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0 ); } to make it as simple as the patch of code that works, it still draws the sprite jaggedly!

    Read the article

  • What is the difference between Workcenters, Dashboards, and the Interaction Hub?

    - by Matthew Haavisto
    Oracle Open World has just concluded.  Over the course of the conference, we presented several sessions covering different aspects of the PeopleSoft user experience, including Workcenters, Dashboards, and the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub (formerly known as the PeopleSoft Applications Portal).  Although we've produced collateral on these features and covered them in sessions, it became apparent at the conference that customers still have many questions about the these products, including how they are licensed, how they are installed, what their various purposes are, and how they can be used together synergistically. Let's Start with Licensing and Installation As you may know, we've extended the restricted use license (RUL) for the Interaction Hub.  This grants customers with PeopleTools 8.52 licenses the right to install the Interaction Hub for free for use as specified in the Tools license notes.  Note that this means customers receive a restricted use license for the Interaction Hub that doesn't cost them an additional license fee, but it is a separate product, not part of PeopleTools or PeopleSoft applications, and is a separate installation.  This means customers must provide the infrastructure to install and run the Hub, just like any other application.  The benefits of using the Hub to unify your PeopleSoft user experience can be great.  PeopleSoft applications have not yet delivered instances of the Hub with their products, though they may in the future. Workcenters and Dashboards, on the other hand, are frameworks provided by PeopleTools.  No other license is required, and no additional installation of a separate product is needed (apart from PeopleTools and PeopleSoft applications).  PeopleSoft applications are delivering instances of the workcenters and dashboards with their products.  Some are available now, and more are coming in future releases.  These delivered workcenter and dashboard instances require no additional licenses, and no additional installations beyond Tools and the applications that provide them.  In addition, the workcenter and dashboard frameworks provided by PeopleTools can be used by customers to build their own workcenters and dashboards, and it's quite easy and simple to do so. What are Their Differences?  What Purposes do they Serve? Workcenters, Dashboards and the Interaction Hub appear somewhat similar.  They all contain pagelets, and have some visual characteristics in common.  However, their strengths and purposes are very different, and they were designed to provide different benefits to your PeopleSoft ecosystem. Workcenters and Dashboards have the following characteristics: Designed for specific roles Focus on the daily tasks of those roles Help to streamline the work performed most often Personal view of my work world Makes navigation and search easier and quicker, particularly for transactions and decision support Reports and data needed for day-to-day work Personalizable, but minimal Delivered by PS Apps, but can be altered by customer for their requirements Customers can create their own Workcenters can be used for guided processes  The Interaction Hub is designed to aggregate content from multiple applications, and is is used to unify the user experience of those applications.  It offers a rich, web site-based user experience, and is often used to provide access to infrequently performed activities like benefits enrollment, payroll inquiries, life event changes, onboarding, and so on. Full-featured and robust Centrally administered Pushed to large audience Broad info like Company News Infrequent activities like benefits, not day-to-day tasks Self-service, access to employer info Central launch point for other activities and can navigate to workcenters and dashboards Deployed by customers or consultants, instances not delivered by PeopleSoft (at this time) Content management Unified PS application navigation Although these products are quite different and serve different purposes in your PeopleSoft environment, they can be used together to provide a richer, more efficient and engaging user experience for your all your user communities.

    Read the article

  • Viewport / Camera Calculation in 2D Game

    - by Dave
    we have a 2D game with some sprites and tiles and some kind of camera/viewport, that "moves" around the scene. so far so good, if we wouldn't had some special behaviour for your camera/viewport translation. normally you could stick the camera to your player figure and center it, resulting in a very cheap, undergraduate, translation equation, like : vec_translation -/+= speed (depending in what keys are pressed. WASD as default.) buuuuuuuuuut, we want our player figure be able to actually reach the bounds, when the viewport/camera has reached a maximum translation. we came up with the following solution (only keys a and d are the shown here, the rest is just adaption of calculation or maybe YOUR super-cool and elegant solution :) ): if(keys[A]) { playerX -= speed; if(playerScreenX <= width / 2 && tx < 0) { playerScreenX = width / 2; tx += speed; } else if(playerScreenX <= width / 2 && (tx) >= 0) { playerScreenX -= speed; tx = 0; if(playerScreenX < 0) playerScreenX = 0; } else if(playerScreenX >= width / 2 && (tx) < 0) { playerScreenX -= speed; } } if(keys[D]) { playerX += speed; if(playerScreenX >= width / 2 && (-tx + width) < sceneWidth) { playerScreenX = width / 2; tx -= speed; } if(playerScreenX >= width / 2 && (-tx + width) >= sceneWidth) { playerScreenX += speed; tx = -(sceneWidth - width); if(playerScreenX >= width - player.width) playerScreenX = width - player.width; } if(playerScreenX <= width / 2 && (-tx + width) < sceneWidth) { playerScreenX += speed; } } i think the code is rather self explaining: keys is a flag container for currently active keys, playerX/-Y is the position of the player according to world origin, tx/ty are the translation components vital to background / npc / item offset calculation, playerOnScreenX/-Y is the actual position of the player figure (sprite) on screen and width/height are the dimensions of the camera/viewport. this all looks quite nice and works well, but there is a very small and nasty calculation error, which in turn sums up to some visible effect. let's consider following piece of code: if(playerScreenX <= width / 2 && tx < 0) { playerScreenX = width / 2; tx += speed; } it can be translated into plain english as : if the x position of your player figure on screen is less or equal the half of your display / camera / viewport size AND there is enough space left LEFT of your viewport/camera then set players x position on screen to width half, increase translation (because we subtract the translation from something we want to move). easy, right?! doing this will create a small delta between playerX and playerScreenX. after so much talking, my question appears now here at the bottom of this document: how do I stick the calculation of my player-on-screen to the actual position of the player AND having a viewport that is not always centered aroung the players figure? here is a small test-case in processing: http://pastebin.com/bFaTauaa thank you for reading until now and thank you in advance for probably answering my question.

    Read the article

  • What is the best practice, point of view of well experienced developers

    - by Damien MIRAS
    My manager pushes me to use his self defined best practices. All of these practices are based on is own assumptions. I disagree with them and I would like to have some feedback of well experienced people about these practices. I would prefer answers from people involved in the maintenance of huge products and people whom have maintained the product for years. Developers with 15+ years of experience are preferred because my manager has that much experience himself. I have 7 years of experience. Here are the practices he wants me to use: never extends classes, use composition and interface instead because extending classes are unmaintainable and difficult to debug. What I think about that Extend when needed, respect "Liskov's Substitution Principle" and you'll never be stuck with a problem, but prefer composition and decoration. I don't know any serious project which has banned inheriting, sometimes it's impossible to not use that, i.e. in a UI framework. Design patterns are just unusable. In PHP, for simple use cases (for example a user needs a web interface to view a database table), his "best practice" is: copy some random php code wich we own, paste and modify it, put html and php code in same file, never use classes in PHP, it doesn't work well for small jobs, and in fact it doesn't work well at all, there is no good tool to work with. Copy & paste PHP code is good practice for maintenance because scripts are independent, if you have a bug somewhere you can fix it without side effects. What I think about that: NEVER EVER COPY code or do it because you have five minutes to deliver something, you will do some refactoring after that. Copy & paste code is a beginners error, if you have errors you'll have the error everywhere any time you have pasted it's a nightmare to maintain. If you repsect the "Open Close Principle" you'll rarely get edge effects, use unit test if you are afraid of that. For small jobs in PHP use at least something you get or write the HTML separately from the PHP code and reuse it any time you need it. Classes in PHP are mature, not as mature as other languages like python or java, but they are usable. There is tools to work with classes in PHP like Zend Studio that work very well. The use of classes or not depends not on the language you use but the programming paradigm you have choosen. I'm a OOP developer, I use PHP5, why do I have to shoot myself in the foot? When you find a simple bug in the code, and you can fix it simply, if you are not working on the code where you have found it, never fix it, even if it takes 5 seconds. He says to me his "best practices" are driven by the fact that he has a lot of experience in maintaining software in production (14 years) and he now knows what works and what doesn't work, what the community says is a fad, and the people advocating such principles as never copy & paste code, are not evolved in maintaining applications. What I think about that: If you find a bug fix it if you can do it quickly inform the people who've touched that code before, check if you have not introduced a new bug, ideally add a unit test for it. I currently work on a web commerce project, which serves 15k unique users per day. The code base has to be maintained and has been maintained this way since 2005. Ideally you include a short description of your position and experience in terms of years effectively maintaining an application which has been in production for real.

    Read the article

  • Loosely coupled .NET Cache Provider using Dependency Injection

    - by Rhames
    I have recently been reading the excellent book “Dependency Injection in .NET”, written by Mark Seemann. I do not generally buy software development related books, as I never seem to have the time to read them, but I have found the time to read Mark’s book, and it was time well spent I think. Reading the ideas around Dependency Injection made me realise that the Cache Provider code I wrote about earlier (see http://geekswithblogs.net/Rhames/archive/2011/01/10/using-the-asp.net-cache-to-cache-data-in-a-model.aspx) could be refactored to use Dependency Injection, which should produce cleaner code. The goals are to: Separate the cache provider implementation (using the ASP.NET data cache) from the consumers (loose coupling). This will also mean that the dependency on System.Web for the cache provider does not ripple down into the layers where it is being consumed (such as the domain layer). Provide a decorator pattern to allow a consumer of the cache provider to be implemented separately from the base consumer (i.e. if we have a base repository, we can decorate this with a caching version). Although I used the term repository, in reality the cache consumer could be just about anything. Use constructor injection to provide the Dependency Injection, with a suitable DI container (I use Castle Windsor). The sample code for this post is available on github, https://github.com/RobinHames/CacheProvider.git ICacheProvider In the sample code, the key interface is ICacheProvider, which is in the domain layer. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3:   4: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain 5: { 6: public interface ICacheProvider<T> 7: { 8: T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry); 9: IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry); 10: } 11: }   This interface contains two methods to retrieve data from the cache, either as a single instance or as an IEnumerable. the second paramerter is of type Func<T>. This is the method used to retrieve data if nothing is found in the cache. The ASP.NET implementation of the ICacheProvider interface needs to live in a project that has a reference to system.web, typically this will be the root UI project, or it could be a separate project. The key thing is that the domain or data access layers do not need system.web references adding to them. In my sample MVC application, the CacheProvider is implemented in the UI project, in a folder called “CacheProviders”: 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Caching; 6: using CacheDiSample.Domain; 7:   8: namespace CacheDiSample.CacheProvider 9: { 10: public class CacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T> 11: { 12: public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) 13: { 14: return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry); 15: } 16:   17: public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) 18: { 19: return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry); 20: } 21:   22: #region Helper Methods 23:   24: private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) 25: { 26: U value; 27: if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value)) 28: { 29: value = retrieveData(); 30: if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue) 31: absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration; 32:   33: if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue) 34: relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration; 35:   36: HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, null, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value); 37: } 38: return value; 39: } 40:   41: private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value) 42: { 43: object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key); 44: if (cachedValue == null) 45: { 46: value = default(U); 47: return false; 48: } 49: else 50: { 51: try 52: { 53: value = (U)cachedValue; 54: return true; 55: } 56: catch 57: { 58: value = default(U); 59: return false; 60: } 61: } 62: } 63:   64: #endregion 65:   66: } 67: }   The FetchAndCache helper method checks if the specified cache key exists, if it does not, the Func<U> retrieveData method is called, and the results are added to the cache. Using Castle Windsor to register the cache provider In the MVC UI project (my application root), Castle Windsor is used to register the CacheProvider implementation, using a Windsor Installer: 1: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; 2: using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; 3: using Castle.Windsor; 4:   5: using CacheDiSample.Domain; 6: using CacheDiSample.CacheProvider; 7:   8: namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers 9: { 10: public class CacheInstaller : IWindsorInstaller 11: { 12: public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) 13: { 14: container.Register( 15: Component.For(typeof(ICacheProvider<>)) 16: .ImplementedBy(typeof(CacheProvider<>)) 17: .LifestyleTransient()); 18: } 19: } 20: }   Note that the cache provider is registered as a open generic type. Consuming a Repository I have an existing couple of repository interfaces defined in my domain layer: IRepository.cs 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3:   4: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 5:   6: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories 7: { 8: public interface IRepository<T> 9: where T : EntityBase 10: { 11: T GetById(int id); 12: IList<T> GetAll(); 13: } 14: }   IBlogRepository.cs 1: using System; 2: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 3:   4: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories 5: { 6: public interface IBlogRepository : IRepository<Blog> 7: { 8: Blog GetByName(string name); 9: } 10: }   These two repositories are implemented in the DataAccess layer, using Entity Framework to retrieve data (this is not important though). One important point is that in the BaseRepository implementation of IRepository, the methods are virtual. This will allow the decorator to override them. The BlogRepository is registered in a RepositoriesInstaller, again in the MVC UI project. 1: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; 2: using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; 3: using Castle.Windsor; 4:   5: using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheDecorators; 6: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 7: using CacheDiSample.DataAccess; 8:   9: namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers 10: { 11: public class RepositoriesInstaller : IWindsorInstaller 12: { 13: public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) 14: { 15: container.Register(Component.For<IBlogRepository>() 16: .ImplementedBy<BlogRepository>() 17: .LifestyleTransient() 18: .DependsOn(new 19: { 20: nameOrConnectionString = "BloggingContext" 21: })); 22: } 23: } 24: }   Now I can inject a dependency on the IBlogRepository into a consumer, such as a controller in my sample code: 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6:   7: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 8: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 9:   10: namespace CacheDiSample.Controllers 11: { 12: public class HomeController : Controller 13: { 14: private readonly IBlogRepository blogRepository; 15:   16: public HomeController(IBlogRepository blogRepository) 17: { 18: if (blogRepository == null) 19: throw new ArgumentNullException("blogRepository"); 20:   21: this.blogRepository = blogRepository; 22: } 23:   24: public ActionResult Index() 25: { 26: ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!"; 27:   28: var blogs = blogRepository.GetAll(); 29:   30: return View(new Models.HomeModel { Blogs = blogs }); 31: } 32:   33: public ActionResult About() 34: { 35: return View(); 36: } 37: } 38: }   Consuming the Cache Provider via a Decorator I used a Decorator pattern to consume the cache provider, this means my repositories follow the open/closed principle, as they do not require any modifications to implement the caching. It also means that my controllers do not have any knowledge of the caching taking place, as the DI container will simply inject the decorator instead of the root implementation of the repository. The first step is to implement a BlogRepository decorator, with the caching logic in it. Note that this can reside in the domain layer, as it does not require any knowledge of the data access methods. BlogRepositoryWithCaching.cs 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5:   6: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 7: using CacheDiSample.Domain; 8: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 9:   10: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheDecorators 11: { 12: public class BlogRepositoryWithCaching : IBlogRepository 13: { 14: // The generic cache provider, injected by DI 15: private ICacheProvider<Blog> cacheProvider; 16: // The decorated blog repository, injected by DI 17: private IBlogRepository parentBlogRepository; 18:   19: public BlogRepositoryWithCaching(IBlogRepository parentBlogRepository, ICacheProvider<Blog> cacheProvider) 20: { 21: if (parentBlogRepository == null) 22: throw new ArgumentNullException("parentBlogRepository"); 23:   24: this.parentBlogRepository = parentBlogRepository; 25:   26: if (cacheProvider == null) 27: throw new ArgumentNullException("cacheProvider"); 28:   29: this.cacheProvider = cacheProvider; 30: } 31:   32: public Blog GetByName(string name) 33: { 34: string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetByName.{0}", name); 35: // hard code 5 minute expiry! 36: TimeSpan relativeCacheExpiry = new TimeSpan(0, 5, 0); 37: return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => 38: { 39: return parentBlogRepository.GetByName(name); 40: }, 41: null, relativeCacheExpiry); 42: } 43:   44: public Blog GetById(int id) 45: { 46: string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetById.{0}", id); 47:   48: // hard code 5 minute expiry! 49: TimeSpan relativeCacheExpiry = new TimeSpan(0, 5, 0); 50: return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => 51: { 52: return parentBlogRepository.GetById(id); 53: }, 54: null, relativeCacheExpiry); 55: } 56:   57: public IList<Blog> GetAll() 58: { 59: string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetAll"); 60:   61: // hard code 5 minute expiry! 62: TimeSpan relativeCacheExpiry = new TimeSpan(0, 5, 0); 63: return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => 64: { 65: return parentBlogRepository.GetAll(); 66: }, 67: null, relativeCacheExpiry) 68: .ToList(); 69: } 70: } 71: }   The key things in this caching repository are: I inject into the repository the ICacheProvider<Blog> implementation, via the constructor. This will make the cache provider functionality available to the repository. I inject the parent IBlogRepository implementation (which has the actual data access code), via the constructor. This will allow the methods implemented in the parent to be called if nothing is found in the cache. I override each of the methods implemented in the repository, including those implemented in the generic BaseRepository. Each override of these methods follows the same pattern. It makes a call to the CacheProvider.Fetch method, and passes in the parentBlogRepository implementation of the method as the retrieval method, to be used if nothing is present in the cache. Configuring the Caching Repository in the DI Container The final piece of the jigsaw is to tell Castle Windsor to use the BlogRepositoryWithCaching implementation of IBlogRepository, but to inject the actual Data Access implementation into this decorator. This is easily achieved by modifying the RepositoriesInstaller to use Windsor’s implicit decorator wiring: 1: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; 2: using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; 3: using Castle.Windsor; 4:   5: using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheDecorators; 6: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 7: using CacheDiSample.DataAccess; 8:   9: namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers 10: { 11: public class RepositoriesInstaller : IWindsorInstaller 12: { 13: public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) 14: { 15:   16: // Use Castle Windsor implicit wiring for the block repository decorator 17: // Register the outermost decorator first 18: container.Register(Component.For<IBlogRepository>() 19: .ImplementedBy<BlogRepositoryWithCaching>() 20: .LifestyleTransient()); 21: // Next register the IBlogRepository inmplementation to inject into the outer decorator 22: container.Register(Component.For<IBlogRepository>() 23: .ImplementedBy<BlogRepository>() 24: .LifestyleTransient() 25: .DependsOn(new 26: { 27: nameOrConnectionString = "BloggingContext" 28: })); 29: } 30: } 31: }   This is all that is needed. Now if the consumer of the repository makes a call to the repositories method, it will be routed via the caching mechanism. You can test this by stepping through the code, and seeing that the DataAccess.BlogRepository code is only called if there is no data in the cache, or this has expired. The next step is to add the SQL Cache Dependency support into this pattern, this will be a future post.

    Read the article

  • NFJS Central Iowa Software Symposium Des Moines Trip Report

    - by reza_rahman
    As some of you may be aware, I recently joined the well-respected US based No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Tour. If you work in the US and still don't know what the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Tour is, you are doing yourself a very serious disfavor. NFJS is by far the cheapest and most effective way to stay up to date through some world class speakers and talks. Following the US cultural tradition of old-fashioned roadshows, NFJS is basically a set program of speakers and topics offered at major US cities year round. The NFJS Central Iowa Software Symposium was held August 8 - 10 in Des Moines. The attendance at the event and my sessions was moderate by comparison to some of the other shows. It is one of the few events of it's kind that take place this part the country so it is extremely important. I had five talks total over two days, more or less back-to-back. The first one was my JavaScript + Java EE 7 talk titled "Using JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients with Java EE 7". This talk is basically about aligning EE 7 with the emerging JavaScript ecosystem (specifically AngularJS). The slide deck for the talk is here: JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7 from Reza Rahman The demo application code is posted on GitHub. The code should be a helpful resource if this development model is something that interests you. Do let me know if you need help with it but the instructions should be fairly self-explanatory. I am delivering this material at JavaOne 2014 as a two-hour tutorial. This should give me a little more bandwidth to dig a little deeper, especially on the JavaScript end. The second talk (on the second day) was our flagship Java EE 7/8 talk. Currently the talk is basically about Java EE 7 but I'm slowly evolving the talk to transform it into a Java EE 8 talk as we move forward. The following is the slide deck for the talk: JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond from Reza Rahman The next talk I delivered was my Cargo Tracker/Java EE + DDD talk. This talk basically overviews DDD and describes how DDD maps to Java EE using code examples/demos from the Cargo Tracker Java EE Blue Prints project. Applied Domain-Driven Design Blue Prints for Java EE from Reza Rahman The third was my talk titled "Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE". The talk covers an interesting gap that there is surprisingly little material on out there. The talk has three parts -- a birds-eye view of the NoSQL landscape, how to use NoSQL via a JPA centric facade using EclipseLink NoSQL, Hibernate OGM, DataNucleus, Kundera, Easy-Cassandra, etc and how to use NoSQL native APIs in Java EE via CDI. The slides for the talk are here: Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE from Reza Rahman The JPA based demo is available here, while the CDI based demo is available here. Both demos use MongoDB as the data store. Do let me know if you need help getting the demos up and running. I finishd off the event with a talk titled Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356. The talk introduces HTML 5 WebSocket, overviews JSR 356, tours the API and ends with a small WebSocket demo on GlassFish 4. The slide deck for the talk is posted below. Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 from Reza Rahman The demo code is posted on GitHub: https://github.com/m-reza-rahman/hello-websocket. My next NFJS show is the Greater Atlanta Software Symposium on September 12 - 14. Here's my tour schedule so far, I'll keep you up-to-date as the tour goes forward: September 12 - 14, Atlanta. September 19 - 21, Boston. October 17 - 19, Seattle. I hope you'll take this opportunity to get some updates on Java EE as well as the other useful content on the tour?

    Read the article

  • Let Me Show You Something: Instagram, Vine and Snapchat for Brands

    - by Mike Stiles
    While brands are well aware of how much more impactful images are than text-only posts on social channels, today you’re additionally being presented with platform after additional platform for hosting, doctoring and sharing photos and videos.  Can you play in every sandbox? And if you do, can you be brilliant on all of them? As has usually been the case, so far brands are sticking their toes into new platforms while not actually committing to them, or strategizing for them, or resourcing them. TrackMaven found of the 123 F500 companies using Instagram, only 22% of them are active on it. Likewise, research from Simply Measured found brands are indeed jumping in, with the number establishing a presence on Instagram up 55% over the past year. Users want them there…brand engagement has exploded 350%, and over 1/3 of the top brands have at least 10,000 followers. BUT…the top 10 brands are generating 33% of all posts, reaping 83% of all engagement. Things are also growing on Twitter’s Vine, the 6-second looping video app that hit 40 million users in August. The 7th Chamber says 5 tweets a second contain a Vine link. Other studies say branded Vines are 4 times more likely to be shared and seen than rank-and-file branded videos. Why? Users know that even if a video is pure junk, they won’t get robbed of too much of their valuable time. Vine is always upgrading so you can make sure your videos are worth viewers’ time. You can now edit videos, and save & work on several projects concurrently. What you can’t do is upload a finely crafted video into Vine, but you can do that with Instagram. The key to success? Same as with all other content; make it of value. Deliver a laugh or a lesson or both. How-to, behind the scenes peeks, contests, demos, all make sense in the short video format. Or follow Nash Grier’s example, which is to just have fun with and connect to your viewers, earning their trust that your next Vine will be as good as the last. Nash is only 15, has over 1.4 million followers, and adds about 100,000 a week. He broke out when one of his videos was re-Vined by some other kid with 300,000 followers. Make good stuff, get it in front of influencers, and your brand Vines could break out as well. Then there’s Snapchat, the “this photo will self destruct” platform. How can that be of use to brands besides offering coupons that really expire? The jury is out. But with an audience of over 100 million and a valuation of $800 million, media-with-a-time-limit is compelling. Now there’s “Snapchat Stories” that can last 24 hours and be shared to the public at large. You might be able to capitalize on how much more focus gets put on content when there’s a time limit on its availability. The underlying truth to all of this is, these are all tools. Very cool, feature rich tools, but tools. You can give the exact same art kit to 5 different people and you’d get back 5 very different works, ranging from worthless garbage to masterpiece. Brands are being called upon to be still and moving image artists. That’s what your customers are used to seeing, from a variety of sources. Commit to communicating with them accordingly. @mikestiles Photo: stock.xchng

    Read the article

  • Personal Financial Management – The need for resuscitation

    - by Salil Ravindran
    Until a year or so ago, PFM (Personal Financial Management) was the blue eyed boy of every channel banking head. In an age when bank account portability is still fiction, PFM was expected to incentivise customers to switch banks. It still is, in some emerging economies, but if the state of PFM in matured markets is anything to go by, it is in a state of coma and badly requires resuscitation. Studies conducted around the year show an alarming decline and stagnation in PFM usage in mature markets. A Sept 2012 report by Aite Group – Strategies for PFM Success shows that 72% of users hadn’t used PFM and worse, 58% of them were not kicked about using it. Of the rest who had used it, only half did on a bank site. While there are multiple reasons for this lack of adoption, some are glaringly obvious. While pretty graphs and pie charts are important to provide a visual representation of my income and expense, it is simply not enough to encourage me to return. Static representation of data without any insightful analysis does not help me. Budgeting and Cash Flow is important but when I have an operative account, a couple of savings accounts, a mortgage loan and a couple of credit cards help me with what my affordability is in specific contexts rather than telling me I just busted my budget. Help me with relative importance of each budget category so that I know it is fine to go over budget on books for my daughter as against going over budget on eating out. Budget over runs and spend analysis are post facto and I am informed of my sins only when I return to online banking. That too, only if I decide to come to the PFM area. Fundamentally, PFM should be a part of my banking engagement rather than an analysis tool. It should be contextual so that I can make insight based decisions. So what can be done to resuscitate PFM? Amalgamation with banking activities – In most cases, PFM tools are integrated into online banking pages and they are like chapter 37 of a long story. PFM needs to be a way of banking rather than a tool. Available balances should shift to Spendable Balances. Budget and goal related insights should be integrated with transaction sessions to drive pre-event financial decisions. Personal Financial Guidance - Banks need to think ground level and see if their PFM offering is really helping customers achieve self actualisation. Banks need to recognise that most customers out there are non-proficient about making the best value of their money. Customers return when they know that they are being guided rather than being just informed on their finance. Integrating contextual financial offers and financial planning into PFM is one way ahead. Yet another way is to help customers tag unwanted spending thereby encouraging sound savings habits. Mobile PFM – Most banks have left all those numbers on online banking. With access mostly having moved to devices and the success of apps, moving PFM on to devices will give it a much needed shot in the arm. This is not only about presenting the same wine in a new bottle but also about leveraging the power of the device in pushing real time notifications to make pre-purchase decisions. The pursuit should be to analyse spend, budgets and financial goals real time and push them pre-event on to the device. So next time, I should know that I have over run my eating out budget before walking into that burger joint and not after. Increase participation and collaboration – Peer group experiences and comments are valued above those offered by the bank. Integrating social media into PFM engagement will let customers share and solicit their financial management experiences with their peer group. Peer comparisons help benchmark one’s savings and spending habits with those of the peer group and increases stickiness. While mature markets have gone through this learning in some way over the last one year, banks in maturing digital banking economies increasingly seem to be falling into this trap. Best practices lie in profiling and segmenting customers, being where they are and contextually guiding them to identify and achieve their financial goals. Banks could look at the likes of Simple and Movenbank to draw inpiration from.

    Read the article

  • Social HCM: Is Your Team Listening?

    - by Mike Stiles
    Does integrating Social HCM into your enterprise make sense? Consider Sam and Christina. Sam is a new hire at a big company. On the job 3 weeks, a question has come up on how to properly file an expense report to get reimbursed. It was covered in the onboarding session, but shockingly enough, Sam didn’t memorize or write down every word of the session. The answer is probably in a handout, in a stack of handouts 2 inches thick. It also might be on the employee web site…somewhere. Christina is a new hire at a different big company. She has the same question. She logs into her company’s social network, goes to the “new hires” group, asks her question and gets an answer in seconds. Christina says, “Cool!” Sam says, “Grrrr.” It’s safe to say the qualified talent your company wants is accustomed to using social platforms to communicate and get quick answers. As such, Christina is comfortable at her new company, whereas Sam is wondering what he’s gotten himself into. Companies that cling to talent communication and management systems that don’t speak to talent’s needs or expectations put themselves at risk. Right from the recruiting stage, prospects can determine if a company has embraced the communications tools of the 21st century. If they don’t see it, alarm bells go off. With great talent more in demand than ever, enterprises should reconsider making “this is the way we do it, you adapt to us” their mantra. Other blogs have clearly outlined that apart from meeting top recruits’ expectations, Social HCM benefits the organization itself in terms of efficiency, talent performance & measurement. Recruiting: Jobvite shows 64% of companies hired using social. 89% of job seekers are using social in their search. Social can give employers access to relevant communities of prospects and advance the brand. Nucleus Research found general hiring software can provide over 1,000% ROI by reducing churn and improving screening. Social talent acquisition should perform at least as well. Learning & Development:Employees, learning from the company or from peers, can be kept on top of the latest needed skillsets and engage in self-paced training so as to advance within the company. Performance Management:Just as gamers are egged on by levels and achievements, talent can reach for workplace kudos, be they shout-outs from peers & managers or formally established milestones. Plus employee reviews become consistent and fair as managers have access to the cumulative feedback social offers. Workflow and Collaboration:With workforces dispersing in terms of physical location, social provides a platform that helps eliminate drawbacks that would have brought just 10 years ago. Finding and connecting with just the right colleague to get the most relevant info at any given time has never been more possible…or expected. While yes, marketing has taken the social lead inside the enterprise, HCM (with the word “human” right there in its name) is the obvious locale for the next big integration of social in business. The technology is there. At Oracle, Fusion HCM apps are deeply embedded with Social HCM…just one example of systems taking social across the enterprise. Christina’s company is communicating with her in ways she’s used to. Sam’s company may as well be trying to talk to him using signal flags. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.xchng

    Read the article

  • Getting Help with 'SEPA' Questions

    - by MargaretW
    What is 'SEPA'? The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a self-regulatory initiative for the European banking industry championed by the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). The aim of the SEPA initiative is to improve the efficiency of cross border payments and the economies of scale by developing common standards, procedures, and infrastructure. The SEPA territory currently consists of 33 European countries -- the 28 EU states, together with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway and Switzerland. Part of that infrastructure includes two new SEPA instruments that were introduced in 2008: SEPA Credit Transfer (a Payables transaction in Oracle EBS) SEPA Core Direct Debit (a Receivables transaction in Oracle EBS) A SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) is an outgoing payment instrument for the execution of credit transfers in Euro between customer payment accounts located in SEPA. SEPA Credit Transfers are executed on behalf of an Originator holding a payment account with an Originator Bank in favor of a Beneficiary holding a payment account at a Beneficiary Bank. In R12 of Oracle applications, the current SEPA credit transfer implementation is based on Version 5 of the "SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme Customer-To-Bank Implementation Guidelines" and the "SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme Rulebook" issued by European Payments Council (EPC). These guidelines define the rules to be applied to the UNIFI (ISO20022) XML message standards for the implementation of the SEPA Credit Transfers in the customer-to-bank space. This format is compliant with SEPA Credit Transfer version 6. A SEPA Core Direct Debit (SDD) is an incoming payment instrument used for making domestic and cross-border payments within the 33 countries of SEPA, wherein the debtor (payer) authorizes the creditor (payee) to collect the payment from his bank account. The payment can be a fixed amount like a mortgage payment, or variable amounts such as those of invoices. The "SEPA Core Direct Debit" scheme replaces various country-specific direct debit schemes currently prevailing within the SEPA zone. SDD is based on the ISO20022 XML messaging standards, version 5.0 of the "SEPA Core Direct Debit Scheme Rulebook", and "SEPA Direct Debit Core Scheme Customer-to-Bank Implementation Guidelines". This format is also compliant with SEPA Core Direct Debit version 6. EU Regulation #260/2012 established the technical and business requirements for both instruments in euro. The regulation is referred to as the "SEPA end-date regulation", and also defines the deadlines for the migration to the new SEPA instruments: Euro Member States: February 1, 2014 Non-Euro Member States: October 31, 2016. Oracle and SEPA Within the Oracle E-Business Suite of applications, Oracle Payables (AP), Oracle Receivables (AR), and Oracle Payments (IBY) provide SEPA transaction capabilities for the following releases, as noted: Release 11.5.10.x -  AP & AR Release 12.0.x - AP & AR & IBY Release 12.1.x - AP & AR & IBY Release 12.2.x - AP & AR & IBY Resources To assist our customers in migrating, using, and troubleshooting SEPA functionality, a number of resource documents related to SEPA are available on My Oracle Support (MOS), including: R11i: AP: White Paper - SEPA Credit Transfer V5 support in Oracle Payables, Doc ID 1404743.1R11i: AR: White Paper - SEPA Core Direct Debit v5.0 support in Oracle Receivables, Doc ID 1410159.1R12: IBY: White Paper - SEPA Credit Transfer v5 support in Oracle Payments, Doc ID 1404007.1R12: IBY: White Paper - SEPA Core Direct Debit v5 support in Oracle Payments, Doc ID 1420049.1R11i/R12: AP/AR/IBY: Get Help Setting Up, Using, and Troubleshooting SEPA Payments in Oracle, Doc ID 1594441.2R11i/R12: Single European Payments Area (SEPA) - UPDATES, Doc ID 1541718.1R11i/R12: FAQs for Single European Payments Area (SEPA), Doc ID 791226.1

    Read the article

  • PASS: The Legal Stuff

    - by Bill Graziano
    I wanted to give a little background on the legal status of PASS.  The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) is an American corporation chartered in the state of Illinois.  In America a corporation has to be chartered in a particular state.  It has to abide by the laws of that state and potentially pay taxes to that state.  Our bylaws and actions have to comply with Illinois state law and United States law.  We maintain a mailing address in Chicago, Illinois but our headquarters is currently in Vancouver, Canada. We have roughly a dozen people that work in our Vancouver headquarters and 4-5 more that work remotely on various projects.  These aren’t employees of PASS.  They are employed by a management company that we hire to run the day to day operations of the organization.  I’ll have more on this arrangement in a future post. PASS is a non-profit corporation.  The term non-profit and not-for-profit are used interchangeably.  In a for-profit corporation (or LLC) there are owners that are entitled to the profits of a company.  In a non-profit there are no owners.  As a non-profit, all the money earned by the organization must be retained or spent.  There is no money that flows out to shareholders, owners or the board of directors.  Any money not spent in furtherance of our mission is retained as financial reserves. Many non-profits apply for tax exempt status.  Being tax exempt means that an organization doesn’t pay taxes on its profits.  There are a variety of laws governing who can be tax exempt in the United States.  There are many professional associations that are tax exempt however PASS isn’t tax exempt.  Because our mission revolves around the software of a single company we aren’t eligible for tax exempt status. PASS was founded in the late 1990’s by Microsoft and Platinum Technologies.  Platinum was later purchased by Computer Associates. As the founding partners Microsoft and CA each have two seats on the Board of Directors.  The other six directors and three officers are elected as specified in our bylaws. As a non-profit, our bylaws layout our governing practices.  They must conform to Illinois and United States law.  These bylaws specify that PASS is governed by a Board of Directors elected by the membership with two members each from Microsoft and CA.  You can find our bylaws as well as a proposed update to them on the governance page of the PASS web site. The last point that I’d like to make is that PASS is completely self-funded.  All of our $4 million in revenue comes from conference registrations, sponsorships and advertising.  We don’t receive any money from anyone outside those channels.  While we work closely with Microsoft we are independent of them and only derive a very small percentage of our revenue from them.

    Read the article

  • The inevitable Hello World post!

    - by brendonpage
    Greetings to anyone reading this! This is my first of hopefully many posts. I would like to use this post to introduce myself and to let you know what to expect from this blog in future. Okay so a bit about myself. In case you missed the name of this blog, my name is Brendon Page! I am a Software Developer from South Africa and work for a small company who’s main focus is producing software for the kitchen cupboard industry, although from time to time we do produce custom solutions for other industries. I work in a small team of 3, including myself, and am fortunate enough to work from home! I have been involved in IT since 1996, which is when I got my first PC, and started working as a junior programmer in 2003. Outside of work I enjoy playing squash, PC Games and of course LANing with my friends. If I get any free time between all of that I will usually dedicate some of it to a personal project, these are mainly prototypes for an idea I have had or for something that could be useful at work. I was in 2 minds on whether to include a photo of myself. The reason for this was because while I was looking for a suitable photo to use, it dawned on me how much time I dedicate to pulling funny faces in photos! I also realized how little I shave, which I blame completely on working form home. So after much debate here I am, funny face, beard and all!   Now that you know a bit about me lets move onto what expect from this blog. I work predominantly with Microsoft technologies so most if not all of my posts will be related to something Microsoft. Since most of my job entails Software Development you can expect a lot of posts which will deal with the .NET Framework. I am currently working on a large Silverlight project, so my first few posts will be targeted at in that direction. I will be striving to make the content of my posts as useful as possible from both an explanation and code perspective, I aim to include a working solution for every post, which I will put up on my skydrive for download. Here is what I have planned for my next few posts: Where did my session variables go?  Here I will take you through the lessons I learnt the hard way about the ASP.NET session. I am not going to go into to much depth in this post, as there is already a lot of information available on it. I mainly want to cover it in an effort to keep the scope creep of my posts to a minimum, some the solutions I upload will use it and I would like to have a post that I can reference to explain why I am doing something a certain way. Uploading files through SIlverlight Again there is a lot of existing information on this topic, so I wont be going into to much depth, but I will be using the solution from this as a base for my next post. Generating and Displaying DeepZoom images dynamically in Silverlight Well the title pretty much speaks for it’s self on this one. As I mentioned I will be building off the solution that I create in my ‘Uploading files through Silverlight’ post. Securing DeepZoom images using a custom implementation of the MultiScaleTileSource In this post I will look at the privacy issue surrounding the default usage of DeepZoom images in Silverlight and how to overcome it. This makes the use of DeepZoom in privacy conscious applications more viable. Thanks to anyone who actually read this post! I look forward to producing more which will hopefully be helpful to you.

    Read the article

  • Advanced Record-Level Business Intelligence with Inner Queries

    - by gt0084e1
    While business intelligence is generally applied at an aggregate level to large data sets, it's often useful to provide a more streamlined insight into an individual records or to be able to sort and rank them. For instance, a salesperson looking at a specific customer could benefit from basic stats on that account. A marketer trying to define an ideal customer could pull the top entries and look for insights or patterns. Inner queries let you do sophisticated analysis without the overhead of traditional BI or OLAP technologies like Analysis Services. Example - Order History Constancy Let's assume that management has realized that the best thing for our business is to have customers ordering every month. We'll need to identify and rank customers based on how consistently they buy and when their last purchase was so sales & marketing can respond accordingly. Our current application may not be able to provide this and adding an OLAP server like SSAS may be overkill for our needs. Luckily, SQL Server provides the ability to do relatively sophisticated analytics via inner queries. Here's the kind of output we'd like to see. Creating the Queries Before you create a view, you need to create the SQL query that does the calculations. Here we are calculating the total number of orders as well as the number of months since the last order. These fields might be very useful to sort by but may not be available in the app. This approach provides a very streamlined and high performance method of delivering actionable information without radically changing the application. It's also works very well with self-service reporting tools like Izenda. SELECT CustomerID,CompanyName, ( SELECT COUNT(OrderID) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID ) As Orders, DATEDIFF(mm, ( SELECT Max(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) ,getdate() ) AS MonthsSinceLastOrder FROM Customers Creating Views To turn this or any query into a view, just put CREATE VIEW AS before it. If you want to change it use the statement ALTER VIEW AS. Creating Computed Columns If you'd prefer not to create a view, inner queries can also be applied by using computed columns. Place you SQL in the (Formula) field of the Computed Column Specification or check out this article here. Advanced Scoring and Ranking One of the best uses for this approach is to score leads based on multiple fields. For instance, you may be in a business where customers that don't order every month require more persistent follow up. You could devise a simple formula that shows the continuity of an account. If they ordered every month since their first order, they would be at 100 indicating that they have been ordering 100% of the time. Here's the query that would calculate that. It uses a few SQL tricks to make this happen. We are extracting the count of unique months and then dividing by the months since initial order. This query will give you the following information which can be used to help sales and marketing now where to focus. You could sort by this percentage to know where to start calling or to find patterns describing your best customers. Number of orders First Order Date Last Order Date Percentage of months order was placed since last order. SELECT CustomerID, (SELECT COUNT(OrderID) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) As Orders, (SELECT Max(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) AS LastOrder, (SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) AS FirstOrder, DATEDIFF(mm,(SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID),getdate()) AS MonthsSinceFirstOrder, 100*(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT 100*DATEPART(yy,OrderDate) + DATEPART(mm,OrderDate)) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) / DATEDIFF(mm,(SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID),getdate()) As OrderPercent FROM Customers

    Read the article

  • Using Recursive SQL and XML trick to PIVOT(OK, concat) a "Document Folder Structure Relationship" table, works like MySQL GROUP_CONCAT

    - by Kevin Shyr
    I'm in the process of building out a Data Warehouse and encountered this issue along the way.In the environment, there is a table that stores all the folders with the individual level.  For example, if a document is created here:{App Path}\Level 1\Level 2\Level 3\{document}, then the DocumentFolder table would look like this:IDID_ParentFolderName1NULLLevel 121Level 232Level 3To my understanding, the table was built so that:Each proposal can have multiple documents stored at various locationsDifferent users working on the proposal will have different access level to the folder; if one user is assigned access to a folder level, she/he can see all the sub folders and their content.Now we understand from an application point of view why this table was built this way.  But you can quickly see the pain this causes the report writer to show a document link on the report.  I wasn't surprised to find the report query had 5 self outer joins, which is at the mercy of nobody creating a document that is buried 6 levels deep, and not to mention the degradation in performance.With the help of 2 posts (at the end of this post), I was able to come up with this solution:Use recursive SQL to build out the folder pathUse SQL XML trick to concat the strings.Code (a reminder, I built this code in a stored procedure.  If you copy the syntax into a simple query window and execute, you'll get an incorrect syntax error) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} -- Get all folders and group them by the original DocumentFolderID in PTSDocument table;WITH DocFoldersByDocFolderID(PTSDocumentFolderID_Original, PTSDocumentFolderID_Parent, sDocumentFolder, nLevel)AS (-- first member      SELECT 'PTSDocumentFolderID_Original' = d1.PTSDocumentFolderID            , PTSDocumentFolderID_Parent            , 'sDocumentFolder' = sName            , 'nLevel' = CONVERT(INT, 1000000)      FROM (SELECT DISTINCT PTSDocumentFolderID                  FROM dbo.PTSDocument_DY WITH(READPAST)            ) AS d1            INNER JOIN dbo.PTSDocumentFolder_DY AS df1 WITH(READPAST)                  ON d1.PTSDocumentFolderID = df1.PTSDocumentFolderID      UNION ALL      -- recursive      SELECT ddf1.PTSDocumentFolderID_Original            , df1.PTSDocumentFolderID_Parent            , 'sDocumentFolder' = df1.sName            , 'nLevel' = ddf1.nLevel - 1      FROM dbo.PTSDocumentFolder_DY AS df1 WITH(READPAST)            INNER JOIN DocFoldersByDocFolderID AS ddf1                  ON df1.PTSDocumentFolderID = ddf1.PTSDocumentFolderID_Parent)-- Flatten out folder path, DocFolderSingleByDocFolderID(PTSDocumentFolderID_Original, sDocumentFolder)AS (SELECT dfbdf.PTSDocumentFolderID_Original            , 'sDocumentFolder' = STUFF((SELECT '\' + sDocumentFolder                                         FROM DocFoldersByDocFolderID                                         WHERE (PTSDocumentFolderID_Original = dfbdf.PTSDocumentFolderID_Original)                                         ORDER BY PTSDocumentFolderID_Original, nLevel                                         FOR XML PATH ('')),1,1,'')      FROM DocFoldersByDocFolderID AS dfbdf      GROUP BY dfbdf.PTSDocumentFolderID_Original) And voila, I use the second CTE to join back to my original query (which is now a CTE for Source as we can now use MERGE to do INSERT and UPDATE at the same time).Each part of this solution would not solve the problem by itself because:If I don't use recursion, I cannot build out the path properly.  If I use the XML trick only, then I don't have the originating folder ID info that I need to link to the document.If I don't use the XML trick, then I don't have one row per document to show in the report.I could conceivably do this in the report function, but I'd rather not deal with the beginning or ending backslash and how to attach the document name.PIVOT doesn't do strings and UNPIVOT runs into the same problem as the above.I'm excited that each version of SQL server provides us new tools to solve old problems and/or enables us to solve problems in a more elegant wayThe 2 posts that helped me along:Recursive Queries Using Common Table ExpressionHow to use GROUP BY to concatenate strings in SQL server?

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 03, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 03, 2012Popular ReleasesZXMAK2: Version 2.6.8.2: fix save to SZX snapshot for +3 model fix +3 ULA timingsLaunchbar: Launchbar 4.2.2.0: This release is the first step in cleaning up the code and using all the latest features of .NET 4.5 Changes 4.2.2 (2012-11-02) Improved handling of left clicks 4.1.0 (2012-10-17) Removed tray icon Assembly renamed and signed with strong name Note When you upgrade, Launchbar will start with the default settings. You can import your previous settings by following these steps: Run Launchbar and just save the settings without configuring anything Shutdown Launchbar Go to the folder %LOCA...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.8: Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.8 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8.8 Build: 0.9.8.8 Changeset: 77368 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: November 2nd, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/ Download: http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com/releases/view/90426 Source code: http://common...Mouse Jiggler: MouseJiggle-1.3: This adds the much-requested minimize-to-tray feature to Mouse Jiggler.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0 Release Candidate: This is a Release Candidate, which means that if we do not find any major issues in the next week, we will release this version as the final release of 4.10.0 on November 9th, 2012. The documentation for the MVC bits still lives in the Github version of the docs for now and will be updated on our.umbraco.org with the final release of 4.10.0. Browse the documentation here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco4Docs/tree/4.8.0/Documentation/Reference/Mvc If you want to do only MVC then make sur...Skype Auto Recorder: SkypeAutoRecorder 1.3.4: New icon and images. Reworked settings window. Implemented high-quality sound encoding. Implemented a possibility to produce stereo records. Added buttons with system-wide hot keys for manual starting and canceling of recording. Added buttons for opening folder with records. Added Help button. Fixed an issue when recording is continuing after call end. Fixed an issue when recording doesn't start. Fixed several bugs and improved stability. Major refactoring and optimization...Access 2010 Application Platform - Build Your Own Database: Application Platform - 0.0.2: Release 0.0.2 Created two new users. One belongs to the Administrators group and the other to the Public group. User: admin Pass: admin User: guest Pass: guest Initial Release This is the first version of the database. At the moment is all contained in one file to make development easier, but the obvious idea would be to split it into Front and Back End for a production version of the tool. The features it contains at the moment are the "Core" features.Python Tools for Visual Studio: Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, etc. support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video There are a number of exciting improvement in this release comp...BCF.Net: BCF.Net: BCF.Net-20121024 source codeAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.5: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Changelog: Fixed potential bot bugs: Map change, OpenAL...Edi: Edi 1.0 with DarkExpression: Added DarkExpression theme (dialogs and message boxes are not completely themed, yet)DirectX Tool Kit: October 30, 2012 (add WP8 support): October 30, 2012 Added project files for Windows Phone 8MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.6: Changelog for 2.3.6 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug in multichannel audio conversion failure. AAC does not support 6 channel audio, MCEBuddy now checks for it and force the output to 2 channel if AAC codec is specified 2. Fixed a bug in Original Broadcast Date and Time. Original Broadcast Date and Time is reported in UTC timezone in WTV metadata. TVDB and MovieDB dates are reported in network timezone. It is assumed the video is recorded and converted on the same machine, i.e. local timezone...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V4.1 for Visual Studio 2012: This version only supports Visual Studio 2012 (and all Express editions too). If you use Visual Studio 2010, please stay tuned, we will publish an update in a few days with support for VS10. V4.1 supports: Windows Phone 8 Windows 8 (Windows RT) Silverlight 5 Silverlight 4 WPF 4.5 WPF 4 WPF 3.5 And the following development environments: Visual Studio 2012 (Pro, Premium, Ultimate) Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 Visual...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.73: Fix issue in Discussion #401101 (unreferenced var in a for-in statement was getting removed). add the grouping operator to the parsed output so that unminified parsed code is closer to the original. Will still strip unneeded parens later, if minifying. more cleaning of references as they are minified out of the code.RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.03: changes NEW: Added Support for the phun.org forum FIXED: Kitty-Kats new Forum UrlLiberty: v3.4.0.1 Release 28th October 2012: Change Log -Fixed -H4 Fixed the save verification screen showing incorrect mission and difficulty information for some saves -H4 Hopefully fixed the issue where progress did not save between missions and saves would not revert correctly -H3 Fixed crashes that occurred when trying to load player information -Proper exception dialogs will now show in place of crashesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 7): This release is compatible with the version of the Smooth Streaming SDK released today (10/26). Release 1 of the player framework is expected to be available next week. IMPROVEMENTS & FIXESIMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 6 Support for the latest smooth streaming SDK. Xaml only: Support for moving any of the UI elements outside the MediaPlayer (e.g. into the appbar). Note: Equivelent changes to the JS version due in coming week. Support for localizing all text used in t...Send multiple SMS via Way2SMS C#: SMS 1.1: Added support for 160by2Quick Launch: Quick Launch 1.0: A Lightweight and Fast Way to Manage and Launch Thousands of Tools and ApplicationsPress Win+Q and start to search and run. http://www.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=quicklaunch&DownloadId=523536New Projectsappnitiren: This project's main objective is to deepen my knowledge on developing apps for windows 8 and windows phone and Buddhist philosophy of Nichiren Daishonin. Aspect - TypeScript AOP Framework: A simple AOP framework for TypeScript.AWF's PowerPoint Tab: A collection of little powerpoint utilities, including "resize all shapes".Base64 Encoder-Decoder: (Base64 Encoder/Decoder using C#)BombaJob-WF: Official Windows desktop client for BombaJob.bgBungie Test: !CCAudio: A project to create an audio recording/mixing and processing framework in C#/C++ with a look to creating a Digital Audio Workstation. EvaluationSyarem: for yuanguangexporttfschangesets: Small utility that runs agains tftp.exe(tfs power tools) and exports a given range of changesets.fjfdszjtfs: fjfdszjtfsKladionica: Ovo je mala web aplikacija koja je specijalizovana za f1 kladionicu na forumu KrstaricaListViewItem Float Test: WPF testing ground for development of a "floating" listviewitem (preeettty)Macconnell: This is my test projectNWebsec Demo site: This is the NWebsec demo website project.Ocean Flattened: Summary of this projectQuagmire: QUAGMIRE aims to make distributed data processing and visualisation simple and flexible.Scheduled SQL Jobs for DotNetNuke by IowaComputerGurus Inc.: Keeping a DotNetNuke site database clean can be a real nightmare for those hosting sites on shared hosting providers.Secretary Tool: Tool for secretaries of congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses.Secure My Install for DotNetNuke by IowaComputerGurus: This module is a single-use per DotNetNuke installation utility module that will make a number of security enhancing modifications to your "out of the box" DotNServStop: ServStop is a .NET application that makes it easy to stop several system services at once. Now you don't have to change startup types or stop them one at a time. It has a simple list-based interface with the ability to save and load lists of user services to stop. Written in C#.Simple File List for DotNetNuke by IowaComputerGurus Inc.: The Simple File List module is a Free DotNetNuke module that will list all files within a specific folder under the specific portal folder within DNN for users SOLUS3 Config Discovery: An open-source community developed tool for generating a simple text file detailing your local SIMS server settings to simplify new SOLUS3 configurations.Sort Project: Project Name: Sort Project Description: This project holds a class that extends objects type of IEnumerable by enabling them using sorting algorithms other than the buil in one within the microsoft staff SQL Azure Data Protector: This tool leverages the currently available options that Azure platform has to provide an integrated and automated solution to back up the SQL Azure databases.Throttling Suite for ASP.NET Applications: The Throttling Suite provides throttling control capabilities to the ASP.NET applications. It is highly customizable; including "log-only" mode.TidyBackups: Allows for automation of deletion of Microsoft SQL backup files based on file type (.bak) creation age as well as compression using standard ZIP technology.TrainingData: TrainingData is a set of libraries for reading and modifying training data files for Garmin and Polar heart rate monitors.Virtual eCommerce: ??? ? ?????? ????????? ??????. ??????: ??????????? ?????????, ?????????? ?????????? ?? ????????????? ?? Microsoft - ASP Web Pages with Razor Engine.WebNext: My personal web page / blog with cms on asp mvc 3Windows 8 Mouse Unsticky: Makes Windows 8 top right/left hot corners unsticky.WPForms: WPForms is simple framework for Form-driven Silverlight Windows Phone applications. Using the framework allows developers to easily create and display forms.

    Read the article

  • Caching factory design

    - by max
    I have a factory class XFactory that creates objects of class X. Instances of X are very large, so the main purpose of the factory is to cache them, as transparently to the client code as possible. Objects of class X are immutable, so the following code seems reasonable: # module xfactory.py import x class XFactory: _registry = {} def get_x(self, arg1, arg2, use_cache = True): if use_cache: hash_id = hash((arg1, arg2)) if hash_id in _registry: return _registry[hash_id] obj = x.X(arg1, arg2) _registry[hash_id] = obj return obj # module x.py class X: # ... Is it a good pattern? (I know it's not the actual Factory Pattern.) Is there anything I should change? Now, I find that sometimes I want to cache X objects to disk. I'll use pickle for that purpose, and store as values in the _registry the filenames of the pickled objects instead of references to the objects. Of course, _registry itself would have to be stored persistently (perhaps in a pickle file of its own, in a text file, in a database, or simply by giving pickle files the filenames that contain hash_id). Except now the validity of the cached object depends not only on the parameters passed to get_x(), but also on the version of the code that created these objects. Strictly speaking, even a memory-cached object could become invalid if someone modifies x.py or any of its dependencies, and reloads it while the program is running. So far I ignored this danger since it seems unlikely for my application. But I certainly cannot ignore it when my objects are cached to persistent storage. What can I do? I suppose I could make the hash_id more robust by calculating hash of a tuple that contains arguments arg1 and arg2, as well as the filename and last modified date for x.py and every module and data file that it (recursively) depends on. To help delete cache files that won't ever be useful again, I'd add to the _registry the unhashed representation of the modified dates for each record. But even this solution isn't 100% safe since theoretically someone might load a module dynamically, and I wouldn't know about it from statically analyzing the source code. If I go all out and assume every file in the project is a dependency, the mechanism will still break if some module grabs data from an external website, etc.). In addition, the frequency of changes in x.py and its dependencies is quite high, leading to heavy cache invalidation. Thus, I figured I might as well give up some safety, and only invalidate the cache only when there is an obvious mismatch. This means that class X would have a class-level cache validation identifier that should be changed whenever the developer believes a change happened that should invalidate the cache. (With multiple developers, a separate invalidation identifier is required for each.) This identifier is hashed along with arg1 and arg2 and becomes part of the hash keys stored in _registry. Since developers may forget to update the validation identifier or not realize that they invalidated existing cache, it would seem better to add another validation mechanism: class X can have a method that returns all the known "traits" of X. For instance, if X is a table, I might add the names of all the columns. The hash calculation will include the traits as well. I can write this code, but I am afraid that I'm missing something important; and I'm also wondering if perhaps there's a framework or package that can do all of this stuff already. Ideally, I'd like to combine in-memory and disk-based caching.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425  | Next Page >