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• SR Activity Summaries Via Direct Email? You Bet!

  - by PCat

  Courtesy of Ken Walker. I’m a “bottom line” kind of guy.  My friends and co-workers will tell you that I’m a “Direct Communicator” when it comes to work or my social life.  For example, if I were to come up with a fantastic new recipe for a low-fat pan fried chicken, I’d Tweet, email, or find a way to blast the recipe directly to you so that you could enjoy it immediately.  My friends would see the subject, “Awesome New Fried Chicken” and they’d click and see the recipe there before them.Others are “Indirect Communicators.”  My friend Joel is like this.  He would post the recipe in his blog, and then Tweet or email a link back to his blog with a subject, “Fried Chicken.”  Then Joel would sit back and expect his friends to read the email, AND click the link to his blog, and then read the recipe.  As a fan of the “Direct” method, I wish there was a way for me to “Opt-in” for immediate updates from Joel so I could see the recipe without having to click over to his blog to search for it.The same is true for MOS.  If you’ve ever opened a Service Request through My Oracle Support (MOS), you know that most of the communication between you and the Oracle Support Engineer with respect to the issue in the SR, is done via email.  Which type of email would you rather receive in your email account? Example1:Your SR has been updated.  Click HERE to see the update. Or Example2:Your SR has been updated.  Here is the update:  “Hi John, Oracle Development has completed the patch we’ve been waiting for!  Here’s a direct “LINK” to the patch that should resolve your issue.  Please download and install the patch via the instructions (included with the link) and let me know if it does, in fact, resolve your issue!”Example2 is available to you!  All you need to do is to “Opt-In” for the direct email updates.  The default is for the indirect update as seen in Example1.  To turn on “Service Request Details in Email” simply follow these instructions (aided by the screenshot below):1.    Log into MOS, and click on your name in the upper right corner.  Select “My Account.”2.    Make sure “My Account” is highlighted in bold on the left.3.    Turn ON, “Service Request Details in Email” That’s it!  You will now receive the SR Updates, directly in your email account without having to log into MOS, click the SR, scroll down to the updates, etc.  That’s better than Fried Chicken!  (Well; almost better....).

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• 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.

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• Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role'ing in the deep

  - by Chris George

  Since last time I've been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It's fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my 'page', one for the list, one for the compass. Then using the onClick event in the list, this will switch the display attribute on the divs. This seemed to work, but did lead to some dodgy transitional redrawing artefacts which I was not happy with. So after some Googling I realised I was doing it all wrong! JQuery mobile has the concept of giving an object in html a data-role. By giving a div the attribute data-role="page" it is then treated as a separate page on the mobile device. Within the code, this is referenced like a html anchor in the form #mypage. Using this system, page transitions such as fade or slide are automatically applied which adds to the whole authenticity of the app! Here is a simple example: . <a href="#'compasspage">compass</a> . <div data-role="page" id="compasspage" data-add-back-btn="true"> But I don't want just a static link, I want to dynamically create my list, and get each list elements to switch to the compass page with the right information. So here is the jquery that I used to dynamically inject new <li> rows into the <ul> block. $('ul').append($('<li/>', {    //here appendin `<li>`     'data-role': "list-divider" }).append($('<a/>', {    //here appending `<a>` into `<li>`     'href': '#compasspage',     'data-transition': 'none',     'onclick': 'selectTx(' + i + ')',     'html': buttonHtml }))); $('ul').listview('refresh'); This is called within a for loop so the first 5 appropriate transmitters are used. There are several things of interest to note here. Firstly, I could not find a more elegant way to tell the target page which transmitter I've clicked on, so I have used the onclick event as well as the href attribute. The onclick event fires 'selectTx' which simply sets a global member variable to the specific index number I've clicked on. Yes it's not nice, but it works. Secondly, the data-transition attribute is set to 'none'. I wanted the transition between the pages to be a whooshy slidey effect. However this worked going to the compass page, but returning to the list page gave some undesirable visual artefacts (flickering, redrawing etc.). So I decided to remove the transitions all together, which was a shame. Thirdly, rather than embedding loads of html into the append command, I removed this out into a variable 'buttonHtml'. Doing this really tidied up my code. Until next time!

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• Documentation and Test Assertions in Databases

  - by Phil Factor

  When I first worked with Sybase/SQL Server, we thought our databases were impressively large but they were, by today’s standards, pathetically small. We had one script to build the whole database. Every script I ever read was richly annotated; it was more like reading a document. Every table had a comment block, and every line would be commented too. At the end of each routine (e.g. procedure) was a quick integration test, or series of test assertions, to check that nothing in the build was broken. We simply ran the build script, stored in the Version Control System, and it pulled everything together in a logical sequence that not only created the database objects but pulled in the static data. This worked fine at the scale we had. The advantage was that one could, by reading the source code, reach a rapid understanding of how the database worked and how one could interface with it. The problem was that it was a system that meant that only one developer at the time could work on the database. It was very easy for a developer to execute accidentally the entire build script rather than the selected section on which he or she was working, thereby cleansing the database of everyone else’s work-in-progress and data. It soon became the fashion to work at the object level, so that programmers could check out individual views, tables, functions, constraints and rules and work on them independently. It was then that I noticed the trend to generate the source for the VCS retrospectively from the development server. Tables were worst affected. You can, of course, add or delete a table’s columns and constraints retrospectively, which means that the existing source no longer represents the current object. If, after your development work, you generate the source from the live table, then you get no block or line comments, and the source script is sprinkled with silly square-brackets and other confetti, thereby rendering it visually indigestible. Routines, too, were affected. In our system, every routine had a directly attached string of unit-tests. A retro-generated routine has no unit-tests or test assertions. Yes, one can still commit our test code to the VCS but it’s a separate module and teams end up running the whole suite of tests for every individual change, rather than just the tests for that routine, which doesn’t scale for database testing. With Extended properties, one can get the best of both worlds, and even use them to put blame, praise or annotations into your VCS. It requires a lot of work, though, particularly the script to generate the table. The problem is that there are no conventional names beyond ‘MS_Description’ for the special use of extended properties. This makes it difficult to do splendid things such ensuring the integrity of the build by running a suite of tests that are actually stored in extended properties within the database and therefore the VCS. We have lost the readability of database source code over the years, and largely jettisoned the use of test assertions as part of the database build. This is not unexpected in view of the increasing complexity of the structure of databases and number of programmers working on them. There must, surely, be a way of getting them back, but I sometimes wonder if I’m one of very few who miss them.

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• When does a Tumbling Window Start in StreamInsight

  Whilst getting some courseware ready I was playing around writing some code and I decided to very simply show when a window starts and ends based on you asking for a TumblingWindow of n time units in StreamInsight.  I thought this was going to be a two second thing but what I found was something I haven’t yet found documented anywhere until now.   All this code is written in C# and will slot straight into my favourite quick-win dev tool LinqPad   Let’s first create a sample dataset   var EnumerableCollection = new [] { new {id = 1, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 2, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:20:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 3, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:30:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 4, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:40:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 5, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 12:50:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 6, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 01:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 7, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 01:10:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 8, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 02:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 9, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 03:20:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 10, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 03:30:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 11, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 04:40:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 12, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 04:50:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 13, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 05:00:00 PM").ToLocalTime()}, new {id = 14, StartTime = DateTime.Parse("2010-10-01 05:10:00 PM").ToLocalTime()} };   Now let’s create a stream of point events   var inputStream = EnumerableCollection .ToPointStream(Application,evt=> PointEvent .CreateInsert(evt.StartTime,evt),AdvanceTimeSettings.StrictlyIncreasingStartTime);   Now we can create our windows over the stream.  The first window we will create is a one hour tumbling window.  We’'ll count the events in the window but what we do here is not the point, the point is our window edges.   var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromHours(1),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()};   Now we can have a look at what we get.  I am only going to show the first non Cti event as that is enough to demonstrate what is going on   windowedStream.ToIntervalEnumerable().First(e=> e.EventKind == EventKind.Insert).Dump("First Row from Windowed Stream");   The results are below   EventKind Insert   StartTime 01/10/2010 12:00   EndTime 01/10/2010 13:00     { CountOfEntries = 5 }   Payload CountOfEntries 5   Now this makes sense and is quite often the width of window specified in examples.  So what happens if I change the windowing code now to var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromHours(5),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()}; Now where does your window start?  What about   var windowedStream = from win in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(13),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new {CountOfEntries = win.Count()};   Well for the first example your window will start at 01/10/2010 10:00:00 , and for the second example it will start at  01/10/2010 11:55:00 Surprised?   Here is the reason why and thanks to the StreamInsight team for listening.   Windows start at TimeSpan.MinValue. Windows are then created from that point onwards of the size you specified in your code.  If a window contains no events they are not produced by the engine to the output.  This is why window start times can be before the first event is created.

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• No external microphone Acer AO722

  - by Leeghwater

  The ACER AO722 comes with an external mic input, and this input is not recognised by Alsa mixer or Sound (in System Settings). There are various comments on this problem, but no real solutions. For example External Mic not working but Internal Mic works on an Acer Aspiron AO722. Using the internal mic is not an option, as I need to use skype professionally. I have tried everything in alsamixer (accessible through the Terminal Ctrl+Alt+t, command: alsamixer), and in Sound (under System Settings). I have also installed Pulseaudio. But to no avail. The headset is working normally under Skype in Windows. My AO722 came with Windows 7 on it, so I have installed Skype there too. My headset has separate connectors for ears and mic, and these go into the respective output and input on the right side of the laptop. This location: http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/202-ubuntu-acer-ao722 sounds like an effective solution but it is for Ubuntu Natty 11.04. The solution suggested sounds drastic to me: replace the kernel 2.6.38-13 with version 2.6.38-12. I use Ubuntu 12.04, and my kernel is 3.2.0-30-generic-pae. Question: could I try this solution with Ubuntu 12.04? Is this a risky thing to do? I have found harware work around this problem. The audio output seems to be a combi output with also a microphone connection. I have made an adapter for this output. I used a 4 contacts 3,5 mm audio jack plug. To this plug I have soldered 2 female (common stereo) connectors, one for ears and one for the mic of my headset. The 4 contacts jack, which goes into the laptop (in audio OUTput) is wired as follows: tip = hot audio right; first sleeve after tip = hot audio left; second sleeve = common earth (for both ears and microphone); the 3rd sleeve = microphone signal input. In the connector which I could buy, the 3rd sleeve is not so much a sleeve, but part of the metal base of the connector; normally you would expect this one to be connect to earth. But connecting the mic signal to it works. Maybe ready made adapters of this kind and even headsets with a combi jack can simply be purchased; I didn't check. When I plug in the 4 contacts jack, Sound and Alsamixer immediately recognise an external microphone (even if no mic is connected to the adapter). In Sound, under the Input tab, 'Settings for internal microphone' changes into 'Setting for microphone'. The microphone comes through loud and clear, however there is a constant noise in the background. Others have reported this too. If I disconnect the external mic from the adapter, or shortcircuit the external microphone, the noise gets less but does not disappear. Therefore, it is not background noise from the room, but it comes from the computer itself. However, if you talk directly in the microphone of the headset, the noise level is acceptable for VOIP. The headset of my mobile phone Nokia C1 mobile comes wwith a 4 contacts combi 3,5mm jack plug. However, this one works (ear and mic) with the AO722 only if not inserted fully. Possibly the wiring of this headset jack is different. I cannot find detailed specs of the AO722, and don't know whether the audio 'output' was actually designed as a combi input/output. I have seen that at least one other AO model has a combi connector only. In any case, I do not believe that connecting your headset in this way will harm your computer. I would still appreciate a software solution. This must be possible, because the proper microphone input connector works under MS Windows.

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• WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

  - by alexhildyard

  I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

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• Head in the Clouds

  - by Tony Davis

  We're just past the second anniversary of the launch of Windows Azure. A couple of years' experience with Azure in the industry has provided some obvious success stories, but has deflated some of the initial marketing hyperbole. As a general principle, Azure seems to work well in providing a Service-Oriented Architecture for services in enterprises that suffer wide fluctuations in demand. Instead of being obliged to provide hardware sufficient for the occasional peaks in demand, one can hire capacity only when it is needed, and the cost of hosting an application is no longer a capital cost. It enables companies to avoid having to scale out hardware for peak periods only to see it underused for the rest of the time. A customer-facing application such as a concert ticketing system, which suffers high demand in short, predictable bursts of activity, is a great example of an application that would work well in Azure. However, moving existing applications to Azure isn't something to be done on impulse. Unless your application is .NET-based, and consists of 'stateless' components that communicate via queues, you are probably in for a lot of redevelopment work. It makes most sense for IT departments who are already deep in this .NET mindset, and who also want 'grown-up' methods of staging, testing, and deployment. Azure fits well with this culture and offers, as a bonus, good Visual Studio integration. The most-commonly stated barrier to porting these applications to Azure is the problem of reconciling the use of the cloud with legislation for data privacy and security. Putting databases in the cloud is a sticky issue for many and impossible for some due to compliance and security issues, the need for direct control over data, and so on. In the face of feedback from the early adopters of Azure, Microsoft has broadened the architectural choices to cater for a wide range of requirements. As well as SQL Azure Database (SAD) and Azure storage, the unstructured 'BLOB and Entity-Attribute-Value' NoSQL storage alternative (which equates more closely with folders and files than a database), Windows Azure offers a wide range of storage options including use of services such as oData: developers who are programming for Windows Azure can simply choose the one most appropriate for their needs. Secondly, and crucially, the Windows Azure architecture allows you the freedom to produce hybrid applications, where only those parts that need cloud-based hosting are deployed to Azure, whereas those parts that must unavoidably be hosted in a corporate datacenter can stay there. By using a hybrid architecture, it will seldom, if ever, be necessary to move an entire application to the cloud, along with personal and financial data. For example that we could port to Azure only put those parts of our ticketing application that capture and process tickets orders. Once an order is captured, the financial side can be processed in our own data center. In short, Windows Azure seems to be a very effective way of providing services that are subject to wide but predictable fluctuations in demand. Have you come to the same conclusions, or do you think I've got it wrong? If you've had experience with Azure, would you recommend it? It would be great to hear from you. Cheers, Tony.

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• Make your TSQL easier to read during a presentation

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server Management Studio 2012 has some neat settings that you can use to help your presentations at a SQL event better for the attendees if you are willing to spend a few minutes making some settings changes. Historically, I have been reluctant to make changes to my SSMS settings as it is such a tedious process and it’s not 100% clear that what you think you are changing is actually what gets changed. With SSMS 2012 this has become a lot easier and a lot less risky. In any session that involves TSQL there is a trade off between the speaker having all the code on screen and the attendees being able to read any of what is on screen. You (the speaker) might be able to read this when you are working on the code but plenty of your audience wont be able to make head or tail of it. SSMS 2012 has a zoom facility that can help: but don’t go nuts … Having the font too big means you will be scrolling a lot and the code will again be rendered unreadable. There is more though but you need to take a deep breath and open the Tools menu and delve into the SSMS options. In previous versions of SSMS this is a deep, dark and scary place where changing values can be obscure and sometimes catastrophic to the UI when you get back to the code editor. First things first, we set out as a good DBA and save our current (and presumably acceptable) SSMS configuration. From the import and Export Settings you can set up a file to hold all of the settings that you currently have. The wizard will open and ask you to pick an option. This time around choose to export settings. hit next and next again and then name your settings profile in the final step of the wizard and then click Finish. Once this is done then you can change whatever you like and always get back to this configuration in a couple of clicks. So what can you change to make for a good experience? Well there are plenty of things that can be altered but don’t go too mad and change too many things without taking a look at the results for every item on the list above you can change font, size, weight, colour, background colour etc. etc. but consider what you are trying to achieve and take it slowly. I have seen presenters with their settings set to have a yellow highlight and black font rather than the default pale blue background and slightly darker font so to achieve that select Text Editor and then select “Selected Text” in the Display Items listbox. As you change things the Sample area give you an idea of what effect you are going to have. Black and yellow is the colour combination with the highest contrast – that’s why bees and wasps# are that colour. What next? how about increasing the default font for your demo scripts? This means that any script you open and any new ones that you start will take on this font. No more zooming (or forgetting to) in the middle of sessions. now don’t forget to save this profile – follow the same steps as above but give the profile a different name, something like PresentationBigFontHighContrast might be appropriate. Once you are done making changes, export the settings once more and then go into the Import Export wizard and import settings from the first profile you created. Everything will be back to normal. Now making changes to suit your environment can be done very easily and with confidence. * – and warning tape and safety signs and so forth – Health and Safety officers simply copy nature!

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• Feynman's inbox

  - by user12607414

  Here is Richard Feynman writing on the ease of criticizing theories, and the difficulty of forming them: The problem is not just to say something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy. As soon as any really definite idea is substituted it becomes almost immediately apparent that it does not work. The second difficulty is that there is an infinite number of possibilities of these simple types. It is something like this. You are sitting working very hard, you have worked for a long time trying to open a safe. Then some Joe comes along who knows nothing about what you are doing, except that you are trying to open the safe. He says ‘Why don’t you try the combination 10:20:30?’ Because you are busy, you have tried a lot of things, maybe you have already tried 10:20:30. Maybe you know already that the middle number is 32 not 20. Maybe you know as a matter of fact that it is a five digit combination… So please do not send me any letters trying to tell me how the thing is going to work. I read them — I always read them to make sure that I have not already thought of what is suggested — but it takes too long to answer them, because they are usually in the class ‘try 10:20:30’. (“Seeking New Laws”, page 161 in The Character of Physical Law.) As a sometime designer (and longtime critic) of widely used computer systems, I have seen similar difficulties appear when anyone undertakes to publicly design a piece of software that may be used by many thousands of customers. (I have been on both sides of the fence, of course.) The design possibilities are endless, but the deep design problems are usually hidden beneath a mass of superfluous detail. The sheer numbers can be daunting. Even if only one customer out of a thousand feels a need to express a passionately held idea, it can take a long time to read all the mail. And it is a fact of life that many of those strong suggestions are only weakly supported by reason or evidence. Opinions are plentiful, but substantive research is time-consuming, and hence rare. A related phenomenon commonly seen with software is bike-shedding, where interlocutors focus on surface details like naming and syntax… or (come to think of it) like lock combinations. On the other hand, software is easier than quantum physics, and the population of people able to make substantial suggestions about software systems is several orders of magnitude bigger than Feynman’s circle of colleagues. My own work would be poorer without contributions — sometimes unsolicited, sometimes passionately urged on me — from the open source community. If a Nobel prize winner thought it was worthwhile to read his mail on the faint chance of learning a good idea, I am certainly not going to throw mine away. (In case anyone is still reading this, and is wondering what provoked a meditation on the quality of one’s inbox contents, I’ll simply point out that the volume has been very high, for many months, on the Lambda-Dev mailing list, where the next version of the Java language is being discussed. Bravo to those of my colleagues who are surfing that wave.) I started this note thinking there was an odd parallel between the life of the physicist and that of a software designer. On second thought, I’ll bet that is the story for anybody who works in public on something requiring special training. (And that would be pretty much anything worth doing.) In any case, Feynman saw it clearly and said it well.

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• Stepping outside Visual Studio IDE [Part 2 of 2] with Mono 2.6.4

  - by mbcrump

  Continuing part 2 of my Stepping outside the Visual Studio IDE, is the open-source Mono Project. Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com/), Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. A growing family of solutions and an active and enthusiastic contributing community is helping position Mono to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications. So, to clarify. You can use Mono to develop .NET applications that will run on Linux, Windows or Mac. It’s basically a IDE that has roots in Linux. Let’s first look at the compatibility: Compatibility If you already have an application written in .Net, you can scan your application with the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) to determine if your application uses anything not supported by Mono. The current release version of Mono is 2.6. (Released December 2009) The easiest way to describe what Mono currently supports is: Everything in .NET 3.5 except WPF and WF, limited WCF. Here is a slightly more detailed view, by .NET framework version: Implemented C# 3.0 System.Core LINQ ASP.Net 3.5 ASP.Net MVC C# 2.0 (generics) Core Libraries 2.0: mscorlib, System, System.Xml ASP.Net 2.0 - except WebParts ADO.Net 2.0 Winforms/System.Drawing 2.0 - does not support right-to-left C# 1.0 Core Libraries 1.1: mscorlib, System, System.Xml ASP.Net 1.1 ADO.Net 1.1 Winforms/System.Drawing 1.1 Partially Implemented LINQ to SQL - Mostly done, but a few features missing WCF - silverlight 2.0 subset completed Not Implemented WPF - no plans to implement WF - Will implement WF 4 instead on future versions of Mono. System.Management - does not map to Linux System.EnterpriseServices - deprecated Links to documentation. The Official Mono FAQ’s Links to binaries. Mono IDE Latest Version is 2.6.4 That's it, nothing more is required except to compile and run .net code in Linux. Installation After landing on the mono project home page, you can select which platform you want to download. I typically pick the Virtual PC image since I spend all of my day using Windows 7. Go ahead and pick whatever version is best for you. The Virtual PC image comes with Suse Linux. Once the image is launch, you will see the following: I’m not going to go through each option but its best to start with “Start Here” icon. It will provide you with information on new projects or existing VS projects. After you get Mono installed, it's probably a good idea to run a quick Hello World program to make sure everything is setup properly. This allows you to know that your Mono is working before you try writing or running a more complex application. To write a "Hello World" program follow these steps: Start Mono Development Environment. Create a new Project: File->New->Solution Select "Console Project" in the category list. Enter a project name into the Project name field, for example, "HW Project". Click "Forward" Click “Packaging” then OK. You should have a screen very simular to a VS Console App. Click the "Run" button in the toolbar (Ctrl-F5). Look in the Application Output and you should have the “Hello World!” Your screen should look like the screen below. That should do it for a simple console app in mono. To test out an ASP.NET application, simply copy your code to a new directory in /srv/www/htdocs, then visit the following URL: http://localhost/directoryname/page.aspx where directoryname is the directory where you deployed your application and page.aspx is the initial page for your software. Databases You can continue to use SQL server database or use MySQL, Postgress, Sybase, Oracle, IBM’s DB2 or SQLite db. Conclusion I hope this brief look at the Mono IDE helps someone get acquainted with development outside of VS. As always, I welcome any suggestions or comments.

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• Basic collision direction detection on 2d objects

  - by Osso Buko

  I am trying to develop a platform game for Android by using ANdroid GL Engine (ANGLE). And I am having trouble with collision detection. I have two objects which is shaped as rectangular. And no change in rotation. Here is a scheme of attributes of objects. What i am trying to do is when objects collide they block each other's movement on that direction. Every object has 4 boolean (bTop, bBottom, bRight, bLeft). For example when bBottom is true object can't advance on that direction. I came up with a solution but it seems it only works on one dimensional. Bottom and top or right and left. public void collisionPlatform (MyObject a, MyObject b) { // first obj is player and second is a wall or a platform Vector p1 = a.mPosition; // p1 = middle point of first object Vector d1 = a.mPosition2; // width(mX) and height of first object Vector mSpeed1 = a.mSpeed; // speed vector of first object Vector p2 = b.mPosition; // p1 = middle point of second object Vector d2 = b.mPosition2; // width(mX) and height of second object Vector mSpeed2 = b.mSpeed; // speed vector of second object float xDist, yDist; // distant between middle of two object float width , height; // this is average of two objects measurements width=(width1+width2)/2 xDist=(p1.mX - p2.mX); // calculate distance // if positive first object is at the right yDist=(p1.mY - p2.mY); // if positive first object is below width = d1.mX + d2.mX; // average measurements calculate height = d1.mY + d2.mY; width/=2; height/=2; if (Math.abs(xDist) < width && Math.abs(yDist) < height) { // Two object is collided if(p1.mY>p2.mY) { // first object is below second one a.bTop = true; if(a.mSpeed.mY<0) a.mSpeed.mY=0; b.bBottom = true; if(b.mSpeed.mY>0) b.mSpeed.mY=0; } else { a.bBottom = true; if(a.mSpeed.mY>0) a.mSpeed.mY=0; b.bTop = true; if(b.mSpeed.mY<0) b.mSpeed.mY=0; } } As seen in my code it simply will not work. when object comes from right or left it doesn't work. I tried couple of ways other than this one but none worked. I am guessing right method will include mSpeed vector. But I have no idea how to do it. I really appreciate if you could help. Sorry for my bad english.

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• The World of SQL Database Deployment

  - by GGBlogger

  In my early development days, I used Microsoft Access for building databases. It made things easy since I only needed to package the database with the installation package so my clients would have access to it. When we began the development of a new package in Visual Studio .NET I decided to use SQL Server Express. It was free and provided good tools - also free. I thought it was a tremendous idea until it came time to distribute our new software! What a surprise. The nightmare Ah, the choices! Detach the database and have the client reattach it to a newly installed – oh wait. FIRST my new client needs to download and install SQL Server Express with SQL Server Management Studio. That’s not a great thing, but it is one more nightmare step for users who may have other versions of SQL installed. Then the question became – do we detach and reattach or do we do a backup. It was too late (bad planning) to revert to Microsoft Access but we badly needed a simple way to package and distribute both the database AND sample contents. Red Gate to the rescue It took me a while to find an answer but I did find it in a package called SQL Packager sold by a relatively unpublicized company in England called Red Gate. They call their products “ingeniously simple” and I must agree with that description. With SQL Packager you point to the database (more in a minute) you want to distribute. A few mouse clicks and dialogs and you have an executable file that you can ship virtually anywhere and virtually any way which, when run, installs the database on your destination SQL Server instance! It really is that simple. Easier to show than tell Let’s explore a hypothetical case. Let’s say you have a local SQL database of customers and you have decided you want to share it with your subsidiaries or partners. Here is the underlying screen you will see on starting SQL Packager. There are a bunch of possibilities here but I’m going to keep this relatively simple. At this point I simply want to illustrate the simplicity of generating an executable to deliver your database. You will notice that you can set up a new package, edit an existing package or change a bunch of options. Start SQL packager And the following is the default dialog you get on startup. In the next dialog, I’ve selected the Server and Database. I’ve also selected Windows Authentication. Pressing Next causes SQL Packager to run a number of checks and produce a report. Now you’re given a comprehensive list of what is going to be packaged and you’re allowed to change it if you desire. I’ve never made any changes here so I can’t really make any suggestions. The just illustrates the comprehensive nature of so many Red Gate products including this one. Clicking Next gives you still further options. SQL Packager then works its magic and shows you a dialog with the results. Packager then gives you a dialog of the scripts it has generated. The capture above only shows 1 of 4 tabs. Finally pressing Next gives you the option to generate a .NET executable of a C# project. I’ve only generated an executable so I’m not in a position to tell you what the C# project looks like. That may be the subject of further discussions. You can rename the package and tell SQL Packager where to save it. I’ve skipped a lot but this will serve to illustrate the comprehensive (and ingenious) things Red Gate does. All in all, it’s a superb way to distribute populated SQL databases. Oh – we’ll save running the resulting executable for later also but believe me it’s insanely simple.

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• Web Services Example - Part 1: Declarative

  - by Denis T

  In this edition of the ADF Mobile blog we'll tackle part 1 of our Web Service examples. In this posting we'll take a look at using a declarative SOAP Web Service. Getting the sample code: Just click here to download a zip of the entire project. You can unzip it and load it into JDeveloper and deploy it either to iOS or Android. Please follow the previous blog posts if you need help getting JDeveloper or ADF Mobile installed. Defining our Web Service: First off, we should mention that this sample code is using a public web service provided free by CDYNE Corporation that provides weather forecasts by zipcode. Sometimes this service goes down so please ensure you know it's up before reporting this example isn't working. Let's take a look at the web service.  We created this by using the "Web Service Data Control" from the New Gallery and using this link to this wsdl:  "http://wsf.cdyne.com/WeatherWS/Weather.asmx?WSDL"   This web service has several methods but we're interested in GetCityForecastByZIP which takes a single string parameter for the zipcode and the second method, GetWeatherInformation that enumerates all possible forecast descriptions and associated image URLs.  The latter we'll use in the next edition but we included it here for completeness. Defing the Application: After adding a feature to the adfmf-feature.xml file, we added a taskflow to host the application flow.  This comprises of a home screen with a list with items for each method in the web service, "Forecast by Zip" and "Weather Info".  In this application we've also decided to hide the navigation bar since there is only one feature in the application. Forecast by Zip: The "Forecast By ZIP" option first presents the user with a screen where they can enter a zipcode and when the "Search" button is tapped, it executes the GetCityForecastByZIP method.  This is done by binding an Action binding to that method. The easiest way to accomplish this is to just drag & drop the method from the Data Control palette to the AMX page and drop it as a button and let the framework hook it up for you.  There is an inputText component on the page that is bound to a pageFlowScope variable called "zip".  This is used as the parameter to the Action binding when it is executed.  Because the actionListener attribute of the commandButton executes the Web Service each time, we ensure that the method is invoked every time the button is clicked. Weather Info: Unlike the previous method, this time instead of explictly executing the web service method we are using deferred invocation.  What this means is that we will bind to the results of the method and the framework will execute the method when it the data is required to be rendered.  We do this by simply doing a drag & drop of the results of the GetWeatherInformation to the AMX page.  When the page is rendered and the bindings are resolved the framework invokes the method.  This executes the method only when it is needed and fills the Data Control provider.  Because we never re-execute the method, you can click from Home to Weather Info and back many times and the web service is only ever invoked once. Issues and Possible Improvements: One thing you will quickly realize with this example is that the error handling is done by the framework for you. For simple examples this is fine but for real applications you'll want to customize these error messages.  With the declarative invocation of web services, this is difficult.  This is one aspect we'll address in the second installment of the web service examples where we will show you how to do programmatic invocation which allows you better error handling. Another issue you will notice with this example is that we can enumerate the weather information but there isn't an easy way to use that information to show the corresponding description and image as part of the forecast results.  We'll show you how to do this in the next example.

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• Investigating on xVelocity (VertiPaq) column size

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

    In January I published an article about how to optimize high cardinality columns in VertiPaq. In the meantime, VertiPaq has been rebranded to xVelocity: the official name is now “xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq)” but using xVelocity and VertiPaq when we talk about Analysis Services has the same meaning. In this post I’ll show how to investigate on columns size of an existing Tabular database so that you can find the most important columns to be optimized. A first approach can be looking in the DataDir of Analysis Services and look for the folder containing the database. Then, look for the biggest files in all subfolders and you will find the name of a file that contains the name of the most expensive column. However, this heuristic process is not very optimized. A better approach is using a DMV that provides the exact information. For example, by using the following query (open SSMS, open an MDX query on the database you are interested to and execute it) you will see all database objects sorted by used size in a descending way. SELECT * FROM $SYSTEM.DISCOVER_STORAGE_TABLE_COLUMN_SEGMENTS ORDER BY used_size DESC You can look at the first rows in order to understand what are the most expensive columns in your tabular model. The interesting data provided are: TABLE_ID: it is the name of the object – it can be also a dictionary or an index COLUMN_ID: it is the column name the object belongs to – you can also see ID_TO_POS and POS_TO_ID in case they refer to internal indexes RECORDS_COUNT: it is the number of rows in the column USED_SIZE: it is the used memory for the object By looking at the ration between USED_SIZE and RECORDS_COUNT you can understand what you can do in order to optimize your tabular model. Your options are: Remove the column. Yes, if it contains data you will never use in a query, simply remove the column from the tabular model Change granularity. If you are tracking time and you included milliseconds but seconds would be enough, round the data source column to the nearest second. If you have a floating point number but two decimals are good enough (i.e. the temperature), round the number to the nearest decimal is relevant to you. Split the column. Create two or more columns that have to be combined together in order to produce the original value. This technique is described in VertiPaq optimization article. Sort the table by that column. When you read the data source, you might consider sorting data by this column, so that the compression will be more efficient. However, this technique works better on columns that don’t have too many distinct values and you will probably move the problem to another column. Sorting data starting from the lower density columns (those with a few number of distinct values) and going to higher density columns (those with high cardinality) is the technique that provides the best compression ratio. After the optimization you should be able to reduce the used size and improve the count/size ration you measured before. If you are interested in a longer discussion about internal storage in VertiPaq and you want understand why this approach can save you space (and time), you can attend my 24 Hours of PASS session “VertiPaq Under the Hood” on March 21 at 08:00 GMT.

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• Type of computer for a developer on the road

  - by nabucosound

  Hi developers: I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be "on transit" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on "open" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector Update I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this "on the road" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order: keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time battery life: I think something very important weight/size: also very important looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance. wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!

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• Server-Sent Events using GlassFish (TOTD #179)

  - by arungupta

  Bhakti blogged about Server-Sent Events on GlassFish and I've been planning to try it out for past some days. Finally, I took some time out today to learn about it and build a simplistic example showcasing the touch points. Server-Sent Events is developed as part of HTML5 specification and provides push notifications from a server to a browser client in the form of DOM events. It is defined as a cross-browser JavaScript API called EventSource. The client creates an EventSource by requesting a particular URL and registers an onmessage event listener to receive the event notifications. This can be done as shown var url = 'http://' + document.location.host + '/glassfish-sse/simple';eventSource = new EventSource(url);eventSource.onmessage = function (event) { var theParagraph = document.createElement('p'); theParagraph.innerHTML = event.data.toString(); document.body.appendChild(theParagraph);} This code subscribes to a URL, receives the data in the event listener, adds it to a HTML paragraph element, and displays it in the document. This is where you'll parse JSON and other processing to display if some other data format is received from the URL. The URL to which the EventSource is subscribed to is updated on the server side and there are multipe ways to do that. GlassFish 4.0 provide support for Server-Sent Events and it can be achieved registering a handler as shown below: @ServerSentEvent("/simple")public class MySimpleHandler extends ServerSentEventHandler { public void sendMessage(String data) { try { connection.sendMessage(data); } catch (IOException ex) { . . . } }} And then events can be sent to this handler using a singleton session bean as shown: @Startup@Statelesspublic class SimpleEvent { @Inject @ServerSentEventContext("/simple") ServerSentEventHandlerContext<MySimpleHandler> simpleHandlers; @Schedule(hour="*", minute="*", second="*/10") public void sendDate() { for(MySimpleHandler handler : simpleHandlers.getHandlers()) { handler.sendMessage(new Date().toString()); } }} This stateless session bean injects ServerSentEventHandlers listening on "/simple" path. Note, there may be multiple handlers listening on this path. The sendDate method triggers every 10 seconds and send the current timestamp to all the handlers. The client side browser simply displays the string. The HTTP request headers look like: Accept: text/event-streamAccept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdchAccept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8Cache-Control: no-cacheConnection: keep-aliveCookie: JSESSIONID=97ff28773ea6a085e11131acf47bHost: localhost:8080Referer: http://localhost:8080/glassfish-sse/faces/index2.xhtmlUser-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3) AppleWebKit/536.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/19.0.1084.54 Safari/536.5 And the response headers as: Content-Type: text/event-streamDate: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:16:10 GMTServer: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0Transfer-Encoding: chunkedX-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0 JSP/2.2 (GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0 Java/Apple Inc./1.6) Notice, the MIME type of the messages from server to the client is text/event-stream and that is defined by the specification. The code in Bhakti's blog can be further simplified by using the recently-introduced Twitter API for Java as shown below: @Schedule(hour="*", minute="*", second="*/10") public void sendTweets() { for(MyTwitterHandler handler : twitterHandler.getHandlers()) { String result = twitter.search("glassfish", String.class); handler.sendMessage(result); }} The complete source explained in this blog can be downloaded here and tried on GlassFish 4.0 build 34. The latest promoted build can be downloaded from here and the complete source code for the API and implementation is here. I tried this sample on Chrome Version 19.0.1084.54 on Mac OS X 10.7.3.

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• 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.

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• The Growing Importance of Network Virtualization

  - by user12608550

  The Growing Importance of Network Virtualization We often focus on server virtualization when we discuss cloud computing, but just as often we neglect to consider some of the critical implications of that technology. The ability to create virtual environments (or VEs [1]) means that we can create, destroy, activate and deactivate, and more importantly, MOVE them around within the cloud infrastructure. This elasticity and mobility has profound implications for how network services are defined, managed, and used to provide cloud services. It's not just servers that benefit from virtualization, it's the network as well. Network virtualization is becoming a hot topic, and not just for discussion but for companies like Oracle and others who have recently acquired net virtualization companies [2,3]. But even before this topic became so prominent, Solaris engineers were working on technologies in Solaris 11 to virtualize network services, known as Project Crossbow [4]. And why is network virtualization so important? Because old assumptions about network devices, topology, and management must be re-examined in light of the self-service, elasticity, and resource sharing requirements of cloud computing infrastructures. Static, hierarchical network designs, and inter-system traffic flows, need to be reconsidered and quite likely re-architected to take advantage of new features like virtual NICs and switches, bandwidth control, load balancing, and traffic isolation. For example, traditional multi-tier Web services (Web server, App server, DB server) that share net traffic over Ethernet wires can now be virtualized and hosted on shared-resource systems that communicate within a larger server at system bus speeds, increasing performance and reducing wired network traffic. And virtualized traffic flows can be monitored and adjusted as needed to optimize network performance for dynamically changing cloud workloads. Additionally, as VEs come and go and move around in the cloud, static network configuration methods cannot easily accommodate the routing and addressing flexibility that VE mobility implies; virtualizing the network itself is a requirement. Oracle Solaris 11 [5] includes key network virtualization technologies needed to implement cloud computing infrastructures. It includes features for the creation and management of virtual NICs and switches, and for the allocation and control of the traffic flows among VEs [6]. Additionally it allows for both sharing and dedication of hardware components to network tasks, such as allocating specific CPUs and vNICs to VEs, and even protocol-specific management of traffic. So, have a look at your current network topology and management practices in view of evolving cloud computing technologies. And don't simply duplicate the physical architecture of servers and connections in a virtualized environment…rethink the traffic flows among VEs and how they can be optimized using Oracle Solaris 11 and other Oracle products and services. [1] I use the term "virtual environment" or VE here instead of the more commonly used "virtual machine" or VM, because not all virtualized operating system environments are full OS kernels under the control of a hypervisor…in other words, not all VEs are VMs. In particular, VEs include Oracle Solaris zones, as well as SPARC VMs (previously called LDoms), and x86-based Solaris and Linux VMs running under hypervisors such as OEL, Xen, KVM, or VMware. [2] Oracle follows VMware into network virtualization space with Xsigo purchase; http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21191001/oracle-follows-vmware-into-network-virtualization-space-xsigo [3] Oracle Buys Xsigo; http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1721421 [4] Oracle Solaris 11 Networking Virtualization Technology, http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/technologies/networkvirtualization-312278.html [5] Oracle Solaris 11; http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris11/overview/index.html [6] For example, the Solaris 11 'dladm' command can be used to limit the bandwidth of a virtual NIC, as follows: dladm create-vnic -l net0 -p maxbw=100M vnic0

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• PHP-FPM stops responding and dies [migrated]

  - by user12361

  I'm running Drupal 6 with Nginx 1.5.1 and PHP-FPM (PHP 5.3.26) on a 1GB single core VPS with 3GB of swap space on SSD storage. I just switched from shared hosting to this unmanaged VPS because my site was getting too heavy, so I'm still learning the ropes. I have moderately high traffic, I don't really monitor it closely but Google Adsense usually record close to 30K page views/day. I usually have 50 to 80 authenticated users logged in and a few hundred more anonymous users hitting the Boost static HTML cache at any given moment. The problem I'm having is that PHP-FPM frequently stops responding, resulting in Nginx 502 or 504 errors. I swear I have read every page on the internet about this issue, which seems fairly common, and I've tried endless combinations of configurations, and I can't find a good solution. After restarting Nginx and PHP-FPM, the site runs really fast for a while, and then without warning it simply stops responding. I get a white screen while the browser waits on the server, and after about 30 seconds to a minute it throws an Nginx 502 or 504 error. Sometimes it runs well for 2 minutes, sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 5 hours, but it always ends up hanging. When I find the server in this state, there is still plenty of free memory (500MB or more) and no major CPU usage, the control and worker PHP-FPM processes are still present, and the server is still pingable and usable via SSH. A reload of PHP-FPM via the init script revives it again. The hangups don't seem to correspond to the amount of traffic, because I observed this behavior consistently when I was testing this configuration on a development VPS with no traffic at all. I've been constantly tweaking the settings, but I can't definitively eliminate the problem. I set Nginx workers to just 1. In the PHP-FPM config I have tried all three of the process managers. "Dynamic" is definitely the least reliable, consistently hanging up after only a few minutes. "Static" also has been unreliable and unpredictable. The least buggy has been "ondemand", but even that is failing me, sometimes after as much as 12 to 24 hours. But I can't leave the server unattended because PHP-FPM dies and never comes back on its own. I tried adjusting the pm.max_children value from as low as 3 to as high as 50, doesn't make a lot of difference, but I currently have it at 10. Same thing for the spare servers values. I also have set pm.max_requests anywhere from 30 to unlimited, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. According to the logs, the PHP-FPM processes are not exiting with SIGSEGV or SIGBUS, but rather with SIGTERM. I get a lot of lines like: WARNING: [pool www] child 3739, script '/var/www/drupal6/index.php' (request: "GET /index.php") execution timed out (38.739494 sec), terminating and: WARNING: [pool www] child 3738 exited on signal 15 (SIGTERM) after 50.004380 seconds from start I actually found several articles that recommend doing a graceful reload of PHP-FPM via cron every few minutes or hours to circumvent this issue. So that's what I did, "/etc/init.d/php-fpm reload" every 5 minutes. So far, it's keeping the lights on. But it feels like a dreadful hack. Is PHP-FPM really that unreliable? Is there anything else I can do? Thanks a lot!

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• Get Ready for Anytime, Anywhere Engagement

  - by Christie Flanagan

  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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Are you ready for 2015?  According to IDC, 2015 is the year when more users are projected to access the internet using mobile devices than with PC’s or other wired devices.  It’s no doubt that mobile devices are a critical means of communication today, and are on track to become increasingly more important in the coming years. However, device formats are so varied that delivering a mobile web experience that will engage site visitors and enhance your brand can be a daunting task. Solutions that empower organizations to easily extend their web presence to the mobile channel, while saving significant time and effort in managing mobile sites, are now essential in our ever connected mobile world. So what are some of the things organizations should look for in such a solution? Mobile device form factors, networks, protocols, and browsers vary widely, and reformatting web content for thousands of different device and software combinations is a prohibitive task. An effective mobile solution can make this process seamless by automatically formatting designated web content for mobile delivery.  By automatically detecting a site visitor’s device configuration, the selected web content can be sized and formatted for optimal display on that particular device. This can save tremendous time involved in building, formatting, and maintaining individual websites or mobile applications for different mobile devices. It’s not enough to simply support the thousands of different mobile device types that are out there. It’s also critical to make it easy for marketers and other business users to manage mobile sites and mobile content. Those responsible for maintaining an organization’s web and mobile experiences need the ability to edit content using rich text editor tools and then preview that content directly in the context of the mobile website and the traditional website, ideally from the same business user interface. Powerful capabilities such as these make managing the web experience for mobile devices easy, even with frequently changing content, across a multitude of different devices. This saves tremendous time involved in building, formatting, and maintaining individual websites or mobile applications for different mobile devices. When content or business needs change, the business user needs only to change site content once, and it is seamlessly deployed to the web and all mobile channels.Geo-location is another critical input to making the online experience engaging and relevant for web visitors who are increasingly mobile. A mobile solution should enable use of device GPS data to deliver location-based content and services to mobile website visitors. Organizations can provide mobile site visitors with location-sensitive search results, location-based offers and recommendations, integration of maps and directions into site content, and much more – all critical for meeting the needs of those on the go.To hear more about how mobile is changing the game, check out our recent webcast with Ted Schadler, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester, where he discussed why mobile is the new face of engagement, or learn more about how to extend your web presence to the mobile channel with Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle WebCenter Sites Mobility Server.

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• XNA 2D Board game - trouble with the cursor

  - by Adorjan

  I just have started making a simple 2D board game using XNA, but I got stuck at the movement of the cursor. This is my problem: I have a 10x10 table on with I should use a cursor to navigate. I simply made that table with the spriteBatch.Draw() function because I couldn't do it on another way. So here is what I did with the cursor: public override void LoadContent() { ... mutato.Position = new Vector2(X, Y); //X=103, Y=107; mutato.Sebesseg = 45; ... mutato.Initialize(content.Load<Texture2D>("cursor"),mutato.Position,mutato.Sebesseg); ... } public override void HandleInput(InputState input) { if (input == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("input"); // Look up inputs for the active player profile. int playerIndex = (int)ControllingPlayer.Value; KeyboardState keyboardState = input.CurrentKeyboardStates[playerIndex]; if (input.IsPauseGame(ControllingPlayer) || gamePadDisconnected) { ScreenManager.AddScreen(new PauseMenuScreen(), ControllingPlayer); } else { // Otherwise move the player position. if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { Y = (int)mutato.Position.Y + mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { Y = (int)mutato.Position.Y - mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { X = (int)mutato.Position.X - mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { X = (int)mutato.Position.X + mutato.Move; } } } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { mutato.Draw(spriteBatch); } Here's the cursor's (mutato) class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Battleship.Components { class Cursor { public Texture2D Cursortexture; public Vector2 Position; public int Move; public void Initialize(Texture2D texture, Vector2 position,int move) { Cursortexture = texture; Position = position; Move = move; } public void Update() { } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw(Cursortexture, Position, Color.White); } } } And here is a part of the InputState class where I think I should change something: public bool IsNewKeyPress(Keys key, PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { if (controllingPlayer.HasValue) { // Read input from the specified player. playerIndex = controllingPlayer.Value; int i = (int)playerIndex; return (CurrentKeyboardStates[i].IsKeyDown(key) && LastKeyboardStates[i].IsKeyUp(key)); } } If I leave the movement operation like this it doesn't have any sense: X = (int)mutato.Position.X - mutato.Move; However if I modify it to this: X = (int)mutato.Position.X--; it moves smoothly. Instead of this I need to move the cursor by fields (45 pixels), but I don't have any idea how to manage it.

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• Moving from Silverlight 4 Beta to RC - Part 1

  The other day I had finished up my Task-It Webinar, written a few blog posts, and knew the time had come to move from my Silverlight 4 Beta environment up to the latest RC (release candidate) bits that were released last Monday. What disappointed me when I went to the Silverlight 4 Information Page is that it told me what to install, but not what to uninstall first. Uninstalling I'm not entirely sure if I had to uninstall anything, or if installing the new stuff would just work, but in poking around the web I found posts stating that you must uninstall the following items first. Unfortunately I'm going by memory here and have not been able to find my way back to the magic page I found in the myriad of posts that I went through: Microsoft VisualStudio Beta 2 Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended (apparently this must be done *before* the next one) Microsoft .NET Framework Client Profile Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 WCF RIA Services Preview for Visual Studio 2010 While I was at it, I removed a bunch of other stuff, like Blend 3, Blend 4, the SDK's associated with them, and a bunch other stuff that was old. Of course, I didn't really want/need to keep any Silverlight 3 stuff around as I am developing Task-It in Silverlight 4. If I need a Silverlight 3 environment at some point I'll set it up in a virtual environment. NOTE: One thing that I did not uninstall is the Microsoft Silverlight 4 Toolkit November 2009. The reason is that they have not released the March version yet, so if you uninstall this, youll end up having to reinstall it. Installing OK, now that I had all of that old stuff off my machine, now it was time to get the new stuff. For this part I liked Tim Heuer's post, A Guide to What has Changed in Silverlight 4 RC better than the Silverlight 4 Information Page. VisualStudio 2010 RC - I installed Ultimate, but you may not need that version. No harm, it's free for now anyway. I downloaded the .exe and the 3 .rar files, then ran the .exe. I then extracted the contents of the ISO (using WinZip) to a new directory, and now had Setup.exe, a bunch of .cab files and some other assorted stuff. I simply ran Setup.exe and chose custom install (only because I wanted to uncheck Visual C++...I don't really have a need for that) Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 - As mentioned in Tim's blog post, this installs this installs Silverlight developer runtime, SDK, tools, and this installs Silverlight developer runtime, SDK, tools, and WCF RIA Services. WCF RIA Services Toolkit March 2010 - I'm not sure if/when I'll need any of this stuff, but no harm in installing it anyway. Expression Blend 4 beta - Only if you plan to use Blend, which I do. Windows Phone Developer Tools - Only if you are interested in playing with Windows Phone 7 development. Wrap Up Hopefully I got those steps right. If anyone finds anything I've missed, please just add a comment to this post and I'll update it accordingly.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• 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.

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