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• The Future of Project Management is Social

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size: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;} A guest post by Kazim Isfahani, Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Rapid Ascent. Breakneck Speed. Lightning Fast. Perhaps even overwhelming. No matter which set of adjectives we use to describe it, social media’s rise into the enterprise mainstream has been unprecedented. Indeed, the big 4 social media powerhouses (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter), have nearly 2 Billion users between them. You may be asking (as you should really) “That’s all well and good for the consumer, but for me at my company, what’s your point? Beyond the fact that I can check and post updates, that is.” Good question, kind sir. Impact of Social and Collaboration on Project Management I’ll dovetail this discussion to the project management realm, since that’s what I’m writing about. Speed is a big challenge for project-driven organizations. Anything that can help speed up project delivery - be it a new product introduction effort or a geographical expansion project - fast is a good thing. So where does this whole social thing fit particularly since there are already a host of tools to help with traditional project execution? The fact is companies have seen improvements in their productivity by deploying departmental collaboration and other social-oriented solutions. McKinsey’s survey on social tools shows we have reached critical scale: 72% of respondents report that their companies use at least one and over 40% say they are using social networks and blogs. We don’t hear as much about the impact of social media technologies at the project and project manager level, but that does not mean there is none. Consider the new hire. The type of individual entering the workforce and executing on projects is a generation of worker expecting visually appealing, easy to use and easy to understand technology meshing hand-in-hand with business processes. Consider the project manager. The social era has enhanced the role that the project manager must play. Today’s project manager must be a supreme communicator, an influencer, a sympathizer, a negotiator, and still manage to keep all stakeholders in the loop on project progress. Social tools play a significant role in this effort. Now consider the impact to the project team. The way that a project team functions has changed, with newer, social oriented technologies making the process of information dissemination and team communications much more fluid. It’s clear that a shift is occurring where “social” is intersecting with project management. The Rise of Social Project Management We refer to the melding of project management and social networking as Social Project Management. Social Project Management is based upon the philosophy that the project team is one part of an integrated whole, and that valuable and unique abilities exist within the larger organization. For this reason, Social Project Management systems should be integrated into the collaborative platform(s) of an organization, allowing communication to proceed outside the project boundaries. What makes social project management "social" is an implicit awareness where distributed teams build connected links in ways that were previously restricted to teams that were co-located. Just as critical, Social Project Management embraces the vision of seamless online collaboration within a project team, but also provides for, (and enhances) the use of rigorous project management techniques. Social Project Management acknowledges that projects (particularly large projects) are a social activity - people doing work with people, for other people, with commitments to yet other people. The more people (larger projects), the more interpersonal the interactions, and the more social affects the project. The Epitome of Social - Fusion Project Portfolio Management If I take this one level further to discuss Fusion Project Portfolio Management, the notion of Social Project Management is on full display. With Fusion Project Portfolio Management, project team members have a single place for interaction on projects and access to any other resources working within the Fusion ERP applications. This allows team members the opportunity to be informed with greater participation and provide better information. The application’s the visual appeal, and highly graphical nature makes it easy to navigate information. The project activity stream adds to the intuitive user experience. The goal of productivity is pervasive throughout Fusion Project Portfolio Management. Field research conducted with Oracle customers and partners showed that users needed a way to stay in the context of their core transactions and yet easily access social networking tools. This is manifested in the application so when a user executes a business process, they not only have the transactional application at their fingertips, but also have things like e-mail, SMS, text, instant messaging, chat – all providing a number of different ways to interact with people and/or groups of people, both internal and external to the project and enterprise. But in the end, connecting people is relatively easy. The larger issue is finding a way to serve up relevant, system-generated, actionable information, in real time, which will allow for more streamlined execution on key business processes. Fusion Project Portfolio Management’s design concept enables users to create project communities, establish discussion threads, manage event calendars as well as deliver project based work spaces to organize communications within the context of a project – all within a secure business environment. We’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts and ideas about how Social Project Management is impacting your organization. To learn more about Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management, please visit this link

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• Master Data

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  Let's take a deeper look at what we mean when we talk about 'Master' data. In its most general sense, master data is data that exists in more than one operational application. These are the applications that automate business processes. These applications require significant amounts of data to function correctly.  This includes data about the objects that are involved in transactions, as well as the transaction data itself.  For example, when a customer buys a product, the transaction is managed by a sales application.  The objects of the transaction are the Customer and the Product.  The transactional data is the time, place, price, discount, payment methods, etc. used at the point of sale. Many thousands of transactional data attributes are needed within the application. These important data elements are local to the applications and have no bearing on other applications. Harmonization and synchronization across applications is not necessary. The Customer and Product objects of the transaction also have a large number of attributes. Customer for example, includes hierarchies, hierarchical and matrixed relationships, contacts, classifications, preferences, accounts, identifiers, profiles, and addresses galore for 'ship to', 'mail to'; 'service at'; etc. Dozens of attributes exist for individuals, hundreds for organizations, and thousands for products. This data has meaning beyond any particular application. It exists in many applications and drives the vital cross application enterprise business processes. These are the processes that define and differentiate the organization. At every decision point, information about the objects of the process determines the direction of the process flow. This is the nature of the data that exists in more than one application, and this is why we call it 'master data'. Let me elaborate. Parties Oracle has developed a party schema to model all participants in your daily business operations. It models people, organizations, groups, customers, contacts, employees, and suppliers. It models their accounts, locations, classifications, and preferences.  And most importantly, it models the vast array of hierarchical and matrixed relationships that exist between all the participants in your real world operations.  The model logically separates people and organizations from their relationships and accounts.  This separation creates flexibility unmatched in the industry and accounts for the fact that the Oracle schema for Customers, Suppliers, and Accounts is a true superset of the wide variety of commercial and homegrown customer models in existence. Sites Sites are places where business is conducted. They can be addresses, clusters such as retail malls, locations within a cluster, floors within a building, places where meters are located, rooms on floors, etc.  Fully understanding all attributes of a site is key to many business processes. Attributes such as 'noise abatement policy' at a point of delivery, or the size of an oven in a business kitchen drive day-to-day activities such as delivery schedules or food promotions. Typically this kind of data is siloed in departments and scattered across applications and spreadsheets.  This leads to conflicting information and poor operational efficiencies. Oracle's Global Single Schema can hold all site attributes in one place and enables a single version of authoritative site information across the enterprise. Products and Services The Oracle Global Single Schema also includes a number of entities that define the products and services a company creates and offers for sale. Key entities include Items organized into Catalogs and Price Lists. The Catalog structures provide for the ability to capture different views of a product such as engineering, manufacturing, and service which are based on a unified product model. As a result, designers, manufacturing engineers, purchasers and partners can work simultaneously on a common product definition. The Catalog schema allows for unlimited attributes, combines them into meaningful groups, and maps them to catalog categories to track these different types of information. The model also maps an unlimited number of functional structures for each item. For example, multiple Bills of Material (BOMs) can be constructed representing requirements BOM, features BOM, and packaging BOM for an item. The Catalog model also supports hierarchical information about each item and all standard Global Data Synchronization attributes. Business Processes Utilizing Linked Data Entities Each business entity codified into a centralized master data environment significantly improves the efficiency of the automated business processes that use the consolidated data.  When all the key business entities used by an organization's process are so consolidated, the advantages are multiplied.  The primary reason for business process breakdowns (i.e. data errors across application boundaries) is eliminated. All processes are positively impacted and business process automation is itself automated.  I like to use the "Call to Resolution" business process as an example to help illustrate this important point. It involves call center applications, service applications, RMA applications, transportation applications, inventory applications, etc. Customer, Site, Product and Supplier master data must all be correct and consistent across these applications.  What's more, the data relationships between customer and product, and product and suppliers must be right. This is the minimum quality needed to insure the business process flows without error. But that is not the end of the story. Critical master data attributes such as customer loyalty, profitability, credit worthiness, and propensity to buy can optimize the call center point of contact component of the process. Critical product information such as alternative parts or equivalent products can optimize the resolution selected by the process. A comprehensive understanding of the 'service at' location can help insure multiple trips are avoided in the process. Full supplier information on reliability, delivery delays, and potential alternates can prevent supplier exceptions and play a significant role in optimizing the process.  In other words, these master data attributes enable the optimization of the "Call to Resolution" enterprise business process. Master data supports and guides business process flows. Thus the phrase 'Master Data' is indeed appropriate. MDM is the software that houses, manages, and governs the master data that resides in all applications and controls the enterprise business processes. A complete master data solution takes a data model that holds fully attributed master data entities and their inter-relationships. Oracle has this model. Oracle, with its deep understanding of application data is the logical choice for managing all your master data within the enterprise whether or not your organization actually runs any Oracle Applications.

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• Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

  - by Rob Farley

  A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #031

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Find Table without Clustered Index – Find Table with no Primary Key Clustered index is very important concept for any table. They impact the performance very heavily. Here is a quick script to find tables without a clustered index. Replace TEXT with VARCHAR(MAX) – Stop using TEXT, NTEXT, IMAGE Data Types Question: “Is VARCHAR (MAX) big enough to store the TEXT field?” Answer: “Yes, VARCHAR(MAX) is big enough to accommodate TEXT field. TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types of SQL Server 2000 will be deprecated in a future version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 provides backward compatibility to data types but it is recommended to use new data types which are VARHCAR (MAX), NVARCHAR (MAX) and VARBINARY (MAX).” Limiting Result Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE – Examples Introduced in SQL Server 2005, TABLESAMPLE allows you to extract a sampling of rows from a table in the FROM clause. The rows retrieved are random and they are are not in any order. This sampling can be based on a percentage of number of rows. You can use TABLESAMPLE when only a sampling of rows is necessary for the application instead of a full result set. User Defined Functions (UDF) Limitations UDF have its own advantage and usage but in this article we will see the limitation of UDF. Things UDF can not do and why Stored Procedure are considered as more flexible then UDFs. Stored Procedure are more flexibility then User Defined Functions(UDF). However, this blog post is a good read to know what are the limitations of UDF. Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility For a long time SQL Server stayed on the compatibility level of 80 which is of SQL Server 2000. However, as soon as SQL Server 2005 introduced the issue of compatibility was quite a major issue. Since that time MS has been releasing the versions at every 2-3 years, changing compatibility is a ever popular topic. In this blog post, we learn how we can do the same using T-SQL. We can also do the same using SSMS and here is the blog post for the same: Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility – Part 2 – Management Studio. Constraint on VARCHAR(MAX) Field To Limit It Certain Length How can I limit the VARCHAR(MAX) field with maximum length of 12500 characters only. His Question was valid as our application was allowed 12500 characters. First of all – this requirement is bit strange but if someone wants to do the same, they can do it as described in this blog post. 2008 UNPIVOT Table Example Understanding UNPIVOT can be very complicated at times. In this blog post, I have attempted to explain the same concept in very simple words. Create Default Constraint Over Table Column A simple straight to script blog post – I still use this blog quite many times for my own reference. UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function It took me 4 iteration to find this very simple function which can immediately get the day of the week in a single line. 2009 Find Hostname and Current Logged In User Name There are two tricks listed in this blog post where users can find out the hostname and current logged user name immediately and very easily. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers When I was doing a project, I made an interesting observation of executing a logon trigger multiple times. It was absolutely unexpected for me! As I was logging only once, naturally, I was expecting the entry only once. However, it did it multiple times on different threads – indeed an eccentric phenomenon at first sight! Difference Between Candidate Keys and Primary Key One needs to be very careful in selecting the Primary Key as an incorrect selection can adversely impact the database architect and future normalization. For a Candidate Key to qualify as a Primary Key, it should be Non-NULL and unique in any domain. I have observed quite often that Primary Keys are seldom changed. I would like to have your feedback on not changing a Primary Key. Create Multiple Filegroup For Single Database Why should one create multiple file group for any database and what are the advantages of the same. In this blog post, I explain the same in detail. List All Objects Created on All Filegroups in Database In this blog post we discuss the essential question – “How can I find which object belongs to which filegroup. Is there any way to know this?” 2010 DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008 When DATE is converted to DATETIME it adds the of midnight. When TIME is converted to DATETIME it adds the date of 1900 and it is something one wants to consider if you are going to run scripts from SQL Server 2008 to earlier version with CONVERT. Disabled Index and Update Statistics If you do not need a nonclustered index, I suggest you to drop it as keeping them disabled is an overhead on your system. This is because every time the statistics are updated for system all the statistics for disabled indexes are also updated. Precision of SMALLDATETIME – A 1 Minute Precision The precision of the datatype SMALLDATETIME is 1 minute. It discards the seconds by rounding up or rounding down any seconds greater than zero. 2011 Getting Columns Headers without Result Data – SET FMTONLY ON SET FMTONLY ON returns only metadata to the client. It can be used to test the format of the response without actually running the query. When this setting is ON the resultset only have headers of the results but no data. Copy Database from Instance to Another Instance – Copy Paste in SQL Server SQL Server has a feature which copy database from one database to another database and it can be automated as well using SSIS. Make sure you have SQL Server Agent Turned on as this feature will create a job. Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) If you have ever wondered SELECT * gives error when executed alone but SELECT COUNT(*) does not. Why? in that case, you should read this blog post. Creating All New Database with Full Recovery Model This blog post is very based on very interesting story where the user wants to do something by default for every single new database created. Model database is a secret weapon which should be used very carefully and with proper evalution. If used carefully this can be a very much beneficiary when we need a newly created database behave in certain fashion. 2012 In year 2012 I had two interesting series ran on the blog. If there is no fun in learning, the learning becomes a burden. For the same reason, I had decided to build a three part quiz around SEQUENCE. The quiz was to identify the next value of the sequence. I encourage all of you to take part in this fun quiz. Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 1 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 2 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 3 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Read five part series on developer training subject Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Book Review: Brownfield Application Development in .NET

  - by DotNetBlues

  I recently finished reading the book Brownfield Application Development in .NET by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham.  The book is available from Manning.  First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of Manning as a publisher.  I've found their books to be top-quality, over all.  As a Kindle owner, I also appreciate getting an ebook copy along with the dead tree copy.  I find ebooks to be much more convenient to read, but hard-copies are easier to reference. The book covers, surprisingly enough, working with brownfield applications.  Which is well and good, if that term has meaning to you.  It didn't for me.  Without retreading a chunk of the first chapter, the authors break code bases into three broad categories: greenfield, brownfield, and legacy.  Greenfield is, essentially, new development that hasn't had time to rust and is (hopefully) being approached with some discipline.  Legacy applications are those that are more or less stable and functional, that do not expect to see a lot of work done to them, and are more likely to be replaced than reworked. Brownfield code is the gray (brown?) area between the two and the authors argue, quite effectively, that it is the most likely state for an application to be in.  Brownfield code has, in some way, been allowed to tarnish around the edges and can be difficult to work with.  Although I hadn't realized it, most of the code I've worked on has been brownfield.  Sometimes, there's talk of scrapping and starting over.  Sometimes, the team dismisses increased discipline as ivory tower nonsense.  And, sometimes, I've been the ignorant culprit vexing my future self. The book is broken into two major sections, plus an introduction chapter and an appendix.  The first section covers what the authors refer to as "The Ecosystem" which consists of version control, build and integration, testing, metrics, and defect management.  The second section is on actually writing code for brownfield applications and discusses object-oriented principles, architecture, external dependencies, and, of course, how to deal with these when coming into an existing code base. The ecosystem section is just shy of 140 pages long and brings some real meat to the matter.  The focus on "pain points" immediately sets the tone as problem-solution, rather than academic.  The authors also approach some of the topics from a different angle than some essays I've read on similar topics.  For example, the chapter on automated testing is on just that -- automated testing.  It's all well and good to criticize a project as conflating integration tests with unit tests, but it really doesn't make anyone's life better.  The discussion on testing is more focused on the "right" level of testing for existing projects.  Sometimes, an integration test is the best you can do without gutting a section of functional code.  Even if you can sell other developers and/or management on doing so, it doesn't actually provide benefit to your customers to rewrite code that works.  This isn't to say the authors encourage sloppy coding.  Far from it.  Just that they point out the wisdom of ignoring the sleeping bear until after you deal with the snarling wolf. The other sections take a similarly real-world, workable approach to the pain points they address.  As the section moves from technical solutions like version control and continuous integration (CI) to the softer, process issues of metrics and defect tracking, the authors begin to gently suggest moving toward a zero defect count.  While that really sounds like an unreasonable goal for a lot of ongoing projects, it's quite apparent that the authors have first-hand experience with taming some gruesome projects.  The suggestions are grounded and workable, and the difficulty of some situations is explicitly acknowledged. I have to admit that I started getting bored by the end of the ecosystem section.  No matter how valuable I think a good project manager or business analyst is to a successful ALM, at the end of the day, I'm a gear-head.  Also, while I agreed with a lot of the ecosystem ideas, in theory, I didn't necessarily feel that a lot of the single-developer projects that I'm often involved in really needed that level of rigor.  It's only after reading the sidebars and commentary in the coding section that I had the context for the arguments made in favor of a strong ecosystem supporting the development process.  That isn't to say that I didn't support good product management -- indeed, I've probably pushed too hard, on occasion, for a strong ALM outside of just development.  This book gave me deeper insight into why some corners shouldn't be cut and how damaging certain sins of omission can be. The code section, though, kept me engaged for its entirety.  Many technical books can be used as reference material from day one.  The authors were clear, however, that this book is not one of these.  The first chapter of the section (chapter seven, over all) addresses object oriented (OO) practices.  I've read any number of definitions, discussions, and treatises on OO.  None of the chapter was new to me, but it was a good review, and I'm of the opinion that it's good to review the foundations of what you do, from time to time, so I didn't mind. The remainder of the book is really just about how to apply OOP to existing code -- and, just because all your code exists in classes does not mean that it's object oriented.  That topic has the potential to be extremely condescending, but the authors miraculously managed to never once make me feel like a dolt or that they were wagging their finger at me for my prior sins.  Instead, they continue the "pain points" and problem-solution presentation to give concrete examples of how to apply some pretty academic-sounding ideas.  That's a point worth emphasizing, as my experience with most OO discussions is that they stay in the academic realm.  This book gives some very, very good explanations of why things like the Liskov Substitution Principle exist and why a corporate programmer should even care.  Even if you know, with absolute certainty, that you'll never have to work on an existing code-base, I would recommend this book just for the clarity it provides on OOP. This book goes beyond just theory, or even real-world application.  It presents some methods for fixing problems that any developer can, and probably will, encounter in the wild.  First, the authors address refactoring application layers and internal dependencies.  Then, they take you through those layers from the UI to the data access layer and external dependencies.  Finally, they come full circle to tie it all back to the overall process.  By the time the book is done, you're left with a lot of ideas, but also a reasonable plan to begin to improve an existing project structure. Throughout the book, it's apparent that the authors have their own preferred methodology (TDD and domain-driven design), as well as some preferred tools.  The "Our .NET Toolbox" is something of a neon sign pointing to that latter point.  They do not beat the reader over the head with anything resembling a "One True Way" mentality.  Even for the most emphatic points, the tone is quite congenial and helpful.  With some of the near-theological divides that exist within the tech community, I found this to be one of the more remarkable characteristics of the book.  Although the authors favor tools that might be considered Alt.NET, there is no reason the advice and techniques given couldn't be quite successful in a pure Microsoft shop with Team Foundation Server.  For that matter, even though the book specifically addresses .NET, it could be applied to a Java and Oracle shop, as well.

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• elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility

  - by user9154181

  Solaris 11 has a new standard user level command, /usr/bin/elffile. elffile is a variant of the file utility that is focused exclusively on linker related files: ELF objects, archives, and runtime linker configuration files. All other files are simply identified as "non-ELF". The primary advantage of elffile over the existing file utility is in the area of archives — elffile examines the archive members and can produce a summary of the contents, or per-member details. The impetus to add elffile to Solaris came from the effort to extend the format of Solaris archives so that they could grow beyond their previous 32-bit file limits. That work introduced a new archive symbol table format. Now that there was more than one possible format, I thought it would be useful if the file utility could identify which format a given archive is using, leading me to extend the file utility: % cc -c ~/hello.c % ar r foo.a hello.o % file foo.a foo.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table % ar r -S foo.a hello.o % file foo.a foo.a: current ar archive, 64-bit symbol table In turn, this caused me to think about all the things that I would like the file utility to be able to tell me about an archive. In particular, I'd like to be able to know what's inside without having to unpack it. The end result of that train of thought was elffile. Much of the discussion in this article is adapted from the PSARC case I filed for elffile in December 2010: PSARC 2010/432 elffile Why file Is No Good For Archives And Yet Should Not Be Fixed The standard /usr/bin/file utility is not very useful when applied to archives. When identifying an archive, a user typically wants to know 2 things: Is this an archive? Presupposing that the archive contains objects, which is by far the most common use for archives, what platform are the objects for? Are they for sparc or x86? 32 or 64-bit? Some confusing combination from varying platforms? The file utility provides a quick answer to question (1), as it identifies all archives as "current ar archive". It does nothing to answer the more interesting question (2). To answer that question, requires a multi-step process: Extract all archive members Use the file utility on the extracted files, examine the output for each file in turn, and compare the results to generate a suitable summary description. Remove the extracted files It should be easier and more efficient to answer such an obvious question. It would be reasonable to extend the file utility to examine archive contents in place and produce a description. However, there are several reasons why I decided not to do so: The correct design for this feature within the file utility would have file examine each archive member in turn, applying its full abilities to each member. This would be elegant, but also represents a rather dramatic redesign and re-implementation of file. Archives nearly always contain nothing but ELF objects for a single platform, so such generality in the file utility would be of little practical benefit. It is best to avoid adding new options to standard utilities for which other implementations of interest exist. In the case of the file utility, one concern is that we might add an option which later appears in the GNU version of file with a different and incompatible meaning. Indeed, there have been discussions about replacing the Solaris file with the GNU version in the past. This may or may not be desirable, and may or may not ever happen. Either way, I don't want to preclude it. Examining archive members is an O(n) operation, and can be relatively slow with large archives. The file utility is supposed to be a very fast operation. I decided that extending file in this way is overkill, and that an investment in the file utility for better archive support would not be worth the cost. A solution that is more narrowly focused on ELF and other linker related files is really all that we need. The necessary code for doing this already exists within libelf. All that is missing is a small user-level wrapper to make that functionality available at the command line. In that vein, I considered adding an option for this to the elfdump utility. I examined elfdump carefully, and even wrote a prototype implementation. The added code is small and simple, but the conceptual fit with the rest of elfdump is poor. The result complicates elfdump syntax and documentation, definite signs that this functionality does not belong there. And so, I added this functionality as a new user level command. The elffile Command The syntax for this new command is elffile [-s basic | detail | summary] filename... Please see the elffile(1) manpage for additional details. To demonstrate how output from elffile looks, I will use the following files: FileDescription configA runtime linker configuration file produced with crle dwarf.oAn ELF object /etc/passwdA text file mixed.aArchive containing a mixture of ELF and non-ELF members mixed_elf.aArchive containing ELF objects for different machines not_elf.aArchive containing no ELF objects same_elf.aArchive containing a collection of ELF objects for the same machine. This is the most common type of archive. The file utility identifies these files as follows: % file config dwarf.o /etc/passwd mixed.a mixed_elf.a not_elf.a same_elf.a config: Runtime Linking Configuration 64-bit MSB SPARCV9 dwarf.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 /etc/passwd: ascii text mixed.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table mixed_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table not_elf.a: current ar archive same_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table By default, elffile uses its "summary" output style. This output differs from the output from the file utility in 2 significant ways: Files that are not an ELF object, archive, or runtime linker configuration file are identified as "non-ELF", whereas the file utility attempts further identification for such files. When applied to an archive, the elffile output includes a description of the archive's contents, without requiring member extraction or other additional steps. Applying elffile to the above files: % elffile config dwarf.o /etc/passwd mixed.a mixed_elf.a not_elf.a same_elf.a config: Runtime Linking Configuration 64-bit MSB SPARCV9 dwarf.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 /etc/passwd: non-ELF mixed.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table, mixed ELF and non-ELF content mixed_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table, mixed ELF content not_elf.a: current ar archive, non-ELF content same_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table, ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 The output for same_elf.a is of particular interest: The vast majority of archives contain only ELF objects for a single platform, and in this case, the default output from elffile answers both of the questions about archives posed at the beginning of this discussion, in a single efficient step. This makes elffile considerably more useful than file, within the realm of linker-related files. elffile can produce output in two other styles, "basic", and "detail". The basic style produces output that is the same as that from 'file', for linker-related files. The detail style produces per-member identification of archive contents. This can be useful when the archive contents are not homogeneous ELF object, and more information is desired than the summary output provides: % elffile -s detail mixed.a mixed.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table mixed.a(dwarf.o): ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable 80386 Version 1 mixed.a(main.c): non-ELF content mixed.a(main.o): ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 [SSE]

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• We've completed the first iteration

  - by CliveT

  There are a lot of features in C# that are implemented by the compiler and not by the underlying platform. One such feature is a lambda expression. Since local variables cannot be accessed once the current method activation finishes, the compiler has to go out of its way to generate a new class which acts as a home for any variable whose lifetime needs to be extended past the activation of the procedure. Take the following example:     Random generator = new Random();     Func func = () = generator.Next(10); In this case, the compiler generates a new class called c_DisplayClass1 which is marked with the CompilerGenerated attribute. [CompilerGenerated] private sealed class c__DisplayClass1 {     // Fields     public Random generator;     // Methods     public int b__0()     {         return this.generator.Next(10);     } } Two quick comments on this: (i)    A display was the means that compilers for languages like Algol recorded the various lexical contours of the nested procedure activations on the stack. I imagine that this is what has led to the name. (ii)    It is a shame that the same attribute is used to mark all compiler generated classes as it makes it hard to figure out what they are being used for. Indeed, you could imagine optimisations that the runtime could perform if it knew that classes corresponded to certain high level concepts. We can see that the local variable generator has been turned into a field in the class, and the body of the lambda expression has been turned into a method of the new class. The code that builds the Func object simply constructs an instance of this class and initialises the fields to their initial values.     c__DisplayClass1 class2 = new c__DisplayClass1();     class2.generator = new Random();     Func func = new Func(class2.b__0); Reflector already contains code to spot this pattern of code and reproduce the form containing the lambda expression, so this is example is correctly decompiled. The use of compiler generated code is even more spectacular in the case of iterators. C# introduced the idea of a method that could automatically store its state between calls, so that it can pick up where it left off. The code can express the logical flow with yield return and yield break denoting places where the method should return a particular value and be prepared to resume.         {             yield return 1;             yield return 2;             yield return 3;         } Of course, there was already a .NET pattern for expressing the idea of returning a sequence of values with the computation proceeding lazily (in the sense that the work for the next value is executed on demand). This is expressed by the IEnumerable interface with its Current property for fetching the current value and the MoveNext method for forcing the computation of the next value. The sequence is terminated when this method returns false. The C# compiler links these two ideas together so that an IEnumerator returning method using the yield keyword causes the compiler to produce the implementation of an Iterator. Take the following piece of code.         IEnumerable GetItems()         {             yield return 1;             yield return 2;             yield return 3;         } The compiler implements this by defining a new class that implements a state machine. This has an integer state that records which yield point we should go to if we are resumed. It also has a field that records the Current value of the enumerator and a field for recording the thread. This latter value is used for optimising the creation of iterator instances. [CompilerGenerated] private sealed class d__0 : IEnumerable, IEnumerable, IEnumerator, IEnumerator, IDisposable {     // Fields     private int 1__state;     private int 2__current;     public Program 4__this;     private int l__initialThreadId; The body gets converted into the code to construct and initialize this new class. private IEnumerable GetItems() {     d__0 d__ = new d__0(-2);     d__.4__this = this;     return d__; } When the class is constructed we set the state, which was passed through as -2 and the current thread. public d__0(int 1__state) {     this.1__state = 1__state;     this.l__initialThreadId = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId; } The state needs to be set to 0 to represent a valid enumerator and this is done in the GetEnumerator method which optimises for the usual case where the returned enumerator is only used once. IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() {     if ((Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId == this.l__initialThreadId)               && (this.1__state == -2))     {         this.1__state = 0;         return this;     } The state machine itself is implemented inside the MoveNext method. private bool MoveNext() {     switch (this.1__state)     {         case 0:             this.1__state = -1;             this.2__current = 1;             this.1__state = 1;             return true;         case 1:             this.1__state = -1;             this.2__current = 2;             this.1__state = 2;             return true;         case 2:             this.1__state = -1;             this.2__current = 3;             this.1__state = 3;             return true;         case 3:             this.1__state = -1;             break;     }     return false; } At each stage, the current value of the state is used to determine how far we got, and then we generate the next value which we return after recording the next state. Finally we return false from the MoveNext to signify the end of the sequence. Of course, that example was really simple. The original method body didn't have any local variables. Any local variables need to live between the calls to MoveNext and so they need to be transformed into fields in much the same way that we did in the case of the lambda expression. More complicated MoveNext methods are required to deal with resources that need to be disposed when the iterator finishes, and sometimes the compiler uses a temporary variable to hold the return value. Why all of this explanation? We've implemented the de-compilation of iterators in the current EAP version of Reflector (7). This contrasts with previous version where all you could do was look at the MoveNext method and try to figure out the control flow. There's a fair amount of things we have to do. We have to spot the use of a CompilerGenerated class which implements the Enumerator pattern. We need to go to the class and figure out the fields corresponding to the local variables. We then need to go to the MoveNext method and try to break it into the various possible states and spot the state transitions. We can then take these pieces and put them back together into an object model that uses yield return to show the transition points. After that Reflector can carry on optimising using its usual optimisations. The pattern matching is currently a little too sensitive to changes in the code generation, and we only do a limited analysis of the MoveNext method to determine use of the compiler generated fields. In some ways, it is a pity that iterators are compiled away and there is no metadata that reflects the original intent. Without it, we are always going to dependent on our knowledge of the compiler's implementation. For example, we have noticed that the Async CTP changes the way that iterators are code generated, so we'll have to do some more work to support that. However, with that warning in place, we seem to do a reasonable job of decompiling the iterators that are built into the framework. Hopefully, the EAP will give us a chance to find examples where we don't spot the pattern correctly or regenerate the wrong code, and we can improve things. Please give it a go, and report any problems.

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• parallel_for_each from amp.h – part 1

  - by Daniel Moth

  This posts assumes that you've read my other C++ AMP posts on index<N> and extent<N>, as well as about the restrict modifier. It also assumes you are familiar with C++ lambdas (if not, follow my links to C++ documentation). Basic structure and parameters Now we are ready for part 1 of the description of the new overload for the concurrency::parallel_for_each function. The basic new parallel_for_each method signature returns void and accepts two parameters: a grid<N> (think of it as an alias to extent) a restrict(direct3d) lambda, whose signature is such that it returns void and accepts an index of the same rank as the grid So it looks something like this (with generous returns for more palatable formatting) assuming we are dealing with a 2-dimensional space: // some_code_A parallel_for_each( g, // g is of type grid<2> [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { // kernel code } ); // some_code_B The parallel_for_each will execute the body of the lambda (which must have the restrict modifier), on the GPU. We also call the lambda body the "kernel". The kernel will be executed multiple times, once per scheduled GPU thread. The only difference in each execution is the value of the index object (aka as the GPU thread ID in this context) that gets passed to your kernel code. The number of GPU threads (and the values of each index) is determined by the grid object you pass, as described next. You know that grid is simply a wrapper on extent. In this context, one way to think about it is that the extent generates a number of index objects. So for the example above, if your grid was setup by some_code_A as follows: extent<2> e(2,3); grid<2> g(e); ...then given that: e.size()==6, e[0]==2, and e[1]=3 ...the six index<2> objects it generates (and hence the values that your lambda would receive) are:    (0,0) (1,0) (0,1) (1,1) (0,2) (1,2) So what the above means is that the lambda body with the algorithm that you wrote will get executed 6 times and the index<2> object you receive each time will have one of the values just listed above (of course, each one will only appear once, the order is indeterminate, and they are likely to call your code at the same exact time). Obviously, in real GPU programming, you'd typically be scheduling thousands if not millions of threads, not just 6. If you've been following along you should be thinking: "that is all fine and makes sense, but what can I do in the kernel since I passed nothing else meaningful to it, and it is not returning any values out to me?" Passing data in and out It is a good question, and in data parallel algorithms indeed you typically want to pass some data in, perform some operation, and then typically return some results out. The way you pass data into the kernel, is by capturing variables in the lambda (again, if you are not familiar with them, follow the links about C++ lambdas), and the way you use data after the kernel is done executing is simply by using those same variables. In the example above, the lambda was written in a fairly useless way with an empty capture list: [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), where the empty square brackets means that no variables were captured. If instead I write it like this [&](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), then all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by reference, but as soon as I try to use any of those variables in the lambda, I will receive a compiler error. This has to do with one of the direct3d restrictions, where only one type can be capture by reference: objects of the new concurrency::array class that I'll introduce in the next post (suffice for now to think of it as a container of data). If I write the lambda line like this [=](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by value. This works for some types (e.g. an integer), but not for all, as per the restrictions for direct3d. In particular, no useful data classes work except for one new type we introduce with C++ AMP: objects of the new concurrency::array_view class, that I'll introduce in the post after next. Also note that if you capture some variable by value, you could use it as input to your algorithm, but you wouldn’t be able to observe changes to it after the parallel_for_each call (e.g. in some_code_B region since it was passed by value) – the exception to this rule is the array_view since (as we'll see in a future post) it is a wrapper for data, not a container. Finally, for completeness, you can write your lambda, e.g. like this [av, &ar](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) where av is a variable of type array_view and ar is a variable of type array - the point being you can be very specific about what variables you capture and how. So it looks like from a large data perspective you can only capture array and array_view objects in the lambda (that is how you pass data to your kernel) and then use the many threads that call your code (each with a unique index) to perform some operation. You can also capture some limited types by value, as input only. When the last thread completes execution of your lambda, the data in the array_view or array are ready to be used in the some_code_B region. We'll talk more about all this in future posts… (a)synchronous Please note that the parallel_for_each executes as if synchronous to the calling code, but in reality, it is asynchronous. I.e. once the parallel_for_each call is made and the kernel has been passed to the runtime, the some_code_B region continues to execute immediately by the CPU thread, while in parallel the kernel is executed by the GPU threads. However, if you try to access the (array or array_view) data that you captured in the lambda in the some_code_B region, your code will block until the results become available. Hence the correct statement: the parallel_for_each is as-if synchronous in terms of visible side-effects, but asynchronous in reality.   That's all for now, we'll revisit the parallel_for_each description, once we introduce properly array and array_view – coming next. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• Automatic Maintenance Jobs in every PDB? New SPM Evolve Advisor Task in Oracle 12.1.0.2

  - by Mike Dietrich

  A customer checking out our slides from the OTN Tour in August 2014 asked me a finicky question the other day: "According to the documentation the Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor maintenance task gets executed only within the CDB$ROOT, but not within each PDB - but the slides are not clear here. So what is the truth?" Ok, that's good question. In my understanding all tasks will get executed within each PDB - that's why we recommend (based on experience) to break up the default maintenance windows when using Oracle Multitenant. Otherwise all PDBs will have the same maintenance windows, and guess what will happen when 25 PDBs start gathering object statistics at the same time ... The documentation indeed says: Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor data is stored in the root. It might have results about SQL statements executed in a PDB that were analyzed by the advisor, but these results are not included if the PDB is unplugged. A common user whose current container is the root can run SQL Tuning Advisor manually for SQL statements from any PDB. When a statement is tuned, it is tuned in any container that runs the statement. This sounds reasonable. But when we have a look into our PDBs or into the CDB_AUTOTASK_CLIENT view the result is different from what the doc says. In my environment I did create just two fresh empty PDBs (CON_ID 3 and 4): SQL> select client_name, status, con_id from cdb_autotask_client; CLIENT_NAME                           STATUS         CON_ID------------------------------------- ---------- ----------auto optimizer stats collection       ENABLED             1sql tuning advisor                    ENABLED             1auto space advisor                    ENABLED             1auto optimizer stats collection       ENABLED             4sql tuning advisor                    ENABLED             4auto space advisor                    ENABLED             4auto optimizer stats collection       ENABLED             3sql tuning advisor                    ENABLED             3auto space advisor                    ENABLED             3 9 rows selected. I haven't verified the reason why this is different from the docs but it may have been related to one change in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2: The new SPM Evolve Advisor Task ( SYS_AUTO_SPM_EVOLVE_TASK) for automatic plan evolution for SQL Plan Management. This new task doesn't appear as a stand-alone job (client) in the maintenance window but runs as a sub-entity of the Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor task. And (I'm just guessing) this may be one of the reasons why every PDB will have to have its own Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor task  Here you'll find more information about how to enable, disable and configure the new Oracle 12.1.0.2 SPM Evolve Advisor Task: Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 SQL Tuning Guide:Managing the SPM Evolve Advisor Task -Mike

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• Key Promoter for NetBeans

  - by Geertjan

  Whenever a menu item or toolbar button is clicked, it would be handy if NetBeans were to tell you 'hey, did you know, you can actually do this via the following keyboard shortcut', if a keyboard shortcut exists for the invoked action. After all, ultimately, a lot of developers would like to do everything with the keyboard and a key promoter feature of this kind is a helpful tool in learning the keyboard shortcuts related to the menu items and toolbar buttons you're clicking with your mouse. Above, you see the balloon message that appears for each menu item and toolbar button that you click and, below, you can see a list of all the actions that have been logged in the Notifications window. That happens automatically when an action is invoked (assuming the plugin described in this blog entry is installed), showing the display name of the action, together with the keyboard shortcut, which is presented as a hyperlink which, when clicked, re-invokes the action (which might not always be relevant, especially for context-sensitive actions, though for others it is quite useful, e.g., reopen the New Project wizard). And here's all the code. Notice that I'm hooking into the 'uigestures' functionality, which was suggested by Tim Boudreau, and I have added my own handler, which was suggested by Jaroslav Tulach, which gets a specific parameter from each new log entry handled by the 'org.netbeans.ui.actions' logger, makes sure that the parameter actually is an action, and then gets the relevant info from the action, if the relevant info exists: @OnShowingpublic class Startable implements Runnable {    @Override    public void run() {        Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("org.netbeans.ui.actions");        logger.addHandler(new StreamHandler() {            @Override            public void publish(LogRecord record) {                Object[] parameters = record.getParameters();                if (parameters[2] instanceof Action) {                    Action a = (Action) parameters[2];                    JMenuItem menu = new JMenuItem();                    Mnemonics.setLocalizedText(                            menu,                             a.getValue(Action.NAME).toString());                    String name = menu.getText();                    if (a.getValue(Action.ACCELERATOR_KEY) != null) {                        String accelerator = a.getValue(Action.ACCELERATOR_KEY).toString();                        NotificationDisplayer.getDefault().notify(                                name,                                 new ImageIcon("/org/nb/kp/car.png"),                                 accelerator,                                 new ActionListener() {                            @Override                            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {                                a.actionPerformed(e);                            }                        });                    }                }            }        });    }} Indeed, inspired by the Key Promoter in IntelliJ IDEA. Interested in trying it out? If there's interest in it, I'll put it in the NetBeans Plugin Portal.

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• Setting up a VPN connection to Amazon VPC - routing

  - by Keeno

  I am having some real issues setting up a VPN between out office and AWS VPC. The "tunnels" appear to be up, however I don't know if they are configured correctly. The device I am using is a Netgear VPN Firewall - FVS336GV2 If you see in the attached config downloaded from VPC (#3 Tunnel Interface Configuration), it gives me some "inside" addresses for the tunnel. When setting up the IPsec tunnels do I use the inside tunnel IP's (e.g. 169.254.254.2/30) or do I use my internal network subnet (10.1.1.0/24) I have tried both, when I tried the local network (10.1.1.x) the tracert stops at the router. When I tried with the "inside" ips, the tracert to the amazon VPC (10.0.0.x) goes out over the internet. this all leads me to the next question, for this router, how do I set up stage #4, the static next hop? What are these seemingly random "inside" addresses and where did amazon generate them from? 169.254.254.x seems odd? With a device like this, is the VPN behind the firewall? I have tweaked any IP addresses below so that they are not "real". I am fully aware, this is probably badly worded. Please if there is any further info/screenshots that will help, let me know. Amazon Web Services Virtual Private Cloud IPSec Tunnel #1 ================================================================================ #1: Internet Key Exchange Configuration Configure the IKE SA as follows - Authentication Method : Pre-Shared Key - Pre-Shared Key : --- - Authentication Algorithm : sha1 - Encryption Algorithm : aes-128-cbc - Lifetime : 28800 seconds - Phase 1 Negotiation Mode : main - Perfect Forward Secrecy : Diffie-Hellman Group 2 #2: IPSec Configuration Configure the IPSec SA as follows: - Protocol : esp - Authentication Algorithm : hmac-sha1-96 - Encryption Algorithm : aes-128-cbc - Lifetime : 3600 seconds - Mode : tunnel - Perfect Forward Secrecy : Diffie-Hellman Group 2 IPSec Dead Peer Detection (DPD) will be enabled on the AWS Endpoint. We recommend configuring DPD on your endpoint as follows: - DPD Interval : 10 - DPD Retries : 3 IPSec ESP (Encapsulating Security Payload) inserts additional headers to transmit packets. These headers require additional space, which reduces the amount of space available to transmit application data. To limit the impact of this behavior, we recommend the following configuration on your Customer Gateway: - TCP MSS Adjustment : 1387 bytes - Clear Don't Fragment Bit : enabled - Fragmentation : Before encryption #3: Tunnel Interface Configuration Your Customer Gateway must be configured with a tunnel interface that is associated with the IPSec tunnel. All traffic transmitted to the tunnel interface is encrypted and transmitted to the Virtual Private Gateway. The Customer Gateway and Virtual Private Gateway each have two addresses that relate to this IPSec tunnel. Each contains an outside address, upon which encrypted traffic is exchanged. Each also contain an inside address associated with the tunnel interface. The Customer Gateway outside IP address was provided when the Customer Gateway was created. Changing the IP address requires the creation of a new Customer Gateway. The Customer Gateway inside IP address should be configured on your tunnel interface. Outside IP Addresses: - Customer Gateway : 217.33.22.33 - Virtual Private Gateway : 87.222.33.42 Inside IP Addresses - Customer Gateway : 169.254.254.2/30 - Virtual Private Gateway : 169.254.254.1/30 Configure your tunnel to fragment at the optimal size: - Tunnel interface MTU : 1436 bytes #4: Static Routing Configuration: To route traffic between your internal network and your VPC, you will need a static route added to your router. Static Route Configuration Options: - Next hop : 169.254.254.1 You should add static routes towards your internal network on the VGW. The VGW will then send traffic towards your internal network over the tunnels. IPSec Tunnel #2 ================================================================================ #1: Internet Key Exchange Configuration Configure the IKE SA as follows - Authentication Method : Pre-Shared Key - Pre-Shared Key : --- - Authentication Algorithm : sha1 - Encryption Algorithm : aes-128-cbc - Lifetime : 28800 seconds - Phase 1 Negotiation Mode : main - Perfect Forward Secrecy : Diffie-Hellman Group 2 #2: IPSec Configuration Configure the IPSec SA as follows: - Protocol : esp - Authentication Algorithm : hmac-sha1-96 - Encryption Algorithm : aes-128-cbc - Lifetime : 3600 seconds - Mode : tunnel - Perfect Forward Secrecy : Diffie-Hellman Group 2 IPSec Dead Peer Detection (DPD) will be enabled on the AWS Endpoint. We recommend configuring DPD on your endpoint as follows: - DPD Interval : 10 - DPD Retries : 3 IPSec ESP (Encapsulating Security Payload) inserts additional headers to transmit packets. These headers require additional space, which reduces the amount of space available to transmit application data. To limit the impact of this behavior, we recommend the following configuration on your Customer Gateway: - TCP MSS Adjustment : 1387 bytes - Clear Don't Fragment Bit : enabled - Fragmentation : Before encryption #3: Tunnel Interface Configuration Outside IP Addresses: - Customer Gateway : 217.33.22.33 - Virtual Private Gateway : 87.222.33.46 Inside IP Addresses - Customer Gateway : 169.254.254.6/30 - Virtual Private Gateway : 169.254.254.5/30 Configure your tunnel to fragment at the optimal size: - Tunnel interface MTU : 1436 bytes #4: Static Routing Configuration: Static Route Configuration Options: - Next hop : 169.254.254.5 You should add static routes towards your internal network on the VGW. The VGW will then send traffic towards your internal network over the tunnels. EDIT #1 After writing this post, I continued to fiddle and something started to work, just not very reliably. The local IPs to use when setting up the tunnels where indeed my network subnets. Which further confuses me over what these "inside" IP addresses are for. The problem is, results are not consistent what so ever. I can "sometimes" ping, I can "sometimes" RDP using the VPN. Sometimes, Tunnel 1 or Tunnel 2 can be up or down. When I came back into work today, Tunnel 1 was down, so I deleted it and re-created it from scratch. Now I cant ping anything, but Amazon AND the router are telling me tunnel 1/2 are fine. I guess the router/vpn hardware I have just isnt up to the job..... EDIT #2 Now Tunnel 1 is up, Tunnel 2 is down (I didn't change any settings) and I can ping/rdp again. EDIT #3 Screenshot of route table that the router has built up. Current state (tunnel 1 still up and going string, 2 is still down and wont re-connect)

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• Mac OS X Server Open Directory does not push Software Update settings to clients

  - by joxl

  I have an Xserve G5 running Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 configured as an Open Directory master. I have also enabled and configured Software Update service on the machine. The SUS is configured to serve Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard clients (see http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10297359#10297359) The clients bound to the OD are a variety of Mac's running OS X 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6. In Workgroup Manager, I have created 3 machine groups for each client OS. Each group is configured with a custom SUS URL, and the managed client computers are members accordingly (see http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10493154#10493154) My problem is that the server pushes the SUS settings to some of the client machines, but not all. When I first configured all this stuff on the server (a few weeks ago) I was closely monitoring a few of the client machines to confirm that they received the custom settings. I noticed that some of the clients (10.4/5/6 alike) seemed to get the settings immediately, others didn't show the new settings until after a reboot. As I said, results are mixed across OS's, but some clients will not "sync" at all. My immediate thought was to unbind/rebind the problematic machines. I did this on several client computers with no success. For example, today I was working on one of the Tiger clients. I noticed it was not pointed at my local SUS, so I checked the OD binding; it was fine. Just to be sure I unbound the machine. Next, I checked WM and confirmed the computer record was gone. I noticed the machine group still had a residual (broken?) member from the unbound client; I manually removed this. Finally, I re-bound the client to OD and re-added the machine to it's correct group in WM. Unfortunately, the client still pings apple's SUS for updates. Just to play it safe I rebooted the client, but to no avail, it will not see my local SUS. To confirm that there is nothing wrong with the server, or the client's connection to it, forcefully pointed the machine at my SUS: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL "$LOCAL_SUS_URL" and the machine successfully updated off my local server. Great, successful updates, but problem not solved. I've done exhaustive reading on discussions.apple.com (not saying I read everything, I'm just saying I have read a lot) without a good answer. The discouraging thing is that a lot of OD problems I've read about only result in the sysadmin completely reinstalling the server, or OD, or some other similarly heavy-handed operation. At this point, I am not willing to go that route. I still have hope that I can find the reason for this flaky behavior. If anyone can point me in a helpful direction it would be much appreciated. EDIT: Indeed, some files are being pushed to the client: # from client machine: $ sudo find /Library -type f -name com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/Managed Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/Managed Preferences/username/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist A few weeks ago, prior to my (previously mentioned) modifications, the SUS was still running "stock". Which meant it could not serve SL (10.6) machines. At that time, the Software Update settings were setup in WM under User Groups. This didn't make any sense because some users work on multiple machines with different OS's. Before creating Machine Groups in WM, I deleted all the SU settings from the User Group Preferences. This just makes the whole thing more confusing, because when I see a file here: /Library/Managed Preferences/username/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist I assume it's still remaining from the "old" settings, because I wouldn't think a Machine Setting belongs there. Despite all the com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist hanging around under the Managed Preferences, why does the client machine still call home to Apple and not my SUS? # on client machine: $ date Tue Jan 25 17:01:46 EST 2011 $ softwareupdate --list Software Update Tool Copyright 2002-2005 Apple No new software available. switch terminals... # on server: $ tail -n1 /var/log/swupd/swupd_access_log 10.x.x.x - - [25/Jan/2011:15:54:29 -0500] XXXX POST "/cgi-bin/SoftwareUpdateServerStats" 200 13 ... Notice the date of the client softwareupdate and the latest access to the SUS server; the server never heard a peep from that client.

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• LDAP query on linux against AD returns groups with no members

  - by SethG

  I am using LDAP+kerberos to authenticate against Active Directory on Windows 2003 R2. My krb5.conf and ldap.conf appear to be correct (according to pretty much every sample I found on the 'net). I can login to the host with both password and ssh keys. When I run getent passwd, all my ldap user accounts are listed with all the important attributes. When I run getent group, all the ldap groups and their gid's are listed, but no group members. If I run ldapsearch and filter on any group, the members are all listed with the "member" attribute. So the data is there for the taking, it's just not being parsed properly. It would appear that I simply am using an incorrect mapping in ldap.conf, but I can't see it. I've tried several variations and all give the same result. Here is my current ldap.conf: host <ad-host1-ip> <ad-host2-ip> base dc=my,dc=full,dc=dn uri ldap://<ad-host1> ldap://<ad-host2> ldap_version 3 binddn <mybinddn> bindpw <mybindpw> scope sub bind_policy hard nss_reconnect_tries 3 nss_reconnect_sleeptime 1 nss_reconnect_maxsleeptime 8 nss_reconnect_maxconntries 3 nss_map_objectclass posixAccount User nss_map_objectclass posixGroup Group nss_map_attribute uid sAMAccountName nss_map_attribute gidNumber msSFU30GidNumber nss_map_attribute uidNumber msSFU30UidNumber nss_map_attribute cn cn nss_map_attribute gecos displayName nss_map_attribute homeDirectory msSFU30HomeDirectory nss_map_attribute loginShell msSFU30LoginShell nss_map_attribute uniqueMember member pam_filter objectcategory=User pam_login_attribute sAMAccountName pam_member_attribute member pam_password ad Here's the kicker: this config works 100% fine on a different linux box with a different distro. It does not work on the distro I am planning on switching to. I have installed from source the versions of pam_ldap and nss_ldap on the new box to match the old box, which fixed another problem I was having with this setup. Other relevant info is the original AD box was Windows 2003. It's mirror died a horrible hardware death so I'm trying to add two more 2003-R2 servers to the mirror tree and ultimately drop the old 2003 box. The new R2 boxes appear to have joined the DC forest properly. What do I need to do to get groups working? I've exhausted all the resources I could find and need a different angle. Any input is appreciated. Status update, 7/31/09 I have managed to tweak my config file to get full info from the AD and performance is nice and snappy. I replaced the back-rev'd copies of pam_ldap and nss_ldap with the current ones for the distro I'm using, so it's back to a standard out-of-the-box install. Here's my current config: host <ad-host1-ip> <ad-host2-ip> base dc=my,dc=full,dc=dn uri ldap://<ad-host1> ldap://<ad-host2> ldap_version 3 binddn <mybinddn> bindpw <mybindpw> scope sub bind_policy soft nss_reconnect_tries 3 nss_reconnect_sleeptime 1 nss_reconnect_maxsleeptime 8 nss_reconnect_maxconntries 3 nss_connect_policy oneshot referrals no nss_map_objectclass posixAccount User nss_map_objectclass posixGroup Group nss_map_attribute uid sAMAccountName nss_map_attribute gidNumber msSFU30GidNumber nss_map_attribute uidNumber msSFU30UidNumber nss_map_attribute cn cn nss_map_attribute gecos displayName nss_map_attribute homeDirectory msSFU30HomeDirectory nss_map_attribute loginShell msSFU30LoginShell nss_map_attribute uniqueMember member pam_filter objectcategory=CN=Person,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=w2k,DC=cis,DC=ksu,DC=edu pam_login_attribute sAMAccountName pam_member_attribute member pam_password ad ssl off tls_checkpeer no sasl_secprops maxssf=0 The remaining problem now is when you run the groups command, not all subscribed groups are listed. Some are (one or two), but not all. Group memberships are still honored, such as file and printer access. getent group foo still shows that the user is a member of group foo. So it appears to be a presentation bug, and does not interfere with normal operation. It also appears that some (I have not determined exactly how many) group searches do not resolve correctly, even though the group is listed. eg, when you run "getent group bar", nothing is returned, but if you run "getent group|grep bar" or "getent group|grep <bar_gid>" you can see that it indeed listed and your group name and gid are correct. This still seems like an LDAP search or mapping error, but I can't figure out what it is. I'm a heckuva lot closer than earlier in the week, but I'd really like to get this last detail ironed out.

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• Postfix "warning: cannot get RSA private key from file"

  - by phew

  I just followed this tutorial to set up a postfix mailserver with dovecot and mysql as backend for virtual users. Now I got the most parts working, I can connect to pop3 pop3s imap and imaps. Using echo TEST-MAIL | mail [email protected] works fine, when I log into my hotmail account it shows the email. It also works in reverse hence my MX entry for mydomain.com finally has been propagated, so I am being able to receive emails sent from [email protected] to [email protected] and view them in Thunderbird using STARTTLS via IMAP. Doing a bit more research after I got the error message "5.7.1 : Relay access denied" when trying to send mails to [email protected] using Thunderbird being logged into [email protected], I figured out that my server was acting as an "Open Mail Relay", which - ofcourse - is a bad thing. Digging more into the optional parts of the tutorial like shown workaround.org/comment/2536 and workaround.org/ispmail/squeeze/postfix-smtp-auth I decided to complete these steps aswell to be able to send mails via [email protected] through Mozilla Thunderbird, not getting the error message "5.7.1 : Relay access denied" anymore (as common mailservers reject open relayed emails). But now I ran into an error trying to get postfix working with SMTPS, in /var/log/mail.log it reads Sep 28 17:29:34 domain postfix/smtpd[20251]: warning: cannot get RSA private key from file /etc/ssl/certs/postfix.pem: disabling TLS support Sep 28 17:29:34 domain postfix/smtpd[20251]: warning: TLS library problem: 20251:error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line:pem_lib.c:650:Expecting: ANY PRIVATE KEY: Sep 28 17:29:34 domain postfix/smtpd[20251]: warning: TLS library problem: 20251:error:140B0009:SSL routines:SSL_CTX_use_PrivateKey_file:PEM lib:ssl_rsa.c:669: That error is logged right after I try to send a mail from my newly installed mailserver using SMTP SSL/TLS via port 465 in Thunderbird. Thunderbird then tells me a timeout occured. Google has a few results concerning that problem, yet I couldn't get it working with any of those. I would link some of them here but as a new user I am only allowed to use two hyperlinks. My /etc/postfix/master.cf looks like smtp inet n - - - - smtpd smtps inet n - - - - smtpd -o smtpd_tls_wrappermode=yes -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes and nmap tells me PORT STATE SERVICE [...] 465/tcp open smtps [...] my /etc/postfix/main.cf looks like smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Debian/GNU) biff = no append_dot_mydomain = no readme_directory = no #smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/postfix.pem #default postfix generated #smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key #default postfix generated smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/postfix.pem smptd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/postfix.pem smtpd_use_tls = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth smptd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, reject_unauth_destination myhostname = mydomain.com alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases myorigin = /etc/mailname mydestination = localhost.com, localhost relayhost = mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128 mailbox_size_limit = 0 recipient_delimiter = + inet_interfaces = all virtual_mailbox_domains = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-domains.cf virtual_mailbox_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-maps.cf virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-alias-maps.cf virtual_transport = dovecot dovecot_destination_recipient_limit = 1 mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver The *.pem files were created like described in the tutorial above, using Postfix To create a certificate to be used by Postfix use: openssl req -new -x509 -days 3650 -nodes -out /etc/ssl/certs/postfix.pem -keyout /etc/ssl/private/postfix.pem Do not forget to set the permissions on the private key so that no unauthorized people can read it: chmod o= /etc/ssl/private/postfix.pem You will have to tell Postfix where to find your certificate and private key because by default it will look for a dummy certificate file called "ssl-cert-snakeoil": postconf -e smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/postfix.pem postconf -e smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/postfix.pem I think I don't have to include /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf here, as login via imaps and pop3s works fine according to the logs. Only problem is making postfix properly use the self-generated, self-signed certificates. Any help appreciated! EDIT: I just tried this different tutorial on generating a self-signed certificate for postfix, still getting the same error. I really don't know what else to test. I also did check for the SSL libraries, but all seems to be fine: root@domain:~# ldd /usr/sbin/postfix linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff91b25000) libpostfix-global.so.1 => /usr/lib/libpostfix-global.so.1 (0x00007f6f8313d000) libpostfix-util.so.1 => /usr/lib/libpostfix-util.so.1 (0x00007f6f82f07000) libssl.so.0.9.8 => /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8 (0x00007f6f82cb1000) libcrypto.so.0.9.8 => /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 (0x00007f6f82910000) libsasl2.so.2 => /usr/lib/libsasl2.so.2 (0x00007f6f826f7000) libdb-4.8.so => /usr/lib/libdb-4.8.so (0x00007f6f8237c000) libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0x00007f6f82164000) libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007f6f81f4e000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f6f81beb000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f6f819e7000) libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x00007f6f817d0000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f6f815b3000) /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f6f83581000) After following Ansgar Wiechers instructions its finally working. postconf -n contained the lines as it should. The certificate/key check via openssl did show that both files are valid. So it indeed has been a permissions problem! Didn't know that chown'ing the /etc/ssl/*/postfix.pem files to postfix:postfix is not enough for postfix to read the files.

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• Performance required to improve Windows Experience Index?

  - by Ian Boyd

  Is there a guide on the metrics required to obtain a certain Windows Experience Index? A Microsoft guy said in January 2009: On the matter of transparency, it is indeed our plan to disclose in great detail how the scores are calculated, what the tests attempt to measure, why, and how they map to realistic scenarios and usage patterns. Has that amount of transparency happened? Is there a technet article somewhere? If my score was limited by my Memory subscore of 5.9. A nieve person would suggest: Buy a faster RAM Which is wrong of course. From the Windows help: If your computer has a 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) and 4 gigabytes (GB) or less random access memory (RAM), then the Memory (RAM) subscore for your computer will have a maximum of 5.9. You can buy the fastest, overclocked, liquid-cooled, DDR5 RAM on the planet; you'll still have a maximum Memory subscore of 5.9. So in general the knee-jerk advice "buy better stuff" is not helpful. What i am looking for is attributes required to achieve a certain score, or move beyond a current limitation. The information i've been able to compile so far, chiefly from 3 Windows blog entries, and an article: Memory subscore Score Conditions ======= ================================ 1.0 < 256 MB 2.0 < 500 MB 2.9 <= 512 MB 3.5 < 704 MB 3.9 < 944 MB 4.5 <= 1.5 GB 5.9 < 4.0GB-64MB on a 64-bit OS Windows Vista highest score 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Graphics Subscore Score Conditions ======= ====================== 1.0 doesn't support DX9 1.9 doesn't support WDDM 4.9 does not support Pixel Shader 3.0 5.9 doesn't support DX10 or WDDM1.1 Windows Vista highest score 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Gaming graphics subscore Score Result ======= ============================= 1.0 doesn't support D3D 2.0 supports D3D9, DX9 and WDDM 5.9 doesn't support DX10 or WDDM1.1 Windows Vista highest score 6.0-6.9 good framerates (e.g. 40-50fps) at normal resoltuions (e.g. 1280x1024) 7.0-7.9 even higher framerates at even higher resolutions 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Processor subscore Score Conditions ======= ========================================================================== 5.9 Windows Vista highest score 6.0-6.9 many quad core processors will be able to score in the high 6 low 7 ranges 7.0+ many quad core processors will be able to score in the high 6 low 7 ranges 7.9 8-core systems will be able to approach 8.9 Windows 7 highest score Primary hard disk subscore (note) Score Conditions ======= ======================================== 1.9 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 2.0 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 2.9 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 3.0 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 5.9 highest you're likely to see without SSD Windows Vista highest score 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Bonus Chatter You can find your WEI detailed test results in: C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore e.g. 2011-11-06 01.00.19.482 Disk.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml <WinSAT> <WinSPR> <DiskScore>5.9</DiskScore> </WinSPR> <Metrics> <DiskMetrics> <AvgThroughput units="MB/s" score="6.4" ioSize="65536" kind="Sequential Read">89.95188</AvgThroughput> <AvgThroughput units="MB/s" score="4.0" ioSize="16384" kind="Random Read">1.58000</AvgThroughput> <Responsiveness Reason="UnableToAssess" Kind="Cap">TRUE</Responsiveness> </DiskMetrics> </Metrics> </WinSAT> Pre-emptive snarky comment: "WEI is useless, it has no relation to reality" Fine, how do i increase my hard-drive's random I/O throughput? Update - Amount of memory limits rating Some people don't believe Microsoft's statement that having less than 4GB of RAM on a 64-bit edition of Windows doesn't limit the rating to 5.9: And from xxx.Formal.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml: <WinSPR> <LimitsApplied> <MemoryScore> <LimitApplied Friendly="Physical memory available to the OS is less than 4.0GB-64MB on a 64-bit OS : limit mem score to 5.9" Relation="LT">4227858432</LimitApplied> </MemoryScore> </LimitsApplied> </WinSPR> References Windows Vista Team Blog: Windows Experience Index: An In-Depth Look Understand and improve your computer's performance in Windows Vista Engineering Windows 7 Blog: Engineering the Windows 7 “Windows Experience Index”

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• setting up Ubuntu 10.10 as paravirtualized guest in Xen on RHEL5 host - what kernel?

  - by kostmo

  I've discovered the tool ubuntu-vm-builder, which I've installed and then invoked on an Ubuntu workstation as: sudo vmbuilder xen ubuntu --suite maverick --flavour virtual --arch amd64 --mem=512 --rootsize 8192 This workstation is not the intended target host of the virtual machine, however; I would like to host the guest on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 machine that is running Xen 3.0.3. The output of this command appears to be a folder named ubuntu-xen containing three files: tmpXXXXXX, a very large file which I assume is the root partition image tmpYYYYYY, a somewhat large file which I assume is the swap partition image xen.conf, a text file I have copied the xen.conf file to the RHEL server's /etc/xen directory under the new name newvm, adjusting the paths of tempXXXXXX and tempYYYYYYin the file after also copying them from my local workstation to the RHEL server. When I launch the Virtual Machine Manager virt-manager, I can see the newvm virtual machine listed underneath the Dom0 machine. When I try to start newvm, I get the error: Error starting domain: virDomainCreate() failed POST operation failed: (xend.err 'Error creating domain: Kernel image does not exist: None') Indeed, there exists an entry kernel = 'None' in the xen.conf file. How do I find out what the path of the kernel should be? Is this path supposed to be to a kernel stored on the local filesystem of the RHEL5 host, or is it supposed to be a path inside the guest image? I see that the vmbuilder command provides for a --xen-kernel option, along with a --xen-ramdisk option, but I'm not sure what to use for either. I think I should be able to get this to work, since Ubuntu is said to be supported as a Xen guest, even though the Xen 4.0.1 docs state support for only a limited set of distributions, Ubuntu excluded. Update 1 When running vmbuilder on my local workstation, I did observe an output line saying: Calling hook: install_kernel and later, output lines saying: update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-23-virtual [...] run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 2.6.35-23-virtual /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-23-virtual So in the xen.conf file, I tried setting the lines: kernel = '/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-23-virtual' ramdisk = '/boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-23-virtual' When trying to start the VM, I got an error similar to last time: Error starting domain: virDomainCreate() failed POST operation failed: (xend.err 'Error creating domain: Kernel image does not exist: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-23-virtual') This makes me think that the RHEL5 machine is looking for local files, rather than a file within the binary guest disk image. After running sudo updatedb on my workstation, neither of those files were found. If the vmbuilder tool had tried to install them, it must have failed. Update 2 I was able to extract the kernel and initrd images from the guest disk binary by mounting it: mkdir mnt_tmp sudo mount ubuntu-xen/tmpXXXXXX mnt_tmp/ -o loop cp mnt_tmp/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-23-virtual virtual_kernel_ubuntu cp mnt_tmp/boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-23-virtual virtual_initrd_ubuntu These two files I copied to the RHEL5 server, and edited the xen.conf file to point to them as kernel and ramdisk. With this done, I could "run" the newvm virtual machine from within virt-manager, but was met with the message Console Not Configured For Guest when I double clicked the entry to open the Virtual Machine Console. As suggested by a forum, I then added the line vfb = [ 'type=vnc' ] to the configuration file, recreated the virtual machine (a ~10 min process), and this time got the message: Connecting to console for guest This remained indefinitely; after selecting View - Serial Console, I found a kernel panic: [5442621.272173] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task! [5442621.272179] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Tainted: G D 2.6.35-23-virtual #41-Ubuntu [5442621.272184] Call Trace: [5442621.272191] [<ffffffff815a1b81>] panic+0x90/0x111 [5442621.272199] [<ffffffff810652ee>] do_exit+0x3be/0x3f0 [5442621.272204] [<ffffffff815a5e20>] oops_end+0xb0/0xf0 [5442621.272211] [<ffffffff8100ddeb>] die+0x5b/0x90 [5442621.272216] [<ffffffff815a56c4>] do_trap+0xc4/0x170 [5442621.272221] [<ffffffff8100ba35>] do_invalid_op+0x95/0xb0 [5442621.272227] [<ffffffff8130851c>] ? intel_idle+0xac/0x180 [5442621.272232] [<ffffffff810072bf>] ? xen_restore_fl_direct_end+0x0/0x1 [5442621.272239] [<ffffffff815a48fe>] ? _raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore+0x1e/0x30 [5442621.272247] [<ffffffff8108dfb7>] ? tick_broadcast_oneshot_control+0xc7/0x120 [5442621.272253] [<ffffffff8100ad5b>] invalid_op+0x1b/0x20 [5442621.272259] [<ffffffff8130851c>] ? intel_idle+0xac/0x180 [5442621.272264] [<ffffffff813084e0>] ? intel_idle+0x70/0x180 [5442621.272269] [<ffffffff810072bf>] ? xen_restore_fl_direct_end+0x0/0x1 [5442621.272275] [<ffffffff8148a147>] cpuidle_idle_call+0xa7/0x140 [5442621.272281] [<ffffffff81008d93>] cpu_idle+0xb3/0x110 [5442621.272286] [<ffffffff815873aa>] rest_init+0x8a/0x90 [5442621.272291] [<ffffffff81b04c9d>] start_kernel+0x387/0x390 [5442621.272297] [<ffffffff81b04341>] x86_64_start_reservations+0x12c/0x130 [5442621.272303] [<ffffffff81b08002>] xen_start_kernel+0x55d/0x561 Update 3 I tried an i386 architecture instead of amd64, but got the same kernel panic. Also, it seems the Virtual Machine Manager pays attention to the format of the filename of the kernel; for the same kernel binary, I tried simply naming it vmlinuz-virtual, which threw out an error box about an invalid kernel. When I named it vmlinuz-2.6.35-23-virtual, it did not throw the error, but it did still result in the kernel panic shortly thereafter.

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• Set the JAXB context factory initialization class to be used

  - by user1902288

  I have updated our projects (Java EE based running on Websphere 8.5) to use a new release of a company internal framework (and Ejb 3.x deployment descriptors rather than the 2.x ones). Since then my integration Tests fail with the following exception: [java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.ibm.xml.xlxp2.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory] I can build the application with the previous framework release and everything works fine. While debugging i noticed that within the ContextFinder (javax.xml.bind) there are two different behaviours: Previous Version (Everything works just fine): None of the different places brings up a factory class so the default factory class gets loaded which is com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.ContextFactory (defined as String constant within the class). Upgraded Version (ClassNotFound): There is a resource "META-INF/services/javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext" beeing loaded successfully and the first line read makes the ContextFinder attempt to load "com.ibm.xml.xlxp2.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory" which causes the error. I now have two questions: What sort is that resource? Because inside our EAR there is two WARs and none of those two contains a folder services in its META-INF directory. Where could that value be from otherwise? Because a filediff showed me no new or changed properties files. No need to say i am going to read all about the JAXB configuration possibilities but if you have first insights on what could have gone wrong or help me out with that resource (is it a real file i have to look for?) id appreciate a lot. Many Thanks! EDIT (according to comments Input/Questions): Out of curiosity, does your framework include JAXB JARs? Did the old version of your framework include jaxb.properties? Indeed (i am a bit surprised) the framework has a customized eclipselink-2.4.1-.jar inside the EAR that includes both a JAXB implementation and a jaxb.properties file that shows the following entry in both versions (the one that finds the factory as well as in the one that throws the exception): javax.xml.bind.context.factory=org.eclipse.persistence.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory I think this is has nothing to do with the current issue since the jar stayed exactly the same in both EARs (the one that runs/ the one with the expection) It's also not clear to me why the old version of the framework was ever selecting the com.sun implementation There is a class javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder which is responsible for initializing the JAXBContextFactory. This class searches various placess for the existance of a jaxb.properties file or a "javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext" resource. If ALL of those places dont show up which Context Factory to use there is a deault factory loaded which is hardcoded in the class itself: private static final String PLATFORM_DEFAULT_FACTORY_CLASS = "com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.ContextFactory"; Now back to my problem: Building with the previous version of the framework (and EJB 2.x deployment descriptors) everything works fine). While debugging i can see that there is no configuration found and thatfore above mentioned default factory is loaded. Building with the new version of the framework (and EJB 3.x deployment descriptors so i can deploy) ONLY A TESTCASE fails but the rest of the functionality works (like i can send requests to our webservice and they dont trigger any errors). While debugging i can see that there is a configuration found. This resource is named "META-INF/services/javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext". Here are the most important lines of how this resource leads to the attempt to load 'com.ibm.xml.xlxp2.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory' which then throws the ClassNotFoundException. This is simplified source of the mentioned javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder class: URL resourceURL = ClassLoader.getSystemResource("META-INF/services/javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext"); BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(resourceURL.openStream(), "UTF-8")); String factoryClassName = r.readLine().trim(); The field factoryClassName now has the value 'com.ibm.xml.xlxp2.jaxb.JAXBContextFactory' (The day i understand how to format source code on stackoverflow will be my biggest step ahead.... sorry for the formatting after 20 mins it still looks the same :() Because this has become a super lager question i will also add a bounty :)

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• How to Zip one IEnumerable with itself

  - by wageoghe

  I am implementing some math algorithms based on lists of points, like Distance, Area, Centroid, etc. Just like in this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2227828/find-the-distance-required-to-navigate-a-list-of-points-using-linq That post describes how to calculate the total distance of a sequence of points (taken in order) by essentially zipping the sequence "with itself", generating the sequence for Zip by offsetting the start position of the original IEnumerable by 1. So, given the Zip extension in .Net 4.0, assuming Point for the point type, and a reasonable Distance formula, you can make calls like this to generate a sequence of distances from one point to the next and then to sum the distances: var distances = points.Zip(points.Skip(1),Distance); double totalDistance = distances.Sum(); Area and Centroid calculations are similar in that they need to iterate over the sequence, processing each pair of points (points[i] and points[i+1]). I thought of making a generic IEnumerable extension suitable for implementing these (and possibly other) algorithms that operate over sequences, taking two items at a time (points[0] and points[1], points[1] and points[2], ..., points[n-1] and points[n] (or is it n-2 and n-1 ...) and applying a function. My generic iterator would have a similar signature to Zip, but it would not receive a second sequence to zip with as it is really just going to zip with itself. My first try looks like this: public static IEnumerable<TResult> ZipMyself<TSequence, TResult>(this IEnumerable<TSequence> seq, Func<TSequence, TSequence, TResult> resultSelector) { return seq.Zip(seq.Skip(1),resultSelector); } With my generic iterator in place, I can write functions like this: public static double Length(this IEnumerable<Point> points) { return points.ZipMyself(Distance).Sum(); } and call it like this: double d = points.Length(); and double GreensTheorem(Point p1, Point p1) { return p1.X * p2.Y - p1.Y * p2.X; } public static double SignedArea(this IEnumerable<Point> points) { return points.ZipMyself(GreensTheorem).Sum() / 2.0 } public static double Area(this IEnumerable<Point> points) { return Math.Abs(points.SignedArea()); } public static bool IsClockwise(this IEnumerable<Point> points) { return SignedArea(points) < 0; } and call them like this: double a = points.Area(); bool isClockwise = points.IsClockwise(); In this case, is there any reason NOT to implement "ZipMyself" in terms of Zip and Skip(1)? Is there already something in LINQ that automates this (zipping a list with itself) - not that it needs to be made that much easier ;-) Also, is there better name for the extension that might reflect that it is a well-known pattern (if, indeed it is a well-known pattern)? Had a link here for a StackOverflow question about area calculation. It is question 2432428. Also had a link to Wikipedia article on Centroid. Just go to Wikipedia and search for Centroid if interested. Just starting out, so don't have enough rep to post more than one link,

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• Trying to link http://www.example.com to my shopping cart on https://secure.example.com

  - by Pickledegg

  Heres my saga - I'm trying to link http://www.example.com to my shopping cart on https://secure.example.com, but it doesnt seem to be linking correctly. Heres my code: <!--Google Analytics --> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-125xxxxx-1"); //start cart link pageTracker._setDomainName(".example.com"); pageTracker._setAllowHash(false); //end cart link pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}</script> <!--Google Analytics --> Notice the two lines: pageTracker._setDomainName(".example.com"); pageTracker._setAllowHash(false); I added the first line so I could share the cookies between site and cart, and added the setAllowHash to make sure it used the utm values from the cookie, and didnt 'recreate' them when I entered https://secure.example.com. Using firecookie, it does indeed share the same cookie between site and cart, and the cookies domain is 'example.com'. I'm pretty sure though that if it was working right, all my utmz, utma values etc should be copied over and remain the same, but they're changing. I've copied all the params that are being sent to google analytics and pasted then below. It shows what is happening from my homepage, to my product page, then into my cart all the way to the page before ordering. ( I can't practically test the final page myself without buying something, so I'll post the code from our confirmation page later if needed.) Here goes: =============================================================== HOMEPAGE - http://www.example.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- utmac UA-125xxxxx-1 utmcc __utma=1.1920057171.1269446996.1269446996.1269446996.1;+__utmz=1.1269446996.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); utmcs UTF-8 utmdt GSM Cell Phone Rental from example utmfl 10.0 r45 utmhid 69978133 utmhn www.example.com utmje 1 utmn 1806413990 utmp / utmr - utmsc 24-bit utmsr 1280x800 utmul en-gb utmwv 4.6.5 PRODUCT PAGE - http://www.example.com/products/international-cell-phone-purchase/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- utmac UA-125xxxxx-1 utmcc __utma=1.1920057171.1269446996.1269446996.1269446996.1;+__utmz=1.1269446996.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); utmcs UTF-8 utmdt example | International Cell Phones utmfl 10.0 r45 utmhid 276151647 utmhn www.example.com utmje 1 utmn 155808433 utmp /products/international-cell-phone-purchase/ utmr 0 utmsc 24-bit utmsr 1280x800 utmul en-gb utmwv 4.6.5 CART STAGE 1 - https://secure.example.com/checkout/viewbasket.php ------------------------------------------------ utmac UA-125xxxxx-1 utmcc __utma=60286578.994269564.1269447144.1269447144.1269447144.1;+__utmz=60286578.1269447144.1.1.utmcsr=example.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/products/international-cell-phone-purchase/; utmcn 1 utmcs UTF-8 utmdt Your Cart utmfl 10.0 r45 utmhid 1802074903 utmhn secure.example.com utmje 1 utmn 1621444199 utmp 1-reviewcart utmr http://www.example.com/products/international-cell-phone-purchase/ utmsc 24-bit utmsr 1280x800 utmul en-gb utmwv 4.6.5 CART STAGE 2 - https://secure.example.com/checkout/docheckout.php ------------------------------------------------ utmac UA-125xxxxx-1 utmcc __utma=60286578.994269564.1269447144.1269447144.1269447144.1;+__utmz=60286578.1269447144.1.1.utmcsr=example.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/products/international-cell-phone-purchase/; utmcs UTF-8 utmdt Checkout utmfl 10.0 r45 utmhid 871670520 utmhn secure.example.com utmje 1 utmn 1153927228 utmp 2-checkout utmr 0 utmsc 24-bit utmsr 1280x800 utmul en-gb utmwv 4.6.5 CART STAGE 3 - https://secure.example.com/checkout/doreview.php ---------------------------------------------- utmac UA-125xxxxx-1 utmcc __utma=60286578.994269564.1269447144.1269447144.1269447144.1;+__utmz=60286578.1269447144.1.1.utmcsr=example.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/products/international-cell-phone-purchase/; utmcs UTF-8 utmdt Checkout utmfl 10.0 r45 utmhid 1731598159 utmhn secure.example.com utmje 1 utmn 1442257710 utmp 3-checkoutreview utmr 0 utmsc 24-bit utmsr 1280x800 utmul en-gb utmwv 4.6.5 =============================================================== As you can see, the utma values are not being preserved, so it looks like a config issue. I've studied the help does but none of the cases seem to fit mine. I hope someone can offer help on this, its been an ongoing problem of mine for a while, and would be good to finally get rock-solid reliable analytics set up.

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• How to create an array of User Objects in Powerbuilder?

  - by TomatoSandwich

  The application has many different windows. One is a single 'row' window, which relates to a single row of data in a table, say 'Order'. Another is a 'multiple row' datawindow, where each row in the datawindow relates to a row in 'Order', used for spreadsheet-like data entry Functionality extentions have create a detail table, say 'Suppliers', where an order may require multiple suppliers to fill the order. Normally, suppliers are not required, because they are already in the warehouse (0), or there may need to be an order to a supplier to complete an order (1), or multiple suppliers may need to be contacted (more than one). As a single order is entered, once the items are entered, a User Object is populated depending on the status of the items in the warehouse. If required, this creates a 1-to-many relationship between the order and the "backorder". In the PB side, there is a single object uo_backorder which is created on the window, and is referenced by the window depending on the command (button popup, save, etc) I have been tasked to create the 'backorder' functionality on the spreadsheet-line window. Previously the default options for backorders were used when orders were created from the multiple-row window. A workaround already exists where unconfirmed orders could be opened in the single-row window, and the backorder information manipulated there. However, the userbase wants this functionality on the one window. Since the functionality of uo_backorder already exists, I assumed I could just copy the code from the single-order window, but create an array of uo_backorder objects to cope with multiple rows. I tried the following: forward .. type uo_backorder from popupdwpb within w_order_conv end type end forward global type w_order_conv from singleform .. uo_backorder uo_backorder end type type variables .. uo_backorder iuo_backorders[] end variables .. public function boolean iuo_backorders(); .. long ll_count ll_count = UpperBound(iuo_backorders[]) iuo_backorders[ll_count+1] = uo_backorder //THIS ISN'T RIGHT lb_ok = iuo_backorders[ll_count+1].init('w_backorder_popup', '', '', '', 'd_backorder_popup', sqlca, useTransObj()) return lb_ok end function .. <utility functions> .. type uo_backorder from popupdwpb within w_order_conv integer x = 28 integer y = 28 integer width ... end type on uo_backorder.destroy call popupdwpb::destroy end on The issue I face now is that the code commented "THIS ISN'T RIGHT" isn't correct. It is associating the visual object placed on the face of the main window to each array cell, so anytime I reference the array cell object it's actually referencing the one original object, not the new instances that I (thought) I was creating. If I change the code iuo_backorders[ll_count+1] = create uo_backorder the code doesn't run, saying that it failed to initalize the popup window. I think this is related to the class being called the same thing as the instance. What I want to end up with is an array of uo_backorder objects that I can associate to each row of my datawindow (first row = first cell, etc). I think the issue lays in the fact it's a visual object, and I can't seem to get the window to run without adding a dummy object on the face of the window (functionality from the original single-row window). Since it's a VISUAL object, does the object indeed need to be embedded on the windowface for the window to know what object I'm talking about? If so, how does one create multiple windowface objects (one to many, depending on when a row is added)? Don't hesitate to inquire regarding any more information this issue may require from myself. I have no idea what is 'standard' or 'default' in PB, or what is custom and needs more explaining.

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• Calculate a set of concatenated sets of n sets

  - by Andras Zoltan

  Okay - I'm not even sure that the term is right - and I'm sure there is bound to be a term for this - but I'll do my best to explain. This is not quite a cross product here, and the order of the results are absolutely crucial. Given: IEnumerable<IEnumerable<string>> sets = new[] { /* a */ new[] { "a", "b", "c" }, /* b */ new[] { "1", "2", "3" }, /* c */ new[] { "x", "y", "z" } }; Where each inner enumerable represents an instruction to produce a set of concatenations as follows (the order here is important): set a* = new string[] { "abc", "ab", "a" }; set b* = new string[] { "123", "12", "1" }; set c* = new string[] { "xyz", "xy", "x" }; I want to produce set ordered concatenations as follows: set final = new string { a*[0] + b*[0] + c*[0], /* abc123xyz */ a*[0] + b*[0] + c*[1], /* abc123xy */ a*[0] + b*[0] + c*[2], /* abc123x */ a*[0] + b*[0], /* abc123 */ a*[0] + b*[1] + c*[0], /* abc12xyz */ a*[0] + b*[1] + c*[1], /* abc12xy */ a*[0] + b*[1] + c*[2], /* abc12x */ a*[0] + b*[1], /* abc12 */ a*[0] + b*[2] + c*[0], /* abc1xyz */ a*[0] + b*[2] + c*[1], /* abc1xy */ a*[0] + b*[2] + c*[2], /* abc1x */ a*[0] + b*[2], /* abc1 */ a*[0], /* abc */ a*[1] + b*[0] + c*[0], /* ab123xyz */ /* and so on for a*[1] */ /* ... */ a*[2] + b*[0] + c*[0], /* a123xyz */ /* and so on for a*[2] */ /* ... */ /* now lop off a[*] and start with b + c */ b*[0] + c*[0], /* 123xyz */ /* rest of the combinations of b + c with b on its own as well */ /* then finally */ c[0], c[1], c[2]}; So clearly, there are going to be a lot of combinations! I can see similarities with Numeric bases (since the order is important as well), and I'm sure there are permutations/combinations lurking in here too. The question is - how to write an algorithm like this that'll cope with any number of sets of strings? Linq, non-Linq; I'm not fussed. Why am I doing this? Indeed, why!? In Asp.Net MVC - I want to have partial views that can be redefined for a given combination of back-end/front-end culture and language. The most basic of these would be, for a given base view View, we could have View-en-GB, View-en, View-GB, and View, in that order of precedence (recognising of course that the language/culture codes could be the same, so some combinations might be the same - a Distinct() will solve that). But I also have other views that, in themselves, have other possible combinations before culture is even taken into account (too long to go into - but the fact is, this algo will enable a whole bunch of really cool that I want to offer my developers!). I want to produce a search list of all the acceptable view names, iterate through the whole lot until the most specific match is found (governed by the order that this algo will produce these concatenations in) then serve up the resolved Partial View. The result of the search can later be cached to avoid the expense of running the algorithm all the time. I already have a really basic version of this working that just has one enumerable of strings. But this is a whole different kettle of seafood! Any help greatly appreciated.

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• "type" Command Not Working As Expected on Git Bash

  - by trysis

  The type command, in Linux, returns the location, on the filesystem, of the given file, if it is in the current folder or the $PATH. This functionality is also available through Windows with the Git Bash command line program. The command also returns a file's location given the file without its extension (.exe, .vbs, etc.) However, I have run into what seems like a strange corner case where the file exists on the $PATH but doesn't get returned using the command. I am thinking of buying a new computer soon, so I looked up the method of transferring the license key from one computer to another, in preparation for actually doing this. The method I found mentioned the files slmgr.vbs and slui.exe, both of which reside in the C:/Windows\System32 folder, which is in my $PATH, as usual for a Windows computer. However, these two files aren't showing up when I use the type command. Also, neither gets executed when I call the files as commands without their extensions in Git Bash, and only slmgr.vbs gets executed when I call them with the extensions. Finally, slmgr.vbs is shown when listing the folder's contents in Git Bash, as well, but slui.exe isn't. I thought this might have to do with permissions, and, indeed, both files have very restrictive permissions, as you can see in the pictures below, but they both have the same permissions, which wouldn't explain why one gets executed and the other doesn't when called directly, nor why one file is listed on command line but the other isn't. C:\Windows\System32 folder, proving the files exist: File permissions for the Users and Administrators groups for the two files (they are identical): And the folder: type command and its output in Git Bash for the 2 files, plus listing the files in the folder (using grep to filter as the folder is huge), as well as listing part of the $PATH (keep in mind, for all these, that Git Bash changes the paths as they are displayed): Sean@MYPC ~ $ type -a slmgr sh.exe": type: slmgr: not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ type -a slmgr.vbs sh.exe": type: slmgr.vbs: not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ type -a slui sh.exe": type: slui: not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ type -a slui.exe sh.exe": type: slui.exe: not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ slmgr sh.exe": slmgr: command not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ slmgr.vbs /c/WINDOWS/system32/slmgr.vbs: line 2: syntax error near unexpected token `(' /c/WINDOWS/system32/slmgr.vbs: line 2: `' Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. A ll rights reserved.' Sean@MYPC ~ $ slui sh.exe": slui: command not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ slui.exe sh.exe": slui.exe: command not found Sean@MYPC ~ $ ls /c/Windows/System32/slui.exe /c/Windows/System32/slmgr.vbs ls: /c/Windows/System32/slui.exe: No such file or directory /c/Windows/System32/slmgr.vbs Sean@MYPC ~ $ echo $PATH /c/Users/Sean/bin:.:/usr/local/bin:/mingw/bin:/bin:/cmd:/c/Python33/:/c/Program Files (x86)/Intel/iCLS Client/:/c/Program Files/Intel/iCLS Client/:/c/WINDOWS/sy stem32:/c/WINDOWS:/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/c/WINDOWS/System32/WindowsPowerShell /v1.0/:/c/Program Files/Intel/Intel(R) Management Engine Components/DAL:/c/Progr am Files/Intel/Intel(R) Management Engine Components/IPT:/c/Program Files (x86)/ Intel/Intel(R) Management Engine Components/DAL:/c/Program Files (x86)/Intel/Int el(R) Management Engine Components/IPT:/c/Program Files/Intel/WiFi/bin/:/c/Progr am Files/Common Files/Intel/WirelessCommon/:/c/strawberry/c/bin:/c/strawberry/pe rl/site/bin:/c/strawberry/perl/bin:/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft ASP.NET/ASP. NET Web Pages/v1.0/:/c/Program Files/Microsoft SQL Server/110/Tools/Binn/:/c/Pro gram Files (x86)/Microsoft SQL Server/90/Tools/binn/:/c/Program Files (x86)/Open AFS/Common:/c/HashiCorp/Vagrant/bin:/c/Program Files (x86)/Windows Kits/8.1/Wind ows Performance Toolkit/:/c/Program Files/nodejs/:/c/Program Files (x86)/Git/cmd :/c/Program Files (x86)/Git/bin:/c/Program Files/Microsoft/Web Platform Installe r/:/c/Ruby200-x64/bin:/c/Users/Sean/AppData/Local/Box/Box Edit/:/c/Program Files (x86)/SSH Communications Security/SSH Secure Shell:/c/Users/Sean/Documents/Lisp :/c/Program Files/GCL-2.6.1/lib/gcl-2.6.1/unixport:/c/Chocolatey/bin:/c/Users/Se an/AppData/Roaming/npm:/c/wamp/bin/mysql/mysql5.6.12/bin:/c/Program Files/Oracle /VirtualBox:/c/Program Files/Java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin:/c/Program Files/Node-Growl:/c /chocolatey/bin:/c/Program Files/eclipse:/c/MongoDB/bin:/c/Program Files/7-Zip:/ c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application:/c/Program Files (x86)/LibreOffi ce 4/program:/c/Program Files (x86)/OpenOffice 4/program What's happening? Why aren't these files listed with the type command? Is this issue because of weird Windows permissions, or something even weirder? If permissions, why do they seem to have the same permissions, yet both are not handled in the same way?

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• I'm trying to run some PHP scripts as CLI instead of over HTTP. How do I make them play nice?

  - by gnfti

  Hi everyone. I'm using some PHP scripts from FeedForAll to join together RSS feeds (RSSmesh) and display them as HTML (RSS2HTML). Because I intend to run these scripts fairly intensively and don't want the resulting HTTP requests and bandwidth to count towards my hosting quota, I am in the process of moving to running them on the web host's server in an umbrella PHP "batch" script, and call this script via cron (this is a Linux server, by the way). Here's a (working) sample request over HTTP: http://www.mydomain.com/a/rss2htmlcore/rss2html2.php?XMLFILE=http://www.mydomain.com/a/myapp/xmlcache/feed.xml&TEMPLATE=template.html This will produce the desired HTML output. An example of how I want this to work on the command line: /srv/customers/mycustomer#/mydomain.com/www/a/rss2htmlcore/rss2html2-cli.php /srv/customers/mycustomer#/mydomain.com/www/a/myapp/xmlcache/feed.xml /srv/customers/mycustomer#/mydomain.com/www/a/template.html This is with the correct shebang line added to "rss2html2-cli.php". I could just as well specify the executable ("/usr/local/bin/php") in the request, I doubt it makes a difference because I am able to run another script (that I wrote myself) either way without problems. Now, RSS2HTML and RSSmesh are different in that, for starters, they include secondary files -- for example, both include an XML parser script -- and I suspect that this is where I am getting a bit in over my head. Right now I'm calling exec() from the "umbrella" batch script, like so: exec("/srv/customers/mycustomer#/mydomain.com/www/a/rss2htmlcore/rss2html2-cli.php /srv/customers/mycustomer#/mydomain.com/www/a/myapp/xmlcache/feed.xml /srv/customers/mycustomer#/mydomain.com/www/a/template.html", $output) But no output is being produced. What's the best way to go about this and what "gotchas" should I keep in mind? Is exec() the right way to approach this? It works fine for the other (simple) script but that writes its own output. For this I want to get the output and write it to a file from within the umbrella script if possible. I've also tried output buffering but to no avail. Do I need to pay attention to anything specific with regard to the includes? Right now they're specified in the scripts as include_once("FeedForAll_XMLParser.inc.php"); and the specified files are indeed in the same folder. Further info: -This is a Linux server. -I have no direct access to the shell, so I can't test things directly on a command line, everything is via crontab. -I will admit that support for the FeedForAll scripts leaves a lot to be desired, but I'd like to keep using their scripts if at all possible, if only because I know them and have been using them for a while. I have looked into Simplepie, but the FFA scripts do some things that I've seen no obvious solutions for with Simplepie, like limiting the number of items per individual feed (RSSmesh) or limiting the description length (RSS2HTML). -Yahoo! Pipes is out, they cache their data for too long for my application. Should you want to take a look at the code, here are the scripts as txt files. RSS2HTML2 and RSSmesh are the FeedForAll scripts, FeedForAll_XMLParser... is the included parser. Note that I have not yet amended these to handle $argv etc. I have however in "scraper-universal-rss-cli", which works fine with CLI. If anyone has any thoughts to share on this it would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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• Interactive Data Language, IDL: Does anybody care?

  - by Alex

  Anyone use a language called Interactive Data Language, IDL? It is popular with scientists. I think it is a poor language because it is proprietary (every terminal running it has to have an expensive license purchased) and it has minimal support (try searching for IDL, the language, right now on stack) . I am trying to convince my colleagues to stop using it and learn C/C++/Python/Fortran/Java/Ruby. Does anybody know about or even care about IDL enough to have opinions on it? What do you think of it? Should I tell my colleagues to stop wasting their time on it now? How can I convince them? Edit: People are getting the impression that I don't know or use IDL. Also, I said IDL has minimal support which is true in one sense, so I must clarify that the scientific libraries are indeed large. I use IDL all the time, but this is exactly the problem: I am only using IDL because colleagues use it. There is a file format IDL uses, the .sav, which can only be opened in IDL. So I must use IDL to work with this data and transfer the data back to colleagues, but I know I would be more efficient in another language. This is like someone sending you a microsoft word file in an email attachment and if you don't understand how wrong that is then you probably write too many words not enough code and you bought microsoft word. Edit: As an alternative to IDL Python is popular. Here is a list of The Pros of IDL (and the cons) from AstroBetter: Pros of IDL Mature many numerical and astronomical libraries available Wide astronomical user base Numerical aspect well integrated with language itself Many local users with deep experience Faster for small arrays Easier installation Good, unified documentation Standard GUI run/debug tool (IDLDE) Single widget system (no angst about which to choose or learn) SAVE/RESTORE capability Use of keyword arguments as flags more convenient Cons of IDL Narrow applicability, not well suited to general programming Slower for large arrays Array functionality less powerful Table support poor Limited ability to extend using C or Fortran, such extensions hard to distribute and support Expensive, sometimes problem collaborating with others that don’t have or can’t afford licenses. Closed source (only RSI can fix bugs) Very awkward to integrate with IRAF tasks Memory management more awkward Single widget system (useless if working within another framework) Plotting: Awkward support for symbols and math text Many font systems, portability issues (v5.1 alleviates somewhat) not as flexible or as extensible plot windows not intrinsically interactive (e.g., pan & zoom) Pros of Python Very general and powerful programming language, yet easy to learn. Strong, but optional, Object Oriented programming support Very large user and developer community, very extensive and broad library base Very extensible with C, C++, or Fortran, portable distribution mechanisms available Free; non-restrictive license; Open Source Becoming the standard scripting language for astronomy Easy to use with IRAF tasks Basis of STScI application efforts More general array capabilities Faster for large arrays, better support for memory mapping Many books and on-line documentation resources available (for the language and its libraries) Better support for table structures Plotting framework (matplotlib) more extensible and general Better font support and portability (only one way to do it too) Usable within many windowing frameworks (GTK, Tk, WX, Qt…) Standard plotting functionality independent of framework used plots are embeddable within other GUIs more powerful image handling (multiple simultaneous LUTS, optional resampling/rescaling, alpha blending, etc) Support for many widget systems Strong local influence over capabilities being developed for Python Cons of Python More items to install separately Not as well accepted in astronomical community (but support clearly growing) Scientific libraries not as mature: Documentation not as complete, not as unified Not as deep in astronomical libraries and utilities Not all IDL numerical library functions have corresponding functionality in Python Some numeric constructs not quite as consistent with language (or slightly less convenient than IDL) Array indexing convention “backwards” Small array performance slower No standard GUI run/debug tool Support for many widget systems (angst regarding which to choose) Current lack of function equivalent to SAVE/RESTORE in IDL matplotlib does not yet have equivalents for all IDL 2-D plotting capability (e.g., surface plots) Use of keyword arguments used as flags less convenient Plotting: comparatively immature, still much development going on missing some plot type (e.g., surface) 3-d capability requires VTK (though matplotlib has some basic 3-d capability)

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