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  • How do I compare 2 fields and return the lowest value of each record?

    - by BigRob
    I'm slowly learning access to make a database of products and suppliers for my parents' business. What i've got is a table of products indexed by our product reference and 2 more tables for 2 different suppliers that contains the suppliers product reference and price that links with our reference. I've made a query that performs a left outer join such that it returns a table of our products with each supplier's reference and price, i.e: Ref | Product Name | Supplier 1 Ref | Supplier 1 Price | Supplier 2 Ref | Supplier 2 Price Here's the query I used: SELECT Catalog.Ref, Catalog.[Product Name], Catalog.Price, [D Products].[Supplier Ref], [D Products].Cost, [GS Products].[Supplier Ref], [GS Products].Cost FROM ([Catalog] LEFT JOIN [D Products] ON Catalog.Ref = [D Products].Ref) LEFT JOIN [GS Products] ON Catalog.Ref = [GS Products].Ref; Not all products are available from both suppliers, hence the outer join. What I want to do (with a query?) is to take the table produced by the query above and simply show the product reference, cheapest supplier reference and cheapest supplier price, i.e: Ref | Cheapest Suppplier Ref | Cheapest Supplier Price Unfortunately my SQL knowledge isn't quite good enough to figure this out, but if anyone can help i'd really appreciate it. Thanks, Rob

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  • Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider

    - by Gopinath
    If you going to buy iPhone 4S on a two year contract in USA, Europe or Australia you may not find it expensive. But if you are planning to buy it in any other parts of the world, you will definitely feel the heat of ridiculous iPhone 4S price. In India iPhone 4S costs approximately costs $1000 which is 30% more than the price tag of an unlocked iPhone sold in USA. Personally I love iPhones as there is no match for the user experience provided by Apple as well as the wide range of really meaning applications available for iPhone. But it breaks heart to spend $1000 for a phone and I’m forced to look at alternates available in the market. Here are the four iPhone 4S alternates available in almost all the countries where we can buy iPhone 4S Google Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s own Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung and sold under the brand name of Google Nexus. Galaxy Nexus is the pure Android phone available in the market without any bloat software or custom user interfaces like other Androids available in the market. Galaxy Nexus is also the first Android phone to be shipped with the latest version of Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. This phone is the benchmark for the rest of Android phones that are going to enter the market soon. In the words of Google this smartphone is called as “Galaxy Nexus: Simple. Beautiful. Beyond Smart.”.  BGR review summarizes the phone as This is almost comical at this point, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is my favourite Android device in the world. Easily replacing the HTC Rezound, the Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus champions in a brand new version of Android that pushes itself further than almost any other mobile OS in the industry. Samsung Galaxy S II The one single company that is able to sell more smartphones than Apple is Samsung. Samsung recently displaced Apple from the top smartphone seller spot and occupied it with loads of pride. Samsung’s Galaxy S II fits as one the best alternatives to Apple’s iPhone 4S with it’s beautiful design and remarkable performance. Engadget summarizes Samsung Galaxy S2 review as It’s the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period. Of course, a 4.3-inch screen size won’t suit everyone, no matter how stupendously thin the device that carries it may be, and we also can’t say for sure that the Galaxy S II would justify a long-term iOS user foresaking his investment into one ecosystem and making the leap to another. Nonetheless, if you’re asking us what smartphone to buy today, unconstrained by such externalities, the Galaxy S II would be the clear choice. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Nokia Lumia 800 Here comes unexpected Windows Phone in to the boxing ring. May be they are not as great as Androids available in the market today, but they are picking up very quickly. Especially the Nokia Lumia 800 seems to be first ever Windows Phone 7 aimed at competing serious with Androids and iPhones available in the market. There are reports that Nokia Lumia 800 is outselling all Androids in UK and few high profile tech blogs are calling it as the king of Windows Phone. Considering this phone while evaluating the alternative of iPhone 4S will not disappoint you. We assure. Droid RAZR Remember the Motorola Driod that swept entire Android market share couple of years ago? The first two version of Motorola Droids were the best in the market and they out performed almost every other Android phone those days. The invasion of Samsung Androids, Motorola lost it charm. With the recent release of Droid RAZR, Motorola seems to be in the right direction to reclaiming the prestige. Droid RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in the market and it’s beauty is not just skin deep. Here is a review of the phone from Engadget blog the RAZR’s beauty is not only skin deep. The LTE radio, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM make sure this sleek number is ready to run with the big boys. It kept pace with, and in some cases clearly outclassed its high-end competition. Despite its deficiencies in the display department and underwhelming battery life, the RAZR looks to be a perfectly viable alternative when considering the similarly-pricey Rezound and Galaxy Nexus Further Reading So we have seen the four alternates of iPhone 4S available in the market and I personally love to buy a Samsung smartphone if I’m don’t have money to afford an iPhone 4S. If you are interested in deep diving into the alternates, here few links that help you do more research Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Motorola Droid RAZR: How Their Specs Compare by Huffington Post Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Nexus Galaxy: Spec Smackdown by PC World Browser Speed Test: Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II – by Gizmodo iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II by pocket lint Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II by techie buzz This article titled,Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Feb 2nd Links: Visual Studio, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, JQuery, Windows Phone

    - by ScottGu
    Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my Best of 2010 Summary for links to 100+ other posts I’ve done in the last year. [I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Community News MVCConf Conference Next Wednesday: Attend the free, online ASP.NET MVC Conference being organized by the community next Wednesday.  Here is a list of some of the talks you can watch live. Visual Studio HTML5 and CSS3 in VS 2010 SP1: Good post from the Visual Studio web tools team that talks about the new support coming in VS 2010 SP1 for HTML5 and CSS3. Database Deployment with the VS 2010 Package/Publish Database Tool: Rachel Appel has a nice post that covers how to enable database deployment using the built-in VS 2010 web deployment support.  Also check out her ASP.NET web deployment post from last month. VsVim Update Released: Jared posts about the latest update of his VsVim extension for Visual Studio 2010.  This free extension enables VIM based key-bindings within VS. ASP.NET How to Add Mobile Pages to your ASP.NET Web Forms / MVC Apps: Great whitepaper by Steve Sanderson that covers how to mobile-enable your ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC based applications. New Entity Framework Tutorials for ASP.NET Developers: The ASP.NET and EF teams have put together a bunch of nice tutorials on using the Entity Framework data library with ASP.NET Web Forms. Using ASP.NET Dynamic Data with EF Code First (via NuGet): Nice post from David Ebbo that talks about how to use the new EF Code First Library with ASP.NET Dynamic Data. Common Performance Issues with ASP.NET Web Sites: Good post with lots of performance tuning suggestions (mostly deployment settings) for ASP.NET apps. ASP.NET MVC Razor View Converter: Free, automated tool from Terlik that can convert existing .aspx view templates to Razor view templates. ASP.NET MVC 3 Internationalization: Nadeem has a great post that talks about a variety of techniques you can use to enable Globalization and Localization within your ASP.NET MVC 3 applications. ASP.NET MVC 3 Tutorials by David Hayden: Great set of tutorials and posts by David Hayden on some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features. EF Fixed Concurrency Mode and MVC: Chris Sells has a nice post that talks about how to handle concurrency with updates done with EF using ASP.NET MVC. ASP.NET and jQuery jQuery Performance Tips and Tricks: A free 30 minute video that covers some great tips and tricks to keep in mind when using jQuery. jQuery 1.5’s AJAX rewrite and ASP.NET services - All is well: Nice post by Dave Ward that talks about using the new jQuery 1.5 to call ASP.NET ASMX Services. Good news according to Dave is that all is well :-) jQuery UI Modal Dialogs for ASP.NET MVC: Nice post by Rob Regan that talks about a few approaches you can use to implement dialogs with jQuery UI and ASP.NET MVC.  Windows Phone 7 Free PDF eBook on Building Windows Phone 7 Applications with Silverlight: Free book that walksthrough how to use Silverlight and Visual Studio to build Windows Phone 7 applications. Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Three Steps to Becoming an Expert Oracle Linux System Administrator

    - by Antoinette O'Sullivan
    Oracle provides a complete system administration curriculum to take you from your initial experience of Unix to being an expert Oracle Linux system administrator. You can take these live instructor-led courses from your own desk through live-virtual events or by traveling to an education center through in-class events. Step 1: Unix and Linux Essentials This 3-day course is designed for users and administrators who are new to Oracle Linux. It will help you develop the basic UNIX skills needed to interact comfortably and confidently with the operating system. Below is a sample of the in-class events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Vivoorde, Belgium  28 October 2013  English  Berlin, Germany  15 July 2013  German  Utrecht, Netherlands  19 August 2013  Dutch  Bucarest, Romania  12 August 2013  Romanian  Ankara, Turkey  6 January 2013  Turkish  Nairobi, Kenya  5 August 2013  English  Kaduna, Nigeria  15 July 2013  English   Woodmead, South Africa  15 July 2013  English   Jakarta, Indonesia  23 September 2013  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  22 July 2013  English  Makati City, Philippines  3 July 2013  English  Bangkok, Thailand  20 November 2013  English  Auckland, New Zealand  5 August 2013  English  Melbourne, Australia  12 August 2013  English  Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Canada  3 September 2013  English  San Francisco and San Jose, CA, United States  15 July 2013  English  Reston, VA, United States  7 August 2013  English  Edison, NJ, and King of Prussia, PA, United States  3 September 2013  English  Denver, CO, United States  25 September 2013  English  Cambridge, MA, and Roseville MN, United States  6 November 2013  English  Phoenix, AZ, and Sacramento, CA, United States  25 November 2013  English Step 2: Oracle Linux System Administration Through this 5-day course, become a knowledgeable Oracle Linux system administrator, learning how to install Oracle Linux and the benefits of Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and Ksplice. Below is a sample of in-class events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Vienna, Austria  1 July 2013  German  Vivoorde, Belgium  18 November 2013  English  Zagreb, Croatia  16 September 2013  Croatian  London, England  3 September 2013  English  Manchester, England  9 September 2013  English  Paris, France  29 July 2013  French  Budapest, Hungary  8 July 2013  Hungarian  Utrecht, Netherland  2 September 2013  Dutch  Warsaw, Poland  15 July 2013  Polish  Bucharest, Romania  2 December 2013  Romanian  Ankara, Turkey  7 October 2013  Turkish  Istanbul, Turkey  9 September 2013  Turkish  Nairobi, Kenya  12 August 2013  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  29 July 2013  English  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  21 October 2013  English  Makati City, Philippines  8 July 2013  English  Singapore  24 July 2013  English  Bangkok, Thailand  26 July 2013  English  Canberra, Australia  19 August 2013  English  Melbourne, Australia  16 September 2013  English   Sydney, Australia 19 August 2013   English   Mississauga, Canada  26 August 2013  English  Ottawa, Canada  4 November 2013  English  Phoenix, AZ, United States  7 October 2013  English  Belmont, CA, United States  23 September 2013  English  Irvine, CA, United States  18 November 2013  English  Sacramento, CA, United States  19 August 2013  English  San Francisco, CA, United States  15 July 2013  English  Denver, CO, United States  19 August 2013  English  Schaumburg, IL, United States  26 August 2013  English  Indianapolis, IN, United States  14 October 2013  English  Columbia, MD, United States  30 September 2013  English  Roseville, MN, United States  19 August 2013  English  St Louis, MO, United States  7 October 2013  English  Edison, NJ, United States  28 October 2013  English  Beaverton, OR, United States  12 August 2013  English  Pittsburg, PA, United States 9 December 2013   English  Reston, VA, United States 12 August 2013   English  Brookfield, WI, United States 30 September 2013   English  Sao Paolo, Brazil 15 July 2013   Brazilian Portugese Step 3: Oracle Linux Advanced System Administration This new 3-day course is ideal for administrators who want to learn about managing resources and file systems while developing troubleshooting and advanced storage administration skills. You will learn about Linux Containers, Cgroups, btrfs, DTrace and more. Below is a sample of in-class events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Melbourne, Australia  9 October 2013  English  Roseville, MN, United States  3 September 2013  English To register for or learn more about these courses, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux. Watch this video to learn more about Oracle's operating system training.

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 25, 2010 -- #820

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: René Schulte, Jeremy Likness, Hassan, Victor Gaudioso, SilverLaw, Mike Taulty, Phani Raj, Tim Heuer, Christian Schormann, Brad Abrams, David Anson, Diptimaya Patra, and Daniel Vaughan. Shoutouts: Last week, Koen Zwikstra announced Silverlight Spy at MIX10 Anand Iyer announced this for students on the Windows Team Blog: Be a Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” Justin Angel blogged that Silverlight Isn't Fully Cross-Platform ... let him know if you think it's a yawn or important. On behalf of SilverlightShow, Cigdem Patlak posted MIX10: Laurent Bugnion on Silverlight adoption, WP7 and the EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Coding4Fun - Silverlight Real Time Face Detection René Schulte has a Coding 4 Fun article posted on facial recognition. Who better to be manipulating graphics like this than René? Sequential Asynchronous Workflows Part 2: Simplified Jeremy Likness follows up his previous post with another one that is 'simplified'. Remember his previous post began with a post on the Silverlight.net forum and Rob Eisenburg's MVVM presentation from MIX10 Windows Phone 7 Video Tutorial Hassan has a new video up on his AfricanGeek site, and that's a continuation of his previous WP7 video tutorial, adding a listbox and databinding it to the selected index of another listbox. The Los Angeles Silverlight Usergorup will be Streaming its March Meeting LIVE in Silverlight – Tonight! Victor Gaudioso used his Live Streaming knowledge to stream his User Group meeting last night from LA where Michael Washington presented on MVVM followed by Victor himself. That was last night. Today he has a couple of the videos up to view. Shining 3D Font Design - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a "Shining 3D Font" tutorial up, and a video on it here: New Video: How to create a 3D effect on a Silverlight 3 Textblock ... this is also available in the Expression Gallery. Silverlight 4 RC – Signing trusted apps with home made certificates Mike Taulty has a post up about building a hand-rolled cert to test out the XAP signing features, and then gives a nod to John Papa with a link to the Silverlight White Paper I've posted about before, because this info is in there as well. Developing a Windows Phone 7 Application that consumes OData Phani Raj has a tutorial up on consuming the NetFlix OData catalog on the WP7 emulator ... now *that* is cool! Make your Silverlight applications Speak to you with Microsoft Translator Tim Heuer used Silverlight to demonstrate Microsoft Translator as a speech synthesis tool using the Speak API included ... pretty cool, Tim ... lots of external links and code. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Sidebar – More About ListBox Than You Ever Wanted To Know Christian Schormann has another outstanding tutorial up on the ListBox and PathLayout in Expression Blend ... just check out the screen shots and you'll wanna read it! Silverlight 4 + RIA Services: Ready for Business: Updating Data in the Client This is the continuation of Brad Abrams' series on WCF RIA Services and is a tutorial on setting up to deal with updating the data. Tip: The CLR wrapper for a DependencyProperty should do its job and nothing more David Anson is posting some "Development Tips", and this is the first ... discussing making sure your DependencyProperty CLR wrapper stays on point... Create and Apply Theme Silverlight Application Diptimaya Patra has a tutorial up on creating and using themes. He states that "Themes are nothing but some predefined styles" ... check it out and see if it's really that easy :) Building a Windows Phone 7 Puzzle Game Daniel Vaughan has a great post up starting with installing all the tools and ending with a maze game for WP7 using XNA for sound... this is the first I've seen that integrates XNA (I think). Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone    MIX10

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  • Today's Links (6/29/2011)

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Event-Driven SOA: Events meet Services | Guido Schmutz Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz shows you how to achieve extreme loose coupling within a Service-Oriented Architecture by using event-driven interactions. Misconceptions About Software Architecture | Sanjeev Kumar A concise, to-the-point, and informative article by Sanjeev Kumar. Good Leaders Acknowledge What Can't Be Done - Jeffrey Pfeffer - Harvard Business Review "None of us likes to admit to bad decisions," says Jeffrey Pfeffer. "But imagine how much harder that is for someone who has been chosen to lead a large organization precisely because he or she is thought to have the power to see the future more clearly and chart a wise course." Suboptimal Thinking within Enterprise Architecture | James McGovern McGovern says: "We need to remember that enterprises live and thrive beyond just the current person at the helm." Boundaryless Information Flow | Richard Veryard "If all the boundaries are removed or porous, then the (extended) enterprise or ecosystem becomes like a giant sponge, in which all information permeates the whole," Veryard says. "Some people may think that's a good idea, but it's not what I'd call loose coupling." Coming to a City Near You: Oracle Business Analytics Summits | Rob Reynolds This series of events includes a Technology and Architecture track. New Date for Implementation of Sun Hands-On Course Requirement (Oracle Certification) As announced on the Oracle Certification website, Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification tracks will include a new mandatory course attendance requirement. VirtualBox 4.0.10 is now available for download | Bob Netherton Netherton shares information on the new release. Updated Technical Best Practices whitepaper | Anthony Shorten The Technical Best Practices whitepaper has been updated with the latest advice. "New advice includes new installation advice, advanced settings, new security settings and advice for both Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere installations," says Shorten. Kscope 11 ADF, AIA and Business Rules | Peter Paul van de Beek Whitehorses Solution Architect Peter Paul van de Beek shares his impressions of KScope11 presentations by Markus Eisele, Sten Vesterli, and Edwin Biemond. Amazon AWS for the learning experience | Andrej Koelewijn "Using AWS changes your expectations how your internal data center should operate," says Koelewijn. BPMN is dead, long live BPEL! (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jürgen Kress shares information -- including a long list of speakers -- for the SOA & BPM Integration Days 2011 conference, October 12th & 13th 2011 in Düsseldorf. InfoQ: HTML5 and the Dawn of Rich Mobile Web Applications James Pearce introduces cross-platform web apps development using HTML5 and web frameworks, such as jQTouch, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap, outlining what makes a good framework. InfoQ: Interview and Book Excerpt: CMMI for Development "Frameworks like TOGAF are used to define an architecture that aligns IT assets and resources to support key business needs and processes of key stakeholders," says SEI's Mike Konrad. "But the individual application systems, capabilities, services, networks, and other IT assets and infrastructure still need to be acquired, developed, or sustained." InfoQ: Architecting a Cloud-Scale Identity Fabric | Eric Olden "The most cited reason for not moving to the cloud is concern about security," says Olden. "In particular, managing user identity and access in the cloud is a tough problem to solve and a big security concern for organizations."

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 23, 2010 -- #818

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Jeremy Likness, Mark Tucker, Christian Schormann, Page Brooks, Brad Abrams(-2-), Jeff Wilcox, Unnir, Bea Stollnitz, John Papa and Adam Kinney, and Bill Reiss(-2-). Shoutouts: Ashish Shetty posted his material from his MIX10 presentation: Stepping outside the browser with Silverlight 4 Not Silverlight, but dang useful, Karl Shifflett posted a Visual Studio 2010 XAML Editor IntelliSense Presenter Extension Yavor Georgiev posted his MIX10 material: Two samples from today's MIX talk From SilverlightCream.com: GroupBox Sketching Control for WPF applications Using Blend Max Paulousky creates a GroupBox control for SketchFlow for WPF. He includes a link to an example of doing the same for Silverlight. Sequential Asynchronous Workflows in Silverlight using Coroutines Jeremy Likness' latest post begann with a post on the Silverlight.net forum and Rob Eisenburg's MVVM presentation from MIX10 resulting in the use of Wintellect's PowerThreading library (downloadable), and Coroutines. Windows Phone 7 UI Templates Mark Tucker has been putting a lot of thought into WP7 apps and produced 5 templates for building apps, downloadable in PowerPoint format. He's also looking to discuss this concept. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Part I Christian Schormann has a great tutorial up about Expression Blend 4 and path layout ... this is lots of great info, and it's only part 1! Custom Splash Screen for Windows Phone Page Brooks makes very quick work of showing how to add a splash screen to your WP7 app... very nice, Page! Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing Data from Entity Framework Brad Abrams next post in the series is is on pulling your data from wherever it lives, and uses a DomainService to shape it for your Silverlight app. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Consuming Data in the Silverlight Client Brad Abrams then discusses consuming that data in a Silverlight app. Not much code involvement at all.. great ROI :) Building Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 applications on a .NET 3.5 build machine Jeff Wilcox talks about building Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4B both on a .NET 3.5 machine. He then adds in the Toolkit, and even WCF RIA Services. Expression Blend 4 - XAML generation tweaks Unnir demonstrates a few changes to Expression Blend 4 that produce more compact XAML. He's also asking for other examples you'd like to see tightened up. How can I sort a hierarchy? Bea Stollnitz posts plausible solutions to sorting data items at each level of a hierarchical UI, with descriptions of why they don't work, followed by the real deal... Silverlight and WPF. Silverlight Training Course (Silverlight 4) John Papa and Adam Kinney have posted a huge body of work to get us up-to-speed on Silverlight 4 -- a WhitePaper, hands-on labs, and an 8-unit course with 25 accompanying videos... geez... Silverlight game development on Windows Phone 7 Bill Reiss has a post up discussing game development on WP7 in general and then discusses his SilverSprite library, with a link to it. XNA or Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 game development? Bill Reiss next discusses the advantage of using Silverlight or XNA for your WP7 game development, and who better to discuss both? Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • links for 2011-01-13

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Webcast: Oracle WebCenter Suite: Giving Users a Modern Experience Speakers: Vince Casarez (VP Enterprise 2.0 Product Management, Oracle),  Erin Smith (Consulting Practice Manager – Portals, Oracle), Robert Wessa (Consulting Technical Director – Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure, Oracle)  (tags: oracle otn webcenter webcast enterprise2.0) Oracle & StickyMinds.com Webcast: Load Testing Techniques for Enterprise Applications Mughees Minhas, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle Server Technologies, answers your questions about the latest techniques for effectively and efficiently testing enterprise application performance. Thursday, January 20, 2011. 10am PT / 1pm ET. (tags: oracle otn stickymings webcast) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20, 5:30pm - 8:00pm PT. Presentations: Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features (Rob Lee), Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time ( Rao Bhethanabotla), How To Build a Coherence Practice (Christer Fahlgren). (tags: oracle, otn coherence bacsig) Podcast Show Notes: William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter on Business Architecture (ArchBeat) A four-part interview with the authors of  "Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation"  (tags: oracle otn podcast businessarchitecture) John Brunswick: Overlapping Social Networks in your Enterprise? Strategies to Understand and Govern "Overall it is important to consider if tacit knowledge being captured by the social systems is able to be retained and somehow summarized into an overall organizational directory." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 socialnetworking) Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher (Middlewarepedia) Cosmin Todur describes "a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC."  (tags: oracle coherence grid) Aino Andriessen: Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) for application development "Logging is a very important aspect of application development as it offers run-time access to the behaviour and data of the application. It’s important for debugging purposes but also to investigate exception situations on production." -- Aino Andriessen (tags: oracle odl java jdeveloper weblogic) Security issues when upgrading a Web Catalog from 10g to 11g Oracle BI By Bakboord "I blogged about upgrading from Oracle BI EE 10g to Oracle BI EE 11g R1 earlier. Although this is a very straight forward process, you could end up with some security issues." -- Daan Bakboord (tags: oracle businessintelligence obiee) Angelo Santagata: SOA Composite Sensors : Good Practice "A good best practice is that for any composites you create, consider publishing a composite sensor value using a primary key of some sort , e.g. orderId, that way if you need to manipulate/query composites you can easily look up the instanceId using the sensorid." - Angelo Santagata (tags: oracle soa sca) Javier Ductor: WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Task Flow Customization "Previously, I wrote about Spaces Template Customization. In order to adapt Spaces to customers prototype, it was necessary to change template and skin, as well as the members task flow. In this entry, I describe how to customize this task flow." - Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter) RonBatra's blog: Cloud Computing Series: VI: Industry Directions "When someone says their 'Product/Solution is in the Cloud,' ask them basic questions to seperate the spin from the reality. I would start with 'tell me what that means' and see which way the conversation goes." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle otn oracleace cloud) First JSRs Proposed for Java EE 7 (The Java Source) With the approval of Java SE 7 and Java SE 8 JSRs last month, attention is now shifting towards the Java EE platform. (tags: oracle java jsr javaee)

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  • Gene Hunt Says:

    - by BizTalk Visionary
    "She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot"   "He's got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course" "You so much as belch out of line and I'll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate" "Let's go play slappyface" "your surrounded by armed barstewards" “Right, get out and find this murdering scum right now!” [pause] “Scratch that, we start 9am sharp tomorrow, it's beer-o-clock.” "So then Cartwright, you're such a good Detective.... Go and Detect me a packet of Garibaldies" "You're not the one who is going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after 25 years of aggressive male love in prison" “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “They reckon you've got concussion - but personally, I couldn't give a tart's furry cup if half your brains are falling out. Don't ever waltz into my kingdom playing king of the jungle.” “You great... soft... sissy... girlie... nancy... french... bender... Man-United supporting POOF!!” “Drugs eh? What's the point. They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren't there. My old grandma got all of that for free when she had a stroke.” “He's Dead! It's quite serious!” “Fanny in the flat...Nice Work” “SoopaDoopa” “Tits in a Jumper!” “Drop your weapons! You are surrounded by armed bastards!” “It's 1973, almost dinnertime. I'm 'avin 'oops!” “Trust the Gene Genie!” “I wanna hump Britt Ekland...What're we gonna do...!” “Was that 'E' and you don't know the rest?! or you going 'Eeee, I Dunno'” “Good Girl! Prostate probe and no jelly. “ “Give over, it's nothing like Spain!” “I'll come over your houses and stamp on all your toys!” “The Wizard will sort it out. It's cos of the wonderful things he does” “Cartwright can jump up and down on his knackers!” “It's not a windup love, he really thinks like this!” “Women! You can't say two words to them” “I was thinking, maybe, a Berni Inn!” “If I wanted a bollocking for drinking too much...!” “Shhhh...hear that...that's the sound of this case being closed! “Chicken!? In a basket!?” “Seems a large quantity of cocaine...” “You probably thought he kept his cock in his keks!” “The tail-end of Rays demotion speech!” “Stephen Warren is gay!?” “You're a smart boy, use your initiative!” “Don't be such a Jessie!” “I find the idea of a bird brushing her teeth...!” “Never been tempted to the Magic talcum powder?” “Make sure she's got nice tits!” “You're more likely to find an ostrich with a plum up it's arse!” “Drink this lot under the table and have a pint on the way home!” “Never be a female Prime Minister!” “Pub? Pub! pub!.....Pub!” “Thou shalt not suck off rent boys!” “The number for the special clinic is on the notice board!” “If me uncle had tits, would he be me auntie!” “Got your vicars in a twist!” “We Done?!” “Your mates got balls...If they were any bigger he'd need a wheelbarrow!” “The Ending - from 'I want to go home' to the end music.”

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  • The Oracle Retail Week Awards - most exciting awards yet?

    - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com
    Last night's annual Oracle Retail Week Awards saw the UK's top retailers come together to celebrate the very best of our industry over the last year.  The Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London was the setting for an exciting ceremony which this year marked several significant milestones in British - and global - retail.  Check out our videos about the event at our Oracle Retail YouTube channel, and see if you were snapped by our photographer on our Oracle Retail Facebook page. There were some extremely hot contests for many of this year's awards - and all very deserving winners.  The entries have demonstrated beyond doubt that retailers have striven to push their standards up yet again in all areas over the past year.  The judging panel includes some of the most prestigious names in the retail industry - to impress the panel enough to win an award is a substantial achievement.  This year the panel included the likes of Andy Clarke - Chief Executive of ASDA Group; Mark Newton Jones - CEO of Shop Direct Group; Richard Pennycook - the finance director at Morrisons; Rob Templeman - Chief Executive of Debenhams; and Stephen Sunnucks - the president of Gap Europe.  These are retail veterans  who have each helped to shape the British High Street over the last decade.  It was great to chat with many of them in the Oracle VIP area last night.  For me, last night's highlight was honouring both Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy for their contributions to the retail industry.  Both have set the standards in retailing over the last twenty years and taken their respective businesses from strength to strength, demonstrating that there is always a need for innovation even in larger businesses, and that a business has to adapt quickly to new technology in order to stay competitive.  Sir Terry Leahy's retirement this year marks the end of an era of global expansion for the Tesco group and a milestone in the progression of British retail.  Sir Terry has helped steer Tesco through nearly 20 years of change, with 14 years as Chief Executive.  During this time he led the drive for international expansion and an aggressive campaign to increase market share.  He has led the way for High Street retailers in adapting to the rise of internet retailing and nurtured a very successful home delivery service.  More recently he has pioneered the notion of cross-channel retailing with the introduction of Tesco apps for the iPhone and Android mobile phones allowing customers to scan barcodes of items to add to a shopping list which they can then either refer to in store or order for delivery.  John Lewis Partnership was a very deserving winner of The Oracle Retailer of the Year award for their overall dedication to excellent retailing practices.  The business was also named the American Express Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year award for their memorable 'Never Knowingly Undersold' advert series, which included a very successful viral video and radio campaign with Fyfe Dangerfield's cover of Billy Joel's 'She's Always a Woman' used for the adverts.  Store Design of the Year was another exciting category with Topshop taking the accolade for its flagship Oxford Street store in London, which combines boutique concession-style stalls with high fashion displays and exclusive collections from leading designers.  The store even has its own hairdressers and food hall, making it a truly all-inclusive fashion retail experience and a global landmark for any self-respecting international fashion shopper. Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring some of the winning entries in more detail here on the blog, so keep an eye out for some unique insights into how the winning retailers have made such remarkable achievements. 

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  • Unleash the Power of Cryptography on SPARC T4

    - by B.Koch
    by Rob Ludeman Oracle’s SPARC T4 systems are architected to deliver enhanced value for customer via the inclusion of many integrated features.  One of the best examples of this approach is demonstrated in the on-chip cryptographic support that delivers wire speed encryption capabilities without any impact to application performance.  The Evolution of SPARC Encryption SPARC T-Series systems have a long history of providing this capability, dating back to the release of the first T2000 systems that featured support for on-chip RSA encryption directly in the UltraSPARC T1 processor.  Successive generations have built on this approach by support for additional encryption ciphers that are tightly coupled with the Oracle Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 encryption framework.  While earlier versions of this technology were implemented using co-processors, the SPARC T4 was redesigned with new crypto instructions to eliminate some of the performance overhead associated with the former approach, resulting in much higher performance for encrypted workloads. The Superiority of the SPARC T4 Approach to Crypto As companies continue to engage in more and more e-commerce, the need to provide greater degrees of security for these transactions is more critical than ever before.  Traditional methods of securing data in transit by applications have a number of drawbacks that are addressed by the SPARC T4 cryptographic approach. 1. Performance degradation – cryptography is highly compute intensive and therefore, there is a significant cost when using other architectures without embedded crypto functionality.  This performance penalty impacts the entire system, slowing down performance of web servers (SSL), for example, and potentially bogging down the speed of other business applications.  The SPARC T4 processor enables customers to deliver high levels of security to internal and external customers while not incurring an impact to overall SLAs in their IT environment. 2. Added cost – one of the methods to avoid performance degradation is the addition of add-in cryptographic accelerator cards or external offload engines in other systems.  While these solutions provide a brute force mechanism to avoid the problem of slower system performance, it usually comes at an added cost.  Customers looking to encrypt datacenter traffic without the overhead and expenditure of extra hardware can rely on SPARC T4 systems to deliver the performance necessary without the need to purchase other hardware or add-on cards. 3. Higher complexity – the addition of cryptographic cards or leveraging load balancers to perform encryption tasks results in added complexity from a management standpoint.  With SPARC T4, encryption keys and the framework built into Solaris 10 and 11 means that administrators generally don’t need to spend extra cycles determining how to perform cryptographic functions.  In fact, many of the instructions are built-in and require no user intervention to be utilized.  For example, For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, SPARC T4 crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "t4 engine."  For a deeper technical dive into the new instructions included in SPARC T4, consult Dan Anderson’s blog. Conclusion In summary, SPARC T4 systems offer customers much more value for applications than just increased performance. The integration of key virtualization technologies, embedded encryption, and a true Enterprise Operating System, Oracle Solaris, provides direct business benefits that supersedes the commodity approach to data center computing.   SPARC T4 removes the roadblocks to secure computing by offering integrated crypto accelerators that can save IT organizations in operating cost while delivering higher levels of performance and meeting objectives around compliance. For more on the SPARC T4 family of products, go to here.

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  • Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault &ndash; Part 1

    - by AjarnMark
    I am fanatical when it comes to managing the source code for my company.  Everything that we build (in source form) gets put into our source control management system.  And I’m not just talking about the UI and middle-tier code written in C# and ASP.NET, but also the back-end database stuff, which at times has been a pain.  We even script out our Scheduled Jobs and keep a copy of those under source control. The UI and middle-tier stuff has long been easy to manage as we mostly use Visual Studio which has integration with source control systems built in.  But the SQL code has been a little harder to deal with.  I have been doing this for many years, well before Microsoft came up with Data Dude, so I had already established a methodology that, while not as smooth as VS, nonetheless let me keep things well controlled, and allowed doing my database development in my tool of choice, Query Analyzer in days gone by, and now SQL Server Management Studio.  It just makes sense to me that if I’m going to do database development, let’s use the database tool set.  (Although, I have to admit I was pretty impressed with the demo of Juneau that Don Box did at the PASS Summit this year.)  So as I was saying, I had developed a methodology that worked well for us (and I’ll probably outline in a future post) but it could use some improvement. When Solutions and Projects were first introduced in SQL Management Studio, I thought we were finally going to get our same experience that we have in Visual Studio.  Well, let’s say I was underwhelmed by Version 1 in SQL 2005, and apparently so were enough other people that by the time SQL 2008 came out, Microsoft decided that Solutions and Projects would be deprecated and completely removed from a future version.  So much for that idea. Then I came across SQL Source Control from Red-Gate.  I have used several tools from Red-Gate in the past, including my favorites SQL Compare, SQL Prompt, and SQL Refactor.  SQL Prompt is worth its weight in gold, and the others are great, too.  Earlier this year, we upgraded from our earlier product bundles to the new Developer Bundle, and in the process added SQL Source Control to our collection.  I thought this might really be the golden ticket I was looking for.  But my hopes were quickly dashed when I discovered that it only integrated with Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Subversion as the source code repositories.  We have been using SourceGear’s Vault and Fortress products for years, and I wholeheartedly endorse them.  So I was out of luck for the time being, although there were a number of people voting for Vault/Fortress support on their feedback forum (as did I) so I had hope that maybe next year I could look at it again. But just a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive notice in my email that Red-Gate had an Early Access version of SQL Source Control that worked with Vault and Fortress, so I quickly downloaded it and have been putting it through its paces.  So far, I really like what I see, and I have been quite impressed with Red-Gate’s responsiveness when I have contacted them with any issues or concerns that I have had.  I have had several communications with Gyorgy Pocsi at Red-Gate and he has been immensely helpful and responsive. I must say that development with SQL Source Control is very different from what I have been used to.  This post is getting long enough, so I’ll save some of the details for a separate write-up, but the short story is that in my regular mode, it’s all about the script files.  Script files are King and you dare not make a change to the database other than by way of a script file, or you are in deep trouble.  With SQL Source Control, you make your changes to your development database however you like.  I still prefer writing most of my changes in T-SQL, but you can also use any of the GUI functionality of SSMS to make your changes, and SQL Source Control “manages” the script for you.  Basically, when you first link your database to source control, the tool generates scripts for every primary object (tables and their indexes are together in one script, not broken out into separate scripts like DB Projects do) and those scripts are checked into your source control.  So, if you needed to, you could still do a GET from your source control repository and build the database from scratch.  But for the day-to-day work, SQL Source Control uses the same technique as SQL Compare to determine what changes have been made to your development database and how to represent those in your repository scripts.  I think that once I retrain myself to just work in the database and quit worrying about having to find and open the right script file, that this will actually make us more efficient. And for deployment purposes, SQL Source Control integrates with the full SQL Compare utility to produce a synchronization script (or do a live sync).  This is similar in concept to Microsoft’s DACPAC, if you’re familiar with that. If you are not currently keeping your database development efforts under source control, definitely examine this tool.  If you already have a methodology that is working for you, then I still think this is worth a review and comparison to your current approach.  You may find it more efficient.  But remember that the version which integrates with Vault/Fortress is still in pre-release mode, so treat it with a little caution.  I have found it to be fairly stable, but there was one bug that I found which had inconvenient side-effects and could have really been frustrating if I had been running this on my normal active development machine.  However, I can verify that that bug has been fixed in a more recent build version (did I mention Red-Gate’s responsiveness?).

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  • GRUB 2 problem after Mac OS X update

    - by vallllll
    I have a MacBook Pro in dual boot Mac OS X / Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). When I boot it I have a rEFIt menu, and I can chose between Mac OS X and Linux. A few days ago I have updated Mac OS X from 10.7 (Lion) to 10.8 (Mountain Lion) using a .dmg image provided by my company. Since then when I select Linux in rEFIt it says: No bootable device --insert boot disk and press any key I have tried going to rEFIt partitioning tool. This is what I got: As suggested in Mac OSX Mavericks update rEFIT broken I wanted to fix the issue the same way as AndrewM, but I don't have the option "MBR table must be updated". Then I booted on Ubuntu 12.04 CD, chose repair broken system, chose root patition /dev/sda6 as this is where my Ubuntu file system is. I got a shell, but I don't really know how to repair the poblem since if it was just Windows dual boot. A GRUB update would solve the issue, but here I don't know where the GRUB 2 is installed. Here are results from Parted, and it is a bit confusing for me as the Mac partition is the one with boot: As you can see the entry 1 is an EFI system partition and is the boot partition, so I wonder if I should install GRUB there or in sda6, which is the Ubuntu filesystem. I am not sure should I work on rEFIt shell or Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I don't remember where GRUB was before update. UPDATE: using same link above I have tried RoundSparrow hilltx answer and installed rEFInd, but the result is same.... still no bootable device when I select Linux. UPDATE 2: just used alternate CD again, mounted on /dev/sda6 and the ran update-grub. It seemed to wok and started listing all my kernels. But after rebooting several times still no bootable device when I select Linux in rEFInd. UDATE 3: Have tried to boot from Ubuntu cd and select "boot from first available filesystem. I got error and dropped to grub rescue shell. I even followed the indications on this link but was unable to boot as I tried to use sdb6 but no luck UPDATE 4 as per Rob Smith request here is out put from ls -l $(find /EFI -iname "*.efi") *MACOSX -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 55048 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/btrfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 38888 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ext2_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 39304 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ext4_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 43432 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/hfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 38984 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/iso9660_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 43656 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/reiserfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 175016 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 73232 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dbounce.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 763248 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dhclient.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 67024 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/drawbox.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 71312 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dumpfv.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 84848 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dumpprot.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 472912 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ed.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 143856 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/edit.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 1801008 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ftp.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 47848 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/tools/gptsync_x64.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 320560 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/hexdump.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 286384 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/hostname.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 534416 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ifconfig.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 395344 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/loadarg.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 587408 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ping.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 730416 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/pppd.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 561360 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/route.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 1961712 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/shell.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 750224 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/tcpipv4.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 4048 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/textmode.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 320656 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/which.efi *LINUX

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  • Old School Wizardry Tip: Batch File Comments

    - by jkauffman
    Johnny, the Endangered Keyboard-Driven Windows User Some of my proudest, obscure Windows tricks are losing their relevance. I know I’m not alone. Keyboard shortcuts are going the way of the dodo. I used to induce fearful awe by slapping Ctrl+Shift+Esc in front of the lowly, pedestrian Windows users. No windows key on the keyboard? No problem: Ctrl+Esc. No menu key on the keyboard: Shift+F10. I am also firmly planted in the habit of closing windows with the Alt+Space menu (Alt+Space, C); and I harbor a brooding, slow=growing list of programs that fail to support this correctly (that means you, Paint.NET). Every time a new version of windows comes out, the support for some of these minor time-saving habits get pared out. Will I complain publicly? Nope, I know my old ways should be axed to conserve precious design energy. In fact, I disapprove of fierce un-intuitiveness for the sake of alleged productivity. Like vim, for example. If you approach a program after being away for 5 years, having to recall encyclopedic knowledge is a flaw. The RTFM disciples have lost. Anyway, some of the items in my arsenal of goofy time-saving tricks are still relevant today. I wanted to draw attention to one that’s stood the test of time. Remember Batch Files? Yes, it’s true, batch files are fading faster than the world of print. But they're not dead yet. I still run into some situations where I opt to use batch files. They are still relevant for build processes, or just various development workflow tools. Sure, there’s powershell, but there’s that stupid Set-ExecutionPolicy speed bump standing in your way; can you really spare the time to A) hunt down that setting on all machines affected and/or B) make futile efforts to convince your coworkers/boss that the hassle was worth it? When possible, I prefer the batch file wild card. And whenever I return to batch files, I end up researching some of the unintuitive aspects such as parameters, quote handling, and ERRORLEVEL. But I never have to remember to use “REM” for comment lines, because there’s a cleaner way to do them! Double Colon For Eye-Friendly Comments Here is a very simple batch file, with pretty much minimal content: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL REM This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much If you code on a daily basis, this may be more suitable to your eyes: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Works great! I imagine I find it preferable due to the similarity to comments in other situations: // or ;  or # I’ve often make visual pseudo-line breaks in my code, and this colon-based syntax works wonders: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: Do stuff ECHO Doing Stuff :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Do more stuff ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Not only is it more readable, but there’s a slight performance benefit. The batch file engine sees this as an invalid line label and immediately reads the following line. Use that fact to your advantage if this trick leads you into heated nerd debate. Two Pitfalls to Avoid Be aware of that there are a couple situations where this hack will fail you. It most likely won’t be a problem unless you’re getting really sophisticated with your batch files. Pitfall #1: Inline comments @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt GOTO END ::This will fail :END Unfortunately, this fails. You can only have whitespace to the left of your comments. Pitfall #2: Code Blocks @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt (         :: This will fail         ECHO HELLO ) Code blocks, such as if statements and for loops, cannot contain these comments. This is ultimately due to the fact that entire code blocks are processed as a single line. I originally learned this from Rob van der Woude’s site. He goes into more depth about the behavior of the pitfalls as well, if you are interested in further details. I hope this trick earns you serious geek rep!

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  • What Counts For A DBA: Foresight

    - by drsql
    Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA covered so far in this series, ranging from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly-nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the parent of any teenager will attest. No matter how clearly you see their problems coming they won't listen, and have to fail before eventually (hopefully) learning for themselves. Having graduated from the school of hard knocks, the DBA, the naive teenager no longer, acquires the ability to foretell how events will unfold in response to certain actions or attitudes with the unerring accuracy of a doom-laden prophet. Like Simba in the Lion King, after a few blows to the head, we foretell that a sore head that will be the inevitable consequence of a swing of Rafiki's stick, and we take evasive action. However, foresight is about more than simply learning when to duck. It's about taking the time to understand and prevent the habits that caused the stick to swing in the first place. And based on this definition, I often think there is a lot less foresight on display in my industry than there ought to be. Most DBAs reading this blog will spot a line such as the following in a piece of "working" code, understand immediately why it is less than optimimum, and take evasive action. …WHERE CAST (columnName as int) = 1 However, the programmers who regularly write this sort of code clearly lack that foresight, and this and numerous other examples of similarly-malodorous code prevail throughout our industry (and provide premium-grade fertilizer for the healthy growth of many a consultant's bank account). Sometimes, perhaps harried by impatient managers and painfully tight deadlines, everyone makes mistakes. Yes, I too occasionally write code that "works", but basically stinks. When the problems manifest, it is sometimes accompanied by a sense of grim recognition that somewhere in me existed the foresight to know that that approach would lead to this problem. However, in the headlong rush, warning signs got overlooked, lessons learned previously, which could supply the foresight to the current project, were lost and not applied.   Of course, the problem often is a simple lack of skills, training and knowledge in the relevant technology and/or business space; programmers and DBAs forced to do their best in the face of inadequate training, or to apply their skills in areas where they lack experience. However, often the problem goes deeper than this; I detect in some DBAs and programmers a certain laziness of attitude.   They veer from one project to the next, going with "whatever works", unwilling or unable to take the time to understand where their actions are leading them. Of course, the whole "Agile" mindset is often interpreted to favor flexibility and rapid production over aiming to get things right the first time. The faster you try to travel in the dark, frequently changing direction, the more important it is to have someone who has the foresight to know at least roughly where you are heading. This is doubly true for the data tier which, no matter how you try to deny it, simply cannot be "redone" every month as you learn aspects of the world you are trying to model that, with a little bit of foresight, you would have seen coming.   Sometimes, when as a DBA you can glance briefly at 200 lines of working SQL code and know instinctively why it will cause problems, foresight can feel like magic, but it isn't; it's more like muscle memory. It is acquired as the consequence of good experience, useful communication with those around you, and a willingness to learn continually, through continued education as well as from failure. Foresight can be deployed only by finding time to understand how the lessons learned from other DBAs, and other projects, can help steer the current project in the right direction.   C.S. Lewis once said "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." It cannot be avoided; the quality of what you build now is going to affect you, and others, at some point in the future. Take the time to acquire foresight; it is a love letter to your future self, to say you cared.

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  • How do I resolve this exercise on C++? [closed]

    - by user40630
    (Card Shuffling and Dealing) Create a program to shuffle and deal a deck of cards. The program should consist of class Card, class DeckOfCards and a driver program. Class Card should provide: a) Data members face and suit of type int. b) A constructor that receives two ints representing the face and suit and uses them to initialize the data members. c) Two static arrays of strings representing the faces and suits. d) A toString function that returns the Card as a string in the form “face of suit.” You can use the + operator to concatenate strings. Class DeckOfCards should contain: a) A vector of Cards named deck to store the Cards. b) An integer currentCard representing the next card to deal. c) A default constructor that initializes the Cards in the deck. The constructor should use vector function push_back to add each Card to the end of the vector after the Card is created and initialized. This should be done for each of the 52 Cards in the deck. d) A shuffle function that shuffles the Cards in the deck. The shuffle algorithm should iterate through the vector of Cards. For each Card, randomly select another Card in the deck and swap the two Cards. e) A dealCard function that returns the next Card object from the deck. f) A moreCards function that returns a bool value indicating whether there are more Cards to deal. The driver program should create a DeckOfCards object, shuffle the cards, then deal the 52 cards. This above is the exercise I'm trying to solve. I'd be very much appreciated if someone could solve it and explain it to me. The main idea of the program is quite simple. What I don't get is how to build the constructor for the class DeckOfCards and how to generate the 52 cards of the deck with different suits and faces. Untill now I've managed to do this: #include <iostream> #include <vector> using namespace std; /* * */ /* a) Data members face and suit of type int. b) A constructor that receives two ints representing the face and suit and uses them to initialize the data members. c) Two static arrays of strings representing the faces and suits. d) A toString function that returns the Card as a string in the form “face of suit.” You can use the + operator to concatenate strings. */ class Card { public: Card(int, int); string toString(); private: int suit, face; static string faceNames[13]; static string suitNames[4]; }; string Card::faceNames[13] = {"Ace","Two","Three","Four","Five","Six","Seven","Eight","Nine","Ten","Queen","Jack","King"}; string Card::suitNames[4] = {"Diamonds","Clubs","Hearts","Spades"}; string Card::toString() { return faceNames[face]+" of "+suitNames[suit]; } Card::Card(int f, int s) :face(f), suit(s) { } /* Class DeckOfCards should contain: a) A vector of Cards named deck to store the Cards. b) An integer currentCard representing the next card to deal. c) A default constructor that initializes the Cards in the deck. The constructor should use vector function push_back to add each Card to the end of the vector after the Card is created and initialized. This should be done for each of the 52 Cards in the deck. d) A shuffle function that shuffles the Cards in the deck. The shuffle algorithm should iterate through the vector of Cards. For each Card, randomly select another Card in the deck and swap the two Cards. e) A dealCard function that returns the next Card object from the deck. f) A moreCards function that returns a bool value indicating whether there are more Cards to deal. */ class DeckOfCards { public: DeckOfCards(); void shuffleCards(); Card dealCard(); bool moreCards(); private: vector<Card> deck(52); int currentCard; }; int main(int argc, char** argv) { return 0; } DeckOfCards::DeckOfCards() { //I'm stuck here I have no idea of what to take out of here. //I still don't fully get the idea of class inside class and that's turning out as a problem. I try to find a way to set the suits and faces members of the class Card but I can't figure out how. for(int i=0; i<deck.size(); i++) { deck[i]//....There is no function to set them. They must be set when initialized. But how?? } } For easier reading: http://pastebin.com/pJeXMH0f

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  • PASS: International Travels

    - by Bill Graziano
    Nihao!  One of the largest changes PASS is going through is the the expansion outside the US and Canada.  We’ve had international chapters and events in Europe since the early 2000’s.  But nothing on the scale we’re seeing now.  Since January 1st there have been 18 SQL Saturday events outside North America and 19 events in North America.  We hope to have three international SQLRally events outside the US in FY13 (budget willing).  I don’t know the exact percentage of chapters outside the US but it’s got be 50% or higher. We recently started an effort to remake the Board to better reflect the growing global face of PASS.  This involves assigning some Board seats to geographic regions.  You can ask questions about this in our feedback forum, participate in a Twitter chat or ask questions directly of Board members.  You can email me at if you’d like to ask a question directly.  We’re doing this very slowly and deliberately in hopes that a long communication cycle gives us a chance to address all the issues that our members will raise. After the Summit we passed a budget exception allocating an extra $20,000 for Board members to travel to local events.  I think it’s important for Board members to visit new areas and talk to more of our members.  I sent out an email asking where people had attended events outside their home city.  Here’s the list I got back: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, London, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Orange County, Orlando, Pensacola, Perth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Redmond, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Tampa Bay, Vancouver, Washington DC and Wellington.  (Disclaimer: Some of this travel was paid for by employers or Board members themselves.  Some of this travel may have been completed before the Summit.  That’s still one heck of a list!) The last SQL Saturday event this fiscal year is SQL Saturday Shanghai.  And that’s one I’m attending.  This is our first event in China and is being put on in cooperation with the local Microsoft office.  Hopefully this event will be the start of a growing community in China that includes chapters, SQL Saturdays and maybe a SQLRally or two in the future.  I’m excited to speak with people that are just starting down this path and watching this community grow. I encourage you to visit the PASS Global Growth site and read through the material there.  This is the biggest change we’ve made to our governance since I’ve been on the Board.  You need to understand how it affects you and how it affects the organization. And wish me luck on the 15 hour flight to Shanghai on Friday afternoon.  Rob Farley flies from Australia to the US for PASS events multiple times per year and I don’t know how he does it so often.  I think one of these is going to wipe me out.  (And Nihao (knee-how) is Chinese for Hello.)

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  • Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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  • Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

    - by Chris George
    I’d like to give you a bit of background first… so please bear with me! In 1996, whilst studying for my final year of my degree, I applied for a job as a C++ Developer at a small software house in Hertfordshire  After bodging up the technical part of the interview I didn’t get the job, but was offered a position as a QA Engineer instead. The role sounded intriguing and the pay was pretty good so in the absence of anything else I took it. Here began my career in the world of software testing! Back then, testing/QA was often an afterthought, something that was bolted on to the development process and very much a second class citizen. Test automation was rare, and tools were basic or non-existent! The internet was just starting to take off, and whilst there might have been testing communities and resources, we were certainly not exposed to any of them. After 8 years I moved to another small company, and again didn’t find myself exposed to any of the changes that were happening in the industry. It wasn’t until I joined Red Gate in 2008 that my view of testing and software development as a whole started to expand. But it took a further 4 years for my view of testing to be totally blown open, and so the story really begins… In May 2012 I was fortunate to land the role of Head of Test Engineering. Soon after, I received an email with details for the “Agile Testi However, in my new role, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and at least go to one conference. Perhaps I could get some new ideas to supplement and support some of the ideas I already had.ng Days” conference in Potsdam, Germany. I looked over the suggested programme and some of the talks peeked my interest. For numerous reasons I’d shied away from attending conferences in the past, one of the main ones being that I didn’t see much benefit in attending loads of talks when I could just read about stuff like that on the internet. So, on the 18th November 2012, myself and three other Red Gaters boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Potsdam, Germany to attend Agile Testing Days 2012. Tutorial Day – “Software Testing Reloaded” We chose to do the tutorials on the 19th, I chose the one titled “Software Testing Reloaded – So you wanna actually DO something? We’ve got just the workshop for you. Now with even less powerpoint!”. With such a concise and serious title I just had to see what it was about! I nervously entered the room to be greeted by tables, chairs etc all over the place, not set out and frankly in one hell of a mess! There were a few people in there playing a game with dice. Okaaaay… this is going to be a long day! Actually the dice game was an exercise in deduction and simplification… I found it very interesting and is certainly something I’ll be using at work as a training exercise! (I won’t explain the game here cause I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag…) The tutorial consisted of several games, exploring different aspects of testing. They were all practical yet required a fair amount of thin king. Matt Heusser and Pete Walen were running the tutorial, and presented it in a very relaxed and light-hearted manner. It was really my first experience of working in small teams with testers from very different backgrounds, and it was really enjoyable. Matt & Pete were very approachable and offered advice where required whilst still making you work for the answers! One of the tasks was to devise several strategies for testing some electronic dice. The premise was that a Vegas casino wanted to use the dice to appeal to the twenty-somethings interested in tech, but needed assurance that they were as reliable and random as traditional dice. This was a very interesting and challenging exercise that forced us to challenge various assumptions, determine/clarify requirements but most of all it was frustrating because the dice made a very very irritating beeping noise. Multiple that by at least 12 dice and I was dreaming about them all that night!! Some of the main takeaways that were brilliantly demonstrated through the games were not to make assumptions, challenge requirements, and have fun testing! The tutorial lasted the whole day, but to be honest the day went very quickly! My introduction into the conference experience started very well indeed, and I would talk to both Matt and Pete several times during the 4 days. Days 1,2 & 3 will be coming soon…  

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  • PASS summit 2013. We do not remember days. We remember moments.

    - by Maria Zakourdaev
      "Business or pleasure?" barked the security officer in the Charlotte International Airport. "I’m not sure, sir," I whimpered, immediately losing all courage. "I'm here for the database technologies summit called PASS”. "Sounds boring. Definitely a business trip." Boring?! He couldn’t have been more wrong. If he only knew about the countless meetings throughout the year where I waved my hands at my great boss and explained again and again how fantastic this summit is and how much I learned last year. One by one, the drops of water began eating away at the stone. He finally approved of my trip just to stop me from torturing him. Time moves as slow as a turtle when you are waiting for something. Time runs as fast as a cheetah when you are there. PASS has come...and passed. It’s been an amazing week. Enormous sqlenergy has filled the city, filled the convention center and the surrounding pubs and restaurants. There were awesome speakers, great content, and the chance to meet most inspiring database professionals from all over the world. Some sessions were unforgettable. Imagine a fully packed room with more than 500 people in awed silence, catching each and every one of Paul Randall's words. His tremendous energy and deep knowledge were truly thrilling. No words can describe Rob Farley's unique presentation style, captivating and engaging the audience. When the precious session minutes were over, I could tell that the many random puzzle pieces of information that his listeners knew had been suddenly combined into a clear, cohesive picture. I was amazed as always by Paul White's great sense of humor and his phenomenal ability to explain complicated concepts in a simple way. The keynote by the brilliant Dr. DeWitt from Microsoft in front of the full summit audience of 5000 deeply listening people was genuinely breathtaking. The entire conference throughout offered excellent speakers who inspired me to absorb the knowledge and use it when I got home. To my great surprise, I found that there are other people in this world who like replication as much I do. During the Birds of a Feather Luncheon, SQL Server MVP Ted Krueger was writing a script for replicating the food to other tables. I learned many things at PASS, and not all of them were about SQL. After three summits, this time I finally got the knack of networking. I actually went up and spoke to people, and believe me, that was not easy for an introvert. But this is what the summit is all about. Sqlpeople. They are the ones who make it such an exciting experience. I will be looking forward to the next year. Till then I have my notes and new ideas. How long was the summit? Thousands of unforgettable moments.

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  • WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

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

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  • How to Hashtag (Without Being #Annoying)

    - by Mike Stiles
    The right tool in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. Giving a chimpanzee a chain saw would not be a pretty picture. And putting Twitter hashtags in the hands of social marketers who were never really sure how to use them can be equally unattractive. Boiled down, hashtags are for search and organization of tweets. A notch up from that, they can also be used as part of a marketing strategy. In terms of search, if you’re in the organic apple business, you want anyone who searches “organic” on Twitter to see your posts about your apples. It’s keyword tactics not unlike web site keyword search tactics. So get a clear idea of what keywords are relevant for your tweet. It’s reasonable to include #organic in your tweet. Is it fatal if you don’t hashtag the word? It depends on the person searching. If they search “organic,” your tweet’s going to come up even if you didn’t put the hashtag in front of it. If the searcher enters “#organic,” your tweet needs the hashtag. Err on the side of caution and hashtag it so it comes up no matter how the searcher enters it. You’ll also want to hashtag it for the second big reason people hashtag, organization. You can follow a hashtag. So can the rest of the Twitterverse. If you’re that into organic munchies, you can set up a stream populated only with tweets hashtagged #organic. If you’ve established a hashtag for your brand, like #nobugsprayapples, you (and everyone else) can watch what people are tweeting about your company. So what kind of hashtags should you include? They should be directly related to the core message of your tweet. Ancillary or very loosely-related hashtags = annoying. Hashtagging your brand makes sense. Hashtagging your core area of interest makes sense. Creating a specific event or campaign hashtag you want others to include and spread makes sense (the burden is on you to promote it and get it going). Hashtagging nearly every word in the tweet is highly annoying. Far and away, the majority of hashtagged words in such tweets have no relevance, are not terms that would be searched, and are not terms needed for categorization. It looks desperate and spammy. Two is fine. One is better. And it is possible to tweet with --gasp-- no hashtags! Make your hashtags as short as you can. In fact, if your brand’s name really is #nobugsprayapples, you’re burning up valuable, limited characters and risking the inability of others to retweet with added comments. Also try to narrow your topic hashtag down. You’ll find a lot of relevant users with #organic, but a lot of totally uninterested users with #food. Just as you can join online forums and gain credibility and a reputation by contributing regularly to that forum, you can follow hashtagged topics and gain the same kind of credibility in your area of expertise. Don’t just parachute in for the occasional marketing message. And if you’re constantly retweeting one particular person, stop it. It’s kissing up and it’s obvious. Which brings us to the king of hashtag annoyances, “hashjacking.” This is when you see what terms are hot and include them in your marketing tweet as a hashtag, even though it’s unrelated to your content. Justify it all you want, but #justinbieber has nothing to do with your organic apples. Equally annoying, piggybacking on a popular event’s hashtag to tweet something not connected to the event. You’re only fostering ill will and mistrust toward your account from the people you’ve tricked into seeing your tweet. Lastly, don’t @ mention people just to make sure they see your tweet. If the tweet’s not for them or about them, it’s spammy. What I haven’t covered is use of the hashtag for comedy’s sake. You’ll see this a lot and is a matter of personal taste. No one will search these hashtagged terms or need to categorize then, they’re just there for self-expression and laughs. Twitter is, after all, supposed to be fun.  What are some of your biggest Twitter pet peeves? #blogsovernow

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  • Server 2008, 2 NICs, 2 fixed IPs - big delays using internet

    - by user46055
    Hi geniuses I have an all in one Windows 2008 server, configured with AD/DHCP/DNS/RRAS - all set up with wizards and no specific tweaking. The server has 2 network adapters : one of which ("MyWAN") is plugged into our office's internet connection, the other ("MyLAN") is plugged into a local switch, which is also where all our desktops are connected. So this one server is doing everything. When first set up, MyLAN had a fixed IP of 192.168.2.1 and served the desktops with DHCP scope 192.168.2.50-99. It also told them to use 192.168.2.1 as DNS and gateway. MyWAN was setup to take its IP etc from DHCP, being handled by the building's router and ADSL modem etc. All desktops were setup to use DHCP. This all worked perfectly fine, until I recently changed MyWAN to have a static IP (I wanted to access it from home, and needed to give it a static IP to port map in the building's router). Things still work, but there is now a long delay when accessing the internet. The actual speed is as before when downloading, but there is a pause of 3-6 secs when connecting to new hosts (for example if I browse to slashdot from either a desktop or the server itself, it'll hang on connecting to slashdot.org, hang again on connecting to *.fsdn, *.google-analytics.com and all the other hosts referenced from the main page). If I ping slashdot.org from the server, I get the following : Pinging slashdot.org [216.34.181.45] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.2.1: Destination host unreachable. Reply from 216.34.181.45: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=239 Reply from 216.34.181.45: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=239 Reply from 216.34.181.45: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=239 Pinging anywhere external always seems to hit 192.168.2.1 first, which doesn't seem right. Trying tracert from the server gives the following : Tracing route to slashdot.org [216.34.181.45] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 MYSERVER01.intranet [192.168.2.1] reports: Destination host unreachable Trying tracert from a desktop gives the following : Tracing route to slashdot.org [216.34.181.45] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms * <1 ms MYSERVER [192.168.2.1] 2 * * * Request timed out. 3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms dsl-gw1.ge.mer.uk.webtapestry.net [217.151.111.17] 4 38 ms 239 ms 251 ms gw-router.ge.mer.uk.webtapestry.net [217.151.111.13] ...and then all is fine after that. I think that DNS is working fine because the domain names are getting translated to correct IPs immediately. DHCP seems to be okay? So perhaps it's something up with my RRAS setup - although I can't see any option during the setup wizard which I would have filled in differently. I've also tried changing the binding order of the two network connections, to prioritise MyWAN, but that doesn't seem to have done anything. Any idea what's up? Many thanks - Rob

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  • Can someone help me with this Java Chess game please?

    - by Chris Edwards
    Hey guys, Please can someone have a look at this code and let me know whether I am on the right track with the "check_somefigure_move"s and the "check_black/white_promotion"s please? And also any other help you can give would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! P.S. I know the code is not the best implementation, but its a template I have to follow :( Code: class Moves { private final Board B; private boolean regular; public Moves(final Board b) { B = b; regular = regular_position(); } public boolean get_regular_position() { return regular; } public void set_regular_position(final boolean new_reg) { regular = new_reg; } // checking whether B represents a "normal" position or not; // if not, then only simple checks regarding move-correctness should // be performed, only checking the direct characteristics of the figure // moved; // checks whether there is exactly one king of each colour, there are // no more figures than promotions allow, and there are no pawns on the // first or last rank; public boolean regular_position() { int[] counts = new int[256]; for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) for (char rank = '1'; rank <= '8'; ++rank) ++counts[(int) B.get(file,rank)]; if (counts[Board.white_king] != 1 || counts[Board.black_king] != 1) return false; if (counts[Board.white_pawn] > 8 || counts[Board.black_pawn] > 8) return false; int count_w_promotions = 0; count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_queen]-1,0); count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_rook]-2,0); count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_bishop]-2,0); count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_knight]-2,0); if (count_w_promotions > 8 - counts[Board.white_pawn]) return false; int count_b_promotions = 0; count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_queen]-1,0); count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_rook]-2,0); count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_bishop]-2,0); count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_knight]-2,0); if (count_b_promotions > 8 - counts[Board.black_pawn]) return false; for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) { final char fig1 = B.get(file,'1'); if (fig1 == Board.white_pawn || fig1 == Board.black_pawn) return false; final char fig8 = B.get(file,'8'); if (fig8 == Board.white_pawn || fig8 == Board.black_pawn) return false; } return true; } public boolean check_normal_white_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { if (! Board.is_valid_white_figure(B.get(file0,rank0))) return false; if (! B.is_empty(file1,rank1) && ! Board.is_valid_black_figure(B.get(file1,rank1))) return false; if (B.get_active_colour() != 'w') return false; if (! check_move_simple(file0,rank0,file1,rank1)) return false; if (! regular) return true; final Board test_board = new Board(B); test_board.normal_white_move_0(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); final Moves test_move = new Moves(test_board); final char[] king_pos = test_move.white_king_position(); assert(king_pos.length == 2); return test_move.black_not_attacking(king_pos[0],king_pos[1]); } public boolean check_normal_black_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED THE CHECK NORMAL BLACK MOVE BASED ON THE CHECK NORMAL WHITE MOVE if (! Board.is_valid_black_figure(B.get(file0,rank0))) return false; if (! B.is_empty(file1,rank1) && ! Board.is_valid_white_figure(B.get(file1,rank1))) return false; if (B.get_active_colour() != 'b') return false; if (! check_move_simple(file0,rank0,file1,rank1)) return false; if (! regular) return true; final Board test_board = new Board(B); test_board.normal_black_move_0(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); final Moves test_move = new Moves(test_board); final char[] king_pos = test_move.black_king_position(); assert(king_pos.length == 2); return test_move.white_not_attacking(king_pos[0],king_pos[1]); } // for checking a normal move by just applying the move-rules private boolean check_move_simple(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { final char fig = B.get(file0,rank0); if (fig == Board.white_king || fig == Board.black_king) return check_king_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_queen || fig == Board.black_queen) return check_queen_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_rook || fig == Board.black_rook) return check_rook_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_bishop || fig == Board.black_bishop) return check_bishop_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_knight || fig == Board.black_knight) return check_knight_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_pawn) return check_white_pawn_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); else return check_black_pawn_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); } private boolean check_king_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED KING MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <= 1 && fileChange >= -1 && rankChange <= 1 && rankChange >= -1; } private boolean check_queen_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED QUEEN MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <=8 && fileChange >= -8 && rankChange <= 8 && rankChange >= -8; } private boolean check_rook_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED ROOK MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <=8 || fileChange >= -8 || rankChange <= 8 || rankChange >= -8; } private boolean check_bishop_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED BISHOP MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <= 8 && rankChange <= 8 || fileChange <= 8 && rankChange >= -8 || fileChange >= -8 && rankChange >= -8 || fileChange >= -8 && rankChange <= 8; } private boolean check_knight_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED KNIGHT MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; /* IS THIS THE CORRECT WAY? * return fileChange <= 1 && rankChange <= 2 || fileChange <= 1 && rankChange >= -2 || fileChange <= 2 && rankChange <= 1 || fileChange <= 2 && rankChange >= -1 || fileChange >= -1 && rankChange <= 2 || fileChange >= -1 && rankChange >= -2 || fileChange >= -2 && rankChange <= 1 || fileChange >= -2 && rankChange >= -1;*/ // OR IS THIS? return fileChange <= 1 || fileChange >= -1 || fileChange <= 2 || fileChange >= -2 && rankChange <= 1 || rankChange >= - 1 || rankChange <= 2 || rankChange >= -2; } private boolean check_white_pawn_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED PAWN MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange == 0 && rankChange <= 1; } private boolean check_black_pawn_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED PAWN MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange == 0 && rankChange >= -1; } public boolean check_white_kingside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_white_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'q') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'b') return false; if (B.get('e','1') != 'K') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','1')) return false; if (! free_white('f','1')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_white_queenside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_white_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'k') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'b') return false; // ADDED BASED ON KINGSIDE CASTLING if (B.get('e','1') != 'Q') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','1')) return false; if (! free_white('f','1')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_black_kingside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_black_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'q') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'w') return false; // ADDED BASED ON CHECK WHITE if (B.get('e','8') != 'K') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','8')) return false; if (! free_white('f','8')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_black_queenside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_black_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'k') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'w') return false; // ADDED BASED ON KINGSIDE CASTLING if (B.get('e','8') != 'Q') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','8')) return false; if (! free_white('f','8')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_white_promotion(final char pawn_file, final char figure) { // XXX // ADDED CHECKING FOR CORRECT FIGURE AND POSITION - ALTHOUGH IT SEEMS AS THOUGH // PAWN_FILE SHOULD BE PAWN_RANK, AS IT IS THE REACHING OF THE END RANK THAT // CAUSES PROMOTION OF A PAWN, NOT FILE if (figure == P && pawn_file == 8) { return true; } else return false; } public boolean check_black_promotion(final char pawn_file, final char figure) { // XXX // ADDED CHECKING FOR CORRECT FIGURE AND POSITION if (figure == p && pawn_file == 1) { return true; } else return false; } // checks whether black doesn't attack the field: public boolean black_not_attacking(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return true; } public boolean free_white(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return black_not_attacking(file,rank) && B.is_empty(file,rank); } // checks whether white doesn't attack the field: public boolean white_not_attacking(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return true; } public boolean free_black(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return white_not_attacking(file,rank) && B.is_empty(file,rank); } public char[] white_king_position() { for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) for (char rank = '1'; rank <= '8'; ++rank) if (B.get(file,rank) == Board.white_king) { char[] result = new char[2]; result[0] = file; result[1] = rank; return result; } return new char[0]; } public char[] black_king_position() { for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) for (char rank = '1'; rank <= '8'; ++rank) if (B.get(file,rank) == Board.black_king) { char[] result = new char[2]; result[0] = file; result[1] = rank; return result; } return new char[0]; } public static void main(final String[] args) { // checking regular_position { Moves m = new Moves(new Board()); assert(m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("8/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("KK6/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/n7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/N7 w - - 0 1")); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/b7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/B7 w - - 0 1")); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/r7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/R7 w - - 0 1")); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/q7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/Q7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kkp5/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("KkP5/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/7p w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/7P w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); } // checking check_white/black_king/queenside_castling { Moves m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/8/8/8/8/8/8/4K2R w Kk - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/8/8/8/8/8/8/4K2R b Kk - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/4pppp/8/8/8/8/4PPPP/4K2R w KQkq - 0 1")); assert(m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/4pppp/8/8/8/8/4PPPP/4K2R b KQkq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/8/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 w Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/8/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 b Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 w Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 b Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/8/8/8/n7/8/R3K3 w Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/B7/8/8/8/8/R3K3 b Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); // XXX } } }

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  • Schema to support dynamic properties

    - by Johan Fredrik Varen
    Hi people. I'm working on an editor that enables its users to create "object" definitions in real-time. A definition can contain zero or more properties. A property has a name a type. Once a definition is created, a user can create an object of that definition and set the property values of that object. So by the click of a mouse-button, the user should ie. be able to create a new definition called "Bicycle", and add the property "Size" of type "Numeric". Then another property called "Name" of type "Text", and then another property called "Price" of type "Numeric". Once that is done, the user should be able to create a couple of "Bicycle" objects and fill in the "Name" and "Price" property values of each bike. Now, I've seen this feature in several software products, so it must be a well-known concept. My problem started when I sat down and tried to come up with a DB schema to support this data structure, because I want the property values to be stored using the appropriate column types. Ie. a numeric property value is stored as, say, an INT in the database, and a textual property value is stored as VARCHAR. First, I need a table that will hold all my object definitions: Table obj_defs id | name | ---------------- 1 | "Bicycle" | 2 | "Book" | Then I need a table for holding what sort of properties each object definition should have: Table prop_defs id | obj_def_id | name | type | ------------------------------------ 1 | 1 | "Size" | ? | 2 | 1 | "Name" | ? | 3 | 1 | "Price" | ? | 4 | 2 | "Title" | ? | 5 | 2 | "Author" | ? | 6 | 2 | "ISBN" | ? | I would also need a table that holds each object: Table objects id | created | updated | ------------------------------ 1 | 2011-05-14 | 2011-06-15 | 2 | 2011-05-14 | 2011-06-15 | 3 | 2011-05-14 | 2011-06-15 | Finally, I need a table that will hold the actual property values of each object, and one solution is for this table to have one column for each possible value type, such as this: Table prop_vals id | prop_def_id | object_id | numeric | textual | boolean | ------------------------------------------------------------ 1 | 1 | 1 | 27 | | | 2 | 2 | 1 | | "Trek" | | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1249 | | | 4 | 1 | 2 | 26 | | | 5 | 2 | 2 | | "GT" | | 6 | 3 | 2 | 159 | | | 7 | 4 | 3 | | "It" | | 8 | 5 | 3 | | "King" | | 9 | 6 | 4 | 9 | | | If I implemented this schema, what would the "type" column of the prop_defs table hold? Integers that each map to a column name, varchars that simply hold the column name? Any other possibilities? Would a stored procedure help me out here in some way? And what would the SQL for fetching the "name" property of object 2 look like?

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