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• SQL SERVER – Basic Calculation and PEMDAS Order of Operation

  - by pinaldave

  After thinking a long time, I have decided to write about this blog post. I had no plan to create a blog post about this subject but the amount of conversation this one has created on my Facebook page, I decided to bring up a few of the question and concerns discussed on the Facebook page. There are more than 10,000 comments here so far. There are lots of discussion about what should be the answer. Well, as far as I can tell there is a big debate going on on Facebook, for educational purpose you should go ahead and read some of the comments. They are very interesting and for sure teach some new stuff. Even though some of the comments are clearly wrong they have made some good points and I believe it for sure develops some logic. Here is my take on this subject. I believe the answer is 9 as I follow PEMDAS  Order of Operation. PEMDAS stands for  parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. PEMDAS is commonly known as BODMAS in India. BODMAS stands for Brackets, Orders (ie Powers and Square Roots, etc), Division, Multiplication,  Addition and Subtraction. PEMDAS and BODMAS are almost same and both of them follow the operation order from LEFT to RIGHT. Let us try to simplify above statement using the PEMDAS or BODMAS (whatever you prefer to call). Step 1: 6 ÷ 2 (1+2) (parentheses first) Step 2: = 6 ÷ 2 * (1+2) (adding multiplication sign for further clarification) Step 3: = 6 ÷ 2* (3) (single digit in parentheses – simplify using operator) Step 4: = 6 ÷ 2 * 3 (Remember next Operation should be LEFT to RIGHT) Step 5: = 3 * 3 (because 6 ÷ 2 = 3; remember LEFT to RIGHT) Step 6: = 9 (final answer) Some often find Step 4 confusing and often ended up multiplying 2 and 3 resulting Step 5 to be 6 ÷ 6, this is incorrect because in this case we did not follow the order of LEFT to RIGHT. When we do not follow the order of operation from LEFT to RIGHT we end up with the answer 1 which is incorrect. Let us see what SQL Server returns as a result. I executed following statement in SQL Server Management Studio SELECT 6/2*(1+2) It is clear that SQL Server also thinks that the answer should be 9. Let us go ahead and ask Google what will be the answer of above question in Google I have searched for the following term: 6/2(1+2) The result also says the answer should be 9. If you want a further reference here is a great video which describes why the answer should be 9 and not 1. And here is a fantastic conversation on Google Groups. Well, now what is your take on this subject? You are welcome to share constructive feedback and your answer may be different from my answer. NOTE: A healthy conversation about this subject is indeed encouraged but if there is a single bad word or comment is flaming it will be deleted without any notification (it does not matter how valuable information it contains). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• FairWarning Privacy Monitoring Solutions Rely on MySQL to Secure Patient Data

  - by Rebecca Hansen

  FairWarning® solutions have audited well over 120 billion events, each of which was processed and stored in a MySQL database. FairWarning is the world's leading supplier of privacy monitoring solutions for electronic health records, relied on by over 1,200 Hospitals and 5,000 Clinics to keep their patients' data safe. In January 2014, FairWarning was awarded the highest commendation in healthcare IT as the first ever Category Leader for Patient Privacy Monitoring in the "2013 Best in KLAS: Software & Services" report[1]. FairWarning has used MySQL as their solutions’ database from their start in 2005 to worldwide expansion and market leadership. FairWarning recently migrated their solutions from MyISAM to InnoDB and updated from MySQL 5.5 to 5.6. Following are some of benefits they’ve had as a result of those changes and reasons for their continued reliance on MySQL (from FairWarning MySQL Case Study). Scalability to Handle Terabytes of Data FairWarning's customers have a lot of data: On average, FairWarning customers receive over 700,000 events to be processed daily. Over 25% of their customers receive over 30 million events per day, which equates to over 1 billion events and nearly one terabyte (TB) of new data each month. Databases range in size from a few hundred GBs to 10+ TBs for enterprise deployments (data are rolled off after 13 months). Low or Zero Admin = Few DBAs "MySQL has not required a lot of administration. After it's been tuned, configured, and optimized for size on initial setup, we have very low administrative costs. I can scale and add more customers without adding DBAs. This has had a big, positive impact on our business.” - Chris Arnold, FairWarning Vice President of Product Management and Engineering. Performance Schema  As the size of FairWarning's customers has increased, so have their tables and data volumes. MySQL 5.6’ new maintenance and management features have helped FairWarning keep up. In particular, MySQL 5.6 performance schema’s low-level metrics have provided critical insight into how the system is performing and why. Support for Mutli-CPU Threads MySQL 5.6' support for multiple concurrent CPU threads, and FairWarning's custom data loader allow multiple files to load into a single table simultaneously vs. one at a time. As a result, their data load time has been reduced by 500%. MySQL Enterprise Hot Backup Because hospitals and clinics never stop, FairWarning solutions can’t either. FairWarning changed from using mysqldump to MySQL Enterprise Hot Backup, which has reduced downtime, restore time, and storage requirements. For many of their larger customers, restore time has decreased by 80%. MySQL Enterprise Edition and Product Roadmap Provide Complete Solution "MySQL's product roadmap fully addresses our needs. We like the fact that MySQL Enterprise Edition has everything included; there's no need to purchase separate modules."  - Chris Arnold Learn More>> FairWarning MySQL Case Study Why MySQL 5.6 is an Even Better Embedded Database for Your Products presentation Updating Your Products to MySQL 5.6, Best Practices for OEMs on-demand webinar (audio and / or slides + Q&A transcript) MyISAM to InnoDB – Why and How on-demand webinar (same stuff) Top 10 Reasons to Use MySQL as an Embedded Database white paper [1] 2013 Best in KLAS: Software & Services report, January, 2014. © 2014 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

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• 2D Rendering with OpenGL ES 2.0 on Android (matrices not working)

  - by TranquilMarmot

  So I'm trying to render two moving quads, each at different locations. My shaders are as simple as possible (vertices are only transformed by the modelview-projection matrix, there's only one color). Whenever I try and render something, I only end up with slivers of color! I've only done work with 3D rendering in OpenGL before so I'm having issues with 2D stuff. Here's my basic rendering loop, simplified a bit (I'm using the Matrix manipulation methods provided by android.opengl.Matrix and program is a custom class I created that just calls GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv()): Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); program.setUniformMatrix4f("Projection", projection); At this point, I render the quads (this is repeated for each quad): Matrix.setIdentityM(modelview, 0); Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); program.setUniformMatrix4f("ModelView", modelview); quad.render(); // calls glDrawArrays and all I see is a sliver of the color each quad is! I'm at my wits end here, I've tried everything I can think of and I'm at the point where I'm screaming at my computer and tossing phones across the room. Anybody got any pointers? Am I using ortho wrong? I'm 100% sure I'm rendering everything at a Z value of 0. I tried using frustumM instead of orthoM, which made it so that I could see the quads but they would get totally skewed whenever they got moved, which makes sense if I correctly understand the way frustum works (it's more for 3D rendering, anyway). If it makes any difference, I defined my viewport with GLES20.glViewport(0, 0, windowWidth, windowHeight); Where windowWidth and windowHeight are the same values that are pased to orthoM It might be worth noting that the android.opengl.Matrix methods take in an offset as the second parameter so that multiple matrices can be shoved into one array, so that'w what the first 0 is for For reference, here's my vertex shader code: uniform mat4 ModelView; uniform mat4 Projection; attribute vec4 vPosition; void main() { mat4 mvp = Projection * ModelView; gl_Position = vPosition * mvp; } I tried swapping Projection * ModelView with ModelView * Projection but now I just get some really funky looking shapes... EDIT Okay, I finally figured it out! (Note: Since I'm new here (longtime lurker!) I can't answer my own question for a few hours, so as soon as I can I'll move this into an actual answer to the question) I changed Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); to float ratio = windowWwidth / windowHeight; Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 1, -1, 1); I then had to scale my projection matrix to make it a lot smaller with Matrix.scaleM(projection, 0, 0.05f, 0.05f, 1.0f);. I then added an offset to the modelview translations to simulate a camera so that I could center on my action (so Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); was changed to Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX + camX, quadY + camY, 0);) Thanks for the help, all!

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• December 3 is Stephanie Choyer Day

  - by rickramsey

  I don't answer Stephanie Choyer's email just so I can enjoy her French accent when she calls. "Reek! Reek! Why do joo not answer my eemails?" Without the French, life on Earth would be so much poorer. No, they don't bring to the party any motorcycles that grow chest on your hair, and the Citroen is such a frightening study in Automobile design that I don't dare climb inside one. But they have French architecture. French sidewalks. French villages. The French Alps. Grenoble. French cheese. French wine. And that glorious French accent. If I were French, I'd spend all my time enjoying being French. Which makes the work that Stephanie does day in and day with our hard-edged technologies and stubborn technologists so admirable. Oracle Solaris 11 Resources for Sysadmins and Developers The page in the link above represents the work of many people, but it was Steph who rounded them up. And it wasn't easy. I know, because I ran and hid from her on many, many occasions. But she was tireless. "Reek. Reek. Why have you not published Glynn's article? Pleeeease, you must!" Remember when tech companies gave you a simple choice? You could either read the 27,000 pages of documentation or a double-sided data sheet. Which will it be, pal? Then they started writing white papers. 74 pages of excellent prose did a beautiful job of explaining why the technology was fantastic, but never told you how to use it. Well, have you taken a look at these? How-To Technical Articles for System Admins and Developers Now you can get wicked excited about a cool technique described in a 74-page white paper, and find a technical article that shows you exactly how to use it. The wicked smart marketing folks on the Oracle Solaris team wrote them, but it was Steph who bribed them with a Cabernet or beat them over the head with a baguette until all that work was finished and posted on OTN. There are songs about French wine, but not about French vintners. There are songs about French cities, but not about French bricklayers. About French sidewalks, but not about the French policemen who keep them safe. As far as I know, there are no songs about OTN, but if there were, they would probably neglect to mention Steph. Which is why today, Dec 3rd, we celebrate Stephanie Choyer Day. We dedicate this day to our relentless, hardworking, tireless, patient and friendly French colleague with the delightful accent. If I knew how to speak French, I'd say "Thanks for all you do" in French. But I don't speak French. And I don't trust online translations. I'd probably wind up saying "My left foot yearns for curdled milk." So here it is in plain old English: Thank you, Stephanie. psssst! about that documentation and those white papers ... In case you haven't noticed, the Oracle Solaris doc team has done some pretty cool things with the Solaris docs. And those white papers are interesting reading, well worth setting aside some time. Because with Solaris, as you know, it's not just about getting by with a rudimentary grasp of the basics. It's about the amazing stuff savvy sysadmins and developers can do when they really understand it. Find them here: White Papers Documentation And don't forget training! - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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• SFML fail to load image as texture

  - by zyeek

  I have come to a problem with the code below ... Using SFML 2.0 #include <SFML/Graphics.hpp> #include <iostream> #include <list> int main() { float speed = 5.0f; // create the window sf::RenderWindow window(sf::VideoMode(sf::VideoMode::getDesktopMode().height - 300, 800), "Bricks"); // Set game window position on the screen window.setPosition( sf::Vector2i(sf::VideoMode::getDesktopMode().width/4 + sf::VideoMode::getDesktopMode().width/16 , 0) ); // Allow library to accept repeatitive key presses (i.e. holding key) window.setKeyRepeatEnabled(true); // Hide mouse cursor //window.setMouseCursorVisible(false); // Limit 30 frames per sec; the minimum for all games window.setFramerateLimit(30); sf::Texture texture; if (!texture.loadFromFile("tile.png", sf::IntRect(0, 0, 125, 32))) { std::cout<<"Could not load image\n"; return -1; } // Empty list of sprites std::list<sf::Sprite> spriteContainer; bool gameFocus = true; // run the program as long as the window is open while (window.isOpen()) { sf::Vector2i mousePos = sf::Mouse::getPosition(window); // check all the window's events that were triggered since the last iteration of the loop sf::Event event; while (window.pollEvent(event)) { float offsetX = 0.0f, offsetY = 0.0f; if(event.type == sf::Event::GainedFocus) gameFocus = !gameFocus; else if(event.type == sf::Event::LostFocus) gameFocus = !gameFocus; if(event.type == sf::Event::KeyPressed) { if (event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::Space) { if(gameFocus) { // Create sprite and add features before putting it into container sf::Sprite sprite(texture); sprite.scale(.9f,.7f); sf::Vector2u textSize = texture.getSize(); sprite.setPosition(sf::Vector2f(mousePos.x-textSize.x/2.0f, mousePos.y - textSize.y/2.0f)); spriteContainer.push_front(sprite); } } if(event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::P) std::cout << spriteContainer.size() << std::endl; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::W ) offsetY -= speed; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::A ) offsetX -= speed; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::S ) offsetY += speed; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::D ) offsetX += speed; } // "close requested" event: we close the window if (event.type == sf::Event::Closed || event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::Escape) window.close(); // Move all sprites synchronously for (std::list<sf::Sprite>::iterator sprite = spriteContainer.begin(); sprite != spriteContainer.end(); ++sprite) sprite->move(offsetX, offsetY); //sprite.move(offsetX,offsetY); } // clear the window with black color window.clear(sf::Color::Black); // draw everything here... // window.draw(...); // Draw all sprites in the container for (std::list<sf::Sprite>::iterator sprite = spriteContainer.begin(); sprite != spriteContainer.end(); ++sprite) window.draw(*sprite); // end the current frame window.display(); } return 0; } A couple weeks ago it worked flawlessly to my expectation, but now that I come back to it and I am having problems importing the image as a texture "tile.png". I don't understand why this is evening happening and the only message I get via the terminal is "Cannot load image ..." then a bunch of random characters. My libraries are for sure working, but now I am not sure why the image is not loading. My image is in the same directory as with my .h and .cpp files. This is an irritating problem that keep coming up for some reason and is always a problem to fix it. I import my libraries via my own directory "locals" which contain many APIs, but I specifically get SFML, and done appropriately as I am able to open a window and many other stuff.

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• Silverlight Cream for December 27, 2010 -- #1016

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Sacha Barber, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Martin Krüger, Ryan Alford(-2-), Michael Crump, Peter Kuhn(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Part 4 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers" Michael Crump WP7: "Navigating with the WebBrowser Control on WP7" Shawn Wildermuth Shoutouts: John Papa posted that the open call is up for MIX11 presenters: Your Chance to Speak at MIX11 From SilverlightCream.com: Aspect Examples (INotifyPropertyChanged via aspects) If you're wanting to read a really in-depth discussion of aspect oriented programming (AOP), check out the article Sacha Barber has up at CodeProject discussing INPC via aspects. How to: Localize a Windows Phone 7 application that uses the Windows Phone Toolkit into different languages David Anson has a nice tutorial up on localizing your WP7 app, including using the Toolkit and controls such as DatePicker... remember we're talking localized Windows Phone From Scratch – Animation Part 1 Jesse Liberty continues in his 'From Scratch' series with this first post on WP7 Animation... good stuff, Jesse! Navigating with the WebBrowser Control on WP7 In building his latest WP7 app, Shawn Wildermuth ran into some obscure errors surrounding browser.InvokeScript. He lists the simple solution and his back, refresh, and forward button functionality for us. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #7 In the time I was out, Jeff Blankenburg got ahead of me, so I'll catch up 2 at a time... in this number 7 he discusses making videos of your apps, links to the Learn Visual Studio series, and his new website What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #8 Jeff Blankenburg's number 8 is a very cool tip on using the return key on the keyboard to handle the loss of focus and handling of text typed into a textbox. Resize of a grid by using thumb controls Martin Krüger has a sample in the Expression Gallery of a grid that is resizable by using 'thumb controls' at the 4 corners... all source, so check it out! Silverlight 4 – Productivity Power Tools and EF4 Ryan Alford found a very interesting bug associated with EF4 and the Productivity Power Tools, and the way to get out of it is just weird as well. Silverlight 4 – Toolkit and Theming Ryan Alford also had a problem adding a theme from the Toolkit, and what all you might have to do to get around this one.... Part 4 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers. Michael Crump has part 4 of his series on Silverlight Development tips and tricks. This is numbers 16 through 20 and covers topics such as Version information, Using Lambdas, Specifying a development port, Disabling ChildWindow Close button, and XAML cleanup. The XML content importer and Windows Phone 7 Peter Kuhn wanted to use the XML content inporter with a WP7 app and ran into problems implementing the process and a lack of documentation as well... he pounded through it all and has a class he's sharing for loading sounds via XML file settings. WP7 snippet: analyzing the hyperlink button style In a second post, Peter Kuhn responds to a forum discussion about the styles for the hyperlink button in WP7 and why they're different than SL4 ... and styles-to-go to get all the hyperlink goodness you want... wrapped text, or even non-text content. 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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• The enterprise vendor con - connecting SSD's using SATA 2 (3Gbits) thus limiting there performance

  - by tonyrogerson

  When comparing SSD against Hard drive performance it really makes me cross when folk think comparing an array of SSD running on 3GBits/sec to hard drives running on 6GBits/second is somehow valid. In a paper from DELL (http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/PowerEdge-PowerVaultH800-CacheCade-final.pdf) on increasing database performance using the DELL PERC H800 with Solid State Drives they compare four SSD drives connected at 3Gbits/sec against ten 10Krpm drives connected at 6Gbits [Tony slaps forehead while shouting DOH!]. It is true in the case of hard drives it probably doesn’t make much difference 3Gbit or 6Gbit because SAS and SATA are both end to end protocols rather than shared bus architecture like SCSI, so the hard drive doesn’t share bandwidth and probably can’t get near the 600MiBytes/second throughput that 6Gbit gives unless you are doing contiguous reads, in my own tests on a single 15Krpm SAS disk using IOMeter (8 worker threads, queue depth of 16 with a stripe size of 64KiB, an 8KiB transfer size on a drive formatted with an allocation size of 8KiB for a 100% sequential read test) I only get 347MiBytes per second sustained throughput at an average latency of 2.87ms per IO equating to 44.5K IOps, ok, if that was 3GBits it would be less – around 280MiBytes per second, oh, but wait a minute [...fingers tap desk] You’ll struggle to find in the commodity space an SSD that doesn’t have the SATA 3 (6GBits) interface, SSD’s are fast not only low latency and high IOps but they also offer a very large sustained transfer rate, consider the OCZ Agility 3 it so happens that in my masters dissertation I did the same test but on a difference box, I got 374MiBytes per second at an average latency of 2.67ms per IO equating to 47.9K IOps – cost of an 240GB Agility 3 is £174.24 (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/240gb-ocz-agility-3-ssd-25-sata-6gb-s-sandforce-2281-read-525mb-s-write-500mb-s-85k-iops), but that same drive set in a box connected with SATA 2 (3Gbits) would only yield around 280MiBytes per second thus losing almost 100MiBytes per second throughput and a ton of IOps too. So why the hell are “enterprise” vendors still only connecting SSD’s at 3GBits? Well, my conspiracy states that they have no interest in you moving to SSD because they’ll lose so much money, the argument that they use SATA 2 doesn’t wash, SATA 3 has been out for some time now and all the commodity stuff you buy uses it now. Consider the cost, not in terms of price per GB but price per IOps, SSD absolutely thrash Hard Drives on that, it was true that the opposite was also true that Hard Drives thrashed SSD’s on price per GB, but is that true now, I’m not so sure – a 300GByte 2.5” 15Krpm SAS drive costs £329.76 ex VAT (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/300gb-seagate-st9300653ss-savvio-15k3-25-hdd-sas-6gb-s-15000rpm-64mb-cache-27ms) which equates to £1.09 per GB compared to a 480GB OCZ Agility 3 costing £422.10 ex VAT (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/480gb-ocz-agility-3-ssd-25-sata-6gb-s-sandforce-2281-read-525mb-s-write-410mb-s-30k-iops) which equates to £0.88 per GB. Ok, I compared an “enterprise” hard drive with a “commodity” SSD, ok, so things get a little more complicated here, most “enterprise” SSD’s are SLC and most commodity are MLC, SLC gives more performance and wear, I’ll talk about that another day. For now though, don’t get sucked in by vendor marketing, SATA 2 (3Gbit) just doesn’t cut it, SSD need 6Gbit to breath and even that SSD’s are pushing. Alas, SSD’s are connected using SATA so all the controllers I’ve seen thus far from HP and DELL only do SATA 2 – deliberate? Well, I’ll let you decide on that one.

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• Introducing MySQL for Excel

  - by Javier Treviño

  As part of the new product initiatives of the MySQL on Windows group we released a tool that makes the task of getting data in and out of a MySQL Database very friendly and intuitive, and we paired it with one of the preferred applications for data analysis and manipulation in Windows platforms, MS Excel. Welcome to MySQL for Excel, an add-in that is installed and accessed from within the MS Excel’s Data tab offering a wizard-like interface arranged in an elegant yet simple way to help users browse MySQL Schemas, Tables, Views and Procedures and perform data operations against them using MS Excel as the vehicle to drive the data in and out MySQL Databases. One of the coolest features we had in mind designing MySQL for Excel is simplicity. MS Excel is simple and easy to work with, thus liked by many Windows users because they don’t have to be software gurus to use it.  We applied the same principle by targeting MySQL for Excel to any kind of user, so if you are already familiarized with Excel’s interface you will find yourself working with MySQL data in no time. MySQL for Excel is shipped within the MySQL Installer as one of the tools in the suite; if prerequisites are already installed (.NET Framework 4.0, Visual Studio Tools for Office 4.0 and of course MS Office), installing the add-in involves a very few clicks and no further setup to use it. Being an Excel Add-In there is no executable file involved after the installation, running MS Excel and opening the add-in from its Data tab is all that is required. MySQL for Excel automatically integrates with MySQL Workbench (if installed) to share the same connections to MySQL Server installations, that way connections are defined just once in either product saving time.  Opening the Add-In brings the Welcome Panel at the right side of the Excel main window from which connections to MySQL Servers are shown grouped by Local VS Remote connections; then users can open any of those connections by double-clicking it and entering the password of the used account.  Additionally a user can create a connection by clicking on the New Connection action label or edit connections through MySQL Workbench (if installed) by clicking on the Manage Connections action label. Once a connection is opened, the Schema Selection panel is shown, at the top of it the selected connection (connection name, hostname/IP and username). Just below, a list of schemas is displayed where User Schemas are grouped first followed by System Schemas; users can double-click any selected schema to go to the next panel or select a schema and clicking the Next > button. Users can alternatively click on the < Back button to go back to the Welcome Panel to close the current connection and open a new one; also by clicking the Create New Schema action label they can create an empty new schema. Once a schema is opened the DB Object Selection panel is shown, this is actually the place where the fun stuff happens; from here users are able to perform actions against MySQL Tables, Views and Procedures. ">The actions available here are about importing data from a MySQL Table, View or Procedure to Excel, exporting Excel data to a new MySQL Table, appending Excel data to an existing MySQL Table or editing a MySQL Table’s data by using an Excel Worksheet as a user interface to update data in any row/column, insert new rows or delete existing rows in a very easy and friendly way. More blog posts will follow describing all of these actions, so stay tuned! Remember that your feedback is very important for us, so drop us a message: · MySQL on Windows (this) Blog - https://blogs.oracle.com/MySqlOnWindows/ · Forum - http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?172 · Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/mysql Cheers!

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• Stuck due to "knowing too much"

  - by Ran Biron

  Note more discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037794 Welcome Hacker News Visitors! While HN is a fine forum for discussion and debate, Programmers - Stack Exchange is not. From the FAQ: If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ____”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ____ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.) Currently, this question is viewed by the membership of Programmers.SE as more likely to provoke unproductive discussion than constructive answers; while debates on its form and future are conducted, it will be locked to prevent arguments and vandalism. -- Shog9 I have a relatively simple development task, but every time I try to attack it, I end up spiraling in deep thoughts - how could it extending the future, what are the 2nd generation clients going to need, how does it affect "non functional" aspects (e.g. Performance, authorization...), how would it best be architectured to allow change... I remember myself a while ago, younger and, perhaps, more eager. The "me" I was then wouldn't have given a thought about all that - he would've gone ahead and wrote something, then rewrote it, then rewrote it again (and again...). The "me" today is more hesitant, more careful. I find it much easier today to sit and plan and instruct other people on how to do things than to actually go ahead and do them myself - not because I don't like to code - the opposite, I love to! - but because every time I sit at the keyboard, I end up in that same annoying place. Is this wrong? Is this a natural evolution, or did I drive myself into a rut? Fair disclosure - in the past I was a developer, today my job title is a "system architect". Good luck figuring what it means - but that's the title. Wow. I honestly didn't expect this question to generate that many responses. I'll try to sum it up. Reasons: Analysis paralysis / Over engineering / gold plating / (any other "too much thinking up-front can hurt you"). Too much experience for the given task. Not focusing on what's important. Not enough experience (and realizing that). Solutions (not matched to reasons): Testing first. Start coding (+ for fun) One to throw away (+ one API to throw away). Set time constraints. Strip away the fluff, stay with the stuff. Make flexible code (kinda opposite to "one to throw away", no?). Thanks to everyone - I think the major benefit here was to realize that I'm not alone in this experience. I have, actually, already started coding and some of the too-big things have fallen off, naturally. Since this question is closed, I'll accept the answer with most votes as of today. When/if it changes - I'll try to follow.

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• CSV Anyone?

  - by Tim Dexter

  CSV, a dead format? With today's abilities to generate Excel output (Im working on some posts for the shiny new Excel templates) and the sophistication of the eText outputs, do you really need CSV? I guess so seeing as it was added after the base product was released as an enhancement. But I'd be interested in hearing use cases? I used to think the same of text output. But now Im working in the public sector where older technologies abound I can see a use for text output. Its also used as a machine readable format, etc. BIP still does not support a text format from its RTF templates but its very doable using XSL templates. Back to CSV, I noticed an enhancement in the big list of new stuff in the 10.1.3.4.1 rollup. You can now generate CSV from structured data ie a data template or a SQL XML query. This piqued my interest so I ran off a data template to CSV. Its interesting, in a geeky kinda way, I guess Im that way inclined.Here's my data structure:<EMPLOYEES> <LIST_G_DEPT> <G_DEPT>  <DEPARTMENT_ID>10</DEPARTMENT_ID>  <DEPARTMENT_NAME>Administration</DEPARTMENT_NAME>  <LIST_G_EMP>   <G_EMP>     <EMPLOYEE_ID>200</EMPLOYEE_ID>     <EMP_NAME>Jennifer Whalen</EMP_NAME>     <EMAIL>JWHALEN</EMAIL>     <PHONE_NUMBER>515.123.4444</PHONE_NUMBER>     <HIRE_DATE>1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00</HIRE_DATE>     <SALARY>4400</SALARY>    </G_EMP>   </LIST_G_EMP>  <TOTAL_EMPS>1</TOTAL_EMPS>  <TOTAL_SALARY>4400</TOTAL_SALARY>  <AVG_SALARY>4400</AVG_SALARY>  <MAX_SALARY>4400</MAX_SALARY>  <MIN_SALARY>4400</MIN_SALARY> </G_DEPT>Poor ol Jennifer, she needs some help in the Admin department :0)Pushing this to CSV and BP completely flattens the data out so you get a completely denormalized data output in the CSV.TOTAL_SALARY,DEPARTMENT_ID,DEPARTMENT_NAME,MIN_SALARY,AVG_SALARY,MAX_SALARY,EMPLOYEE_ID,SALARY,PHONE_NUMBER,HIRE_DATE,EMP_NAME,EMAIL,TOTAL_EMPS4400,10,Administration,4400,4400,4400,200,4400,515.123.4444,1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00,"Jennifer Whalen",JWHALEN,119000,20,Marketing,6000,9500,13000,201,13000,515.123.5555,1996-02-17T00:00:00.000-07:00,"Michael Hartstein",MHARTSTE,219000,20,Marketing,6000,9500,13000,202,6000,603.123.6666,1997-08-17T00:00:00.000-06:00,"Pat Fay",PFAY,2Useful? Its a little confusing to start with but it is completely de-normalized so there is lots of repetition. But if it floats your boat, you got it!

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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011

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• Silverlight Cream for March 08, 2011 -- #1056

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Joost van Schaik, Manas Patnaik, Kevin Hoffman, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata, Dhananjay Kumar, Dennis Delimarsky, Samuel Jack, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jfo. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "How I let the trees grow" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior" Joost van Schaik Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 from last week posted, plus the ECOContest is ready to be voted on: SilverlightShow for Feb 28 - March 06, 2011 Drew DeVault is a young man involved with the Microsoft Student Insiders. He gave a WP7 presentation at RMTT and has posted his material: Post-Session: Windows Phone 7 @ RMTT Rui Marinho has an app in the ECO Contest called Forest Findr. is based on the BIng Map Control for silverlight and Sql Spatial data, and helps you find Forests and get geolocated pictures and wikipedia information, and has a post up with a bunch of info on it here: Forest Findr. my entry on the SilverlightShow EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior Joost van Schaik has a behavior that makes *anything* draggable and 'flickable' in WP7 ... read the intro, scroll to the bottom to watch the demo, and then grab up the code... cool stuff, Joost! Data Aggregation Using Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4 Manas Patnaik sent me a link to his blog, and it appears he's got lots of Silverlight goodness out there so you'll be hearing more about him. This first post is on the Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4... good discussion, diagrams and code... good job, Manas! WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Advanced UI Kevin Hoffman has part 3 of an ambitious 12-part tutorial series up on WP7 development ... this go-around is concentrating on Advanced UI - Panorama/Pivot controls, DataBinding, ObservableCollections, and Converters... whew! Sterling DB on top of Isolated Storage – 2 Jesse Liberty has part 2 of his Sterling series up... this time setting up the database in App.xaml so it can be used for dealing with tombstoning. Silverlight Charting: Formatting the Tick Marks Deborah Kurata's next chart tutorial is all about showing you how to continue to dress up your charts.. this time by formatting the tick marks... if you don't know what that is... check out the first image in the post. Stored Procedure in WCF Data Service Dhananjay Kumar has a very nice tutorial up on using a stored proc with WCF Data Services... I happen to know someone working on just that at this time. If you have this in mind, here's a step-by-step guide to getting it done. Windows Phone 7 – Episode 5 – Pages Dennis Delimarsky has part 5 of his WP7 tutorial series up and is discussing Pages in this 17 minute video. Unpacking Simon Squared: My mini framework-independent animation library Samuel Jack has not only Open-Sourced the WP7 game he built and blogged about, but he's now explaining some of the structure of the game in posts such as this one about the animation library he wrote that his game is built on. How I let the trees grow Peter Kuhn shares with us the code he used for the tree animation in his ECO Contest entry. There's a lot to learn in this post about performance ... the fully-animated tree has about 20K elements... 5K branches and 20K leaves... check it out. WP7 ToastPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek takes a deep dive into the ToastPrompt control in the Coding4fun Toolkit... everything you need to completely use the control including sample code. Beware the loaded event Jfo talks about another frustration point she had with WP7 development, and that is around the use of the loaded event... read these tips from someone that's been there. 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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• Silverlight Cream for November 13, 2011 -- #1166

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Pontus Wittenmark, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Colin Eberhardt, Charles Petzold, Dhananjay Kumar, Igor, Beth Massi, Kunal Chowdhury(-2-), Shawn Wildermuth, XAMLNinja, and Peter Kuhn(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Page Navigation Framework - Learn about UriMapper" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "31 Days of Mango" Jeff Blankenburg WinRT/Metro/W8: "An Introduction to Semantic Zoom in Windows 8 Metro" Colin Eberhardt LightSwitch: "Common Validation Rules in LightSwitch Business Applications" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up From SilverlightCream.com: 10 tips about porting Silverlight apps to WinRT/Metro style apps (Part 1) Pontus Wittenmark spent some time porting his Silverlight game to WinRT and says it was easier than expected. He has posted 10 tips for porting... and promises more 31 Days of Mango Looks like Jeff Blankenburg started another 31 days series... this one on Mango dev... and looks like I'm late to the party, but that's ok, gives me more stuff to blog about... this time you can get the posts by email, and he has a hashtag for discussion too 31 Days of Mango | Day #1: The New Windows Phone Emulator Tools Day 1 of Jeff Blankenburg's journey is this post on what's new in the emulator tools. An Introduction to Semantic Zoom in Windows 8 Metro This is Colin Eberhardt's latest ... getting familiar with semantic zoom oin Metro by creating a WP7-stylke jumplist experience.... check out the video on his blogpost for a better idea of what he's up to .NET Streams and Windows 8 IStreams In his first real post on his new series writing an EPUB viewer for W8, Charles Petzold described using IInputStream to get the contents of a disk file... and source for the project in progress Video on How to work with Page Navigation and Back Button in Windows Phone 7 Dhananjay Kumar has a video tutorial up on Page Navigation and Back Button usage in WP7 Screen capture to media library instead of isolated storage Igor discusses a class that lets you save screen captures for use in your application and also saving them to the media library on the phone Common Validation Rules in LightSwitch Business Applications Beth Massi's latest is this LightSwitch post on Validation rules... showing how to define declarative rules and also write custom validation code. Silverlight Page Navigation Framework - Learn about UriMapper Kunal Chowdhury continues his Page Navigation discussion with this post on the UriMapper, and how to hide the actual URL of the page you're navigating to How to use PlaySoundAction Behavior in WP7 Application? Kunal Chowdhury also has this post up on using the PlaySoundAction Behavior in WP7 ... nice tutorial on using Blend to get the job done What Win8 Should Learn from Windows Phone After spending time with Windows 8, Shawn Wildermuth has this post up about features from WP7 that should be brought over to Windows 8, and finishes with features that WP8 (?) could learn from Win8 too WP7Contrib – FindaPad and the fastest list in the west XAMLNinja discusses the WP7 App FindaPad which spawned the creation of WP7Contrib and uses the app to describe some nuances that may not be readily obvious. Windows Phone 7: The kind of bug you don't want to discover Peter Kuhn discusses a problem he came across while programming WP7, interestingly enough, only in the emulator, and has to do with a Uint64 cast. He does offer a workaround. Announcing: Your Last About Dialog (YLAD) Peter Kuhn also has this post up that's a take-off on a post by Jeff Wilcox about a generic About Dialog. Peter has some great additions.. and he's right... it may be your last About Dialog... get it via NuGet, too! 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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• Revisioning the CeBIT 2011

  - by hechtsuppe

  Hey guys, I am living in the CeBIT's hometown, the beautiful city Hanover. So I am visiting this exhibition since 2002 and I've seen a lot of changes during all this time. But this time, it was the most boring fair I've ever seen. Lets start with the first halls: "The same procedure as every year"- directly behind the entrance are the exhibitioners from far east (China, Taiwan...). In the past, they've shown a lot of nice toys. But this time, they got very serious, the only great gimmick was the motorcycle suitcase for the iPad, I watched the presentation until I reminded myself that I am not owning an iPad and these cases weren't suitable for my BMW motorcycle. So I started looking for the business stuff (I was there for business). I walked deeper in the exhibition area: During the way to the business halls, I came across a hall where I heard a big bass- the gamer's hall I think so I made a quick getaway from there. I saw a lot of teenagers with gaming bags on thier shoulders and I was really confused. I thought 'Damn it is tuesday 11:00 am, the trade fair is opened for public on saturday, why they are here and not at school?'. So the german schools seem to be too easy for students. At the time I was a pupil I visited the CeBIT on saturday! At the business halls: I visited IBM's booth but there were only guys looking like penguins and I weared a white chemise. So nobody was interested in talking to me. At the coffeebar I met a very nice guy from Bangladesh I think he was round about 25, but he told me that he was the first time in germany and he thought that germans are still nazis. I laughed at him and went to DELL. I was really really really interested in client solutions from DELL because I want to get away from our current client manufacturer. At the DELL booth I became recognized and a really nice guy told me where to use which client products. But there were too many people for trying the notebooks so the DELL guy asked for my business card. But I am still waiting for information, dear 'DELL dude'. I went to the Microsoft booth for informing myself about new IT trends. There were nothig new, only a few presentations about the 'new' Windows Live, Windows Phone 7 and 'the allmighty cloud'. But there was a very small presentation corner with the title 'geeks corner'. A guy inside the 'geeks corner' started Visual Studio 2010, I was really agog for the presentation. But then he started talking about Windows Phone 7 and how to program. He began with drag'n drop a textbox and a button on the form. He wrote really basic code and explained the functionality of a textbox- then I stood up and left the room. At the end: Before leaving the fairground, I've visited a few small booths and the big anti-virus program companies. But there was nothing new, I was really disappointed  this year. I've seen only ten exhibition babes and the rest of the week I stood ~3 hours in traffic jams. But I really love the flair in the whole town during this exhibition. The people in the city railways, which are really confused and the people in the pubs. Cheers Vince

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• Measuring Code Quality

  - by DotNetBlues

  Several months back, I was tasked with measuring the quality of code in my organization. Foolishly, I said, "No problem." I figured that Visual Studio has a built-in code metrics tool (Analyze -> Calculate Code Metrics) and that would be a fine place to start with. I was right, but also very wrong. The Visual Studio calculates five primary metrics: Maintainability Index, Cyclomatic Complexity, Depth of Inheritance, Class Coupling, and Lines of Code. The first two are figured at the method level, the second at (primarily) the class level, and the last is a simple count. The first question any reasonable person should ask is "Which one do I look at first?" The first question any manager is going to ask is, "What one number tells me about the whole application?" My answer to both, in a way, was "Maintainability Index." Why? Because each of the other numbers represent one element of quality while MI is a composite number that includes Cyclomatic Complexity. I'd be lying if I said no consideration was given to the fact that it was abstract enough that it's harder for some surly developer (I've been known to resemble that remark) to start arguing why a high coupling or inheritance is no big deal or how complex requirements are to blame for complex code. I should also note that I don't think there is one magic bullet metric that will tell you objectively how good a code base is. There are a ton of different metrics out there, and each one was created for a specific purpose in mind and has a pet theory behind it. When you've got a group of developers who aren't accustomed to measuring code quality, picking a 0-100 scale, non-controversial metric that can be easily generated by tools you already own really isn't a bad place to start. That sort of answers the question a developer would ask, but what about the management question; how do you dashboard this stuff when Visual Studio doesn't roll up the numbers to the solution level? Since VS does roll up the MI to the project level, I thought I could just figure out what sort of weighting Microsoft used to roll method scores up to the class level and then to the namespace and project levels. I was a bit surprised by the answer: there is no weighting. That means that a class with one 1300 line method (which will score a 0 MI) and one empty constructor (which will score a 100 MI) will have an overall MI of a respectable 50. Throw in a couple of DTOs that are nothing more than getters and setters (which tend to score 95 or better) and the project ends up looking really, really healthy. The next poor bastard who has to work on the application is probably not going to be singing the praises of its maintainability, though. For the record, that 1300 line method isn't a hypothetical, either. So, what does one do with that? Well, I decided to weight the average by the Lines of Code per method. For our above example, the formula for the class's MI becomes ((1300 * 0) + (1 * 100))/1301 = .077, rounded to 0. Sounds about right. Continue the pattern for namespace, project, solution, and even multi-solution application MI scores. This can be done relatively easily by using the "export to Excel" button and running a quick formula against the data. On the short list of follow-up questions would be, "How do I improve my application's score?" That's an answer for another time, though.

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• My Take on Hadoop World 2011

  - by Jean-Pierre Dijcks

  I’m sure some of you have read pieces about Hadoop World and I did see some headlines which were somewhat, shall we say, interesting? I thought the keynote by Larry Feinsmith of JP Morgan Chase & Co was one of the highlights of the conference for me. The reason was very simple, he addressed some real use cases outside of internet and ad platforms. The following are my notes, since the keynote was recorded I presume you can go and look at Hadoopworld.com at some point… On the use cases that were mentioned: ETL – how can I do complex data transformation at scale Doing Basel III liquidity analysis Private banking – transaction filtering to feed [relational] data marts Common Data Platform – a place to keep data that is (or will be) valuable some day, to someone, somewhere 360 Degree view of customers – become pro-active and look at events across lines of business. For example make sure the mortgage folks know about direct deposits being stopped into an account and ensure the bank is pro-active to service the customer Treasury and Security – Global Payment Hub [I think this is really consolidation of data to cross reference activity across business and geographies] Data Mining Bypass data engineering [I interpret this as running a lot of a large data set rather than on samples] Fraud prevention – work on event triggers, say a number of failed log-ins to the website. When they occur grab web logs, firewall logs and rules and start to figure out who is trying to log in. Is this me, who forget his password, or is it someone in some other country trying to guess passwords Trade quality analysis – do a batch analysis or all trades done and run them through an analysis or comparison pipeline One of the key requests – if you can say it like that – was for vendors and entrepreneurs to make sure that new tools work with existing tools. JPMC has a large footprint of BI Tools and Big Data reporting and tools should work with those tools, rather than be separate. Security and Entitlement – how to protect data within a large cluster from unwanted snooping was another topic that came up. I thought his Elephant ears graph was interesting (couldn’t actually read the points on it, but the concept certainly made some sense) and it was interesting – when asked to show hands – how the audience did not (!) think that RDBMS and Hadoop technology would overlap completely within a few years. Another interesting session was the session from Disney discussing how Disney is building a DaaS (Data as a Service) platform and how Hadoop processing capabilities are mixed with Database technologies. I thought this one of the best sessions I have seen in a long time. It discussed real use case, where problems existed, how they were solved and how Disney planned some of it. The planning focused on three things/phases: Determine the Strategy – Design a platform and evangelize this within the organization Focus on the people – Hire key people, grow and train the staff (and do not overload what you have with new things on top of their day-to-day job), leverage a partner with experience Work on Execution of the strategy – Implement the platform Hadoop next to the other technologies and work toward the DaaS platform This kind of fitted with some of the Linked-In comments, best summarized in “Think Platform – Think Hadoop”. In other words [my interpretation], step back and engineer a platform (like DaaS in the Disney example), then layer the rest of the solutions on top of this platform. One general observation, I got the impression that we have knowledge gaps left and right. On the one hand are people looking for more information and details on the Hadoop tools and languages. On the other I got the impression that the capabilities of today’s relational databases are underestimated. Mostly in terms of data volumes and parallel processing capabilities or things like commodity hardware scale-out models. All in all I liked this conference, it was great to chat with a wide range of people on Oracle big data, on big data, on use cases and all sorts of other stuff. Just hope they get a set of bigger rooms next time… and yes, I hope I’m going to be back next year!

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• When is your interview?

  - by Rob Farley

  Sometimes it’s tough to evaluate someone – to figure out if you think they’d be worth hiring. These days, since starting LobsterPot Solutions, I have my share of interviews, on both sides of the desk. Sometimes I’m checking out potential staff members; sometimes I’m persuading someone else to get us on board for a project. Regardless of who is on which side of the desk, we’re both checking each other out. The world is not how it was some years ago. I’m pretty sure that every time I walk into a room for an interview, I’ve searched for them online, and they’ve searched for me. I suspect they usually have the easier time finding me, although there are obviously other Rob Farleys in the world. They may have even checked out some of my presentations from conferences, read my blog posts, maybe even heard me tell jokes or sing. I know some people need me to explain who I am, but for the most part, I think they’ve done plenty of research long before I’ve walked in the room. I remember when this was different (as it could be for you still). I remember a time when I dealt with recruitment agents, looking for work. I remember sitting in rooms having been giving a test designed to find out if I knew my stuff or not, and then being pulled into interviews with managers who had to find out if I could communicate effectively. I’d need to explain who I was, what kind of person I was, what my value-system involved, and so on. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at. (Oh, and in case you hadn’t realised, it’s a T-SQL Tuesday post, this month about interviews.) At TechEd Australia some years ago (either 2009 or 2010 – I forget which), I remember hearing a comment made during the ‘locknote’, the closing session. The presenter described a conversation he’d heard between two girls, discussing a guy that one of them had just started dating. The other girl expressed horror at the fact that her friend had met this guy in person, rather than through an online dating agency. The presenter pointed out that people realise that there’s a certain level of safety provided through the checks that those sites do. I’m not sure I completely trust this, but I’m sure it’s true for people’s technical profiles. If I interview someone, I hope they have a profile. I hope I can look at what they already know. I hope I can get samples of their work, and see how they communicate. I hope I can get a feel for their sense of humour. I hope I already know exactly what kind of person they are – their value system, their beliefs, their passions. Even their grammar. I can work out if the person is a good risk or not from who they are online. If they don’t have an online presence, then I don’t have this information, and the risk is higher. So if you’re interviewing with me, your interview started long before the conversation. I hope it started before I’d ever heard of you. I know the interview in which I’m being assessed started before I even knew there was a product called SQL Server. It’s reflected in what I write. It’s in the way I present. I have spent my life becoming me – so let’s talk! @rob_farley

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• Do we still have a case against the goto statement? [closed]

  - by FredOverflow

  Possible Duplicate: Is it ever worthwhile using goto? In a recent article, Andrew Koenig writes: When asked why goto statements are harmful, most programmers will say something like "because they make programs hard to understand." Press harder, and you may well hear something like "I don't really know, but that's what I was taught." For that reason, I'd like to summarize Dijkstra's arguments. He then shows two program fragments, one without a goto and and one with a goto: if (n < 0) n = 0; Assuming that n is a variable of a built-in numeric type, we know that after this code, n is nonnegative. Suppose we rewrite this fragment: if (n >= 0) goto nonneg; n = 0; nonneg: ; In theory, this rewrite should have the same effect as the original. However, rewriting has changed something important: It has opened the possibility of transferring control to nonneg from anywhere else in the program. I emphasized the part that I don't agree with. Modern languages like C++ do not allow goto to transfer control arbitrarily. Here are two examples: You cannot jump to a label that is defined in a different function. You cannot jump over a variable initialization. Now consider composing your code of tiny functions that adhere to the single responsibility principle: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n >= 0) goto n_is_not_negative: n = 0; n_is_not_negative: return n; } The classic argument against the goto statement is that control could have transferred from anywhere inside your program to the label n_is_not_negative, but this simply is not (and was never) true in C++. If you try it, you will get a compiler error, because labels are scoped. The rest of the program doesn't even see the name n_is_not_negative, so it's just not possible to jump there. This is a static guarantee! Now, I'm not saying that this version is better then the one without the goto, but to make the latter as expressive as the first one, we would at least have to insert a comment, or even better yet, an assertion: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n < 0) n = 0; // n is not negative at this point assert(n >= 0); return n; } Note that you basically get the assertion for free in the goto version, because the condition n >= 0 is already written in line 1, and n = 0; satisfies the condition trivially. But that's just a random observation. It seems to me that "don't use gotos!" is one of those dogmas like "don't use multiple returns!" that stem from a time where the real problem were functions of hundreds or even thousand of lines of code. So, do we still have a case against the goto statement, other than that it is not particularly useful? I haven't written a goto in at least a decade, but it's not like I was running away in terror whenever I encountered one. 1 Ideally, I would like to see a strong and valid argument against gotos that still holds when you adhere to established programming principles for clean code like the SRP. "You can jump anywhere" is not (and has never been) a valid argument in C++, and somehow I don't like teaching stuff that is not true. 1: Also, I have never been able to resurrect even a single velociraptor, no matter how many gotos I tried :(

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• Windows Phone 8, possible tablets and what the latest update might mean

  - by Roger Hart

  Microsoft have just announced an update to Windows Phone 8. As one of the five, maybe six people who actually bought a WP8 handset I found this interesting. Then I read the blog post about it, and rushed off to write somewhat less than a thousand words about a single picture. The blog post announces an extra column of tiles on the start screen, and support for higher resolutions. If we ignore all the usual flummery about how this will make your life better, that (and the rotation lock) sounds a little like stage setting for tablets. Looking at the preview screenshot, I started to wonder. What it’s called Phablet_5F00_StartScreenProductivity_5F00_01_5F00_072A1240.jpg Pretty conclusive. If you can brand something a “phablet” and sleep at night you’re made of sterner stuff than I am, but that’s beside the point. It’s explicit in the post that Microsoft are expecting a broader range of form factors for WP8, but they stop short of quite calling out tablet size. The extra columns and resolution definitely back that up, so why stop at a 6 inch “phablet”? Sadly, the string of numbers there don’t really look like a Lumia model number – that would be a bit tendentious even for a speculative blog post about a single screenshot. “Productivity” is interesting too. I get into this a bit more below, but this is a pretty clear pitch for a business device. What it looks like Something that would look quite decent on a 7 inch screen, but something a bit too vertical to go toe-to-toe with the Surface. Certainly, it would look a lot better on a large-factor phone than any of the current models. Those tiles are going to get cramped and a bit ugly if the handsets aren’t getting bigger. What’s on it You have a bunch of missed calls, you rarely text, use a stocks app, and your budget spreadsheet and meeting notes are a thumb-reach away. Outlook is your main form of email. You care enough about LinkedIn to not only install its app but give it a huge live tile. There’s no beating about the bush here, the implicit persona is a corporate exec. With Nokia in the bag and Blackberry pushing daisies, that may not be a stupid play. There’s almost certainly a niche there if they can parlay their corporate credentials into filling it before BYOD (which functionally means an iPhone) reaches the late adopters. The really quite slick WP8 Office implementation ought to help here. This is the face they’ve chosen to present, the cultural milieu they’re normalizing for Windows Phone. It’s an iPhone for Serious Business Grown-ups. Could work, I guess. Does it mean anything? Is the latest WP8 update a sign that we can expect to see tablets running Windows Phone rather than WinRT? Well, WinRT tablets haven’t exactly taken off but I’m not quite going to make a leap like that just from a file name and a column of icons. I feel pretty safe, however, conjecturing that Microsoft would like to squeeze a WP8 “phablet” into the palm of every exec who’s ever grumbled about their Blackberry, and this release might get them a bit closer. If it works well incrementing up to larger devices, then that could be a fair hedge against WinRt crashing and burning any harder in the marketplace.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 11, 2010 -- #859

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this All Submittal Issue: Colin Eberhardt, Ken Johnson, Alan Beasley, Pencho Popadiyn, Phil Middlemiss, Khawar(-2-), Levente Mihály, Alex van Beek, Bart Czernicki, Michael Washington, and Mark Monster. Shoutout: Not Silverlight necessarily, but definitely VS2010, read what Brett Balmer has to say In Defense of Portrait Mode From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MultiBinding solution for Silverlight 4 Colin Eberhardt updated his Silverlight Multibinding solution to Silverlight 4. Great article with explanatory graphics, and links to the code... congrats on the use in the FaceBook Client too! Spirograph Shapes: WPF Bezier shapes from math formulae Wow... I haven't seen this much math since my Master's Thesis! ... Check out all the shapes Ken Johnson has built... don't let the math scare you... just use it :) Busy Dizzy Bee-sley Spirographic Animation in Expression Blend and Silverlight This is just fun... I saw Michael Washington playing with this yesterday at the Arizona Day of .NET but didn't have a chance to ask what it was.. Alan Beasley had a good time building this, and is sharing a very detailed tutorial with us. ModalDialogs, IEditableObject and MVVM in Silverlight 4 Pencho Popadiyn said the 'M' word over at SilverlightShow... actually the 'MVVM' word :) ... he's discussing Modal dialogs with no code in the View ... check out how he did it. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 6 Phil Middlemiss is up to episode 6 in his Theme-building tutorial... this time out, he's giving the TabControl and TabItem new clothes ... specifically discussing what to change and what to allow to inherit ... good stuff! Silverlight 4 Fonts gotcha Check out Khawar's ATM Machine demo -- there's a link on the page for this post... he had an issue with fonts, ratted it out, and explains it for all of us... thanks Khawar Demystifying Silverlight Obfuscation Khawar also has a good post up on Obfuscating your Silverlight... definitely showing that it's not all that difficult to do. geoGallery, a WinPhone7 sample OK this is interesting... using the geoLocation feature of WP7, Levente Mihály hits Google Picasa to find pictures... good write-up and all the code. Silverlight 4: Digitally signing a XAP with Visual Studio 2010 Alex van Beek has a nice tutorial on Signing your XAP file using Visual Studio 2010... of course you may want to visit Tim Heuer's blog (search at SC) to find the two good deals on certificates that are still in play. Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Expression Blend 4 for Business Intelligence applications In an interesting post, Bart Czernicki describes using the shape assets in Blend 4 to produce a KPI display in Silverlight or WPF. A discussion of the shape's evolution for KPI is included as well as some alternate shape uses. A DotNetNuke Silverlight 4 Drag and Drop File Manager Michael Washington has blogged about his Drag and Drop File Manager using the View Model Style pattern. This is covered in two CodeProject articles listed in the post. The design work was done by Alan Beasely and links to his work is there as well as covered in other SC posts. How to select a ListItem on Hover Mark Monster had a Use Case for Selecting a ListBox entry by hovering ... but he did it with a Behavior and for a ListBox and PathListBox and it works with DataBinding... 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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• Silverlight Cream for December 12, 2010 - 2 -- #1009

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Crump, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Domagoj Pavlešic, Peter Kuhn, James Ashley, Sara Summers, Morten Nielsen, Peter Torr, and Tau Sick. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight 4 – Coded UI Framework Video Tutorial" Michael Crump WP7: "Windows Phone From Scratch #12–Custom Behaviors (Part I)" Jesse Liberty From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 – Coded UI Framework Video Tutorial Michael Crump posted a video tutorial today on the Coded UI Test Framework that we got with the VS2010 Feature Pack 2. Wanna create automated tests? ... check out Michael's video and save yourself some time. Windows Phone From Scratch #12–Custom Behaviors (Part I) Jesse Liberty posted his Windows Phone from Scratch number 12 today... and it's on Custom Behaviors... cool stuff... need to read this and get your head around it... this is part 1, jump on it before he drops part 2 on us! The Next Application Platform? All of them... Shawn Wildermuth has a thought-provoking post up ... check it out and see if you're ready to join him on the adventure of building for all the platforms... Windows Phone 7 Accelerometer Test App Domagoj Pavlešic has a test app up for the accelerometer on the WP7 ... if you need to use it, and are having problems, a good example always helps me. Protocol of developing an animation texture tool Peter Kuhn found a need for a tool to creat some animations for an WP7 XNA game... so he challenged himself to write it, and detailed out all his steps as he went. Re-examining WP7 Launchers and Choosers James Ashley's most recent post is on the Pivot Control ... check this out... add a working Horizontally oriented slider to a pivot... plus some external links to help out New Prototyping Sketch Sheets for WP7 This is one of those posts that I had to go to SilverlightCream and make sure I hadn't hit it yet... pretty cool prototype sheets for WP7 by Sara Summers ... we've seen others, they're all good. Simulating GPS on Windows Phone 7 Morten Nielsen helps you get around the fact that you're not going to be able to use the emulator for testing your GPS app ... at least not without some assistance... and that doesn't mean hauling your dev system around your neighborhood, either. How to correctly handle application deactivation and reactivation We've seen posts on Tombstoning, but probably not from Silverlight team members... check this one out from Peter Torr ... great even sequence information and all the info on how to correctly handle it, plus external links to the documentation... you knew there was documentation, right? :) Localizing a Windows Phone 7 Application Tau Sick has a post up discussing Localization and your WP7 apps... coming from soneone with an app in the marketplace in 3 languages, it's a pretty good bet he's got it figured out! 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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• Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

  - by Chris Warner

  It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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• Monitor System Resources from the Windows 7 Taskbar

  - by Asian Angel

  The problem with most system monitoring apps is that they get covered up with all of your open windows, but you can solve that problem by adding monitoring apps to the Taskbar. Setting Up & Using SuperbarMonitor All of the individual monitors and the .dll files necessary to run them come in a single zip file for your convenience. Simply unzip the contents, add them to an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, and create shortcuts for the monitors that you would like to use on your system. For our example we created shortcuts for all five monitors and set the shortcuts up in their own “Start Menu Folder”. You can see what the five monitors (Battery, CPU, Disk, Memory, & Volume) look like when running…they are visual in appearance without text to clutter up the looks. The monitors use colors (red, green, & yellow) to indicate the amount of resources being used for a particular category. Note: Our system is desktop-based but the “Battery Monitor” was shown for the purposes of demonstration…thus the red color seen here. Hovering the mouse over the “Battery, CPU, Disk, & Memory Monitors” on our system displayed a small blank thumbnail. Note: The “Battery Monitor” may or may not display more when used on your laptop. Going one step further and hovering the mouse over the thumbnails displayed a small blank window. There really is nothing that you will need to worry with outside of watching the color for each individual monitor. Nice and simple! The one monitor with extra features on the thumbnail was the “Volume Monitor”. You can turn the volume down, up, on, or off from here…definitely useful if you have been wanting to hide the “Volume Icon” in the “System Tray”. You can also pin the monitors to your “Taskbar” if desired. Keep in mind that if you do close any of the monitors they will “temporarily” disappear from the “Taskbar” until the next time they are started. Note: If you want the monitors to start with your system each time you will need to add the appropriate shortcuts to the “Startup Sub-menu” in your “Start Menu”. Conclusion If you have been wanting a nice visual way to monitor your system’s resources then SuperbarMonitor is definitely worth trying out. Links Download SuperbarMonitor Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Monitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersUse Windows Vista Reliability Monitor to Troubleshoot CrashesTaskbar Eliminator Does What the Name Implies: Hides Your Windows TaskbarBring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop (Keyboard Trick)How To Fix System Tray Tooltips Not Displaying in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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• Moving the Oracle User Experience Forward with the New Release 7 Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User ExperienceIn September 2013, Release 7 for Oracle Cloud Applications became generally available for Oracle Sales Cloud and HCM Cloud. This significant release allowed the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team to finally talk freely about Simplified UI, a user experience project in the works since Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Simplified UI represents the direction that the Oracle user experience – for all of its enterprise applications – is heading. Oracle’s Apps UX team began by building a Simplified UI for sales representatives. You can find that today in Release 7, and it was demoed extensively during OpenWorld 2013 in San Francisco. This screenshot shows how Opportunities appear in the new Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud, a user interface built for sales reps.Analyst Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, saw Simplified UI at Oracle Openworld 2013 and talked about it with CRM Buyer in “Oracle Revs Its Cloud Engines for a Better Customer Experience.” Wettemann said there are distinct themes to the latest release: "One is usability. Oracle Sales Cloud, for example, is designed to have zero training for onboarding sales reps, which it does," she explained. "It is quite impressive, actually -- the intuitive nature of the application and the design work they have done with this goal in mind."The software uses as few buttons and fields as possible, she pointed out. "The sales rep doesn't have to ask, 'what is the next step?' because she can see what it is."In fact, there are three themes driving the usability that Wettemann noted. They are simplicity, mobility, and extensibility, and we write more about them on the Usable Apps web site. These three themes embody the strategy for Oracle’s cloud applications user experiences.  Simplified UI for Oracle Sales CloudIn developing a Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle’s UX team concentrated on the tasks that sales reps need to do most frequently, and are most important. “Knowing that the majority of their work lives are spent on the road and on the go, they need to be able to quickly get in and qualify and convert their leads, monitor and progress their opportunities, update their customer and contact information, and manage their schedule,” Jeremy Ashley, Vice President of the Applications UX team, said.Ashley said the Apps UX team has a good reason for creating a Simplified UI that focuses on self-service. “Sales people spend the day selling stuff,” he said. “The only reason they use software is because the company wants to track what they’re doing.” Traditional systems of tracking that information include filling in a spreadsheet of leads or sales. Oracle wants to automate this process for the salesperson, and enable that person to keep everyone who needs to know up-to-date easily and quickly. Simplified UI addresses that problem by providing light-touch input.  “It has to be useful to the salesperson,” Ashley said about the Sales Cloud user experience. Simplified UI can tell sales reps about key opportunities, or provide information about a contact in just a click or two. Customer information is accessible quickly and easily with Simplified UI for the Oracle Sales Cloud.Simplified UI for Sales Cloud can also be extended easily, Ashley said. Users usually just need to add various business fields or create and modify analytical reports. The way that Simplified UI is constructed allows extensibility to happen by hiding or showing a few necessary fields. The Settings user interface, starting in release 7, allows for the simple configuration of the most important visual elements. “With Sales cloud, we identified a need to make the application useful and very simple,” Ashley said. Simplified UI meets that need. Where can you find out more?To find out more about the simplified UI and Oracle’s ongoing investment in applications user experience innovations, come to one of our sessions at a user group conference near you. Stay tuned to the Voice of User Experience (VoX) blog – the next post will be about Simplified UI and HCM Cloud.

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• IE9 Beta

  - by Daniel Moth

  I've been using Internet Explorer 8 since the early pre-release bits, but I never tried IE9 until today – the day the Beta is available. I downloaded it from here: http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/ The download took longer than what I expected, but I was doing other stuff, so no bother. After coming down, it asked me to reboot my computer. Really hate when apps do that, but I did it anyway. The first time I launched it, it prompted me with a list of add-ons I should disable including the start-up time that I could save fore each one. It even let me configure the prompt so, for example, it won't prompt me again unless an add-on contributes to more than 1 second of the startup time. Cool. First thing I noticed is that the search bar had gone and, as you'd expect, you have to search from the address box. I totally despise this feature. The first thing I've been doing with all versions of IE is to turn off the automatic searching from the address bar and now I have no way of searching if I do that. Ridiculous. The second thing I notice is that the tabs are next to the address bar and cannot be moved to go below it. One word for that decision: appalling (and, no, I didn't accidentally drop an 'e' and added an 'l' in the previous word). The third thing I notice to the right is the favorites button (star icon) and when I click on it, it brings up the favorites explorer under it on the right; then I pin the explorer and it jumps to the left(!). Why move the entry point to this feature to the right instead of leaving it on the left is beyond me (other than wanting to retrain me on what I've been used to for all this time), but the fact that pinning it makes it jump sides is… an "astonishing" design decision. As I browse I notice a little annoying pop up in the bottom left every time I hover over a link; there is no status bar. I correctly guessed to right click at the top and turn on the status bar (which also got rid of the popup thereafter) and while I am at it, I bring back my favorites bar which was hidden by default (and am pleased to see that all my favorites are still there). The next thing I notice, I like: IE9 is fast. No joke, I visit sites and they seem to be loading visibly much faster – try it! Beyond the speed, I am interested to find out what else is new. I searched and found a few good links: What's new in Internet Explorer 9 Internet Explorer 9 Features (check out the links under "Clean") Top Features If you are a developer, check out IE's msdn home for many articles, e.g. this section on Canvas and SVG. Either way: wherever you are, get IE9 Beta now and judge for yourself. If you don't like it, you can always uninstall (which auto-restores the previous version). Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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