Arch workflow design advice for a designer?

Sorry for the ambiguous title, I couldn't figure out what to call this post.
I'm new to Arch, though not Linux, and I must say, this is an amazing distro (I'm on the 64bit version). Dead simple, super fast, and nearly as flexible as a Gentoo system (that can use binaries!). Pacman is rockin'.
I'm a designer by trade: Web, video, and image. And I STILL boot into Windows for important tasks like Flash work, video work, and ftp work. I would obviously like to reduce that dependency, though there is little hope in the video department, right now.
But for web, I see no reason I couldn't do it all in linux. But I'm not sure how to go about it. Here is the workflow I need, and I was wondering if you could advise how I might set up such a system (I have just a base system with Gnome installed right now):
* WYSIWYG html and CSS editting (NVU/Kompose is fine for html, but NOT for CSS) for the design phase
* A way to output image slices with html (does GIMP do this?)
* Accurate web fonts
* Reliable ftp, preferably one with drag n' drop functionality (I use filezilla on Windows, but I think the linux version lacks the drag n' drop)
It's not a real complicated workflow, I just need to save time wherever possible because I need to work very fast. In windows, it's like having a ball and chain strapped to your leg, but it does work. With linux, I will very much appreciate access to terminal and file management advantages.
I'm not stuck on Gnome, I just like the simplicity. I'm mainly interested in speed and efficiency (NOTE efficiency... I like time savers and fluxbox always seems to add clicks to my tasks). Let me know what you think! I may be able to move my flash work over with a little help from VirtualBox too, but I think I'm stuck when it comes to video . Thanks for any advice you might have!

No offense, but using WYSIWYG to design web pages doesn't sound very professional imo. They just don't offer the control that one would want with the code. I have tried a few (Frontpage, Dreamweaver, NVU, Bluefish, ...) and they all suck. They just don't do what you want it to. You drag something or add some formatting and it just messes up the code. It's better to just use a text editor and view the results in browser. Maybe that's slow or inefficient for you, but I find that's the best way to do it.
As for image slicing, I find that annoying as well. In Photoshop I never really liked the way it worked. I sliced a few images and then trashed most of the others. I tend to go for simple designs and focus on making it mostly CSS, so when I slice images it's usually a 1px wide/high gradient which would get repeated. I don't need image slicing for that. As for graphic intensive sites... well... really, you should review that. People still have slow connections and having a lot of graphics is just bad, even if your client wants it. You might as well go with flash, and waste some more bandwidth
If you really want to do it though, I think Inkscape is quite a nice tool. I do all my designing in it, and though I don't use slicing, you can do it quite easily (though it's a bit hackish) by adding a layer and creating transparent rectangles around the stuff you want, then just select the rectangle and export it. I'm not sure if there's a more automatic way - there are plenty of tutorials.
The MS-fonts should be fine, I just want to know that I am looking at an accurate representation of what I my windows customers will see.
Fonts won't help you much there. You know most people use IE, so you need to view the website in IE regardless, and that means you need Windows (I think wine uses some weird IE version which uses gecko). Maybe there's some good Linux alternative for viewing stuff in IE, but I just view it on Windows. Also the font shouldn't change the general layout of the site... I don't see how that would be a problem unless it's some weird font that not everyone has, in which case you'd use @font-face anyway...

Similar Messages

Time-series / temporal database - design advice for DWH/OLAP???

I am in front of task to design some DWH as effectively as it can be - for time series data analysis - are there some special design advices or best practices available? Or can the ordinary DWH/OLAP design concepts be used? I ask this - because I have seen the term 'time series database' in academia literature (but without further references) and also - I have heard the term 'temporal database' (as far as I have heard - it is not just a matter for logging of data changes etc.)
So - it would be very nice if some can give me some hints about this type design problems?

Hi Frank,
Thanks for that - after 8 years of working with Oracle Forms and afterwards the same again with ADF, I still find it hard sometimes when using ADF to understand the best approach to a particular problem - there is so many different ways of doing things/where to put the code/how to call it etc... ! Things seemed so much simplier back in the Forms days !
Chandra - thanks for the information but this doesn't suit my requirements - I originally went down that path thinking/expecting it to be the holy grail but ran into all sorts of problems as it means that the dates are always being converted into users timezone regardless of whether or not they are creating the transaction or viewing an earlier one. I need the correct "date" to be stored in the database when a user creates/updates a record (for example in California) and this needs to be preserved for other users in different timezones. For example, when a management user in London views that record, the date has got to remain the date that the user entered, and not what the date was in London at the time (eg user entered 14th Feb (23:00) - when London user views it, it must still say 14th Feb even though it was the 15th in London at the time). Global settings like you are using in the adf-config file made this difficult. This is why I went back to stripping all timezone settings back out of the ADF application and relied on database session timezones instead - and when displaying a default date to the user, use the timestamp from the database to ensure the users "date" is displayed.
Cheers,
Brent

Design advice for custom painting

Hi,
Can someone give me some high-level design advice on designing a JPanel subclass for custom painting? My panel class is becoming very complex, with lots of drawing and scaling methods, so I'm wondering if I could abstract away some of these graphical elements by creating new classes to make the design more object-oriented. However, I'm finding that there are also disadvantages in representing some of my graphic components as classes. Specifically,
1. It will lead to a much higher level of class coupling. My panel will depend on all these new classes to work correctly. In fact the situation is even worse because my panel is an inner class and, to do some of the scaling, needs to use methods from an object stored in the parent class. I would therefore have to also pass this object reference as an argument to many of these new classes.
2. It will lead to a lot of awkward passing of data between classes. For example, I need to use g2.drawImage(img, x, y, w, h, this), so I will have to pass not only the graphics context but also the panel reference itself.
Is it common for panel subclasses that do custom painting to be complex?
thanks,
Eric

I wrote the map view for a commercial GIS system. Drawing and scaling on a JPanel is challenging, but it need not be complex.
1. To eliminate class coupling, you need to create a couple of interfaces: Renderable (what you want drawn) and Renderer (the thing doing the low-level drawing). Renderer will have before and after setup and reset methods (to do things like scaling and rotation), and methods that the renderables can use to draw graphics. The Renderable interface can be as simple as a single method: draw(Renderer).
Every type of graphic that you draw on the screen would be a different class that implements Renderable, and which knows how to draw itself using whatever lower-level drawing commands you put in the Renderer. If you construct each Renderable in terms of java.awt.Shape, then Renderable.draw() could call a method Renderer.draw(java.awt.Shape, java.awt.Color).
2. The Panel becomes fairly simple. It has a Renderer and a collection of Renderable objects. Its paint() method calls the Renderer setup method, calls Renderable.draw(Renderer) on each object, and calls the Renderer reset method. Each Renderable in turn calls Renderable.draw(java.awt.Shape, java.awt.Color) one or more times.
Renderer should get a Graphics2D from the Panel when the setup method is called. That's when the Renderer does all of the scaling, positioning, and rotation on the Graphics2D. The Renderable implementations shouldn't even need to know about it.
I don't think custom painting code is necessarily complex, merely challenging to write. If you're only drawing a few lines and circles, you probably don't have to be too concerned about design elegance and code maintainability. The map view I designed for our GIS system, on the other hand, has to handle all kinds of map geometry, icons, text, and aerial photos.

Mac Pro buying advice for Graphic Design

I am going to be purchasing a Mac Pro and was hoping I could get some advice on the right set-up for what I do. I use CS4 heavily on the Mac for graphic design spending a good amount of time in Photoshop working with files that can easily go over a few gigs (when working on convention booth displays, etc.). I also use my Mac for casual video editing in iMovie, and use Apple's other great offerings like iWeb, iPhoto, etc.
My main questions are:
- I'm leaning towards the Quad. I keep my Macs for at least 5 years. Is that a good decision?
- If I do go with the Quad should I opt for the 2.66 or 2.93?
- At the moment I am running 8 Gig on my current Mac, should I configure this new one with 8 Gig?
- Is the Radeon the correct card choice for a heavy Photoshop user?
I hope these questions aren't ones that have been asked a thousand times. It's a lot of money to spend (especially right now) and I want to make sure I configure it correctly for what I do.
Thank you in advance for your input.

Hi hatter,
Thank you again for your responses. That really helps clear up the RAM situation. I think that is part of what swayed me towards the 8-Core as opposed to the Quad. Please correct me if I am wrong, but looking at prices of RAM on Crucial I see that if I wanted today to put 16 Gigs of RAM in a Quad-Core it would cost me $1200 (for 4 4-Gig chips using all slots). However if I was going to put 16 in the 8-Core I could do it for $400 (8 2-Gig chips using all slots. Actually it would only be $200 more since I configured my Mac with 4 2-Gig chips from Apple for an extra $100). Seems like having more slots open will save me money when I want to upgrade ram since I don't have to go for the 4-Gig chips. That coupled with the theory that Snow Leopard is around the corner and will take advantage of the 8-Core it seems like opting for a low end 8-Core vs a high end Quad is worth the $300 difference.
Side note: Are there any reports that say running more 2GB chips is worse than running fewer 4GB chips? Just curious.
Even though I understand that the processor speed makes a difference I am hoping that the advantages of more RAM slots and future benefits of Snow Leopard, CS5 and other apps that will take advantage of the 8-Core in the near future will make it the right decision. If I could afford a faster 8-Core obviously I would opt for that but with a jump of $1,400 to the next processor speed I am afraid it is out of my reach.
Regardless I'm sure I will feel very spoiled as soon as I unwrap this beast and get it up and running. Then in a year I'll give into the temptation of slipping a SSD in for the boot drive and I'll have to find a way to contain my excitement. I have a SSD on my laptop and WOW what an amazing difference it really is.
Wow, these forums are great. I can't believe how helpful all of your responses have been. I feel much more informed and was able to order my Mac today not feeling like I was shopping in the dark.
Thank you all again!

Design advice for vertical list calculations

I'm extending a product management life cycle sharpoint 365 site,
With purchase orders, magazine store, production targets (date based) and sold dates.
So that in our production environment we can see how much is stored, how much can be sold, and what we need to buy in etc.
The thing i'm a bit troubled about that sharepoint lists are not Excel, but this has to be done with Sharepoint lists.
They prefer not to have edits directly in the aspX code, but editing workflows in Sharepoint designer is OK
In excel one could easily add a cell formula with the content of Sum the value in the row left of me and add it to the value of myself one row earlier (like B2 contained = A2+B1 ); and then copy that formula to the whole B column
The nice thing with Excel is that when you change some value in A, like A2 = 10 and and later A5=10 then B7 would be 20
Changing later a value like A3 =4 would recalculate quickly and re- totals the B column.
Sharepoint Lists, calculated fields work only horizontally, so to do some vertical actions one needs a workflow, and do some lookup based upon (calculated previous) ID field, ea ID -1. Or stepp through to All ID's till current. What borders me a bit, is that
my list will grow large at some point. So stepping through all ID's to sum them till current Item seams 'slow' to me, on the other hand if i only check the previous version then the whole column (B) wouldnt be recalculated, if someone changed an older entry.
Extremly simplified i have a single list with the columns below (where stored act as my B column).
bought | stored | sold
0 | 5 | 0
2 | 5 | 0 (raw products need to be manufactured before stored so they're added 1 by 1 later).
0 | 6 | 0
0 | 7 | 0
0 | 4 | 3 (but when sold we can subtract directly from storage)
Ofcourse i need some horizontal calculations because i need to track as well if there has been bought enough for production. But i wonder what would be Wise to do, base thing on current ID and ID minus 1, or to walk through all items by work flow (recalculate
whole list), or like with changes; recalculate from current changed till the end (not sure how to detect end yet.. but well something like that).
I just wonder what would be wise here, and the best direction for this.
The table i showed is a extreme simplified, in fact also some other tables and workflows will be the feeders of the data.
Its just that the whole thing makes me a bit worry and wonder what would be best, and maybe i oversee something maybe there are other ways for vertical calculations over lists.

After lots of thinking, and seeing how slow office 365 SharePoint reacted upon my list workflows.
I've decided to use a "site variables list", in which I store variables as rows and their value in a columns.
And I refer to them by ID (or one could use another indexed unique value).
It's maybe not an exact calculation of the whole thing (build around several lists) but everything is a lot faster then stepping trough each item in a huge list. And it also allows for a bit more easy tweaking of these "vertical" calculations.
If for some reason those calculations would need adjustments (by change of management definitions), I have easy access to those variables to adjust them.
On a side note, when I use those variables, it turned out it worked a bit better to create in the workflow local variables, then do the calculation, and put it in the right table you want those numbers to appear in. As compared to directly referring to the
total. It takes just 5 sec or so to update. With this method size of the lists have no almost no impact on the speed of the workflow now.

Need advice for future design and hardware I should purchase now.

I was wondering if someone could assist me in making a decision on where I should take the future design of my network. Currently the design has no redundancy and I've been told recently that my company has a bit of money to spend and that it needs to spend it within the next 2 weeks. I am fairly new to the company so haven't been able to really think about future redundant designs nor have I studied much about designing networks. There are about 200-300 people that may be using my network at once, all users aren't at the location in question but they may be asking for resources from our servers.
I've included a basic design of the "core" of my network and would like any suggestions for creating redundancy in the future and also optimizing the way data travels to our servers. Do people generally have redundant Layer 3 switches for the core in small networks such as mine? I will be replacing the 2811 since it only has 100Mbps connections and was thinking, perhaps replace this with a Layer 3 switch with the plan to have another identical Layer 3 switch installed to offer redundancy in the future.
Also, would it be a good idea to move the servers into a vlan on the core? Thanks for any advice on what I should be purchasing now with plans for redundancy being implemented over a year. -Mark

40k Can go pretty quick depending on the scope. Your server farm especially should be dual-homed capable of surviving link, hardware, routing, and software failure.
It's going to be best practice your server farm be in it's logical subnet, so failover mechanism can be controlled routing protocols, as opposed to FHRP's such as HSRP/VRRP/GLBP. Especially since you adjust routing timers to sub-second convergence.
Budget will be the primary limitation (as it always it) but ideally dual 6500's running VSS and FWSM would be the ideal way. Data centers should be designed with high availability in mind, hence the need to 2x devices.
Depending on the size of the SAN/Virtual infrastructure Nexus might want to be considered but you will chew up 40k before you know it.
Also make sure the server farm is scaled properly. Your server farms should be oversubscribed in a much higher ratio compared to your access layer.
CCNP, CCIP, CCDP, CCNA: Security/Wireless
Blog: http://ccie-or-null.net/

Seeking advice for timer design

Hi,
I am designing a timer application with Flex Builder 3 which
is basically a stop watch that will remember when it was started if
the page is reloaded (on a different computer, for instance). My
original plan was to use JavaScript and mySQL but I'd like to give
it a try with Flex first.
Since Flex doesn't interact directly with databases I'm
wondering if using mySQL to store the timer settings is the best
idea? I think I could manage interfacing it with PHP but I'm not
sure how much trouble this is going to be since I'm a new Flex
user.
How would you approach the project?
Thanks,
tekfetish

Interfacing with a server part is very simple using Flex, PHP
would be just fine - as well as any other server side
language/system.
Here is an Actionscript idea:
You just create a HTTPService variable
quote:
* gateway : this is the communication layer with the server
side php code
private var gateway:HTTPService = new HTTPService();
Then set properties of this service
quote:
gateway.url = '
http://www.myServer.com/myScript.php';
gateway.method = "POST";
gateway.useProxy = false;
If you'd like to pass parameters, use something like this:
quote:
parameters['someNameHere'] ='John Doe';
parameters['whichTimer'] = 'timer 1';
gateway.request = parameters;
Then, define which functions should be called once the
HTTPService returns [resultHandler on success and faultHandler on
error:
quote:
gateway.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, resultHandler);
gateway.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, faultHandler);
Then do something in these functions:
quote:
public function resultHandler(e:ResultEvent):void
// your code here...
public function faultHandler(e:FaultEvent):void
var errorMessage:String = "Connection error: " +
e.fault.faultString;
if (e.fault.faultDetail)
errorMessage += "\n\nAdditional detail: " +
e.fault.faultDetail;
Alert.show(errorMessage);
Finally, perform your request:
quote:
gateway.send();

Java EE design advice for a re-designed DB app

I'm currently tasked with rewriting a legacy DB app in Java. The original was written in Delphi. It worked great for a number of years, but the powers that be have recently decided to redesign and rewrite it in Java. Basically I just have the same set of business requirements as the original did.
Overall, the app is a desktop GUI application that helps track contents of a natural history museum collection. The collection contains a bunch of specimens (dead animals) collected all over the globe at various times over the last 200 years. Multiple users (1 - 10 uesrs) will have to have access to the data at the same time. I also have to provide a nice Swing GUI for it.
Here's my question: Is this the type of app that lends itself to a Java EE design? I'm imagining using a Java EE app server that connects to the DB. The app server would provide DB access, producing entity beans, as well as managing a number of session beans (EJBs) that implement the business logic (security, user management/session management). I would also have a Swing GUI that would connect to the beans remotely. This sounds like it would help me keep a good disconnect between the UI layer (Swing), the business logic (EJBs), and the data layer (entity beans accessed using the Java Persistance API). Does this sound reasonable? I'm a veteran Swing developer, but not a seasoned Java EE developer/designer.
Also, if I use this architecture, I can imagine one issue that I might run into (I'm sure there are many others). I can imagine that I would want to retrieve the entity beans (lets say mypackage.MyPersonBean) through some call to an EJB, and then use the bean in some rendered Swing component. What happens when the Swing component needs to access the results of MyPersonBean.getAddresses() if the addresses are lazy loaded?
As you can probably tell, I really have more than one design question here. Help/comments about any of this is greatly appreciated.

I was thinking the same thing, but don't have a
successful experience to validate my gut feelings.
Here's my only suggestion (which dubwai could
hopefully confirm or correct): write your entity
classes/data model classes with no knowledge of
lazy-loading etc. Then subclass them, overriding
just the getChildren() type of methods and build the
lazy-loading knowledge into the subclass.More or less, yes. Don't over-think it, though. If you define your basic data 'types' as interfaces, you don't need to get into complex type hierarchies or multiple versions of the types unless that becomes necessary and if it does, the changes should not affect the presentation layer.
Since you are on-board with this and I think you are completely following, there is a technique for the lazy loading that you can use here.
In the case where it's a one-to-one relationship, you can do the lazy-loading by creating a simple wrapper class for the child object. This class will have a reference to either null or a filled in Object. This is a little more OO because the Object is taking care of itself. Whether this abstraction is useful to you, you will have to decide.
In the case of a one-to-many relationship, you can create a custom Collection (List or Set) that manages the stub loading. If you make a generic abstract version and subclass it for the different child types, you might be able to reuse a lot of the data retrieval code. You can do the same thing with the wrapper too.
I will caution you to try to keep it as simple as you can without painting yourself into a corner. Only do things that you are going to use now and write things so they can be expanded upon later. Reducing coupling is a core technique for that.
When the
GUI asks for an object in the getData() call, hand
them a subclass object, but don't let them know it.
In other words, have the method "public DataClass
getData()" return a SubDataClass object. The caller
will only know that they received a DataClass
object, but lazy-loading awareness will be built
into it. This way, the lazy-loading stuff is
completely transparent to the caller but you still
have simple data classes that can be used outside of
a lazy-loading context.Yes this is the idea, but don't write the other versions until you need them.
It's also possible to use
this method if you need to add transparent
lazy-loading to classes that you aren't the author
of. (Only classes that have been tagged 'final' or
have 'final' public methods would be beyond this
method's reach.)Yes, you can use the wrapper approach above but if the author of that class made a lot of unecessary assumptions you might have trouble.
This approach allows for some enhancements, too.You
can create a thread that retrieves the children of
Foo (e.g. bars) incrementally after the Foo is
returned to the caller. Often you can load the
bars
in the time it takes the user to click around to
the
point where they are needed or at least be partly
done. This will make the app seem very fast to the
user because they get the Foo very quickly (because
you didn't load the chidren) and then the bars
really
quickly (because you loaded them during user
'think-time').
I love this idea. I'm hoping to code this into my
GUI app soon.I would advise that you get the main lazy-loading working without this (keep in mind when writing the code) and do it once you are sure you will finish on time.

Using Suitcase Fusion/Advice for a Designer

For the longest time, I would just add whatever fonts I could find to Fusion and the program would add them without any problem. However, now that I am doing more freelance, I need to be really careful with what fonts I use for my clients. I wouldn't want to use unlicenced fonts for a job. Consequently, I now need to think up the best workflow for using fusion for freelancing. I know I can add temporar fonts to fusion. But what if I am doing a job for a month for someone. Would you then add the fonts permanently? Then after the job is over would you remove them? What would be the best way to remove the fonts? How could you be sure you aren't removing the wrong fonts? For example, what if a client sends you a Helvetica to use, and it happens to be exact same Helvetica that you own, and is consequently already in Fusion. I imagine Fusion would not allow that other Helvetica into the database since it is already in there. My problem is, when you are done with the job and you go to delete all the fonts because you no longer need them, wouldn't you end up deleting out your own helvetica? Any advice on the best workflow would be much appreciated.

Hi kpdesigns,
The main thing to remember is that your fonts are never part of Suitcase. Everything listed in the active font lists are symbolic links only. If you "remove" fonts from Suitcase, you are only deactivating them. The originals are still wherever they were originally on the hard drive.
It's a bit different if you're using Fusion's option to put activated fonts in the vault. Those are then a copy of the fonts you activated stored in Suitcase's own database. Unless, in a sudden burst of insanity, turned on the option to delete the originals after adding fonts to the vault. When you deactivate them, they remain in the vault so you can go to the Closed Fonts panel and reopen them without having the originals on hand.
There are problems with that workflow though. What if you need to open a modified copy of Helvetica? Will Suitcase allow you to override the font in the vault. Will it even let you add it since they're the same name? To me, the vault isn't very useful and so that option is always off on my Macs. It's also downright dangerous if you're silly enough to let it delete your originals when adding fonts.
Here's the workflow we used to best effect in the prepress shops I've worked at.
1) Keep your open fonts to the bare minimum on your Mac so client fonts you activate are unlikely to already be open from another font with the same name. See my article, Font Management in Mac OS X Tiger and Panther for a list of minimum fonts.
2) Keep client fonts with each job they are for. Create a folder for a job when it comes in. Within that folder, create a folder for the fonts that belong with that job. So if the job folder is called Florida Spa Flyer, name the folder within for the fonts Florida Spa Fonts to make the association easy to remember. Once you have all of the fonts for that job in the Fonts folder, drag and drop it into the Suitcase window. A new font set will be created with the same name as the folder the fonts are in, making is easy to see which fonts belong with which job.
3) Since fonts in Suitcase are only links, you can have multiple sets for all of your separate projects. Just activate whichever set matches the job you're currently on and deactivate the other sets. That way you can have multiple versions of Helvetica, Garamond or whatever in Suitcase. Since they're all separated by sets that activate only from the job folder you added them from, you'll always be using the correct fonts supplied by the client for that job.
4) When you're done with a project, simply deactivate and delete that set from Suitcase. The actual fonts will remain where they are and can be archived with the final documents so they stay together.
The link, or one of the links above directs you to my personal web site. While the information is free, it does ask for a contribution. As such, I am required by Apple's rules for these discussions to include the following disclaimer.
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Any advice for space designer preset?

just would like to know what's the best preset from ur point in he space design..
my taste in term of reverb is more like lexicon 480, AMS,and real old plate.
any goodies?just to lazy to listen to all those preset.
will be curious to know ur habit .

I use matches and petrol.
I used to use any of the space designer rooms that didn't colour the sound too much - not many of those. I have since moved to Altiverb and am loving it.
Any reverb sound has to be appropriate to the material. I understand about all the presets. I started off one afternoon intending to try them all and got as far as about 3. If you have an idea how long you want your reverb to last, then you can start auditioning only those that are within the right ballpark.
It's a real eye opener to use Space Designer as an insert rather than an aux send effect. Balancing the wet and dry can really put the sound in a space, rather than just giving it some kind of a tail

Design advice for setting users default time

I have an application that in a number of different places requires that records when being updated or created are shown to default to the user's current date. Depending on the location of the user, this could be a different day than where the server is.
All of the relevant fields in the database tables are using a datatype of "TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE". When a users account is initially created, the timezone that the user is in is saved. When the user logs on, an "alter session set time_zone" command runs on the database to change the time zone of the current session.
When a user updates or creates a record and one of the field(s) requires to display the current date of the user, I call a ViewObject which runs a query to "select current_timestamp from dual" to return the current date from the database and populate the field with this.
I've realised that I'm creating a considerable overhead as this view object may be queried dozens of times during a users session and was thinking of running it once when the user logs on and storing the "USER_DATE" as a session variable - then I can simply refer to this each time, instead of many round-trips off to the database. Obviously there is a risk if the user logs on just before midnight and stays on until after that the date will be incorrect but this is extremely unlikely as the application is only used during normal business hours up to 9pm as an exception
Am I heading down the right track here or doing something daft (and missing something far more simple that I should be doing !)
Cheers,
Brent

Hi Frank,
Thanks for that - after 8 years of working with Oracle Forms and afterwards the same again with ADF, I still find it hard sometimes when using ADF to understand the best approach to a particular problem - there is so many different ways of doing things/where to put the code/how to call it etc... ! Things seemed so much simplier back in the Forms days !
Chandra - thanks for the information but this doesn't suit my requirements - I originally went down that path thinking/expecting it to be the holy grail but ran into all sorts of problems as it means that the dates are always being converted into users timezone regardless of whether or not they are creating the transaction or viewing an earlier one. I need the correct "date" to be stored in the database when a user creates/updates a record (for example in California) and this needs to be preserved for other users in different timezones. For example, when a management user in London views that record, the date has got to remain the date that the user entered, and not what the date was in London at the time (eg user entered 14th Feb (23:00) - when London user views it, it must still say 14th Feb even though it was the 15th in London at the time). Global settings like you are using in the adf-config file made this difficult. This is why I went back to stripping all timezone settings back out of the ADF application and relied on database session timezones instead - and when displaying a default date to the user, use the timestamp from the database to ensure the users "date" is displayed.
Cheers,
Brent

Workflow & encode advice for 2,000 vid library

Hello and I hope this is the right forum for my questions...
We're at the start of a project that will see us capture, encode and distribute several thousand videos to the web. We've spent a few weeks working through different processes - at this early stage we're trying to confirm if we're on the right track or if some part of the workflow should be changed to speed up the whole process. The broad details are:
Summary...
Step 1 - capture HD video in Google Earth Pro
Step 2 - add various sound effects and audio track in PP CS4, encode in ME to h.264 - we've turned to PP CS4 but are new to the app
Step 3 - upload to web audience, youtube, iphone etc
Source media...
- is captured from movie maker within Google Earth Pro
- format is Windows Media 9, 17 mbps, 1280x720, 25 fps
- duration is from 2 min to 10 min, avg 4:30
- library will consist of 2,000 videos
Question - we can capture the source media at 6mpbs rather than 17mpbs, would the lower bitrate speed up encoding?
PP encode step...
- The aim of this step is to add audio tracks and some minor effects to each video, and prepare for delivery into youtube, iphones, etc
- Output file is currently h.264 MP4, 1280x720, 25 fps, 6mpbs with 10mbps max, VBR
- We've used PPBM4 to benchmark and after moving from a network output location to local raid, it now takes about 7 mins to encode a 4 min file which seems about right for our hardware specs (available if required).
Question - given the final renditions will be delivered from 320kbps to 2mbps via youtube and other vid sites, what encode settings should we use to get the best quality for speed balance? Is 2 pass worth it if it doubles the time? Should I use b frames? Are there other settings I either should or shouldn't use?
Batching up lots of timelines in media encoder is giving us problems too, after 5 or 6 successful jobs it fails with encode errors. It's be great to be able to watch it blow through 50 overnight but not sure what to test.
Are we on the right track? IF any tips can shave 5% here and 10% there it'll make a big difference with so many videos. Thanks in advance...

Some of my thoughts:
we can capture the source media at 6mpbs rather than 17mpbs, would the lower bitrate speed up encoding?
No. All it would do is lower your final output quality because you started with lower quality. You always want your source to be as good as you can get it.
Is 2 pass worth it if it doubles the time? Should I use b frames?
Sometimes. Yes.
Batching up lots of timelines in media encoder is giving us problems
too, after 5 or 6 successful jobs it fails with encode errors
The AME creates a temporary project in your User temp folder for each timeline. Make sure you have enough free space on the drive that has that folder. Use an app like CCleaner to clean out old stuff that builds up in there.
-Jeff

Asking for advice for Jabber deployment - multi CUCM cluster\AD domains

I would like some design advice for deploying Jabber and CUPS in our company. We have 2 locations, west coast (SiteA) and east coast (SiteB). Each site have their own CUCM 7.15 clusters, Unity clusters, AD domains (trusted, but not in the same forest).
At SiteA I have setup CUPS (8.6.3.10000-20) and jabber and have it working great.
I would like to setup CUPS\Jabber for SiteB, but they need to be able to IM\call\etc to SiteA (And vice-versa).
SiteA and SiteB both have CUCM LDAP sync turned on, and LDAP directory synced with both domains (although SiteA cannot authenticate to CUCM at SiteB, and vice-versa due to the fact you can only LDAP sync authentication with one domain, CUCM user database contain users from SiteA and SiteB).
We have SIP trucks setup to pass internal calls and line status(BLF) between the trunks, and can communicate via internal extensions just fine.
The problem I’m running into is my jabber-config files uses the EDI directory – which can only look at one domain, so I cannot search the other domain. I believe changing to UDS fixes this, but I understand it would require me to upgrade both CUCM clusters to 8.6.2 - unless I’m mistaken.
I’m aware the desktop sharing will not work until CUCM is upgraded to 8.6.1 or 8.6.2.
I’m wondering if anyone has any advice, or can confirm I’m on the right track. Thanks in advance!

The thing that's important to understand is how CUP and Jabber build the XMPP URI. The URI has a left- and right-hand side; the left is the username while the right is the XMPP domain. CUP uses the LDAP attribute specified in CUCM's LDAP System page, sAMAccountName by default, for the left-hand-side. The right-hand side is the FQDN of the CUP cluster. Jabber must use the same values as CUP when displaying search results. Take note that nowhere in this process does the entire XMPP URI originate from the directory source.
In your case you have two separate CUP clusters in two separate domains. This won't work because when a user searches for a contact in the directory using Jabber, the client will build the XMPP URI as [email protected]. Even if you got the other domain's user objects into the search results the right-hand-side of the URI would be wrong and the presence subscription would never succeed since the other cluster is in another domain. As such your first task must be to move the CUP clusters into the exact same fully-qualified DNS domain. Once this is done you can use Inter-Cluster Peering to build a larger XMPP network in which all users have the same presence domain. If you intend to do Inter-Domain Federation in the future this must be your public DNS domain, not your internal active directory domain. If you use a non-public DNS domain TLS handshake will never succeed for inter-domain federation requests.
Once you have Inter-Cluster Peering in place you can use Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (the new name for ADAM) to front-end both forests. Both CUCM clusters would need to import the full list of users representing both domains and the sAMAccountNames must be unique across both domains.
Finally, you can instruct Jabber to use UDS and query it's local CUCM cluster which will be able to return a search result from both domains. Since the CUP clusters are peered in the same domain the XMPP URI can be built properly, the presence subscription can be routed to the correct cluster, and life will be good.
By this point hopefully it's clear that EDI won't cut it since it would be limited to only returning search results from the local forest.
Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify helpful or correct answers.

Hi, i am a littl confused as I logged into creative cloud and bough the in design plan for a year but i cant seem to donwload it... there is a window that pops up and it says its downloading but its taking forever? any advice?

hi, i am a littl confused as I logged into creative cloud and bough the in design plan for a year but i cant seem to donwload it... there is a window that pops up and it says its downloading but its taking forever? any advice?

Hi Dima,
Please refer to the help documents below:
Troubleshoot Creative Cloud download and install issues
Error downloading, installing, or updating Creative Cloud applications
Regards,
Sheena

Design Document for SAP Workflow

Hi I am looking for a design document for SAP Workflow. A template for design document for the SAP workflow will also be fine

Hi,
Have a look at these good links-
Workflows
http://www.sap-img.com/workflow/sap-workflow.htm
http://www.sapgenie.com/workflow/index.htm
https://sapneth9.wdf.sap.corp/workflow
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_webas620/helpdata/en/a5/172437130e0d09e10000009b38f839/frameset.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/a5/172437130e0d09e10000009b38f839/frameset.htm
http://www.sap-img.com/workflow/sap-workflow.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/a5/172437130e0d09e10000009b38f839/frameset.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/3d/6a9b3c874da309e10000000a114027/frameset.htm
http://help.sap.com/printdocu/core/Print46c/en/data/pdf/PSWFL/PSWFL.pdf
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/4a/dac507002f11d295340000e82dec10/frameset.htm
http://www.workflowing.com/id18.htm
http://www.e-workflow.org/
http://web.mit.edu/sapr3/dev/newdevstand.html
http://www.sap-img.com/workflow/sap-workflow.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/a5/172437130e0d09e10000009b38f839/frameset.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/3d/6a9b3c874da309e10000000a114027/frameset.htm
http://help.sap.com/printdocu/core/Print46c/en/data/pdf/PSWFL/PSWFL.pdf
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/4a/dac507002f11d295340000e82dec10/frameset.htm
http://www.workflowing.com/id18.htm
http://www.e-workflow.org/
http://web.mit.edu/sapr3/dev/newdevstand.html
/people/ginger.gatling/blog/2005/12/01/link-workflow-business-objects-to-your-collaboration-tasks
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/92/bc26a6ec2b11d2b4b5006094b9ea0d/content.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_bw33/helpdata/en/92/bc26a6ec2b11d2b4b5006094b9ea0d/content.htm
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_bw31/helpdata/en/8d/25f94b454311d189430000e829fbbd/content.htm
http://www.sap-press.com/product.cfm?account=&product=H950
http://help.sap.com/printdocu/core/Print46c/en/data/pdf/PSWFL/PSWFL.pdf
http://www.workflowing.com/id18.htm
http://www.e-workflow.org/
http://www.sapgenie.com/workflow/index.htm
For examples on WorkFlow...check the below link..
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/3d/6a9b3c874da309e10000000a114027/frameset.htm
http://help.sap.com/printdocu/core/Print46c/en/data/pdf/PSWFL/PSWFL.pdf
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/4a/dac507002f11d295340000e82dec10/frameset.htm
http://www.workflowing.com/id18.htm
http://www.e-workflow.org/
http://web.mit.edu/sapr3/dev/newdevstand.html
Mark useful answers.
Regards,
Tanuja.

Arch workflow design advice for a designer?

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