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Geoffrey Chapman
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An IT professional with a wide experience of IT systems, specialising in Database Management and Security.

Geoffrey Chapman

Windows 7 Networks connectors suddenly stop working

windows7Had an interesting problem this morning which while not difficult to fix took up a lot of time investigating.

Yesterday the laptop was working perfectly fine, connecting to the internet via the wireless connector. This morning the wireless connector failed to make a connection to the hub.  Very strange, but even more so when all other PC devices were working fine, and even the plugged in network adaptor was failing to make a connection.  Running the command line ‘ipconfig’ command didn’t even display the network adaptors as existing!

Looking at the network adaptors didn’t show anything unusual in the control panel. They were present and enabled and running fine.  However the network trouble-shooter said there were problems with the adaptors but couldn’t say what was wrong.  A fat lot of use they turned out to be.

Looking at the system activity the only events that I could see were that yesterday afternoon I upgraded ‘Tortoise SVN’ to the latest 1.8.1 version and this morning it looked like ‘Trusteer Rapport’ had also updated itself. Now the machine was fine after the Tortoise upgrade, and presumably the network connection must have been fine if Rapport had upgraded itself.

Uninstalling ‘Rapport’ did not resolve the problem, so tried using System restore to a point prior to the ‘Rapport’ update, but this also failed to resolve the problem.  At this point I decided to uninstall the two network devices (using Device Manager), and then use the ‘discover new hardware’ option to reinstall them.  Surprise, surprise the main network adaptor suddenly started working.  At last a clue.

I then proceeded to perform system restore again to the latest point and then uninstalled, and rediscovered the adaptors.  The main network adaptor worked straight away, but because I had obviously removed the wireless connector details, all of the ‘automatic’ connection details for the adaptor also were lost, so it was necessary to re-enter the connection keys etc.

So the only thing I can conclude from this is that the ‘Trusteer Rapport’ (version 3.5.1208.41) must somehow have impacted the network adaptors, something which even uninstalling didn’t resolve. For those unfamiliar with Rapport it is security software that is used to protect secure sites such as banks etc. Quite why it should impact the network adaptors is not quite so clear. Searching on the web didn’t discover anything similar reported but then again perhaps it is still ‘new’ and nobody else has reported it yet?

Tags:
Windows 7 updates
Geoffrey Chapman

Considering Metadata for our Joomla extensions

The use of Metadata within web pages to provide a ‘richer’ and more tailored data structure is not new.  The term metadata is defined as "data about data". The term is however slightly ambiguous, as it can be used for two fundamentally different concepts (types). Structural metadata is about the design and specification of data structures and is more properly called "data about the containers of data"; descriptive metadata, on the other hand, is about individual instances of application data, the data content. In our context we are really talking about ‘data about data content’.

We say it is not new because many years ago we worked upon implementing some of the ‘Dublin Core’ metadata into some specific sites that we were working with.  The focus now seems to be the use of the vocabularies as defined by ‘schema.org.  This is no doubt influenced by the fact that it was promoted by Microsoft and Google themselves.

Deciding to implement it is not for the faint hearted especially if the ‘intended’ target is composed of entities that do not easily fit into one of the defined ‘standards’.  As an example we have looked at our ‘Problem/Issue/Bug Tracking’ application.  At first glance it looks to be a ‘Product’, but the products are those that are sold, or available to hire etc.  The output from our ‘Issue Tracker’ is a set or series of ‘reports’ which describe reported problems or improvement tasks for a ‘product’ hence perhaps they should instead be an ‘Article’.  Here again they do not really fit into the current ‘standard’.  The best we can come up with would be a ‘CreativeWork’, and more specifically a ‘SoftwareApplication’, but even here we would need to add some specific custom extensions, which is possible with ‘schema.org’ to more accurately reflect information that should be in the meta tags. We require the metadata to describe the output from the application and not the application itself.

At the moment the jury is still out as to whether we wish or desire to add an automated mechanism to our application to generate the meta data automatically.  We will probably continue to monitor the situation before deciding whether to implement it as a feature or not, especially as it is not certain whether including it will improve the page rankings within Google, since the exact details of the algorithm used by Google is their secret.

Tags:
metadata website Tools
Geoffrey Chapman

Oracle Database 12c (12.1.0.1.0) released for Windows 64bit

oracleWe note that Oracle has now released the latest version of its database for Windows 64bit to go with the earlier released Solaris (Sparc and x86-64)  and Linux platform versions. Interested readers can obtain a copy from Oracle via its Technet site.

The official release docs follow:

Oracle Database 12c, the latest generation of the world’s most popular database, has been developed for the Cloud and will enable customers to make more efficient use of their IT resources while continuing to improve their users’ service levels. In addition to a raft of enhancements and new features, including a new architecture, Oracle Database 12c makes it easier for customers to take advantage of the Cloud through:

bullet  Consolidating multiple databases with Oracle Multitenant

bullet  Automatically optimizing data storage and compression according to usage patterns

bullet  Providing continuous access with Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture

bullet  Securing enterprise data with comprehensive defense-in-depth strategy

bullet  Simplifying in-database analysis of Big Data

bullet  Efficient database management using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

Tags:
database DBA developers Oracle
Geoffrey Chapman

Free Toad for Oracle 12.0.0.61 released

Toad World - Connected IntelligenceWe are pleased to note the release of Toad for Oracle 12c is available on the Toadworld site. This is hot after the official Oracle release itself.

We have used the tool for more years than we care to remember, and it is highly recommended. They are invaluable for good database development and support.

Tags:
database DBA Oracle Tools
Geoffrey Chapman

10 Top Time-Saving Tech Tips

Saw this video and just had to share it. It's amazing just how many things one doesn't know about even on the simple things. I bet there are is at least one thing here that you didn't know.

 

Tags:
browser Tools
Geoffrey Chapman

Oracle Database 12c (12.1.0.1.0) released for Solaris and Linux

oracleWe note that Oracle has released the latest version of its database for Solaris (Sparc and x86-64)  and Linux platforms. The release for Windows is not yet available. Interested readers can obtain a copy from Oracle via its Technet site.

The official release docs follow:

Oracle Database 12c, the latest generation of the world’s most popular database, has been developed for the Cloud and will enable customers to make more efficient use of their IT resources while continuing to improve their users’ service levels. In addition to a raft of enhancements and new features, including a new architecture, Oracle Database 12c makes it easier for customers to take advantage of the Cloud through:

bullet  Consolidating multiple databases with Oracle Multitenant

bullet  Automatically optimizing data storage and compression according to usage patterns

bullet  Providing continuous access with Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture

bullet  Securing enterprise data with comprehensive defense-in-depth strategy

bullet  Simplifying in-database analysis of Big Data

bullet  Efficient database management using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

Tags:
database Oracle
Geoffrey Chapman

Component Translations and Transifex

b2ap3 icon joomlaPart of the task of providing a useful component for the wide community, we have long considered a way in which it is easier to provide language translations for our Joomla Issue Tracker component.  One method that we have recently decided to make use of is the ‘Transifex’ project.

To be truly multi-lingual each Joomla component (including modules and plugins) has to rely on local communities to create language packs.  We realise that is can be a very dirty job, that is very time consuming.  Transifex provides a mechanism to make language translations faster but with less work. Making use of this mechanism we hope to be able to provide users with a wider variety of available languages ready to download.

Looking at the number of existing components already making use of Transifex, it seems that we are joining an already varied and wide ranging community.

Transifex comes with the options of a client or a web interface and also has an extensive help.

One site that might provide useful to translators starting to get to grips with Transifex and its usage is provided here. Not being multilingual ourselves we cannot really make any valid comments upon how useful they specifically are, but they certainly appear to be informative and complete.

Tags:
Language joomla
Geoffrey Chapman

Reclaiming a disk'€™s recover partition space.

Windows 7Occasionally we make use of an old ATA or SATA disk that has previously been used as the main disk in a laptop, that has long died and gone, by placing it in a small portable case.

Then we usually reformat the disk to make it generally available.  There are occasions when there are system or recovery partitions present upon the disk and these situations it is convenient to wish to clean off all the ‘old’ unwanted data off of the disk.  The present of the system and/or recovery partitions normally means some special technique has to be employed to recover the space that these areas occupy.

One can always purchase a third party product to perform this task, but why should one when a perfectly useful utility is provided with Windows 7.

The command line utility ‘diskpart’  manages the task very easily.  All that is required is to select the disk we wish to ‘modify’, then display the partitions and ensure that it is indeed the correct disk. (After all you do not want to modify the live machine disk!)  Once sure we are 'on the correct disk, select the partition, and then delete the partition specifying the [noerr] and [overide] parameters.  Job done.  Now we can create a single large partition for the whole disk and use it as we please.

See the documentation via the link above for more information.

Geoffrey Chapman

Converting Joomla Forum from Discussions to Kunena

b2ap3 icon joomlaI recently looked at the possibility of converting from using the Discussions component to using Kunena.  I will not go into the reasons why this may or may not be required or whether it is a good or bad thing to do.

Looking on the web, for the best method, it was a topic that several others have looked into, but there were no solutions offered. We therefore post this information which others may find useful.

There is a ‘Kunena Importer’ but according to the Kunena documentation this doesn’t work with Kunena 2.0.x or above. We were thus left trying to see how difficult it would be. The following describes the mechanism we used to get our ‘old’ posts transferred over to Kunena 3.0.0. It is possibly not the most efficient but given that it is likely to be a ‘one-off’ conversion, performance is not the prime criteria.

To convert Discussions v1.6.1 to Kunena 3.0.0

Continue reading
Tags:
database joomla Forum
Geoffrey Chapman

Implementing Smart Search

b2ap3 icon joomlaWe have changed the search mechanism on the site from the standard ‘Joomla Search’ to make use of ‘Smart Search’.

This will hopefully enable a ‘richer’ environment for our visitors.  The implementation itself was relatively painless. Our own Issue Tracker component, and the standard supplied components such as content etc. worked flawlessly ‘out of the box’.  In additional a finder plugin for our Blog was also found and implemented very easily.

Only our Forum component gave rise to any problems. It was necessary to prevent sh404SEF from interfering in the URL generation so that the Forum used the ‘standard Joomla router’ for its links. This also involved removing from the sh404SEF component all history of the forum component. Once this was done then it was plain sailing.

The only point that should be emphasised is that the ‘Smart Search’ does not make use of ‘wild card’ characters.  The ‘old’ Joomla search mechanism used a very primitive method of searching which relied on the FULLTEXT search provided by the database. This was very inefficient but provided a simple means of handling wildcard search queries. Smart Search provides an auto-complete feature which is effectively a wildcard search of terms in the index, but full wildcard searching is not supported due to the potential for crippling the server if the feature were to be abused. In most cases wildcard searching is used to cater for variations in a search term. For example, searching for "juggl*" in order to catch references to "juggling" as well as "juggler". Smart Search attempts to avoid the need for wildcard searching by instead supporting word stemming where words that have the same stem are considered equivalent so that searching for "juggler" will also retrieve instances of "juggling" without the need to use wildcards.

Tags:
website Information joomla search
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