Macrotone Blogs

Macrotone blogs upon Joomla, our products and other matters.
Categories
Tags
Archives
Calendar
Categories:   All Categories
Suggested keywords
x
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
Geoffrey Chapman

Joomla Smart Search

b2ap3 icon joomlaI have seen a number of posts on the web about the ‘Smart Search’ feature, most of which are about using it and configuring it.  My experience had found one peculiarity of using the feature on Joomla 2.5 which I am sure cannot just be me.

The peculiarity I refer to is the fact that it is ‘always’ necessary to create a menu item for the ‘Smart search’,  otherwise the search just directs one to the usual (old) search page.  It doesn’t matter if one disables the ‘old’ search plugin, one is still directed to the ‘old’ search result. This is something I first noticed with the initial release of Joomla 2.5, and put it down to a ‘quirk’, it being a ‘new’ feature, but it is still present even with the recent updates.

I have been unable to find any reference to this peculiarity anywhere, despite extensive searching (pun intended).  There is a brief reference to a menu item being required IF a search filter is used, but I have found it necessary even if a filter is not being used.

The only way in which I have managed to get it working every time is as follows:

Create a Menu Item from the "Smart Search" category. NOTE: there is a category of Menu Item called "Search" and a different Category of Menu Item called "Smart Search". Be sure you are in the category called "Smart Search."  (To make it more confusing, the item itself is called "Search" but just be sure you are in the "Smart Search" category.)

After selecting this item type, in the Required Settings, choose your (optional) Search Filter and Save.

This menu item can be placed in a hidden menu if you do not desire a specific search page displayed on the site.  The page doesn't have to exist on its own but it has to be there for the ‘smart search’ to operate properly within a module.

Note that I have not seen this peculiarity on Joomla 3.1 which doesn’t require the menu item to be present.

Tags:
joomla search
Geoffrey Chapman

Joomla -€“ Creating a component '€˜Smart Search'€™ Language file

b2ap3 icon joomlaHaving created a custom Finder (Smart search) plugin for our Issue Tracker component, there was one small problem left which was that the supplied language translations were not being picked up by the ‘Smart Search module’.

Having spent time ensuring that the format of the language files were correct and that they were being placed in the correct directory on installation and were named as the documentation suggested. 

Continue reading
Tags:
developers joomla Issue Tracker installable plugin Plugin Language
Geoffrey Chapman

Nested tables, MySQL and Joomla Smart Search.

b2ap3 icon joomlaWe have been looking at refining a finder plugin in Joomla which is accessing a nested MySQL table.  Nothing complex about that one would think.

However the desire was to expand out the different sub record titles into a single ‘title’ comprised of the individual sub record titles linked together offered a few ‘opportunities’ for want of a different word!

To explain further.  We have a classic nested table structure as follows:

Continue reading
Tags:
joomla MySQL tables Issue Tracker developers
Go To Top

Joomla! Debug Console

Session

Profile Information

Memory Usage

Database Queries