Anca A.

Looks like the facination for Web 2.0 is an anthropological revolution for the human kind.
I’m curious to see what the Web 3.0(besides his marketing purpose) will bring us.
In the meantime, I think one of the first steps has been made by the search engines like Wolfram Alpha.

I am pround to see that my blogging activity in Toulouse it is starting to pay off. During the last six months I have been working on gathering the information and content for the blog as well as setting up the playground of the social networks.

Now the blog counts around 100 unique visitors per day, a Facebook and Yahoo group as well as a Twitter microblogging platform.

One of the goals was to allow members of the Romanian community in Toulouse to better communicate and get to know each other. The results were our first two meetings in August and September of this year.

In the last days I have been working on an idea I had a while ago: I am talking about a website dedicated to the Romanian community in Toulouse.

It contains practical informations about living in Toulouse and it aims to provide a starting point to the ones visiting or living in this region of France.

When deciding to get a job or to change our current working place we are often confronted with this question of what should my cover letter contain now. Of course the answer varies according to the geographical location and the kind of job you are interested in getting. There are however some key ideas that are available in software development too.

A very good place for asking such questions and getting qualified answers is in a Questions &Answers topic on LinkedIn . Below are some of the conclusions to this question.

Things that it should contain:

• Be short, not more than 1 page in length.
• Be personalized; the candidate has done some research and has and understanding of what the company does and what the position likely entails.
• They have called out the Unique Value Proposition of the candidate and what specifically they have done that will be applicable in the new role and how they will be able to help out.
• They have been positive and upbeat. They have shown excitement and energy
• They finish with a request for action – a meeting (phone or face-to-face) with the intent to explore the opportunity in more detail.

Things that it should not contain:

• It should not be generic and one size fits all.
• It should not be a rehashing of your resume, whether you enclose the resume or not
• It should not be long and rambling.
• Basically anything that doesn’t move the conversation forward. Leave out anything that allows a person to start thinking ‘no’.

Possible pattern to follow:

• Greeting (best if you have a name, but a generic “Dear Hiring Professional” will do)
• Paragraph 1: no more than 2-3 sentences. What position you are applying for, how you heard about it.
• Paragraph 2: why the company should consider *you*, in detail. Keep it as targeted as possible with no more than 3-5 sentences.
• Paragraph 3: when you are reachable, best way to reach you.
• Closing: name/contact info (phone AND email.)

For sending your cover letter by e-mail, if you choose this option, make sure to send it from a business-like email address, not the “cute one” that we use with friends and acquaintances.

Some very useful tutorials and demos that I’ve found about implementing OpenGL:

• Nehe Tutorials
• Zeus Tutorials
• Public API Implementations
• OpenGL ES Implementations
• Glut
• Glut ES
• GlUT Windows Libraries
• GLUT on Windows

As I received many e-mails regarding how to start learning program on Windows Mobile I will include here some of the tutorials that I’ve found very useful:

• Comparison in choosing the good technology for developing in Windows Mobile
• How to start programming a Windows Mobile Application
• Win32 Tutorial
• Framework for .Net Mobile Development
• Testing tool – Application Verifier for Pocket PC
• Windows Mobile Programming Tips and Techniques

At the beginning my dilemma was if to use the .Net Compact framework or not for my application. It was quite difficult to integrate it with Open GL ES so I decided not to use it.

Creating a job using the Design module. Here you have to define the source and the target of the job. This can be either a text file or an Oracle table. After choosing the source and the target, the job must be implemented and the unit tests executed.
Creating the job control. The job that has just been created should be integrated into a set of job and the moment of launchment should be established(after what job it starts). The job will be executed and the logs viewed with the help of the DataStage Director.

1. Job Design

In order to design a job there are a few steps to follow:

• Define the entering parameters
• Use stages like: databases, ODBC, sequential files, hashed files, folders, containers, transformer, aggregator, pivot, sort, link partitioner, link collector.
• Define the derivations(transforming functions)
• Execute the unit tests. In order to execute the unit tests, the definition of parameters is required, real time view of the number of lines treated as well as the end of the job(Error or Succes). This can be done using the Director module.The logs are not visible in the designer.

Frequent tasks when creating a job:

• Adding a Transformer item that can be based either on a formula, a filter or some variables.
• Adding a hashed file for creating and alimenting a table.
• Adding a lookup(database of hashed file ).
• Adding a OCI Oracle (query type/ sql overload)

Frequent transformations in a job:

• Alimenting a table using insert else update
• Aggregation
• Sort
• Removing duplicates
• Manage the rejects: generating one ore more rejects starting from a single line .
• Lookup for a big database table.

2. Job Control

The steps in executing a job are the following:

• define the entry parameters
• use the stages: Job Activity, Execute Command, Wait for file activity, Routine Activity, Sequencer, Terminator Activity, Exception Handler, StartLoop activity, EndLoop Activity.
• execute the unit test

DataStage is an ETL(Extract, Transfer, Load) tool. Like all the ETL tools it satisfies the following needs:

• extract data from the datawarehouse or from files that arrive from different other applications

• transform and modify the data and after

• insert or load data into the datawarehouse.

DataStage is composed of more modules that will allow you to implement these three main functionalities:

The client module:

• Designer – creates the jobs
• Director – launches and stops the jobs, enables you to consult the logs of the jobs
• Administrator – manages the projects , the users and the security
• Manager – manages the objects of a project: Import – Export

The server module:

• The DataStage Server – can be installed on Windows/Unix/Linux
• The Repository – stores all the Datastage objects as well as the logs

Different other products:

• Datastage Server
• Datastage Parallel Extender
• Datastage MVS

TDWI is a good site that tracks developments in the business intelligence and data warehousing industry to keep you apprised of what’s happening.