Using Graphs to Manage Networks and Devices with Cacti 0.8

In this article by Dinangkur Kundu and S. M. Ibrahim Lavlu, we will see how to add network-attached devices in the Cacti system and produce graphs to monitor LAN-sized installations to complex networks with hundreds of devices. It is fairly easy to manage devices through the Cacti web front-end. It provides a fast poller, advance graph templating, and multiple data acquisition methods out of the box, wrapped in an easy to use interface that makes sense to the network administrator.

Building a Facebook Application: Part 1

You'll obviously want to start building applications, and that's just what we'll do in this two-part article. By the end of this two-part article by Dr. Mark Alexander Bain and Hasin Hayder, you'll be able to:

• Extract Facebook information to be displayed by your application.
• Store information in the Facebook cache, so that it can be displayed on your users' profile pages.
• Store your own custom data.

The first part will cover the concepts of developing a simple Facebook application and also the way to write the Facebook profile.

Storing Planning Data in IBM Cognos: D-Cube (Part 1)

In this two-part article by Ned Riaz, Jason Edwards, and Rich Babaran, we will discuss how data is stored in IBM Cognos Planning Analyst. We will begin by defining the D-Cube and explaining the things that you need to think about before creating the D-Cube. We will discuss the importance of the order of dimensions in enforcing calculation and format priorities. We will show you how you can view the multiple slices of the cube and how you can save a selection of the cube as a separate object. We will explain how you can restructure the dimensions of the cube by adding, deleting, substituting, and reordering dimensions. We will cover some of the important functions available with the D-Cube, including global formatting, exporting, and other options that can make it easier for you to work with the program. We will illustrate how you can use data entry commands that will enable you to enter data, execute mathematical operations, or set restrictions for a cell, a range of cells, or the entire cube. Finally, we will cover Breakback—a powerful feature that allows you to cascade changes throughout the cube simply by making the change to a calculated item.

Adding Interactive Course Material in Moodle 1.9: Part 3

Read Part One of Adding Interactive Course Material in Moodle 1.9 here.

Read Part Two of Adding Interactive Course Material in Moodle 1.9 here.

Debugging the Scheduler in Oracle 11g Databases

In this article by Ronald Rood, we consider the fact that when the jobs get more complicated, it gets harder to understand why something works differently than planned. This article gives the reader a fresh look at how to follow and debug Scheduler jobs in Oracle 11g.

Query Performance Tuning in Microsoft Analysis Services: Part 1

In this two-part article by Chris Webb, we will cover query performance tuning, including how to design aggregations and partitions and how to write efficient MDX. The first part will cover performance-specific design features, along with the concepts of partitions and aggregations.

One of the main reasons for building Analysis Services cubes as part of a BI solution is because it should mean you get better query performance than if you were querying your relational database directly. While it's certainly the case that Analysis Services is very fast it would be naive to think that all of our queries, however complex, will return in seconds without any tuning being necessary. This article will describe the steps you'll need to go through in order to ensure your cube is as responsive as possible.