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Automatic Icon Conversion

Providing icons of various sizes for application development can be a tedious task. The built in icon scaling code in Windows does not do a great job when downscaling icons from e.g. 32 to 16 pixel sizes. The ANKHOR FlowSheet application uses a variety of full colour icons with transparency for its user interface that have to be available in 32, 24 and 16 pixel sizes each.

The basic size of icons in a ribbon bar is 32 by 32 pixels.

If the user scales down the application window, a smaller version is needed.

Parallel Execution in ANKHOR FlowSheet

While Moores law is still intact, one can easily observe that there has been a plateau reached at the performance improvements due to an increase in GHz. Modern CPUs are still becoming faster with each generation, but not so much due to an increase in clock speed, but improvements in the area of parallelism. Modern software should thus be written in a way to augment all levels of parallelism provided by state of the art CPUs. ANKHOR has been designed with parallelism in mind, and this article will provide some insight on the various levels at which this is achieved.

Parallel execution due to Data Flow architecture

ANKHOR uses data-flow architecture and thus generates a significant amount of coarse grain parallelism by design.

Building ANKHOR Operators in Python

There are basic ways that an ANKHOR operator is created:

  • Built-in : The operator is part of the ANKHOR basic set of operators
  • Macro : The operator is composed of other operators and combined into an operator class
  • Plug-in : The operator is implemented in an external library called a plugin

The third option is used for operators written in Python. We have created an ANKHOR plugin and a supporting library that allows you to execute python scripts from within an ANKHOR flowsheet.

Analyzing and predicting virtual goods auctions in an online game

Many massive multiplayer online games have their own virtual economy where virtual goods are traded against a virtual (or sometimes real) currency. These trades happen in either a direct form, e.g. player to player or player to NPC or in an anonymous form of an auction. The later allows a price finding and represents an almost perfect market. A distinguishing feature of these virtual auctions is the limited set of merchandise.

In this article I will look at the virtual goods auctions in the browser game Horizon. This game is staged in a SciFi space environment and the goods in question are ancient alien devices. These devices can be found or harvested in various ways and may be traded amongst players in a direct way or using a common and annonymous auction place.

ScreenshotAuction

It is important for players as well as the game administrators to know the value of these goods, and with the help of the auction results it should be possible to predict the outcome of an auction before it is started.

Analyzing Syslog files can be easy...

Reading in syslog files is easy, a lot of script languages provides means to do that. But is it also possible to perform a quick analysis request with these languages ?

Your task: Extract the IP addresses out of the text portion and get the access count of every single address.

Dedicated Time: None. Your Boss stands behind you...

Result

Meet us at SAPPHIRE NOW in Madrid

As a participant in SAP's Startup Focus Program, ANKHOR attends the SAPPHIRE NOW conference, November 13 - 15, 2012 in Madrid. For the 2nd time, we have been selected by SAP to join the conference, this time featuring our new Cloud based advanced analytics platform running on SAP HANA One® and ANKHOR's ground-breaking In-Memory analytics engine. We present how a complete application for detecting fraudulent behavior of players in online multiplayer games can be created, modified and inspected remotely. See the combined benefits of ANKHOR FlowSheet and SAP HANA One® for highly customized real-time analytic solutions in the Cloud by yourself: Let the demonstrators show you a live demo on the Database & Technology area in hall 10, booth DT520 and DT522. You can also contact us to schedule a private demo with our representatives at the conference.

ANKHOR at the SAP Startup Forum Berlin

At the end of May 2012 ANKHOR was selected by SAP as one of the first 10 startup companies and the only German company to participate in the Startup Focus Program. Now other companies from Germany will be selected for this program. For this purpose, SAP held an SAP Startup Forum event on August 15, 2012 in Berlin. ANKHOR will participate in this event and report on experiences gained in the SAP startup focus program.

Announcing ANKHOR FlowSheet Analytics with SAP HANA™ Integration

ANKHOR, a participant in the SAP Startup Focus Program, announces first availability of the revolutionary next generation real-time and visual analytics workbench “ANKHOR FlowSheet Analytics” with integrated support for SAP HANA™, SAP’s high-performance in-memory database and computing platform. ANKHOR FlowSheet Analytics with SAP HANA™ support is a unique combination providing Business Analysts, Super Users and Analytical Modelers with the most flexible and powerful environment for Next-Generation Business Analytics on big amounts of data offered on the market today. It is available now as Early Preview Release for select customers and will be generally available in Q3 2012. Secure a competitive advantage for your business by early adoption of Next-Generation Analytics. We recommend contacting us right now at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for project inquiries in order to be one of the first companies to profit from accelerated and more cost-effective creation of solutions for critical big data problems requiring flexible advanced analytic processing in real-time.

ANKHOR chosen to participate in the SAP Startup Focus Program promoting innovations on SAP HANA™

A few days before SAPPHIRE NOW 2012 we received the pleasant news that ANKHOR has been selected by SAP as one of the first 10 startups (and currently the only one from Germany) to participate in their new Startup Focus Program. This program was established to support startups in order to accelerate the development of new and innovative applications on SAP HANA™, SAP’s high-performance in-memory database and computing platform. We have been working on the integration of our revolutionary next generation real-time and visual analytics workbench ANKHOR FlowSheet with SAP HANA™ since early 2012 with great support by the SAP Innovation Center in Potsdam. By having been chosen now to also join the SAP Startup Focus Program, ANKHOR will receive additional support from SAP for the go-to-market stage of ANKHOR FlowSheet with SAP HANA™ support.

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