Full Outer Join

During mid-September, WowStead changed its hosting partner to Curse Inc.. In doing so, it needed to migrate vast amounts of data over to the new Web servers and, among other things, merge the databases of both websites together. This was necessary given that users will log in to WowStead using their Curse Account. Unfortunately, several problems arose from the process:

• WowStead users that do not have a Curse Account cannot log in to WowStead.
• WowStead users that do not have a Curse Account have lost access to their characters and subsequently need to reclaim them.
• In the vice versa of the above, users have access to their characters but do not own the account they were assigned.

While explanations of what went wrong are not readily forthcoming, a likely cause is the misuse of the methods adopted to merge the two databases together. Given the popularity of relational databases in storing website data, one can contemplate how the use of relational algebra can bring about such complications.

Ulduar Constellations [Windows 7 theme]

Ulduar may well be one of the most awe-inspiring and (quite literally) captivating places in Azeroth. This theme brings a few of its highlights (in particular, its many constellation-like sculptures) to your Windows 7 desktop.

As I do not have file hosting available to me for hosting the .themepack file, I will give instructions apply it manually. This theme offers the following appearance customisations:

• Desktop background
• Window colour
• Sounds
• Screensaver

WoW Mathematics: Steady-State Health Level

In the final phase of the Anub'arak encounter in the Trial of the Crusader (ToC), healers must heal through a variety of sources of damage, including Penetrating Cold and Leeching Swarm. While the former deals constant damage over time, the latter does more damage the higher players' health levels are! The raid might be interested in knowing the optimal health level the healer(s) can keep the players at.

At the steady-state health level, DPS of Anub'arak against the raid equals the HPS of the healers for the raid. From here, health levels do not tend to move either way; they are stable, and this determines whether the healers can provide enough healing.

Summary:

• Where h is the total HPS, r is the proportion of current health Leeching Swarm does as damage, p is the proportion of players affected by Penetrating Cold at cast and P is the tick size of Penetrating Cold, the steady-state health level H* is H* = ¹/_r(h - ³/₁₀pP). It is a good idea to incorporate a buffer against the randomness of the damage.
• For Heroic 10-man, the steady-state health level is H* = 5h - 450, and for Normal 25-man, it is H* ~ 10h - 228.
• As long as the steady-state health level is more than zero, the healing the healers provide is sufficient.