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Articles indexed in May 2010

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  • Mexico leading in Business Transformation Strategies:

    - by [email protected]
    By [email protected] on April 15, 2010 8:31 AM By John Burke Group Vice President Oracle Applications Business Unit I recently completed a business tour in Mexico, and was surprised by both the economic vibrancy of the country and the thought leadership expressed by many of the customers I met. An example of the economic vibrancy of the country: across the street from my hotel was the local Bentley dealership, Coach Store, Yves Saint Laurent and of course a Starbucks. I only made it to Starbucks. Both the Coach Store and YSL had a line of folks waiting to get in... As for thought leadership, there were several illustrations only on the first day. I had the opportunity to meet with a branch of the Mexican Federal Government. Their questions were not about clerical task automation, far from it! We discussed citizen on-line access to fees and services - for example looking up the duty on an international goods shipment, or tracking that my taxes have been received, or the status of my request for a certain service. Eligibility, policies and status. Having an integrated rules or policy automation system that would allow businesses and citizens to access accurate information and ensure the proper collection of fees and payment for 3rd party provided services. Then in the afternoon, I met with the owner of a roofing company (note: most roofs in Mexico are flat and made of cement). This CEO started discussing how he wanted to transform his business from a cement products company to a service company and market 5-10-15 year service contracts which would guarantee the structural integrity of the roof and of course that the roof would remain waterproof. Although his products were guaranteed, they required an annual inspection and most home owners never schedule that inspection until it is too late and water damage has occurred. These emergency calls reduce his margin and reduce customer satisfaction. This lead to a discussion of business models in general and why long term differentiation can only come from service, not just for the music or news industries, but also for roofing companies! I completely agreed with the transformational concepts described in both meetings and quickly understood why there is a Bentley dealership near my hotel.

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  • Oracle Turkey Applications Strategy Update Event

    - by [email protected]
    By [email protected] on April 12, 2010 10:42 PM Oracle Turkey recently gathered a wide range of customers and associates for an Oracle Applications Strategy update event in Istanbul, as part of the worldwide Global Applications Smart Strategies Tour. The program discussed new technologies and with real-world examples, presented strategies for leveraging technology to succeed in today's challenging business environment.

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  • Good Scoop: The PeopleSoft/IBM Backstory

    - by [email protected]
    By Brian Dayton on April 12, 2010 11:15 AM Sometimes you're searching for something online and you find an unrelated, bonus nugget. Last week I stumbled across an interesting blog post from Chris Heller of a PeopleSoft consulting shop in San Ramon, CA called Grey Sparling. I don't know these guys. But Chris, who apparently used to work on the PeopleTools team, wrote a great article on a pre-acquisition, would-be deal between IBM and PeopleSoft that would have standardized PeopleSoft on IBM technology. The behind-the-scenes perspective is interesting. His commentary on the challenges that the company and PeopleSoft customers would have encountered if the deal had gone through was also interesting: · "No common ownership. It's hard enough to get large groups of people to work together when they work for the same company, but with two separate companies it is much, much harder. Even within Oracle, progress on Fusion applications was slow until Thomas Kurian took over Fusion applications in addition to Fusion middleware." · "No customer buy-in. PeopleSoft customers weren't asking for a conversion to WebSphere, so the fact that doing that could have helped PeopleSoft stay independent wouldn't have meant much to them, especially since the cost of moving to whatever a "PeopleSoft built on WebSphere" would have been significant." · "No executive buy-in. This is related to the previous point, but it's worth calling out separately. If Oracle had walked away and the deal with IBM had gone through, and PeopleSoft customers got put through the wringer as part of WebSphere move, all of the PeopleSoft project teams would be put in the awkward position of explaining to their management why these additional costs and headaches were happening. Essentially they would need to "sell" the partnership internally to their own management team. That's not a fun conversation to have." I'm not surprised that something like this was in the works. But I did find the inside scoop and Heller's perspective on the challenges particularly interesting. Especially the advantages of aligning development of applications and infrastructure development under one roof. Here's a link to the whole blog entry.

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  • My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

    - by [email protected]
    By Brian Dayton on April 8, 2010 9:27 PM "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions." What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc. When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: - Nod your head politely - Tune out and check your smart phone - Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?" Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen." - 24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors - 20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry - 19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself - 5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day. The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: - How standards can benefit your business - Your IT organization's philosophy around standards - Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there. Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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  • The Other "C" in CRM

    - by [email protected]
    By Brian Dayton on April 5, 2010 7:04 PM Folks who know me know that I rarely, if ever, talk politics. And I never talk politicians. Having grown up in a household with one parent leaning left and the other leaning to the right it was the best way to keep the peace. This isn't about politics. It's about "constituents" and the need to improve the services and service levels for people--at the city, county, state/province, etc. level all the way up to national governments. As a citizen and tax payer it's also important to me that these services be provided at a reasonable cost. If there's a better and more efficient way to do something then it's my hope that a public sector organization takes advantage of technology the same way private sector companies do. Social services organizations have a complex job. They provide the services that people need, from healthcare and children's assistance to helping people find jobs. But many of these organizations are still managing these processes manually or outdated, home-grown applications that could have been written up to 30 years ago. A lot has changed in technology. On the (this is as political as I'm going to get) political front, stakeholders like you and me are expecting greater transparency on where and how funds are spent. I'll admit that most of the time, when I think about CRM systems, I think about my experience as a customer of my bank, utilities company or cable operator. But now that I'm older, have children and a house--I find myself interacting more and more with agencies and services organizations. My experiences are sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Along those lines, last week's announcement of Siebel CRM 8.2 for Public Sector caught my eye. You may not work in the public sector, but you are a constituent of some--actually a lot--of public sector organizations. I don't know which CRM systems city and county utilize but I'm going to start paying closer attention.

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by [email protected]
    By ken.pulverman on March 24, 2010 8:51 AM ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software. The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies. Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years. Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor. Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough." So your ERP is working. It's humming along. You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere. Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on. And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™. SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications. Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise. In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure that Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution. It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do. The diagram below reflects that change. In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over. It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information. And through modern middleware it will connect to everything. So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • Why You Should Do Search Engine Optimization

    If you do internet savvy then you need to take help of the services that are search engine optimization as you not have difficulty in your search. If you use search engine optimization then you don't need to hire any professional for your search. You can use search engine to promote your product and services. But for this you will have to take aid of search engine optimization assistance. The following are some reasons that will convey you to take benefit of the services that are provided by search engine optimization assistance:

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  • Selecting a Niche For Better SEO

    In today's world people have more selection than they ever did before and enjoy selecting niche products/services. First of all, you need to spend some quality time selecting niche-focused keywords.

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  • Calculating Length Based on Sensor Data

    - by BSchlinker
    I've got an IR sensor which writes its current information to a token which I then interpret in a C# application. That's all good -- no problems there, heres my code: SetLabelText(tokens [1],label_sensorValue); sensorreading = Int32.Parse(tokens[0]); sensordistance = (mathfunctionhere); Great. So the further away the IR sensor is from an object, the lower the sensor reading (as less light is reflected back and received by the sensor). My problem is in interpreting that length. I can go ahead and get lets say "110" as a value when an object is 5 inches away, and then "70" as a value when an object is 6 inches away. Now I want to be able to calculate the distance of an object using these constants for any length. Any ideas?

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  • How to get the measures of an object from far away?

    - by Luis Armando
    I am working on an App that intends to give an accurate measure of any object (building, desk, chair, people, etc.) Using the camera (either phone's or laptop) but I'm unsure as to how to do this without using a lot of resources, would someone mind giving me some options? I'm looking for a lightweight one that can be quickly processed by the computer/phone to give back the measures.

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  • populate FusionCharts with XML data AJAX

    - by Mick
    Hi I have a js file that uses ajax to get a XML doc from a php script . The XML file forms the data to draw a Fusion Chart. I know I am getting the XML data ok but FusionCharts will not draw it . I would really appreciate any help , thanks (FusionCharts.js is included earlier in my script) if(XMLHttpRequestObject) { XMLHttpRequestObject.open("GET", "chart.php?job="+job, true); XMLHttpRequestObject.onreadystatechange = function() { if (XMLHttpRequestObject.readyState == 4 && XMLHttpRequestObject.status == 200) { var xdoc = XMLHttpRequestObject.responseXML; var chart1 = new FusionCharts("Pie3D.swf", "chart1Id", "400", "300", "0", "1"); chart1.setDataXML(xdoc); chart1.render("chart1div"); chart.php produces this XML data <chart caption='ADI Chart Test ' > <set label='Driver' value='12.25' /> <set label='Other Staff' value='223.21' /> <set label='Equipment' value='0.00' /> <set label='Additional Items' value='0.00' /> <set label='Vehicle Fuel' value='0.00' /> <set label='Accomodation' value='0.00' /> <set label='Generator Fuel' value='0.00' /> </chart>

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  • Mysqli connection trying with different users

    - by gerardo
    I'm trying to create a PHP class extending mysqli that is capable of connecting with another user if the connection fails. It is probably easier to explain with code: public function __construct() { $users = new ArrayObject(self::$user); $passwords = new ArrayObject(self::$pass); $itUser = $users->getIterator(); $itPass = $passwords->getIterator(); parent::__construct(self::$host, $itUser->current(), $itPass->current(), self::$prefix.self::$db); while($this->connect_errno && $itUser->valid()){ $itUser->next(); $itPass->next(); $this->change_user($itUser->current(), $itPass->current(), self::$prefix.self::$db); } if($this->connect_errno) throw new Exception("Error", $this->connect_errno); } $user and $pass are static variables containing arrays of users and passwords. If the first user fails to connect, I try with the next one. The problem here is with $this->connect_errno. It says it cannot find Mysqli. Is there any solution to this or should I create a Factory class?

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  • Grails problem with nullable contraint in domain class

    - by xain
    Hi, I'm having the following problem with grails' 1.2.1 domain classes: When I set a constraint attr(nullable:true) and attr is int or bool, this condition isn't reflected in the db (postgresql 8.4). However, if attr is a String, the DB is consistent with the situation. Any hints ? Thanks

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  • Accessing Every File on the File System (no matter what) On Windows 7

    - by LonnieBest
    In c#, on a windows 7 machine, how can I programmatically access every file on the file system as though I was a "Master Administrator". The main priority here, is that after my c# program is installed, that it won't run into any file/folder access permission problems. My program runs as a windows service, and it must allow a user to backup any files on the file system.

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  • Docbook+Ant: Could not find variable with the name of fop.extensions

    - by rfkrocktk
    After a lot of spent time trying to get my article to compile in Ant with Docbook, I can't seem to make FO compilation work. I'm using Xalan 2.7.0, and everything else (both single-page and chunked HTML) compiles perfectly. It's only when I try to compile to FO that I get this error: Fatal Error! org.apache.xml.utils.WrappedRuntimeException: Could not find variable with the name of fop.extensions Cause: org.apache.xml.utils.WrappedRuntimeException: Could not find variable with the name of fop.extensions This is pretty strange and I can't seem to resolve it. I even added a <param> value defining the variable it "can't find:" <xslt style="docbook-xsl/fo/fo.xsl" in="documents/book.xml" out="output.fo"> <classpath> <fileset dir="lib" includes="**/*"/> </classpath> <param name="fop.extensions" expression="1"/> </xslt> Is there anything I can do to resolve this issue? It's really weird if you ask me. (Again, using the same code as above, all of my other Docbook compilation works just fine)

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  • Resharper Warnings with MVVM

    - by Dan Bryant
    As I implement the MVVM pattern with WPF, I'm finding that Resharper is often warning me that certain properties are never used in my ViewModels. The problem is that they are being used, but only by the data binding system. Has anyone else encountered this annoyance and is there a way to help Resharper realize that these properties are, indeed, being used? I am glad, at least, that VS 2010 properly realizes that [Import] tagged members won't "always be null", but hopefully I can fix this issue as well.

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  • How can I add to List<? extends Number> data structures?

    - by kunjaan
    I have a List which is declared like this : List<? extends Number> foo3 = new ArrayList<Integer>(); I tried to add 3 to foo3. However I get an error message like this: The method add(capture#1-of ? extends Number) in the type List<capture#1-of ? extends Number> is not applicable for the arguments (ExtendsNumber)

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  • C# how to store those information?

    - by 5YrsLaterDBA
    I have a PrivilegeGroup table, a Privileges table and a link table because the PrivilegeGroup table and the Privileges table is a many to many relationship. I am thinking about load all contents of PrivilegeGroup table and Privilege table into memory from database at beginning when application started. I want to save them in a form easily to look up. Usually we will look up the PrivilegeCode via GroupId. Which structure is good for this purpose? array of list? dictionary?

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  • SerialPort not taking input. It throws it back at me!

    - by Mashew
    When I try to write an AT command to my GSM modem, it does not seem to take the command. I have used PuTTY to check that the command words, it does. I have checked to see if the port is opening, it does. What could I possibly be doing wrong? NOTE: The "lol" part is for debugging purposes. ;3 SerialPort sp = new SerialPort("COM3"); sp.BaudRate = 9600; sp.DataBits = 8; sp.StopBits = StopBits.One; sp.Parity = Parity.None; sp.Open(); if (sp.IsOpen == false) { sp.Open(); } Thread.Sleep(1000); sp.WriteLine("AT+CMGF=1"); Thread.Sleep(1000); string lol = sp.ReadExisting(); sp.Close(); return lol;

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  • Using a Button to navigate to another Page in a NavigationWindow

    - by Will
    I'm trying to use the navigation command framework in WPF to navigate between Pages within a WPF application (desktop; not XBAP or Silverlight). I believe I have everything configured correctly, yet its not working. I build and run without errors, I'm not getting any binding errors in the Output window, but my navigation button is disabled. Here's the app.xaml for a sample app: <Application x:Class="Navigation.App" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" StartupUri="First.xaml"> </Application> Note the StartupUri points to First.xaml. First.xaml is a Page. WPF automatically hosts my page in a NavigationWindow. Here's First.xaml: <Page x:Class="Navigation.First" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="First"> <Grid> <Button CommandParameter="/Second.xaml" CommandTarget="{Binding RelativeSource= {RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type NavigationWindow}}}" Command="NavigationCommands.GoToPage" Content="Go!"/> </Grid> </Page> The button's CommandTarget is set to the NavigationWindow. The command is GoToPage, and the page is /Second.xaml. I've tried setting the CommandTarget to the containing Page, the CommandParameter to "Second.xaml" (First.xaml and Second.xaml are both in the root of the solution), and I've tried leaving the CommandTarget empty. I've also tried setting the Path to the Binding to various navigational-related public properties on the NavigationWindow. Nothing has worked so far. What am I missing here? I really don't want to do my navigation in code. Clarification. If, instead of using a button, I use a Hyperlink: <Grid> <TextBlock> <Hyperlink NavigateUri="Second.xaml">Go! </Hyperlink> </TextBlock> </Grid> everything works as expected. However, my UI requirements means that using a Hyperlink is right out. I need a big fatty button for people to press. That's why I want to use the button to navigate. I just want to know how I can get the Button to provide the same ability that the Hyperlink does in this case.

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