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  • Why is Robert C. Martin called Uncle Bob?

    - by Lernkurve
    Is there a story behind it? I did a Google search for "Why is Robert C. Martin called Uncle Bob?" but didn't find an answer. More context There is this pretty well-know person in the software engineering world named Robert C. Martin. He speaks at conferences and has published many excellent books one of which is Clean Code (Amazon). He is the founder and CEO of Object Mentor Inc. Robert C. Martin is also called Uncle Bob. But I can't figure out why.

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  • Not so long ago in a city not so far away by Carlos Martin

    - by Maria Sandu
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This is the story of how the EMEA Presales Center turned an Oracle intern into a trusted technology advisor for both Oracle’s Sales and customers. It was the summer of 2011 when I was finishing my Computer Engineering studies as well as my internship at Oracle when I was offered what could possibly be THE dream job for any young European Computer Engineer. Apart from that, it also seemed like the role was particularly tailored to me as I could leverage almost everything I learned at University and during the internship. And all of it in one of the best cities to live in, not only from my home country but arguably from Europe: Malaga! A day at EPC As part of the EPC Technology pillar, and later on completely focused on WebCenter, there was no way to describe a normal day on the job as each day had something unique. Some days I was researching documentation in order to elaborate accurate answers for a customer’s question within a Request for Information or Proposal (RFI/RFP), other days I was doing heavy programming in order to bring a Proof of Concept (PoC) for a customer to life and last not but least, some days I presented to the customer via webconference the demo I built for them the past weeks. So as you can see, the role has research, development and presentation, could you ask for more? Well, don’t worry because there IS more! Internationality As the organization’s name suggests, EMEA Presales Center, it is the Center of Presales within Europe, Middle East and Africa so I got the chance to work with great professionals from all this regions, expanding my network and learning things from one country to apply them to others. In addition to that, the teams based in the Malaga office are comprised of many young professionals hailing mainly from Western and Central European countries (although there are a couple of exceptions!) with very different backgrounds and personalities which guaranteed many laughs and stories during lunch or coffee breaks (or even while working on projects!). Furthermore, having EPC offices in Bucharest and Bangalore and thanks to today’s tele-presence technologies, I was working every day with people from India or Romania as if they were sitting right next to me and the bonding with them got stronger day by day. Career development Apart from the research and self-study I’ve earlier mentioned, one of the EPC’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is that 15% of your time is spent on training so you get lots and lots of trainings in order to develop both your technical product knowledge and your presentation, negotiation and other soft skills. Sometimes the training is via webcast, sometimes the trainer comes to the office and sometimes, the best times, you get to travel abroad in order to attend a training, which also helps you to further develop your network by meeting face to face with many people you only know from some email or instant messaging interaction. And as the months go by, your skills improving at a very fast pace, your relevance increasing with each new project you successfully deliver, it’s only a matter of time (and a bit of self-promoting!) that you get the attention of the manager of a more senior team and are offered the opportunity to take a new step in your professional career. For me it took 2 years to move to my current position, Technology Sales Consultant at the Oracle Direct organization. During those 2 years I had built a good relationship with the Oracle Direct Spanish sales and sales managers, who are also based in the Malaga office. I supported their former Sales Consultant in a couple of presentations and demos and were very happy with my overall performance and attitude so even before the position got eventually vacant, I got a heads-up from then in advance that their current Sales Consultant was going to move to a different position. To me it felt like a natural step, same as when I joined EPC, I had at least a 50% of the “homework” already done but wanted to experience that extra 50% to add new product and soft skills to my arsenal. The rest is history, I’ve been in the role for more than half a year as I’m writing this, achieved already some important wins, gained a lot of trust and confidence in front of customers and broadened my view of Oracle’s Fusion Middleware portfolio. I look back at the 2 years I spent in EPC and think: “boy, I’d recommend that experience to absolutely anyone with the slightest interest in IT, there are so many different things you can do as there are different kind of roles you can end up taking thanks to the experience gained at EPC” /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#": Is this just a .NET-translation of the popular Uncle Bob book?

    - by Louis Rhys
    I found this book sold on Amazon Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, written by Robert C Martin and Micah Martin. Is it merely a .NET port of the older, more popular Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices? Or is it just a new book trying to take advantage of the other book's popularity? If I am a .NET developer who hasn't read either book, which one would you recommend?

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  • Sourcecode for Paymentroll example in Robert C. Martin book

    - by bitbonk
    Throughout the book "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#" by Robert C. Martin a small Paymentroll application is build. While most of the source code is printed in place, some classes are missing and some are incomplete. The book says on the firest page: The book includes many source code examples that are also available for download from the authors' Web site. Unfortunately this seems to be a lie. Unless either this is not the author's website (the book forgets to mention the authors website adress) or I am blind. Does anyone have the comlete source code for that book preferably in form of a Visual Studio project or knows where I can find it.

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  • Question About Example In Robert C Martin's _Clean Code_

    - by Jonah
    This is a question about the concept of a function doing only one thing. It won't make sense without some relevant passages for context, so I'll quote them here. They appear on pgs 37-38: To say this differently, we want to be able to read the program as though it were a set of TO paragraphs, each of which is describing the current level of abstraction and referencing subsequent TO paragraphs at the next level down. To include the setups and teardowns, we include setups, then we include the test page content, and then we include the teardowns. To include the setups, we include the suite setup if this is a suite, then we include the regular setup. It turns out to be very dif?cult for programmers to learn to follow this rule and write functions that stay at a single level of abstraction. But learning this trick is also very important. It is the key to keeping functions short and making sure they do “one thing.” Making the code read like a top-down set of TO paragraphs is an effective technique for keeping the abstraction level consistent. He then gives the following example of poor code: public Money calculatePay(Employee e) throws InvalidEmployeeType { switch (e.type) { case COMMISSIONED: return calculateCommissionedPay(e); case HOURLY: return calculateHourlyPay(e); case SALARIED: return calculateSalariedPay(e); default: throw new InvalidEmployeeType(e.type); } } and explains the problems with it as follows: There are several problems with this function. First, it’s large, and when new employee types are added, it will grow. Second, it very clearly does more than one thing. Third, it violates the Single Responsibility Principle7 (SRP) because there is more than one reason for it to change. Fourth, it violates the Open Closed Principle8 (OCP) because it must change whenever new types are added. Now my questions. To begin, it's clear to me how it violates the OCP, and it's clear to me that this alone makes it poor design. However, I am trying to understand each principle, and it's not clear to me how SRP applies. Specifically, the only reason I can imagine for this method to change is the addition of new employee types. There is only one "axis of change." If details of the calculation needed to change, this would only affect the submethods like "calculateHourlyPay()" Also, while in one sense it is obviously doing 3 things, those three things are all at the same level of abstraction, and can all be put into a TO paragraph no different from the example one: TO calculate pay for an employee, we calculate commissioned pay if the employee is commissioned, hourly pay if he is hourly, etc. So aside from its violation of the OCP, this code seems to conform to Martin's other requirements of clean code, even though he's arguing it does not. Can someone please explain what I am missing? Thanks.

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  • Game of Thrones : l'arme secrète de George R. R. Martin contre les virus, un PC sous DOS avec Wordstar 4.0 et sans internet

    Game of Thrones : L'arme secrète de George R. R. Martin contre les virus George R. R. MARTIN, auteur de la saga Game of Thrones et co-producteur de la série du même nom a révélé à un Talk-show américain avoir une arme secrète contre les virus qui pourraient attaquer son ordinateur et détruire ses documents. Pour écrire ses livres, il se sert d'un ordinateur non relié à internet et qui fonctionne sous DOS et comme traitement de texte Wordstar 4,0 ! À la question « pourquoi rester avec ce vieux...

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  • Installing MySQL without root access

    - by vinay
    I am trying to install MySQL without root permissions. I ran through the following steps: Download MySQL Community Server 5.5.8 Linux - Generic Compressed TAR Archive Unpack it, for example to: /home/martin/mysql Create a my.cnf file in your home directory. The file contents should be: [server] user=martin basedir=/home/martin/mysql datadir=/home/martin/sql_data socket=/home/martin/socket port=3666 Go to the /home/martin/mysql directory and execute: ./scripts/mysql_install_db --defaults-file=~/my.cnf --user=martin --basedir=/home/martin/mysql --datadir=/home/martin/sql_data --socket=/home/martin/socket Your MySQL server is ready. Start it with this command: ./bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=~/my.cnf & When I try to change the password of MySQL it gives the error: Cannot connect to mysql server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' How can I change this path and see whether the mysql.sock is created or not?

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  • Visual Studio ALM MVP of the Year 2011

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    For some reason this year some of my peers decided to vote for me as a contender for Visual Studio ALM MVP of the year. I am not sure what I did to deserve this, but a number of people have commented that I have a rather useful blog. I feel wholly unworthy to join the ranks of previous winners: Ed Blankenship (2010) Martin Woodward (2009) Thank you to everyone who voted regardless of who you voted for. If there was a prize for the best group of MVP’s then the Visual Studio ALM MVP would be a clear winner, as would the product group of product groups that is Visual Studio ALM Group. To use a phrase that I have learned since moving to Seattle and probably use too much: you guys are all just awesome. I have tried my best in the last year to document not only every problem that I have had with Team Foundation Server (TFS), but also to document as many of the things I am doing as possible. I have taken some of Adam Cogan’s rules to heart and when a customer asks me a question I always blog the answer and send them a link. This allows both my blog and my understanding of TFS to grow while creating a useful bank of content. The idea is that if one customer asks, all benefit. I try, when writing for my blog, to capture both the essence and the context for a problem being solved. This allows more people to benefit as they do not need to understand the specifics of an environment to gain value. I have a number of goals for this year that I think will help increase value in the community: persuade my new colleagues at Northwest Cadence to do more blogging (Steve, Jeff, Shad and Rennie) Rangers Project – TFS Iteration Automation with Willy-Peter Schaub, Bill Essary, Martin Hinshelwood, Mike Fourie, Jeff Bramwell and Brian Blackman Write a book on the Team Foundation Server API with Willy-Peter Schaub, Mike Fourie and Jeff Bramwell write more useful blog posts I do not think that these things are beyond the realms of do-ability, but we will see…

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  • ubuntu one not syncing

    - by Martin
    I am really starting to despair as I have been trying ubuntu one for several months, trying it on several machines, and it has caused me loads of different issues wasting me a lot of time. It is not straight forward to use, it should be a piece of software that runs in background and users should not think about checking all the time if it is really doing it's job. Of course I have been searching around this website and other forums but couldn't find an answer to my situation. Yesterday I had several problems with the client not syncing and using a lot of the machine's RAM, up and CPU. I had to reboot on several occasions and leave the office's PC on overnight in order to sync a few files of not more than a few MB. Today I am experiencing another problem: I have decided to do a test putting a small file in my ubuntu one shared folder. Ubuntu one is not detecting it (now already more than an hour), therefore not uploading it to the server. martin@ubuntu-desktop:~$ u1sdtool --status State: QUEUE_MANAGER connection: With User With Network description: processing the commands pool is_connected: True is_error: False is_online: True queues: IDLE and martin@ubuntu-desktop:~$ u1sdtool --current-transfers Current uploads: 0 Current downloads: 0 I am running Ubuntu 11.04 64 with all recent updates. On my other machine the transfer of files seems to be completely frozen, with around 10 files in the queue but no transfer whatsoever. Another curious issue is on my Ubuntu 10.10 laptop where ubuntu one seems to have completly disappeared from Nautilus context menu, folder/file sync status icons missing. I have therefore been forced to upgrade to 11.04 on this machine. Anyway, now I would like to solve the ** processing the commands pool ** issue and make sure the client

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  • Are today's general purpose languages at the right level of abstarction ?

    - by KeesDijk
    Today Uncle Bob Martin, a genuine hero, showed this video In this video Bob Martin claims that our programming languages are at the right level for our problems at this time. One of the reasons I get from this video as that he Bob Martin sees us detail managers and our problems are at the detail level. This is the first time I have to disagree with Bob Martin and was wondering what the people at programmers think about this. First there is a difference between MDA and MDE MDA in itself hasn't worked and I blame way to much formalisation at a level you can't formalize these kind of problems. MDE and MDD are still trying to prove themselves and in my mind show great promise. e.g. look at MetaEdit The detail still needs to be management in my mind, but you do so in one place (framework or generators) instead of at multiple places. Right for our kind of problems ? I think depends on what problems you look at. Do the current programming languages keep up with the current demands on time to market ? Are they good at bridging the business IT communication gap ? So what do you think ?

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  • Are today's general purpose languages at the right level of abstraction ?

    - by KeesDijk
    Today Uncle Bob Martin, a genuine hero, showed this video In this video Bob Martin claims that our programming languages are at the right level for our problems at this time. One of the reasons I get from this video as that Bob Martin sees us as detail managers and our problems are at the detail level. This is the first time I have to disagree with Bob Martin and was wondering what the people at programmers think about this. First there is a difference between MDA and MDE MDA in itself hasn't worked and I blame way to much formalisation at a level you can't formalize these kind of problems. MDE and MDD are still trying to prove themselves and in my mind show great promise. e.g. look at MetaEdit The detail still needs to be management in my mind, but you do so in one place (framework or generators) instead of at multiple places. Right for our kind of problems ? I think depends on what problems you look at. Do the current programming languages keep up with the current demands on time to market ? Are they good at bridging the business IT communication gap ? So what do you think ?

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  • Slide-decks from recent Adelaide SQL Server UG meetings

    - by Rob Farley
    The UK has been well represented this summer at the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, with presentations from Chris Testa-O’Neill (isn’t that the right link? Maybe try this one) and Martin Cairney. The slides are available here and here. I thought I’d particularly mention Martin’s, and how it’s relevant to this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. Martin spoke about Policy-Based Management and the Enterprise Policy Management Framework – something which is remarkably under-used, and yet which can really impact your ability to look after environments. If you have policies set up, then you can easily test each of your SQL instances to see if they are still satisfying a set of policies as defined. Automation (the topic of this month’s T-SQL Tuesday) should mean that your life is made easier, thereby enabling to you to do more. It shouldn’t remove the human element, but should remove (most of) the human errors. People still need to manage the situation, and work out what needs to be done, etc. We haven’t reached a point where computers can replace people, but they are very good at replace the mundaneness and monotony of our jobs. They’ve made our lives more interesting (although many would rightly argue that they have also made our lives more complex) by letting us focus on the stuff that changes. Martin named his talk Put Your Feet Up, which nicely expresses the fact that managing systems shouldn’t be about running around checking things all the time. It must be about having systems in place which tell you when things aren’t going well. It’s never quite as simple as being able to actually put your feet up, but certainly no system should require constant attention. It’s definitely a policy we at LobsterPot adhere to, whether it’s an alert to let us know that an ETL package has run successfully, or a script that generates some code for a report. If things can be automated, it reduces the chance of error, reduces the repetitive nature of work, and in general, keeps both consultants and clients much happier.

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  • Slide-decks from recent Adelaide SQL Server UG meetings

    - by Rob Farley
    The UK has been well represented this summer at the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, with presentations from Chris Testa-O’Neill (isn’t that the right link? Maybe try this one) and Martin Cairney. The slides are available here and here. I thought I’d particularly mention Martin’s, and how it’s relevant to this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. Martin spoke about Policy-Based Management and the Enterprise Policy Management Framework – something which is remarkably under-used, and yet which can really impact your ability to look after environments. If you have policies set up, then you can easily test each of your SQL instances to see if they are still satisfying a set of policies as defined. Automation (the topic of this month’s T-SQL Tuesday) should mean that your life is made easier, thereby enabling to you to do more. It shouldn’t remove the human element, but should remove (most of) the human errors. People still need to manage the situation, and work out what needs to be done, etc. We haven’t reached a point where computers can replace people, but they are very good at replace the mundaneness and monotony of our jobs. They’ve made our lives more interesting (although many would rightly argue that they have also made our lives more complex) by letting us focus on the stuff that changes. Martin named his talk Put Your Feet Up, which nicely expresses the fact that managing systems shouldn’t be about running around checking things all the time. It must be about having systems in place which tell you when things aren’t going well. It’s never quite as simple as being able to actually put your feet up, but certainly no system should require constant attention. It’s definitely a policy we at LobsterPot adhere to, whether it’s an alert to let us know that an ETL package has run successfully, or a script that generates some code for a report. If things can be automated, it reduces the chance of error, reduces the repetitive nature of work, and in general, keeps both consultants and clients much happier.

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  • Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    I will be presenting a session on “Scrum for TFS2010” not once, but twice! If you are going to be at the Aberdeen Partner Group meeting on 27th April, or DDD Scotland on 8th May then you may be able to catch my session. Credit: I want to give special thanks to Aaron Bjork from Microsoft who provided me with most of my material He is a Scrum and Power Point genius. Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010 Synopsis Visual Studio ALM (formerly Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These are the best tools for a team to have successful projects and for the developers to have a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft is heavily investing in Scrum and has already started moving some teams across to using it. Martin will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even asses your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. Come and see Martin Hinshelwood, Visual Studio ALM MVP and Solution Architect from SSW show you: How to successfully gather requirements with User stories How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010 The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010 Tracking your progress The right way to use work items What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on from the SharePoint dashboard The important reports to give your Product Owner / Project Manager Walk away knowing how to see the project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by teams. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help managers better support the software development processes. During this session we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. If you want to know more about how to do Scrum with TFS then there is a new course that has been created in collaboration with Microsoft and Scrum.org that is going to be the official course for working with TFS 2010. SSW has Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools. Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development Technorati Tags: Scrum,VS ALM,VS 2010,TFS 2010

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  • Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    I will be presenting a session on “Scrum for TFS2010” not once, but twice! If you are going to be at the Aberdeen Partner Group meeting on 27th April, or DDD Scotland on 8th May then you may be able to catch my session. Credit: I want to give special thanks to Aaron Bjork from Microsoft who provided me with most of my material He is a Scrum and Power Point genius. Updated 9th May 2010 – I have now presented at both of these sessions  and posted about it. Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010 Synopsis Visual Studio ALM (formerly Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These are the best tools for a team to have successful projects and for the developers to have a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft is heavily investing in Scrum and has already started moving some teams across to using it. Martin will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even asses your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Come and see Martin Hinshelwood, Visual Studio ALM MVP and Solution Architect from SSW show you: How to successfully gather requirements with User stories How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010 The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010 Tracking your progress The right way to use work items What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on from the SharePoint dashboard The important reports to give your Product Owner / Project Manager Walk away knowing how to see the project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by teams. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help managers better support the software development processes. During this session we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. If you want to know more about how to do Scrum with TFS then there is a new course that has been created in collaboration with Microsoft and Scrum.org that is going to be the official course for working with TFS 2010. SSW has Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools. Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development Technorati Tags: Scrum,VS ALM,VS 2010,TFS 2010

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  • Exchange ActiveSync with multiple email addresses

    - by Martin Robins
    I have Exchange 2007 SP2, and I have successfully connected my Windows Mobile phone via Exchange ActiveSync and can send and receive emails. I have two addresses within my Exchange mailbox, [email protected] and [email protected], with the second being set as the reply address. When I view my email addresses on my device, I see both of these email addresses, however when I send new messages it always selects the first email address as the reply address and not the second. It is probably worth pointing out that, like in the example provided above, the email addresses are shown alphabetically and the address being selected is the first alphabetically (just in case that matters). I would like to set the device to always select the reply address specified in the mailbox, or at least be able to ensure that the address I want is selected if I have to select it manually on the device, but cannot find any way to make this happen. Can anybody help?

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  • Exchange ActiveSync with muliple email addresses

    - by Martin Robins
    I have Exchange 2007 SP2, and I have successfully connected my Windows Mobile phone via Exchange ActiveSync and can send and receive emails. I have two addresses within my Exchange mailbox, [email protected] and [email protected], with the second being set as the reply address. When I view my email addresses on my device, I see both of these email addresses, however when I send new messages it always selects the first email address as the reply address and not the second. It is probably worth pointing out that, like in the example provided above, the email addresses are shown alphabetically and the address being selected is the first alphabetically (just in case that matters). I would like to set the device to always select the reply address specified in the mailbox, or at least be able to ensure that the address I want is selected if I have to select it manually on the device, but cannot find any way to make this happen. Can anybody help?

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  • Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study

    - by charlie.berger
    There is a complete and detailed Telco Churn case study "How to" Blog Series just posted by Ari Mozes, ODM Dev. Manager.  In it, Ari provides detailed guidance in how to leverage various strengths of Oracle Data Mining including the ability to: mine Star Schemas and join tables and views together to obtain a complete 360 degree view of a customer combine transactional data e.g. call record detail (CDR) data, etc. define complex data transformation, model build and model deploy analytical methodologies inside the Database  His blog is posted in a multi-part series.  Below are some opening excerpts for the first 3 blog entries.  This is an excellent resource for any novice to skilled data miner who wants to gain competitive advantage by mining their data inside the Oracle Database.  Many thanks Ari! Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (1 of 3) One of the strengths of Oracle Data Mining is the ability to mine star schemas with minimal effort.  Star schemas are commonly used in relational databases, and they often contain rich data with interesting patterns.  While dimension tables may contain interesting demographics, fact tables will often contain user behavior, such as phone usage or purchase patterns.  Both of these aspects - demographics and usage patterns - can provide insight into behavior.Churn is a critical problem in the telecommunications industry, and companies go to great lengths to reduce the churn of their customer base.  One case study1 describes a telecommunications scenario involving understanding, and identification of, churn, where the underlying data is present in a star schema.  That case study is a good example for demonstrating just how natural it is for Oracle Data Mining to analyze a star schema, so it will be used as the basis for this series of posts...... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (2 of 3) This post will follow the transformation steps as described in the case study, but will use Oracle SQL as the means for preparing data.  Please see the previous post for background material, including links to the case study and to scripts that can be used to replicate the stages in these posts.1) Handling missing values for call data recordsThe CDR_T table records the number of phone minutes used by a customer per month and per call type (tariff).  For example, the table may contain one record corresponding to the number of peak (call type) minutes in January for a specific customer, and another record associated with international calls in March for the same customer.  This table is likely to be fairly dense (most type-month combinations for a given customer will be present) due to the coarse level of aggregation, but there may be some missing values.  Missing entries may occur for a number of reasons: the customer made no calls of a particular type in a particular month, the customer switched providers during the timeframe, or perhaps there is a data entry problem.  In the first situation, the correct interpretation of a missing entry would be to assume that the number of minutes for the type-month combination is zero.  In the other situations, it is not appropriate to assume zero, but rather derive some representative value to replace the missing entries.  The referenced case study takes the latter approach.  The data is segmented by customer and call type, and within a given customer-call type combination, an average number of minutes is computed and used as a replacement value.In SQL, we need to generate additional rows for the missing entries and populate those rows with appropriate values.  To generate the missing rows, Oracle's partition outer join feature is a perfect fit.  select cust_id, cdre.tariff, cdre.month, minsfrom cdr_t cdr partition by (cust_id) right outer join     (select distinct tariff, month from cdr_t) cdre     on (cdr.month = cdre.month and cdr.tariff = cdre.tariff);   ....... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (3 of 3) Now that the "difficult" work is complete - preparing the data - we can move to building a predictive model to help identify and understand churn.The case study suggests that separate models be built for different customer segments (high, medium, low, and very low value customer groups).  To reduce the data to a single segment, a filter can be applied: create or replace view churn_data_high asselect * from churn_prep where value_band = 'HIGH'; It is simple to take a quick look at the predictive aspects of the data on a univariate basis.  While this does not capture the more complex multi-variate effects as would occur with the full-blown data mining algorithms, it can give a quick feel as to the predictive aspects of the data as well as validate the data preparation steps.  Oracle Data Mining includes a predictive analytics package which enables quick analysis. begin  dbms_predictive_analytics.explain(   'churn_data_high','churn_m6','expl_churn_tab'); end; /select * from expl_churn_tab where rank <= 5 order by rank; ATTRIBUTE_NAME       ATTRIBUTE_SUBNAME EXPLANATORY_VALUE RANK-------------------- ----------------- ----------------- ----------LOS_BAND                                      .069167052          1MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON  PEAK-5                   .034881648          2REV_PER_MON          REV-5                    .034527798          3DROPPED_CALLS                                 .028110322          4MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON  PEAK-4                   .024698149          5From the above results, it is clear that some predictors do contain information to help identify churn (explanatory value > 0).  The strongest uni-variate predictor of churn appears to be the customer's (binned) length of service.  The second strongest churn indicator appears to be the number of peak minutes used in the most recent month.  The subname column contains the interior piece of the DM_NESTED_NUMERICALS column described in the previous post.  By using the object relational approach, many related predictors are included within a single top-level column. .....   NOTE:  These are just EXCERPTS.  Click here to start reading the Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study from the beginning.    

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  • New Communications Industry Data Model with "Factory Installed" Predictive Analytics using Oracle Da

    - by charlie.berger
    Oracle Introduces Oracle Communications Data Model to Provide Actionable Insight for Communications Service Providers   We've integrated pre-installed analytical methodologies with the new Oracle Communications Data Model to deliver automated, simple, yet powerful predictive analytics solutions for customers.  Churn, sentiment analysis, identifying customer segments - all things that can be anticipated and hence, preconcieved and implemented inside an applications.  Read on for more information! TM Forum Management World, Nice, France - 18 May 2010 News Facts To help communications service providers (CSPs) manage and analyze rapidly growing data volumes cost effectively, Oracle today introduced the Oracle Communications Data Model. With the Oracle Communications Data Model, CSPs can achieve rapid time to value by quickly implementing a standards-based enterprise data warehouse that features communications industry-specific reporting, analytics and data mining. The combination of the Oracle Communications Data Model, Oracle Exadata and the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Foundation represents the most comprehensive data warehouse and BI solution for the communications industry. Also announced today, Hong Kong Broadband Network enhanced their data warehouse system, going live on Oracle Communications Data Model in three months. The leading provider increased its subscriber base by 37 percent in six months and reduced customer churn to less than one percent. Product Details Oracle Communications Data Model provides industry-specific schema and embedded analytics that address key areas such as customer management, marketing segmentation, product development and network health. CSPs can efficiently capture and monitor critical data and transform it into actionable information to support development and delivery of next-generation services using: More than 1,300 industry-specific measurements and key performance indicators (KPIs) such as network reliability statistics, provisioning metrics and customer churn propensity. Embedded OLAP cubes for extremely fast dimensional analysis of business information. Embedded data mining models for sophisticated trending and predictive analysis. Support for multiple lines of business, such as cable, mobile, wireline and Internet, which can be easily extended to support future requirements. With Oracle Communications Data Model, CSPs can jump start the implementation of a communications data warehouse in line with communications-industry standards including the TM Forum Information Framework (SID), formerly known as the Shared Information Model. Oracle Communications Data Model is optimized for any Oracle Database 11g platform, including Oracle Exadata, which can improve call data record query performance by 10x or more. Supporting Quotes "Oracle Communications Data Model covers a wide range of business areas that are relevant to modern communications service providers and is a comprehensive solution - with its data model and pre-packaged templates including BI dashboards, KPIs, OLAP cubes and mining models. It helps us save a great deal of time in building and implementing a customized data warehouse and enables us to leverage the advanced analytics quickly and more effectively," said Yasuki Hayashi, executive manager, NTT Comware Corporation. "Data volumes will only continue to grow as communications service providers expand next-generation networks, deploy new services and adopt new business models. They will increasingly need efficient, reliable data warehouses to capture key insights on data such as customer value, network value and churn probability. With the Oracle Communications Data Model, Oracle has demonstrated its commitment to meeting these needs by delivering data warehouse tools designed to fill communications industry-specific needs," said Elisabeth Rainge, program director, Network Software, IDC. "The TM Forum Conformance Mark provides reassurance to customers seeking standards-based, and therefore, cost-effective and flexible solutions. TM Forum is extremely pleased to work with Oracle to certify its Oracle Communications Data Model solution. Upon successful completion, this certification will represent the broadest and most complete implementation of the TM Forum Information Framework to date, with more than 130 aggregate business entities," said Keith Willetts, chairman and chief executive officer, TM Forum. Supporting Resources Oracle Communications Oracle Communications Data Model Data Sheet Oracle Communications Data Model Podcast Oracle Data Warehousing Oracle Communications on YouTube Oracle Communications on Delicious Oracle Communications on Facebook Oracle Communications on Twitter Oracle Communications on LinkedIn Oracle Database on Twitter The Data Warehouse Insider Blog

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  • More details on America's Cup use of Oracle Data Mining

    - by charlie.berger
    BMW Oracle Racing's America's Cup: A Victory for Database Technology BMW Oracle Racing's victory in the 33rd America's Cup yacht race in February showcased the crew's extraordinary sailing expertise. But to hear them talk, the real stars weren't actually human. "The story of this race is in the technology," says Ian Burns, design coordinator for BMW Oracle Racing. Gathering and Mining Sailing DataFrom the drag-resistant hull to its 23-story wing sail, the BMW Oracle USA trimaran is a technological marvel. But to learn to sail it well, the crew needed to review enormous amounts of reliable data every time they took the boat for a test run. Burns and his team collected performance data from 250 sensors throughout the trimaran at the rate of 10 times per second. An hour of sailing alone generates 90 million data points.BMW Oracle Racing turned to Oracle Data Mining in Oracle Database 11g to extract maximum value from the data. Burns and his team reviewed and shared raw data with crew members daily using a Web application built in Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX). "Someone would say, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could look at some new combination of numbers?' We could quickly build an Oracle Application Express application and share the information during the same meeting," says Burns. Analyzing Wind and Other Environmental ConditionsBurns then streamed the data to the Oracle Austin Data Center, where a dedicated team tackled deeper analysis. Because the data was collected in an Oracle Database, the Data Center team could dive straight into the analytics problems without having to do any extract, transform, and load processes or data conversion. And the many advanced data mining algorithms in Oracle Data Mining allowed the analytics team to build vital performance analytics. For example, the technology team could remove masking elements such as environmental conditions to give accurate data on the best mast rotation for certain wind conditions. Without the data mining, Burns says the boat wouldn't have run as fast. "The design of the boat was important, but once you've got it designed, the whole race is down to how the guys can use it," he says. "With Oracle database technology we could compare the incremental improvements in our performance from the first day of sailing to the very last day. With data mining we could check data against the things we saw, and we could find things that weren't otherwise easily observable and findable."

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  • Kicking yourself because you missed the Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle Develop Call for Papers?

    - by charlie.berger
    Here's a great opportunity!If you missed the Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle Develop Call for Papers, here is another opportunity to submit a paper to present. Submit a paper and ask your colleagues, Oracle Mix community, friends and anyone else you know to vote for your session. As applications of data mining and predictive analytics are always interesting, your chances of getting accepted by votes is higher.  Note, only Oracle Mix members are allowed to vote. Voting is open from the end of May through June 20. For the most part, the top voted sessions will be selected for the program (although we may choose sessions in order to balance the content across the program). Please note that Oracle reserves the right to decline sessions that are not appropriate for the conference, such as subjects that are competitive in nature or sessions that cover outdated versions of products. Oracle OpenWorld and Oracle DevelopSuggest-a-Sessionhttps://mix.oracle.com/oow10/proposals FAQhttps://mix.oracle.com/oow10/faq

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  • Recorded YouTube-like presentation and "live" demos of Oracle Advanced Analytics

    - by chberger
    Ever want to just sit and watch a YouTube-like presentation and "live" demos of Oracle Advanced Analytics?  Then ' target=""click here! This 1+ hour long session focuses primarily on the Oracle Data Mining component of the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option and is tied to the Oracle SQL Developer Days virtual and onsite events.   I cover: Big Data + Big Data Analytics Competing on analytics & value proposition What is data mining? Typical use cases Oracle Data Mining high performance in-database SQL based data mining functions Exadata "smart scan" scoring Oracle Data Miner GUI (an Extension that ships with SQL Developer) Oracle Business Intelligence EE + Oracle Data Mining resutls/predictions in dashboards Applications "powered by Oracle Data Mining for factory installed predictive analytics methodologies Oracle R Enterprise Please contact [email protected] should you have any questions.  Hope you enjoy!  Charlie Berger, Sr. Director of Product Management, Oracle Data Mining & Advanced Analytics, Oracle Corporation

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  • Video Presentation and Demo of Oracle Advanced Analytics & Data Mining

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    For a video presentation and demonstration of Oracle Advanced Analytics & Data Mining  click here. (This plays a large MP4 file in a browser: access is from Google.docs, and this works best with Google CHROME). This one hour session focuses primarily on the Oracle Data Mining component of the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option along with Oracle R Enterprise and is tied to the Oracle SQL Developer Days virtual and onsite events and is presented by Oracle’s Director for Advanced Analytics, Charlie Berger, covering: Big Data + Big Data Analytics Competing on analytics & value proposition What is data mining? Typical use cases Oracle Data Mining high performance in-database SQL based data mining functions Exadata "smart scan" scoring Oracle Data Miner GUI (an Extension that ships with SQL Developer) Oracle Business Intelligence EE + Oracle Data Mining results/predictions in dashboards Applications "powered by Oracle Data Mining" for factory installed predictive analytics methodologies Oracle R Enterprise Please contact [email protected] should you have any questions. 

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