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• 10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

  - by Stephen Walther

  I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

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• Dynamic localization with Data Annotations possible?

  - by devries48

  Hi, I'm trying to dynamicly update the language of a Silverlight application. I tried the example provided by Tim Heuer and that was exactly wat I needed. Silverlight and localizing string data Now I'm experimenting with Data Annotations and would like to have the same behaviour.But with no luck... Can someone point me in the right direction. DataAnnotation of a property: [Display(Name = "UserNameLabel", ResourceType = typeof(Resources.Strings.StringResources))] [Required] public string Username ... My Xaml: <dataInput:Label Target="{Binding ElementName=tbUserName}" PropertyPath="UserName"/> Thanks, Ron

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• Which are the Extreme Programming "core" practices?

  - by MiKo

  Recently, I began reading about agile methodologies and XP in particular. I am a bit confused, though, about what are considered the practices involved in extreme programming. More precisely: Wikipedia reports 12 practices, which I someway believe to be the "classic" ones. Both Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries indicate 13 practices (you can find the links at the bottom of wikipedia page about "Extreme Programming Practices", I cannot post them here since I am new user of Stack Overflow), while this review of Kent Beck's "XP explained" (2nd edition) report more than 20 somewhat different practices. As a complete beginner in the topic (and basically as a complete beginner as a programmer), I would like to be enlightened on the matter. My impression is that I should look at Beck's book, since the second edition has been written after several years of XPerience, but I can find a lot less material based on that.

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• Retrieving accessors in IronRuby

  - by rsteckly

  I'm trying to figure out how to retrieve the value stored in the Person class. The problem is just that after I define an instance of the Person class, I don't know how to retrieve it within the IronRuby code because the instance name is in the .NET part. /*class Person attr_accessor :name def initialize(strname) self.name=strname end end*/ //We start the DLR, in this case starting the Ruby version ScriptEngine engine = IronRuby.Ruby.CreateEngine(); ScriptScope scope = engine.ExecuteFile("c:\\Users\\ron\\RubymineProjects\\untitled\\person.rb"); //We get the class type object person = engine.Runtime.Globals.GetVariable("Person"); //We create an instance object marcy = engine.Operations.CreateInstance(person, "marcy");

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• Classic asp paging and session state

  - by flavour404

  Hi, Working on a classic asp page that uses paging. The error I am having a problem with is this: Lets say that you have 5 pages returned in your record set and you are on page 2. You leave and come back, you then press the link for page 3, the trouble is your session has timed out. I don't know why this happens but the page is reloaded, but the session check is bypassed and of course when the page attempts to retrieve the record set the session variables are now empty so I am getting a message stating: error near ',' line 1, because now the query is defunct. How do I get around this? Thanks, Ron.

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• Do NOT Change "Copy Local” project references to false, unless understand subsequences.

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  To optimize performance of visual studio build I've found multiple recommendations to change CopyLocal property for dependent dlls to false,e.g. From http://stackoverflow.com/questions/690033/best-practices-for-large-solutions-in-visual-studio-2008 CopyLocal? For sure turn this offhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/280751/what-is-the-best-practice-for-copy-local-and-with-project-referencesAlways set the Copy Local property to false and enforce this via a custom msbuild stephttp://codebetter.com/patricksmacchia/2007/06/20/benefit-from-the-c-and-vb-net-compilers-perf/BenefitBenefitMy advice is to always set ‘Copy Local’ to falseSome time ago we've tried to change the setting to false, and found that it causes problem for deployment of top-level projects.Recently I've followed the suggestion and changed the settings for middle-level projects. It didn't cause immediate issues, but I was warned by Readify Consultant Colin Savage about possible errors during deploymentsI haven't undone the changes immediately and we found a few issues during testing.There are many scenarios, when you need to have Copy Local’ left to True.The concerns are highlighted in some stack overflow answers, but they have small number of votes.Top-level projects:  set copy local = true.First of all, it doesn't work correctly for top-level projects, i.e. executables or web sites.As pointed in the answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/6529461/52277for all the references in the one at the top set copy local = true.Alternatively you have to change output directory as it's described in http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/partitioning-your-code-base-through-.net-assemblies-and-visual-studio-projects/If you set ‘ Copy Local = false’, VS will, unless you tell it otherwise, place each assembly alone in its own .\bin\Debugdirectory. Because of this, you will need to configure VS to place assemblies together in the same directory. To do so, for each VS project, go to VS > Project Properties > Build tab > Output path, and set the Ouput path to ..\bin\Debugfor debug configuration, and ..\bin\Release for release configuration.Second-level  dependencies:  set copy local = true.Another example when copylocal =false fails on run-time, is when top level assembly doesn't directly referenced one of indirect dependencies.E..g. Top-level assembly A has reference to assembly B with copylocal =true, but assembly B has reference to assembly C with copylocal =false. Most likely assembly C will be missing on runtime and will cause errors E.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602765/when-should-copy-local-be-set-to-true-and-when-should-it-not?lq=1Copy local is important for deployment scenarios and tools. As a general rule you should use CopyLocal=True and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602765/when-should-copy-local-be-set-to-true-and-when-should-it-not?lq=1 Unfortunately there are some quirks and CopyLocal won't necessary work as expected for assembly references in secondary assemblies structured as shown below.MainApp.exe MyLibrary.dll ThirdPartyLibrary.dll (if in the GAC CopyLocal won't copy to MainApp bin folder)This makes xcopy deployments difficult . .Reflection called DLLs  dependencies:  set copy local = true.E.g user can see error "ISystem.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information."The fix for the issue is recommended in http://stackoverflow.com/a/6200173/52277"I solved this issue by setting the Copy Local attribute of my project's references to true."In general, the problems with investigation of deployment issues may overweight the benefits of reduced build time. Setting the Copy Local to false without considering deployment issues is not a good idea.

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• Using a WCF Message Inspector to extend AppFabric Monitoring

  - by Shawn Cicoria

  I read through Ron Jacobs post on Monitoring WCF Data Services with AppFabric http://blogs.msdn.com/b/endpoint/archive/2010/06/09/tracking-wcf-data-services-with-windows-server-appfabric.aspx What is immediately striking are 2 things – it’s so easy to get monitoring data into a viewer (AppFabric Dashboard) w/ very little work.  And the 2nd thing is, why can’t this be a WCF message inspector on the dispatch side. So, I took the base class WCFUserEventProvider that’s located in the WCF/WF samples [1] in the following path, \WF_WCF_Samples\WCF\Basic\Management\AnalyticTraceExtensibility\CS\WCFAnalyticTracingExtensibility\  and then created a few classes that project the injection as a IEndPointBehavior There are just 3 classes to drive injection of the inspector at runtime via config: IDispatchMessageInspector implementation BehaviorExtensionElement implementation IEndpointBehavior implementation The full source code is below with a link to the solution file here: [Solution File] using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher; using System.ServiceModel.Channels; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Configuration; using System.ServiceModel.Description; using Microsoft.Samples.WCFAnalyticTracingExtensibility; namespace Fabrikam.Services { public class AppFabricE2EInspector : IDispatchMessageInspector { static WCFUserEventProvider evntProvider = null; static AppFabricE2EInspector() { evntProvider = new WCFUserEventProvider(); } public object AfterReceiveRequest( ref Message request, IClientChannel channel, InstanceContext instanceContext) { OperationContext ctx = OperationContext.Current; var opName = ctx.IncomingMessageHeaders.Action; evntProvider.WriteInformationEvent("start", string.Format("operation: {0} at address {1}", opName, ctx.EndpointDispatcher.EndpointAddress)); return null; } public void BeforeSendReply(ref System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message reply, object correlationState) { OperationContext ctx = OperationContext.Current; var opName = ctx.IncomingMessageHeaders.Action; evntProvider.WriteInformationEvent("end", string.Format("operation: {0} at address {1}", opName, ctx.EndpointDispatcher.EndpointAddress)); } } public class AppFabricE2EBehaviorElement : BehaviorExtensionElement { #region BehaviorExtensionElement /// <summary> /// Gets the type of behavior. /// </summary> /// <value></value> /// <returns>The type that implements the end point behavior<see cref="T:System.Type"/>.</returns> public override Type BehaviorType { get { return typeof(AppFabricE2EEndpointBehavior); } } /// <summary> /// Creates a behavior extension based on the current configuration settings. /// </summary> /// <returns>The behavior extension.</returns> protected override object CreateBehavior() { return new AppFabricE2EEndpointBehavior(); } #endregion BehaviorExtensionElement } public class AppFabricE2EEndpointBehavior : IEndpointBehavior //, IServiceBehavior { #region IEndpointBehavior public void AddBindingParameters(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) {} public void ApplyClientBehavior(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, ClientRuntime clientRuntime) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, EndpointDispatcher endpointDispatcher) { endpointDispatcher.DispatchRuntime.MessageInspectors.Add(new AppFabricE2EInspector()); } public void Validate(ServiceEndpoint endpoint) { ; } #endregion IEndpointBehavior } }     [1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=35ec8682-d5fd-4bc3-a51a-d8ad115a8792&displaylang=en

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves - June 23-29, 2013

  - by Bob Rhubart

  2,947 people now follow OTN ArchBeat on Facebook. Here are the Top 10 items shared on that page for June 23-29, 2013. Podcast Show Notes: DevOps, Cloud, and Role Creep After some confusion (my bad) all three CORRECT parts of this podcast are now available. The panelists for this discussion are all Oracle ACE Directors: Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Cary Millsap. SOA Suite 11g Developers Cookbook Published | Antony Reynolds "The book focuses on areas that we felt we had neglected in the Developers Guide, says co-author Antony Reynolds. "There is more about Java integration and OSB, both of which we see a lot of questions about when working with customers." Using Oracle TimesTen With Oracle BI Applications (Part 2) | Peter Scott Peter Scott follows up an earlier post with a look at some of the OBIA structures and a discussion of some of the features of TimesTen. Linux-Containers — Part 1: Overview | Lenz Grimmer OTN Garage blogger Lenz Grimmer kicks off a series and expands your mind with deep detail on Linux Containers Slides from my ODTUG Kscope13 Presentation | Zeeshan Baig Oracle ACE Zeeshan Baig shares the slides from his KScope13 presentation, "Build Your Business Services Using ADF Task Flows." Fun with Enterprise Manager | Rene van Wijk Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk shares some background and some tuning and other tech tips for working with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Using VirtualBox to test drive Windows Blue | The Fat Bloke The Fat Bloke shares a tech tip for those interested in giving Windows Blue a try on Virtual Box. Podcast Show Notes: The Fusion Middleware A-Team and the Chronicles of Architecture In this three-part series Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team members Jennifer Briscoe, Clifford Musante, Mikael Ottosson, and Pardha Reddy talk about the origins and mission of the FMW A-Team and about the great technical content you'll find on the recently launched Oracle A-Team blog. Part one is now available. 5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects | John Brunswick Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick shares best practices that "enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration." Oracle Magazine - July/Aug 2013 The digital edition of the July/August edition of Oracle Magazine is now available. This issue includes my architect community column, "The CX Factor." which features insight from community members on "why and how CX has become a significant factor in enterprise IT." h

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• Warm Reception By Partners at EMEA Manageability Forum

  - by Get_Specialized!

  For the EMEA Partners that were able to attend the event in Istanbul Turkey, thank you for your attendance and feedback at the event. As you can see, the weather kept most of inside during the event and at times there was even some snow.  And while it may have been chilly outside, there was a warm reception from Partners who traveled from all over EMEA to hear from other Oracle Specialized Partners and subject matter experts about the opportunities and benefits of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Exadata Specialization. Here you can see David Robo, Oracle Technology Director for Manageability kicking off the event followed later by Patrick Rood, Oracle Indirect Manageability Business. A special thank you to all the Partner speakers including Ron Tolido, VP and CTO of Application Services Continental Europe Capgemini, who delivered a very innovative keynote where many in attendance learned that Black Swans do exist. And while at break, interactivity among partners continued and it was great to see such innovative partners who had listed their achieved specializations on their business cards. Here we can see Oracle Enterprise Manager customer, Turkish Oracle User Group board member and Blogger Gokhan Atil sharing his product experiences with others attending. Additionally, Christian Trieb of Paragon Data, also shared with other Partners what the German Oracle User Group (DOAG) was doing around manageability and invitation to submit papers for their next event. Here we can see at one of the breaks, one of the event organizers Javier Puerta (left), Oracle Director of Partner Programs, joined by Sebastiaan Vingerhoed (middle), Oracle EE & CIS Manager Manageability and speaker on Managing the Application Lifecycle, Julian Dontcheff (right), Global Head of Database Management at Accenture. Below is Julian Dontcheff's delivering his partner presentation on Exadata and Lifecycle Management. Just after his plane landed and 1 hour Turkish taxi experience to the event location, Julian still took the time to sit down with me and provide some extra insights on his experiences of managing the enterprise infrastructure with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Below is one of the Oracle Enterprise Management Product Management Team,  Mark McGill, Oracle Principal Product Manager, presenting to Partners on how you can perform Chargeback and Metering with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control. Overall, it was a great event and an extra thank you to those OPN Specialized Partners who presented, to the Partners that attended, and to those Oracle team members who organized the event and presented.

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• Can you Trust Search?

  - by David Dorf

  An awful lot of referrals to e-commerce sites come from web searches. Retailers rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to correctly position their website so they can be found. Search on "blue jeans" and the results are determined by a semi-secret algorithm -- in my case Levi.com, Banana Republic, and ShopStyle show up. The NY Times recently uncovered a situation where JCPenney, via third-parties hired to help with SEO, was caught manipulating search results so they were erroneously higher in page rankings. No doubt this helped drive additional sales during this part Christmas. The article, The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, is well worth reading. My friend Ron Kleinman started an interesting discussion at the ARTS Linkedin forum. He posed the question: The ability of a single company to "punish" any retailer (by significantly impacting their on-line sales volume) who does not play by their rules ... is this a good thing or a bad thing? Clearly JCP was in the wrong and needed to be punished, but should that decision lie with Google alone? Don't get me wrong -- I'm certainly not advocating we create a Department of Search where bureaucrats think of ways to spend money, but Google wields an awful lot of power in this situation, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Now Google is incorporating more social aspects into their search results. For example, when Google knows its me (i.e. I'm logged in when using Google) search results will be influenced by my Twitter network. In an effort to increase relevance, the blogs and re-tweeted articles from my network will be higher in the search results than they otherwise would be. So in the case of product searches, things discussed in my network will rise to the top. Continuing my blue jean example, if someone in my network had been discussing Macy's perhaps they would now be higher in the result set. soapbox: I already have lots of spammers posting bogus comments to this blog in an effort to create additional links to their sites and thus increase their search ranking. Should I expect a similar situation in Twitter and eventually Facebook? Now retailers need to expand their SEO efforts to incorporate social media as well, but do us all a favor and please don't cheat.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-07-10

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Free Event Today: Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development This free event—another in the ongoing series of OTN Virtual Developer Days—focuses on Oracle Fusion development, and features three session tracks plus hands-on labs. Agenda and session abstracts are available now so you can be ready for the live event when it kicks off today, July 10, 9am to 1pm PST / 12pm to 4pm EST / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Podcast: The Role of the Cloud Architect - Part 1/3 In part one of this three-part conversation, cloud architects Ron Batra (AT&T) and James Baty (Oracle) talk about how cloud computing is driving the supply-chaining of IT and the "democratization of the activity of architecture." Middleware and Cloud Computing Book | Tom Laszewski Cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski describes Middleware and Cloud Computing by Frank Munz as "one of only a couple books that really discuss AWS and Oracle in depth." Cloud computing moves from fad to foundation | David Linthicum "When enterprises make cloud computing work, they view the application of the technology as a trade secret of sorts, so there are no press releases or white papers," says David Linthicum. "Indeed, if you see one presentation around a successful cloud computing case study, you can bet you're not hearing about 100 more." Oracle Real-Time Decisions: Combined Likelihood Models | Lukas Vermeer Lukas Vermeer concludes his extensive series of posts on decision models with a look "an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models." Running Oracle BPM 11g PS5 Worklist Task Flow and Human Task Form on Non-SOA Domain | Andrejus Baranovskis "With a standard setup, both the BPM worklist application and the Human task form run on the same SOA domain, where the BPM process is running," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "While this work fine, this is not what we want in the development, test and production environment." BAM design pointers | Kavitha Srinivasan "When using EMS (Enterprise Message Source) as a BAM feed, the best practice is to use one EMS to write to one Data Object," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Kavitha Srinivasan. "There is a possibility of collisions and duplicates when multiple EMS write to the same row of a DO at the same time." Changes in SOA Human Task Flow (Run-Time) for Fusion Applications | Jack Desai Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Jack Desai shares a troubleshooting tip. Thought for the Day "A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program." — Cem Kaner Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves - June 16-22, 2013

  - by Bob Rhubart

  2,819 people now follow OTN ArchBeat on Facebook. These are the Top 10 most popular items shared there for the week of June 16-22, 2013. Getting started with Java EE 7: Hands-on in 10 minutes | Lucas Jellema Oracle ACE Director and prolific blogger Lucas Jellema offers his take on the Java EE7 release and shares tips and resources to help you on your way. Not ‘how’ but ‘why’ should you upgrade to JDeveloper & ADF 11.1.1.7.0 | Chris Muir Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall and Oracle ADF Product Manager Chris Muir collaborated on this dialog that just might help you in your decision. OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing - July 9, Redwood Shores, CA You won't need 3D glasses to see the technical sessions at OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing, July 9, 2013. Redwood Shores, CA. It's free! It's live! Register now! Video: Frédéric Desbiens: Bringing Java to On-Device iOS and Android Apps (QCon NYC 2013) Oracle Application Development Tools product manager Frédéric Desbiens recaps his QCon New York presentation about how Java developers can leverage existing skills to develop enterprise mobile applications. OEPE 12.1.1.2.2 with GlassFish Tools released | Peter Benedikovic Peter Benedikovic's brief post offers an overview of some of the features in the new version of Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, released in conjunction with the release of Java EE 7. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Configuration Best Practices (Part 2 of 3) | Bethany Lapaglia Part 2 of Beth Lapaglia's 3-part series on the most commonly implemented configuration changes to improve performance and operation of a large Enterprise Manager 12c environment focuses on recommended WebLogic Server changes. Video: Doug Clarke: Polyglot Persistence: From NoSQL to HTML5 (QCon NYC 2013) Doug Clarke, EclipseLink Project Lead and Oracle Director of Product Management gives a very condensed version of his QCon New York presentation on "Polyglot Persistence: From NoSQL to HTML5." Podcast Show Notes: DevOps, Cloud, and Role Creep - Part 2 Automation and innovation had a huge impact on the manufacturing jobs of years gone by. Is something similar happening to some IT jobs? Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Cary Millsap discuss what's happening in part 2 of this 3-part podcast. Video: Reza Rahman: Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 (QCon NYC 2013) Java EE/GlassFish evangelist Reza Rahman talks about how WebSocket provides "the basis for a new generation of interactive and live Web applications" for mobile developers. Lessons from Fusion HCM Implementations | Tim Warner Oracle ACE Tim Warner shares summaries of the Fusion HCM implementation experiences of several companies, as detailed in presentations at the 2013 Oracle HCM Users Group Conference. Thought for the Day "If the mind really is the finest computer, then there are a lot of people out there who need to be rebooted." — Tim Bryce Source: softwarequotes.com

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-14

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Duke's Choice Award Nominations Close Friday! | The Java Source The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the best in Java innovation. Nominate at Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until this Friday, June 15. Whole Lotta Virtualization Goin' On | Rick Ramsey The OTN Garage's Rick Ramsey shares a list of recent Virtualization articles available on OTN, along with a link to a video by The Killer, Mr Jerry Lee Lewis. A Pragmatic Path to Navigating your Infrastructure to the Cloud | The WebLogic Server Blog Ruma Sanyal offers an overview of a recent Oracle webcast featuring Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Andy Butler and Vice President and Gartner Fellow Massimo Pezzini. Migrating C/C++ embedded SQL code | Tom Laszewski Cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski explains the how-to in 5 easy steps. Aetna Dumps Its Siloed Enterprise Architecture for SOA | CIO.com CIO writer Stephanie Overby tells the story of how one major health insurance provider put the "Enterprise" back in Enterprise Architecture. (H/T to Joe McKendrick for this story.) Downloading specific video renditions in WebCenter Content | Kyle Hatlestad How-to from Oracle WebCenter & ADF A-Team blogger Kyle Hatlestad. Eclipse DemoCamp - June 2012 - Redwood Shores, CA Location: Oracle HQ - 10 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood Shores, CA (Map) Date and Time: Wednesday, June 13, 2012. From 6pm - 9pm Agenda: The evolution of Java persistence, Doug Clarke, EclipseLink Project Lead, Oracle Integrating BIRT into Applications, Ashwini Verma, Actuate Corporation Leveraging OSGi In The Enterprise, Kamal Muralidharan, Lead Engineer, eBay Developing Rich ADF Applications with Java EE, Greg Stachnick, Oracle NVIDIA® NsightTM Eclipse Edition, Goodwin (Tech lead - Visual tools), Eugene Ostroukhov (Senior engineer – Visual tools) 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards - Win a FREE Pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco Share your use of Oracle Fusion Middleware solutions and how they help your organization drive business innovation. You just might win a free pass to Oracle Openworld 2012 in San Francisco. Deadline for submissions in July 17, 2012. BI Architecture Master Class for Partners – Oracle Architecture Unplugged Date: June 21, 2012 No slides, no fluff. This workshop will be highly interactive and is aimed at Oracle OPN member partners who are IT Architects and BI+W specialists. The focus will be on architectural issues and considerations. DevOps: Evolving to Handle Disruption | JP Morgenthal The subject of DevOps came up this week during an OTN ArchBeat podcast interview with Ron Batra and James Baty on the role of the cloud architect (that program will be available in a few weeks). Morgenthal's article for InfoQ offers a good overview of what DevOps is and how it works. Thought for the Day "Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure." — Edsger Dijkstra Source: softwarequotes.com

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• How to determine the source of a request in a distributed service system?

  - by Kabumbus

  Map/Reduce is a great concept for sorting large quantities of data at once. What to do if you have small parts of data and you need to reduce it all the time? Simple example - choosing a service for request. Imagine we have 10 services. Each provides services host with sets of request headers and post/get arguments. Each service declares it has 30 unique keys - 10 per set. service A: name id ... Now imagine we have a distributed services host. We have 200 machines with 10 services on each. Each service has 30 unique keys in there sets. but now to find to which service to map the incoming request we make our services post unique values that map to that sets. We can have up to or more than 10 000 such values sets on each machine per each service. service A machine 1 name = Sam id = 13245 ... service A machine 1 name = Ben id = 33232 ... ... service A machine 100 name = Ron id = 777888 ... So we get 200 * 10 * 30 * 30 * 10 000 == 18 000 000 000 and we get 500 requests per second on our gateway each containing 45 items 15 of which are just noise. And our task is to find a service for request (at least a machine it is running on). On all machines all over cluster for same services we have same rules. We can first select to which service came our request via rules filter 10 * 30. and we will have 200 * 30 * 10 000 == 60 000 000. So... 60 mil is definitely a problem... I hope to get on idea of mapping 30 * 10 000 onto some artificial neural network alike Perceptron that outputs 1 if 30 words (some hashes from words) from the request are correct or if less than Perceptron should return 0. And I’ll send each such Perceptron for each service from each machine to gateway. So I would have a map Perceptron <-> machine for each service. Can any one tall me if my Perceptron idea is at least “sane”? Or normal people do it some other way? Or if there are better ANNs for such purposes?

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• Working the Chart Percentages

  - by Tim Dexter

  Charting in BIP is such fun, well sometimes it is. Not so much today, at least not for Ron in San Diego. He needed a horizontal bar chart showing values plotted for various test areas with value labels at the end of the bars. Simple enough right? The wrinkle, they were percentage values so he needed to see '56%' not '56'! Still, it should be simple enough but the percentage formatting has a requirement for your values to be in a decimal format i.e. 0.56 not 56.0. 56.0 gets formatted as 5600%. OK, so either pull the values out as decimals or use the div function to divide the values in the chart by 100 e.g. <xsl:value-of select="myval div 100)" /> Now I can use the following the chart XML to format the percentages as I need them:   <Graph ... > ... <MarkerText visible="true"> <Y1ViewFormat> <ViewFormat numberType="NUMTYPE_PERCENT" decimalDigit="0" numberTypeUsed="true" leadingZeroUsed="true" decimalDigitUsed="true"/> </Y1ViewFormat> </MarkerText> ... </Graph>   That gets me the values shown the way I want but the auto axis formatting gets me from 0 >> 1. I now need to go in and add the formatting for the axis too.   <Graph ...> ... <Y1Axis axisMinAutoScaled="false" axisMinValue="0.0" axisMaxAutoScaled="false" axisMaxValue="1.0" majorTickStepAutomatic="true"> <ViewFormat numberType="NUMTYPE_PERCENT" decimalDigit="0" scaleFactor="SCALEFACTOR_NONE" numberTypeUsed="true" leadingZeroUsed="true" decimalDigitUsed="true" scaleFactorUsed="true"/> </Y1Axis>   Now I have a chart that's showing the percentage values and formatting axis scale correctly for me too. You can of course mess with the attributes above to get more decimal points on your labels, etc. Happy Charting!

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• eXist-db: can't start webstart client on a closed port, reverse proxied via apache

  - by rvdb

  I am configuring an Apache HTTP server so it reverse proxies requests starting with /app/ to an eXist-db instance running in a Tomcat server, on port 8082. This port has been closed in the firewall and is inaccessible to the outer world. Following the eXist documentation, I have following rules in place in my httpd.conf file: ProxyPass /apps/ http://localhost:8082/ ProxyPassReverse /apps/ http://localhost:8082/ ProxyPassReverseCookiePath /apps/ / All goes well for requests to e.g. 'http://mydomain/apps/exist/index.xml'. Yet, the webstart client (accessible at 'http://localhost:8082/exist/webstart/exist.jnlp' on the web server) doesn't work behind the proxy. While 'http://mydomain/apps/exist/webstart/exist.jnlp' does generate a valid exist.jnlp file, that file can't be executed. The reason seems quite obvious: apparently, the eXist-db instance generating the exist.jnlp file only sees the proxied request as: 'http://localhost:8082/exist/webstart/exist.jnlp'. Yet, since the exist.jnlp file is executed on the client, that reference is meaningless (unless the client computer happens to have an eXist-db instance running on that port). Executing the exist.jnlp file hence fails with a 'connection refused' error. Yet, there's no problem at all connecting a local eXist-db Java client to the proxied eXist instance with the URL xmldb:exist://mydomain/apps/exist/xmlrpc. The problem lies in generating the webstart exist.jnlp file, which seems to need access to a publicly accessible URL. However, opening port 8082 and replacing the Proxy references to 'http://localhost:8082' with 'http://mydomain:8082' IMO rather destroys the point of reverse proxying. Do others have had success reverse proxying eXist-db on a closed port behind Apache? Are there perhaps some Proxy configuration settings I have overlooked (I'm no expert at all) that can make eXist see the original request instead of the proxied one? Kind regards, Ron

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• plesk: how to configure reverse proxy rules properly?

  - by rvdb

  I'm trying to configure reverse proxy rules in vhost.conf. I have Apache-2.2.8 on Ubuntu-8.04, monitored by Plesk-10.4.4. What I'm trying to achieve is defining a reverse proxy rule that defers all traffic to -say- http://mydomain/tomcat/ to the Tomcat server running on port 8080. I have mod_rewrite and mod_proxy loaded in Apache. As far as I understand mod_proxy docs, entering following rules in /var/www/vhosts/mydomain/conf/vhost.conf should work: <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> ProxyRequests off RewriteRule ^/tomcat/(.*)$ http://mydomain:8080/$1 [P] Yet, I am getting a HTTP 500: internal server error when requesting above URL. (Note: I decided to use a rewrite rule in order to at least get some information logged.) I have made mod_rewrite log extensively, and find following entries in the logs [note: due to a limitation of max. 2 URLs in posts of new users, I have modified all following URLs so that they only contain 1 slash after http:. In case you're suspecting typos: this was done on purpose): 81.241.230.23 - - [19/Mar/2012:16:42:59 +0100] [mydomain/sid#b06ab8][rid#1024af8/initial] (2) init rewrite engine with requested uri /tomcat/testApp/ 81.241.230.23 - - [19/Mar/2012:16:42:59 +0100] [mydomain/sid#b06ab8][rid#1024af8/initial] (3) applying pattern '^/tomcat/(.*)$' to uri '/tomcat/testApp/' 81.241.230.23 - - [19/Mar/2012:16:42:59 +0100] [mydomain/sid#b06ab8][rid#1024af8/initial] (2) rewrite '/tomcat/testApp/' - 'http:/mydomain:8080/testApp/' 81.241.230.23 - - [19/Mar/2012:16:42:59 +0100] [mydomain/sid#b06ab8][rid#1024af8/initial] (2) forcing proxy-throughput with http:/mydomain:8080/testApp/ 81.241.230.23 - - [19/Mar/2012:16:42:59 +0100] [mydomain/sid#b06ab8][rid#1024af8/initial] (1) go-ahead with proxy request proxy:http:/mydomain:8080/testApp/ [OK] This suggests that the rewrite and proxy part is processed ok; still the proxied request produces a 500 error. Yet: Addressing the testApp directly via http:/mydomain:8080/testApp does work. The same setup does work on my local computer. Is there something else (Plesk-related, perhaps?) I should configure? Many thanks for any pointers! Ron

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• links for 2011-01-13

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Oracle WebCenter Suite: Giving Users a Modern Experience Speakers: Vince Casarez (VP Enterprise 2.0 Product Management, Oracle),  Erin Smith (Consulting Practice Manager – Portals, Oracle), Robert Wessa (Consulting Technical Director – Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure, Oracle)  (tags: oracle otn webcenter webcast enterprise2.0) Oracle & StickyMinds.com Webcast: Load Testing Techniques for Enterprise Applications Mughees Minhas, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle Server Technologies, answers your questions about the latest techniques for effectively and efficiently testing enterprise application performance. Thursday, January 20, 2011. 10am PT / 1pm ET. (tags: oracle otn stickymings webcast) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20, 5:30pm - 8:00pm PT. Presentations: Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features (Rob Lee), Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time ( Rao Bhethanabotla), How To Build a Coherence Practice (Christer Fahlgren). (tags: oracle, otn coherence bacsig) Podcast Show Notes: William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter on Business Architecture (ArchBeat) A four-part interview with the authors of  "Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation"  (tags: oracle otn podcast businessarchitecture) John Brunswick: Overlapping Social Networks in your Enterprise? Strategies to Understand and Govern "Overall it is important to consider if tacit knowledge being captured by the social systems is able to be retained and somehow summarized into an overall organizational directory." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 socialnetworking) Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher (Middlewarepedia) Cosmin Todur describes "a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC."  (tags: oracle coherence grid) Aino Andriessen: Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) for application development "Logging is a very important aspect of application development as it offers run-time access to the behaviour and data of the application. It’s important for debugging purposes but also to investigate exception situations on production." -- Aino Andriessen (tags: oracle odl java jdeveloper weblogic) Security issues when upgrading a Web Catalog from 10g to 11g Oracle BI By Bakboord "I blogged about upgrading from Oracle BI EE 10g to Oracle BI EE 11g R1 earlier. Although this is a very straight forward process, you could end up with some security issues." -- Daan Bakboord (tags: oracle businessintelligence obiee) Angelo Santagata: SOA Composite Sensors : Good Practice "A good best practice is that for any composites you create, consider publishing a composite sensor value using a primary key of some sort , e.g. orderId, that way if you need to manipulate/query composites you can easily look up the instanceId using the sensorid." - Angelo Santagata (tags: oracle soa sca) Javier Ductor: WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Task Flow Customization "Previously, I wrote about Spaces Template Customization. In order to adapt Spaces to customers prototype, it was necessary to change template and skin, as well as the members task flow. In this entry, I describe how to customize this task flow." - Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter) RonBatra's blog: Cloud Computing Series: VI: Industry Directions "When someone says their 'Product/Solution is in the Cloud,' ask them basic questions to seperate the spin from the reality. I would start with 'tell me what that means' and see which way the conversation goes." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle otn oracleace cloud) First JSRs Proposed for Java EE 7 (The Java Source) With the approval of Java SE 7 and Java SE 8 JSRs last month, attention is now shifting towards the Java EE platform. (tags: oracle java jsr javaee)

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• Smooth Sailing or Rough Waters: Navigating Policy Administration Modernization

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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;} Life insurance and annuity carriers continue to recognize the need to modernize their aging policy administration systems, but may be hesitant to move forward because of the inherent risk involved. To help carriers better prepare for what lies ahead LOMA's Resource Magazine asked Karen Furtado, partner of Strategy Meets Action, to help them chart a course in Navigating Policy Administration Selection, the cover story of this month’s issue. The industry analyst and research firm recently asked insurance carriers to name the business drivers for replacing legacy policy administration systems. The top five cited, according to Furtado, centered on: Supporting growth in current lines Improving competitive position Containing and reducing costs Supporting growth in new lines Supporting agent demands and interaction It’s no surprise that fueling growth, both now and in the future, continues to be a key driver for modernization. Why? Inflexible, hard-coded, legacy systems require customization by IT every time a change is required. This in turn impedes a carrier’s ability to be agile, constraining their ability to quickly adapt to changing regulatory requirements and evolving market demands. It also stymies their ability to quickly bring to market new products or rapidly configure changes to existing ones, and also can inhibit how carriers service customers and distribution channels. In the article, Furtado advised carriers to ensure that the policy administration system they are considering is current and modern, with an adaptable user interface and flexible service-oriented architecture. She said carriers to should ask themselves, “How much do you need flexibility and agility now and in the future? Does it support the business processes and rules that are needed for you to be able to create that adaptable environment?” Furtado went on to advise that carriers “Connect your strategy to your business and technical capabilities before you make investment choices…You want to enable your organization to transform for the future, not just automate the past.” Unlocking High Performance with Policy Administration Transformation also was the topic of a recent LOMA webcast moderated by Ron Clark, editor of LOMA's Resource Magazine. The web cast, which featured speakers from Oracle Insurance and Capgemini, focused on how insurers can competitively drive high performance by: Replacing a legacy policy administration system with a modern, flexible platform Optimizing IT and operations costs, creating consistent processes and eliminating resource redundancies Selecting the right partner with the best blend of technology, operational, and consulting capabilities to achieve market leadership Understanding the value of outsourcing closed block operations Learn more by clicking here to access this free, one-hour recorded webcast. Helen Pitts, is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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• Retail CEO Interviews

  - by David Dorf

  Businessweek's 2012 Interview Issue has interviews with three retail CEOs that are worth a quick read.  I copied some excerpts below, but please follow the links to the entire interviews. Ron Johnson, CEO JCPenney Take me through your merchandising. One of the things I learned from Steve [Jobs]—Steve said three times in his life he had the chance to be part of the change of an interface. If you change the interface, you can dramatically change the entire experience of the product. For Steve, that was the mouse, the scroll wheel on the iPod, and then the [touch]screen. What we’re trying to do here is change the interface of retail. What we call that is the street, and you’re standing in the middle of it. When you walk into a store today, you’re overwhelmed by merchandise. There is a narrow aisle. Typically, it’s filled with product on tables and you’re overwhelmed with the noise of signs and promotions. Especially in the age of the Internet, the idea of going to a very large store and having so much abundance is actually not very appealing. The first thing you find here is you’re inspired. I have used the mannequins. The street is actually this new navigation path for a retail store. So if you come in here—you’ll notice that these aisles are 14 feet wide. These are wider than Nordstrom’s (JWN). Slide show of JCPenney store. Walter Robb, co-CEO Whole Foods What did you learn from the recent recession about selling groceries?It was a lot of humble pie, because our sales experienced a drop that I have never seen in 32 years of retail. Customers left us in droves. We also learned that there were some very loyal customers who loved Whole Foods (WFM), people who said, “I like what you stand for. I like coming here. I like this experience.” That was very affirming. I think the realization was that we’ve got some customers, and we need to make sure we know who they are. So instead of chasing every customer out there, we started doing customer discussion groups. We were growing for growth’s sake, which is not a good strategy. We were chasing the rainbow. We cut the growth in half overnight and said, “All right, slow down. Let’s make sure we’re doing this better and more thoroughly and more thoughtfully.” This company is a mission-based company. This company started to change the world by bringing healthier food to the world. It’s not about the money, it’s about the impact, and this company is back on track as a result of those experiences. Video of Whole Foods store tour. Kay Krill, CEO Ann Taylor You’ve worked in retail all your life. What drew you to it?I graduated from college, and I did not know what I wanted to do. Macy’s (M) came to campus to interview for their training program, and I thought, “Let me give it a try.” I got the job and fell in love with the industry. The president of Macy’s at the time said, “If you don’t wake up every morning dying to go to work, then retailing is not for you; it has to be in your blood.” It was in my blood. I love the fact that every day is different. You can get to be creative one day, financial the next day, marketing the next. I love going to stores. I love talking to associates. I love talking to clients. There’s not a predictable day.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 28 - November 3, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of Oct 28 - Nov 3, 2012. Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Mobile Development Platform Strategy Chart: ADF Mobile, WebCenter Sites, Portal, Content and Social "Unlike desktop web focused efforts, the world of mobile has undergone change at a feverish pace," says social enterprise expert John Brunswick. His extensive post charts various resources that will help you keep up. ADF Essentials - The Bare Necessities | Floyd Teter The experiment is over… And now Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares his impressions after spending some time with Oracle ADF Essentials, the free version of Oracle ADF. A review of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook | RedStack "More so than any other single piece of content that I have seen on the topic, it provides the information that a SOA administrator needs to know in order to successfully configure, manage, monitor, troubleshoot and backup an Oracle SOA environment." So says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team solution architect Mark Nelson of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook, by Ahmed Aboulnaga and Arun Pareek. Expanding the Oracle Enterprise Repository with functional documentation Capgemini middleware specialist Marc Kuijpers shares information on how Oracle Enterprise Repository can be configured "to contain functional assets, i.e. functional designs, use cases and a logical data model" to aid in SOA governance efforts. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what’s truly valuable. Easy way to access JPA with REST (JSON / XML) | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond shows you "what is possible with JPA-RS, how easy it is and howto setup your own EclipseLink REST service." Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic: when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. 2012 IOUG Virtualization SIG – Online Symposium on Nov 7 and Nov 8 | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares information on this week's IOUG Virtualization SIG online event. Does that make it a virtual virtualization event? Thought for the Day "If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning — and the response would be, 'We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more.'" — Mark Minasi Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 21-27, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of October 21-27, 2012. OTN Architect Day: Los Angeles This is your brain on IT architecture. Stuff your cranium with architecture by attending Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles, October 25, 2012, at the Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Technical sessions, panel Q&A, and peer roundtables—plus a free lunch. [NOTE: The event was last week, of course. Big thanks to the session presenters and especially to those Angelinos who came out for the event.] WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference"The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Podcast: Are You Future Proof? The latest OTN ArchBeat Podcast series features Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Ronald van Luttikhuizen, three practicing architects in an open discussion about how changes in enterprise IT are raising the bar for success for software architects and developers. Play Oracle Vanquisher Here's a little respite from whatever it is you normally spend your time on. Oracle Vanquisher is an online diversion that makes a game of data center optimization. According to the description: "Armed with a cool Oracle vacuum pack suit and a strategic IT roadmap, you will thwart threats and optimize your data center to increase your company’s stock price and boost your company’s position." Mainly you avoid electric shock and killer birds. The current high score belongs to someone identified as 'TEN." My score? Never mind. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite OOW 2012 PresentationsThe Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. OAM and OIM 11g Academies Looking for technical how-to content covering Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Identity Manager? The people behind the Oracle Middleware Security blog have indexed relevant blog posts into what they call "Academies." "These indexes contain the articles we’ve written that we believe provide long lasting guidance on OAM and OIM. Posts covered in these series include articles on key aspects of OAM and OIM 11g, best practice architectural guidance, integrations, and customizations." Oracle’s Analytics, Engineered Systems, and Big Data Strategy | Mark Rittman Part 1 of 3 in Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's series on Oracle Exalytics, Oracle R Enterprise and Endeca. Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark RittmanOracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Following the Thread in OSB | Antony Reynolds Antony Reynolds recently led an Oracle Service Bus POC in which his team needed to get high throughput from an OSB pipeline. "Imagine our surprise when, on stressing the system, we saw it lock up, with large numbers of blocked threads." He shares the details of the problem and the solution in this extensive technical post. OW12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices | Andrejus Baranovskis The Oracle OpenWorld presentations keep coming! Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares the slides from "Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices," co-presented with Danilo Schmiedel from Opitz Consulting. Thought for the Day "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." — Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) Source: Quotes For Software Engineers

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for October 2012. OAM/OVD JVM Tuning | @FusionSecExpert Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (known as the A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic – when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." -- Irving Wladawsky-Berger Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Vennster) discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what's truly valuable. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript — iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. Oracle Solaris 11.1 update focuses on database integration, cloud | Mark Fontecchio TechTarget editor Mark Fontecchio reports on the recent Oracle Solaris 11.1 release, with comments from IDC's Al Gillen. Architects Matter: Making sense of the people who make sense of enterprise IT Why do architects matter? Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens suggests that you ask yourself this question the next time you take the elevator to the Oracle offices on the 45th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (or any other skyscraper, for that matter). If you had to take the stairs to get to those offices, who would you blame? "You get the picture," he says. "Architecture is essential for any necessarily complex structure, be it a building or an enterprise." (Read the article) Thought for the Day "I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Firefox/vista not showing div tag

  - by flavour404

  Hi, I have a div tag which should be displayed at the bottom of a page given a set of circumstances. On my machine XP/IE, chrome, firefox, opera (all latest versions) the div shows up fine. But on my bosses machine, running vista with Firefox 3.6 for some reason the div tag is not showing up. However, if i go to another machine with vista and firefox the div tag shows up fine. My question is, what could have been set in firefox that would cause this div tag to now be displayed. It is there, if you resize the window then the tag flickers into view and then disappears again... <div id="savePane" style="position:absolute;left:0px;top:457px;width:100%;height:40px;border-top:#EFECDC 1px solid;padding:5px; visibility:visible;"> <table width="100%"> <tr> <td width="130" align="left"> Ad Description: </td> <td align="left"> <input type="text" id="adDescription" style="width: 270px" onfocus="skipcycle=true;loadThumbnail(<%=AdToSaveID%>);" onblur="skipcycle=false;"> </td> <td align="right"> <% 'onblur='skipcycle=false' onfocus='skipcycle=true' is needed to do not focus on SaveToFolder window when user enter data to that window but focus on that input box instead %> <input type="button" onclick="saveItemToSelectedFolder('<%=AdToSaveID%>', '<%=AdNumber%>', '<%=Sequencer%>', '<%=PageNumber%>', '<%=Section%>', '<%=Zone%>', '<%=RunDate%>', '<%=PublicationID%>')" value="Save" style="width: 70px; margin-right: 10px" /> </td> </tr> </table> Thanks, Ron.

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• How to read time from recorded surveillance camera video?

  - by stressed_geek

  I have a problem where I have to read the time of recording from the video recorded by a surveillance camera. The time shows up on the top-left area of the video. Below is a link to screen grab of the area which shows the time. Also, the digit color(white/black) keeps changing during the duration of the video. http://i55.tinypic.com/2j5gca8.png Please guide me in the direction to approach this problem. I am a Java programmer so would prefer an approach through Java. EDIT: Thanks unhillbilly for the comment. I had looked at the Ron Cemer OCR library and its performance is much below our requirement. Since the ocr performance is less than desired, I was planning to build a character set using the screen grabs for all the digits, and using some image/pixel comparison library to compare the frame time with the character-set which will show a probabilistic result after comparison. So I was looking for a good image comparison library(I would be OK with a non-java library which I can run using the command-line). Also any advice on the above approach would be really helpful.

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