blogs - Page 135 - Developer IT

O’Reilly offer to 05:00 PT 12/Aug/2014 - Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2013

- by TATWORTH

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2014/08/05/orsquoreilly-offer-to-0500-pt-12aug2014---ivor-hortons-beginning.aspxUntil 05:00 PT 12/Aug/2014, O’Reilly at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118845714.do?code=WKCPPS are offering 50% off Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2013. “This latest edition of the bestselling book on the C++ language follows the proven approach that has made all of Ivor Horton’s C++ books so popular. Horton provides a comprehensive introduction to both the Standard C++ language, and to Visual C++. The book—thoroughly updated for the 2013 release—shows readers how to build real-world applications using Visual C++. No previous programming experience is required. The author uses numerous step-by-step programming examples to guide readers through the ins and outs of C++ development.”

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Not Dead, Just Busy

- by MOSSLover

So I didn’t die in a freak smelting accident yet, but I have been dealing with a lot of different things. I had to take a bit of a break to deal with the cat death issue. I am not fully recovered, because well it just happened a few months ago. It kind of sucked. Plus the apartment feels a lot bigger. Then you have the whole New York Comic Con thing where I had to plan some cosplay costumes. I have been trying to find time to hang out with friends and have a social life. That plus I built an entire presentation for iOS development for New York Code Camp. I am also planning a couple MS Community dinners (namely one a week from Tuesday) plus a give camp. I am also planning a vacation around SPS UK plus I will be at SPC. Life is just incredibly hectic and when you factor in dating to the mix it’s gotten insane to the point where some day I just have to go dark. Hence the lack of blogging. I am just trying to keep up with everything and everyone without losing myself. If you guys will be at SPC or SPS UK I will be at both places this year. Stop by the Planet Technologies booth and see me or I’ll be around somewhere. I am really sorry if I don’t remember you from an event or if you are someone following me on twitter. I am trying to get better at the mnemonic memory devices, but I think things broke down around the 47th event I attended or spoke at or something to that nature. If anyone wants to talk to Cathy, Lori, or I about Women in SharePoint definitely find us at the event. Anyway good night and good luck guys. I promise to check back at least once before the year ends. In the meantime twitter stalking is always possible. Sometimes I even respond back. Technorati Tags: SPC,SPS UK,NYCC,NYC Code Camp,MOSSLover

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Software Engineering Practices – Different Projects should have different maturity levels

- by Dylan Smith

I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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Does HTML 5 “Rich vs. Reach” a False Choice?

- by andrewbrust

The competition between the Web and proprietary rich platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iPhone/iPad, Adobe’s Flash/AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, is not new. But with the emergence of HTML 5 and imminent support for it in the next release of the major Web browsers, the battle is heating up. And with the announcements made Wednesday at Google's I/O conference, it's getting kicked up yet another notch. The impact of this platform battle on companies in the media and advertising world, and the developers who serve them, is significant. The most prominent question is whether video and rich media online will shift towards pure HTML and away from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In fact, certain features in HTML 5 make it suitable for development for line of business applications as well, further threatening those plug-in technologies. So what's the deal? Is this real or hype? To answer that question, I've done my own research into HTML 5's features and talked to several media-focused, New York area developers to get their opinions. I present my findings to you in this post. Before bearing down into HTML 5 specifics and practitioners’ quotes, let's set the context. To understand what HTML 5 can do, take a look at this video of Sports Illustrated’s HTML 5 prototype. This should start to get you bought into the idea that HTML 5 could be a game-changer. Next, if you happen to have installed the beta version of Google's Chrome 5 browser, take a look at the page linked to below, and in that page, click on any of the game thumbnails to see what's possible, without a plug-in, in this brave new world. (Note, although the instructions for each game tell you to press the A key to start, press the Z key instead.). Here's the link: http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara As an adjunct to what's enabled by HTML 5, consider the various transforms that are part of CSS 3. If you're running Safari as your browser, the following link will showcase this live; if not, you'll see a bitmap that will give you an idea of what's possible: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms Are you starting to get the picture (literally)? What has up until now required browser plug-ins and other patches to HTML, most typically Flash, will soon be renderable, natively, in all major browsers. Moreover, it's looking likely that developers will be able to deliver such content and experiences in these browsers using one base of markup and script code (using straight JavaScript and/or jQuery), without resorting to browser-specific code and workarounds. If you're skeptical of this, I wouldn't blame you, especially with respect to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However, i can tell you with confidence that even Microsoft is dedicated to full-on HTML 5 support in version 9 of that browser, which is currently under development. So what’s new in HTML 5, specifically, that makes sites like this possible? The specification documents go into deep detail, and there’s no sense in rehashing them here, but a summary is probably in order. Here is a non-authoritative, but useful, list of the major new feature areas in HTML 5: 2D drawing capabilities and 3D transforms. 2D drawing instructions can be embedded statically into a Web page; application interactivity and animation can be achieved through script. As mentioned above, 3D transforms are technically part of version 3 of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) spec, rather than HTML 5, but they can nonetheless be thought of as part of the bundle. They allow for rendering of 3D images and animations that, together with 2D drawing, make HTML-based games much more feasible than they are presently, as the links above demonstrate. Embedded audio and video. A media player can appear directly in a rendered Web page, using HTML markup and no plug-ins. Alternately, player controls can be hidden and the content can play automatically. Major enhancements to form-based input. This includes such things as specification of required fields, embedding of text “hints” into a control, limiting valid input on a field to dates, email addresses or a list of values. There’s more to this, but the gist is that line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation, are supported directly Offline caching, local storage and client-side SQL database. These facilities allow Web applications to function more like native apps, even if no internet connection is available. User-defined data. Data (or metadata – data about data) can easily be embedded statically and/or retrieved and updated with Javascript code. This avoids having to embed that data in a separate file, or within script code. Taken together, these features position HTML to compete with, and perhaps overtake, Adobe’s Flash/AIR (and Microsoft’s Silverlight) as a viable Web platform for media, RIAs (rich internet applications – apps that function more like desktop software than Web sites) and interactive Web content, including games. What do players in the media world think about this? From the embedded video above, we know what Sports Illustrated (and, therefore, Time Warner) think. Hulu, the major Internet site for broadcast TV content, is on record as saying HTML5 video does not pass muster with them, at least not yet. YouTube, on the other hand, already has an experimental HTML 5-based version of their site. TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML 5 too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices. And the New York Times’ Web site now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash. They have to – otherwise iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users couldn’t see them in the Mobile Safari browser. What do media-focused developers think about all this? I talked to several to get their opinions. Michael Pinto is CEO and Founder of Very Memorable Design whose primary focus has been to help marketing directors get traction online. The firm’s client roster includes the likes Time, Inc., Scholastic and PBS. Pinto predicts that “More and more microsites that were done entirely in Flash will be done more and more using jQuery. I can also see slideshows and video now being done without Flash. However if you needed to create a game or highly interactive activity Flash would still be the way to go for the web.” A dissenting view comes from Jesse Erlbaum, CEO of The Erlbaum Group, LLC, which serves numerous clients in the magazine publishing sector. When I asked Erlbaum whether he thought HTML 5 and jQuery/JavaScript would steal significant market share from Flash, he responded “Not at all! In particular, not for media and advertising customers! These sectors are not generally in the business of making highly functional applications, which is the one place where HTML5/jQuery/etc really shines.” Ironically, Pinto’s firm is a heavy user of Flash for its projects and Erlbaum’s develops atop the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) stack. For whatever reason, each firm seems to see the other’s toolset as a more viable choice. But both agree that the developer tool story around HTML 5 is deficient. Pinto explains “What’s lost with [HTML 5 and Javascript] techniques is that there isn’t a single widely favored easy-to-use tool of choice for authoring. So with Flash you can get up and running right away and not worry about what is different from one browser to the next.“ Erlbaum agrees, saying: “HTML5/Javascript lacks a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) which is an essential part of Flash. If what someone is trying to make is primarily animation, it's a waste of time…to do this in Javascript. It can be done much more easily in Flash, and with greater cross-browser compatibility and consistency due to the ubiquity of Flash.” Adobe (maker of Flash since its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia) likely agrees. And for better or worse, they’ve decided to address this shortcoming of HTML 5, even at risk of diminishing their Flash platfrom. Yesterday Adobe announced that their hugely popular Deamweaver Web design authoring tool would directly support HTML 5 and CSS 3 development. In fact, the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is downloadable now from Adobe Labs. Maybe Adobe is bowing to pressure from ardent Web professionals like Scott Kellum, Lead Designer at Channel V Media, a digital and offline branding firm, serving the media and marketing sectors, among others. Kellum told me that HTML 5 “…will definitely move people away from Flash. It has many of the same functionalities with faster load times and better accessibility. HTML5 will help Flash as well: with the new caching methods you can now even run Flash apps offline.” Although all three Web developers I interviewed would agree that Flash is still required for more sophisticated applications, Kellum seems to have put his finger on why HTML 5 may nonetheless dominate. In his view, much of the Web development out there has little need for high-end capabilities: “Most people want to add a little punch to a navigation bar or some video and now you can get the biggest bang for your buck with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.” I’ve already mentioned that Google’s ongoing I/O conference, at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, is driving the HTML 5 news cycle, big time. And Google made many announcements of their own, including the open sourcing of their VP8 video codec, new enterprise-oriented capabilities for its App Engine cloud offering, and the creation of the Chrome Web Store, which the company says will make it easier to find and “install” Web applications, in a fashion similar to the way users procure native apps on various mobile platforms. HTML 5 looks to be disruptive, especially to the media world. And even if the technology ends up disappointing, the chatter around it alone is causing big changes in the technology world. If the richness it promises delivers, then magazine publishers and non-text digital advertisers may indeed have a platform for creating compelling content that loads quickly, is standards-based and will render identically in (the newest versions of) all major Web browsers. Can this development in the digital arena save the titans of the print world? I can’t predict, but it’s going to be fun to watch, and the competitive innovation from all players in both industries will likely be immense.

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St. Louis Day of .NET 2011

- by Scott Spradlin

The St. Louis .NET User Group is proud to announce that the St. Louis Day of .NET 2011 developers conference is officially open for registration. The fee for the two-day event remains the same as last year at $200.00 per attendee. However, if you register now through July 1, you will qualify for an “early bird” discount of $75.00, making the total cost only $125.00 per attendee. Act quickly to take advantage of this discount! (Invoicing is available for groups of 5 or more.) There are already 33 confirmed speakers and 51 confirmed sessions, with more being added each week. You can find biographies of the speakers, as well as abstracts of the scheduled sessions, on our conference web site. A full agenda will be provided soon and a mobile session builder is being constructed. The event will once again be held in the Ameristar Casino & Resort this year. Hotel rooms are available on-site, as they have been the prior two years. Friday night will we will host our annual attendee social networking night, where you can grab a bite to eat and talk with speakers and sponsors in a relaxed atmosphere. This will be held in the nightclub area of the Ameristar and is exclusively available to the attendees at no additional charge. A large part of the success of this event is due to the ongoing support of our great sponsors. If your organization would be interested in a sponsorship opportunity, details are available on the web site, or you can email [email protected]. Thanks to the current sponsors who have already stepped forward for this year’s event! Register today! You are encouraged to tweet, blog, or otherwise help spread the word! http://www.StLouisDayOfDotNet.com

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Power Dynamic Database-Driven Websites with MySQL & PHP

- by Antoinette O'Sullivan

Join major names among MySQL customers by learning to power dynamic database-driven websites with MySQL & PHP. With the MySQL and PHP: Developing Dynamic Web Applications course, in 4 days, you learn how to develop applications in PHP and how to use MySQL efficiently for those applications! Through a hands-on approach, this instructor-led course helps you improve your PHP skills and combine them with time-proven database management techniques to create best-of-breed web applications that are efficient, solid and secure. You can currently take this course as a: Live Virtual Class (LVC): There are a number events on the schedule to suit different timezones in January 2013 and March 2013. With an LVC, you get to follow this live instructor-led class from your own desk - so no travel expense or inconvenience. In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to attend this class. Here are some events already on the scheduled: Where When Delivery Language Lisbon, Portugal 15 April 2013 European Portugese Porto, Portugal 15 April 2013 European Portugese Barcelona, Spain 28 February 2013 Spanish Madrid, Spain 4 March 2013 Spanish If you do not see an event that suits you, register your interest in an additional date/location/delivery language. If you want more indepth knowledge on developing with MySQL and PHP, consider the MySQL for Developers course. For full details on these and all courses on the authentic MySQL curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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SLK opens SCORM package as a ZIP file

- by Cherie Riesberg

Symptom: After installing SharePoint Learning Kit successfully, (http://www.codeplex.com/SLK), everything works except that the SCORM package (a ZIP extension) is opening as a ZIP file instead of a course. You get the normal ZIP message "Do you want to open or save this file?" Problem: The package is zipped at the upper folder level and does not create a manifest that allows SharePoint to recognize it as a SCORM file instead of a ZIP file. Solution: Add the contents of the course to the ZIP, not the outer (uppermost) folder. This creates a ZIP file that SharePoint can recognize as a SCORM package.

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Build Mobile App for E-Business Suite Using SOA Suite and ADF Mobile

- by Michelle Kimihira

With the upcoming release of Oracle ADF Mobile, I caught up with Srikant Subramaniam, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Fusion Middleware post OpenWorld to learn about the cool hands-on lab at OpenWorld. For those of you who missed it, you will want to keep reading... Author: Srikant Subramaniam, Senior Principal Product Manager,Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle ADF Mobile enables rapid and declarative development of native on-device mobile applications. These native applications provide a richer experience for smart devices users running Apple iOS or other mobile platforms. Oracle ADF Mobile protects Oracle customers from technology shifts by adopting a metadata-based development framework that enables developer to develop one app (using Oracle JDeveloper), and deploy to multiple device platforms (starting with iOS and Android). Oracle ADF Mobile also enables IT organizations to leverage existing expertise in web-based and Java development by adopting a hybrid application architecture that brings together HTML5, Java, and device native container: HTML5 allows developer to deliver device-native user experiences while maintaining portability across different platforms Java allows developers to create modules to support business logic and data services Native container provides integration into device services such as camera, contacts, etc All these technologies are packaged into a development framework that supports declarative application development through Oracle JDeveloper. ADF Mobile also provides out of box integratoin with key Fusion Middleware components, such as SOA Suite and Business Process Management (BPM). Oracle Fusion Middleware provides the necessary infrastructure to extend business processes and services to the mobile device -- enabling the mobile user to participate in human tasks – without the additional “mobile middleware” layer. When coupled with Oracle SOA Suite, this combination can execute business transactions on Oracle E-Business Suite (or any Oracle Application). Demo Use Case: Mobile E-Business Suite (iExpense) Approvals Using an employee expense approval scenario, we illustrate how to use Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle ADF Mobile to build application extensions that integrate intelligently with Oracle Applications (For example, E-Business Suite). Building these extensions using Oracle Fusion middleware and ADF makes modifications simple, quick to implement, and easy to maintain/upgrade. As described earlier, this approach also extends Fusion Middleware to mobile users without the additional "Mobile Middleware" layer. The approver is presented with a list of expense reports that have been submitted for approval. These expense reports are retrieved from the backend E-Business Suite and displayed on the mobile device. Approval (or rejection) of the expense report kicks off the workflow in E-Business Suite and takes it to completion. The demo also shows how to integrate with native device services such as email, contacts, BI dashboards as well as a prebuilt PDF viewer (this is especially useful in the expense approval scenario, as there is often a need for the approver to access the submitted receipts). Summary Oracle recommends Fusion Middleware as the application integration platform to deliver critical enterprise data and processes to mobile applications. Pre-built connectors between Fusion Middleware and Applications greatly accelerates the integration process. Instead of building individual integration points between mobile applications and individual enterprise applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware enables IT organizations to leverage a common platform to support both desktop and mobile application. Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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UPK Professional Customer Success Story: Medtronic

- by [email protected]

In case you missed the live event, be sure to listen to last week's UPK Customer iSeminar featuring Medtronic. This was the first iSeminar in our quarterly series to showcase UPK Professional (UPK and Knowledge Pathways). Donna Miller and Staci Gilbert gave viewers an inside look at samples of Medtronic's content as they shared their experiences, methodology and best practices for use of the solution. Here are some highlights of the call: • Medtronic initially purchased UPK Professional to support a multi-year, global SAP rollout for 9,000 end users located in 24 countries. • As time went on, they expanded their use of UPK Professional to include several of their other enterprise applications: PeopleSoft, Siebel CRM, Hyperion Financial Management, a number of SAP bolt-ons, Documentum, TrackWise, and many others. • In combination with their Saba LMS, UPK Professional has allowed Medtronic to create, deploy, track and certify consistent end user training for critical transactions and processes across their organization worldwide - essential for a company in a heavily regulated industry. • For key pieces of content or certain end user populations, some Medtronic business units localize/translate the global UPK content. Staci demonstrated examples of their SAP content which has been translated into Japanese. • In the live SAP environment, end users rely on UPK's context sensitive in-application performance support. Medtronic has found this to be very helpful post go-live, giving just-in-time support so end users are confident in a new system or when performing tasks they don't often touch (at quarter or year end). UPK also serves as Medtronic's internal Google. • Medtronic has realized savings on many fronts: reduction in support calls due to in-application performance support, elimination of their training clients, and speedier training (1.5 days rather than 5-7 days) of temporary workers by moving from ILT to a blended solution that includes UPK simulations for eLearning. Thanks again to Donna and Staci for an exceptional presentation. They offered so many great examples for anyone who's looking for ways to get more out of UPK or interested in learning about UPK Professional: Knowledge Pathways. - Karen Rihs, Oracle UPK Outbound Product Management

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Consuming Hello World pagelet in WebCenter Spaces

- by astemkov

Introduction The goal of this exercise is to show you how can you use Hello World pagelet that you just created from your web space. Assumptions Let's assume the following: Pagelet Producer is running on http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/ WebCenter is running on http://webcenter.company.com:8888/webcenter/ You created Hello_World pagelet as described here. For our exercise we will need a space created. So let's login into WebCenter Portal and create a space called "myspace" using "Portal Site" template: Registering Pagelet Producer with WebCenter portal In order to use our newly created pagelet from WebCenter Spaces, we first need to register Pagelet Producer: Click "Administraion" link on WebCenter toolbar Open the "Configuration" tab Click on "Services" link on the upper-left corner of the page Click on "Portlet Producers" link on the right hand pane of the screen Click on "Register" button Select "Pagelet Producer" radio button and type Producer Name = "MyPageletProducer" Server URL = http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/ Click "Test" button If everything is succesful you will see the following screen: Now click "OK'. Pagelet producer is registered: Inserting Hello World pagelet to WebCenter Space Now let's insert Hello World pagelet into "myspace" page: Let's go back to "myspace", click on the icon in a upper-right corner of the page and select "Edit Page" Click on one of the "Add Content" buttons: Select "Mash-Ups": Select "Pagelet Producers: You will see the MyPageletProducer that we just registered: Click on it. You will see the library "MyLib" that contains our "Hello_World" pagelet. Click on "MyLib" and you will see "Hello_World" pagelet. Click on "Add" button, and then "Close" button. Click "Save" button, and then "Close". Now we see that our "Hello World" pagelet is inserted into "myspace" page:

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JavaOne pictures and Community Commentary on JCP Awards

- by heathervc

We posted some pictures from JCP related events at JavaOne 2012 on the JCP Facebook page today. The 2012 JCP Program Award winners and some of the nominees responded to the community recognition of their achievements during some of the JCP events last week. “Our job on the EC is to balance the need of innovation – so we don’t standardize too early, or too late. We try to find that sweet spot that makes innovation and standardization work together, and not against each other.”- Ben Evans, CEO of jClarity and Executive Committee (EC) representative of the London Java Community, 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Winner“SouJava has been evangelizing the Java platform, promoting the Java ecosystem in Brazil, and contributing to JSRs for several years. It’s very gratifying to have our work recognized, on behalf of many developers and Java User Groups around the world. This really is the work of a large group of people, represented by the few that can be here tonight.”- Michael Santos, representative of SouJava, 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Winner "In the last years Credit Suisse has contributed to the development of Java EE specifications through participation in many customer advisory boards, through statements of requirements for extensions to the core Java related products in use, and active participation in JSRs. Winning the JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Award 2012 is very encouraging for our engagement and also demonstrates the level of expertise and commitment to drive the evolution of Java. Victor Grazi is happy and honored to receive this award." - Susanne Cech Previtali, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Credit Suisse, accepting award for 2012 JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Winner "Managing a JSR is difficult. There are so many decisions to be made and so many good and varied opinions, you never really know if you have decided correctly. The key to success is transparency and collaboration. I am truly humbled by receiving this award, there are so many other active JSRs.” Victor added that going forward in the JCP EC, they would like to simplify and open the process of participation – being addressed in the JCP.Next initiative of the JCP EC. "We would also like to encourage the engagement of universities, professors and students – as an important part of the Java community. While innovation is the lifeblood of our community and industry, without strong standards and compatibility requirements, we all end up in a maze of technology where everything is slightly different and doesn’t quite work with everything else." Victo Grazi, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Credit Suisse, 2012 JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Winner“I am very pleased, of course, to accept this award, but the credit really should go to all of those who have participated in the work of the JCP, while pushing for changes in the way it operates. JCP.Next represents three JSRs. The first two are done, but the final step, JSR 358, is the complicated one, and it will bring in the lawyers. Just to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with, it affects licensing, intellectual property, patents, implementations not based on the Reference Implementation (RI), the role of the RI, compatibility policy, possible changes to the Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK), transparency, where do individuals fit in, open source, and more.”- Patrick Curran, JCP Chair, Spec Lead on JCP.Next JSRs (JSR 348, JSR 355 and JSR 358), 2012 JCP Most Significant JSR Winner“I’m especially glad to see the JCP community recognize JCP.Next for its importance. The governance work it represents is KEY to moving the Java platform forward and the success of the technology.”- John Rizzo, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Aplix Corporation, JSR Expert Group Member “I am deeply honored to be nominated. I had the privilege to receive two awards on behalf of Expert Groups and Spec Leads two years ago. But this time, I am nominated personally, which values my own contribution to the JCP, and of course, participation in JSRs and the EC work. I’m a fan of Agile Principles and Values Working. Being an Agile Coach and Consultant, I use it for some of the biggest EC Member companies and projects. It fuels my ability to help the JCP become more agile, lean and transparent as part of the JCP.Next effort.” - Werner Keil, Individual Executive Committee (EC) Member, a 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Nominee, JSR Expert Group Member“The JCP ever has been some kind of institution for me,” Markus said. “If in technical doubt, I go there, look for the specifications of the implementation I work with at the moment and verify what I had observed. Since the beginning of my Java journey more than 12 years back now, I always had a strong relationship with the JCP. Shaping the future of a technology by joining the JCP – giving feedback and contributing to the road ahead through individual JSRs – that brings you to a whole new level.”Calling himself, “the new kid on the block,” he explained that for years he was afraid to join the JCP and contribute. But in reality, “Every single one of the big names I meet from the different Expert Groups is a nice person. People you can actually work with,” he says. “And nobody blames you for things you don't know. As long as you are committed and bring what is worth the most: passion, experiences and the desire to make a difference.” - Markus Eisele, a 2012 JCP Member of the Year Nominee, JSR Expert Group MemberCongratulations again to all of the nominees and winners of the JCP Program Awards. Next year, we will add another award for the group of JUG members (not an entire JUG) that makes the best contribution to the Adopt-a-JSR program. Let us know if you have other suggestions or improvements.

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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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Vermeidung von SOA Anti-Patterns mittels AIA

- by Hans Viehmann

Gerade ist mir ein White Paper des Enterprise Architecture Teams in die Hände gefallen, das sich mit SOA Anti-Patterns befasst. Es ist zwar kein AIA Paper im eigentlichen Sinne, aber mit AIA hat man natürlich eine gute Unterstützung darin, die dort beschriebenen Fehler zu vermeiden. Das White Paper behandelt Themen wie: Vermeidung von SOA Silos SOA Reifegrad und Projekt-Management Ausuferndes Service Portfolio Umgang mit Referenz-Architekturen EAI 2.0 - Punkt-zu-Punkt Integration auf offenen Standards Ein Link auf das Dokument ist unten angefügt - viel Vergnügen bei der Lektüre ... Oracle White Paper: SOA Anti-Patterns.

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Podcast Show Notes: Fear and Loathing in SOA

- by Bob Rhubart

The latest program (#47) in the Arch2Arch podcast series is the first of three segments from another virtual mini-meet-up with architects from the OTN community, recorded on March 9, 2010. In keeping with the meet-up format, I sent an invitation to my list of past participants in Arch2Arch panel discussions. The following people showed up to take seats at the virtual table and drive the conversation: Hajo Normann is a SOA architect and consultant at EDS in Frankfurt Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile | Books Jeff Davies is a Senior Product Manager at Oracle, and is the primary author of The Definitive Guide to SOA: Oracle Service Bus Homepage | Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Pat Shepherd is an enterprise architect with the Oracle Enterprise Solutions Group. Oracle Mix | LinkedIn | Blog This first segment focuses on a discussion of the persistent fear of SOA the panelists have observed among many developers and architects. Listen to Part 1 The discussion continues in next week’s segment with a look at the misinformation and misunderstanding behind the fear of SOA, and a discussion of possible solutions. So stay tuned: RSS del.icio.us Tags: oracle,otn,arch2arch,podcast,soa,service-oriented architecture,enterprise architecture Technorati Tags: oracle,otn,arch2arch,podcast,soa,service-oriented architecture,enterprise architecture

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Solaris 11 Resources

- by user12618891

.. Oracle Solaris 11 (November, 2011) Oracle Solaris 11 Landing Page Download Oracle Solaris 11 Oracle Solaris 11 Documentation Solaris 11 End-of-Life Notices What's New in Oracle Solaris 11 (blog) Oracle Solaris 11 Feature Demo Videos (blog) Solaris 11 Developer Resources (November, 2011) Oracle Solaris 11 ISV Adoption Guide Oracle Solaris 11 Preflight Checker The IPS System Repository (blog) Packaging and Delivering Software with the Image Packaging System - A Developer's Guide How to Create and Publish packages to an IPS Repository on Solaris 11 Solaris 10 Branded zone VM Templates for Solaris 11 (blog) Oracle Solaris 11 Security: What's New For Developers Optimizing Application with Oracle Solaris Studio Tools and CompilersOther Solaris 11 Technology Spotlights (Landing Page)

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OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam

- by JuergenKress

OOW 2013 Summary for Fusion Middleware Architects & Administrators by Simon Haslam This September during Oracle OpenWorld 2013 the weather in San Francisco, as you see can from the photo, was exceptionally sunny. The dramatic final few days of the Americas Cup sailing competition, being held every day in the bay, coincided with the conference and meant that there was almost a holiday feel to the whole event. Here's my annual round-up of what I think was most interesting at OpenWorld 2013 for Fusion Middleware architects and administrators; I hope you find it useful and if you think I've missed something please add a comment! WebLogic and Cloud Application Foundation (CAF) The big WebLogic release of the year has already happened a few months ago with 12.1.2 so I won't duplicate that here. Will Lyons discussed the WebLogic and Coherence roadmap which essentially is that 12.1.3 will probably be released to coincide with SOA 12c next year and that 12.1.4, the next feature-rich WebLogic release, is more likely to be in 2015. This latter release will probably include full Java EE 7 support, have enhancements for multi-tenancy and further auto-scaling features to support increased density (i.e. more WebLogic usage for the same amount of hardware). There's a new Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (OVAB) out already and an Oracle Traffic Director (OTD) 12c release round the corner too. Also of relevance to administrators is that Oracle has increased the support lifetime for Fusion Middleware 11g (e.g. WebLogic 10.3.6) so that Premier Support will now run to the end of 2018 and Extended Support until 2021 - this should remove any Oracle-driven pressure to upgrade at least. Java Mission Control Java Mission Control (JMC) is the HotSpot Java 7 version of JRockit 6 Mission Control, a very nice performance monitoring tool from Oracle's BEA acquisition. Flight Recorder is a feature built into the JVM which records diagnostic events into, typically, a circular buffer which can then be used for historical analysis, particularly in the case of a JVM crash or hang. It's been available separately for WebLogic only for perhaps a year now but, more significantly, it now includes JVM events and was bundled in with JDK7 Update 40 a few weeks ago. I attended a couple of interesting Java One sessions on JMC/Flight Recorder and have to say it's looking really good - it has all the previous JRMC features except for memory leak detector, plus some enhancements around operative sets and ECID filtering I think. Marcus also showed how you could add your own events into flight recorder by building your own event class - they are then available for graphing alongside all the other events in JMC. This uses a currently an unsupported/undocumented API, but it's also the same one that WebLogic uses for WLDF events so I imagine it is stable. I'm not sure quite whether this would be useful to custom applications, as opposed to infrastructure services or ISV packaged applications, but it was a very nice demonstration. I've been testing JMC / FR enabling on several environments recently and my confidence is growing - it feels robust and I think could very soon be part of my standard builds. Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: OOW,Simon Haslam,Oracle OpenWorld,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Defining the Features we would like to see

- by Patrick Liekhus

OK, now that we have a very rough idea of what we are building, let’s get a list of the top features that this application needs to allow us to do. In this next list we are not prioritizing them yet, just getting on paper the high level backlog of items that this system must do. Add a new task to my work queue Change the status of the task Print a hard copy of the task list by day for my records Log a phone conversation A manager should be able to assign tasks to another user How do we login? Change the Covey roles per user Manage the statuses used Manage the Covey quadrants Can we make this available on the following user interfaces? Windows Desktop Web Browser Sliverlight (WPF) Excel Add-in Outlook Add-in Android Devices iPhone Devices Windows Mobile Devices Blackberry Devices While this looks like a simple spread sheet, it can get pretty complex and busy quickly. Next time we will work on making this into a Product Backlog and prioritizing the features we would like to see.

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BUILD 2013 Session–What’s New In XAML

- by Tim Murphy

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/build-2013-sessionndashwhatrsquos-new-in-xaml.aspx If ever there was a session that you felt like your head was going to explode, this one would do it. Tim Heuer proceeded to try to fit as many of the changes and additions to XAML as he could in one hour. There were a number of improvements that struck me. The first was the fact that we no longer need to put stack panels in the AppBar in order to add buttons. This has been changed to a CommandBar which at the very least makes the markup read more cleanly. Now if they would just bring this same improvement to Windows Phone we would be set. There was a lot of cheering at the beginning of his talk when he showed that there are now date time pickers. I understand that it makes life easier, but I just couldn’t get that excited. The couple of features that did grab my attention being able to select a group of tags and then add an encapsulating tag such as a StackPanel around them and the fact that they have optimized XAML so that now runs on average 25% faster. I’d go crazy trying to list off all the improvements and new features so be sure to go and review the recording of the session. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,XAML,Windows 8.1

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Who is Jeremiah Owyang?

- by Michael Hylton

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Q: What’s your current role and what career path brought you here? J.O.: I'm currently a partner and one of the founding team members at Altimeter Group. I'm currently the Research Director, as well as wear the hat of Industry Analyst. Prior to joining Altimeter, I was an Industry Analyst at Forrester covering Social Computing, and before that, deployed and managed the social media program at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara. Around that time, I started a career blog called Web Strategy which focused on how companies were using the web to connect with customers --and never looked back. Q: As an industry analyst, what are you focused on these days? J.O.: There are three trends that I'm focused my research on at this time: 1) The Dynamic Customer Journey: Individuals (both b2c and b2b) are given so many options in their sources of data, channels to choose from and screens to consume them on that we've found that at each given touchpoint there are 75 potential permutations. Companies that can map this, then deliver information to individuals when they need it will have a competitive advantage and we want to find out who's doing this. 2) One of the sub themes that supports this trend is Social Performance. Yesterday's social web was disparate engagement of humans, but the next phase will be data driven, and soon new technologies will emerge to help all those that are consuming, publishing, and engaging on the social web to be more efficient with their time through forms of automation. As you might expect, this comes with upsides and downsides. 3) The Sentient World is our research theme that looks out the furthest as the world around us (even inanimate objects) become 'self aware' and are able to talk back to us via digital devices and beyond. Big data, internet of things, mobile devices will all be this next set. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? J.O.: The lines between our work and personal lives are dissolving, and this leads to a greater upside of being always connected and have deeper relationships with those that are not. It also means a downside of society expectations that we're always around and available for colleagues, customers, and beyond. In the future, a balance will be sought as we seek to achieve the goals of family, friends, work, and our own personal desires. All of this is being ironically written at 430 am on a Sunday am. Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? J.O.: A great question, thanks. There are a few sources of information to find out, I'll lead with the first which is my blog at web-strategist.com. A few times a week I'll publish my industry insights (hires, trends, forces, funding, M&A, business needs) as well as on twitter where I'll point to all the news that's fit to print @jowyang. As my research reports go live (we publish them for all to read --called Open Research-- at no cost) they'll emerge on my blog, or checkout the research tab to find out more now. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/research/ Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon? J.O.: Absolutely! This coming Thursday, September 13th, I’m doing a webcast with Oracle on “Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise”. This is going to be a great discussion with Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Oracle and Christian Finn, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. I’m looking forward to a great discussion around all those issues that so many companies are struggling with these days as they realize how much social media is impacting their business. It’s changing the way your customers and employees interact with your brand. Today it’s no longer a matter of when to become a social-enabled enterprise, but how to become a successful one. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast? J.O.: Below is a 15 minute video which encapsulates Altimeter’s themes on the Dynamic Customer Journey and the Sentient World. I’m really proud to have taken an active role in the first ever LeWeb outside of Paris. This one, which was featured in downtown London across the street from Westminster Abbey was sold out. If you’ve not heard of LeWeb, this is a global Internet conference hosted by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, a power couple that stem from Paris but are also living in Silicon Valley, this is one of my favorite conferences to connect with brands, technology innovators, investors and friends. Altimeter was able to play a minor role in suggesting the theme for the event “Faster Than Real Time” which stems off previous LeWebs that focused on the “Real time web”. In this radical state, companies are able to anticipate the needs of their customers by using data, technology, and devices and deliver meaningful experiences before customers even know they need it. I explore two of three of Altimeter’s research themes, the Dynamic Customer Journey, and the Sentient World in my speech, but due to time, did not focus on Adaptive Organization.

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Who is Jeremiah Owyang?

- by Michael Snow

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Q: What’s your current role and what career path brought you here? J.O.: I'm currently a partner and one of the founding team members at Altimeter Group. I'm currently the Research Director, as well as wear the hat of Industry Analyst. Prior to joining Altimeter, I was an Industry Analyst at Forrester covering Social Computing, and before that, deployed and managed the social media program at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara. Around that time, I started a career blog called Web Strategy which focused on how companies were using the web to connect with customers --and never looked back. Q: As an industry analyst, what are you focused on these days? J.O.: There are three trends that I'm focused my research on at this time: 1) The Dynamic Customer Journey: Individuals (both b2c and b2b) are given so many options in their sources of data, channels to choose from and screens to consume them on that we've found that at each given touchpoint there are 75 potential permutations. Companies that can map this, then deliver information to individuals when they need it will have a competitive advantage and we want to find out who's doing this. 2) One of the sub themes that supports this trend is Social Performance. Yesterday's social web was disparate engagement of humans, but the next phase will be data driven, and soon new technologies will emerge to help all those that are consuming, publishing, and engaging on the social web to be more efficient with their time through forms of automation. As you might expect, this comes with upsides and downsides. 3) The Sentient World is our research theme that looks out the furthest as the world around us (even inanimate objects) become 'self aware' and are able to talk back to us via digital devices and beyond. Big data, internet of things, mobile devices will all be this next set. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? J.O.: The lines between our work and personal lives are dissolving, and this leads to a greater upside of being always connected and have deeper relationships with those that are not. It also means a downside of society expectations that we're always around and available for colleagues, customers, and beyond. In the future, a balance will be sought as we seek to achieve the goals of family, friends, work, and our own personal desires. All of this is being ironically written at 430 am on a Sunday am. Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? J.O.: A great question, thanks. There are a few sources of information to find out, I'll lead with the first which is my blog at web-strategist.com. A few times a week I'll publish my industry insights (hires, trends, forces, funding, M&A, business needs) as well as on twitter where I'll point to all the news that's fit to print @jowyang. As my research reports go live (we publish them for all to read --called Open Research-- at no cost) they'll emerge on my blog, or checkout the research tab to find out more now. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/research/ Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon? J.O.: Absolutely! This coming Thursday, September 13th, I’m doing a webcast with Oracle on “Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise”. This is going to be a great discussion with Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Oracle and Christian Finn, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. I’m looking forward to a great discussion around all those issues that so many companies are struggling with these days as they realize how much social media is impacting their business. It’s changing the way your customers and employees interact with your brand. Today it’s no longer a matter of when to become a social-enabled enterprise, but how to become a successful one. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast? J.O.: Below is a 15 minute video which encapsulates Altimeter’s themes on the Dynamic Customer Journey and the Sentient World. I’m really proud to have taken an active role in the first ever LeWeb outside of Paris. This one, which was featured in downtown London across the street from Westminster Abbey was sold out. If you’ve not heard of LeWeb, this is a global Internet conference hosted by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, a power couple that stem from Paris but are also living in Silicon Valley, this is one of my favorite conferences to connect with brands, technology innovators, investors and friends. Altimeter was able to play a minor role in suggesting the theme for the event “Faster Than Real Time” which stems off previous LeWebs that focused on the “Real time web”. In this radical state, companies are able to anticipate the needs of their customers by using data, technology, and devices and deliver meaningful experiences before customers even know they need it. I explore two of three of Altimeter’s research themes, the Dynamic Customer Journey, and the Sentient World in my speech, but due to time, did not focus on Adaptive Organization.

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Who is Jeremiah Owyang?

- by Michael Hylton

Q: What’s your current role and what career path brought you here? J.O.: I'm currently a partner and one of the founding team members at Altimeter Group. I'm currently the Research Director, as well as wear the hat of Industry Analyst. Prior to joining Altimeter, I was an Industry Analyst at Forrester covering Social Computing, and before that, deployed and managed the social media program at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara. Around that time, I started a career blog called Web Strategy which focused on how companies were using the web to connect with customers --and never looked back. Q: As an industry analyst, what are you focused on these days? J.O.: There are three trends that I'm focused my research on at this time: 1) The Dynamic Customer Journey: Individuals (both b2c and b2b) are given so many options in their sources of data, channels to choose from and screens to consume them on that we've found that at each given touchpoint there are 75 potential permutations. Companies that can map this, then deliver information to individuals when they need it will have a competitive advantage and we want to find out who's doing this. 2) One of the sub themes that supports this trend is Social Performance. Yesterday's social web was disparate engagement of humans, but the next phase will be data driven, and soon new technologies will emerge to help all those that are consuming, publishing, and engaging on the social web to be more efficient with their time through forms of automation. As you might expect, this comes with upsides and downsides. 3) The Sentient World is our research theme that looks out the furthest as the world around us (even inanimate objects) become 'self aware' and are able to talk back to us via digital devices and beyond. Big data, internet of things, mobile devices will all be this next set. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? J.O.: The lines between our work and personal lives are dissolving, and this leads to a greater upside of being always connected and have deeper relationships with those that are not. It also means a downside of society expectations that we're always around and available for colleagues, customers, and beyond. In the future, a balance will be sought as we seek to achieve the goals of family, friends, work, and our own personal desires. All of this is being ironically written at 430 am on a Sunday am. Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? J.O.: A great question, thanks. There are a few sources of information to find out, I'll lead with the first which is my blog at web-strategist.com. A few times a week I'll publish my industry insights (hires, trends, forces, funding, M&A, business needs) as well as on twitter where I'll point to all the news that's fit to print @jowyang. As my research reports go live (we publish them for all to read --called Open Research-- at no cost) they'll emerge on my blog, or checkout the research tab to find out more now. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/research/ Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon? J.O.: Absolutely! This coming Thursday, September 13th, I’m doing a webcast with Oracle on “Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise”. This is going to be a great discussion with Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Oracle and Christian Finn, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. I’m looking forward to a great discussion around all those issues that so many companies are struggling with these days as they realize how much social media is impacting their business. It’s changing the way your customers and employees interact with your brand. Today it’s no longer a matter of when to become a social-enabled enterprise, but how to become a successful one. Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast? J.O.: Below is a 15 minute video which encapsulates Altimeter’s themes on the Dynamic Customer Journey and the Sentient World. I’m really proud to have taken an active role in the first ever LeWeb outside of Paris. This one, which was featured in downtown London across the street from Westminster Abbey was sold out. If you’ve not heard of LeWeb, this is a global Internet conference hosted by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, a power couple that stem from Paris but are also living in Silicon Valley, this is one of my favorite conferences to connect with brands, technology innovators, investors and friends. Altimeter was able to play a minor role in suggesting the theme for the event “Faster Than Real Time” which stems off previous LeWebs that focused on the “Real time web”. In this radical state, companies are able to anticipate the needs of their customers by using data, technology, and devices and deliver meaningful experiences before customers even know they need it. I explore two of three of Altimeter’s research themes, the Dynamic Customer Journey, and the Sentient World in my speech, but due to time, did not focus on Adaptive Organization.

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Getting UPK data into Excel

- by maria.cozzolino(at)oracle.com

Did you ever want someone to review your UPK outline outside of the Developer? You can send your outline to an Excel report, which can be distributed through email. Depending on how much additional data you want with your outline, there are two ways you can do this task. Basic data: • You can print a listing of all the items in the outline. • With your outline open, choose File/Print... • Choose the "Save document as" command on the right, and choose Excel (or xlsx). • HINT: If you have not expanded your entire outline, it's faster to use the commands in Developer to expand the entire outline. However, you can expand specific sections by clicking on them in the print preview. • NOTE: If you have the Details view displayed rather than the Player view, you can print all the data that appears in that view. Advanced data: If you desire a more detailed report, you can use the HP Quality Center publishing style, which also creates an Excel file. This style contains a default set of fields for use with Quality Center, but any of the metadata fields can be added to the report, and it can be used for more than just importing into HP Quality Center. To add additional columns to the HP Quality Center publishing style: 1. Make a copy of the publishing style. This process ensures that you have a good copy to revert to if something goes wrong with your customizations, and also allows you to keep your modifications when the software is upgraded. 2. Open the copy of the columnspec.xml file in your favorite XML editor - I use notepad. (This file is located in a language-specific folder in the HP Quality Center publishing style.) 3. Scroll down the columnspec file until you find the column to include. All the metadata fields that can be added to the report are listed in the columnspec file - you just need to tell the system to include the columns. 4. You will see a series of sections like this: 5. Change the value for "col export" to "yes". This will include the column in the Excel file. 6. If desired, change the value for "Play_ModesColHeader" to be whatever name you wish to appear in the Excel column heading. 7. Save the columnspec file. 8. Save the publishing style package. Now, when you publish for HP Quality Center, you will see your newly added columns. You can refer to the section on Customizing HP Quality Center Output in the Content Deployment Guide for additional customization details. Happy customization! I'd be interested in hearing what other uses you have for Excel reporting. Wishing you and yours a happy and healthy New Year! ~~Maria Cozzolino, Manager of Software Requirements and UI

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Weblogic domain scale up using EM Grid Control 11gR1

- by dmitry.nefedkin(at)oracle.com

As you know a weblogic domain consists of set of servers running independently or in a cluster mode, sharing the distributed resources. And in most environments weblogic cluster consists of multiple managed servers running simultaneously and working together to provide increased scalability and reliability. These servers can run on the same machine, or be located on different machines. It's a common task to increase a cluster's capacity by adding new machines to the cluster to host the new server instances. You can do it by manually installing weblogic binaries to the new host and use pack/unpack commands to add a managed server to this new host. But with Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11gR1 (EMGC) there is another way - Fusion Middleware Domain Scale Up procedure. I'm going to show you how it works.Here is a picture of my medrec_oradb weblogic domain, what is registered in EMGC. It contains an admin server and a cluster MedRecCluster with the single managed server MS1. Both admin and managed servers are on the same host oel46-vmware, it's a virtual machine with OEL 4.6 that runs inside our Oracle VM infrastructure. And here are the application deployments, note that couple of applications are deployed to the cluster.First of all I have to prepare a new machine that will host new managed sever of my cluster. I created new VM with OEL 5.4 using the corresponding Oracle VM template available in Oracle E-Delivery site for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM and named it wls1032. Next step is to install Oracle EM Grid Control 11gR1 Agent to this new host. You can download it from the OTN page and install it manually, or you can use Agent Installation Deployment procedure available in EMGC (Deployments->Agent Installation->Install Agent). Anyway, when you agent is up and running on the new machine, you will see it in EMGC Console in the Targets->Hosts subtab.Now we are ready to scale up our weblogic domain. Click the Deployments tab in Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, and then click Deployment Procedure. Select a Fusion Middleware Domain Scale Up procedure from the list, and click Schedule Deployment. The first page of the FMW Domain Scale Up Wizard is displayed and you can proceed with the deployment process.Select the domain from list, enter the working directory on the admin server host, and also fill the weblogic credentials for the administration server console and the OS credentials for the admin server host. Click Next button. The next step allows you to configure you domain, to add a new manager server to the cluster you should select the cluster in the tree and click Add Server button. Select the newly added server in a tree, choose the target host and enter the configuration details of your managed server. You can also add new machine and node manager details. Please note that you cannot change the values in Domain Location and Fusion Middleware Home fields, so these locations on the target host will be the same as for the admin server host. Working directory on the target host should have enough free space to store FMW home binaries and domain configuration files. In my experience the working directories should have at least 3 Gb of free space. The last thing you should fill is the OS credentials for the target host. The next steps allows you to schedule the execution of the procedure, it is started immediately in my example. The last step is just a review the configuration for the domain scale up. Click Submit to launch the process. You can track the status of the procedure execution by selecting Deployments->Deployment Procedures->Procedure Completion Status in the EMGC Console.As you can see in the picture below, the procedure consists of the many steps, and I'm going to share my experience about the issues that I had at some of the steps. Please keep in mind that you can always continue the execution from the last successfully completed step by clicking Retry button.Check OUI Prerequisites step may fail if the target host does not pass prerequisites checks for Weblogic Server installation such as amount of RAM, linux packages installed, etc. Create FMW Clone Archive step may fail if you do not have enough free space in the working directory on the administration server host.Transfer cloning archive to targets step may fail if the EMGC agents on the admin server host or on target host are not secured. You should secure the agent by issuing ./emctl secure agent command from $AGENT_HOME/bin directory and entering the agent registration password.Both Transfer cloning archive to targets and Apply Clone at target hosts steps may fail if you do not have enough free space in the working directory on the target host. The most complicated issue I had on the Run Inventory Collection step. The step failed and I noticed that the agent on the target server is also failed with the following error in the $AGENT_HOME/sysman/log/emagent.trc log file:2010-12-28 11:50:34,310 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: Failed to upload file A0000008.xml: Fatal Error.Response received: 500|ORA-20603: The timezone of the multiagent target (/Farm_Localhost_MedRec_medrec_oradb/medrec_oradb,weblogic_domain)is not consistent with the timezone (America/Los_Angeles) reported by other agents.2010-12-28 11:50:34,310 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: 1 Failure(s) in a row or XML error for A0000008.xml, retcode = -6, we give up2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 WARN upload: FxferSend: received fatal error in header from repository: https://oel46-vmware:1159/em/uploadFATAL_ERROR::500|ORA-20603: The timezone of the multiagent target (/Farm_Localhost_MedRec_medrec_oradb/medrec_oradb,weblogic_domain)is not consistent with the timezone (America/Los_Angeles) reported by other agents.2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: number of fatal error exceeds the limit 32010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: agent will shutdown now2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR : Signalled to Exit with status 55. Too many fatal upload failures2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: 1 Failure(s) in a row or XML error for A0000008.xml, retcode = -6, we give up2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-3044607680 ERROR main: EMAgent abnormal terminatingI checked the timezone of my domain target inside EMGC repositoryselect timezone_regionfrom mgmt_targets where target_type = 'weblogic_domain' and display_name = 'medrec_oradb'"TIMEZONE_REGION""America/Los_Angeles"Then checked the timezone of my agents and indeed, they differedselect target_name, timezone_region from mgmt_targets where type_display_name = 'Agent'"TARGET_NAME" "TIMEZONE_REGION""oel46-vmware:3872" "America/Los_Angeles""wls1032.imc.fors.ru:3872" "America/New_York"So I had to change the timezone on the wls1032 host and propagate this changes to the agent and to the EMGC repository. Here was the steps:issued system-config-date command on wls1032.imc.fors.ru and set timezone to "America/Los_Angeles"propagated the changes to the agent bu executing ./emctl resetTZ agent command from $AGENT_HOME/bin directoryconnected to EMGC repository as sysman and executed the following PL/SQL block: begin mgmt_target.set_agent_tzrgn('wls1032.imc.fors.ru:3872','America/Los_Angeles'); commit; end;After that I had to clear the pending uploads on wls1032.imc.fors.ru: rm -r $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/state/* rm -r $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/collection/* rm -r $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/upload/* rm $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/lastupld.xml rm $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/agntstmp.txt $AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl start agent $AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl clearstate agentThe last part of this solution was to resync the agent in EMGC console by clicking Agent Resynchronization button (please leave "Unblock agent on successful completion of agent resynchronization" checkbox checked in the next screen).After that I issued ./emctl upload command from $AGENT_HOME/bin on the wls1032 host, and my previous error disappeared, but I catched another one: EMD upload error: Failed to upload file A0000004.xml: HTTP error.Response received: ERROR-400|Data will be rejected for upload from agent 'https://wls1032.imc.fors.ru:3872/emd/main/', max size limit for direct load exceeded [7544731/5242880]So the uploading XML file size was 7 Mb, and the limit on OMS was 5 Mb. To increase the max file size limit to 20 Mb I had to connect to the OMS host and execute the following commands from $OMS_HOME/bin directory: ./emctl set property -name em.loader.maxDirectLoadFileSz -value 20971520 -module emoms ./emctl stop oms ./emctl start omsAfter that I issued ./emctl upload command from $AGENT_HOME/bin on the wls1032 one more time and it completed successfully. The agent uploaded the configuration information to the EMGC repository and I was able to see the results of my weblogic domain scale-up in EMGC Console.DeploymentsSo, now the weblogic cluster contains 2 managed servers located on the different hosts. This powerful feature of the Enterprise Manager Grid Control is a part of the WebLogic Server Management Pack Enterprise Edition.

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Refactor This (Ugly Code)!

- by Alois Kraus

Ayende has put on his blog some ugly code to refactor. First and foremost it is nearly impossible to reason about other peoples code without knowing the driving forces behind the current code. It is certainly possible to make it much cleaner when potential sources of errors cannot happen in the first place due to good design. I can see what the intention of the code is but I do not know about every brittle detail if I am allowed to reorder things here and there to simplify things. So I decided to make it much simpler by identifying the different responsibilities of the methods and encapsulate it in different classes. The code we need to refactor seems to deal with a handler after a message has been sent to a message queue. The handler does complete the current transaction if there is any and does handle any errors happening there. If during the the completion of the transaction errors occur the transaction is at least disposed. We can enter the handler already in a faulty state where we try to deliver the complete event in any case and signal a failure event and try to resend the message again to the queue if it was not inside a transaction. All is decorated with many try/catch blocks, duplicated code and some state variables to route the program flow. It is hard to understand and difficult to reason about. In other words: This code is a mess and could be written by me if I was under pressure. Here comes to code we want to refactor: private void HandleMessageCompletion( Message message, TransactionScope tx, OpenedQueue messageQueue, Exception exception, Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted, Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit) { var txDisposed = false; if (exception == null) { try { if (tx != null) { if (beforeTransactionCommit != null) beforeTransactionCommit(currentMessageInformation); tx.Complete(); tx.Dispose(); txDisposed = true; } try { if (messageCompleted != null) messageCompleted(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceError("An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"+ e); } return; } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceWarning("Failed to complete transaction, moving to error mode"+ e); exception = e; } } try { if (txDisposed == false && tx != null) { Trace.TraceWarning("Disposing transaction in error mode"); tx.Dispose(); } } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceWarning("Failed to dispose of transaction in error mode."+ e); } if (message == null) return; try { if (messageCompleted != null) messageCompleted(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceError("An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"+ e); } try { var copy = MessageProcessingFailure; if (copy != null) copy(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception moduleException) { Trace.TraceError("Module failed to process message failure: " + exception.Message+ moduleException); } if (messageQueue.IsTransactional == false)// put the item back in the queue { messageQueue.Send(message); } } You can see quite some processing and handling going on there. Yes this looks like real world code one did put together to make things work and he does not trust his callbacks. I guess these are event handlers which are optional and the delegates were extracted from an event to call them back later when necessary. Lets see what the author of this code did intend: private void HandleMessageCompletion( TransactionHandler transactionHandler, MessageCompletionHandler handler, CurrentMessageInformation messageInfo, ErrorCollector errors ) { // commit current pending transaction transactionHandler.CallHandlerAndCommit(messageInfo, errors); // We have an error for a null message do not send completion event if (messageInfo.CurrentMessage == null) return; // Send completion event in any case regardless of errors handler.OnMessageCompleted(messageInfo, errors); // put message back if queue is not transactional transactionHandler.ResendMessageOnError(messageInfo.CurrentMessage, errors); } I did not bother to write the intention here again since the code should be pretty self explaining by now. I have used comments to explain the still nontrivial procedure step by step revealing the real intention about all this complex program flow. The original complexity of the problem domain does not go away but by applying the techniques of SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) and some functional style but we can abstract the necessary complexity away in useful abstractions which make it much easier to reason about it. Since most of the method seems to deal with errors I thought it was a good idea to encapsulate the error state of our current message in an ErrorCollector object which stores all exceptions in a list along with a description what the error all was about in the exception itself. We can log it later or not depending on the log level or whatever. It is really just a simple list that encapsulates the current error state. class ErrorCollector { List<Exception> _Errors = new List<Exception>(); public void Add(Exception ex, string description) { ex.Data["Description"] = description; _Errors.Add(ex); } public Exception Last { get { return _Errors.LastOrDefault(); } } public bool HasError { get { return _Errors.Count > 0; } } } Since the error state is global we have two choices to store a reference in the other helper objects (TransactionHandler and MessageCompletionHandler)or pass it to the method calls when necessary. I did chose the latter one because a second argument does not hurt and makes it easier to reason about the overall state while the helper objects remain stateless and immutable which makes the helper objects much easier to understand and as a bonus thread safe as well. This does not mean that the stored member variables are stateless or thread safe as well but at least our helper classes are it. Most of the complexity is located the transaction handling I consider as a separate responsibility that I delegate to the TransactionHandler which does nothing if there is no transaction or Call the Before Commit Handler Commit Transaction Dispose Transaction if commit did throw In fact it has a second responsibility to resend the message if the transaction did fail. I did see a good fit there since it deals with transaction failures. class TransactionHandler { TransactionScope _Tx; Action<CurrentMessageInformation> _BeforeCommit; OpenedQueue _MessageQueue; public TransactionHandler(TransactionScope tx, Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeCommit, OpenedQueue messageQueue) { _Tx = tx; _BeforeCommit = beforeCommit; _MessageQueue = messageQueue; } public void CallHandlerAndCommit(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { if (_Tx != null && !errors.HasError) { try { if (_BeforeCommit != null) { _BeforeCommit(currentMessageInfo); } _Tx.Complete(); _Tx.Dispose(); } catch (Exception ex) { errors.Add(ex, "Failed to complete transaction, moving to error mode"); Trace.TraceWarning("Disposing transaction in error mode"); try { _Tx.Dispose(); } catch (Exception ex2) { errors.Add(ex2, "Failed to dispose of transaction in error mode."); } } } } public void ResendMessageOnError(Message message, ErrorCollector errors) { if (errors.HasError && !_MessageQueue.IsTransactional) { _MessageQueue.Send(message); } } } If we need to change the handling in the future we have a much easier time to reason about our application flow than before. After we did complete our transaction and called our callback we can call the completion handler which is the main purpose of the HandleMessageCompletion method after all. The responsiblity o the MessageCompletionHandler is to call the completion callback and the failure callback when some error has occurred. class MessageCompletionHandler { Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> _MessageCompletedHandler; Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> _MessageProcessingFailure; public MessageCompletionHandler(Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompletedHandler, Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageProcessingFailure) { _MessageCompletedHandler = messageCompletedHandler; _MessageProcessingFailure = messageProcessingFailure; } public void OnMessageCompleted(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { try { if (_MessageCompletedHandler != null) { _MessageCompletedHandler(currentMessageInfo, errors.Last); } } catch (Exception ex) { errors.Add(ex, "An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"); } if (errors.HasError) { SignalFailedMessage(currentMessageInfo, errors); } } void SignalFailedMessage(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { try { if (_MessageProcessingFailure != null) _MessageProcessingFailure(currentMessageInfo, errors.Last); } catch (Exception moduleException) { errors.Add(moduleException, "Module failed to process message failure"); } } } If for some reason I did screw up the logic and we need to call the completion handler from our Transaction handler we can simple add to the CallHandlerAndCommit method a third argument to the MessageCompletionHandler and we are fine again. If the logic becomes even more complex and we need to ensure that the completed event is triggered only once we have now one place the completion handler to capture the state. During this refactoring I simple put things together that belong together and came up with useful abstractions. If you look at the original argument list of the HandleMessageCompletion method I have put many things together: Original Arguments New Arguments Encapsulate Message message CurrentMessageInformation messageInfo Message message TransactionScope tx Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit OpenedQueue messageQueue TransactionHandler transactionHandler TransactionScope tx OpenedQueue messageQueue Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit Exception exception, ErrorCollector errors Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted MessageCompletionHandler handler Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageProcessingFailure The reason is simple: Put the things that have relationships together and you will find nearly automatically useful abstractions. I hope this makes sense to you. If you see a way to make it even more simple you can show Ayende your improved version as well.

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ODI 11g – How to override SQL at runtime?

- by David Allan

Following on from the posting some time back entitled ‘ODI 11g – Simple, Powerful, Flexible’ here we push the envelope even further. Rather than just having the SQL we override defined statically in the interface design we will have it configurable via a variable….at runtime. Imagine you have a well defined interface shape that you want to be fulfilled and that shape can be satisfied from a number of different sources that is what this allows - or the ability for one interface to consume data from many different places using variables. The cool thing about ODI’s reference API and this is that it can be fantastically flexible and useful. When I use the variable as the option value, and I execute the top level scenario that uses this temporary interface I get prompted (or can get prompted to be correct) for the value of the variable. Note I am using the <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","EMP", "SCOTT","D")@> notation for the table reference, since this is done at runtime, then the context will resolve to the correct table name etc. Each time I execute, I could use a different source provider (obviously some dependencies on KMs/technologies here). For example, the following groovy snippet first executes and the query uses SCOTT model with EMP, the next time it is from BOB model and the datastore OTHERS. m=new Properties(); m.put("DEMO.SQLSTR", "select empno, deptno from <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","EMP", "SCOTT","D")@>"); s=new StartupParams(m); runtimeAgent.startScenario("TOP", null, s, null, "GLOBAL", 5, null, true); m2=new Properties(); m2.put("DEMO.SQLSTR", "select empno, deptno from <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","OTHERS", "BOB","D")@>"); s2=new StartupParams(m); runtimeAgent.startScenario("TOP", null, s2, null, "GLOBAL", 5, null, true); You’ll need a patch to 11.1.1.6 for this type of capability, thanks to my ole buddy Ron Gonzalez from the Enterprise Management group for help pushing the envelope!

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