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• Live vom Oracle Partner Day 2012 in Frankfurt

  - by A&C Redaktion

  Frankfurt a. M. gegen 11:30 UhrCharmante Idee, mit einem Welcome-Lunch in den Oracle Partner Day 2012 zu starten. So kann man bei einem Snack auch gleich die beeindruckende Atmosphäre der Commerzbank Arena auf sich wirken lassen und ist, ehe man sich versieht, mit dem nebenstehenden Geschäftsführer, einer Managerin und zwei Vertriebsmitarbeitern in ein Gespräch über die jeweils letzten Stadionbesuche verwickelt. Überall fröhliches Wiedersehen, viele haben sich das letzte Mal vor genau einem Jahr getroffen, im Radisson Blu, beim OPN Day Satellite. So, die Masse setzt sich in Bewegung – auf geht’s zur Eröffnung: Silvia Kaske fängt an! 13:45 Uhr Die Keynotes waren mal wieder ein thematischer Rundumschlag – und ein kleines Who-is-Who im Oracle Universum zugleich: Silvia Kaske, Senior Director Channel A&C eröffnete den Partner Day, danach stellte David Callaghan (Senior Vice President UK, Ireland, Israel) die EMEA-Strategien für das FY13 vor und Jürgen Kunz (SVP Technology Northern Europe & Country Leader Germany) sprach über die Geschäftsmöglichkeiten mit Partnern. Christian Werner gab in seiner neuen Funktion als Senior Director Alliances & Channels Germany einen Überblick über die neue Struktur des Oracle Channels und stellte das deutsche Team vor. Zum Abschluss folgte mit Prof. Hermann Maurer ein Gastredner von der Academia Europaea, einer prominent besetzten akademischen Gesellschaft, die sich dem besseren Verständnis der Wissenschaft in der Öffentlichkeit verschrieben hat. Er wagte einen Blick in die Zukunft der IT: „Das Beste kommt erst noch“. Wie immer, in einem so komprimierten Programm, bleibt noch die eine oder andere Frage – aber jetzt ist ja Zeit, bei Coffee & Networking noch mal nachzufragen. Kurz nach 14 Uhr Viele haben inzwischen auch das erste Obergeschoss erkundet. In der Partner Service Zone ist das Angebot breit gefächert: Von Oracle Financing über das License Management bis hin zu OPN Specialized dreht sich hier alles um konkrete Angebote für Partner. Nach einem kurzen Abstecher in die ISV-Lounge, geht es weiter zur Expert Zone: Oracle Database, Oracle Options, Fusion Middleware, Applications und Oracle Hardware heißen hier die Themen und an den Infoständen wird bereits lautstark gefachsimpelt. Zurück im Erdgeschoss sieht man noch diverse Partner, Oracle Executives und andere Teilnehmer durcheinander wuseln, um ihre Breakout Session zu finden. Andere blättern im druckfrischen A&C Kursbuch. In den nächsten zwei Stunden stehen Business Opportunities im Fokus – aufgeteilt nach Hardware, Technology oder Sales Partnern – dazu noch die Angebote der VADs, die A&C Partner Sessions und das 1:1 Speed Dating. Einige Partner nutzen parallel die angebotenen Implementation Tests, um direkt vor Ort die Zertifizierung zu erhalten. Das doppelte Angebot der Breakouts ermöglicht den Teilnehmern, an möglichst vielen Sessions nacheinander teilzunehmen. Kein Thema soll zu kurz kommen! Ein AusblickWas erwartet uns noch, im Laufe des Nachmittags? Sehr informativ wird sicherlich das Leader Panel, in dem die teilnehmenden Partner Fragen an Oracle Executives stellen können. Wenn dann die ersten Teilnehmer unruhig werden, hat das nichts mit den Themen zu tun. Nein, es steht vielmehr noch ein spannender Höhepunkt bevor: die Partner Award Ceremony (über die wir später ausführlich berichten werden). Nach einer hoffentlich gelungenen Veranstaltung stellt sich zum Schluss nur noch die Frage, was sich genau hinter der „Red Stack Arena Sports Challenge“ verbirgt. Brauchen wir Turnschuhe?

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• JFall 2012

  - by Geertjan

  JFall 2012 was over far too soon! Seven tracks going on simultaneously in a great location, with many artifacts reminding me of JavaOne, and nice snacks and drinks afterwards. The day started, as such things always do, with a keynote. Thanks to @royvanrijn for the photo below, I didn't take any myself and without a picture this report might have been too dry: What you see above is Steve Chin riding into the keynote hall on his NightHacking bike. The keynote was interesting, I can't be too complimentary about it, since I was part of it myself. Bert Ertman introduced the day and then Steve Chin took over, together with Sharat Chander, Tom Eugelink, Timon Veenstra, and myself. We had a strict choreography for the keynote, one that would ensure a lot of variation and some unexpected surprises, such as Steve being thrown off the stage a few times by Bert because of mentioning JavaOne too many times, rather than the clearly much cooler JFall. Steve talked about JavaOne and the direction Java is headed in, Sharat talked about JavaME and embedded devices, Steve and Tom did a demo involving JavaFX, I did a Project Easel demo, and Timon from Ordina talked about his Duke's Choice Award winning AgroSense project. I think the Project Easel demo (which I repeated later in a screencast for Parleys arranged by Eugene Boogaart) came across well and several people I spoke to especially like the roundtrip/bi-directional work that can be done, from browser to IDE and back again, very simply and intuitively. (In a long conversation on the drive back home afterwards, the scenario of a designer laying out the UI in HTML and then handing the HTML to a developer for back-end work, a developer who would then find it convenient to open the HTML in a browser and quickly navigate from the browser to the resources within the IDE, was discussed and considered to be extremely interesting and worth considering adopting NetBeans for, for no other reason than that.) Later I attended a session by David Delabassee on Java EE 7, Hans Dockter on Gradle, and Sander Mak on cross-build injection attacks. I was sorry to have missed Martijn Verburg's session, which sounded like it was really fantastic, among others, such as Gerrit Grunwald. I did a session too, entitled "Unlocking the Java EE 6 Platform", which was very well attended, pretty much a full room, and the demo went very smoothly. I talked to many people, e.g., a long time with Hans Dockter about how cool Gradle is and how great the Gradle/NetBeans plugin is turning out to be. I also had a long conversation (and did a demo) with Chris Chedgey, from Structure101, after his session, which was incredibly well attended; very interesting how popular modularity is. I met several people for the first time, as well as some colleagues from past places I've worked at. All in all, it was a great conference, unfortunately too short, which was very well attended (clearly over 1000) people, with several international speakers, as well as international attendees such as Mattias Karlsson, Sweden JUG leader. And, unsurprisingly, I came across NetBeans Platform applications again, none of which I had ever heard of before. In each case, "our fat client application" was mentioned in passing, never as a main application, and never in a context where there are plans for the application to be migrated to the web or mobile, simply because doing so makes no business sense at all. Great times at JFall, looking forward to meeting with some of the people I met again soon.

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• Finalists for Community Manager of the Year Announced

  - by Mike Stiles

  For as long as brand social has been around, there’s still an amazing disparity from company to company on the role of Community Manager. At some brands, they are the lead social innovators. At others, the task has been relegated to interns who are at the company temporarily. Some have total autonomy and trust. Others must get chain-of-command permission each time they engage. So what does a premiere “worth their weight in gold” Community Manager look like? More than anyone else in the building, they have the most intimate knowledge of who the customer is. They live on the front lines and are the first to detect problems and opportunities. They are sincere, raving fans of the brand themselves and are trusted advocates for the others. They’re fun to be around. They aren’t salespeople. Give me one Community Manager who’s been at the job 6 months over 5 focus groups any day. Because not unlike in speed dating, they must immediately learn how to make a positive, lasting impression on fans so they’ll want to return and keep the relationship going. They’re informers and entertainers, with a true belief in the value of the brand’s proposition. Internally, they live at the mercy of the resources allocated toward social. Many, whose managers don’t understand the time involved in properly curating a community, are tasked with 2 or 3 too many of them. 63% of CM’s will spend over 30 hours a week on one community. They come to intuitively know the value of the relationships they’re building, even if they can’t always be shown in a bar graph to the C-suite. Many must communicate how the customer feels to executives that simply don’t seem to want to hear it. Some can get the answers fans want quickly, others are frustrated in their ability to respond within an impressive timeframe. In short, in a corporate world coping with sweeping technological changes, amidst business school doublespeak, pie charts, decks, strat sessions and data points, the role of the Community Manager is the most…human. They are the true emotional connection to the real life customer. Which is why we sought to find a way to recognize and honor who they are, what they do, and how well they have defined the position as social grows and integrates into the larger organization. Meet our 3 finalists for Community Manager of the Year. Jeff Esposito with VistaprintJeff manages and heads up content strategy for all social networks and blogs. He also crafts company-wide policies surrounding the social space. Vistaprint won the NEDMA Gold Award for Twitter Strategy in 2010 and 2011, and a Bronze in 2011 for Social Media Strategy. Prior to Vistaprint, Jeff was Media Relations Manager with the Long Island Ducks. He graduated from Seton Hall University with a BA in English and a minor in Classical Studies. Stacey Acevero with Vocus In addition to social management, Stacey blogs at Vocus on influential marketing and social media, and blogs at PRWeb on public relations and SEO. She’s been named one of the #Nifty50 Women in Tech on Twitter 2 years in a row, as well as included in the 15 up-and-coming PR pros to watch in 2012. Carly Severn with the San Francisco BalletCarly drives engagement, widens the fanbase and generates digital content for America’s oldest professional ballet company. Managed properties include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and G+. Prior to joining the SF Ballet, Carly was Marketing & Press Coordinator at The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in English. We invite you to join us at the first annual Oracle Social Media Summit November 14 and 15 at the Wynn in Las Vegas where our finalists will be featured. Over 300 top brand marketers, agency executives, and social leaders & innovators will be exploring how social is transforming business. Space is limited and the information valuable, so get more info and get registered as soon as possible at the event site.

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• Are You a WebCenter Innovator?

  - by Michael Snow

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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:"Times New Roman","serif";} 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:"Times New Roman","serif";} Calling all Oracle WebCenter Innovators: Submit your Nomination for the 2012 Innovation Awards Click here, to submit your nomination today 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:"Times New Roman","serif";} Call for Nominations: Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards 2012 Are you doing something unique and innovative with Oracle Fusion Middleware? Submit a nomination today for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards. Winners receive a free pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco (September 30 - October 4th) and will be honored during a special event at OpenWorld. Categories include: Oracle Exalogic Cloud Application Foundation Service Integration (SOA) and BPM WebCenter Identity Management Data Integration Application Development Framework and Fusion Development Business Analytics (BI, EPM and Exalytics) To be considered for this award, complete the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards nomination form and send to [email protected]. The deadline to submit a nomination is 5pm Pacific on July 17, 2012.

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• Customer Loyalty vs. Customer Engagement: Who Cares?

  - by Jeb Dasteel-Oracle

  Have you read the recent Forbes OracleVoice blog titled Customer Loyalty is Dead. Long Live Engagement!? If you haven’t, take a look. This article prompted lots of conversation in the social realm. Many who read the article voiced their reactions to the headline and now I’m jumping in to add my view. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Customer loyalty is still key. It’s the effect and engagement is the cause. We at least know that to be true for our customers. We are in an age where customers are demanding to be heard. We need them to be actively involved – or engaged – as well. Greater levels of customer engagement, properly targeted, positively correlate with satisfaction. Our data has shown us this over and over. Satisfied customers are more loyal and more willing to vocalize their satisfaction through referencing, and are more likely to purchase again, all of which in turn drives incremental revenue – from the customer doing the referencing AND the customer on the receiving end of that reference. Turning this around completely, if we begin to see the level of a customer’s engagement start to wane, this is an indicator that their satisfaction, loyalty, and future revenue are likely at risk. At Oracle, we’ve put in place many programs to target, encourage, and then track engagement, allowing us to measure engagement as a determinant of loyalty. Some of these programs include our Key Accounts, solution design and architectural, Executive Sponsorship, as well as executive advisory boards. Specific programs allow us to engage specific contacts within specific customer organizations (based on role) and then systematically track their engagement activities over time, along side of tracking customer satisfaction, loyalty, referenceability, and incremental revenue contribution. Continuous measurement of engagement allows us to better understand customer views of what it means to partner with a provider and adjust program participation to better meet the needs of the partnership. We can also track across customer segments, and design new programs that are even more effective than the ones we have in place today. In case you missed any of my previous Forbes articles, I’ve included links below for easy access. Award-Winning Companies Put Customers First The Power of Peer Networks: 5 Reasons to Get (and Stay) Involved Technology At Work: Traveling In Style Customer Central: 8 Strategies for Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business Technology at Work: Five Companies Doing IT Right /* 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-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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• Automating the choice between JPEG and PNG with a script

  - by MHC

  Choosing the right format to save your images in is crucial for preserving image quality and reducing artifacts. Different formats follow different compression methods and come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. JPG, for instance is suited for real life photographs that are rich in color gradients. The lossless PNG, on the other hand, is far superior when it comes to schematic figures: Picking the right format can be a chore when working with a large number of files. That's why I would love to find a way to automate it. A little bit of background on my particular use case: I am working on a number of handouts for a series of lectures at my unversity. The handouts are rich in figures, which I have to extract from PDF-formatted slides. Extracting these images gives me lossless PNGs, which are needlessly large at times. Converting these particular files to JPEG can reduce their size to up to less than 20% of their original file size, while maintaining the same quality. This is important as working with hundreds of large images in word processors is pretty crash-prone. Batch converting all extracted PNGs to JPEGs is not an option I am willing to follow, as many if not most images are better suited to be formatted as PNGs. Converting these would result in insignificant size reductions and sometimes even increases in filesize - that's at least what my test runs showed. What we can take from this is that file size after compression can serve as an indicator on what format is suited best for a particular image. It's not a particularly accurate predictor, but works well enough. So why not use it in form of a script: I included inotifywait because I would prefer for the script be executed automatically as soon as I drag an extracted image into a folder. This is a simpler version of the script that I've been using for the last couple of weeks: #!/bin/bash inotifywait -m --format "%w%f" --exclude '.jpg' -r -e create -e moved_to --fromfile '/home/MHC/.scripts/Workflow/Conversion/include_inotifywait' | while read file; do mogrify -format jpg -quality 92 "$file" done The advanced version of the script would have to be able to handle spaces in file names and directory names preserve the original file names flatten PNG images if an alpha value is set compare the file size between the temporary converted image and its original determine if the difference is greater than a given precentage act accordingly The actual conversion could be done with imagemagick tools: convert -quality 92 -flatten -background white file.png file.jpg Unfortunately, my bash skills aren't even close to advanced enough to convert the scheme above into an actual script, but I am sure many of you can. My reputation points on here are pretty low, but I will gladly award the most helpful answer with the highest bounty I can set. References: http://www.formortals.com/introducing-cnb-imageguide/, http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg Edit: Also see my comments below for some more information on why I think this script would be the best solution to the problem I am facing.

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• Why do some games randomly turn my screen a random solid color?

  - by Emlena.PhD

  When playing some games my computer will randomly have an error that I cannot fix without turning it off and back on again. The screen changes to one solid color, which varies (off the top of my head I can remember seeing solid green, magenta, etc..) and the sound blares a single tone. The sound sometimes briefly restores and I can still hear the game sounds and even hear and still be heard by people in my Mumble channel, but the screen doesn't right itself so I'm still blind. What's more is this happens in some games but not in others. While the game is actually running, not while I'm still in the menu. However, it does happen if I'm afk or idle but the game world is still rendering. Games where the error occurs: League of Legends World of Warcraft Trine The Sims 2 Dungeon Defenders Safe games: games where it has never occurred: Tribes: Ascend Star Wars: the Old Republic Battlefield 3 So relatively older games cause the problem while newer games do not? I cannot predict when it will happen, it just seems random. However, if it happens and I try playing the same game further after restart it does appear to occur more frequently after the first time. But if I switch to a safe game it doesn't continue happening. Both of my RAM sticks appear fine, flipped position or either one on their own and games still run, computer still boots. I would think over-heating, but then why not all games? ALso, sometimes it happens immediately after I start playing, within seconds of the 3D world booting up. I'm looking to upgrade very soon so I want to figure out what component or software is fubar and replace/repair it. Any suggestions or recommendations of tools would be helpful. Below is some system information. Dxdiag does not detect any problems. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120305-1505) System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. System Model: EP45-UD3R BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz Memory: 4096MB RAM DirectX Version: DirectX 11 DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode Graphics card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 Driver Version: 8.17.12.9610 (error has occurred w/several driver versions) Sound: I do not have a sound card, been using motherboard's built in sound)

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• Thinkpad speaker turns mute - Linux Codec issue?

  - by Curlew

  At some point a few days ago the speakers on my Lenovo Thinkpad T410 (Model number: 2537A11) suddenly stopped working randomly. This error happens every time I watch a video or listen to a music file. The sound just abruptly stops. At the moment, I can't produce a single sound no matter what I do. I am using Debian GNU/Linux on this laptop and there doesn't appear to be anything else wrong (the fan is working, no abnormal heat (staying around ~40°C), no other obvious errors or problems). Here is the output of a nice program someone pointed me to: martin@martin:~/Downloads$ sudo python run.py --monitor Using temporary directory: /dev/shm/hda-analyzer You may remove this directory when finished or if you like to download the most recent copy of hda-analyzer tool. Downloading file hda_analyzer.py Downloading file hda_guilib.py Downloading file hda_codec.py Downloading file hda_proc.py Downloading file hda_graph.py Downloading file hda_mixer.py Downloaded all files, executing hda_analyzer.py Watching 1 cards ====================================== Sound is working normally and then it stops and the following lines appear: Diff for codec 0/0 (0x14f15069): --- +++ @@ -164,17 +164,17 @@ Power: setting=D0, actual=D0 Node 0x1f [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400501: Stereo Pincap 0x00000010: OUT Pin Default 0x901701f0: [Fixed] Speaker at Int N/A Conn = Analog, Color = Unknown DefAssociation = 0xf, Sequence = 0x0 Misc = NO_PRESENCE Pin-ctls: 0x40: OUT - Power: setting=D0, actual=D0 + Power: setting=D3, actual=D3 Connection: 2 0x10* 0x11 Node 0x20 [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400781: Stereo Digital Pincap 0x00000010: OUT Pin Default 0x40f001f0: [N/A] Other at Ext N/A Conn = Unknown, Color = Unknown DefAssociation = 0xf, Sequence = 0x0 Misc = NO_PRESENCE And now there is also an error in the dmesg output hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj. I changed the bdl_pos_adj to various numbers (-1, 0, 64, 1024) and either there is no change at all or dmesg reports that the adjustment is too big. I wonder if this bdl_pos_adj is the real reason for the error. Here is my hardware information provided by alsa-info.sh website. Okay, i did some serious testing and even installed Windows and now i officially conclude that this is a hard-ware related issue with my Laptop speakers. Reason: The error occurs in my installed Debian Linux, an Ubuntu Live distribution and Windows XP No error-message appears in all of the OS. The sound just keeps running and i can't hear a thing. I tested different setups, including OSS, ALSA and the pulseaudio server on top If i use my new usb-headphones i can hear sound all the time without any sudden silences. So obviously, although hard to believe, my laptop speakers are not okay (never heard of similar cases). I'll award the bounty to anyone who can point me to good tutorials or the procedure how to exchange my T410 speakers (i still have warranty. The laptop was bought in Germany, but now i am in Denmark). Or to someone who can explain me the output from hda-analyzer (big log above).

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• SQLAuthority News – A Successful Community TechDays at Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010

  - by pinaldave

  We recently had one of the best community events in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that we had SQL Experts from around the world to have presented at this event. This gathering was very special because besides Jacob Sebastian and myself, we had two other speakers traveling all the way from Florida (Rushabh Mehta) and Bangalore (Vinod Kumar).There were a total of nearly 170 attendees and the event was blast. Here are the details of the event. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days On the day of the event, it seemed to be the coldest day in Ahmedabad but I was glad to see hundreds of people waiting for the doors to be opened some hours before. We started the day with hot coffee and cookies. Yes, food first; and it was right after my keynote. I could clearly see that the coffee did some magic right away; the hall was almost full after the coffee break. Jacob Sebastian Presenting at Community Tech Days Jacob Sebastian, an SQL Server MVP and a close friend of mine, had an unusual job of surprising everybody with an innovative topic accompanied with lots of question-and-answer portions. That’s definitely one thing to love Jacob, that is, the novelty of the subject. His presentation was entitled “Best Database Practices for the .Net”; it really created magic on the crowd. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days Next to Jacob Sebastian, I presented “Best Database Practices for the SharePoint”. It was really fun to present Database with the perspective of the database itself. The main highlight of my presentation was when I talked about how one can speed up the database performance by 40% for SharePoint in just 40 seconds. It was fun because the most important thing was to convince people to use the recommendation as soon as they walk out of the session. It was really amusing and the response of the participants was remarkable. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days My session was followed by the most-awaited session of the day: that of Rushabh Mehta. He is an international BI expert who traveled all the way from Florida to present “Self Service BI” session. This session was funny and truly interesting. In fact, no one knew BI could be this much entertaining and fascinating. Rushabh has an appealing style of presenting the session; he instantly got very much interaction from the audience. Rushabh Mehta Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a networking lunch break in-between, when we talked about many various topics. It is always interesting to get in touch with the Community and feel a part of it. I had a wonderful time during the break. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days After lunch was apparently the most difficult session for the presenter as during this time, many people started to fall sleep and get dizzy. This spot was requested by Microsoft SQL Server Evangelist Vinod Kumar himself. During our discussion he suggested that if he gets this slot he would make sure people are up and more interactive than during the morning session. Just like always, this session was one of the best sessions ever. Vinod is true to his word as he presented the subject of “Time Management for Developer”. This session was the biggest hit in the event because the subject was instilled in the mind of every participant. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days Vinod’s session was followed by his own small session. Due to “insistent public demand”, he presented an interesting subject, “Tricks and Tips of SQL Server“. In 20 minutes he has done another awesome job and all attendees wanted more of the tricks. Just as usual he promised to do that next time for us. Vinod’s session was succeeded by Prabhjot Singh Bakshi’s session. He presented an appealing Silverlight concept. Just the same, he did a great job and people cheered him. Prabhjot Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a special invited speaker, Dhananjay Kumar, traveling all the way from Pune. He always supports our cause to help the Community in empowering participants. He presented the topic about Win7 Mobile and SharePoint integration. This was something many did not even expect to be possible. Kudos to Dhananjay for doing a great job. Dhananjay Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days All in all, this event was one of the best in the Community Tech Days series in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that legends from the all over the world were present here to present to the Community. I’d say never underestimate the power of the Community and its influence over the direction of the technology. Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave This event was a very special gathering to me personally because of your support to the vibrant Community. The following awards were won for last year’s performance: Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group (President: Jacob Sebastian; Leader: Pinal Dave) – Best Tier 2 User Group Best Development Community Individual Contributor – Pinal Dave Speakers I was very glad to receive the award for our entire Community. Attendees at Community Tech Days I want to say thanks to Rushabh Mehta, Vinod Kumar and Dhananjay Kumar for visiting the city and presenting various technology topics in Community Tech Days. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 1 – The birth of the #unicorn…

  - by Chris George

  Still riding the high from the tutorial day, I arrived at the conference venue eager to get cracking with the days talks. The opening Keynote was “Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Scaling Agile” presented by Scott Ambler. The general ideas behind the methodology such as not re-inventing the wheel, and being goal driven, not prescriptive in how you work certainly struck chords with how we are trying to work in my team. Scott made some interesting observations about how scrum is quite prescriptive and is this really agile? I agreed with quite a few of his points on how what works for one team may not work for another. How a team works should be driven by context and reflection, not process and prescription. However was somewhat dubious about some of the statistics he rolled out towards the end. However, out of this keynote was born something that was to transcend this one presentation. During the talk, Scott mentioned on more than one occasion “In the real world”, and at one point made reference to people living in the land of unicorns and rainbows. The challenge was then laid down on twitter for all speakers to include a unicorn in their presentations… and for the most part this happened! It became an identity for this years conference, and I’m sure something that any attendee will always associate with Agile Testing Days 2012! Following this keynote, I attended “Going agile with Automated GUI Testing – Some personal insights” by Jan Zdunek from codecentric on the vendor track. My speciality is test automation, and in particular GUI testing, so this drew me to this talk more than the others. Thankfully, it was made clear from the very start that this was not peddling any particular product (even though it was on the vendor track), and Jan faithfully stuck to that. Most of the content was not new to me, but it was really comforting to hear someone else with very similar experiences to my own. In particular, things like how GUI testing is hard and is not a silver bullet; how record & replay is NOT a good thing to do (which drew a somewhat inflammatory tweet from an automation company when I tweeted that!). Something that I have started hearing around the place, and has certainly been murmuring at work is to push more of the automation coding onto the developers. After all they are the coding experts. I agree with this to a degree, but I personally enjoy coding and find it very rewarding doing so, therefore I’d be reluctant to give it up. I think there are some better alternatives such as pairing with a developer. Lastly, Jan mentioned, almost in passing, that we should consider virtualisation for gui testing for covering configuration combinations. On my project we’ve been running our win32/.NET GUI tests in cloud virtualisation for a couple of years now… I really should write about that! After lunch the second keynote of the day was by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory,”Myths about Agile Testing, De-Bunked”. It started off well… with the two ladies donning Medusa style head bands whilst they disbanding several myths about agile testing! I got the impression that it was perhaps not as slick as they would have liked, but then Janet was suffering with a very sore throat so kept losing her voice. Nevertheless, the presentation was captivating, and they debunked several myths such as : “Testing is dead”, “Testers must write code”, “Agile teams always deliver faster”. I didn’t take many notes for this because it was being recorded, but unfortunately the recordings have not been posted yet so I’ll write more about this when they are. The TestLab was held during a somewhat free for all time during most of the afternoon. It looked intriguing and proved to be one of the surprising experiences of the conference for me. Run by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack, it consisted of a number of ‘stations’ that offered different testing problems. I opted for testing a mathematical drawing app call Geogebra, the task being to pair up and exploratory test it. After an allotted time, we discussed issues we’d found and decided if we wanted to continue ‘playing’ to which we all agreed! It was fun! The last track talk of the day was “Developers Exploratory Testing – Raising the bar” by Sigge Birgisson. One of the teams at Red Gate have tried Dev or Team exploratory testing a couple of times, and I was really interested to go to the presentation that prompted that. I was not disappointed! Sigge gave a first class presentation, and not only explained what DET was all about, but also how to go about implementing it. Little tips like calling it a ‘workshop’ rather than ‘testing’ I can really see working! Monday evening saw the presentation of the award for the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person go to a much deserved Lisa Crispin. The evening was great, with acrobatics, magic and music. My Takeaway Triple from Day 1:  Some of the cool stuff that was suggested in the GUI Testing talk, we are already doing. I should write about that! Testing is not dead! Perhaps testing will become more of a skill than a specific role, but it is certainly not dead. Team/Developer exploratory testing… seems like a no-brainer assuming you have a team who is willing.  Day 2 – Coming soon…

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• The Oracle Retail Week Awards - in review

  - by user801960

  The Oracle Retail Week Awards 2012 were another great success, building on the legacy of previous award ceremonies. Over 1,600 of the UK's top retailers gathered at the Grosvenor House Hotel and many of Europe's top retail leaders attended the prestigious Oracle Retail VIP Reception in the Grosvenor House Hotel's Red Bar. Over the years the Oracle Retail Week Awards have become a rallying point for the morale of the retail industry, and each nominated retailer served as a demonstration that the industry is fighting fit. It was an honour to speak to so many figureheads of UK - and global - retail. All of us at Oracle Retail would like to congratulate both the winners and the nominees for the awards. Retail is a cornerstone of the economy and it was inspiring to see so many outstanding demonstrations of innovation and dedication in the entries. Winners 2012   The Market Force Customer Service Initiative of the Year Winner: Dixons Retail: Knowhow Highly Commended: Hughes Electrical: Digital Switchover     The Deloitte Employer of the Year Winner: Morrisons     Growing Retailer of the Year Winner: Hallett Retail - The Concessions People Highly Commended: Blue Inc     The TCC Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year Winner: Sainsbury's: Feed your Family for £50     The Brandbank Multichannel Retailer of the Year Winner: Debenhams Highly Commended: Halfords     The Ashton Partnership Product Innovation of the Year Winner: Argos: Chad Valley Highly Commended: Halfords: Private label bikes     The RR Donnelley Pure-play Online Retailer of the Year Winner: Wiggle     The Hitachi Consulting Responsible Retailer of the Year Winner: B&Q: One Planet Home     The CA Technologies Retail Technology Initiative of the Year Winner: Oasis: Argyll Street flagship launch with iPad PoS     The Premier Tax Free Speciality Retailer of the Year Winner: Holland & Barrett     Store Design of the Year Winner: Next Home and Garden, Shoreham, Sussex Highly Commended: Dixons Retail, Black concept store, Birmingham Bullring     Store Manager of the Year Winner: Ian Allcock, Homebase, Aylesford Highly Commended: Darren Parfitt, Boots UK, Melton Mowbray Health Centre     The Wates Retail Destination of the Year Winner: Westfield, Stratford     The AlixPartners Emerging Retail Leader of the Year Winner: Catriona Marshall, HobbyCraft, Chief Executive     The Wipro Retail International Retailer of the Year Winner: Apple     The Clarity Search Retail Leader of the Year Winner: Ian Cheshire, Chief Executive, Kingfisher     The Oracle Retailer of the Year Winner: Burberry     Outstanding Contribution to Retail Winner: Lord Harris of Peckham     Oracle Retail and "Your Experience Platform" Technology is the key to providing that differentiated retail experience. More specifically, it is what we at Oracle call ‘the experience platform’ - a set of integrated, cross-channel business technology solutions, selected and operated by a retail business and IT team, and deployed in accordance with that organisation’s individual strategy and processes. This business systems architecture simultaneously: Connects customer interactions across all channels and touchpoints, and every customer lifecycle phase to provide a differentiated customer experience that meets consumers’ needs and expectations. Delivers actionable insight that enables smarter decisions in planning, forecasting, merchandising, supply chain management, marketing, etc; Optimises operations to align every aspect of the retail business to gain efficiencies and economies, to align KPIs to eliminate strategic conflicts, and at the same time be working in support of customer priorities.   Working in unison, these three goals not only help retailers to successfully navigate the challenges of today but also to focus on delivering that personalised customer experience based on differentiated products, pricing, services and interactions that will help you to gain market share and grow sales.  

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• 7 reasons you had to be at JavaOne Latin America 2012

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Yesterday was 12/12/12, and everybody went crazy on Twitter with cool memes like this one. And maybe you are now wondering why I mentioned 7 (seven) on the blog title. Because I want to play numbers? Yes! Today is 7 days after JavaOne Latin America 2012 is over (... and I had to figure out an excuse for taking so long to blog about it...). So unless you were at JavaOne Latin America this year, here are 7 things you missed: OTN Lounge mini-theatreThere was a mini-theatre holding several lightning talks. We had people from SouJava JUG, GoJava JUG, Globalcode, and several other Java gurus and companies running demos, talks, and even more. For example, @drspockbr talked about the ScrumToys project, that demonstrates the power of JSF. Hands On Lab for JAX-RS and WebSocketsOne of the cool things to do during JavaOne is to come to these Hands On labs and really do something using new technologies with the help of experts. This one in particular, was covered by me, Arun Gupta, and Reza Rahman. The HOL had more people than laptops (and we had 48 laptops!) interested on understanding and learning about the new stuff that is coming within Java EE 7. Things like JAX-RS, Server-sent Events and WebSockets. Hey, if you want to try this HOL by yourself, it is available on Github, so go for it! If you have questions, just let me know! Java Community KeynoteThis keynote presented a lot of cool things like startups using Java in their projects, the Duke Awards, SouJava winning the JCP Outstanding Award, the Java Band, and even more! It was really a space where the Java community could present what they are doing and what they want to do. There's a lot of interest on the Adopt-a-JSR program and the Adopt-OpenJDK. There's also an Adopt-a-JavaEE-JSR program! Take a look if you want to participate and Make the Future Java. Java EE (JMS, JAX-RS) sessions from Reza Rahman, the HeavyMetal guyReza is a well know professional and Java EE enthusiast from the communitty who just joined Oracle this year. His sessions were very well attended, perhaps because of a high interest on the new things coming to Java EE 7 like JMS 2.0 and JAX-RS 2.0. If you want to look at what he did at this JavaOne edition, read his blog post. By the way, if you like Java and heavymetal, you should follow him on Twitter as well! :-) Java EE (WebSockets, HTML5) sessions from Arun Gupta, the GlassFish guyIf you don't know Arun Gupta, no worries. You will have time to know about him while you read his Java EE 6 Pocket Guide. Arun has been evangelizing Java EE for a long time, and is now spreading his word about the new upcoming version Java EE 7. He gave one talk about HTML5 Productivity on the Java EE 7 platform, and another one on building web apps with WebSockets. Pretty neat! Arun blogged about JavaOne Latin America as well. Read it here. Java Embedded and JavaFXIf there are two things that are really trending in the Java World right now besides Java EE 7, certainly they are JavaFX and Java Embedded. There were 14 talks covering Java Embedded, from Java Cards to Raspberry.pi, from Java ME to Java on your TV with Ginga-J. The Internet of Things is becoming true, and Java is the only platform today that can connect it all in an standardized and concise way. JavaFX gained a lot of attention too. There were 8 sessions covering what the platform has to offer in terms of Rich User Experience. The JavaFX Scene Builder is an awesome tool to start playing designing an UI, and coding for JavaFX is like coding Swing with 8 hands, one holding your coffee cup. You can achieve a lot, with your two hands (unless, you really have 8 hands, then you can achieve 4 times more :-). If you want to read more about JavaFX, go to Stephen Chin's blog post. GlassFish and Friends Party, 1st edition at JavaOne Lating AmericaThis is probably the thing that I'm most proud. We brought to Brasil the tradition of holding a happy hour for all GlassFish, Java EE friends. This party started almost 7 years ago in San Francisco, and it was about time to bring it to Brazil! The party happened on Tuesday night, right after JavaOne General Keynote, at the Tribeca Pub. We had about 80 attendees and met a lot of Java EE developers there! People from JUGs, Oracle, Locaweb and Red Hat showed up too, including some execs from Oracle that didn't resist and could not miss a party like this one.Lots of caipirinhas, beer and food to everyone, some cool music... even The Fish walking around the party with Juggy!You can see more photos from the party on an album I shared with the recently created GlassFish Brasil community on Google+ here (but you may be more interested in joining the GlassFish english community). There's also more pictures that Arun took and shared on this link. So now you may want to consider coming to Brazil next year! Java EE 7 is on its way, and Brazil is happily and patiently waiting for it, with a lot of enthusiasm. By the way, GlassFish and Java EE 6 just celebrated a Happy Birthday!

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• In the Groove: PASS Board Year 1, Q3

  - by Denise McInerney

  It's nine months into my first year on the PASS Board and I feel like I've found my rhythm. I've accomplished one of the goals I set out for the year and have made progress on others. Here's a recap of the last few months. Anti-Harassment Policy & Process Completed In April I began work on a Code of Conduct for the PASS Summit. The Board had several good discussions and various PASS members provided feedback. You can read more about that in this blog post. Since the document was focused on issues of harassment we renamed it the "Anti-Harassment Policy " and it was approved by the Board in August. The next step was to refine the guideliness and process for enforcement of the AHP. A subcommittee worked on this and presented an update to the Board at the September meeting. You can read more about that in this post, and you can find the process document here. Global Growth Expanding PASS' reach and making the organization relevant to SQL Server communities around the world has been a focus of the Board's work in 2012. We took the Global Growth initiative out to the community for feedback, and everyone on the Board participated, via Twitter chats, Town Hall meetings, feedback forums and in-person discussions. This community participation helped shape and refine our plans. Implementing the vision for Global Growth goes across all portfolios. The Virtual Chapters are well-positioned to help the organization move forward in this area. One outcome of the Global Growth discussions with the community is the expansion of two of the VCs from country-specific to language-specific. Thanks to the leadership in Brazil & Mexico for taking the lead here. I look forward to continued success for the Portuguese- and Spanish-language Virtual Chapters. Together with the Global Chinese VC PASS is off to a good start in making the VC's truly global. Virtual Chapters The VCs continue to grow and expand. Volunteers recently rebooted the Azure and Virutalization VCs, and a new  Education VC will be launching soon. Every week VCs offer excellent free training on a variety of topics. It's the dedication of the VC leaders and volunteers that make all this possible and I thank them for it. Board meeting The Board had an in-person meeting in September in San Diego, CA.. As usual we covered a number of topics including governance changes to support Global Growth, the upcoming Summit, 2013 events and the (then) upcoming PASS election. Next Up Much of the last couple of months has been focused on preparing for the PASS Summit in Seattle Nov. 6-9. I'll be there all week;  feel free to stop me if you have a question or concern, or just to introduce yourself.  Here are some of the places you can find me: VC Leaders Meeting Tuesday 8:00 am the VC leaders will have a meeting. We'll review some of the year's highlights and talk about plans for the next year Welcome Reception The VCs will be at the Welcome Reception in the new VC Lounge. Come by, learn more about what the VCs have to offer and meet others who share your interests. Exceptional DBA Awards Party I'm looking forward to seeing PASS Women in Tech VC leader Meredith Ryan receive her award at this event sponsored by Red Gate Session Presentation I will be presenting a spotlight session entitled "Stop Bad Data in Its OLTP Tracks" on Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. Exhibitor Reception This reception Wednesday evening in the Expo Hall is a great opportunity to learn more about tools and solutions that can help you in your job. Women in Tech Luncheon This year marks the 10th WIT Luncheon at PASS. I'm honored to be on the panel with Stefanie Higgins, Kevin Kline, Kendra Little and Jen Stirrup. This event is on Thursday at 11:30. Community Appreciation Party Thursday evening don't miss this event thanking all of you for everthing you do for PASS and the community. This year we will be at the Experience Music Project and it promises to be a fun party. Board Q & A Friday  9:45-11:15  am the members of the Board will be available to answer your questions. If you have a question for us, or want to hear what other members are thinking about, come by room 401 Friday morning.

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• MCM Lab exam this week

  - by Rob Farley

  In two days I’ll’ve finished the MCM Lab exam, 88-971. If you do an internet search for 88-971, it’ll tell you the answer is –883. Obviously. It’ll also give you a link to the actual exam page, which is useful too, once you’ve finished being distracted by the calculator instead of going to the thing you’re actually looking for. (Do people actually search the internet for the results of mathematical questions? Really?) The list of Skills Measured for this exam is quite short, but can essentially be broken down into one word “Anything”. The Preparation Materials section is even better. Classroom Training – none available. Microsoft E-Learning – none available. Microsoft Press Books – none available. Practice Tests – none available. But there are links to Readiness Videos and a page which has no resources listed, but tells you a list of people who have already qualified. Three in Australia who have MCM SQL Server 2008 so far. The list doesn’t include some of the latest batch, such as Jason Strate or Tom LaRock. I’ve used SQL Server for almost 15 years. During that time I’ve been awarded SQL Server MVP seven times, but the MVP award doesn’t actually mean all that much when considering this particular certification. I know lots of MVPs who have tried this particular exam and failed – including Jason and Tom. Right now, I have no idea whether I’ll pass or not. People tell me I’ll pass no problem, but I honestly have no idea. There’s something about that “Anything” aspect that worries me. I keep looking at the list of things in the Readiness Videos, and think to myself “I’m comfortable with Resource Governor (or whatever) – that should be fine.” Except that then I feel like I maybe don’t know all the different things that can go wrong with Resource Governor (or whatever), and I wonder what kind of situations I’ll be faced with. And then I find myself looking through the stuff that’s explained in the videos, and wondering what kinds of things I should know that I don’t, and then I get amazingly bored and frustrated (after all, I tell people that these exams aren’t supposed to be studied for – you’ve been studying for the last 15 years, right?), and I figure “What’s the worst that can happen? A fail?” I’m told that the exam provides a list of scenarios (maybe 14 of them?) and you have 5.5 hours to complete them. When I say “complete”, I mean complete – you don’t get to leave them unfinished, that’ll get you ‘nil points’ for that scenario. Apparently no-one gets to complete all of them. Now, I’m a consultant. I get called on to fix the problems that people have on their SQL boxes. Sometimes this involves fixing corruption. Sometimes it’s figuring out some performance problem. Sometimes it’s as straight forward as getting past a full transaction log; sometimes it’s as tricky as recovering a database that has lost its metadata, without backups. Most situations aren’t a problem, but I also have the confidence of being able to do internet searches to verify my maths (in case I forget it’s –883). In the exam, I’ll have maybe twenty minutes per scenario (but if I need longer, I’ll have to take longer – no point in stopping half way if it takes more than twenty minutes, unless I don’t see an end coming up), so I’ll have time constraints too. And of course, I won’t have any of my usual tools. I can’t take scripts in, I can’t take staff members. Hopefully I can use the coffee machine that will be in the room. I figure it’s going to feel like one of those days when I’ve gone into a client site, and found that the problems are way worse than I expected, and that the site is down, with people standing over me needing me to get things right first time... ...so it should be fine, I’ve done that before. :) If I do fail, it won’t make me any less of a consultant. It won’t make me any less able to help all of my clients (including you if you get in touch – hehe), it’ll just mean that the particular problem might’ve taken me more than the twenty minutes that the exam gave me. @rob_farley PS: Apparently the done thing is to NOT advertise that you’re sitting the exam at a particular time, only that you’re expecting to take it at some point in the future. I think it’s akin to the idea of not telling people you’re pregnant for the first few months – it’s just in case the worst happens. Personally, I’m happy to tell you all that I’m going to take this exam the day after tomorrow (which is the 19th in the US, the 20th here). If I end up failing, you can all commiserate and tell me that I’m not actually as unqualified as I feel.

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• The Arab HEUG is now a reality, and other random thoughts

  - by user9147039

  I just returned from Doha, Qatar where the first of its kind HEUG (Higher Education User Group) meeting for institutions in the Middle East and North Africa was held at Qatar University and jointly hosted by Damman University from Saudi Arabia. Over 80 delegates attended including representation from education institutions in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Qatar. There are many other regional HEUG organizations in place (in Australia/New Zealand, APAC, EMEA, as well as smaller regional HEUG’s in the Netherlands, South Africa, and in regions of the US), but it was truly an accomplishment to see this Middle East/North Africa group organize and launch their chapter with a meeting of this quality. To be known as the Arab HEUG going forward, I am excited about the prospects for sharing between the institutions and for the growth of Oracle solutions in the region. In particular the hosts for the event (Qatar University) did a masterful job with logistics and organization, and the quality of the event was a testament to their capabilities. Among the more interesting and enlightening presentations I attended were one from Dammam University on the lessons learned from their implementation of Campus Solutions and transition off of Banner, as well as the use by Qatar University E-business Suite for grants management (both pre-and post-award). The most notable fact coming from this latter presentation was the fit (89%) of e-Business Suite Grants to the university’s requirements. In a few weeks time we will be convening the 5th meeting of the Oracle Education & Research Industry Strategy Council in Redwood Shores (5th since my advent into my current role). The main topics of discussion will be around our Higher Education Applications Strategy for the future (including cloud approaches to ERP (HCM, Finance, and Student Information Systems), how some cases studies on the benefits of leveraging delivered functionality and extensibility in the software (versus customization). On the second day of the event we will turn our attention to Oracle in Research and also budgeting and planning in higher education. Both of these sessions will include significant participation from council members in the form of panel discussions. Our EVP’s for Systems (John Fowler) and for Global Cloud Services and North America application sales (Joanne Olson) will join us for the discussion. I recently read a couple of articles that were surprising to me. The first was from Inside Higher Ed on October 15 entitled, “As colleges prepare for major software upgrades, Kuali tries to woo them from corporate vendors.” It continues to disappointment that after all this time we are still debating whether it is better to build enterprise software through open or community source initiatives when fully functional, flexible, supported, and widely adopted options exist in the marketplace. Over a decade or more ago when these solutions were relatively immature and there was a great deal of turnover in the market I could appreciate the initiatives like Kuali. But let’s not kid ourselves – the real objective of this movement is to counter a perceived predatory commercial software industry. Again, when commercial solutions are deployed as written without significant customization, and standard business processes are adopted, the cost of these solutions (relative to the value delivered) is quite low, and certain much lower than the massive investment (and risk) in in-house developers to support a bespoke community source system. In this era of cost pressures in education and the need to refocus resources on teaching, learning, and research, I believe it’s bordering on irresponsible to continue to pursue open-source ERP. Many of the adopter’s total costs are staggering and have little to show for their efforts and expended resources. The second article was recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education and was entitled “’Big Data’ Is Bunk, Obama Campaign’s Tech Guru Tells University Leaders.” This one was so outrageous I almost don’t want to legitimize it by referencing it here. In the article the writer relays statements made by Harper Reed, President Obama’s former CTO for his 2012 re-election campaign, that big data solutions in education have no relevance and are akin to snake oil. He goes on to state that while he’s a fan of data-driven decision making in education, most of the necessary analysis can be accomplished in Excel spreadsheets. Yeah… right. This is exactly what ails education (higher education in particular). Dozens of shadow and siloed systems running on spreadsheets with limited-to-no enterprise wide initiatives to harness the data-rich environment that is a higher ed institution and transform the data into useable information. I’ll grant Mr. Reed that “Big Data” is overused and hackneyed, but imperatives like improving student success in higher education are classic big data problems that data-mining and predictive analytics can address. Further, higher ed need to be producing a massive amount more data scientists and analysts than are currently in the pipeline, to further this discipline and application of these tools to many many other problems across multiple industries.

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• "Yes, but that's niche."

  - by Geertjan

  JavaOne 2012 has come to an end though it feels like it hasn't even started yet! What happened, time is a weird thing. Too many things to report on. James Gosling's appearance at the JavaOne community keynote was seen, by everyone (which is quite a lot) of people I talked to, as the highlight of the conference. It was interesting that the software for the Duke's Choice Award winning Liquid Robotics that James Gosling is now part of and came to talk about is a Swing application that uses the WorldWind libraries. It was also interesting that James Gosling pointed out to the conference: "There are things you can't do using HTML." That brings me to the wonderful counter argument to the above, which I spend my time running into a lot: "Yes, but that's niche." It's a killer argument, i.e., it kills all discussions completely in one fell swoop. Kind of when you're talking about someone and then this sentence drops into the conversation: "Yes, but she's got cancer now." Here's one implementation of "Yes, but that's niche": Person A: All applications are moving to the web, tablet, and mobile phone. That's especially true now with HTML5, which is going to wipe away everything everywhere and all applications are going to be browser based. Person B: What about air traffic control applications? Will they run on mobile phones too? And do you see defence applications running in a browser? Don't you agree that there are multiple scenarios imaginable where the Java desktop is the optimal platform for running applications? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. Here's another implementation, though it contradicts the above [despite often being used by the same people], since JavaFX is a Java desktop technology: Person A: Swing is dead. Everyone is going to be using purely JavaFX and nothing else. Person B: Does JavaFX have a docking framework and a module system? Does it have a plugin system?  These are some of the absolutely basic requirements of Java desktop software once you get to high end systems, e.g., banks, defence force, oil/gas services. Those kinds of applications need a web browser and so they love the JavaFX WebView component and they also love the animated JavaFX charting components. But they need so much more than that, i.e., an application framework. Aren't there requirements that JavaFX isn't meeting since it is a UI toolkit, just like Swing is a UI toolkit, and what they have in common is their lack, i.e., natively, of any kind of application framework? Don't people need more than a single window and a monolithic application structure? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. In other words, anything that doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy is "niche", for no other reason than that it doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy... regardless of the actual needs of real developers. Saying "Yes, but that's niche", kills the discussion completely, because it relegates one side of the conversation to the arcane and irrelevant corners of the universe. You're kind of like Cobol now, as soon as "Yes, but that's niche" is said. What's worst about "Yes, but that's niche" is that it doesn't enter into any discussion about user requirements, i.e., there's so few that need this particular solution that we don't even need to talk about them anymore. Note, of course, that I'm not referring specifically or generically to anyone or anything in particular. Just picking up from conversations I've picked up on as I was scurrying around the Hilton's corridors while looking for the location of my next presentation over the past few days. It does, however, mean that there were people thinking "Yes, but that's niche" while listening to James Gosling pointing out that HTML is not the be-all and end-all of absolutely everything. And so this all leaves me wondering: How many applications must be part of a niche for the niche to no longer be a niche? And what if there are multiple small niches that have the same requirements? Don't all those small niches together form a larger whole, one that should be taken seriously, i.e., a whole that is not a niche?

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• Webcor Builders Coordinates Construction Schedules and Mitigates Potential Delays More Efficiently with Integrated Project Management

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  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:"Times New Roman","serif";} With more than 40 years of commercial construction experience, Webcor Builders is a leading builder of distinguished, high-profile projects, including high-rise condominiums and hotels, laboratories, healthcare centers, and public works projects. Webcor is also known for its award-winning concrete, interior construction, historic restoration, and seismic renovation work. The company has completed more than 50 million square feet of projects to date. Considering the variety and complexity of the construction projects Webcor undertakes, an integrated project management solution is critical to ensuring optimal efficiency and completing client projects on time and on budget. The company previously used a number of scheduling systems for its various building projects. These packages provided different levels of schedule detail and required schedulers, engineers, and other employees to learn multiple systems. From an IT cost and complexity perspective, the company had to manage multiple scheduling systems and pay for multiple sets of licenses. The company looked to standardize on an enterprise project management system, and selected Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. Webcor uses the solution’s advanced capabilities to schedule complex projects, analyze delays, model and propose multiple scenarios to demonstrate and mitigate delays and cost overruns, and process that information efficiently to deliver the scheduling precision that public and private projects require. In fact, the solution was instrumental in helping the company’s expansion into public sector projects during the recent economic downturn, and with Primavera P6 in place, it can deliver the precise schedule reporting required for large public projects. With Primavera P6 in place, the company could deliver the precise scheduling and milestone reporting capabilities required for large public projects. The solution is in managing the high-profile University of California – Berkeley Memorial Stadium project. Webcor was hired as construction manager and general contractor for the stadium renovation project, which is a fast-paced project located near the seismically active Hayward Fault Zone. Due to the University of California’s football schedule, meeting the Universities deadline for the coming season placed Webcor in a situation where risk awareness and early warnings of issues would be paramount. Webcor and the extended project team needed a solution that could instantly analyze alternate scenarios to mitigate potential delays; Primavera would deliver those answers.The team would also need to enable multiple stakeholders to use an internet-based platform to access the schedule from various locations, and model complicated sequencing requirements where swift decisions would be made to keep the project on track. The schedule is an integral part of Webcor’s construction management process for the stadium project. Rather than providing the client with the industry-standard monthly update, Webcor updates the critical path method (CPM) schedule on a weekly basis. The project team also reviews the schedule and updates weekly to confirm that progress and forecasted performance are accurate. Hired by the University for their ability to deliver in high risk environments The Webcor team was hit recently with a design supplement that could have added up to 70 days to the project. Using Oracle Primavera P6 the team sprung into action analyzing multiple “what if” scenarios to review mitigation means and methods.  Determined to make sure the Bears could take the field in the coming season the project team nearly eliminated the impact with their creative analysis in working the schedule. The total time from the issuance of the final design supplement to an agreed mitigation response was less than one week; leveraging the Oracle Primavera solution Webcor was able to deliver superior customer value With the ability to efficiently manage projects and schedules, Webcor can ensure it completes its projects on time and on budget, as well as inform clients about what changes to plans will mean in terms of delays and additional costs. Read the complete customer case study at :  http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/webcor-builders-1-primavera-ss-1639886.html

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• Where is meta.local_fields set in django.db.models.base.py ?

  - by BryanWheelock

  I'm getting the error: Exception Value: (1110, "Column 'about' specified twice") As I was reviewing the Django error page, I noticed that the customizations the model User, seem to be appended to the List twice. This seems to be happening here in django/db/model/base.py in base_save(): values = [(f, f.get_db_prep_save(raw and getattr(self, f.attname) or f.pre_save(self, True))) for f in meta.local_fields] this is what Django error page shows values to be: values = [(<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa78996c>, u'kallie'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa7899cc>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa789a2c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.EmailField object at 0xa789a8c>, u'[email protected]'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa789b2c>, 'sha1$d4a80$0e5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxddadfb07'), (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa789bcc>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa789c6c>, True), (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa789d2c>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xa789dcc>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xa789e2c>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), # this is where the values from the User model customizations show up (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa8c69ac>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c688c>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.PositiveIntegerField object at 0xa8c69cc>, 1), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c69ec>, 'b5ab1603b2308xxxxxxxxxxx75bca1'), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6dac>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6e4c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6e8c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6ecc>, 10), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xa8c6eec>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c6f2c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.URLField object at 0xa8c6f6c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c6fac>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.DateField object at 0xa8c6fec>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.TextField object at 0xa8cb04c>, ''), # at this point User model customizations repeats itself (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa663b0c>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa1e94c>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.PositiveIntegerField object at 0xaa1e34c>, 1), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa1e40c>, 'b5ab1603b2308050ebd62f49ca75bca1'), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6d8c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xaa2378c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xaa237ac>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xaa237ec>, 10), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xaa2380c>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa2384c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.URLField object at 0xaa2388c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa238cc>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.DateField object at 0xaa2390c>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.TextField object at 0xaa2394c>, '')] Since this app is in Production, I can't figure out how to use pdb.set_trace() to see what's going on inside of save_base. The customizations to User are: User.add_to_class('email_isvalid', models.BooleanField(default=False)) User.add_to_class('email_key', models.CharField(max_length=16, null=True)) User.add_to_class('reputation', models.PositiveIntegerField(default=1)) User.add_to_class('gravatar', models.CharField(max_length=32)) User.add_to_class('email_feeds', generic.GenericRelation(EmailFeed)) User.add_to_class('favorite_questions', models.ManyToManyField(Question, through=FavoriteQuestion, related_name='favorited_by')) User.add_to_class('badges', models.ManyToManyField(Badge, through=Award, related_name='awarded_to')) User.add_to_class('gold', models.SmallIntegerField(default=0)) User.add_to_class('silver', models.SmallIntegerField(default=0)) User.add_to_class('bronze', models.SmallIntegerField(default=0)) User.add_to_class('questions_per_page', models.SmallIntegerField(choices=QUESTIONS_PER_PAGE_CHOICES, default=10)) User.add_to_class('last_seen', models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)) User.add_to_class('real_name', models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('website', models.URLField(max_length=200, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('location', models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('date_of_birth', models.DateField(null=True, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('about', models.TextField(blank=True)) Django1.1.1 Python 2.5

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• Contract developer trying to get outsourcing contract with current client.

  - by Mike

  I work for a major bank as a contract software developer. I've been there a few months, and without exception this place has the worst software practices I've ever seen. The software my team makes has no formal testing, terrible code (not reusable, hard to read, etc), minimal documentation, no defined development process and an absolutely sickening amount of waste due to bureaucratic overhead. Part of my contract is to maintain a group of thousands of very poorly written batch jobs. When one of the jobs fails (read: crashes), it's a developers job to look at the source, figure out what's wrong, fix it, and check it in. There is no quality assurance process or auditing of the results whatsoever. Once the developer says "it works" a manager signs off and it goes into production. What's disturbing is that these jobs essentially grab market data and put it into a third-party risk management system, which provides the bank with critical intelligence. I've discovered the disturbing truth that this has been happening since the 90s and nobody really has evidence the system is getting the correct data! Without going into details, an issue arose on Friday that was so horrible I actually stormed out of the place. I was ready to quit, but I decided to just get out to calm my nerves and possibly go back Monday. I've been reflecting today on how to handle this. I have realized that, in probably less than 6 months, I could (with 2 other developers) remake a large component of this system. The new system would provide them with, as primary benefits, a maintainable codebase less prone to error and a solid QA framework. To do it properly I would have to be outside the bank, the internal bureaucracy is just too much. And moreover, I think a bank is fundamentally not a place that can make good software. This is my plan. Write a report explaining in depth all the problems with their current system Explain why their software practices fail and generate a tremendous amount of error and waste. Use this as the basis for claiming the project must be developed externally. Write a high level development plan, including what resources I will require Hand 1,2,3 to my manager, hopefully he passes it up the chain. Worst case he fires me, but this isn't so bad. Convinced Executive decides to award my company a contract for the new system I have 8 years experience as a software contractor and have delivered my share of successful software products, but all working in-house for small/medium sized companies. When I read this over, I think I have a dynamite plan. But since this is the first time doing something this bold so I have my doubts. My question is, is this a good idea? If you think not, please spare no detail.

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• Experienced developer trying to get outsourcing contract with current client.

  - by Mike

  I work for a major bank as a contract software developer. I've been there a few months, and without exception this place has the worst software practices I've ever seen. The software my team makes has no formal testing, terrible code (not reusable, hard to read, etc), minimal documentation, no defined development process and an absolutely sickening amount of waste due to bureaucratic overhead. Part of my contract is to maintain a group of thousands of very poorly written batch jobs. When one of the jobs fails (read: crashes), it's a developers job to look at the source, figure out what's wrong, fix it, and check it in. There is no quality assurance process or auditing of the results whatsoever. Once the developer says "it works" a manager signs off and it goes into production. What's disturbing is that these jobs essentially grab market data and put it into a third-party risk management system, which provides the bank with critical intelligence. I've discovered the disturbing truth that this has been happening since the 90s and nobody really has evidence the system is getting the correct data! Without going into details, an issue arose on Friday that was so horrible I actually stormed out of the place. I was ready to quit, but I decided to just get out to calm my nerves and possibly go back Monday. I've been reflecting today on how to handle this. I have realized that, in probably less than 6 months, I could (with 2 other developers) remake a large component of this system. The new system would provide them with, as primary benefits, a maintainable codebase less prone to error and a solid QA framework. To do it properly I would have to be outside the bank, the internal bureaucracy is just too much. And moreover, I think a bank is fundamentally not a place that can make good software. This is my plan. Write a report explaining in depth all the problems with their current system Explain why their software practices fail and generate a tremendous amount of error and waste. Use this as the basis for claiming the project must be developed externally. Write a high level development plan, including what resources I will require Hand 1,2,3 to my manager, hopefully he passes it up the chain. Worst case he fires me, but this isn't so bad. Convinced Executive decides to award my company a contract for the new system I have 8 years experience as a software contractor and have delivered my share of successful software products, but all working in-house for small/medium sized companies. When I read this over, I think I have a dynamite plan. But since this is the first time doing something this bold so I have my doubts. My question is, is this a good idea? If you think not, please spare no detail.

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• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Architecting Data Warehouse – Niraj Bhatt

  - by pinaldave

  Niraj Bhatt works as an Enterprise Architect for a Fortune 500 company and has an innate passion for building / studying software systems. He is a top rated speaker at various technical forums including Tech·Ed, MCT Summit, Developer Summit, and Virtual Tech Days, among others. Having run a successful startup for four years Niraj enjoys working on – IT innovations that can impact an enterprise bottom line, streamlining IT budgets through IT consolidation, architecture and integration of systems, performance tuning, and review of enterprise applications. He has received Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET, Connected Systems and most recently on Windows Azure. When he is away from his laptop, you will find him taking deep dives in automobiles, pottery, rafting, photography, cooking and financial statements though not necessarily in that order. He is also a manager/speaker at BDOTNET, Asia’s largest .NET user group. Here is the guest post by Niraj Bhatt. As data in your applications grows it’s the database that usually becomes a bottleneck. It’s hard to scale a relational DB and the preferred approach for large scale applications is to create separate databases for writes and reads. These databases are referred as transactional database and reporting database. Though there are tools / techniques which can allow you to create snapshot of your transactional database for reporting purpose, sometimes they don’t quite fit the reporting requirements of an enterprise. These requirements typically are data analytics, effective schema (for an Information worker to self-service herself), historical data, better performance (flat data, no joins) etc. This is where a need for data warehouse or an OLAP system arises. A Key point to remember is a data warehouse is mostly a relational database. It’s built on top of same concepts like Tables, Rows, Columns, Primary keys, Foreign Keys, etc. Before we talk about how data warehouses are typically structured let’s understand key components that can create a data flow between OLTP systems and OLAP systems. There are 3 major areas to it: a) OLTP system should be capable of tracking its changes as all these changes should go back to data warehouse for historical recording. For e.g. if an OLTP transaction moves a customer from silver to gold category, OLTP system needs to ensure that this change is tracked and send to data warehouse for reporting purpose. A report in context could be how many customers divided by geographies moved from sliver to gold category. In data warehouse terminology this process is called Change Data Capture. There are quite a few systems that leverage database triggers to move these changes to corresponding tracking tables. There are also out of box features provided by some databases e.g. SQL Server 2008 offers Change Data Capture and Change Tracking for addressing such requirements. b) After we make the OLTP system capable of tracking its changes we need to provision a batch process that can run periodically and takes these changes from OLTP system and dump them into data warehouse. There are many tools out there that can help you fill this gap – SQL Server Integration Services happens to be one of them. c) So we have an OLTP system that knows how to track its changes, we have jobs that run periodically to move these changes to warehouse. The question though remains is how warehouse will record these changes? This structural change in data warehouse arena is often covered under something called Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD). While we will talk about dimensions in a while, SCD can be applied to pure relational tables too. SCD enables a database structure to capture historical data. This would create multiple records for a given entity in relational database and data warehouses prefer having their own primary key, often known as surrogate key. As I mentioned a data warehouse is just a relational database but industry often attributes a specific schema style to data warehouses. These styles are Star Schema or Snowflake Schema. The motivation behind these styles is to create a flat database structure (as opposed to normalized one), which is easy to understand / use, easy to query and easy to slice / dice. Star schema is a database structure made up of dimensions and facts. Facts are generally the numbers (sales, quantity, etc.) that you want to slice and dice. Fact tables have these numbers and have references (foreign keys) to set of tables that provide context around those facts. E.g. if you have recorded 10,000 USD as sales that number would go in a sales fact table and could have foreign keys attached to it that refers to the sales agent responsible for sale and to time table which contains the dates between which that sale was made. These agent and time tables are called dimensions which provide context to the numbers stored in fact tables. This schema structure of fact being at center surrounded by dimensions is called Star schema. A similar structure with difference of dimension tables being normalized is called a Snowflake schema. This relational structure of facts and dimensions serves as an input for another analysis structure called Cube. Though physically Cube is a special structure supported by commercial databases like SQL Server Analysis Services, logically it’s a multidimensional structure where dimensions define the sides of cube and facts define the content. Facts are often called as Measures inside a cube. Dimensions often tend to form a hierarchy. E.g. Product may be broken into categories and categories in turn to individual items. Category and Items are often referred as Levels and their constituents as Members with their overall structure called as Hierarchy. Measures are rolled up as per dimensional hierarchy. These rolled up measures are called Aggregates. Now this may seem like an overwhelming vocabulary to deal with but don’t worry it will sink in as you start working with Cubes and others. Let’s see few other terms that we would run into while talking about data warehouses. ODS or an Operational Data Store is a frequently misused term. There would be few users in your organization that want to report on most current data and can’t afford to miss a single transaction for their report. Then there is another set of users that typically don’t care how current the data is. Mostly senior level executives who are interesting in trending, mining, forecasting, strategizing, etc. don’t care for that one specific transaction. This is where an ODS can come in handy. ODS can use the same star schema and the OLAP cubes we saw earlier. The only difference is that the data inside an ODS would be short lived, i.e. for few months and ODS would sync with OLTP system every few minutes. Data warehouse can periodically sync with ODS either daily or weekly depending on business drivers. Data marts are another frequently talked about topic in data warehousing. They are subject-specific data warehouse. Data warehouses that try to span over an enterprise are normally too big to scope, build, manage, track, etc. Hence they are often scaled down to something called Data mart that supports a specific segment of business like sales, marketing, or support. Data marts too, are often designed using star schema model discussed earlier. Industry is divided when it comes to use of data marts. Some experts prefer having data marts along with a central data warehouse. Data warehouse here acts as information staging and distribution hub with spokes being data marts connected via data feeds serving summarized data. Others eliminate the need for a centralized data warehouse citing that most users want to report on detailed data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on this blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Who writes the words? A rant with graphs.

  - by Roger Hart

  If you read my rant, you'll know that I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about user interface text. But rather than just yelling about the way the world should be (short version: no UI text would suck), it seemed prudent to actually gather some data. Rachel Potts has made an excellent first foray, by conducting a series of interviews across organizations about how they write user interface text. You can read Rachel's write up here. She presents the facts as she found them, and doesn't editorialise. The result is insightful, but impartial isn't really my style. So here's a rant with graphs. My method, and how it sucked I sent out a short survey. Survey design is one of my hobby-horses, and since some smartarse in the comments will mention it if I don't, I'll step up and confess: I did not design this one well. It was potentially ambiguous, implicitly excluded people, and since I only really advertised it on Twitter and a couple of mailing lists the sample will be chock full of biases. Regardless, these were the questions: What do you do? Select the option that best describes your role What kind of software does your organization make? (optional) In your organization, who writes the text on your software user interfaces? (for example: button names, static text, tooltips, and so on) Tick all that apply. In your organization who is responsible for user interface text? Who "owns" it? The most glaring issue (apart from question 3 being a bit broken) was that I didn't make it clear that I was asking about applications. Desktop, mobile, or web, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, it might have been interesting to categorize and compare. But a few respondents commented on the seeming lack of relevance, since they didn't really make software. There were some other issues too. It wasn't the best survey. So, you know, pinch of salt time with what follows. Despite this, there were 100 or so respondents. This post covers the overview, and you can look at the raw data in this spreadsheet What did people do? Boring graph number one: I wasn't expecting that. Given I pimped the survey on twitter and a couple of Tech Comms discussion lists, I was more banking on and even Content Strategy/Tech Comms split. What the "Others" specified: Three people chipped in with Technical Writer. Author, apparently, doesn't cut it. There's a "nobody reads the instructions" joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. There were a couple of hybrid roles, including Tech Comms and Testing, which sounds gruelling and thankless. There was also, an Intranet Manager, a Creative Director, a Consultant, a CTO, an Information Architect, and a Translator. That's a pretty healthy slice through the industry. Who wrote UI text? Boring graph number two: Annoyingly, I made this a "tick all that apply" question, so I can't make crude and inflammatory generalizations about percentages. This is more about who gets involved in user interface wording. So don't panic about the number of developers writing UI text. First off, it just means they're involved. Second, they might be good at it. What? It could happen. Ours are involved - they write a placeholder and flag it to me for changes. Sometimes I don't make any. It's also not surprising that there's so much UX in the mix. Some of that will be people taking care, and crafting an understandable interface. Some of it will be whatever text goes on the wireframe making it into production. I'm going to assume that's what happened at eBay, when their iPhone app purportedly shipped with the placeholder text "Some crappy content goes here". Ahem. Listing all 17 "other" responses would make this post lengthy indeed, but you can read them in the raw data spreadsheet. The award for the approach that sounds the most like a good idea yet carries the highest risk of ending badly goes to whoever offered up "External agencies using focus groups". If you're reading this, and that actually works, leave a comment. I'm fascinated. Who owned UI text Stop. Bar chart time: Wow. Let's cut to the chase, and by "chase", I mean those inflammatory generalizations I was talking about: In around 60% of cases the person responsible for user interface text probably lacks the relevant expertise. Even in the categories I count as being likely to have relevant skills (Marketing Copywriters, Content Strategists, Technical Authors, and User Experience Designers) there's a case for each role being unsuited, as you'll see in Rachel's blog post So it's not as simple as my headline. Does that mean that you personally, Mr Developer reading this, write bad button names? Of course not. I know nothing about you. It rather implies that as a category, the majority of people looking after UI text have neither communication nor user experience as their primary skill set, and as such will probably only be good at this by happy accident. I don't have a way of measuring those frequency of those accidents. What the Others specified: I don't know who owns it. I assume the project manager is responsible. "copywriters" when they wish to annoy me. the client's web maintenance person, often PR or MarComm That last one chills me to the bone. Still, at least nobody said "the work experience kid". You can see the rest in the spreadsheet. My overwhelming impression here is of user interface text as an unloved afterthought. There were fewer "nobody" responses than I expected, and a much broader split. But the relative predominance of developers owning and writing UI text suggests to me that organizations don't see it as something worth dedicating attention to. If true, that's bothersome. Because the words on the screen, particularly the names of things, are fundamental to the ability to understand an use software. It's also fascinating that Technical Authors and Content Strategists are neck and neck. For such a nascent discipline, Content Strategy appears to have made a mark on software development. Or my sample is skewed. But it feels like a bit of validation for my rant: Content Strategy is eating Tech Comms' lunch. That's not a bad thing. Well, not if the UI text is getting done well. And that's the caveat to this whole post. I couldn't care less who writes UI text, provided they consider the user and don't suck at it. I care that it may be falling by default to people poorly disposed to doing it right. And I care about that because so much user interface text sucks. The most interesting question Was one I forgot to ask. It's this: Does your organization have technical authors/writers? Like a lot of survey data, that doesn't tell you much on its own. But once we get a bit dimensional, it become more interesting. So taken with the other questions, this would have let me find out what I really want to know: What proportion of organizations have Tech Comms professionals but don't use them for UI text? Who writes UI text in their place? Why this happens? It's possible (feasible is another matter) that hundreds of companies have tech authors who don't work on user interfaces because they've empirically discovered that someone else, say the Marketing Copywriter, is better at it. And once we've all finished laughing, I'll point out that I've met plenty of tech authors who just aren't used to thinking about users at the point of need in the way UI text and embedded user assistance require. If you've got what I regard, perhaps unfairly, as the bad kind of tech author - the old-school kind with the thousand-page pdf and the grammar obsession - if you've got one of those then you probably are better off getting the UX folk or the copywriters to do your UI text. At the very least, they'll derive terminology from user research.

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• Want to be part of the most meaningful Customer Experience conversation today?

  - by Tony Berk

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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: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;} Today's entry is written by Chris Warner, Director, Product Strategy at Oracle. By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the blogs and announcements about Oracle OpenWorld. And perhaps you’ve also seen the news about OpenWorld’s newest sister event: Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Summit @ OpenWorld. Oracle CX Summit was created to be the most meaningful CX event, to be truly unique, to serve as the place to discover what it takes and what it really means to put the customer at the center of your business success. One long-time Oracle customer, when told about the Oracle CX Summit, put it this way: ‘This makes me rethink how I think about Oracle and Customer Experience’. Listen to what she heard and you be the judge. We believe Customer Experience (‘CX’) is a movement, not just the latest ‘IT’ tech trend. CX isn’t something you can simply ‘install’. CX is one of the most strategic initiatives an organization can undertake. Customer Experience is about connecting with an organization’s most important asset, the customer, and the critical role that connection has to an organization’s success. And there’s never been a bigger gathering of the smartest CX minds, most successful CX companies, and innovative CX examples than Oracle CX Summit. Take Subaru, for example. The company fully embraced the CX opportunity and their CX leadership will be on stage at the Oracle CX Summit to share their CX journey. They radically changed the way they interact with their customers, empower their employees, and differentiate their brand. And this is a story with a phenomenal happy ending: in a stagnant market and shrinking economy, they GREW their business and outpaced their competition. 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: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;} At Oracle CX Summit, you will be surrounded by dozens of CX leaders, visionaries and innovators like Subaru. This three-day event brings together the largest collection of thought leaders and practitioners in Customer Experience ever. Notable presenters include: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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";} Seth Godin - World-renowned blogger and one ‘the World’s Top 21 Speakers’, author of 14 best-selling books like “Permission Marketing”, and founder of dozens of startups such as Squidoo.com (ranked one of the top 125 sites in the US). Kerry Bodine - VP Principal Analyst at Forrester for Customer Experience, author of the just-published book “Outside In - The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business”, and renowned author of “The Customer Experience Ecosystem”. Bruce Temkin - Co-founder and Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, revered blogger of “Customer Experience Matters”, former VP Principal Analyst at Forrester for Customer Experience, Founder and Managing Partner of The Temkin Group, a leading Customer Experience research and consulting firm. George Kembel - Executive Director and Co-founder of the Stanford Design School, an established, recognized thought leader in design thinking and innovation, and a Silicon Valley based-CEO, venture capitalist and educator. Gene Alvarez - VP Research Analyst at Gartner and a recognized authority in the Retail and Consumer Goods industry. Gene has been published, featured and referenced in a variety of trade publications for Customer Experience insights. Senior Executives from innovative Customer Experience brands and agencies like AT&T, Intuit, Southwest Airlines, Marriott, Quiksilver, and Sapient. 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";} But the CX Summit includes much, much more. There are over 30+ role-driven sessions and rountables as well as one-of-a-kind events including: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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";} The Customer Experience Innovation Tent featuring hands-on demonstrations of bleeding-edge customer experiences like the Share Happy Ice Cream Machine A hands-on Customer Journey Mapping Workshop that lets you learn design thinking techniques for innovating differentiated experiences that drive cross-functional alignment Access to the Oracle OpenWorld Exhibition Halls and DEMOgrounds as well as a week-long Live Music Festival and the Oracle Appreciation Event featuring Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon 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";} At Oracle, we are quite proud of our award-winning suite of CX products, a suite of solutions that can help an organization greatly accelerate their CX journey. But Oracle CX Summit isn’t about products. It’s about how an organization can succeed in its CX initiative. There’s never been a bigger gathering of the smartest CX minds, most successful CX companies, and innovative CX examples than Oracle CX Summit. Come join the Customer Experience Revolution. Register for Oracle CX Summit @ OpenWorld here. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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";} --

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