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• Pimp my Silverlight Firestarter

  - by mbcrump

  So Silverlight Firestarter is over and your sitting on your couch thinking… what now? Well its time to So how exactly can you pimp the Silverlight Firestarter? Well read below and you will find out: 1) Pimp the videos: First we are going to use a program named Juice to download all of the Silverlight Firestarter videos. Go ahead and point your browser to http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/ and download the application. It works on Mac, Linux and PC. After it is downloaded you are going to want to add an RSS feed by clicking the button highlighted below. At this point you are going to want to add the following URL inside the textbox and hit Save: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Silverlight-Firestarter/RSS This RSS feed includes all the Silverlight Firestarter Labs and Presentations located below. The Future of Silverlight Data Binding Strategies with Silverlight and WP7 Building Compelling Apps with WCF using REST and LINQ Building Feature Rich Business Apps Today with RIA Services MVVM: Why and How? Tips and Patterns using MVVM and Service Patterns with Silverlight and WP7 Tips and Tricks for a Great Installation Experience Tune Your Application: Profiling and Performance Tips Performance Tips for Silverlight Windows Phone 7 Select all the videos and click the Download button located below (has blue arrow): Once all the videos are downloaded you will have about 4.64GB of Silverlight fun. You can now move these videos to your MediaServer and watch them with whatever device you want. Put it on an iPad, iPhone.. emm wait I mean WP7 or WMC7.  2) Pimp the Training Material – Download the offline installer for the labs here. This will give you almost a gig of free training materials. Here is the topics covered: Level 100: Getting Started Lab 01 - WinForms and Silverlight Lab 02 - ASP.NET and Silverlight Lab 03 - XAML and Controls Lab 04 - Data Binding Level 200: Ready for More Lab 05 - Migrating Apps to Out-of-Browser Lab 06 - Great UX with Blend Lab 07 - Web Services and Silverlight Lab 08 - Using WCF RIA Services Level 300: Take me Further Lab 09 - Deep Dive into Out-of-Browser Lab 10 - Silverlight Patterns: Using MVVM Lab 11 - Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 You will notice that it install Firestarter to the default of C:\Firestarter. So you will have to navigate to that folder and double click on Default.htm to get started. Now if you followed part one of the pimping guide then you will already have all the videos on your pc. You will notice that once you go into the lab you will get a Lab Document and Source at the bottom of the article. Now instead of opening the Source Folder in a web browser you can just copy the folder C:\Firestarter\Labs into your Visual Studio 2010 Project Folder. This will save a lot of time later.   3) Pimp my Silverlight 5 Knowledge – Always keep reading as much as possible and remember that the Silverlight 5 Beta should come Q1 of 2011 and the final release at the end of 2011. Here are 5 great blog post on Silverlight 5. Scott Gu’s Blog Mary Jo’s Article on Silverlight 5 The Future of Silverlight (Official) Kunal Chowdhury Blog Tim Heuer’s Blog Thats all that I got for now. Have fun with all the new Silverlight content.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Cox Communications' Strategic Approach to Enterprise User Experience: How Change Management and Usab

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Anna Wichansky, Senior Director, Applications User Experience, and Chair, Oracle Usability Advisory Board As part of our work in the User Experience group, our teams often go to Customer events such as the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) conference, Alliance 2010. This year's event was held in San Antonio, Texas, and was attended by hundreds of higher education, government, and public sector users of Oracle applications. The User Assistance team used this opportunity to reach out to customers in the Educational and Government sectors to better understand how their organizations are currently approaching help, messages, and other forms of user assistance. What is User Assistance? For us, user assistance is more than the old books of users' manuals and documentation. User assistance is anything that helps users get their jobs done quickly and efficiently. Instead of expecting users to stop and look through a guide or manual, we have been developing solutions that are embedded within the interface. We know that when people are having difficulty with a task, they want to be able to search efficiently for solutions and collaborate with coworkers. We know that they want to find their answers right there, right then, so that they can get on with their work. In our interviews at Alliance, we wanted to learn what the participants could tell us about what was happening on their campuses and in their institutions. Figure 1. For Oracle User Assistance, it's not just about books any more. So what did we do? Off to Texas, we recruited 10 people from nine different government and education organizations to come to our Oracle User Experience Onsite Usability Labs. We conducted one-hour interviews with these folks and asked them all about User Assistance--what people are doing, what they would like to do, what technologies they are using, what they would like to use, and ultimately what should we as a company be planning for our future products. We used this as an opportunity also to show them some of our design concepts for Fusion User Assistance, our next generation of user assistance based on the best of our user assistance in other products. Figure 2. Interviewing a technical user at Alliance. What we learned... People are not using paper or online manuals anymore. They don't want to see a manual that is written for technical users and that doesn't make sense to the ordinary end user. They really don't want to have to flip through a manual trying to find an answer to their question. Even when the answer might be tailored to their organization, they don't want to dig through documentation. When they need an answer now, they don't have the patience to dig for something that might or might not be clearly written. What does it mean to an organization when users don't want to deal with documentation? In many cases, it means that frustrated users make phone calls to try to find the answers that they need immediately. Phone calls are expensive to an organization and frustrating to the technical support staff who have provided documentation that no one wants to read anymore. If they don't call, they email for help often, and many users are asking for the same information. The bottom line is that if they could get that help immediately in the interface, they wouldn't have to make those calls or send those emails -- and that saves time and money. Our Fusion User Assistance options to customize help and get help for the task immediately were seen as an opportunity by these technical users to build the solutions that their users need and want. Figure 3. Joyce Ohgi and Laurie Pattison of Applications UX. Chicken Fried Steak. That was huge. But then, this was Texas, where we discovered a lot of things come very big. Drinks are served in quart-size glasses and dishes like Chicken Fried Steaks are served on platters not plates. We saw three-pound cinnamon rolls that you down with tea sweet enough to curl your hair. Deep in the heart of Texas, we learned a lot, and we ate even more.

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• SOA Community Newsletter October 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA & BPM Partner Community member, Our October newsletter edition focuses on Oracle OpenWorld 2013, highlights, keynotes and all presentations. Thanks to all partners who made the conference a huge success. If you could not come to San Francisco you will find all the details within this newsletter. As the newsletter edition contains a lot of content thus we have three sections - SOA, BPM & ACM, and AppAdvantage & UX. Make sure you share your content with the community, best via twitter @soacommunity #soacommunity! What is new in SOA Suite 12c? At OOW the product management team demonstrated some of the key features of the upcoming version. The important SOA topics are mobile integration and cloud integration - make sure you re-use your existing SOA platform! Bruce Tierney showcased the Agilent mobile integration and you try the new Mobile Order Management for EBS GSE Demo using middleware technology. On cloud integration the product management team presented several OOW sessions and published two whitepapers. As SOA becomes mature the awareness for SOA Governance continues to raise, Introducing Oracle Enterprise Repository Express Workflows and watch Luis Weir: Challenges to Implementing SOA Governance. Thanks to Ronald for the SOA Made Simple | Introduction to SOA series, the next article in the Industrial SOA series is SOA and User Interfaces (UI). Have you achieved successful BPM implementation? Nominate your customer references for the Gartner Business Process Management Excellence Awards 2014. Do you want to showcase the latest BPM Suite? Make sure you use the hosted BPM PS6 (11.1.1.7) demo. Do you want to become an expert in BPM Suite? Attend one of our BPM Bootcamps in Germany, Netherland, Spain or UK! If you can not make it – we offer plenty of on-demand content Advanced BPM Scenarios & BPM Architecture Topics & Process Modeling and Life Cycle & Adaptive Case Management & Smart Application Extensibility with Oracle Process Accelerators. I would also recommend to watch great introduction to Adaptive Case Management the on-demand webcast with Bruce Silver & Ajay Khanna. Thanks to Mark Foster from the A-team for the ACM article series & Leon Smiers for their blog posts. If you accomplished a SOA Suite or BPM Suite project and want to become a certified SOA or BPM expert, we are offering again free vouchers to become a certified SOA & BPM expert (limited to partners in Europe Middle East and Africa). Don't miss this opportunity and become Specialized! Best regards, Jürgen Kress To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soaNewsOctober2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-26

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Software Architecture for High Availability in the Cloud | Brian Jimerson Brian Jimerson looks at the paradigm shifts from machine-based architectures to cloud-based architectures when designing fault tolerance, and how enterprise applications need to be engineered to ensure the highest level of availability in the cloud. SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London - Special Oracle Discount Registration is now open for one of the premier SOA, Cloud, and Service Technology events. Once again, the Oracle community is well-represented in the session schedule. And now you can save on registration with a special Oracle discount code. Progress 4GL and DB to Oracle and cloud | Tom Laszewski "Getting from client/server based 4GLs and databases where the 4GL is tightly linked to the database to Oracle and the cloud is not easy," says cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski. "The least risky and expensive option...is to use the Progress OpenEdge DataServer for Oracle." Embrace 'big data' now or fall behind the competition, analyst warns | TechTarget TechTarget's Mark Brunelli's story says, in essence, that Big Data is not your fathers Business Intelligence. Calculating the Size (in Bytes and MB) of a Oracle Coherence Cache | Ricardo Ferreira Ferreira illustrates a programmatic way to use the Oracle Coherence API to calculate the total size of a specific cache that resides in the data grid. WebCenter Portal Tutorial Part 7: Integrating Discussions and Link service | Yannick Ongena The latest chapter in Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena's ongoing series. How to Setup JDeveloper workspace for ADF Fusion Applications to run Business Component Tester? | Jack Desai Helpful technical tips from yet another member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Team. Big Data for the Enterprise; Software Architecture for High Availability in the Cloud; Why Cloud Computing is a Paradigm Shift - And Why It Isn't This week on the OTN Solution Architect Homepage, along with an updated events list and this weeks list of selected community blog posts. Worst Practices for Big Data | Dain Hansen Dain Hansen shares some insight on what NOT to do if you want to captialize on Big Data. Free Virtual Developer Day - Oracle Fusion Development | Grant Ronald "The online conference will include seminars, hands-on lab and live chats with our technical staff including me!" says Grant Ronald. "And the best bit, it doesn't cost you a single penny. It's free and available right on your desktop." Penguin is Getting Ready for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 | Zeynep Koch Linux fan? Check out Zeynep Koch's post for a list of Linux-based sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Autoscaling | Frank Munz "Autoscaling on AWS can only be configured with lengthy commands from the command line but not from the web cased AWS console," says Frank Munz. "Getting all the parameters right can be tricky." He demonstrates one easy example in this video. Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers | Ultan O'Broin "These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight," says O'Broin. How Much Data Is Created Every Minute? [INFOGRAPHIC] | Mashable Explaining what the "Big" in Big Data really means -- and it's more than a little mind-boggling. Thought for the Day "Real, though miniature, Turing Tests are happening all the time, every day, whenever a person puts up with stupid computer software." — Jaron Lanier Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Green (Screen) Computing

  - by onefloridacoder

  I recently was given an assignment to create a UX where a user could use the up and down arrow keys, as well as the tab and enter keys to move through a Silverlight datagrid that is going be used as part of a high throughput data entry UI. And to be honest, I’ve not trapped key codes since I coded JavaScript a few years ago.  Although the frameworks I’m using made it easy, it wasn’t without some trial and error.    The other thing that bothered me was that the customer tossed this into the use case as they were delivering the use case.  Fine.  I’ll take a whack at anything and beat up myself and beg (I’m not beyond begging for help) the community for help to get something done if I have to. It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I thought I would hopefully save someone a few keystrokes if you wanted to build a green screen for your customer.   Here’s the ValueConverter to handle changing the strings to decimals and then back again.  The value is a nullable valuetype so there are few extra steps to take.  Usually the “ConvertBack()” method doesn’t get addressed but in this case we have two-way binding and the converter needs to ensure that if the user doesn’t enter a value it will remain null when the value is reapplied to the model object’s setter.  1: using System; 2: using System.Windows.Data; 3: using System.Globalization; 4:  5: public class NullableDecimalToStringConverter : IValueConverter 6: { 7: public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 8: { 9: if (!(((decimal?)value).HasValue)) 10: { 11: return (decimal?)null; 12: } 13: if (!(value is decimal)) 14: { 15: throw new ArgumentException("The value must be of type decimal"); 16: } 17:  18: NumberFormatInfo nfi = culture.NumberFormat; 19: nfi.NumberDecimalDigits = 4; 20:  21: return ((decimal)value).ToString("N", nfi); 22: } 23:  24: public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 25: { 26: decimal nullableDecimal; 27: decimal.TryParse(value.ToString(), out nullableDecimal); 28:  29: return nullableDecimal == 0 ? null : nullableDecimal.ToString(); 30: } 31: }            The ConvertBack() method uses TryParse to create a value from the incoming string so if the parse fails, we get a null value back, which is what we would expect.  But while I was testing I realized that if the user types something like “2..4” instead of “2.4”, TryParse will fail and still return a null.  The user is getting “puuu-lenty” of eye-candy to ensure they know how many values are affected in this particular view. Here’s the XAML code.   This is the simple part, we just have a DataGrid with one column here that’s bound to the the appropriate ViewModel property with the Converter referenced as well. 1: <data:DataGridTextColumn 2: Header="On-Hand" 3: Binding="{Binding Quantity, 4: Mode=TwoWay, 5: Converter={StaticResource DecimalToStringConverter}}" 6: IsReadOnly="False" /> Nothing too magical here.  Just some XAML to hook things up.   Here’s the code behind that’s handling the DataGridKeyup event.  These are wired to a local/private method but could be converted to something the ViewModel could use, but I just need to get this working for now. 1: // Wire up happens in the constructor 2: this.PicDataGrid.KeyUp += (s, e) => this.HandleKeyUp(e);   1: // DataGrid.BeginEdit fires when DataGrid.KeyUp fires. 2: private void HandleKeyUp(KeyEventArgs args) 3: { 4: if (args.Key == Key.Down || 5: args.Key == Key.Up || 6: args.Key == Key.Tab || 7: args.Key == Key.Enter ) 8: { 9: this.PicDataGrid.BeginEdit(); 10: } 11: }   And that’s it.  The ValueConverter was the biggest problem starting out because I was using an existing converter that didn’t take nullable value types into account.   Once the converter was passing back the appropriate value (null, “#.####”) the grid cell(s) and the model objects started working as I needed them to. HTH.

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• SQL SERVER – Renaming Index – Index Naming Conventions

  - by pinaldave

  If you are regular reader of this blog, you must be aware of that there are two kinds of blog posts 1) I share what I learn recently 2) I share what I learn and request your participation. Today’s blog post is where I need your opinion to make this blog post a good reference for future. Background Story Recently I came across system where users have changed the name of the few of the table to match their new standard naming convention. The name of the table should be self explanatory and they should have explain their purpose without either opening it or reading documentations. Well, not every time this is possible but again this should be the goal of any database modeler. Well, I no way encourage the name of the tables to be too long like ‘ContainsDetailsofNewInvoices’. May be the name of the table should be ‘Invoices’ and table should contain a column with New/Processed bit filed to indicate if the invoice is processed or not (if necessary). Coming back to original story, the database had several tables of which the name were changed. Story Continues… To continue the story let me take simple example. There was a table with the name  ’ReceivedInvoices’, it was changed to new name as ‘TblInvoices’. As per their new naming standard they had to prefix every talbe with the words ‘Tbl’ and prefix every view with the letters ‘Vw’. Personally I do not see any need of the prefix but again, that issue is not here to discuss.  Now after changing the name of the table they faced very interesting situation. They had few indexes on the table which had name of the table. Let us take an example. Old Name of Table: ReceivedInvoice Old Name of Index: Index_ReceivedInvoice1 Here is the new names New Name of Table: TblInvoices New Name of Index: ??? Well, their dilemma was what should be the new naming convention of the Indexes. Here is a quick proposal of the Index naming convention. Do let me know your opinion. If Index is Primary Clustered Index: PK_TableName If Index is  Non-clustered Index: IX_TableName_ColumnName1_ColumnName2… If Index is Unique Non-clustered Index: UX_TableName_ColumnName1_ColumnName2… If Index is Columnstore Non-clustered Index: CL_TableName Here ColumnName is the column on which index is created. As there can be only one Primary Key Index and Columnstore Index per table, they do not require ColumnName in the name of the index. The purpose of this new naming convention is to increase readability. When any user come across this index, without opening their properties or definition, user can will know the details of the index. T-SQL script to Rename Indexes Here is quick T-SQL script to rename Indexes EXEC sp_rename N'SchemaName.TableName.IndexName', N'New_IndexName', N'INDEX'; GO Your Contribute Please Well, the organization has already defined above four guidelines, personally I follow very similar guidelines too. I have seen many variations like adding prefixes CL for Clustered Index and NCL for Non-clustered Index. I have often seen many not using UX prefix for Unique Index but rather use generic IX prefix only. Now do you think if they have missed anything in the coding standard. Is NCI and CI prefixed required to additionally describe the index names. I have once received suggestion to even add fill factor in the index name – which I do not recommend at all. What do you think should be ideal name of the index, so it explains all the most important properties? Additionally, you are welcome to vote if you believe changing the name of index is just waste of time and energy.  Note: The purpose of the blog post is to encourage all to participate with their ideas. I will write follow up blog posts in future compiling all the suggestions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for October 14-20, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of October 14-21, 2012. Panel: On the Impact of Software | InfoQ Les Hatton (Oakwood Computing Associates), Clive King (Oracle), Paul Good (Shell), Mike Andrews (Microsoft) and Michiel van Genuchten (moderator) discuss the impact of software engineering on our lives in this panel discussion recorded at the Computer Society Software Experts Summit 2012. ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter Learn how ResCare solves content lifecycle challenges with Oracle WebCenter. Speakers: Joe Lichtefeld, VP of Application Services & PMO, ResCare Wayne Boerger, Product Manager, TEAM Informatics Doug Thompson, EVP Global Development, TEAM Informatics Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference "The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Mobile Apps for EBS | Capgemini Oracle Blog Capgemini solution architect Satish Iyer breifly describes how Oracle ADF and Oracle SOA Suite can be used to fill the gap in mobile applications for Oracle EBS. Introducing the New Face of Fusion Applications | Misha Vaughan Oracle ACE Directors Debra Lilly and Floyd Teter have already blogged about the the new face of Oracle Fusion Applications. Now Applications User Experience Architect Misha Vaughan shares a brief overview of how the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team developed the new look. BPM 11g - Dynamic Task Assignment with Multi-level Organization Units | Mark Foster "I've seen several requirements to have a more granular level of task assignment in BPM 11g based on some value in the data passed to the process," says Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Mark Foster. "Parametric Roles is normally the first port of call to try to satisfy this requirement, but in this blog we will show how a lot of use-cases can be satisfied by the easier to implement and flexible Organization Unit." OTN Architect Day Los Angeles - Oct 25 Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles happens in one week. Register now to make sure you don't miss out on a rich schedule of expert technical sessions and peer interaction covering the use of Oracle technologies in cloud computing, SOA, and more. Even better: it's all free. When: October 25, 2012, 8:30am - 5:00pm. Where: Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.2 released | Oracle's Virtualization Blog The Fat Bloke weighs in with a short post with information on where you can find information and the download for the latest VirtualBox release. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite #OOW 2012 SOA Presentations The Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. Thought for the Day "Software: do you write it like a book, grow it like a plant, accrete it like a pearl, or construct it like a building?" — Jeff Atwood Source: softwarequotes.com

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• What Color is your Jetpack ?

  - by JoshReuben

  I’m a programmer, Im approaching 40, and I’m fairly decent at my job – I’ll keep doing what I’m doing for as long as they let me!   So what are your career options if you know how to code? A Programmer could be ..   An Algorithm developer Pros Interesting High barriers of entry, potential for startup competitive factor Cons Do you have the skill, qualifications? What are working conditions n this mystery niche ? micro-focus An Academic Pros Low pressure Job security – or is this an illusion ? Cons Low Pay Need a PhD A Software Architect Pros: strategic, rather than tactical Setting technology platform and high level vision You say how it should work, others have to figure out why its not working the way its supposed to ! broad view – you are paid to learn (how do you con people into paying for you to learn ??) Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! competitive – everyone wants to do it ! loose touch with underlying tech in tough times, first guy to get the axe ! A Software Engineer Pros: interesting, always more to learn fun I can do it Fallback Cons: Nothing new under the sun – been there, done that Dealing with poor requirements, deadlines, other peoples code, overtime C#, XAML, Web - Low barriers of entry –> à race to the bottom A Team leader Pros: Setting code standards and proposing technology choices Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! Inspecting other peoples code and debugging the problems they cannot fix Dealing with mugbies and prima donas Responsible for QA of others A Project Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Cons Low barrier of entry High pressure Responsible for QA of others Loosing touch with technology A lot of bullshit meetings Have to be an asshole A Product Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Learning new skillset of sales and marketing Cons Travel (I'm a family man) May need to know the bs details of an uninteresting product things I want to work with: AI, algorithms, Numerical Computing, Mathematica, C++ AMP – unfortunately, the work here is few & far between. VS & TFS Extensibility, DSLs (Workflow , Lightswitch), Code Generation – one day, code will write code ! Unity3D, WebGL – fun, fun, fun ! Modern Web – Knockout, SignalR, MVC, Node.Js ??? (tentative – I'll wait until things stabilize as this area is undergoing a pre-Cambrian explosion) Things I don’t want to work with: (but will if I'm asked to !) C# – same old, same old – not learning anything new here Old code – blech ! Environment with code & fix mentality , ad hoc requirements, excessive overtime Pc support, System administration – even after 20 years, people still ask you to do this sometimes ! debugging – my skills are just not there yet Oracle Old tech: VB 6, XSLT, WinForms, Net 3.51 or less Old style Web dev Information Systems: ASP.NET webforms, Reporting services / crystal reports, SQL Server CRUD with manual data layer, XAML MVVM – variations of the same concept, ad nauseaum. Low barriers of entry –> race to the bottom.  Metro – an elegant API coupled to a horrendous UX – I'll wait for market penetration viability before investing further in this.   Conclusion So if you are in a slump, take heart: Programming is a great career choice compared to every other job !

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• What do you need to know to be a world-class master software developer? [closed]

  - by glitch

  I wanted to bring up this question to you folks and see what you think, hopefully advise me on the matter: let's say you had 30 years of learning and practicing software development in front of you, how would you dedicate your time so that you'd get the biggest bang for your buck. What would you both learn and work on to be a world-class software developer that would make a large impact on the industry and leave behind a legacy? I think that most great developers end up being both broad generalists and specialists in one-two areas of interest. I'm thinking Bill Joy, John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, K&R and so on. I'm thinking that perhaps one approach would be to break things down by categories and establish a base minimum of "software development" greatness. I'm thinking: Operating Systems: completely internalize the core concepts of OS, perhaps gain a lot of familiarity with an OSS one such as Linux. Anything from memory management to device drivers has to be complete second nature. Programming Languages: this is one of those topics that imho has to be fully grokked even if it might take many years. I don't think there's quite anything like going through the process of developing your own compiler, understanding language design trade-offs and so on. Programming Language Pragmatics is one of my favorite books actually, I think you want to have that internalized back to back, and that's just the start. You could go significantly deeper, but I think it's time well spent, because it's such a crucial building block. As a subset of that, you want to really understand the different programming paradigms out there. Imperative, declarative, logic, functional and so on. Anything from assembly to LISP should be at the very least comfortable to write in. Contexts: I believe one should have experience working in different contexts to truly be able to appreciate the trade-offs that are being made every day. Embedded, web development, mobile development, UX development, distributed, cloud computing and so on. Hardware: I'm somewhat conflicted about this one. I think you want some understanding of computer architecture at a low level, but I feel like the concepts that will truly matter will be slightly higher level, such as CPU caching / memory hierarchy, ILP, and so on. Networking: we live in a completely network-dependent era. Having a good understanding of the OSI model, knowing how the Web works, how HTTP works and so on is pretty much a pre-requisite these days. Distributed systems: once again, everything's distributed these days, it's getting progressively harder to ignore this reality. Slightly related, perhaps add solid understanding of how browsers work to that, since the world seems to be moving so much to interfacing with everything through a browser. Tools: Have a really broad toolset that you're familiar with, one that continuously expands throughout the years. Communication: I think being a great writer, effective communicator and a phenomenal team player is pretty much a prerequisite for a lot of a software developer's greatness. It can't be overstated. Software engineering: understanding the process of building software, team dynamics, the requirements of the business-side, all the pitfalls. You want to deeply understand where what you're writing fits from the market perspective. The better you understand all of this, the more of your work will actually see the daylight. This is really just a starting list, I'm confident that there's a ton of other material that you need to master. As I mentioned, you most likely end up specializing in a bunch of these areas as you go along, but I was trying to come up with a baseline. Any thoughts, suggestions and words of wisdom from the grizzled veterans out there who would like to share their thoughts and experiences with this? I'd really love to know what you think!

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• Understanding the Value of SOA

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  Written By: Debra Lilley, ACE Director, Fusion Applications Again I want to talk from my area of expertise of Fusion Applications and talk about their design fundamentals. If you look at the table below and start at the bottom Oracle have defined all of the business objects e.g. accounts, people, customers, invoices etc. used by Fusion Applications; each of these objects contain all of the information required and can be expanded if necessary.  That Oracle have created for each of these business objects every action that is needed for the applications e.g. all the actions to create a new customer, checking to see if it exists, credit checking with D&B (Dun & Bradstreet < http://www.dnb.co.uk/> ) , creating the record, notifying those required etc. Each of these actions is a stand-alone web service. Again you can create a new actions or subscribe to an external provided web service e.g. the D&B check. The diagram also shows that all of development of Fusion Applications is from their Fusion Middleware offerings. Then the Intelligent Business Process is the order in which you run these actions, this is Service Orientated Architecture, SOA. Not only is SOA used to orchestrate actions within Fusion Applications it is also used in the integration of Fusion Applications with the rest of the Oracle stable of applications such as EBS, PeopleSoft, JDE and Siebel. The other applications are written with propriety development tools so how do they work with SOA? It’s a very simple answer, with the introduction of the Oracle SOA platform each process within these applications was made available to be called as a web service. I won’t go into technically how that is done but what’s known as a wrapper to allow each of them to act in this way was added. Finally at the top of the diagram are the questions that each Fusion Application process must answer, and this is the ‘special’ sauce that makes them so good, the User Experience, but that is a topic for another day, or you can read about it in my blog http://debrasoracle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/going-on-record-about-fusion-apps-cloud.html or Oracle’s own UX blog https://blogs.oracle.com/usableapps/ The concept behind AppAdvantage is not new the idea that Oracle technology can add value to your Oracle applications investments is pretty fundamental. Nishit Rao who is in AppAdvantage team provided myself and other ACE Directors with demo kits so that we could demonstrate SOA running with the applications. The example I learnt to build was that of the EBS inventory open interface. The simple concept is that request records can be added to a table and an import run that creates these as transactions in inventory. What’s SOA allows you to do is to add to the table from any source and then run this process automatically whereas traditionally you had to run the process at regular intervals because you didn’t know if the table was empty or not. This may just sound like a different way of doing the same thing but if the process is critical for your business then the interval was very small and the process run potentially many times unnecessarily. Using SOA it only happened when necessary without any delay. So in my post today I’ve talked about how SOA is used with Fusion Applications and in the linking with more traditional applications but that is only the tip of the iceberg of potential, your applications are just part of your IT systems and SOA can orchestrate your data across all of them; the beauty of open standards.  Debra Lilley, Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director.  Lilley has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Lead and Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts

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• Updating Debian kernel

  - by Devator

  I'm trying to update my Debian machine to 2.6.32-46 (which is the new stable). However, after doing apt-get update my apt-cache search linux-image shows me: linux-headers-2.6.32-5-486 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-486 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem linux-headers-2.6.32-5-686 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-686 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-openvz-686 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-openvz-686 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-vserver-686-bigmem - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-vser ver-686-bigmem linux-headers-2.6.32-5-vserver-686 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-vserver-686 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-xen-686 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-xen-686 linux-image-2.6.32-5-486 - Linux 2.6.32 for old PCs linux-image-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem-dbg - Debugging infos for Linux 2.6.32-5-686-big mem linux-image-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem - Linux 2.6.32 for PCs with 4GB+ RAM linux-image-2.6.32-5-686 - Linux 2.6.32 for modern PCs linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 - Linux 2.6.32 for 64-bit PCs linux-image-2.6.32-5-openvz-686-dbg - Debugging infos for Linux 2.6.32-5-openvz- 686 linux-image-2.6.32-5-openvz-686 - Linux 2.6.32 for modern PCs, OpenVZ support linux-image-2.6.32-5-vserver-686-bigmem-dbg - Debugging infos for Linux 2.6.32-5 -vserver-686-bigmem linux-image-2.6.32-5-vserver-686-bigmem - Linux 2.6.32 for PCs with 4GB+ RAM, Li nux-VServer support linux-image-2.6.32-5-vserver-686 - Linux 2.6.32 for modern PCs, Linux-VServer su pport linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-686-dbg - Debugging infos for Linux 2.6.32-5-xen-686 linux-image-2.6.32-5-xen-686 - Linux 2.6.32 for modern PCs, Xen dom0 support linux-image-2.6-486 - Linux 2.6 for old PCs (meta-package) linux-image-2.6-686-bigmem - Linux 2.6 for PCs with 4GB+ RAM (meta-package) linux-image-2.6-686 - Linux 2.6 for modern PCs (meta-package) linux-image-2.6-amd64 - Linux 2.6 for 64-bit PCs (meta-package) linux-image-2.6-openvz-686 - Linux 2.6 for modern PCs (meta-package), OpenVZ sup port linux-image-2.6-vserver-686-bigmem - Linux 2.6 for PCs with 4GB+ RAM (meta-packa ge), Linux-VServer support linux-image-2.6-vserver-686 - Linux 2.6 for modern PCs (meta-package), Linux-VSe rver support linux-image-2.6-xen-686 - Linux 2.6 for modern PCs (meta-package), Xen dom0 supp ort linux-image-486 - Linux for old PCs (meta-package) linux-image-686-bigmem - Linux for PCs with 4GB+ RAM (meta-package) linux-image-686 - Linux for modern PCs (meta-package) linux-image-amd64 - Linux for 64-bit PCs (meta-package) linux-image-openvz-686 - Linux for modern PCs (meta-package), OpenVZ support linux-image-vserver-686-bigmem - Linux for PCs with 4GB+ RAM (meta-package), Lin ux-VServer support linux-image-vserver-686 - Linux for modern PCs (meta-package), Linux-VServer sup port linux-image-xen-686 - Linux for modern PCs (meta-package), Xen dom0 support So, 2.6.32-46 doesn't seem to be found. How can I update to this kernel? My sources.list: ###### Debian Main Repos deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib deb-src http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib ###### Debian Update Repos deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-proposed-updates main contrib deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib deb-src http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-proposed-updates main contrib

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• Silverlight Firestarter Wrap Up and WCF RIA Services Talk Sample Code

  - by dwahlin

  I had a great time attending and speaking at the Silverlight Firestarter event up in Redmond on December 2, 2010. In addition to getting a chance to hang out with a lot of cool people from Microsoft such as Scott Guthrie, John Papa, Tim Heuer, Brian Goldfarb, John Allwright, David Pugmire, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Handley, Yavor Georgiev, Jossef Goldberg, Mike Cook and many others, I also had a chance to chat with a lot of people attending the event and hear about what projects they’re working on which was awesome. If you didn’t get a chance to look through all of the new features coming in Silverlight 5 check out John Papa’s post on the subject. While at the Silverlight Firestarter event I gave a presentation on WCF RIA Services and wanted to get the code posted since several people have asked when it’d be available. The talk can be viewed by clicking the image below. Code from the talk follows as well as additional links. I had a few people ask about the green bracelet on my left hand since it looks like something you’d get from a waterpark. It was used to get us access down a little hall that led backstage and allowed us to go backstage during the event. I thought it looked kind of dorky but it was required to get through security. Sample Code from My WCF RIA Services Talk (To login to the 2 apps use “user” and “P@ssw0rd”. Make sure to do a rebuild of the projects in Visual Studio before running them.) View All Silverlight Firestarter Talks and Scott Guthrie’s Keynote WCF RIA Services SP1 Beta for Silverlight 4 WCF RIA Services Code Samples (including some SP1 samples) Improved binding support in EntitySet and EntityCollection with SP1 (Kyle McClellan’s Blog) Introducing an MVVM-Friendly DomainDataSource: The DomainCollectionView (Kyle McClellan’s Blog) I’ve had the chance to speak at a lot of conferences but never with as many cameras, streaming capabilities, people watching live and overall hype involved. Over 1000 people registered to attend the conference in person at the Microsoft campus and well over 15,000 to watch it through the live stream.  The event started for me on Tuesday afternoon with a flight up to Seattle from Phoenix. My flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours (I seem to be good at booking delayed flights) so I didn’t get up there until almost 8 PM. John Papa did a tech check at 9 PM that night and I was scheduled for 9:30 PM. We basically plugged in my laptop backstage (amazing number of servers, racks and audio devices back there) and made sure everything showed up properly on the projector and the machines recording the presentation. In addition to a dedicated show director, there were at least 5 tech people back stage and at least that many up in the booth running lights, audio, cameras, and other aspects of the show. I wish I would’ve taken a picture of the backstage setup since it was pretty massive – servers all over the place. I definitely gained a new appreciation for how much work goes into these types of events. Here’s what the room looked like right before my tech check– not real exciting at this point. That’s Yavor Georgiev (who spoke on WCF Services at the Firestarter) in the background. We had plenty of monitors to reference during the presentation. Two monitors for slides (right and left side) and a notes monitor. The 4th monitor showed the time and they’d type in notes to us as we talked (such as “You’re over time!” in my case since I went around 4 minutes over :-)). Wednesday morning I went back on campus at Microsoft and watched John Papa film a few Silverlight TV episodes with Dave Campbell and Ryan Plemons.   Next I had the chance to watch the dry run of the keynote with Scott Guthrie and John Papa. We were all blown away by the demos shown since they were even better than expected. Starting at 1 PM on Wednesday I went over to Building 35 and listened to Yavor Georgiev (WCF Services), Jaime Rodriguez (Windows Phone 7), Jesse Liberty (Data Binding) and Jossef Goldberg and Mike Cook (Silverlight Performance) give their different talks and we all shared feedback with each other which was a lot of fun. Jeff Handley from the RIA Services team came afterwards and listened to me give a dry run of my WCF RIA Services talk. He had some great feedback that I really appreciated getting. That night I hung out with John Papa and Ward Bell and listened to John walk through his keynote demos. I also got a sneak peak of the gift given to Dave Campbell for all his work with Silverlight Cream over the years. It’s a poster signed by all of the key people involved with Silverlight: Thursday morning I got up fairly early to get to the event center by 8 AM for speaker pictures. It was nice and quiet at that point although outside the room there was a huge line of people waiting to get in.     At around 8:30 AM everyone was let in and the main room was filled quickly. Two other overflow rooms in the Microsoft conference center (Building 33) were also filled to capacity. At around 9 AM Scott Guthrie kicked off the event and all the excitement started! From there it was all a blur but it was definitely a lot of fun. All of the sessions for the Silverlight Firestarter were recorded and can be watched here (including the keynote). Corey Schuman, John Papa and I also released 11 lab exercises and associated videos to help people get started with Silverlight. Definitely check them out if you’re interested in learning more! Level 100: Getting Started Lab 01 - WinForms and Silverlight Lab 02 - ASP.NET and Silverlight Lab 03 - XAML and Controls Lab 04 - Data Binding Level 200: Ready for More Lab 05 - Migrating Apps to Out-of-Browser Lab 06 - Great UX with Blend Lab 07 - Web Services and Silverlight Lab 08 - Using WCF RIA Services Level 300: Take me Further Lab 09 - Deep Dive into Out-of-Browser Lab 10 - Silverlight Patterns: Using MVVM Lab 11 - Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

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• top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – March 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity PeterPaul ? RT @JDeveloper: EJB 3 Deployment guide for WebLogic Server Version: 10.3.4.0 dlvr.it/1J5VcV Andrejus Baranovskis ?Open ADF PopUp on Page Load fb.me/1Rx9LP3oW Sten Vesterli ? RT @OracleBlogs: Using the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java on ADF Applications ow.ly/1hVKbB <- Neat! No more WS calls Java Buddy ?JavaFX 2.0: Example of MediaPlay java-buddy.blogspot.com/2012/03/javafx… Georges Saab Build improvements coming to #openJDK for #jdk8 mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/buil… NetBeans Team Share your #Java experience! JavaOne 2012 India call for papers: ow.ly/9xYg0 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 Screencasts & Videos – bit.ly/zmQjn2 chriscmuir ?G+: New blog post: ADF Runtimes vs WLS versions as of JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 – bit.ly/y8tkgJ Michael Heinrichs New article: Creating a Sprite Animation with JavaFX blog.netopyr.com/2012/03/09/cre… Oracle WebLogic ? #WebLogic Devcast Webinar Series for March: Enterprise Java Scale Out, JPA, Distributed Grid Data Cache bit.ly/zeUXEV #Coherence Andrejus Baranovskis ?Extending Application Module for ADF BC Proxy User DB Connection fb.me/Bj1hLUqm OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7 | Mark Nelson bit.ly/w7IroZ OTNArchBeat ? Java Champion Jonas Bonér Explains the Akka Platform bit.ly/x2GbXm Adam Bien ? (Java) FX Experience Tools–Feels Like Native Mac App: FX Experience Tools application comes with a native Mac O… bit.ly/waHF3H GlassFish ? GlassFish new recruit and Eclipse integration progress – bit.ly/y5eEkk JDeveloper & ADF Prototyping ADF Libraries dlvr.it/1Hhnw0 Eric Elzinga ?Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7, bit.ly/xkphFQ ADF EMG ? Working with ADF in Arabic, Hebrew or other right-to-left-written language? Oracle UX asks for your help. groups.google.com/forum/?fromgro… Java ? A simple #JavaFX Login Form with a TRON like effect ow.ly/9n9AG JDeveloper & ADF ? Logging in Oracle ADF Applications dlvr.it/1HZhcX OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide bit.ly/ywXydR UK Oracle User Group ? Simon Haslam, ACE Director present on #WebLogic for DBAs at #oug_ire2012 j.mp/zG6vz3 @oraclewebcenter @oracleace #dublin Steven Davelaar ? Working with ADF and not a member of ADF EMG? You miss lots of valuable info, join now! sites.google.com/site/oracleemg… Simon Haslam @MaciejGruszka: Oracle plans to provide Forms & Reports plug-in for OVAB next year to help deployment. #ukoug MW SIG GlassFish ? Introducing JSR 357: Social Media API – bit.ly/yC8vez JAX London ? Are you coming to Java EE workshops by @AdamBien at JAX Days? Save £100 by registering today. #jaxdays #javaee jaxdays.com WebLogic Community ?Welcome to our Munich WebLogic 12c Bootcamp in Munich! If you also want to attend a training register for the Community oracle.com/partners/goto/… chriscmuir ? My first webcast for Oracle! (be kind) Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object bit.ly/ArKija OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Weblogic Server 12c is available on Oracle Solaris 11 (SPARC and x86) bit.ly/xE3TLg JDeveloper & ADF ? Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object – YouTube dlvr.it/1H93Qr OTNArchBeat ? Application-Driven Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder | Ronen Kofman bit.ly/wF1C1N Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server Singleton Services ow.ly/1hOu4U Barbara Ann May ?@oracledevtools: New update: #NetBeans IDE 7.1.1, with support for #GlassFish 3.1.2 bit.ly/mOLcQd #java #developer OTNArchBeat ? Using Coherence with JDeveloper: bit.ly/AkoEQb WebLogic Community ? WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p1LMIb-f3 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 – new Podcast episode : bit.ly/wc6oBE Frank Nimphius ?Cool! Open JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, go help–>check for updates. First thing shown is that 11.1.1.6 is available. Never miss a new release Adam Bien ?5 Minutes (Video) With Java EE …Or With NetBeans + GlassFish: This screencast covers a 5-minute development of a… bit.ly/xkOJMf WebLogic Community ? Free Oracle WebLogic Certification Application Grid Implementation Specialist wp.me/p1LMIb-eT OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Coherence: First Steps Using Clusters and Basic API Usage | Ricardo Ferreira bit.ly/yYQ3Wz GlassFish ? JMS 2.0 Early Draft is here – bit.ly/ygT1VN OTNArchBeat ? Exalogic Networking Part 2 | The Old Toxophilist bit.ly/xuYMIi OTNArchBeat ?New Release: GlassFish Server 3.1.2. Read All About It! | Paul Davies bit.ly/AtlGxo Oracle WebLogic ?OTN Virtual Developer Day: #WebLogic 12c & #Coherence ost-conference on-demand page live with bonus #Virtualbox lab – bit.ly/xUy6BJ Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.6) Documentation ow.ly/1hJgUB Lucas Jellema ? Just published an article on the AMIS blog: technology.amis.nl/2012/03/adf-11… ADF 11g – programmatically sorting rich table columns. Java Certification ? New Course! Learn how to create mobile applications using Java ME: bit.ly/xZj1Jh Simon Haslam ? @MaciejGruszka WebLogic 12c can run against 11g domain config without changes …and can rollback to 11. #ukoug MW SIG Justin Kestelyn ? Learn Advanced ADF, free and online bit.ly/wEKSRc WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress,WebLogic 12c

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• Selling Visual Studio ALM

  - by Tarun Arora

  Introduction As a consultant I have been selling Application Lifecycle Management services using Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. I’ve been contacted various times by friends working in organization telling me that ALM processes in their company were benchmarked when dinosaurs walked the earth. Most of these individuals already know the great features Microsoft ALM tools offer and are keen to start a conversation with the CIO but don’t exactly know where to start. It is very important how you engage in your first conversation, if you start the conversation with ‘There is this great tooling from Microsoft which offers amazing features to boost developer productivity, … ‘ from experience I can tell you the reply from your CIO would be ‘I already know! Our existing landscape has a combination of bleeding edge open source and cutting edge licensed tools which already cover these features quite well, more over Microsoft products have a high licensing cost associated to them.’ You will always find it harder to sell by feature, the trick is to highlight the gap in the existing processes & tools and then highlight the impact of these gaps to the overall development processes, by now you would have captured enough attention to show off how the ALM tooling offered by Microsoft not only fills those gaps but offers great value adds to take their development practices to the next level. Rangers ALM Assessment Guide Image 1 – Welcome! First look at the Rangers ALM assessment guide Most organization already have some processes in place to cover aspects of ALM. How do you go about proving that there isn’t enough cover in place? This is where Visual Studio ALM Rangers ALM Assessment guide can help. The ALM assessment guide is really a tool that helps you gather information about Development practices and processes within a customer's environment. Several questionnaires are used to identify the current state of individual development lifecycle areas and decide on a desired state for those processes. It also presents guidance and roll-up summaries to help with recommendations moving forward. The ALM Rangers assessment guide can be downloaded from here. Image 2 – ALM Assessment guide divided into different functions of SDLC The assessment guide is divided into different functions of Software Development Lifecycle (listed below), this gives you the ability to access how mature the company is in different areas of SDLC. Architecture & Design Requirement Engineering & UX Development Software Configuration Management Governance Deployment & Operations Testing & Quality Assurance Project Planning & Management Each section has a set of questions, fill in the assessment by selecting “Never/Sometimes/Always” from the Answer column in the question sheets.  Each answer has weightage to the overall score. Each question has a link next to it, clicking the link takes you to the Reference sheet which gives you more details about the question along with a reason for “why you need to ask this question?”, “other ways to phrase the question” and “what to expect as an answer from the customer”. The trick is to engage the customer in a discussion. You need to probe a lot, listen to the customer and have a discussion with several team members, preferably without management to ensure that you receive candid feedback. This reminds me of a funny incident when during an ALM review a customer told me that they have a sophisticated semi-automated application deployment process, further discussions revealed that deployment actually involved 72 manual configuration steps per production node. Such observations can be recorded in the Issue Brainstorming worksheet for further consideration later. It is also worth mentioning the different levels of ALM maturity to the customer. By default the desired state of ALM maturity is set to Standard, it is possible to set a desired state by area, you should strive for Advanced or Dynamic, it always helps by explaining the classification and advantages. Image 3 – ALM levels by description The ALM assessment guide helps you arrive at a quantitative measure of the company’s ALM maturity. The resultant graph plotted on a spider’s web shows you the company’s current state of ALM maturity and the desired state of ALM maturity. Further since the results are classified by area you can immediately spot the areas where the customer needs immediate help. Image 4 – The spiders web! The red cross icons are areas shouting out for immediate attention, the yellow exclamation icons are areas that need improvement. These icons are calculated on the difference between the Current State of ALM maturity VS the Desired state of ALM maturity. Image 5 – Results by area Conclusion To conclude the Rangers ALM assessment guide gives you the ability to, Measure the customer’s current ALM maturity level Understand the ALM maturity level the customer desires to achieve Capture a healthy list of issues the customer wants to brainstorm further Now What’s next…? Download and get started with the Rangers ALM Assessment Guide. If you have successfully captured the above listed three pieces of information you are in a great state to make recommendations on the identified areas highlighting the benefits that Visual Studio ALM tools would offer. In the next post I will be covering how to take the ALM assessment results as the base to actually convert your recommendation into a sell.  Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. *** A special thanks goes out to fellow ranges Willy, Ethem and Philip for reviewing the blog post and providing valuable feedback. ***

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• Deep in the Heart of Texas

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Erika Webb, Manager, Fusion Applications UX User Assistance When I was first working in the usability field, the only way I could consider conducting a usability study was to bring a potential user to a lab environment where I could show them whatever I was interested in learning more about and ask them questions. While I hate to reveal just how long I have been working in this field, let's just say that pads of paper and a stopwatch were key tools for any test I conducted. Over the years, I have worked in simple labs with basic video taping equipment and not much else, and I have worked in corporate environments with sophisticated usability labs and state-of-the-art equipment. Years ago, we conducted all usability studies at the location of the user. If we wanted to see if there were any differences between users in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, we went to those places to run the test. A lab environment is very useful for many test situations. However, there has always been a debate in the usability field about whether bringing someone into a lab environment, however friendly we make it, somehow intrinsically changes the behavior of the user as compared to having them work in their own environment, at their own desk, and on their own computer. We developed systems to create a portable usability lab, so that we could go to the users that we needed to test.  Do lab environments change user behavior patterns? Then 9/11 hit. You may not remember, but no planes flew for weeks afterwards. Companies all over the world couldn't fly-in employees for meetings. Suddenly, traveling to the location of the users had an additional difficulty. The company I was working for at the time had usability specialists stuck in New York for days before they could finally rent a car and drive home to Colorado. This changed the world pretty suddenly, and technology jumped on the change. Companies offering Internet meeting tools were strugglinguntil no one could travel. The Internet boomed with collaboration tools that enabled people to work together wherever they happened to be. This change in technology has made a huge difference in my world. We use collaborative tools to bring our product concepts and ideas to the user across the Internet. As a global company, we benefit from having users from all over the world inform our designs. We now run usability studies with users all over the world in a single day, a feat we couldn't have accomplished 10 years ago by plane! Other technology companies have started to do more of this type of usability testing, since the tools have improved so dramatically. Plus, in our busy world, it's not always easy to find users who can take the time away from their jobs to come to our labs. reaching users where it is convenient for them greatly improves the odds that people do participate. I manage a team of usability specialists who live in India and California, whlie I live in Colorado. We have wonderful labs that we bring users into to show them our products. But very often, we run our studies remotely. We used to take the lab to the users now we use the labs, but we let the users stay where they are. We gain users who might not have been able to leave work to come to our labs, and they get to use the system they are familiar with. And we gain users nearly anywhere that we can set up an Internet connection, as long as the users have a phone, a broadband connection, and a compatible Web browser (with no pop-up blockers). After we recruit participants in a traditional manner, we send them an invitation to participate through the use of a telephone conference call and Web conferencing tool. At Oracle, we use Oracle Web Conference part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, which enables us to give the user control of the mouse, while we present a prototype or wireframe pictures. We can record the sessions over the Web and phone conference. We send the users instructions, plus tips to ensure that we won't have problems sharing screens. In some cases, when time is tight, we even run a five-minute "test session" with users a day in advance to be sure that we can connect. Prior to the test, we send users a participant script that contains information about the study, including any questionnaires. This is exactly the same script we give to participants who come to the labs. We ask users to print this before the beginning of the session. We generally run these studies by having a usability engineer in our usability labs, so that we can record the session as though the user were in the lab with us. Roughly 80% of our application software usability testing at Oracle is performed using remote methods. The probability of getting a   remote test participant decreases the higher up the person is in the target organization. We have a methodology checklist available to help our usability engineers work through the remote processes.

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• Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates after February 2013. In other words, nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6. These Java SE 6 updates will be made available to EBS users for the Extended Support periods documented in the Oracle Lifetime Support policy document for Oracle Applications (PDF): EBS 11i Extended Support ends November 2013 EBS 12.0 Extended Support ends January 2015 EBS 12.1 Extended Support ends December 2018 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but currently remains optional. JRE 6 will be available to Windows users to run with EBS for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 (for desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content) is in its final stages.  If you plan to upgrade your EBS desktop clients to JRE 7 when that certification is released, you can get a head-start on that today. Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 will be highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290801.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What will Mac users need? Oracle will provide updates to JRE 7 for Mac OS X users. EBS users running Macs will need to upgrade to JRE 7 to receive JRE updates. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 for Mac-based desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content is underway. Mac users waiting for that certification may find this article useful: How to Reenable Apple Java 6 Plug-in for Mac EBS Users Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but will be optional for EBS application tier servers running on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  You can choose to remain on JDK 6 for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  If you remain on JDK 6, you will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers on Windows, Linux, and Solaris as well as other platforms such as IBM AIX and HP-UX is planned.  Customers running platforms other than Windows, Linux, and Solaris should refer to their Java vendors's sites for more information about their support policies. Related Articles Planning Bulletin for JRE 7: What EBS Customers Can Do Today EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes Frequently Asked Questions about Latest EBS Support Changes Critical Patch Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period

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• Seizing the Moment with Mobility

  - by Divya Malik

  Empowering people to work where they want to work is becoming more critical now with the consumerisation of technology. Employees are bringing their own devices to the workplace and expecting to be productive wherever they are. Sales people welcome the ability to run their critical business applications where they can be most effective which is typically on the road and when they are still with the customer. Oracle has invested many years of research in understanding customer's Mobile requirements. “The keys to building the best user experience were building in a lot of flexibility in ways to support sales, and being useful,” said Arin Bhowmick, Director, CRM, for the Applications UX team. “We did that by talking to and analyzing the needs of a lot of people in different roles.” The team studied real-life sales teams. “We wanted to study salespeople in context with their work,” Bhowmick said. “We studied all user types in the CRM world because we wanted to build a user interface and user experience that would cater to sales representatives, marketing managers, sales managers, and more. Not only did we do studies in our labs, but also we did studies in the field and in mobile environments because salespeople are always on the go.” Here is a recent post from Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps which was featured on the Oracle Applications Blog.  Mobile devices are forcing a paradigm shift in the workplace – they’re changing the way businesses can do business and the type of cultures they can nurture. As our customers talk about their mobile needs, we hear them saying they want instant-on access to enterprise data so workers can be more effective at their jobs anywhere, anytime. They also are interested in being more cost effective from an IT point of view. The mobile revolution – with the idea of BYOD (bring your own device) – has added an interesting dynamic because previously IT was driving the employee device strategy and ecosystem. That's been turned on its head with the consumerization of IT. Now employees are figuring out how to use their personal devices for work purposes and IT has to figure out how to adapt. Blurring the Lines between Work and Personal Life My vision of where businesses will be five years from now is that our work lives and personal lives will be more interwoven together. In turn, enterprises will have to determine how to make employees’ work lives fit more into the fabric of their personal lives. And personal devices like smartphones are going to drive significant business value because they let us accomplish things very incrementally. I can be sitting on a train or in a taxi and be productive. At the end of any meeting, I can capture ideas and tasks or follow up with people in real time. Mobile devices enable this notion of seizing the moment – capitalizing on opportunities that might otherwise have slipped away because we're not connected. For the industry shapers out there, this is game changing. The lean and agile workforce is definitely the future. This notion of the board sitting down with the executive team to lay out strategic objectives for a three- to five-year plan, bringing in HR to determine how they're going to staff the strategic activities, kicking off the execution, and then revisiting the plan in three to five years to create another three- to five-year plan is yesterday's model. Businesses that continue to approach innovating in that way are in the dinosaur age. Today it's about incremental planning and incremental execution, which requires a lot of cohesion and synthesis within the workforce. There needs to be this interweaving notion within the workforce about how ideas cascade down, how people engage, how they stay connected, and how insights are shared. How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Marketplace The notion of Facebook isn’t new. We lived it pre-Internet days with America Online and Prodigy – Facebook is just the renaissance of these services in a more viral and pervasive way. And given the trajectory of the consumerization of IT with people bringing their personal tooling to work, the enterprise has no option but to adapt. The sooner that businesses realize this from a top-down point of view the sooner that they will be able to really drive significant innovation and adapt to the marketplace. There are a small number of companies right now (I think it's closer to 20% rather than 80%, but the number is expanding) that are able to really innovate in this incremental marketplace. So from a competitive point of view, there's no choice but to be social and stay connected. By far the majority of users on Facebook and LinkedIn are mobile users – people on iPhones, smartphones, Android phones, and tablets. It's not the couch people, right? It's the on-the-go people – those people at the coffee shops. Usually when you're sitting at your desk on a big desktop computer, typically you have better things to do than to be on Facebook. This is a topic I'm extremely passionate about because I think mobile devices are game changing. Mobility delivers significant value to businesses – it also brings dramatic simplification from a functional point of view and transforms our work life experience. Hernan Capdevila Vice President, Oracle Applications Development

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• Impressions and Reactions from Alliance 2012

  - by user739873

  Alliance 2012 has come to a conclusion.  What strikes me about every Alliance conference is the amazing amount of collaboration and cooperation I see across higher education in the sharing of best practices around the entire Oracle PeopleSoft software suite, not just the student information system (Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions).  In addition to the vibrant U.S. organization, it's gratifying to see the growth in the international attendance again this year, with an EMEA HEUG organizing to complement the existing groups in the Netherlands, South Africa, and the U.K.  Their first meeting is planned for London in October, and I suspect they'll be surprised at the amount of interest and attendance. In my discussions with higher education IT and functional leadership at Alliance there were a number of instances where concern was expressed about Oracle's commitment to higher education as an industry, primarily because of a lack of perceived innovation in the applications that Oracle develops for this market. Here I think perception and reality are far apart, and I'd like to explain why I believe this to be true. First let me start with what I think drives this perception. Predominately it's in two areas. The first area is the user interface, both for students and faculty that interact with the system as "customers", and for those employees of the institution (faculty, staff, and sometimes students as well) that use the system in some kind of administrative role. Because the UI hasn't changed all that much from the PeopleSoft days, individuals perceive this as a dead product with little innovation and therefore Oracle isn't investing. The second area is around the integration of the higher education suite of applications (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions) and the rest of the Oracle software assets. Whether grown organically or acquired, there is an impressive array of middleware and other software products that could be leveraged much more significantly by the higher education applications than is currently the case today. This is also perceived as lack of investment. Let me address these two points.  First the UI.  More is being done here than ever before, and the PAG and other groups where this was discussed at Alliance 2012 were more numerous than I've seen in any past meeting. Whether it's Oracle development leveraging web services or some extremely early but very promising work leveraging the recent Endeca acquisition (see some cool examples here) there are a lot of resources aimed at this issue.  There are also some amazing prototypes being developed by our UX (user experience team) that will eventually make their way into the higher education applications realm - they had an impressive setup at Alliance.  Hopefully many of you that attended found this group. If not, the senior leader for that team Jeremy Ashley will be a significant contributor of content to our summer Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington in June. In the area of integration with other elements of the Oracle stack, this is also an area of focus for the company and my team.  We're making this a priority especially in the areas of identity management and security, leveraging WebCenter more effectively for content, imaging, and mobility, and driving towards the ultimate objective of WebLogic Suite as our platform for SOA, links to learning management systems (SAIP), and content. There is also much work around business intelligence centering on OBI applications. But at the end of the day we get enormous value from the HEUG (higher education user group) and the various subgroups formed as a part of this community that help us align and prioritize our investments, whether it's around better integration with other Oracle products or integration with partner offerings.  It's one of the healthiest, mutually beneficial relationships between customers and an Education IT concern that exists on the globe. And I can't avoid mentioning that this kind of relationship between higher education and the corporate IT community that can truly address the problems of efficiency and effectiveness, institutional excellence (which starts with IT) and student success.  It's not (in my opinion) going to be solved through community source - cost and complexity only increase in that model and in the end higher education doesn't ultimately focus on core competencies: educating, developing, and researching.  While I agree with some of what Michael A. McRobbie wrote in his EDUCAUSE Review article (Information Technology: A View from Both Sides of the President’s Desk), I take strong issue with his assertion that the "the IT marketplace is just the opposite of long-term stability...."  Sure there has been healthy, creative destruction in the past 2-3 decades, but this has had the effect of, in the aggregate, benefiting education with greater efficiency, more innovation and increased stability as larger, more financially secure firms acquire and develop integrated solutions. Cole

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

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• Any way to simulate MouseOver in WPF

  - by jpierson

  I'm working on a link control in WPF which fits the text with icon links case in the Windows UX Guide. What I want is to have some text within a hyperlink that appears to the right of some image. In my case I started off by using a TextBlock that contained a Hyperlink which then contained my image and some text. <TextBlock> <Hyperlink> <Rectangle Height="16" Width="16" Fill="{StaticResource MyIconBrush}" Stretch="UniformToFill" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Left" /> <Run>My link text</Run> </Hyperlink> </TextBlock> The problem with this however was that the image being taller than my text produced an effect where the text was aligned to the bottom. Unfortunately I haven't found any way to control the vertical alignment within the TextBlock or within the Hyperlink so I've resorted to attempting an alternative layout where the Hyperlink and the Rectangle that represent my vector icon are separated in order to get them to align properly like shown below. <TextBlock> <Hyperlink> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <Rectangle Height="16" Width="16" Fill="{StaticResource MyIconBrush}" Stretch="UniformToFill" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Left" /> <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center"><Hyperlink>My link text<Hyperlink></TextBlock> </StackPanel> </Hyperlink> </TextBlock> The problem with this however is that now that my Icon and my Hyperlink are separated I don't get my MouseOver appearance of my link when I the mouse is over my icon and vise-versa. So this got me to thinking, how do I simulate MouseOver for a given control such with a checkbox where you get the MouseOver effect on the box when you actually mouse over it's associated text. I know in the HTML world the label element has a for attribute that can be used to specify which control it is labeling which will basically do what I'm looking for. Also I can imagine that in other scenarios it may be nice to have a label that when you mouse over shows a corresponding text box as if the mouse is over it and possibly when clicked focus is given to the corresponding text box as well. For now though I'm interested mainly in how to to get a label or label like element in WPF to act as a proxy for a given control in terms of it's MouseOver state. Also I would like to do this purely in XAML if possible.

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• How Mary Meeker’s Latest Findings May Make You Re-Imagine Commerce

  - by Brenna Johnson-Oracle

  0 0 1 954 5439 Endeca Technologies 45 12 6381 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-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:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today, Mary Meeker released her highly anticipated annual “Internet Trends” presentation for 2014. All 164 slides are jam-packed with pretty much everything you need to know about the state of the Internet. And as luck would have it, Oracle is staying ahead of these trends (but we’ll talk about that later). There were a few surprises, some stats to solidify what you likely already know, and Meeker’s novel observations about where we are all going. What interested me the most is not only how people are engaging in their personal lives, but how they engage with brands. As you could probably predict, Internet usage growth is slowing while tablet user and mobile data traffic growth continue their meteoric rise around the globe, with tremendous growth in underpenetrated markets like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Now hold those the “Internet is dead” comments. Keep in mind there’s still plenty of room to grow, and a multiscreen model is Meeker’s vision for our future. Despite 1.5x YOY growth for mobile traffic, mobile still only makes up about 23% of all traffic today. With tablet shipments easily outpacing figures for PCs even at their height (in 2007), mobile will only continue on it’s path, but won’t be everything to everyone. Mobile won’t replace every touchpoint, it’s just created our shorter attention spans and demand for simpler, more personal experiences. As Meeker points out TVs, tablets, PCs, and smartphones are used for different activities at present, but lines will blur (for example, 84% of smartphones owners use their device while watching TV). Day-to-day activities are being re-imagining through simple, beautiful user experiences. It seems like every day I discover a new way a brand/site/app made the most mundane or mounting task enjoyable and frictionless – and I’m not alone. Meeker points out the evolution of how we do everything from how we communicate, get information, use money, meet someone, get places, order a meal, and consume media is all done through new user interfaces that make day-to-day tasks simpler. This movement has caused just about everyone’s patience for a poor UX to take a nosedive. And it’s not just the digital user experience, technology is making a lot of people’s offline lives easier, and less expensive. Today 47% of online shopping utilizes free shipping— nearly half. And Meeker predicts same day local delivery will be the “next big thing” (and you can take a guess on who will own that). Content, Community and Commerce creates the “Internet Trifecta.” Meeker pointed out that when content, communities and commerce occur in a single experience it’s embraced by consumers, which translates to big dollars for brands. The magic happens when consumers can get inspired, research, and buy in a single experience. As the buying cycle has changed and touchpoints (Web, mobile, social, store) are no longer tied to “roles” or steps in the customer journey, brands must make all experiences (content and commerce) available in a single, adaptable experience. (We at Oracle Commerce have a lot to say on this topic – stay tuned!) And in what Meeker calls the “biggest re-imagination of all:” consumers enabled with smartphones and sensors are creating troves of findable and sharable data, which she says is in the early stages, by growing rapidly. She notes that transparency and patterns of consumers with this hardware (FYI - there are up to 10 sensors embedded in smartphones now) has created a Big Data treasure chest to be mined to improve business and the life of the consumer. The opportunities are endless. So what does it all mean for a company doing business online? Start thinking about how you can: Re-imagine your experience. Not your online experience and your mobile experience and your social experience – your overall experience. When consumers can research, buy, and advocate from anywhere (and their attention spans are at an all-time low) channels don’t exist. Enable simple and beautiful interactions informed by all of the online and offline data you leverage across your enterprise. Ethically leverage the endless supply of data (user generated content, clicks, purchases, in-store behavior, social activity) to make experiences more beautiful, more accurate, and more personalized (not to mention, more lucrative for you). Re-imagine content and commerce. Content and commerce must co-exist in a single destination where shoppers can get inspired, explore, research, share, and purchase in a collective experience. Think of how you can deliver an experience where all types of experiences (brand stories and commerce) adapt to every customer need. (Look for more on this topic coming soon). Re-imagine your reach. Look to Meeker’s findings to see how the global appetite for digital experiences is growing, but under-served in many places (i.e.: India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, etc.). Growing your online business to a new geography doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch or having an entirely new team manage the new endeavor. Expand using what you’ve already built in a multisite framework, with global language support. And of course, make sure it’s optimized for mobile! Re-imagine the possible. After every Meeker report, I’m always left with the thought “we are just at the beginning.” Everyday there is more data, more possibilities, more online consumers, and more opportunities to use new latest technology to get closer to your customers and be more successful. There’s a lot going on in our Product Development and Product Innovations groups to automate innovation for our customers, so that they can continue to stay ahead of these trends, without disrupting their business. Check out a recent interview with our Innovations Team on some of these new possibilities. Staying on track despite the seemingly endless possibilities out there is the hard part. Prioritizing where you will focus based on your unique brand promise, customer and goals is what you do best. To learn how Oracle Commerce can help your business achieve your goals check out oracle.com/commerce. Check out Meeker’s entire report here.

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• Adaptive ADF/WebCenter template for the iPad

  - by Maiko Rocha

  One of my WebCenter Portal customers was asking about adaptive design with ADF/WebCenter Portal and how they could go about creating an adaptive iPad template for their WebCenter Portal application. They were looking not only for the out-of-the-box support for mobile Safari which is certified against PS5+ (11.1.1.6) for ADF/WebCenter - but also to create a specific template to streamline their workflow on the iPad. Seems like they wanted something in the lines of Yahoo! Mail provides for the iPad - so the example I will use is shamelessly inspired by Y! Mail's iPad UI.  But first, let's quickly understand how can we bake in some adaptive goodness into ADF Faces. First thing we need to understand is, yes, there are a couple of constraints that we will need to work around, namely, the use or layout managers and skins. Please also keep in mind that I'm not and I don't pretend to be a web designer, much less an UX specialist, so feel free to leave your thoughts on the matter in the comments section. Now, back to the limitations. Layout Managers ADF Faces layout managers create an abstraction on top of the generated HTML code for a page so a developer doesn't need to be worried about how to size and dimension the UI layout (eg, af:panelStretchLayout). Although layout managers are very helpful, in this specific situation we will need to know a little bit more of how the final HTML is being rendered so we can apply the CSS class accordingly and create transition containers where the media queries will be applied - now, if you're using 11gR2 (11.1.2.2.3) there's the new component af:panelGridLayout (here and here) that will greatly improve creating responsive templates and pages because it is based on the grid/fluid systems and will generate straight out to DIVs on your final page. For now, I'm limited to PS5 and the af:panelStretchLayout component as a starting point because that's the release my customer is on. Skins You won't be able to use media queries, or use anything with "@" notation on the skin CSS file - the skin pre-processor will remove all extraneous "@" from the CSS file. The solution is to split your CSS in two separate files: a skin CSS file and plain CSS where you will add the media queries. The issue here is that you won't be able to use media queries for any faces components. We can, though, still apply the media queries for the components like af:panelGroupLayout and af:panelBorderLayout through their styleClass property to enable these components to be responsive to to the iPad orientation, by changing its dimensions, font sizes, hide/show areas, etc. Difference between responsive and adaptive design The best definition of adaptive vs responsive web design I could find is this: “Responsive web design,” as coined by Ethan Marcotte, means “fluid grids, fluid images/media & media queries.” “Adaptive web design,” as I use it, is about creating interfaces that adapt to the user’s capabilities (in terms of both form and function). To me, “adaptive web design” is just another term for “progressive enhancement” of which responsive web design can (an often should) be an integral part, but is a more holistic approach to web design in that it also takes into account varying levels of markup, CSS, JavaScript and assistive technology support. Responsive/adapative web design is much more than slapping an HTML template with CSS around your content or application. The content and application themselves are part of your web design - in other words, a responsive template is just an afterthought if it is not originating from a responsive design the involves the whole web application/s. Tips on responsive / adapative design with ADF/WebCenter Some of the tips listed below were already mentioned in multiple blog posts about ADF layout and skinning, but it is still worth remembering: a simple guideline for ADF/WebCenter apps would be to first create a high-level group of devices, for example: smartphones, tablets,  and desktop. For each of these large groups, create the basic structure to provide responsiveness: a page template, a skin, and an external CSS: pagetemplate_smartphone.jspx, smartphone_skin.css, smartphone-responsive.css pagetemplate_tablet.jspx, tablet_skin.css, tablet-responsive.css pagetemplate_desktop.jspx, desktop_skin.css, desktop-responsive.css These three assets can be changed on the fly through an user-agent check on the server side, delivering the right UI to the right device. Within each of the assets, you can make fine adjustments for each subgroup of devices with media queries - for example, smart phones with different screen dimensions and pixel density. Having these three groups and the corresponding assets per group seem to be a good compromise between trying to put everything on a single set of assets - specially considering the constraints above - and going to the other side of the spectrum to create assets per discrete device (iPhone4, iPhone5, Nexus, S3, etc.). Keep in mind that these are my rules and are not in any shape or form a best practice - this is how it fits best for the scenarios I've been working with. If you need to use HTML tags on your page, surround them with af:group to protect the DOM structure For stretchable/fluid layouts: Use non-stretching containers: panelGroupLayout, panelBorderLayout, … panelBorderLayout can be used to approximate HTML table component To avoid multiple scroll bars, do not nest scrolling PanelGroupLayout components. Consider layout="vertical" For stretchable/fluid layouts: Most stretchable ADF components also work in flowing context with dimensionsFrom="auto" To stretch a component horizontally, use styleClass="AFStretchWidth" instead of  "width:100%" Skinning Don't use CSS3 @media, @import, animations, etc. on skin css files. They will be removed. CSS3 properties within a class (box-shadow, transition, etc.) work just fine. Consider resetting some skin classes to better control their rendering: body {color: inherit;font: inherit;} af|document {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|commandLink {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|goLink {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|inputText::content {font: inherit;} Specific meta tags and CSS properties: Use  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0"/> to avoid zooming (if you want) Use -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch to enable native momentum scrolling within overflown areas (here) Use text-rendering: optmizeLegibility to improve readability. (here) User text-overflow: ellipsis to gracefully crop overflown text. (here) The meta-tags are included in each and every page in the metaContainer facet of af:document tag. You can also use a javascript to inject the meta-tags from the template. For the purpose of the example, I wanted to use as few workarounds as possible.   The iPad template and sample application This sample application has been built as a WebCenter Portal application, but you will also be able to reuse the template and techniques on your vanilla ADF application. Keep in mind that I'm neither a designer nor a CSS specialist, so please don't bash me too much on the messy CSS file you'll find on the application.  I've extended the provided PreferencesBean class that comes with WebCenter Portal and added code to dinamically change the template and skin on the fly.   This is the sample application in landscape orientation: This is the sample application in portrait orientation - the left side menu hides automatically based on a CSS media query: Another screenshot with a skinned popup opened: This is a sample application for you to play with - ideally you shouldn't use it as a starting point. On the left side bar you will find links rendered from a WebCenter Portal navigation model - the link triggers a full request through an af:goLink, while the light blue PPR button triggers a PPR navigation. The dark blue toolbar buttons at the top don't have any function,while the Approve and Reject buttons show a skinned popup. The search box of course doesn't have any behavior attahed to it either. There's a known issue right now with some PPR calls that are randomly generating a 403 error redirecting to the login page - I didn't have time to investigate if this is iOS6 specific or not - if you have any insights please let me know your findings. You can download the sample here.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012Popular ReleasesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...menu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.B INI Sharp Library: B INI Sharp Library v1.0.0.0 Final Realsed: The frist realsedActive Social Migrator: ActiveSocialMigrator 1.0.0 Beta: Beta release for the Active Social Migration tool.EntLib.com????????: ??????demo??-For SQL 2005-2008: EntLibShopping ???v3.0 - ??????demo??，?????SQL SERVER 2005/2008/2008 R2/2012 ??????。 ??（??）??????。 THANKS.Sistem LPK Pemkot Semarang: Panduan Penggunaan Sistem LPK: Panduan cara menggunakan Aplikasi Sistem LPK Bagian Pembangunan Kota SemarangActive Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.New ProjectsAdding 2013 Jewish Holidays for Outlook2003: Instruction: Copy the outlook.hol file to your compuer where Outlook2003 is installed. Double click the file, choose "Israel" and continue. That's it Agilcont System: Sistema de contabilidad para empresas privadas de preferencia para cajas que trabajan con efectivo en soles, dolares y con el material oroARB (A Request Broker): The idea is something like a Request Broker, but with some additional functionality.BATTLE.NET - SDK: This SDK provides the ability to use the Battle.net (Blizzard) Services for all supported Games such Diablo 3, World of Warcraft. Container Terminal System: SummaryDeclarative UX Streaming Data Language for the Cloud: Bringing a better communication paradigm for media and data..Get User Profile Information from SharePoint UserProfile Service: Used SharePoint object model to get the user profile information from the User Profile Service.Guess The City & State Windows 8 Source Code: Source code for Guess The City & State in Malaysia Windows 8 AppJquery Tree: This project is to demonstrate tree basic functionality.MCEBuddy 2.x: Convert and Remove Commercials for your Windows Media CenterMvcDesign: MvcDesign engine implementation projectMy Task Manager: This is a task manager module for DotNetNuke. I am using it to get started developing modules.MyAppwithbranches: MyAppwithbranchesProjecte prova: rpyGEO: pyGEO is a python package capable of parsing microarray data files. It also has a primitive plotting function.Scarlet Road: Scarlet Road is a top-down shooter. It's you against an unending horde of monsters.simplecounter: A simple counter, cick and counter.SiteEmpires: ????????Soundcloud Loader: Simple Tool for downloading Tracks from Soundcloud.Windows Phone Samples: Windows Phone code samples.

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• MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's­ toolbox of magic...

  Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting   Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample:  more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

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• MIX 2010 Covert Operations Day 2 Silverlight + Windows 7 Phone

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Left the Circus Circus and headed to the geek circus at Mandalay Bay.  Got in, got some breakfast, met a few more people and headed to the keynote. Upon arriving the crew I was hanging with at the event; Erik Mork, Beth Murray, and Brian Henderson and I were entertained with several other thousand geeks by the wicked yo-yoing. The first video demo of something was of Bing Maps and various aspects of Microsoft Research integrated together.  Namely the pictures, put in place, on real 3d element maps of various environments. Silverlight Scott Guthrie, as one would guess, kicked off the keynote.  His first point was that user experience has become a priority at Microsoft.  This can be seen by any observant soul with the release and push of Expression, Silverlight, and the other tools.  This is even more apparent when one takes note of Microsoft bringing in people that can actually do good design and putting them at the forefront. The next thing Scott brought up was a few key points about Silverlight.  Currently Silverlight is a little over 2 years old and has achieved a pretty solid 60% penetration.  Silverlight has all sorts of capabilities that have been developed and are now provided as open source including;  ad injection, smoothing, playback editing, and more.  Another thing he showed, which really struck me as awesome being in the analytics space, was the Olympics and a quick glimpse of the ad statistics, viewer experience, video playback performance, audience trends, and overall viewer participation.  All of it rendered in Silverlight in beautiful detail. The key piece of Scott's various points were all punctuated with the fact that all of this code is available as open source.  Not only is Microsoft really delving into this design element of things, they're getting involved in the right ways. One of the last points I'll bring up about Silverlight 4 is the ability to have HD video on a monitor, and an entirely different activity being done on the other monitor, effectively making Silverlight the only RIA framework that supports multi-monitor support.  Overall, Silverlight is continuing to impress – providing superior capabilities tit-for-tat with the competition. Windows 7 Phone The Windows 7 Phone has 3 primary buttons (yes, more than the iPhone, don't let your mind explode!!).  Start, Search, and Back control all of the needed functionality of the phone.  At the same time, of course, there is the multi-touch, touch, and other interactive abilities of the interface.  The intent, once start is pressed is to have all the information that a phone owner wants displayed immediately.  Avoiding the scrolling through pages of apps or rolling a ball to get through multitudes of other non-interactive phone interfaces.  The Windows 7 Phone simply has the data right in front of you, basically a phone dashboard.  From there it is easy to dive into the interactive areas of the phone. Each area of the interface of the phone is broken into hubs.  These hubs include applications, data, and other things based on a relative basis.  This basis being determined by the user.  These applications interact on many other levels, and form a kind of relationship between each other adding more and more meta-data to the phone user, their interactions between the applications, and of course the social element of their interactions on the phone.  This makes this phone a practical must have for a marketer involved in social media.  The level of wired together interaction is massive, and of course, if you've seen Office Outlook 2010 you know that the power that is pulled into the phone by being tied to Outlook is massive. Joe Belfiore also showed several UI & specifically UX elements of the phone interface that allows paging to be instinctual by simple clipped items, flipping page to page, and other excellent user experience advances for phone devices.  Belfiore's also showed how his people hub had a massive list of people, with pictures, all from various different social networks and other associated relations.  The rendering, speed, and viewing of these people's, their pictures, their social network information, and other characteristics was smooth and in some situations unbelievably rendered.  This demo showed some of the great power of the beta phone, which isn't even as powerful as the planned end device. Joe finished up by jumping into the music, videos, and other media with the Zune Component of the Windows 7 Mobile Phone.  This was all good stuff, but I'll get to what really sold me on the media element in a moment. When Joe was done, Scott Guthrie stepped back up to walk through building a Windows 7 Mobile Phone.  This is were I have to give serious props.  He built this application, in Visual Studio 2010, in front of 2000+ people.  That was cool, but what really was amazing that he build the application in about 2 minutes.  The IDE, side by side design that is standard in Visual Studio is light years ahead of x-Code or any of the iPhone IDEs.  The Windows 7 Mobile System, if it can get market penetration, poses a technologically superior development and phone platform over anything on the market right now.  The biggest problem with the phone, is it just isn't available yet.  I personally can't wait for a chance to build some apps for the new Windows Phone. Netflix, I May Start Up an Account Again! When I get my Windows 7 Phone device, I am absolutely getting a Netflix account again.  The Vertigo crew, as I wrote on Twitter "#MIX10 Props @seesharp on @netflix demo", displayed an application on the phone for Netflix that actually ran HD Video of Rescue Me (with Dennis Leary).  The video played back smooth as it would on a dedicated computer, I was instantly sold.  So this didn't actually sell me on the phone, because I'm already sold, but it did sell me whole heartedly on the media capabilities of the pending phone. Anyway, I try not to do this but I may double post today.  Lunch is over and I'm off to another session very near and dear to the heart of my occupation, Analytics Tracking.  Stay tuned and I should have that post up by the end of the day. Original Post – Check out my other blog for even more technical ramblings and reads.

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