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• Making A Photo-Sharing App For Android In Eclipse [on hold]

  - by user3694394

  I've only just started developing mobile apps, which is something that I've been wanting to learn for a while now. I'm from an indie games studio, making PC games for around the last 3 years, and I finally decided to move into android app development. The only problem I'm having is that I don't know where to start. The project which I'm aiming to create will be something similar to Instagram, basically a photo-sharing app which allows users to take new photos, or pull them from their device, and add filters to them, before posting them. I have a rough idea of how I could go about doing this, but I need pointing towards any tutorials available for each specific step. So, here's my idea: Create a UI in eclipse (this wont be a problem for me, I should be able to do this fine through xml files) Setup a server-side database to store all user info and uploaded images (the images will need to be converted into byte arrays, and I have no idea how to do this through a database). My best idea would be to use a MySQL database to do this. Add user interactions (likes, favourites, reposts, etc.). This would, again, have to be stored in the database (or, at least, i think it would). Add the ability to take new photos using the phone's camera (I can probably do this anyway, using the Camera API). Add the ability to pull existing photos from the device (again, pretty simple to do). Add the ability to add filters to any photos (I had a look around, and there are some repos and resources which allow you to do this, but they're mainly for iOS development). Add facebook/twitter integration (possibly) to allow phots to be shared to other social networks. Create a news feed which shows users all of the latest photos from their friends, and allows them to post their own images to it. Give all registered users their own wall/page which has their latest posts/images displayed on it. Add the ability to allow users to follow other users, and display their followed users posts on their news feed. Yep. It's not going to be easy, and I don't even know if it's possible for me to do alone in Eclipse. However, this is the plan, and I'm going to do my best to learn everything I need to know to do this successfully. My actual question would be how should I start doing this- where do I begin learning how to do all of this? I've had a look at snapify, which can be edited via Parse, but I won't be spending hundreds of dollars (since I'm 15 and just don't have the available funds) on software. I have extensive knowledge of Java (again, I've been making games for around 3 years, mainly in Java), and various scripting languages. So, hopefully, this will be of some use here. Thanks in advance, Josh.

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• Architects, Leadership, and Influence

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Technical expertise is a given for architects. In addition to solid development experience, extensive knowledge of technical trends, tools, standards, and methodolgies (not to mention business accumen) provides the foundation for the decisions the architect must make in the effort to get all the pieces to work together. But even superior technical chops can't overcome a lack of leadership. Leadership is about influence: the ability to effectively communicate — to sell your ideas and defend your decisions in a manner that affects the decisions of the people around you. Leadership and influence are especially important in situations in which the architect may not have the authority to simply tell people what to do. And even when the architect has that kind of authority, influential leadership can mean the difference between gaining real buy-in and support from colleagues and stakeholders, and settling for their grudging acceptance (or worse). Guess which outcome is likely to produce the best results. In a previous post I presented some examples of the kind of criticism that is leveled at architects, a great deal of which can be attributed to a lack of leadership and influence on the part of the targets of that criticism. So it was serendipitous that I recently ran across a post on the Harvard Business Review blog written by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe. That post, When Your Influence Is Ineffective, includes this: [I]nfluence becomes ineffective when individuals become so focused on the desired outcome that they fail to fully consider the situation. While the influencer may still gain the short-term desired outcome, he or she can do long-term damage to personal effectiveness and the organization, as it creates an atmosphere of distrust where people stop listening, and the potential for innovation or progress is diminished. The need to "see the big picture" is a grossly reductive assesement of the architect's responsibilities — but that doesn't mean it's not true. That big picture perspective must encompass both the technological elements of the architecture and the elements responsible for implementing those technologies in compliance with the prescribed architecture. Technologies may be tempermental, but they don't have personalities or egos, and they are unlikely to carry a grudge — not yet, anyway (Hello, Skynet!).  Effective leadership and the ability to influence people can help to ensure that all the pieces fit and that they work together, today and tomorrow.

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• How to send multiple MVP matrices to a vertex shader in OpenGL ES 2.0

  - by Carbon Crystal

  I'm working my way through optimizing the rendering of sprites in a 2D game using OpenGL ES and I've hit the limit of my knowledge when it comes to GLSL and vertex shaders. I have two large float buffers containing my vertex coordinates and texture coordinates (eventually this will be one buffer) for multiple sprites in order to perform a single glDrawArrays call. This works but I've hit a snag when it comes to passing the transformation matrix into the vertex shader. My shader code is: uniform mat4 u_MVPMatrix; attribute vec4 a_Position; attribute vec2 a_TexCoordinate; varying vec2 v_TexCoordinate; void main() { v_TexCoordinate = a_TexCoordinate; gl_Position = u_MVPMatrix * a_Position; } In Java (Android) I am using a FloatBuffer to store the vertex/texture data and this is provided to the shader like so: mGlEs20.glVertexAttribPointer(mVertexHandle, Globals.GL_POSITION_VERTEX_COUNT, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, mVertexCoordinates); mGlEs20.glVertexAttribPointer(mTextureCoordinateHandle, Globals.GL_TEXTURE_VERTEX_COUNT, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, mTextureCoordinates); (The Globals.GL_POSITION_VERTEX_COUNT etc are just integers with the value of 2 right now) And I'm passing the MVP (Model/View/Projection) matrix buffer like this: GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv(mMVPMatrixHandle, 1, false, mModelCoordinates); (mModelCoordinates is a FloatBuffer containing 16-float sequences representing the MVP matrix for each sprite) This renders my scene but all the sprites share the same transformation, so it's obviously only picking the first 16 elements from the buffer which makes sense since I am passing in "1" as the second parameter. The documentation for this method says: "This should be 1 if the targeted uniform variable is not an array of matrices, and 1 or more if it is an array of matrices." So I tried modifying the shader with a fixed size array large enough to accomodate most of my scenarios: uniform mat4 u_MVPMatrix[1000]; But this lead to an error in the shader: cannot convert from 'uniform array of 4X4 matrix of float' to 'Position 4-component vector of float' This just seems wrong anyway as it's not clear to me how the shader would know when to transition to the next matrix anyway. Anyone have an idea how I can get my shader to pick up a different MVP matrix (i.e. the NEXT 16 floats) from my MVP buffer for every 4 vertices it encounters? (I am using GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP so each sprite has 4 vertices). Thanks!

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• Wrong statistics in AUX_STATS$ might puzzle the optimizer

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We do recommend the creation of System Statistics for quite a long time. Since Oracle 9i the optimizer works with a CPU and IO cost based model. And in order to give the optimizer some knowledge about the IO subsystem's performance and throughput - once System Statistics are collected - they'll get stored in AUX_STATS$. For this purpose in the old Oracle 9i days some default values had been defined - and you'll still find those defaults in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in AUX_STATS$. But these old values don't reflect the performance of modern IO systems. So it might be a good best practice post upgrade to create fresh System Statistics if you haven't done this before.  You can collect System Statistics with: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('start'); and end it later by executing: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('stop'); You could also run DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('interval', interval=>N) instead where N is the number of minutes when statistics gathering is stopped automatically. Please make sure you'll do this on a real workload period. It won't make sense to gather these values while the database is in an idle state. You should do this ideally for several hours. It doesn't affect performance in a negative way as the values are anyway collected in V$SYSSTAT and V$SESSTAT. And in case you'd like to delete the stats and revert to the old default values you'd simply execute:exec DBMS_STATS.DELETE_SYSTEM_STATS; The tricky thing in Oracle Database 11.2 - and that's why I'm actually writing this blog post today - is bug9842771. This leads to wrong values in AUX_STATS$ for SREADTIM and MREADTIM by factor 1000 guiding the optimizer sometimes into the totally wrong directon. The workaround is to overwrite these values manually and divide them by 1000. Use the DBMS_STATS.SET_SYSTEM_STATS procedure. See this MOS Note:9842771.8 for the above bug for some further information. This issue is fixed in Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 and above. To get some background information about the statistics collected in please read this section in the Oracle Database 11.2 Performance Tuning Guide. And gathering System Statistics might have some implication if you have mixed workloads - and interacts with DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT. For more information please read section 13.4.1.2.

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• Lookup Viewer

  - by Geertjan

  The Maven integrated view that I showed yesterday I was able to create because I happened to know that an implementation of SubprojectProvider and LogicalViewProvider are in the Lookup of Maven projects. With that knowledge, I was able to use and even delegate to those implementations. But what if you don't know that those implementations are in the Lookup of the Project object? In the case of the Maven Project implementation, you could look in the source code of the Maven Project implementation, at the "getLookup" method. However, any other module could be putting its own objects into that Lookup, dynamically, i.e., at runtime. So there's no way of knowing what's in the Lookup of any Project object or any other object with a Lookup. But now imagine that you have a Lookup Viewer, as a tool during development, which you would exclude when distributing the application. Whenever new objects are found in the Lookup, the viewer displays them. You could install the Lookup Viewer into NetBeans IDE, or any other NetBeans Platform application, and then get a quick impression of what's actually in the Lookup when you select a different item in the application during development. Here it is (though I vaguely remember someone else writing something similar): Above, a Maven Project is selected. The Lookup Window shows that, among many other classes, an implementation of SubprojectProvider and LogicalViewProvider are found in the Lookup when the Maven Project is selected. If an item in the Lookup Window has its own Lookup, the content of that Lookup is displayed as child nodes of the Lookup, etc, i.e., you can explore all the way down the Lookup of each item found within objects found within the current selection. (What's especially fun is seeing the SaveCookieImpl being added and removed from the Lookup Window when you make/save a change in a document.) Another example is below, showing the Lookup Window installed in a custom application created during a course at MIT in Boston: A small trick I had to apply is that I always show the previous Lookup, since the current Lookup, when you select one of the Nodes in the Lookup Window, would be the Lookup of the Lookup Window itself! If anyone is interested in this, I can publish the NetBeans module providing the above window to the NetBeans update center. 

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• OpenWorld: Our (Road) Maps are Looking Good!

  - by Tony Berk

  Wow, only one (or two) days down at Oracle OpenWorld! Are you on overload yet? I'm still trying to figure out how to be in 3 sessions at the same time... I guess everyone needs to prioritize! There was a lot to see in Monday's sessions, especially some great forward-looking roadmap sessions. In case you aren't here or you decided to go to other sessions, this is my quick summary of what I could capture from a couple of the roadmaps: In the Fusion CRM Strategy and Roadmap session, Anthony Lye provided an overview of the Fusion CRM strategy including the key design principles of 3 E's: Easy, Effective and Efficient. After an overview of how Oracle has deployed Fusion CRM internally to 25,000 users worldwide, Anthony discussed the features coming in the next release, the releases in the next 12 months and beyond. I can't detail too much since you haven't read Oracle's Safe Harbor statement, but check out Fusion Tap and look for new features and added functionality for sales prediction, marketing, social and integration with a number of the key Customer Experience products.  In the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap session, Chris Hamilton presented the focus areas for the RightNow product. As a result of the large increase in development resources after the acquisition, the RightNow CX team is planning a lot of enhancements to the functionality, infrastructure and integrations. As a key piece of the Oracle Customer Experience (CX) strategy, RightNow will be integrated with Oracle Social Network, Oracle Commerce (ATG and Endeca), Oracle Knowledge, Oracle Policy Automation and, of course, further integration with Fusion Sales and Marketing. Look forward to seeing more on the Virtual Assistant, Smart Interaction Hub and Mobility. In addition to the roadmaps, I was looking forward to hearing from Oracle CRM customers. So, I sat in on two great Siebel customer panels: The Maximizing User Adoption Rates for Siebel Sales and Siebel Partner Relationship Management panel consisted of speakers from CSL Behring, McKesson and Intuit. It was great to get an overview of implementations for both B2B and B2C companies. It was great hearing that all of these companies have more than 1,000 sales users (Intuit has 4,000) and how the 360 degree view of the customer in Siebel is helping these customers improve their customers' experience (CX). They are all great examples of centralized implementations which have standardized processes across the globe and across business units.  Waste Management, Farmers Insurance and the US Citizenship & Immigration Services presented in the Driving Great Customer Experiences with Siebel Service Applications session. Talk about serving large customer bases! Is it possible that Farmers with only 10 million households is the smallest of these 3? All of them provided great examples of how they are improving the customer experience (CX) including 60-70% improvements in efficiency or reducing the number of applications the customer service reps (CSRs) need to use from 10 to 1 (Waste Management) and context aware call transfers to avoid the caller explaining their issue 3 times (USCIS). So that's my wrap up of only 4 sessions from Monday. In between sessions, I stopped by the Oracle DEMOgrounds and CRM Pavilion to visit with a group of great partners and see the products and partner integrations in action. Don't miss a recap of Mark Hurd's Keynote. I can't believe there were another 40+ sessions covering CRM, Fusion, Cloud, etc. that I missed today! Anyone else see any great sessions?

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• What Counts for a DBA: Passion

  - by drsql

  One of my first questions, when interviewing for a DBA/Programmer position, is always: “Why do you want this job?” The answers I receive range from cheesy hyperbole (“I want to enhance your services with my vast knowledge”) to deadpan realism (“I have N kids who all have a hole in the front of their face where food goes"). Both answers are fine in their own way, at least displaying some self-confidence, humour and honesty, but once in a while, I'll hear the answer that is music to me ears... “I LOVE DATABASES!” Whenever I hear it, my nerves tingle in hopeful anticipation; have I found someone for whom working with database isn't just a job, but a passion? Inevitably, I'm often disappointed. What initially seemed like passion turns out to be rather shallow enthusiasm; the person is enthusiastic about working with databases in the same way he or she might be about eating a bag of Cajun spiced kettle chips; enjoyable, but not something to think about too deeply or take too seriously. Enthusiasm comes, and enthusiasm goes. I've seen countless technical forum users burst onto the scene in a blaze of frantic question-answering, only to fade away within days, never to be heard from again. Passion, however, is more of a longstanding commitment. The biographies of the great technologists and authors of the recent past are full of the sort of passion and engrossment that lead a person to write a novel non-stop for a fortnight with no sleep and only dog food to eat (Philip K. Dick), or refuse to leave the works of the first tunnel under the Thames, even though it was flooded (Brunel). In a similar (though more modest) way, my passion for working with databases has led me to acts that might cause someone for whom it was "just a job" to roll their eyes in disbelief. Most evenings you're more likely to find me reading a database book than watching TV. I've spent hundreds of hours of my spare time writing blogs and articles (some of which are only read by tens of people); I've spent hundreds of dollars travelling to conferences, paying my own flight and hotel expenses, so that I can share a little of what I know, and mix with some like-minded people. And I know I'm far from alone in this, in the SQL Server community. Passion isn't everything, of course, and it isn't always accompanied by any great skill, but in almost every case, that skill can be cultivated over time. If you are doing what you are passionate about, work turns into more than just a way to feed your kids; it becomes your hobby, entertainment, and preoccupation. And it is this passion that gives a DBA the obsessive stubbornness, the refusal to be beaten by even the most difficult problem, which is often so crucial. A final word of warning though: passion without limits can turn weird. Never let it get in the way of your wife, kids, bills, or personal hygiene.

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• How to interview a natural scientist for a dev position?

  - by Silas

  I already did some interviews for my company, mostly computer scientists for dev positions but also some testers and project managers. Now I have to fill a vacancy in our research group within the R&D department (side note: “research” means that we try to solve problems in our professional domain/market niche using software in research projects together with universities, other companies, research centres and end user organisations. It’s not computer science research; we’re not going to solve the P=NP problem). Now we invited a guy holding an MSc in chemistry (with a lot of physics in his CV, too), who never had any computer science lesson. I already talked with him about half an hour at a local university’s career days and there’s no doubt the guy is smart. Also his marks are excellent and he graduated with distinction. For his BSc he needed to teach himself programming in Mathematica and told me believably that he liked programming a lot. Also he solved some physical chemistry problem that I probably don’t understand using his own software, implemented in Mathematica, for his MSc thesis. It includes a GUI and a notable size of 8,000 LoC. He seems to be very attracted by what we’re doing in our research group and to be honest it’s quite difficult for an SME like us to get good people. I also am very interested in hiring him since he could assist me in writing project proposals, reports, doing presentations and so on. He would probably fit to our team, too. The only question left is: How can I check if he will get the programming skills he needs to do software implementation in our projects since this will be a significant part of the job? Of course I will ask him what it is, that is fascinating him about programming. I’ll also ask how he proceeded to write his natural science software and how he structured it. I’ll ask about how he managed to obtain the skills and information about software development he needed. But is there something more I could ask? Something more concrete perhaps? Should I ask him to explain his Mathematica solution? To be clear: I’m not looking for knowledge in a particular language or technology stack. We’re a .NET shop in product development but I want to have a free choice for our research projects. So I’m interested in the meta-competence being able to learn whatever is actually needed. I hope this question is answerable and not open-ended since I really like to know if there is a default way to check for the ability to get further programming skills on the job. If something is not clear to you please give me some comments and let me improve my question.

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• Should EICAR be updated to test the revision of Antivirus system?

  - by makerofthings7

  I'm posting this here since programmers write viruses, and AV software. They also have the best knowledge of heuristics and how AV systems work (cloaking etc). The EICAR test file was used to functionally test an antivirus system. As it stands today almost every AV system will flag EICAR as being a "test" virus. For more information on this historic test virus please click here. Currently the EICAR test file is only good for testing the presence of an AV solution, but it doesn't check for engine file or DAT file up-to-dateness. In other words, why do a functional test of a system that could have definition files that are more than 10 years old. With the increase of zero day threats it doesn't make much sense to functionally test your system using EICAR. That being said, I think EICAR needs to be updated/modified to be effective test that works in conjunction with an AV management solution. This question is about real world testing, without using live viruses... which is the intent of the original EICAR. That being said I'm proposing a new EICAR file format with the appendage of an XML blob that will conditionally cause the Antivirus engine to respond. X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-EXTENDED-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* <?xml version="1.0"?> <engine-valid-from>2010-1-1Z</engine-valid-from> <signature-valid-from>2010-1-1Z</signature-valid-from> <authkey>MyTestKeyHere</authkey> In this sample, the antivirus engine would only alert on the EICAR file if both the signature or engine file is equal to or newer than the valid-from date. Also there is a passcode that will protect the usage of EICAR to the system administrator. If you have a backgound in "Test Driven Design" TDD for software you may get that all I'm doing is applying the principals of TDD to my infrastructure. Based on your experience and contacts how can I make this idea happen?

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• Oracle BPM and Open Data integration development

  - by drrwebber

  Rapidly developing Oracle BPM application solutions with data source integration previously required significant Java and JDeveloper skills. Now using open source tools for open data development significantly reduces the coding needed.  Key tasks can be performed with visual drag and drop designing combined with menu selections entry and automatic form generation directly from XSD schema definitions. The architecture used is extremely lightweight, portable, open platform and scalable allowing integration with a variety of Oracle and non-Oracle data sources and systems. Two videos available on YouTube walk through the process at both an introductory conceptual level and then a deep dive into the programming needed using JDeveloper, Oracle BPM composer and Oracle WLS (WebLogic Server) along with the CAM editor and Open-XDX open source tools. Also available are coding samples and resources from the GitHub project page, along with working online demonstration resources on the VerifyXML site. Combining Oracle BPM with these open source tools provides a comprehensive simple and elegant solution set. Development times are slashed and rapid prototyping is enabled. Also existing data sources can be integrated using open data formats with either XML or JSON along with CRUD accessing via the Open-XDX Java component. The Open-XDX tool is a code-free approach where data mapping is configured as templates using visual drag and drop in the CAM Editor open source tool.  XML or JSON is then automatically generated or processed (output or input) and appropriate SQL statements created to support the data accessing.   Also included is the ability to integrate with fillable PDF forms via the XML templates and the Java PDF form filling library.  Again minimal Java coding is needed to associate the XML source content with the PDF named fields.  The Oracle BPM forms can be automatically generated from XSD schema definitions that are built from the data mapping templates.  This dramatically simplifies development work as all the integration artifacts needed are created by the open source editor toolset. The developer level video is designed as a tutorial with segments, hands-on demonstrations and reviews.  This allows developers to learn the techniques and approaches used in incremental steps. The intended audience ranges from data analysts to developers and assumes only entry level Java skills and knowledge.  Most actions are menu driven while Java coding is limited to simply configuring values and parameters along with performing builds and deployments from JDeveloper and Oracle WLS.   Additional existing Oracle online training resources can be referenced on Oracle BPM and WLS that cover other normal delivery aspects such as user management and application deployment.

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• Managing Operational Risk of Financial Services Processes – part 2/2

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} In my earlier blog post, I had described the factors that lead to compliance complexity of financial services processes. In this post, I will outline the business implications of the increasing process compliance complexity and the specific role of BPM in addressing the operational risk reduction objectives of regulatory compliance. First, let’s look at the business implications of increasing complexity of process compliance for financial institutions: · Increased time and cost of compliance due to duplication of effort in conforming to regulatory requirements due to process changes driven by evolving regulatory mandates, shifting business priorities or internal/external audit requirements · Delays in audit reporting due to quality issues in reconciling non-standard process KPIs and integrity concerns arising from the need to rely on multiple data sources for a given process Next, let’s consider some approaches to managing the operational risk of business processes. Financial institutions considering reducing operational risk of their processes, generally speaking, have two choices: · Rip-and-replace existing applications with new off-the shelf applications. · Extend capabilities of existing applications by modeling their data and process interactions, with other applications or user-channels, outside of the application boundary using BPM. The benefit of the first approach is that compliance with new regulatory requirements would be embedded within the boundaries of these applications. However pre-built compliance of any packaged application or custom-built application should not be mistaken as a one-shot fix for future compliance needs. The reason is that business needs and regulatory requirements inevitably out grow end-to-end capabilities of even the most comprehensive packaged or custom-built business application. Thus, processes that originally resided within the application will eventually spill outside the application boundary. It is precisely at such hand-offs between applications or between overlaying processes where vulnerabilities arise to unknown and accidental faults that potentially result in errors and lead to partial or total failure. The gist of the above argument is that processes which reside outside application boundaries, in other words, span multiple applications constitute a latent operational risk that spans the end-to-end value chain. For instance, distortion of data flowing from an account-opening application to a credit-rating system if left un-checked renders compliance with “KYC” policies void even when the “KYC” checklist was enforced at the time of data capture by the account-opening application. Oracle Business Process Management is enabling financial institutions to lower operational risk of such process ”gaps” for Financial Services processes including “Customer On-boarding”, “Quote-to-Contract”, “Deposit/Loan Origination”, “Trade Exceptions”, “Interest Claim Tracking” etc.. If you are faced with a similar challenge and need any guidance on the same feel free to drop me a note.

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• The World of SQL Database Deployment

  - by GGBlogger

  In my early development days, I used Microsoft Access for building databases. It made things easy since I only needed to package the database with the installation package so my clients would have access to it. When we began the development of a new package in Visual Studio .NET I decided to use SQL Server Express. It was free and provided good tools - also free. I thought it was a tremendous idea until it came time to distribute our new software! What a surprise. The nightmare Ah, the choices! Detach the database and have the client reattach it to a newly installed – oh wait. FIRST my new client needs to download and install SQL Server Express with SQL Server Management Studio. That’s not a great thing, but it is one more nightmare step for users who may have other versions of SQL installed. Then the question became – do we detach and reattach or do we do a backup. It was too late (bad planning) to revert to Microsoft Access but we badly needed a simple way to package and distribute both the database AND sample contents. Red Gate to the rescue It took me a while to find an answer but I did find it in a package called SQL Packager sold by a relatively unpublicized company in England called Red Gate. They call their products “ingeniously simple” and I must agree with that description. With SQL Packager you point to the database (more in a minute) you want to distribute. A few mouse clicks and dialogs and you have an executable file that you can ship virtually anywhere and virtually any way which, when run, installs the database on your destination SQL Server instance! It really is that simple. Easier to show than tell Let’s explore a hypothetical case. Let’s say you have a local SQL database of customers and you have decided you want to share it with your subsidiaries or partners. Here is the underlying screen you will see on starting SQL Packager. There are a bunch of possibilities here but I’m going to keep this relatively simple. At this point I simply want to illustrate the simplicity of generating an executable to deliver your database. You will notice that you can set up a new package, edit an existing package or change a bunch of options. Start SQL packager And the following is the default dialog you get on startup. In the next dialog, I’ve selected the Server and Database. I’ve also selected Windows Authentication. Pressing Next causes SQL Packager to run a number of checks and produce a report. Now you’re given a comprehensive list of what is going to be packaged and you’re allowed to change it if you desire. I’ve never made any changes here so I can’t really make any suggestions. The just illustrates the comprehensive nature of so many Red Gate products including this one. Clicking Next gives you still further options. SQL Packager then works its magic and shows you a dialog with the results. Packager then gives you a dialog of the scripts it has generated. The capture above only shows 1 of 4 tabs. Finally pressing Next gives you the option to generate a .NET executable of a C# project. I’ve only generated an executable so I’m not in a position to tell you what the C# project looks like. That may be the subject of further discussions. You can rename the package and tell SQL Packager where to save it. I’ve skipped a lot but this will serve to illustrate the comprehensive (and ingenious) things Red Gate does. All in all, it’s a superb way to distribute populated SQL databases. Oh – we’ll save running the resulting executable for later also but believe me it’s insanely simple.

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• Eloqua Sales Awareness Training for Partners - London, November 28-29

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  We are pleased to invite you to the free of charge Oracle Eloqua Sales Awareness Training for Partners - London, November 28&29 - COME LEARN WHAT ALL THE BUZZ IS ABOUT! WHEN SALES & MARKETING BOND, REVENUE GROWS It’s not one thing that makes a company successful with marketing automation – it’s the combination of the best implementation, flexible long-term support and access to a community of marketing innovation that ensures you have the assistance you need every step of the way. Our customers choose Oracle|Eloqua because they know when sales and marketing work together, leads are called upon, quotas are crushed and revenues climb. Learn how Oracle|Eloqua can help you put marketing to work for you! COVERED IN THIS TRAINING Eloqua and the Customer Experience Strategy How Modern Marketing Works Introduction to Eloqua – Whiteboard POV Go To Market Playbook Competitive Landscape Integration Options Service Offerings With case studies, workshops and product demos to help you on your way to a new world of marketing expertise LOGISTICS If you are ready to join us on this journey, now’s the time to let us know! Tell us a little about your experience – complete this form to help us know you better (Please ignore if your firm has already completed) Complete this form to RSVP by Thursday, November 21, 2013. Find out more about the Oracle|Eloqua, join the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud Service Knowledge Zone and keep up on all the news! QUESTIONS? Contact [email protected] Please note that similar events will take place in other cities (Brussels, Istanbul and more come) later in 2014. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

  - by Iain

  In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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• How to be successful at BDD Specifications Workshops?

  - by sigo

  Today we tried to introduce BDD in our software development process by having a specification workshop. For this workshop we had 2 developers, 1 tester and 1 business analyst. The workshop lasted 1h30 and by the end of it we managed to figure out some BDD scenarios for our new feature. We tried to focus on finding the scenarios that we could miss, and the difficult ones. At the end of the workshop some people were actually unhappy with the workshop. One developer felt he wasted his time as he was used to be given out the scenarios directly by the business analyst and review them with her. The business analyst didn't feel confident with our scenario coverage (Had a feeling that we could have missed out other important stuff) but more importantly felt that this workshop was also a waste of time as she could have figured out all these scenarios by herself and in a shorter period of time. So my question is how that kind of workshop can actually work. In the theory, given you have a new feature to develop, you put the tree 'amigos' (dev/tester/ba) in the same room so that they can collaborate together on writing the differents requirements for the new feature using examples. I can see all the benefits from that. Specially in term of knowledge sharing and common product/end goal/done vision. But in practice, we still think it is more cost effective to first have a BA to work on his own on the examples and only then to have the scenarios to be reviewed/reworked by the 3 'amigos'. By having the BA to work on his own, we actually feel more confident that we are less going to miss out stuff + we still get to review the scenarios afterward to double check. We don't think than simple brainstorming/deliberate discovery is actually enought to seriously cover all the requirement for a feature. The business analyst is actually the best person for that kind of stuff. The thing we just do is to review what she wrote and see if then we have a common understanding (which could then lead to rewrite some of her scenarios or add new ones she could have missed). This workshop lasted 1h30, and by the end of it, we didn't feel confident enought about wha we did...sure we could have spent more time on it but honestly most people get exhausted after 1h30 of brainstorming. So how can you get that to work effectively in practice ?

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• PASS Summit for SQL Starters

  - by Davide Mauri

  I’ve received a buch of emails from PASS Summit “First Timers” that are also somehow new to SQL Server (for “somehow” I mean people with less than 6 month experience but with some basic knowledge of SQL Server engine) or are catching up from SQL Server 2000. The common question regards the session one should not miss to have a broad view of the entire SQL Server platform have some insight into some specific areas of SQL Server Given that I’m on (semi-)vacantion and that I have more free time (not true, I have to prepare slides & demos for several conferences, PASS Summit  - Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 - and PASS 24H - Agile Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2012 - among them…but let’s pretend it to be true), I’ve decided to make a post to answer to this common questions. Of course this is my personal point of view and given the fact that the number and quality of session that will be delivered at PASS Summit is so high that is very difficoult to make a choice, fell free to jump into the discussion and leave your feedback or – even better – answer with another post. I’m sure it will be very helpful to all the SQL Server beginners out there. I’ve imposed to myself to choose 6 session at maximum for each Track. Why 6? Because it’s the maximum number of session you can follow in one day, and given that all the session will be on the Summit DVD, they are the answer to the following question: “If I have one day to spend in training, which session I should watch?”. Of course a Summit is not like a Course so a lot of very basics concept of well-established technologies won’t be found here. Analysis Services, Integration Services, MDX are not part of the Summit this time (at least for the basic part of them). Enough with that, let’s start with the session list ideal to have a good Overview of all the SQL Server Platform: Geospatial Data Types in SQL Server 2012 Inside Unstructured Data: SQL Server 2012 FileTable and Semantic Search XQuery and XML in SQL Server: Common Problems and Best Practice Solutions Microsoft's Big Play for Big Data Dashboards: When to Choose Which MSBI Tool Microsoft BI End-User Tools 360° for what concern Database Development, I recommend the following sessions Understanding Transaction Isolation Levels What to Look for in Execution Plans Improve Query Performance by Fixing Bad Parameter Sniffing A Window into Your Data: Using SQL Window Functions Practical Uses and Optimization of New T-SQL Features in SQL Server 2012 Taking MERGE Beyond the Basics For Business Intelligence Information Delivery Analyzing SSAS Data with Excel Building Compelling Power View Reports Managed Self-Service BI PowerPivot 101  SharePoint for Business Intelligence The Best Microsoft BI Tools You've Never Heard Of and for Business Intelligence Architecture & Development BI Power Hour Building a Tabular Model Database Enterprise Information Management: Bringing Together SSIS, DQS, and MDS SSIS Design Patterns Storing Columnstore Indexes Hadoop and Its Ecosystem Components in Action Beside the listed sessions, First Timers should also take a look the the page PASS set up for them: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Connect/FirstTimers.aspx See you at PASS Summit!

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• 4 Key Ingredients for the Cloud

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  It's a short week here with the US Thanksgiving Holiday. So, before we put on our stretch pants and get ready to belly up to the dinner table for turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, let's spend a little time this week talking about the Cloud (kind of like the feathery whipped goodness that tops the infamous Thanksgiving pumpkin pie!) But before we dive into the Cloud, let's do a side by side comparison of the key ingredients for each. Cloud Whipped Cream  Application Integration  1 cup heavy cream  Security  1/4 cup sugar  Virtual I/O  1 teaspoon vanilla  Storage  Chilled Bowl It’s no secret that millions of people are connected to the Internet. And it also probably doesn’t come as a surprise that a lot of those people are connected on social networking sites.  Social networks have become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that reflects real world relationships and they play a major part in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and hundreds of others have transformed the way we interact and communicate with one another.Social networks are becoming more than just an online gathering of friends. They are becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce, and marketing. But it doesn’t just stop there. Some organizations are utilizing social networks internally, integrated with their business applications and processes and the possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling. Forrester alone estimates enterprise cloud computing to grow to over $240 billion by 2020. It’s hard to find any current IT project today that is NOT considering cloud-based deployments. Security and quality of service concerns are no longer at the forefront; rather, it’s about focusing on the right mix of capabilities for the business. Cloud vs. On-Premise? Policies & governance models? Social in the cloud? Cloud’s increasing sophistication, security in applications, mobility, transaction processing and social capabilities make it an attractive way to manage information. And Oracle offers all of this through the Oracle Cloud and Oracle Social Network. Oracle Social Network is a secure private network that provides a broad range of social tools designed to capture and preserve information flowing between people, enterprise applications, and business processes. By connecting you with your most critical applications, Oracle Social Network provides contextual, real-time communication within and across enterprises. With Oracle Social Network, you and your teams have the tools you need to collaborate quickly and efficiently, while leveraging the organization’s collective expertise to make informed decisions and drive business forward. Oracle Social Network is available as part of a portfolio of application and platform services within the Oracle Cloud. Oracle Cloud offers self-service business applications delivered on an integrated development and deployment platform with tools to rapidly extend and create new services. Oracle Social Network is pre-integrated with the Fusion CRM Cloud Service and the Fusion HCM Cloud Service within the Oracle Cloud. If you are looking for something to watch as you veg on the couch in a post-turkey dinner hangover, you might consider watching these how-to videos! And yes, it is perfectly ok to have that 2nd piece of pie

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• Oracle OpenWorld / JavaOne Where I'll Be

  - by Shay Shmeltzer

  It's that time of the year again when San Francisco get flooded with Oracle and Java geeks for the annual OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences. Here are some of the places where you'll be able to find me: Sunday has a bunch of great ADF content in the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group track - I'm not sure if I'll make it there but I'm sure those who will will get some serious knowledge transfer. I'm starting Monday at the Keynote for Developers (10:45 in Salon 8 at the Marriott) - that's a great place for ADF developers to start the official week with an overview of what's new and upcoming in the world of development with ADF. While I'm not presenting this session - Chris Tonas who leads the development tools org will -  a demo that I built will be shown. So I'll be sitting in the audience crossing my fingers praying for the demo gods (and the wifi connection to work). My presentation part of the week starts on Monday at 12:15 at Moscone South room 306 where I'll be presenting "CON3004 - Understanding Oracle ADF and Its Role in Oracle Fusion"  . A basic introduction to ADF, it's architecture, development experience and how it integrates and works with the rest of the Fusion Middleware components.  After the session between 2-4 I'll be at the JDeveloper demo booth in Moscone South to answer any questions people might have. Then at 6:15 together with Grant we'll host BOF4492 - How to Get Started with Oracle ADF where we'll try and explain some of the learning paths and resources that are available for people who want to start learning ADF. This is a birds-of-a-feather so we'll also love to hear ideas from the audience about what paths they took and what things work or need improvment. Tuesday is relatively a quite day for me with a shift at the Oracle ADF Essentials pod at JavaOne from 1:30-3:30. There are several very good ADF architecture and best practices sessions on that day - so I'll try and hit those. Wednesday starts with another shift at the JDeveloper booth at JavaOne. Then at 4:30, instead of doing what all the ADF developers should do and heading over to the ADF meetup at the OTN Lounge, I'll be heading over to JavaOne for my CON3770 - Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF: What’s New session. It's been a couple of years since the last time JDeveloper or ADF got any airtime at JavaOne - so it will be a great opportunity to show those in the Java community with open minds our approach to Java development. Now that ADF Essentials offers a free way to develop with ADF on GlassFish, I hope we'll be getting more people from the core Java camp interested in what we have to offer. Thursday is another relaxed day for me - who knows maybe I'll even be able to catch a session or two on that day. If you want to learn more about the ADF related sessions at OOW check out our full list here.

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• Best Advice Ever: Learn By Helping Others

  - by Argenis

  I remember when back in 2001 my friend and former SQL Server MVP Carlos Eduardo Rojas was busy earning his MVP street-cred in the NNTP forums, aka Newsgroups. I always thought he was playing the Sheriff trying to put some order in a Wild Wild West town by trying to understand what these people were asking. He spent a lot of time doing this stuff – and I thought it was just plain crazy. After all, he was doing it for free. What was he gaining from all of that work? It was not until the advent of Twitter and #SQLHelp that I realized the real gain behind helping others. Forget about the glory and the laurels of others thanking you (and thinking you’re the best thing ever – ha!), or whatever award with whatever three letter acronym might be given to you. It’s about what you learn in the process of helping others. See, when you teach something, it’s usually at a fixed date and time, and on a specific topic. But helping others with their issues or general questions is something that goes on 24x7, on whatever topic under the sun. Just go look at sites like DBA.StackExchange.com, or the SQLServerCentral forums. It’s questions coming in literally non-stop from all corners or the world. And yet a lot of people are willing to help you, regardless of who you are, where you come from, or what time of day it is. And in my case, this process of helping others usually leads to me learning something new. Especially in those cases where the question isn’t really something I’m good at. The delicate part comes when you’re ready to give an answer, but you’re not sure. Often times I’ll try to validate with Internet searches and what have you. Often times I’ll throw in a question mark at the end of the answer, so as not to look authoritative, but rather suggestive. But as time passes by, you get more and more comfortable with that topic. And that’s the real gain.  I have done this for many years now on #SQLHelp, which is my preferred vehicle for providing assistance. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from it. By helping others, by watching others help. It’s all knowledge and experience you gain…and you might not be getting all that in your day job today. Such thing, my dear reader, is invaluable. It’s what will differentiate yours amongst a pack of resumes. It’s what will get you places. Take it from me - a guy who, like you, knew nothing about SQL Server.

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• Using Content Analytics for More Effective Engagement

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Using Content Analytics for More Effective Engagement: Turning High-Volume Content into Templates for Success By Mitchell Palski, Oracle WebCenter Sales Consultant Many organizations use Oracle WebCenter Portal to develop these basic types of portals: Intranet portals used for collaboration, employee self-service, and company communication Extranet portals used by customers and partners for self-service and support Team collaboration portals that allow users to share documents and content, track activity, and engage in discussions Portals are intended to provide a personalized, single point of interaction with web-based applications and information. The user experiences that a Portal is capable of displaying should be relevant to an individual user or class of users (a group or role). The components of a Portal that would vary based on a user’s identity include: Web content such as images, news articles, and on-screen instruction Social tools such as threaded discussions, polls/surveys, and blogs Document management tools to upload, download, and edit files Web applications that present data visualizations and data entry modules These collections of content, tools, and applications make up valuable workspaces. The challenge that a development team may have is defining which combinations are the most effective for its users. No one wants to create and manage a workspace that goes un-used or (even worse) that is used but is ineffective. Oracle WebCenter Portal provides you with the capabilities to not only rapidly develop variations of portals, but also identify which portals are the most effective and should be re-used throughout an enterprise. Capturing Portal AnalyticsOracle WebCenter Portal provides an analytics service that allows administrators and business users to track and analyze portal usage. These analytics are captured in the form of: Usage tracking metrics Behavior tracking User Profile Correlation The out-of-the-box task reports that come with Oracle WebCenter Portal include: WebCenter Portal Traffic Page Traffic Login Metrics Portlet Traffic Portlet Response Time Portlet Instance Traffic Portlet Instance Response Time Search Metrics Document Metrics Wiki Metrics Blog Metrics Discussion Metrics Portal Traffic Portal Response Time By determining the usage and behavior tracking metrics that are associated with specific user profiles (including groups and roles), your administrators will be able to identify the components of your solution that are the most valuable.  Your first step as an administrator should be to identify the specific pages and/or components are used the most frequently. Next, determine the user(s) or user-group(s) that are accessing those high-use elements of a portal. It is also important to determine patterns in high-usage and see if they correlate to a specific schedule. One of the goals of any development team (especially those that are following Agile methodologies) should be to develop reusable web components to minimize redundant development. Oracle WebCenter Portal provides you the tools to capture the successful workspaces that have already been developed and identified so that they can be reused for similar user demographics. Re-using Successful PortalsWhen creating a new Portal in Oracle WebCenter, developers have the option to base that portal on a template that includes: Pre-seeded data such as pages, tools, user roles, and look-and-feel assets Specific sub-sets of page-layouts, tools, and other resources to standardize what is added to a Portal’s pages Any custom components that your team creates during development cycles Once you have identified a successful workspace and its most valuable components, leverage Oracle WebCenter’s ability to turn that custom portal into a portal template. By creating a template from your already successful portal, you are empowering your enterprise by providing a starting point for future initiatives. Your new projects, new teams, and new web pages can benefit from lessons learned and adjustments that have already been made to optimize user experiences instead of starting from scratch. ***For a complete explanation of how to work with Portal Templates, be sure to read the Fusion Middleware documentation available online.

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• Inherit one instance variable from the global scope

  - by Julian

  I'm using Curses to create a command line GUI with Ruby. Everything's going well, but I have hit a slight snag. I don't think Curses knowledge (esoteric to be fair) is required to answer this question, just Ruby concepts such as objects and inheritance. I'm going to explain my problem now, but if I'm banging on, just look at the example below. Basically, every Window instance needs to have .close called on it in order to close it. Some Window instances have other Windows associated with it. When closing a Window instance, I want to be able to close all of the other Window instances associated with it at the same time. Because associated Windows are generated in a logical fashion, (I append the name with a number: instance_variable_set(self + integer, Window.new(10,10,10,10)) ), it's easy to target generated windows, because methods can anticipate what assosiated windows will be called, (I can recreate the instance variable name from scratch, and almost query it: instance_variable_get(self + integer). I have a delete method that handles this. If the delete method is just a normal, global method (called like this: delete_window(@win543) then everything works perfectly. However, if the delete method is an instance method, which it needs to be in-order to use the self keyword, it doesn't work for a very clear reason; it can 'query' the correct instance variable perfectly well (instance_variable_get(self + integer)), however, because it's an instance method, the global instances aren't scoped to it! Now, one way around this would obviously be to simply make a global method like this: delete_window(@win543). But I have attributes associated with my window instances, and it all works very elegantly. This is very simplified, but it literally translates the problem exactly: class Dog def speak woof end end def woof if @dog_generic == nil puts "@dog_generic isn't scoped when .woof is called from a class method!\n" else puts "@dog_generic is scoped when .woof is called from the global scope. See:\n" + @dog_generic end end @dog_generic = "Woof!" lassie = Dog.new lassie.speak #=> @dog_generic isn't scoped when .woof is called from an instance method!\n woof #=> @dog_generic is scoped when .woof is called from the global scope. See:\nWoof! TL/DR: I need lassie.speak to return this string: "@dog_generic is scoped when .woof is called from the global scope. See:\nWoof!" @dog_generic must remain as an insance variable. The use of Globals or Constants is not acceptable. Could woof inherit from the Global scope? Maybe some sort of keyword: def woof < global # This 'code' is just to conceptualise what I want to do, don't take offence! end Is there some way the .woof method could 'pull in' @dog_generic from the global scope? Will @dog_generic have to be passed in as a parameter?

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• Feedback from SQLBits 8

  - by Peter Larsson

  This years SQLBits occurred in Brighton. Although I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the full conference, I did a presentation at Saturday. Getting to Brighton was easy. Drove to Copenhagen airport at 0415, flew 0605 and arrived at Gatwick 0735. Then I took the direct train to Brighton and showed up at 0830, just one hour before presenting. This was the easy part. Getting home was much worse. Presentation ended at 1030 and I had to rush to the train station to get back to London, change to tube for Heathrow. Made it at the gate just 15 seconds before closing. That included a half mile run in the airport… Anyway, yesterday I got the feedback for my presentation. It does look good, especially since English is not my first language. This is the first graph Seems to be just halfway between conference average and best session. I can live with that. Second graph shows more detail about attendees voting. It also look acceptable. A wider spread for the 9’s, but it is an inevitable effect from how attendees percept the session. I did get a lot of 8’s and the lower grades in an descending order. The two people voting 4 and 5 didn’t say why they voted this so I don’t know how to remedy this. Third graph is about each category of votes.   Again, I find this acceptable. The Session abstract and Speaker’s knowledge seems to follow attendees expectations compared to conference average. I seem to have met the attendees expectations (and some more) for the other four categories, also compared to conference average. Since this did encourage me, I believe I will present some more at future meetings. I do have a new presentation about something all developers are doing every day but they may not know it. I will also cover this new topic in the next Deep Dives II book. Stay tuned! //Peter

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• The Connected Company: WebCenter Portal Activity Streams

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post by Mitchell Palski, Oracle Staff Sales Consultant Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Social media is sure to have made its way into your company or government organization. Whether its discussion threads, blog posts, Facebook-style profile-pages, or just a simple Instant Messenger application; in one way or another, your employees are connected. What are the objectives of leveraging social media in your organization? Facilitating knowledge transfer More effectively organizing team events Generating inter-community discussions to solve problems Improving resource management Increasing organizational awareness Creating an environment of accountability Do any of the business objectives above stand out to you as needs? If so, consider leveraging the WebCenter Portal Activity Stream as part of your solution. In WebCenter Portal, the Activity Stream feature provides a streaming view of the activities of your connections, actions taken in portals, and business activities that looks a lot like a combined Facebook and Twitter newsfeed. Activity Stream can note when a user: Posts feedback (comments) Uploads a document Creates a new blog, page, event, or announcement Starts a new discussion Streams messages and attachments entered through WebCenter Publisher (similar to Twitter) Through Activity Stream Preferences, you can select which of these activities to show or hide from your personal Activity Stream. Here’s what you get: Real-time stream of activities with in a Portal or sub-Portal increases awareness across your organization or within a working group Complete list of user actions reduces the time-to-find for users that need to interact with the latest activities in your portal Users can publish to their groups when tasks are finished for complete group traceability and accountability, as well as improved resource management. Project discussions and shared documents that require the expertise of someone outside of a working group now get increased visibility across your organization. There’s a reason that commercial Social Media tools like Facebook and Twitter have been so successful – they spread information in an aesthetically appealing and easy to read format.  Strategically placing an Activity Feed within your Portal is analogous to sending your employees a daily newsletter, events calendar, recent documents report, and list of announcements – BUT ALL IN ONE! 

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• career planning advice [closed]

  - by JDB

  Possible Duplicate: Are certifications worth it? I am at the point in my career where people start to veer off into either management-type roles or they focus on solidifying their technical skills to stay in the development game for the long-haul. Here's my story: I've got a degree in economics, an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Finance and Management. In addition, I've done coursework in advanced math and software development (although no degree in math or software). All-in-all, I've got 13 years of post-secondary education under my belt. I, however, currently work as a software developer using C# for desktop, Silverlight, Flex and javascript for web, and objective c for mobile. I've been in software development for the past 3.3 years, and it seems like it comes pretty easy to me. I work in a field called "geospatial information systems," which just involves customization and manipulation of geospatial data. Right now I am looking at one of several certifications. Given this background, which of these certifications has the highest ceiling? CFA PMP various development/technological certifications from Microsoft, etc. Other? My academic and work experience are all heavy on the analytical/development side, esp. so given the MBA and the B.S. in Econ. The political science degree was really a lot of stats. So it seems that I would be good pursuing more of the CFA/analytical role. This is a difficult path, however, because I have no work experience in the financial sector, and the developers in finance are all "quants," which again, I am OK with, but I haven't done much statistical modeling in the past 3.3 years. The PMP would require knowledge of best practices as it pertains explicitly to software development. I also don't enjoy a lot of business travel, a common theme for most PMP jobs I've seen. If certifications is the route, which would you recommend? Anything else? I've thought about going back to try to knock out a B.S. in C.S., but I wasn't sure how long that would take, or what would be involved. Thoughts or recommendations? Thanks in advance! I turn 32 this weekend, which is what has forced me to think about these issues.

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• My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on April 8, 2010 9:27 PM "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions." What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc. When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: - Nod your head politely - Tune out and check your smart phone - Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?" Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen." - 24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors - 20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry - 19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself - 5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day. The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: - How standards can benefit your business - Your IT organization's philosophy around standards - Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there. Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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