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• How to use Oracle AQ with Message-Driven Beans in Weblogic

  - by lukasz.romaszewski(at)oracle.com

  Welcome to the IMC blog! This post shows how to use Oracle AQ as an underlying JMS implementation with MDBs in Weblogic. MDB's can be very useful when you want to integrate your database logic with your Java application. Normally JEE application invokes the code inside the database. But in some cases you want the DB to initiate the asynchronous call and have your Java application do the actual processing. This is also very useful when you want to integrate JEE code with the Oracle Forms application.The post has been based on the following OTN documentation: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/web.1111/e13738/aq_jms.htm#CJACBCEJDetailed instruction is here:How to connect MDB to Oracle AQ.pdf v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} You can also download a sample JDeveloper application here:MDB_AQApplication.zipPlease feel free to ask questions and put comments.Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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• Integrating with Fusion Applications using SOAP web services and REST APIs (Part 1 of 2) by Arvind Srinivasamoorthy

  - by JuergenKress

  Fusion Applications provides several types of interfaces to facilitate integration with other applications within the enterprise and on the cloud.As one of the key integration interfaces, Fusion Applications (FA) supports SOAP services based integration, both inbound and outbound. At this point FA doesn’t provide REST API’s but it is planned for a future release. It is however possible to invoke external REST APIs from FA which we will discuss. Oracle continues to invest in improving both SOAP and REST based connectivity. The content in this blog is based on features that were available at the time of writing it. In this two part blog, I will cover the following topics briefly. Invoking FA SOAP web services from external applications Identifying the FA SOAP web service to be invoked Sample invocation from an external application Techniques to invoke FA services from an ADF application Invoking external SOAP Web Services from FA (covered in Part 2) Invoking external REST APIs from FA (covered in Part 2) I’ll touch upon some basics, so that you can quickly build a few SOAP/REST interactions with FA. If you do not already have access to an FA instance (on-premise or SaaS), you can request for a free 30 day trial of the Oracle Sales Cloud using http://cloud.oracle.com 1. Invoking FA SOAP web services from external applications There are two main types of services that FA exposes -  ADF Services - These services allow you to perform CRUD operations on Fusion business objects. For example, Sales Party Service, Opportunity Service etc. Using these services you can typically perform operations such as get, find, create, delete, update etc on FA objects.These services are typically useful for UI driven integrations such as looking up FA information from external application UIs, using third party Interfaces to create/update data in FA. They are also used in non-UI driven integration uses cases such as initial upload of business or setup data, synchronizing data with an external systems, etc. - Composite Services – These services involve more logic than CRUD and often involving human workflows, rules etc. These services perform a business function such as Get Orchestration Order Service and are used when building larger process based integrations with external systems.These services are usually asynchronous in nature and are not typically used for UI integration patterns. 1a. Identifying the FA SOAP web service to be invoked All FA web service metadata is available through an OER instance (Oracle Enterprise Repository) which is publicly available via http://fusionappsoer.oracle.com. This is the starting point for you to discover the services that you are going to work with. You do not need to own a FA account to browse the services using the above UI You can use the search area on the left to narrow down your search to what you are looking for. For example, you can choose the type as by ADF Services or Composite, you can narrow your search to a specific FA version, Product Family etc. Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit 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 Technorati Tags: AppAdvantage,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress,Arvind Srinivasamoorthy

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• Kill a tree, save your website? Content strategy in action, part III

  - by Roger Hart

  A lot has been written about how driving content strategy from within an organisation is hard. And that's true. Red Gate is pretty receptive to new ideas, so although I've not had a total walk in the park, it's been a hike with charming scenery. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Lots of people are involved in content, and depending on your organisation some of those people might be the kind who'll gleefully call themselves "stakeholders". People holding a stake generally want to stick it through something's heart and bury it at a crossroads. Winning them over is not always easy. (Richard Ingram has made a nice visual summary of how this can feel - Content strategy Snakes & ladders - pdf ) So yes, a lot of content strategy advocates are having a hard time. And sure, we've got a nice opportunity to get together and have a hug and a cry, but in the interim we could use a hand. What to do? My preferred approach is, I'll confess, brutal. I'd like nothing so much as to take a scorched earth approach to our website. Burn it, salt the ground, and build the new one right: focusing on clearly delineated business and user content goals, and instrumented so we can tell if we're doing it right. I'm never getting buy-in for that, but a boy can dream. So how about just getting buy-in for some small, tenable improvements? Easier, but still non-trivial. I sat down for a chat with our marketing and design guys. It seemed like a good place to start, even if they weren't up for my "Ctrl-A + Delete"  solution. We talked through some of this stuff, and we pretty much agreed that our content is a bit more broken than we'd ideally like. But to get everybody on board, the problems needed visibility. Doing a visual content inventory Print out the internet. Make a Wall Of Content. Seriously. If you've already done a content inventory, you know your architecture, and you know the scale of the problem. But it's quite likely that very few other people do. So make it big and visual. I'm going to carbon hell, but it seems to be working. This morning, I printed out a tiny, tiny part of our website: the non-support content pertaining to SQL Compare I made big, visual, A3 blowups of each page, and covered a wall with them. A page per web page, spread over something like 6M x 2M, with metrics, right in front of people. Even if nobody reads it (and they are doing) the sheer scale is shocking. 53 pages, all told. Some are redundant, some outdated, some trivial, a few fantastic, and frighteningly many that are great ideas delivered not-quite-right. You have to stand quite far away to get it all in your field of vision. For a lot of today, a whole bunch of folks have been gawping in amazement, talking each other through it, peering at the details, and generally getting excited about content. Developers, sales guys, our CEO, the marketing folks - they're engaged. Will it last? I make no promises. But this sort of wave of interest is vital to getting a content strategy project kicked off. While the content strategist is a saucer-eyed orphan in the cupboard under the stairs, they're not getting a whole lot done. Of course, just printing the site won't necessarily cut it. You have to know your content, and be able to talk about it. Ideally, you'll also have page view and time-on-page metrics. One of the most powerful things you can do is, when people are staring at your wall of content, ask them what they think half of it is for. Pretty soon, you've made a case for content strategy. We're also going to get folks to mark it up - cover it with notes and post-its, let us know how they feel about our content. I'll be blogging about how that goes, but it's exciting. Different business functions have different needs from content, so the more exposure the content gets, and the more feedback, the more you know about those needs. Fingers crossed for awesome.

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• Simple task framework - building software from reusable pieces

  - by RuslanD

  I'm writing a web service with several APIs, and they will be sharing some of the implementation code. In order not to copy-paste, I would like to ideally implement each API call as a series of tasks, which are executed in a sequence determined by the business logic. One obvious question is whether that's the best strategy for code reuse, or whether I can look at it in a different way. But assuming I want to go with tasks, several issues arise: What's a good task interface to use? How do I pass data computed in one task to another task in the sequence that might need it? In the past, I've worked with task interfaces like: interface Task<T, U> { U execute(T input); } Then I also had sort of a "task context" object which had getters and setters for any kind of data my tasks needed to produce or consume, and it gets passed to all tasks. I'm aware that this suffers from a host of problems. So I wanted to figure out a better way to implement it this time around. My current idea is to have a TaskContext object which is a type-safe heterogeneous container (as described in Effective Java). Each task can ask for an item from this container (task input), or add an item to the container (task output). That way, tasks don't need to know about each other directly, and I don't have to write a class with dozens of methods for each data item. There are, however, several drawbacks: Each item in this TaskContext container should be a complex type that wraps around the actual item data. If task A uses a String for some purpose, and task B uses a String for something entirely different, then just storing a mapping between String.class and some object doesn't work for both tasks. The other reason is that I can't use that kind of container for generic collections directly, so they need to be wrapped in another object. This means that, based on how many tasks I define, I would need to also define a number of classes for the task items that may be consumed or produced, which may lead to code bloat and duplication. For instance, if a task takes some Long value as input and produces another Long value as output, I would have to have two classes that simply wrap around a Long, which IMO can spiral out of control pretty quickly as the codebase evolves. I briefly looked at workflow engine libraries, but they kind of seem like a heavy hammer for this particular nail. How would you go about writing a simple task framework with the following requirements: Tasks should be as self-contained as possible, so they can be composed in different ways to create different workflows. That being said, some tasks may perform expensive computations that are prerequisites for other tasks. We want to have a way of storing the results of intermediate computations done by tasks so that other tasks can use those results for free. The task framework should be light, i.e. growing the code doesn't involve introducing many new types just to plug into the framework.

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• BizTalk 2009 - Pipeline Component Wizard

  - by Stuart Brierley

  Recently I decided to try out the BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard when creating a new pipeline component for BizTalk 2009. There are different versions of the wizard available, so be sure to download the appropriate version for the BizTalk environment that you are working with. Following the download and expansion of the zip file, you should be left with a Visual Studio solution.  Open this solution and build the project. Following this installation is straight foward - locate and run the built setup.exe file in the PipelineComponentWizard Setup project and click through the small number of installation screens. Once you have completed installation you will be ready to use the wizard in Visual Studio to create your BizTalk Pipeline Component. Start by creating a new project, selecting BizTalk Projects then BizTalk Server Pipeline Component.  You will then be presented with the splash screen. The next step is General Setup, where you will detail the classname, namespace, pipeline and component types, and the implementation language for your Pipeline Component. The options for pipeline type are Receive, Send or Any. Depending on the pipeline type chosen there are different options presented for the component type, matching those available within the BizTalk Pipelines themselves: Receive - Decoder, Disassembling Parser, Validate, Party Resolver, Any. Send -  Encoder, Assembling Serializer, Any. Any - Any. The options for implementation language are C# or VB.Net Next you must set up the UI settings - these are the settings that affect the appearance of the pipeline component within Visual Studio. You must detail the component name, version, description and icon.  Next is the definition of the variables that the pipeline component will use.  The values for these variables will be defined in Visual Studio when creating a pipeline. The options for each variable you require are: Designer Property - The name of the variable. Data Type - String, Boolean, Integer, Long, Short, Schema List, Schema With None Clicking finish now will complete the wizard stage of the creation of your pipeline component. Once the wizard has completed you will be left with a BizTalk Server Pipeline Component project containing a skeleton code file for you to complete.   Within this code file you will mainly be interested in the execute method, which is left mostly empty ready for you to implement your custom pipeline code:          #region IComponent members         /// <summary>         /// Implements IComponent.Execute method.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="pc">Pipeline context</param>         /// <param name="inmsg">Input message</param>         /// <returns>Original input message</returns>         /// <remarks>         /// IComponent.Execute method is used to initiate         /// the processing of the message in this pipeline component.         /// </remarks>         public Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage Execute(Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop.IPipelineContext pc, Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage inmsg)         {             //             // TODO: implement component logic             //             // this way, it's a passthrough pipeline component             return inmsg;         }         #endregion Once you have implemented your custom code, build and compile your Custom Pipeline Component then add the compiled .dll to C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Pipeline Components . When creating a new pipeline, in Visual Studio reset the toolbox and the custom pipeline component should appear ready for you to use in your Biztalk Pipeline. Drop the pipeline component into the relevant pipeline stage and configure the component properties (the variables defined in the wizard). You can now deploy and use the pipeline as you would any other custom pipeline.

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• Welcome Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready Solutions with Extreme Performance

  - by Irem Radzik

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The big day for the Oracle Data Integration team has finally arrived! It is my honor to introduce you to Oracle Data Integration 12c. Today we announced the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions Extreme Performance Fast Time-to-Value       There are many new features that support these key differentiators for Oracle Data Integrator 12c and for Oracle GoldenGate 12c. In this first 12c blog post, I will highlight only a few:·Future-Ready Solutions to Support Current and Emerging Initiatives: Oracle Data Integration offer robust and reliable solutions for key technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence and continuous data availability. Via the tight integration with Oracle’s database, middleware, and application offerings Oracle Data Integration will continue to support the new features and capabilities right away as these products evolve and provide advance features. E    Extreme Performance: Both GoldenGate and Data Integrator are known for their high performance. The new release widens the gap even further against competition. Oracle GoldenGate 12c’s Integrated Delivery feature enables higher throughput via a special application programming interface into Oracle Database. As mentioned in the press release, customers already report up to 5X higher performance compared to earlier versions of GoldenGate. Oracle Data Integrator 12c introduces parallelism that significantly increases its performance as well. Fast Time-to-Value via Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions:  Oracle Data Integrator 12c’s new flow-based declarative UI brings superior developer productivity, ease of use, and ultimately fast time to market for end users.  It also gives the ability to seamlessly reuse mapping logic speeds development.Oracle GoldenGate 12c ‘s Integrated Delivery feature automatically optimally tunes the process, saving time while improving performance. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. On November 12th we will reveal much more about the new release in our video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration". Our customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Please join us at this free event to learn more from our executives about the 12c release, hear our customers’ perspectives on the new features, and ask your questions to our experts in the live Q&A. Also, please continue to follow our blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates as we unveil more about the new features of the latest release. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• LINQ to Twitter Queries with LINQPad

  - by Joe Mayo

  LINQPad is a popular utility for .NET developers who use LINQ a lot.  In addition to standard SQL queries, LINQPad also supports other types of LINQ providers, including LINQ to Twitter.  The following sections explain how to set up LINQPad for making queries with LINQ to Twitter. LINQPad comes in a couple versions and this example uses LINQPad4, which runs on the .NET Framework 4.0. 1. The first thing you'll need to do is set up a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll. From the Query menu, select query properties. Click the Browse button and find the LinqToTwitter.dll binary. You should see something similar to the Query Properties window below. 2. While you have the query properties window open, add the namespace for the LINQ to Twitter types.  Click the Additional Namespace Imports tab and type in LinqToTwitter. The results are shown below: 3. The default query type, when you first start LINQPad, is C# Expression, but you'll need to change this to support multiple statements.  Change the Language dropdown, on the Main window, to C# Statements. 4. To query LINQ to Twitter, instantiate a TwitterContext, by typing the following into the LINQPad Query window: var ctx = new TwitterContext(); Note: If you're getting syntax errors, go back and make sure you did steps #2 and #3 properly. 5. Next, add a query, but don't materialize it, like this: var tweets = from tweet in ctx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Public select new { tweet.Text, tweet.Geo, tweet.User }; 6. Next, you want the output to be displayed in the LINQPad grid, so do a Dump, like this: tweets.Dump(); The following image shows the final results:   That was an unauthenticated query, but you can also perform authenticated queries with LINQ to Twitter's support of OAuth.  Here's an example that uses the PinAuthorizer (type this into the LINQPad Query window): var auth = new PinAuthorizer { Credentials = new InMemoryCredentials { ConsumerKey = "", ConsumerSecret = "" }, UseCompression = true, GoToTwitterAuthorization = pageLink => Process.Start(pageLink), GetPin = () => { // this executes after user authorizes, which begins with the call to auth.Authorize() below. Console.WriteLine("\nAfter you authorize this application, Twitter will give you a 7-digit PIN Number.\n"); Console.Write("Enter the PIN number here: "); return Console.ReadLine(); } }; // start the authorization process (launches Twitter authorization page). auth.Authorize(); var ctx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://search.twitter.com/"); var tweets = from tweet in ctx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Public select new { tweet.Text, tweet.Geo, tweet.User }; tweets.Dump(); This code is very similar to what you'll find in the LINQ to Twitter downloadable source code solution, in the LinqToTwitterDemo project.  For obvious reasons, I changed the value assigned to ConsumerKey and ConsumerSecret, which you'll have to obtain by visiting http://dev.twitter.com and registering your application. One tip, you'll probably want to make this easier on yourself by creating your own DLL that encapsulates all of the OAuth logic and then call a method or property on you custom class that returns a fully functioning TwitterContext.  This will help avoid adding all this code every time you want to make a query. Now, you know how to set up LINQPad for LINQ to Twitter, perform unauthenticated queries, and perform queries with OAuth. Joe

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• Countdown of Top 10 Reasons to Never Ever Use a Pie Chart

  - by Tony Wolfram

    Pie charts are evil. They represent much of what is wrong with the poor design of many websites and software applications. They're also innefective, misleading, and innacurate. Using a pie chart as your graph of choice to visually display important statistics and information demonstrates either a lack of knowledge, laziness, or poor design skills. Figure 1: A floating, tilted, 3D pie chart with shadow trying (poorly)to show usage statistics within a graphics application.   Of course, pie charts in and of themselves are not evil. This blog is really about designers making poor decisions for all the wrong reasons. In order for a pie chart to appear on a web page, somebody chose it over the other alternatives, and probably thought they were doing the right thing. They weren't. Using a pie chart is almost always a bad design decision. Figure 2: Pie Chart from an Oracle Reports User Guide   A pie chart does not do the job of effectively displaying information in an elegant visual form.  Being circular, they use up too much space while not allowing their labels to line up. Bar charts, line charts, and tables do a much better job. Expert designers, statisticians, and business analysts have documented their many failings, and strongly urge software and report designers not to use them. It's obvious to them that the pie chart has too many inherent defects to ever be used effectively. Figure 3: Demonstration of how comparing data between multiple pie charts is difficult.   Yet pie charts are still used frequently in today's software applications, financial reports, and websites, often on the opening page as a symbol of how the data inside is represented. In an attempt to get a flashy colorful graphic to break up boring text, designers will often settle for a pie chart that looks like pac man, a colored spinning wheel, or a 3D floating alien space ship.     Figure 4: Best use of a pie chart I've found yet.   Why is the pie chart so popular? Through its constant use and iconic representation as the classic chart, the idea persists that it must be a good choice, since everyone else is still using it. Like a virus or an urban legend, no amount of vaccine or debunking will slow down the use of pie charts, which seem to be resistant to logic and common sense. Even the new iPad from Apple showcases the pie chart as one of its options.     Figure 5: Screen shot of new iPad showcasing pie charts. Regardless of the futility in trying to rid the planet of this often used poor design choice, I now present to you my top 10 reasons why you should never, ever user a pie chart again.    Number 10 - Pie Charts Just Don't Work When Comparing Data Number 9 - You Have A Better Option: The Sorted Horizontal Bar Chart Number 8 - The Pie Chart is Always Round Number 7 - Some Genius Will Make It 3D Number 6 - Legends and Labels are Hard to Align and Read Number 5 - Nobody Has Ever Made a Critical Decision Using a Pie Chart Number 4 - It Doesn't Scale Well to More Than 2 Items Number 3 - A Pie Chart Causes Distortions and Errors Number 2 - Everyone Else Uses Them: Debunking the "Urban Legend" of Pie Charts Number 1 - Pie Charts Make You Look Stupid and Lazy  

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• WIF, ASP.NET 4.0 and Request Validation

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Since the response of a WS-Federation sign-in request contains XML, the ASP.NET built-in request validation will trigger an exception. To solve this, request validation needs to be turned off for pages receiving such a response message. Starting with ASP.NET 4.0 you can plug in your own request validation logic. This allows letting WS-Federation messages through, while applying all standard request validation to all other requests. The WIF SDK (v4) contains a sample validator that does exactly that: public class WSFedRequestValidator : RequestValidator {     protected override bool IsValidRequestString(       HttpContext context,       string value,       RequestValidationSource requestValidationSource,       string collectionKey,       out int validationFailureIndex)     {         validationFailureIndex = 0;         if ( requestValidationSource == RequestValidationSource.Form &&              collectionKey.Equals(                WSFederationConstants.Parameters.Result,                StringComparison.Ordinal ) )         {             SignInResponseMessage message =               WSFederationMessage.CreateFromFormPost(context.Request)                as SignInResponseMessage;             if (message != null)             {                 return true;             }         }         return base.IsValidRequestString(           context,           value,           requestValidationSource,           collectionKey,           out validationFailureIndex );     } } Register this validator via web.config: <httpRuntime requestValidationType="WSFedRequestValidator" />

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• The SmartAssembly Rearchitecture

  - by Simon Cooper

  You may have noticed that not a lot has happened to SmartAssembly in the past few months. However, the team has been very busy behind the scenes working on an entirely new version of SmartAssembly. SmartAssembly 6.5 Over the past few releases of SmartAssembly, the team had come to the realisation that the current 'architecture' - grown organically, way before RedGate bought it, from a simple name obfuscator over the years into a full-featured obfuscator and assembly instrumentation tool - was simply not up to the task. Not for what we wanted to do with it at the time, and not what we have planned for the future. Not only was it not up to what we wanted it to do, but it was severely limiting our development capabilities; long-standing bugs in the root architecture that couldn't be fixed, some rather...interesting...design decisions, and convoluted logic that increased the complexity of any bugfix or new feature tenfold. So, we set out to fix this. Earlier this year, a new engine was written on which SmartAssembly would be based. Over the following few months, each feature was ported over to the new engine and extensively tested by our existing unit and integration tests. The engine was linked into the existing UI (no easy task, due to the tight coupling between the UI and old engine), and existing RedGate products were tested on the new SmartAssembly to ensure the new engine acted in the same way. The result is SmartAssembly 6.5. The risks of a rearchitecture Are there risks to rearchitecting a product like SmartAssembly? Of course. There was a lot of undocumented behaviour in the old engine, and as part of the rearchitecture we had to find this behaviour, define it, and document it. In the process we found some behaviour of the old engine that simply did not make sense; hence the changes in pruning & obfuscation behaviour in the release notes. All the special edge cases we had to find, document, and re-implement. There was a chance that these special cases would not be found until near the end of the project, when everything is functionally complete and interacting together. By that stage, it would be hard to go back and change anything without a whole lot of extra work, delaying the release by months. We always knew this was a possibility; our initial estimate of the time required was '4 months, ± 4 months'. And that was including various mitigation strategies to reduce the likelihood of these issues being found right at the end. Fortunately, this worst-case did not happen. However, the rearchitecture did produce some benefits. As well as numerous bug fixes that we could not fix any other way, we've also added logging that lets you find out exactly why a particular field or property wasn't pruned or obfuscated. There's a new command line interface, we've tested it with WP7.1 and Silverlight 5, and we've added a new option to error reporting to improve the performance of instrumented apps by ~10%, at the cost of inaccurate line numbers in reports. So? What differences will I see? Largely none. SmartAssembly 6.5 produces the same output as SmartAssembly 6.2. The performance of 6.5 will be much faster for some users, and generally the same as 6.2 for the remaining. If you've encountered a bug with previous versions of SmartAssembly, I encourage you to try 6.5, as it has most likely been fixed in the rearchitecture. If you encounter a bug with 6.5, please do tell us; we'll be doing another release quite soon, so we'll aim to fix any issues caused by 6.5 in that release. Most importantly, the new architecture finally allows us to implement some Big Things with SmartAssembly we've been planning for many months; these will fundamentally change how you build, release and monitor your application. Stay tuned for further updates!

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• MCM Lab exam this week

  - by Rob Farley

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

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• Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet

  - by Rick Strahl

  As a publisher of a Help Creation tool called Html Help Help Builder, I’ve seen a lot of problems with help files that won't properly display actual topic content and displays an error message for topics instead. Here’s the scenario: You go ahead and happily build your fancy, schmanzy Help File for your application and deploy it to your customer. Or alternately you've created a help file and you let your customers download them off the Internet directly or in a zip file. The customer downloads the file, opens the zip file and copies the help file contained in the zip file to disk. She then opens the help file and finds the following unfortunate result:     The help file  comes up with all topics in the tree on the left, but a Navigation to the WebPage was cancelled or Operation Aborted error in the Help Viewer's content window whenever you try to open a topic. The CHM file obviously opened since the topic list is there, but the Help Viewer refuses to display the content. Looks like a broken help file, right? But it's not - it's merely a Windows security 'feature' that tries to be overly helpful in protecting you. The reason this happens is because files downloaded off the Internet - including ZIP files and CHM files contained in those zip files - are marked as as coming from the Internet and so can potentially be malicious, so do not get browsing rights on the local machine – they can’t access local Web content, which is exactly what help topics are. If you look at the URL of a help topic you see something like this:   mk:@MSITStore:C:\wwapps\wwIPStuff\wwipstuff.chm::/indexpage.htm which points at a special Microsoft Url Moniker that in turn points the CHM file and a relative path within that HTML help file. Try pasting a URL like this into Internet Explorer and you'll see the help topic pop up in your browser (along with a warning most likely). Although the URL looks weird this still equates to a call to the local computer zone, the same as if you had navigated to a local file in IE which by default is not allowed.  Unfortunately, unlike Internet Explorer where you have the option of clicking a security toolbar, the CHM viewer simply refuses to load the page and you get an error page as shown above. How to Fix This - Unblock the Help File There's a workaround that lets you explicitly 'unblock' a CHM help file. To do this: Open Windows Explorer Find your CHM file Right click and select Properties Click the Unblock button on the General tab Here's what the dialog looks like:   Clicking the Unblock button basically, tells Windows that you approve this Help File and allows topics to be viewed.   Is this insecure? Not unless you're running a really old Version of Windows (XP pre-SP1). In recent versions of Windows Internet Explorer pops up various security dialogs or fires script errors when potentially malicious operations are accessed (like loading Active Controls), so it's relatively safe to run local content in the CHM viewer. Since most help files don't contain script or only load script that runs pure JavaScript access web resources this works fine without issues. How to avoid this Problem As an application developer there's a simple solution around this problem: Always install your Help Files with an Installer. The above security warning pop up because Windows can't validate the source of the CHM file. However, if the help file is installed as part of an installation the installation and all files associated with that installation including the help file are trusted. A fully installed Help File of an application works just fine because it is trusted by Windows. Summary It's annoying as all hell that this sort of obtrusive marking is necessary, but it's admittedly a necessary evil because of Microsoft's use of the insecure Internet Explorer engine that drives the CHM Html Engine's topic viewer. Because help files are viewing local content and script is allowed to execute in CHM files there's potential for malicious code hiding in CHM files and the above precautions are supposed to avoid any issues. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012 Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• High Jinks, Hi Jacks, Exceptional DBA Awards and PASS

  - by Rodney

  The countdown to PASS has counted down.  The day after tomorrow I will board a plane, like many others, on my way for the 4th year in a row to SQL PASS Summit.  The anticipation has been excruciating but luckily I have this little thing called a day job as a DBA that has kept me busy and not thinking too much about the event. Well that is not exactly true since my beautiful wife works for PASS so we get to talk about SQL from the time we wake up until late in the evening. I would not have it any other way and I feel very fortunate to be a part of this great event and to have been chosen as the Exceptional DBA Award judge also for the 4th year in a row.  This year, I will have been again tasked with presenting the award to the winner, Mr. Jeff Moden and it will be a true honor to meet him in person as I have read many of his articles on SSC and have attended his session at PASS previously.  The speech is all ready but one item remains, which will be a surprise to all who attend the party on Tuesday night in Seattle (see links below).  Let's face it, Exceptional DBAs everywhere work very hard protecting our data stores, tuning queries, mentoring, saving money, installing clusters, etc and once in a while there is time to be exceptionally non-professional and have a bit of fun. Once incident that happened this year that falls under the High Jinks category was when my network admin asked if I could Telnet into a SQL instance and see if I could make the connection through the firewall that he had just configured. I was able to establish a connection on port 1433 and it occurred to me that it would be very interesting if I could actually run T-SQL queries via a Telnet session much like you might do with an SMTP server. With that thought, I proceeded to demonstrate this could be possible by convincing my senior DBA Shawn McGehee that I was able to do so. At first he did not believe me. It shook his world view.  It was inconceivable.  What I had done, behind the scenes, of course, was to copy and rename SQLCMD.exe to Telnet.exe and used it to connect and run a simple, "Select * from sys.databases" on the SQL instance. I think if it had been anyone other than Shawn I could have extended this ruse indefinitely but he caught on within 30 seconds. It was a fun thirty seconds though. On the High Jacks side of the house, which is really merged to be SQL HACKS, I finally, after several years of struggling with how to connect to an untrusted domain like in a DMZ with a windows account in SSMS, I stumbled upon a solution that does away with the requirement to use SQL Authentication.  While "Runas" is a great command to use to run an application with a higher privileged account, I had not previously been able to figure out how to connect to the remote domain with SSMS and "Runsas". It never connected and caused a login failure every time for the remote windows domain account. Then I ran across an option for "Runas",   "/netonly".  This option postpones the login until a connection is made and only then passes the remote login you supply when you first launch SSMS with the "Runas" command. So a typical shortcut would look like: "C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:remotedomain.com\rodlandrum "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe" You will want to make sure the passwords are synced between the two domains, your local domain and the remote domain, otherwise you may have account lockout issues, but I have found in weeks of testing this is a stable solution. Now it is time to get ready to head for Seattle. Please, if you see me (@SQLBeat) or my wife (@Karlakay22) please run up and high five me (wait..High Jinks.High Jacks.High Fives.Need to change the title) or give me a big bear hug if you are strong enough to lift me off the ground. And if you do actually do that, I will think you are awesome and will not embarrass you by crying out for help or complaining of a broken back or sciatic nerve damage. And now the links to others who have all of the details. First, for the MVP Deep Dives 2, of which, like John, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in this year. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/johnm/archive/2011/09/29/103577.aspx And the details of the SSC party where the Exceptional DBA of 2011, Jeff Moden, will be awarded. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/rebecca_amos/archive/2011/10/05/103661.aspx   Cheers! Rodney

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• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Shared Links - May 30- June 5, 2014

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  The list below is comprised of the Top 10 most popular articles, blog posts, videos, and other content shared over the last seven days with the more than 5,100 people fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page. What is REST? | Maarten Smeets "Most Middleware developers will encounter RESTful services," says Oracle SOA / BPM / Java integration specialist Maarten Smeets. "It is good to understand what they are, what they should be and how they work." His extensive post will help you achieve that understanding. Integrating with Fusion Applications using SOAP web services and REST APIs | Arvind Srinivasamoorth This article, part one of Arvind Srinivasamoorth's two-part series on Integrating with Fusion Applications using SOAP web services and REST APIs, shows you how to identify the Fusion Applications SOAP web service to be invoked. Oracle Technology Network | Architect Community Have you visited the OTN Solution Architect homepage lately? I've just updated it with information about the big OTN Virtual Tech Summit on July 9, plus the latest OTN tech articles, and a fresh list of community videos and podcasts. Check it out! Starting and Stopping a Java EE Environment when using Oracle WebLogic | Rene van Wijk Oracle ACE Director and Oracle Fusion Middleware specialist Rene van Wijk explores ways to simplify the life-cycle management of a Java EE environment through the use of scripts developed with WebLogic Scripting Tool and Linux Bash. Application Composer Series: Where and When to use Groovy | Richard Bingham Richard Bingham describes his post as "more of a reference than an article." The post is comprised of a table that highlights where you can add your own custom logic via Groovy code and when you might use the various features. Kscope 2014: HFM Metadata Diagnostics | Eric Erikson Oracle Certified Hyperion Financial Management Specialist Eric Erikson will present three sessions at ODTUG Kscope 2014, June 22-26 in Seattle. Why should you care? Watch the video. Tuning Asynchronous Web Services in Fusion Applications | Jian Liang This article, the fourth in solution architect Jian Liang's five-part series on Fusion Applications and asynchronous Web Services, shows you how to conduct performance tuning of the asynchronous web services in relation to Fusion Applications. IDM FA Integration Flows | Thiago Leoncio Fusion Applications uses the Oracle Identity Management for its identity store and policy store by default. This article by solution architect Thiago Leoncio explains how user and role flows work from different points of view, using key IDM products for each flow in detail. GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator - A Perfect Match in 12c... Part 1: Getting Started | Michael Rainey Michael Rainey has already written extensively about about integration between Oracle Data Integrator and GoldenGate -- but he's not done. "With the release of the 12c versions of ODI and GoldenGate last October, and a soon-to-be-updated reference architecture, it’s time to write a few posts on the subject again, " he says. Here's the first of those posts. Video: Kscope 2014 Preview: Tim Tow on Essbase Java API and ODTUG Community Oracle ACE Director and ODTUG board member Tim Tow talks about his Kscope 2014 sessions focused on the Essbase Java API in this short video interview.

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• Adventures in Scrum: Lesson 1 &ndash; The failed Sprint

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  I recently had a conversation with a product owner that wanted to have the Scrum team broken up into smaller units so that less time was wasted on the Scrum Ceremonies! Their complaint was around the need in Scrum to have the entire “Team” (7+-2) involved in the sizing of the work during the “Sprint Planning Meeting”.  The standard flippant answer of all Scrum professionals, “Well that's not Scrum”, does not get you any brownie points in these situations. The response could be “Well we are not doing Scrum then” which in turn leads to “We are doing Scrum…But, we have split the scrum team into units of 2/3 so that they can concentrate on a specific area of work”. While this may work, it is not Scrum and should not be called so… It is just a form of Agile. Don’t get me wrong at this stage, there is nothing wrong with Agile, just don’t call it Scrum. The reason that the Product Owner wants to do this is that, in effect, through a number of miscommunications and failings in our implementation of Scrum, there was NO unit of potentially Shippable software at the end of the first sprint. It does not matter to them that most Scrum teams will fail the first Sprint, even those that are high performing teams. Remember it is the product owners their money! We should NOT break up scrum teams into smaller units for the purpose of having less people tied up in the Scrum Ceremonies. The amount of backlog the Team selects is solely up to the Team… Only the Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint. - Scrum Guide, Scrum.org The entire team must accept the work and in order to understand what they can accept they must be free to size it as a team. This both encourages common understanding and increases visibility on why team members think a task is of a particular size. This has the benefit of increasing the knowledge of the entire team in the problem domain. A new Team often first realizes that it will either sink or swim as a Team, not individually, in this meeting. The Team realizes that it must rely on itself. As it realizes this, it starts to self-organize to take on the characteristics and behaviour of a real Team. - Scrum Guide, Scrum.org This paragraph goes to the why of having the whole team at the meeting; The goal of Scrum it to produce a unit of potentially shippable software at the end of every Sprint. In order to achieve this we need high performing teams and this is what Scrum as a framework has been optimised to produce. I think that our Product Owner is understandably upset over loosing two weeks work and is losing sight the end goal of Scrum in the failures of the moment. As the man spending the money, I completely understand his perspective and I think that we should not have started Scrum on an internal project, but selected a customer  that is open to the ideas and complications of Scrum. So, what should we have NOT done on our first Scrum project: Should not have had 3 interns as the only on site resource – This lead to bad practices as the experienced guys were not there helping and correcting as they usually would. Should not have had the only experienced guys offsite – With both the experienced technical guys in completely different time zones it was difficult to get time for questions. Helping the guys on site was just plain impossible. Should not have used a part time ScrumMaster – Although the ScrumMaster attended all of the Ceremonies, because they are only in 2 full days of the week it makes it difficult for the team to raise impediments as they go. Should not have used a proxy product owner. – This was probably the worst decision that was made. Mainly because the proxy product owner did not have the same vision as the product owner. While Scrum does not explicitly reject the idea of a Proxy Product Owner, I do not think it works very well in practice. The “single wringable neck” needs to contain both the Money and the Vision as well as attending the required meetings. I will be brining all of these things up at the Sprint Retrospective and we will learn from our mistakes and move on. Do, Inspect then Adapt…   Technorati Tags: Scrum,Sprint Planing,Sprint Retrospective,Scrum.org,Scrum Guide,Scrum Ceremonies,Scrummaster,Product Owner Need Help? Professional Scrum Developer Training SSW has six Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools.

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• C# 5 Async, Part 2: Asynchrony Today

  - by Reed

  The .NET Framework has always supported asynchronous operations.  However, different mechanisms for supporting exist throughout the framework.  While there are at least three separate asynchronous patterns used through the framework, only the latest is directly usable with the new Visual Studio Async CTP.  Before delving into details on the new features, I will talk about existing asynchronous code, and demonstrate how to adapt it for use with the new pattern. The first asynchronous pattern used in the .NET framework was the Asynchronous Programming Model (APM).  This pattern was based around callbacks.  A method is used to start the operation.  It typically is named as BeginSomeOperation.  This method is passed a callback defined as an AsyncCallback, and returns an object that implements IAsyncResult.  Later, the IAsyncResult is used in a call to a method named EndSomeOperation, which blocks until completion and returns the value normally directly returned from the synchronous version of the operation.  Often, the EndSomeOperation call would be called from the callback function passed, which allows you to write code that never blocks. While this pattern works perfectly to prevent blocking, it can make quite confusing code, and be difficult to implement.  For example, the sample code provided for FileStream’s BeginRead/EndRead methods is not simple to understand.  In addition, implementing your own asynchronous methods requires creating an entire class just to implement the IAsyncResult. Given the complexity of the APM, other options have been introduced in later versions of the framework.  The next major pattern introduced was the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern (EAP).  This provides a simpler pattern for asynchronous operations.  It works by providing a method typically named SomeOperationAsync, which signals its completion via an event typically named SomeOperationCompleted. The EAP provides a simpler model for asynchronous programming.  It is much easier to understand and use, and far simpler to implement.  Instead of requiring a custom class and callbacks, the standard event mechanism in C# is used directly.  For example, the WebClient class uses this extensively.  A method is used, such as DownloadDataAsync, and the results are returned via the DownloadDataCompleted event. While the EAP is far simpler to understand and use than the APM, it is still not ideal.  By separating your code into method calls and event handlers, the logic of your program gets more complex.  It also typically loses the ability to block until the result is received, which is often useful.  Blocking often requires writing the code to block by hand, which is error prone and adds complexity. As a result, .NET 4 introduced a third major pattern for asynchronous programming.  The Task<T> class introduced a new, simpler concept for asynchrony.  Task and Task<T> effectively represent an operation that will complete at some point in the future.  This is a perfect model for thinking about asynchronous code, and is the preferred model for all new code going forward.  Task and Task<T> provide all of the advantages of both the APM and the EAP models – you have the ability to block on results (via Task.Wait() or Task<T>.Result), and you can stay completely asynchronous via the use of Task Continuations.  In addition, the Task class provides a new model for task composition and error and cancelation handling.  This is a far superior option to the previous asynchronous patterns. The Visual Studio Async CTP extends the Task based asynchronous model, allowing it to be used in a much simpler manner.  However, it requires the use of Task and Task<T> for all operations.

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• Is there a good [and modern] reason to not have static HTML pages with AJAX content , rather than generate pages?

  - by user1725

  Assumptions: We don't care about IE6, and Noscript users. Lets pretend we have the following design concept: All your pages are HTML/CSS that create the ascetics, layout, colours, general design related things. Lets pretend this basic code below is that: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <link href="/example.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> <script src="example.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <head> <body> <div class="left"> </div> <div class="mid"> </div> <div class="right"> </div> </body> </html> Which in theory should produce, with the right CSS, three vertical columns on the web page. Now, here's the root of the question, what are the serious advantages and/or disadvantages of loading the content of these columns (lets assume they are all indeed dynamic content, not static) via AJAX requests, or have the content pre-set with a scripting language? So for instance, we would have, in the AJAX example, lets asume jquery is used on-load: //Multiple http requests $("body > div.left").load("./script.php?content=news"); $("body > div.right").load("./script.php?content=blogs"); $("body > div.mid").load("./script.php?content=links"); OR--- //Single http request $.ajax({ url: './script.php?content=news|blogs|links', method: 'json', type: 'text', success: function (data) { $("body > div.left").html(data.news); $("body > div.right").html(data.blogs); $("body > div.mid").html(data.links); } }) Verses doing this: <body> <div class="left"> <?php echo function_returning_news(); ?> </div> <div class="mid"> <?php echo function_returning_blogs(); ?> </div> <div class="right"> <?php echo function_returning_links(); ?> </div> </body> I'm personally thinking right now that doing static HTML pages is a better method, my reasoning is: I've separated my data, logic, and presentation (ie, "MVC") code. I can make changes to one without others. Browser caches mean I'm just getting server load mostly for the content, not the presentation wrapped around it. I could turn my "script.php" into a more robust API for the website. But I'm not certain or clear that these are legitimately good reasons, and I'm not confidently aware of other issues that could happen, so I would like to know the pros-and-cons, so to speak.

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• OTN ArchBeat Top 10 for September 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The results are in... Listed below are the Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the month of September 2012. The Real Architects of Los Angeles - OTN Architect Day - Oct 25 No gossip. No drama. No hair pulling. Just a full day of technical sessions and peer interaction focused on using Oracle technologies in today's cloud and SOA architectures. The event is free, but seating is limited, so register now. Thursday October 25, 2012. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Attaching OWSM policies to JRF-based web services clients "OWSM (Oracle Web Services Manager) is Oracle's recommended method for securing SOAP web services," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Andre Correa. "It provides agents that encapsulate the necessary logic to interact with the underlying software stack on both service and client sides. Such agents have their behavior driven by policies. OWSM ships with a bunch of policies that are adequate to most common real world scenarios." His detailed post shows how to make it happen. Oracle 11gR2 RAC on Software Defined Network (SDN) (OpenvSwitch, Floodlight, Beacon) | Gilbert Stan "The SDN [software defined network] idea is to separate the control plane and the data plane in networking and to virtualize networking the same way we have virtualized servers," explains Gil Standen. "This is an idea whose time has come because VMs and vmotion have created all kinds of problems with how to tell networking equipment that a VM has moved and to preserve connectivity to VPN end points, preserve IP, etc." H/T to Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall for the recommendation. Process Oracle OER Events using a simple Web Service | Bob Webster Bob Webster's post "provides an example of a simple web service that processes Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) Events. The service receives events from OER and utilizes the OER REX API to implement simple OER automations for selected event types." Understanding Oracle BI 11g Security vs Legacy Oracle BI 10g | Christian Screen "After conducting a large amount of Oracle BI 10g to Oracle BI 11g upgrades and after writing the Oracle BI 11g book,"says Oracle ACE Christian Screen, "I still continually get asked one of the most basic questions regarding security in Oracle BI 11g; How does it compare to Oracle BI 10g? The trail of questions typically goes on to what are the differences? And, how do we leverage our current Oracle BI 10g security table schema in Oracle BI 11g?" OIM-OAM-OAAM integration using TAP – Request Flow you must understand!! | Atul Kumar Atul Kumar's post addresses "key points and request flow that you must understand" when integrating three Oracle Identity Management product Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Access Management, and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. Adding a runtime LOV for a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena illustrates how to customize the parameters tab for a taskflow in WebCenter. Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET | Scott Nelson "It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings," says Scott Nelson. "Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there." 15 Lessons from 15 Years as a Software Architect | Ingo Rammer In this presentation from the GOTO Conference in Copenhagen, Ingo Rammer shares 15 tips regarding people, complexity and technology that he learned doing software architecture for 15 years. WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections | ECM Architect ECM Architect Kevin Smith shares a detailed technical post covering WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections. Thought for the Day "Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se." — Charles Eames (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• HPCM 11.1.2.2.x - HPCM Standard Costing Generating >99 Calc Scipts

  - by Jane Story

  HPCM Standard Profitability calculation scripts are named based on a documented naming convention. From 11.1.2.2.x, the script name = a script suffix (1 letter) + POV identifier (3 digits) + Stage Order Number (1 digit) + “_” + index (2 digits) (please see documentation for more information (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hpm_admin/apes01.html). This naming convention results in the name being 8 characters in length i.e. the maximum number of characters permitted calculation script names in non-unicode Essbase BSO databases. The index in the name will indicate the number of scripts per stage. In the vast majority of cases, the number of scripts generated per stage will be significantly less than 100 and therefore, there will be no issue. However, in some cases, the number of scripts generated can exceed 99. It is unusual for an application to generate more than 99 calculation scripts for one stage. This may indicate that explicit assignments are being extensively used. An assessment should be made of the design to see if assignment rules can be used instead. Assignment rules will reduce the need for so many calculation script lines which will reduce the requirement for such a large number of calculation scripts. In cases where the scripts generates exceeds 100, the length of the name of the 100th calculation script is different from the 99th as the calculation script name changes from being 8 characters long and becomes 9 characters long (e.g. A6811_100 rather than A6811_99). A name of 9 characters is not permitted in non Unicode applications. It is “too long”. When this occurs, an error will show in the hpcm.log as “Error processing calculation scripts” and “Unexpected error in business logic “. Further down the log, it is possible to see that this is “Caused by: Error copying object “ and “Caused by: com.essbase.api.base.EssException: Cannot put olap file object ... object name_[<calc script name> e.g. A6811_100] too long for non-unicode mode application”. The error file will give the name of the calculation script which is causing the issue. In my example, this is A6811_100 and you can see this is 9 characters in length. It is not possible to increase the number of characters allowed in a calculation script name. However, it is possible to increase the size of each calculation script. The default for an HPCM application, set in the preferences, is set to 4mb. If the size of each calculation script is larger, the number of scripts generated will reduce and, therefore, less than 100 scripts will be generated which means that the name of the calculation script will remain 8 characters long. To increase the size of the generated calculation scripts for an application, in the HPM_APPLICATION_PREFERENCE table for the application, find the row where HPM_PREFERENCE_NAME_ID=20. The default value in this row is 4194304. This can be increased e.g. 7340032 will increase this to 7mb. Please restart the profitability service after making the change.

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• Is this how dynamic language copes with dynamic requirement?

  - by Amumu

  The question is in the title. I want to have my thinking verified by experienced people. You can add more or disregard my opinion, but give me a reason. Here is an example requirement: Suppose you are required to implement a fighting game. Initially, the game only includes fighters, who can attack each other. Each fighter can punch, kick or block incoming attacks. Fighters can have various fighting styles: Karate, Judo, Kung Fu... That's it for the simple universe of the game. In an OO like Java, it can be implemented similar to this way: abstract class Fighter { int hp, attack; void punch(Fighter otherFighter); void kick(Fighter otherFighter); void block(Figther otherFighter); }; class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...}; class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... }; class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... }; This is fine if the game stays like this forever. But, somehow the game designers decide to change the theme of the game: instead of a simple fighting game, the game evolves to become a RPG, in which characters can not only fight but perform other activities, i.e. the character can be a priest, an accountant, a scientist etc... At this point, to make it more generic, we have to change the structure of our original design: Fighter is not used to refer to a person anymore; it refers to a profession. The specialized classes of Fighter (KaraterFighter, JudoFighter, KungFuFighter) . Now we have to create a generic class named Person. However, to adapt this change, I have to change the method signatures of the original operations: class Person { int hp, attack; List<Profession> skillSet; }; abstract class Profession {}; class Fighter extends Profession { void punch(Person otherFighter); void kick(Person otherFighter); void block(Person otherFighter); }; class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...}; class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... }; class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... }; class Accountant extends Profession { void calculateTax(Person p) { //...implementation...}; void calculateTax(Company c) { //...implementation...}; }; //... more professions... Here are the problems: To adapt to the method changes, I have to fix the places where the changed methods are called (refactoring). Every time a new requirement is introduced, the current structural design has to be broken to adapt the changes. This leads to the first problem. Rigid structure makes it hard for code reuse. A function can only accept the predefined types, but it cannot accept future unknown types. A written function is bound to its current universe and has no way to accommodate to the new types, without modifications or rewrite from scratch. I see Java has a lot of deprecated methods. OO is an extreme case because it has inheritance to add up the complexity, but in general for statically typed language, types are very strict. In contrast, a dynamic language can handle the above case as follow: ;;fighter1 punch fighter2 (defun perform-punch (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) ;;fighter1 kick fighter2 (defun perform-kick (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) ;;fighter1 blocks attacks from fighter2 (defun perform-block (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) fighter1 and fighter2 can be anything as long as it has the required data for calculation; or methods (duck typing). You don't have to change from the type Fighter to Person. In the case of Lisp, because Lisp only has a single data structure: list, it's even easier to adapt to changes. However, other dynamic languages can have similar behaviors as well. I work primarily with static languages (mainly C and Java, but working with Java was a long time ago). I started learning Lisp and some other dynamic languages this year. I can see how it helps improving my productivity.

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• Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff   That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program.  In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe.  The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file.  There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version.  The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file.  If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.  The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a  predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project.  Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time.  I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario.  I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.  -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?   Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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• Unmet Dependencies with kdelibs5-data

  - by Jitesh

  I was trying to install Amarok 1.4 on Ubuntu 12.04 (Gnome-classic), by following this instructions. Problem started after giving these two commands dpkg -i kdelibs5-data_4.6.2-0ubuntu4_all.deb dpkg -i kdelibs-data_3.5.10.dfsg.1-5ubuntu2_all.deb Now, immediately after these commands, Ubuntu Updater popped up and gave me an error that the package catalog is broken and needs to be repaired. Nothing can be installed or removed till then. It also offered a suggestion to run apt-get install -f. I tried that, but again got the same error.Also tried apt-get clean followed by apt-get install -f. Again got the following output: jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get clean jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install -f Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following extra packages will be installed: kdelibs5-data The following packages will be upgraded: kdelibs5-data 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18 not upgraded. 2 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 2,832 kB of archives. After this operation, 2,998 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Get:1 http: //in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/precise-updates/main kdelibs5-data all 4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.2 [2,832 kB] Fetched 2,832 kB in 32s (86.6 kB/s) dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs5-data: libplasma3 (4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.2) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.80~) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. kate-data (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. katepart (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. dpkg: error processing kdelibs5-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs-data: kdelibs-data depends on kdelibs5-data; however: Package kdelibs5-data is not configured yet. No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already dpkg: error processing kdelibs-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: kdelibs5-data kdelibs-data W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ precise/partner i386 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.canonical.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_partner_binary-i386_Packages) W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) As I thought the error was related to configuring kdelibs, I tried to configure using dpkg. But got the following errors: jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs5-data: libplasma3 (4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.2) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.80~) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. kate-data (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. katepart (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. dpkg: error processing kdelibs5-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs-data: kdelibs-data depends on kdelibs5-data; however: Package kdelibs5-data is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing kdelibs-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: kdelibs5-data kdelibs-data jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ Now I dont have any idea how to proceed. I am unable to install anything from Software Centre or using Terminal now. Some basic info: Core2Duo, dual booting Ubuntu 12.04 with Win7. Fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 (not upgrade). Incidentally, I had first upgraded from 10.04 and had succesfully installed Amarok 1.4 following this same method. But due to other issues, i had to format and do a clean install of 12.04. Now when I tried to install Amarok 1.4, I'm getting these errors. I also have digiKam and k3b installed, if that can be of any help. I use digiKam a lot, so removing KDE is not feasible for me. Any help on this issue will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part II, Translation

  - by Ralf Westphal

  In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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• The Joy Of Hex

  - by Jim Giercyk

  While working on a mainframe integration project, it occurred to me that some basic computer concepts are slipping into obscurity. For example, just about anyone can tell you that a 64-bit processor is faster than a 32-bit processer. A grade school child could tell you that a computer “speaks” in ‘1’s and ‘0’s. Some people can even tell you that there are 8 bits in a byte. However, I have found that even the most seasoned developers often can’t explain the theory behind those statements. That is not a knock on programmers; in the age of IntelliSense, what reason do we have to work with data at the bit level? Many computer theory classes treat bit-level programming as a thing of the past, no longer necessary now that storage space is plentiful. The trouble with that mindset is that the world is full of legacy systems that run programs written in the 1970’s.  Today our jobs require us to extract data from those systems, regardless of the format, and that often involves low-level programming. Because it seems knowledge of the low-level concepts is waning in recent times, I thought a review would be in order.       CHARACTER: See Spot Run HEX: 53 65 65 20 53 70 6F 74 20 52 75 6E DECIMAL: 83 101 101 32 83 112 111 116 32 82 117 110 BINARY: 01010011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01010011 01110000 01101111 01110100 00100000 01010010 01110101 01101110 In this example, I have broken down the words “See Spot Run” to a level computers can understand – machine language.     CHARACTER:  The character level is what is rendered by the computer.  A “Character Set” or “Code Page” contains 256 characters, both printable and unprintable.  Each character represents 1 BYTE of data.  For example, the character string “See Spot Run” is 12 Bytes long, exclusive of the quotation marks.  Remember, a SPACE is an unprintable character, but it still requires a byte.  In the example I have used the default Windows character set, ASCII, which you can see here:  http://www.asciitable.com/ HEX:  Hex is short for hexadecimal, or Base 16.  Humans are comfortable thinking in base ten, perhaps because they have 10 fingers and 10 toes; fingers and toes are called digits, so it’s not much of a stretch.  Computers think in Base 16, with numeric values ranging from zero to fifteen, or 0 – F.  Each decimal place has a possible 16 values as opposed to a possible 10 values in base 10.  Therefore, the number 10 in Hex is equal to the number 16 in Decimal.  DECIMAL:  The Decimal conversion is strictly for us humans to use for calculations and conversions.  It is much easier for us humans to calculate that [30 – 10 = 20] in decimal than it is for us to calculate [1E – A = 14] in Hex.  In the old days, an error in a program could be found by determining the displacement from the entry point of a module.  Since those values were dumped from the computers head, they were in hex. A programmer needed to convert them to decimal, do the equation and convert back to hex.  This gets into relative and absolute addressing, a topic for another day.  BINARY:  Binary, or machine code, is where any value can be expressed in 1s and 0s.  It is really Base 2, because each decimal place can have a possibility of only 2 characters, a 1 or a 0.  In Binary, the number 10 is equal to the number 2 in decimal. Why only 1s and 0s?  Very simply, computers are made up of lots and lots of transistors which at any given moment can be ON ( 1 ) or OFF ( 0 ).  Each transistor is a bit, and the order that the transistors fire (or not fire) is what distinguishes one value from  another in the computers head (or CPU).  Consider 32 bit vs 64 bit processing…..a 64 bit processor has the capability to read 64 transistors at a time.  A 32 bit processor can only read half as many at a time, so in theory the 64 bit processor should be much faster.  There are many more factors involved in CPU performance, but that is the fundamental difference.    DECIMAL HEX BINARY 0 0 0000 1 1 0001 2 2 0010 3 3 0011 4 4 0100 5 5 0101 6 6 0110 7 7 0111 8 8 1000 9 9 1001 10 A 1010 11 B 1011 12 C 1100 13 D 1101 14 E 1110 15 F 1111   Remember that each character is a BYTE, there are 2 HEX characters in a byte (called nibbles) and 8 BITS in a byte.  I hope you enjoyed reading about the theory of data processing.  This is just a high-level explanation, and there is much more to be learned.  It is safe to say that, no matter how advanced our programming languages and visual studios become, they are nothing more than a way to interpret bits and bytes.  There is nothing like the joy of hex to get the mind racing.

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• Source Control and SQL Development &ndash; Part 3

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In parts one and two of this series, I have been specifically focusing on the latest version of SQL Source Control by Red Gate Software.  But I have been doing source-controlled SQL development for years, long before this product was available, and well before Microsoft came out with Database Projects for Visual Studio.  “So, how does that work?” you may wonder.  Well, let me share some of the details of how we do it where I work… The key to this approach is that everything is done via Transact-SQL script files; either natively written T-SQL, or generated.  My preference is to write all my code by hand, which forces you to become better at your SQL syntax.  But if you really prefer to use the Management Studio GUI to make database changes, you can still do that, and then you use the Generate Scripts feature of the GUI to produce T-SQL scripts afterwards, and store those in your source control system.  You can generate scripts for things like stored procedures and views by right-clicking on the database in the Object Explorer, and Choosing Tasks, Generate Scripts (see figure 1 to the left).  You can also do that for the CREATE scripts for tables, but that does not work when you have a table that is already in production, and you need to make just a simple change, such as adding a new column or index.  In this case, you can use the GUI to make the table changes, and then instead of clicking the Save button, click the Generate Change Script button (). Then, once you have saved the change script, go ahead and execute it on your development database to actually make the change.  I believe that it is important to actually execute the script rather than just click the Save button because this is your first test that your change script is working and you didn’t somehow lose a portion of the change. As you can imagine, all this generating of scripts can get tedious and tempting to skip entirely, so again, I would encourage you to just get in the habit of writing your own Transact-SQL code, and then it is just a matter of remembering to save your work, just like you are in the habit of saving changes to a Word or Excel document before you exit the program. So, now that you have all of these script files, what do you do with them?  Well, we organize ours into folders labeled ChangeScripts, Functions, Views, and StoredProcedures, and those folders are loaded into our source control system.  ChangeScripts contains all of the table and index changes, and anything else that is basically a one-time-only execution.  Of course you want to write your scripts with qualifying logic so that if a script were accidentally run more than once in a database, it would not crash nor corrupt anything; but these scripts are really intended to be run only once in a database. Once you have your initial set of scripts loaded into source control, then making changes, such as altering a stored procedure becomes a simple matter of checking out your CREATE PROCEDURE* script, editing it in SSMS, saving the change, executing the script in order to effect the change in your database, and then checking the script back in to source control.  Of course, this is where the lack of integration for source control systems within SSMS becomes an irritation, because this means that in addition to SSMS, I also have my source control client application running to do the check-out and check-in.  And when you have 800+ procedures like we do, that can be quite tedious to locate the procedure I want to change in source control, check it out, then locate the script file in my working folder, open it in SSMS, do the change, save it, and the go back to source control to check in.  Granted, it is not nearly as burdensome as, say, losing your source code and having to rebuild it from memory, or losing the audit trail that good source control systems provide.  It is worth the effort, and this is how I have been doing development for the last several years. Remember that everything that the SQL Server Management Studio does in modifying your database can also be done in plain Transact-SQL code, and this is what you are storing.  And now I have shown you how you can do it all without spending any extra money.  You already have source control, or can get free, open-source source control systems (almost seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it) and of course Management Studio is free with your SQL Server database engine software. So, whether you spend the money on tools to make it easier, or not, you now have no excuse for not using source control with your SQL development. * In our current model, the scripts for stored procedures and similar database objects are written with an IF EXISTS…DROP… at the top, followed by the CREATE PROCEDURE… section, and that followed by a section that assigns permissions.  This allows me to run the same script regardless of whether the procedure previously existed in the database.  If the script was only an ALTER PROCEDURE, then it would fail the first time that procedure was deployed to a database, unless you wrote other code to stub it if it did not exist.  There are a few different ways you could organize your scripts for deployment, each with its own trade-offs, but I think it is absolutely critical that whichever way you organize things, you ensure that the same script is run throughout the deployment cycle, and do not allow customizations to creep in between TEST and PROD.  If you do, then you have broken the integrity of your deployment process because what you deployed to PROD was not exactly the same as what was tested in TEST, so you effectively have now released untested code into PROD.

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