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• WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections

  - by Kevin Smith

  Kyle has a good post on how to modify the size and number of WebCenter Content (WCC) trace files. His post reminded me I have been meaning to write a post on WCC trace sections for a while. searchcache - Tells you if you query was found in the WCC search cache. searchquery - Shows the processing of the query as it is converted form what the user submitted to the end query that will be sent to the database. Shows conversion from the universal query syntax to the syntax specific to the search solution WCC is configured to use. services (verbose) - Lists the filters that are called for each service. This will let you know what filters are available for each service and will also tell you what filters are used by WCC add-on components and any custom components you have installed. The How To Component Sample has a list of filters, but it has not been updated since 7.5, so it is a little outdated now. With each new release WCC adds more filters. If you have a filter that has no code attached to it you will see output like this: services/6    09.25 06:40:26.270    IdcServer-423    Called filter event computeDocName with no filter plugins registered When a WCC add-on or custom component uses a filter you will see trace output like this: services/6    09.25 06:40:26.275    IdcServer-423    Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionValidateCheckinData with parameter postValidateCheckinDataservices/6    09.25 06:40:26.275    IdcServer-423    Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionFilters with parameter postValidateCheckinData As you can see from this sample output it is possible to have multiple code points using the same filter. systemdatabase - Dumps the database call AFTER it executes. This can be somewhat troublesome if you are trying to track down some weird database problems. We had a problem where WCC was getting into a deadlock situation. We turned on the systemdatabase trace section and thought we had the problem database call, but it turned out since it printed out the database call after it was executed we were looking at the database call BEFORE the one causing the deadlock. We ended up having to turn on tracing at the database level to see the database call WCC was making that was causing the deadlock. socketrequests (verbose) - dumps the actual messages received and sent over the socket connection by WCC for a service. If you have gzip enabled you will see junk on the response coming back from WCC. For debugging disable the gzip of the WCC response.Here is an example of the dump of the request for a GET_SEARCH_RESULTS service call. socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: REMOTE_USER=sysadmin.USER-AGENT=Java;.Stel socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: lent.CIS.11g.CONTENT_TYPE=text/html.HEADER socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: _ENCODING=UTF-8.REQUEST_METHOD=POST.CONTEN socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: T_LENGTH=270.HTTP_HOST=CIS.$$$$.NoHttpHead socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: ers=0.IsJava=1.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESUL socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: [email protected] socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: calData.SortField=dDocName.ClientEncoding= socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: UTF-8.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESULTS.UserTi socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: meZone=UTC.UserDateFormat=iso8601.SortDesc socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: =ASC.QueryText=dDocType..matches..`Documen socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: t`.@end. userstorage, jps - Provides trace details for user authentication and authorization. Includes information on the determination of what roles and accounts a user has access to. In 11g a new trace section, jps, was added with the addition of the JpsUserProvider to communicate with WebLogic Server. The WCC developers decide when to use the verbose option for their trace output, so sometime you need to try verbose to see what different information you get. One of the things I would always have liked to see if the ability to turn on verbose output selectively for individual trace sections. When you turn on verbose output you get it for all trace sections you have enabled. This can quickly fill up your trace files with a lot of information if you have the socket trace section turned on.

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• My Right-to-Left Foot (T-SQL Tuesday #13)

  - by smisner

  As a business intelligence consultant, I often encounter the situation described in this month's T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Steve Jones ( Blog | Twitter) – “What the Business Says Is Not What the  Business Wants.” Steve posed the question, “What issues have you had in interacting with the business to get your job done?” My profession requires me to have one foot firmly planted in the technology world and the other foot planted in the business world. I learned long ago that the business never says exactly what the business wants because the business doesn't have the words to describe what the business wants accurately enough for IT. Not only do technological-savvy barriers exist, but there are also linguistic barriers between the two worlds. So how do I cope? The adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" is particularly helpful when I'm called in to help design a new business intelligence solution. Many of my students in BI classes have heard me explain ("rant") about left-to-right versus right-to-left design. To understand what I mean about these two design options, let's start with a picture: When we design a business intelligence solution that includes some sort of traditional data warehouse or data mart design, we typically place the data sources on the left, the new solution in the middle, and the users on the right. When I've been called in to help course-correct a failing BI project, I often find that IT has taken a left-to-right approach. They look at the data sources, decide how to model the BI solution as a _______ (fill in the blank with data warehouse, data mart, cube, etc.), and then build the new data structures and supporting infrastructure. (Sometimes, they actually do this without ever having talked to the business first.) Then, when they show what they've built to the business, the business says that is not what we want. Uh-oh. I prefer to take a right-to-left approach. Preferably at the beginning of a project. But even if the project starts left-to-right, I'll do my best to swing it around so that we’re back to a right-to-left approach. (When circumstances are beyond my control, I carry on, but it’s a painful project for everyone – not because of me, but because the approach just doesn’t get to what the business wants in the most effective way.) By using a right to left approach, I try to understand what it is the business is trying to accomplish. I do this by having them explain reports to me, and explaining the decision-making process that relates to these reports. Sometimes I have them explain to me their business processes, or better yet show me their business processes in action because I need pictures, too. I (unofficially) call this part of the project "getting inside the business's head." This is starting at the right side of the diagram above. My next step is to start moving leftward. I do this by preparing some type of prototype. Depending on the nature of the project, this might mean that I simply mock up some data in a relational database and build a prototype report in Reporting Services. If I'm lucky, I might be able to use real data in a relational database. I'll either use a subset of the data in the prototype report by creating a prototype database to hold the sample data, or select data directly from the source. It all depends on how much data there is, how complex the queries are, and how fast I need to get the prototype completed. If the solution will include Analysis Services, then I'll build a prototype cube. Analysis Services makes it incredibly easy to prototype. You can sit down with the business, show them the prototype, and have a meaningful conversation about what the BI solution should look like. I know I've done a good job on the prototype when I get knocked out of my chair so that the business user can explore the solution further independently. (That's really happened to me!) We can talk about dimensions, hierarchies, levels, members, measures, and so on with something tangible to look at and without using those terms. It's not helpful to use sample data like Adventure Works or to use BI terms that they don't really understand. But when I show them their data using the BI technology and talk to them in their language, then they truly have a picture worth a thousand words. From that, we can fine tune the prototype to move it closer to what they want. They have a better idea of what they're getting, and I have a better idea of what to build. So right to left design is not truly moving from the right to the left. But it starts from the right and moves towards the middle, and once I know what the middle needs to look like, I can then build from the left to meet in the middle. And that’s how I get past what the business says to what the business wants.

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• Interviewing a DBA

  - by kev

  Our Company is in the Process of recuiting a DBA. I have built a group test of questions from basic questions such as Pk and Fk constraints, simple querries(fizzbuzz style) to more advanced things such as indexes, Collation, isolation levels and how to trace deadlocks. However, that is the limit of my knowledge. So my question to all the DBA's is what is the base level knowledge that all DBA's should have? We are really looking for someone that will be able to manage our replication, analyzing some of our slower running queries(that the devs can go to for help) and someone that can trace some of the deadlock issues that we are having. Any help would be most appreciated!

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• Interviewing a DBA

  - by kev

  Our Company is in the Process of recuiting a DBA. I have built a group test of questions from basic questions such as Pk and Fk constraints, simple querries(fizzbuzz style) to more advanced things such as indexes, Collation, isolation levels and how to trace deadlocks. However, that is the limit of my knowledge. So my question to all the DBA's is what is the base level knowledge that all DBA's should have? We are really looking for someone that will be able to manage our replication, analyzing some of our slower running queries(that the devs can go to for help) and someone that can trace some of the deadlock issues that we are having. Any help would be most appreciated!

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• How to Save Hundreds or Thousands of Dollars on Cell Phone Service

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Cell phone contracts are bad. You get a seemingly cheap phone up front, but you more than pay for the cost of the phone over two years. Prepaid phone plans are surging in North America for a reason. Prepaid phone plans will be cheaper and more flexible than traditional contracts with big carriers for many people. However much you use your phone, there’s a good chance you can save money with a prepaid service. No More Contracts Here’s how cell phone service typically works in North America: You get a subsidized phone for “free”, $99, or $199. You sign up for a two-year contract and more than pay back the cost of that phone over the length of the contract. This is similar to leasing something or purchasing it on a credit card and paying it back over two years — you spend less up front, but you’re paying more in the long run. But this isn’t the only option. You could opt for a cheaper prepaid service that doesn’t lock you into a contract. If you don’t use your phone much, you could just pay for what you use and avoid the hefty cell phone bills. If you use your phone a lot, you could get a cheaper plan, too. Now, this certainly isn’t for everyone. If you want the latest iPhone or Galaxy smartphone every two years and require a 4G data connection, prepaid services may not be for you. On the other hand, if you don’t need the latest phone, you can save money here. You can also save a huge amount of money if you don’t use your phone much. Phone Options When you choose your prepaid or contract-free service, you’ll often be able to purchase a phone from them. You’ll generally be able to find dirt-cheap dumbphones and the cheapest, slowest Android phones for not very much money. If you are able to buy a top-of-the-line smartphone, you’ll have to pay the full, unsubsidized price. That’s $649 for either an iPhone 5S or Samsung Galaxy S4. Whatever phones the service provider offers, you could always buy a phone elsewhere — for example, you could buy an unsubsidized iPhone direct from Apple and then take it to your cell phone service of choice. Most services will allow you to get a SIM card and pop it into your existing phone rather than purchasing a phone. If you can get a hand-me-down smartphone, you can often save quite a bit of money. For example, you may have a family member upgrading from an iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5S. You could take their phone to a prepaid carrier and have a nicer phone on a cheap cell phone plan. If you brought an old smartphone to a big carrier like AT&T or Verizon, they wouldn’t give you a discount on your monthly plan. You’d have to pay the same amount of money every month as if you had gotten a subsidized phone. Google’s Nexus phones are also great options for people looking to buy smartphones and pay up-front. Google’s Nexus 4 offered a modern, almost top-of-the-line Android smartphone experience at $299 or $349 when it came out last year. Google will soon be releasing the Nexus 5 and it’s expected to be priced at $349. That’s certainly a lot more than a cheap phone, but it’s a fairly high-end smartphone at almost half the price of an iPhone 5S or Galaxy S4. Nexus phones can be purchased online from Google’s Play Store. Service Options When choosing a service, you need to consider what you actually use. If you’re someone who only uses your phone rarely, you can get plans that will allow you to pay as little as a few dollars per month. If you’re someone who’s usually in range of Wi-Fi, you may not need much data at all. If you want a plan with unlimited talk, texting, and data usage, you can get it for much cheaper than you’d pay on a major carrier like AT&T. The options here range from pay-as-you-go plans, like the ones offered by T-Mobile, which allow you to put a certain amount of money in and only drain that balance when you actually use minutes, texts, or data. If you only make a few calls and send a few texts per month, you’d only pay a few bucks. On the other end, Walmart’s Straight Talk service is a popular option that offers unlimited talk, texting, and data at $45 per month. Which service is right for you depends on a lot of things, including your usage and what each network’s coverage is like in your area. You’ll want to do some research of your own before choosing a service. Prepaid services also offer you even more flexibility after you choose one. If you’re not happy or a better deal comes along, you can switch — you’re not locked into your service for two years and you won’t pay an early termination fee. Image Credit: Intel Free Press on Flickr, Jon Fingas on Flickr, John Karakatsanis on Flickr, kendalkinggroup on Flickr     

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• User-Defined Customer Events & their impact (FA Type Profile)

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  CC&B automatically creates field activities when a specific Customer Event takes place. This depends on the way you have setup your Field Activity Type Profiles, the templates within, and associated SP Condition(s) on the template. CC&B uses the service point type, its state and referenced customer event to determine which field activity type to generate.   Customer events available in the base product include: Cut for Non-payment (CNP) Disconnect Warning (DIWA) Reconnect for Payment (REPY) Reread (RERD) Stop Service (STOP) Start Service (STRT) Start/Stop (STSP)   Note the Field values/codes defined for each event.   CC&B comes with a flexibility to define new set of customer events. These can be defined in the Look Up - CUST_EVT_FLG. Values from the Look Up are used on the Field Activity Type Profile Template page.     So what's the use of having user-defined Customer Events? And how will the system detect such events in order to create field activity(s)?   Well, system can only detect such events when you reference a user-defined customer event on a Severance Event Type for an event type Create Field Activities.     This way you can create additional field activities of a specific field activity type for user-defined customer events.   One of our customers adopted this feature and created a user-defined customer event CNPW - Cut for Non-payment for Water Services. This event was then linked on a Field Activity Type Profile and referenced on a Severance Event - CUT FOR NON PAY-W. The associated Severance Process was configured to trigger a reconnection process if it was cancelled (done by defining a Post Cancel Algorithm). Whenever this Severance Event was executed, a specific type of Field Activity was generated for disconnection purposes. The Field Activity type was determined by the system from the Field Activity Type Profile referenced for the SP Type, SP's state and the referenced user-defined customer event. All was working well until the time when they realized that in spite of the Severance Process getting cancelled (when a payment was made); the Post Cancel Algorithm was not executed to start a Reconnection Severance Process for the purpose of generating a reconnection field activity and reconnecting the service.   Basically, the Post Cancel algorithm (if specified on a Severance Process Template) is triggered when a Severance Process gets cancelled because a credit transaction has affected/relieved a Service Agreement's debt.   So what exactly was happening? Now we come to actual question as to what is the impact in having a user-defined customer event.   System defined/base customer events are hard-coded across the entire system. There is an impact even if you remove any customer event entry from the Look Up. User-defined customer events are not recognized by the system anywhere else except in the severance process, as described above.   There are few programs which have routines to first validate the completion of disconnection field activities, which were raised as a result of customer event CNP - Cut for Non-payment in order to perform other associated actions. One such program is the Post Cancel Algorithm, referenced on a Severance Process Template, generally used to reconnect services which were disconnected from other Severance Event, specifically CNP - Cut for Non-Payment. Post cancel algorithm provided by the product - SEV POST CAN does the following (below is the algorithm's description):   This algorithm is called after a severance process has been cancelled (typically because the debt was paid and the SA is no longer eligible to be on the severance process). It checks to see if the process has a completed 'disconnect' event and, if so, starts a reconnect process using the Reconnect Severance Process Template defined in the parameter.    Notice the underlined text. This algorithm implicitly checks for Field Activities having completed status, which were generated from Severance Events as a result of CNP - Cut for Non-payment customer event.   Now if we look back to the customer's issue, we can relate that the Post Cancel algorithm was triggered, but was not able to find any 'Completed' CNP - Cut for Non-payment related field activity. And hence was not able to start a reconnection severance process. This was because a field activity was generated and completed for a customer event CNPW - Cut for Non-payment of Water Services instead.   To conclude, if you introduce new customer events that extend or simulate base customer events, the ones that are included in the base product, ensure that there is no other impact either direct or indirect to other business functions that the application has to offer.  

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• Process Centric Banking: Loan Origination Solution

  - by Manish Palaparthy

  There is an old proverb that goes, "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory". So, we keep doing numerous "Proof of Concepts" with our own products on various business cases to analyze them deeply, understand and explain to our customers. We then present our learnings as they happened. The awareness of each PoC should help readers increase the trustworthiness of the results coming out of these PoCs. I present one such PoC where we invested a lot of time&effort.  Process Centric Banking : Loan Origination Solution Loan Origination is a process by which a borrower applies for a new loan and the lender processes that application. Loan origination includes the series of steps taken by the bank from the point the customer shows interest in a loan product all the way to disbursal of funds. The Loan Origination process is relevant for many kind of lenders in Financial services: Banks, Credit Unions, NBFCs(Non Banking Financial Companies) and so on. For simplicity sake, I will use "Bank" as the lending institution in the rest of my article.  Loan Origination is one of the core processes for Banks as it is the process by which the it creates assets against which the Institution earns most of its profits from. A well tuned loan origination process can affect the Bank in many positive ways. Banks have always shown great interest in automating the loan origination process for the above reason. However, due the constant changes in customer environment, market dynamics, prevailing economic conditions, cost pressures & regulatory environment they run into lot of challenges. Let me categorize some of these challenges for you Customer Environment Multiple Channels: Customer can use any of the available channels (Internet Banking, Email, Fax, Branch, Phone Banking, ATM, Broker, Mobile, Snail Mail) to perform all or some of the activities related to her Visibility into the origination process: Expect immediate update on the status of loan processing & alert messages Reduced Turn Around Time: Expect loans to be processed with least turn around time Reduced loan processing fees: Partly due to market dynamics the customer expects the loan processing fee to be negligible Market Dynamics Competitive environment:  The competition keeps creating many variants of loan products to attract customers, the bank needs to create similar product variants with better offers to attract customers or keep existing ones Ability to migrate loans from one vendor to another: It has become really easy for retail customers to move from one bank to the other given the low fee of loan processing and highly attractive offers. How does the bank protect it's customer base while actively engaging with potential customers banking with competitor banks Flexibility to react to market developments: Market development greatly influence loan processing, underwriting, asset valuation, risk mitigation rules. Can the bank modify rules and policies, the idea is not just to react to market developments but to pro-actively manage new developments Economic conditions Constant change in various rates and their implications on the rates and rules applied when on-boarding a loan: How quickly can the bank apply changes to rates offered to customers when the central bank changes various rates Requirements of Audit by the central banker: Tough economic conditions have demanded much more stringent audit rules and tests. The banks needs to produce ready reports(historic & operational) for audit compliance Risk Mitigation: While risk mitigation has always been a key concern for the bank, this is the area where the bank's underwriters & risk analysts spend the maximum time when processing a loan application. In order to reduce TAT the bank cannot compromise on its risk mitigation strategies Cost pressures Reduce Cost of processing per application: To deliver a reduced loan processing fee to the customer, the bank needs to keep its cost per processing loan application low. Meet customer TAT expectations while reducing the queues and the systems being used to process the loan application: The loan application could potentially be spending a lot of time waiting in the queue for further processing. Different volumes & patterns of applications demand different queuing algorithms. The bank needs to have real-time visibility into these queues and have the flexibility to change queuing algorithms at runtime  Increase the use of electronic communication and reduce the branch channel usage: Lesser automation leads not only leads to Increased turn around time, it also impacts more costs to reach out to customers The objective of our PoC was to implement a Loan Origination Solution whose ownership lies with the bank and effectively meet the challenges listed above. We built a simple story board for the solution We then went about implementing our storyboard using Oracle BPM Suite, Webcenter Content : Imaging. The web UI has been built on ADF technolgies, while the integration with core-services has been implemented using the underlying SOA infrastructure. The BPM process model is quite exhaustive can meet all the challenges listed above to reasonable degree. A bank intending to implement an end-to-end Loan Origination Solution has multiple options at it's disposal. It can Develop a customer Loan Origination Application from scratch: Gives maximum opportunity to build what you want but inflexible to upgrade and maintain. Higher TCO in long term Buy a Packaged application & customize it: Customizing a generic loan application can be tedious and prove as difficult as above. Build it using many disparate & un-integrated tools: Initially seems easier than developing from scratch. But, without integrated tool sets this is not a viable approach either or A solution based on a Framework: Independent Services and Business Process Modeling provide decoupled architecture that is flexible. We built this framework end-to-end with processes the core process of loan origination & several sub-processes such as Analyse and define customer needs, customer credit verification, identity check processes, legal review process, New customer registration & risk assessment.

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• Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario Conventional Structures Columnstore ? SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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• How does flash store (represent) movieclips and sprites?

  - by humbleBee

  When we draw any object in flash and convert it into a movieclip or a sprite, how is it stored or represented in flash. I know in vector art it is stored or represented as line segments using formulae. Is there any way to get the vertices of the shape that was drawn? For example, lets say a simple rectangle is drawn and is converted to a movieclip. Is there anyway to obtain the vertices and the line segments from the sprite? So that its shape is obtained. Enough information should be obtained so that the shape can be replicated. That's the key - replication. In simple terms, where does flash store information about a shape that has been drawn so that we can obtain it and attempt to replicate the shape ourselves?

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• Creating the Business Card Request InfoPath Form

  - by JKenderdine

  Business Card Request Demo Files Back in January I spoke at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach about InfoPath forms and Web Part deployment.  Below is some of the information and details regarding the form I created for the session.  There are many blogs and Microsoft articles on how to create a basic form so I won’t repeat that information here.   This blog will just explain a few of the options I chose when creating the solutions for SPS Virginia Beach.  The above link contains the zipped package files of the two InfoPath forms(no code solution and coded solution), the list template for the Location list I used, and the PowerPoint deck.  If you plan to use these templates, you will need to update the forms to work within your own environments (change data connections, code links, etc.).  Also, you must have the SharePoint Enterprise version, with InfoPath Services configured in order to use the Web Browser enabled forms. So what are the requirements for this template? Business Card Request Form Template Design Plan: Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and Another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site Submitted directly to form library The base form was created using the blank template.  The table and rows were added using Insert tab and selecting Custom Table.  The use of tables is a great way to make sure everything lines up.  You do have to split the tables from time to time.  If you’ve ever split cells and then tried to re-align one to find that you impacted the others, you know why.  Here is what the base form looks like in InfoPath.   Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements You will notice I also used Sections within the form.  These show or hide depending on options selected or whether or not fields are blank.  This is a great way to prevent your users from feeling overwhelmed with a large form (this one wouldn’t apply).  Although not used in this one, you can also use various views with a tab interface.  I’ll show that in another post. Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Utilizing rules you can load data when the form initiates (Data tab, Form Load).  Anything you can automate is always appreciated by the user as that is data they don’t have to enter.  For example, loading their user id or other user information on load: Always keep in mind though how much data you load and the method for loading that data (through rules, code, etc.).  They have an impact on form performance.  The form will take longer to load if you bring in a ton of data from external sources.  Laura Rogers has a great blog post on using the User Information List to load user information.   If the user has logged into SharePoint, then this can be used quite effectively and without a huge performance hit.   What I have found is that using the User Profile service via code behind or the Web Service “GetUserProfileByName” (as above) can take more time to load the user data.  Just food for thought. You must add the data connection in order for the above rules to work.  You can connect to the data connection through the Data tab, Data Connections or select Manage Data Connections link which appears under the main data source.  The data connections can be SharePoint lists or libraries, SQL data tables, XML files, etc.  Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and Another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. You can also create multiple views for the users to enhance their experience.  Once they’ve entered the information and submitted their request for business cards, they don’t really need to see the main data input screen any more.  They just need to view what they entered. From the Page Design tab, select New View and give the view a name.  To review the existing views, click the down arrow under View: The ReviewView shows just what the user needs and nothing more: Once you have everything configured, the form should be tested within a Test SharePoint environment before final deployment to production.  This validates you don’t have any rules or code that could impact the server negatively. Submitted directly to form library   You will need to know the form library that you will be submitting to when publishing the template.  Configure the Submit data connection to connect to this library.  There is already one configured in the sample,  but it will need to be updated to your environment prior to publishing. The Design template is different from the Published template.  While both have the .XSN extension, the published template contains all the “package” information for the form.  The published form is what is loaded into Central Admin, not the design template. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site In Central Admin, under General Settings, select Manage Form Templates.  Upload the published form template and Activate it to a site collection. Now it is available as a content type to select in the form library.  Some documentation on publishing form templates:  Technet – Manage administrator approved form templates And that’s all our base requirements.  Hope this helps to give a good start.

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• First Foray&ndash;About timeout

  - by SQLMonger

  It has been quite a while since I signed up for this blog site and high time that something was posted.  I have a list of topics that I will be working through and posting.  Some I am sure will have been posted by others, but I will be sticking to the technical problems and challenges that I’ve recently faced, and the solutions that worked for me.  My motto when learning something new has always been “My kingdom for an example!”, and I plan on delivering useful examples here so others can learn from my efforts, failures and successes.   A bit of background about me… My name is Clayton Groom. I am a founding partner of a consulting firm in St. Louis Missouri, Covenant Technology Partners, LLC and focus on SQL Server Data Warehouse design, Analysis Services and Enterprise Reporting solutions.  I have been working with SQL Server since the early nineties, when it still only ran on OS/2. I love solving puzzles and technical challenges.   Enough about me… On to a real problem… SSIS Connection Time outs versus Command Time outs Last week, I was working on automating the processing for a large Analysis Services cube.  I had reworked an SSIS package and script task originally posted by Vidas Matelis that automates the process of adding new and dropping old partitions to/from an Analysis Services cube.  I had the package working great, tested, and ready for deployment.  It basically performs a query against the source system to determine if there is new data in the warehouse that will require a new partition to be added to the cube, and it checks the cube to see if there are any partitions that are present that are no longer needed in a rolling 60 month window. My client uses Tivoli for running all their production jobs, and not SQL Agent, so I had to build a command line file for Tivoli to use to run the package. Everything was going great. I had tested the command file from my development workstation using an XML configuration file to pass in server-specific parameters into the package when executed using the DTExec utility. With all the pieces ready, I updated the dtsconfig file to point to the UAT environment and started working with the Tivoli developer to test the job.  On the first run, the job failed, and from what I could see in the SSIS log, it had failed because of a timeout. Other errors in the log made me think that perhaps the connection string had not been passed into the package correctly. We bumped the Connection Manager  timeout values from 20 seconds to 120 seconds and tried again. The job still failed. After changing the command line to use the /SET option instead of the /CONFIGFILE option, we tested again, and again failure. After a number more failed attempts, and getting the Teradata DBA involved to monitor and see if we were connecting and failing or just failing to connect, we determined that the job was indeed connecting to the server and then disconnecting itself after 30 seconds.  This seemed odd, as we had the timeout values for the connection manager set to 180 seconds by then.  At this point one of the DBA’s found a post on the Teradata forum that had the clues to the puzzle: There is a separate “CommandTimeout” custom property on the Data source object that may needed to be adjusted for longer running queries.  I opened up the SSIS package, opened the data flow task that generated the partition list table and right-clicked on the data source. from the context menu, I selected “Show Advanced Editor” and found the property. Sure enough, it was set to 30 seconds. The CommandTimeout property can also be edited in the SSIS Properties sheet. In order to determine how long the timeout needed to be, I ran the query from the task in the development environment and received a response in a matter of seconds.  I then tried the same query against the production database and waited several minutes for a response. This did not seem to be a reasonable response time for the query involved, and indeed it wasn’t. The Teradata DBA’s adjusted the query governor settings for the service account I was testing with, and we were able to get the response back down under a minute.  Still, I set the CommandTimeout property to a much higher value in case the job was ever started during a time of high-demand on the production server. With this change in place, the job finally completed successfully.  The lesson learned for me was two-fold: Always compare query execution times between development and production environments, and don’t assume that production will always be faster.  With higher user demands, query governors, and a whole lot more data, the execution time of even what might seem to be simple queries can vary greatly. SSIS Connection time out settings do not affect command time outs.  Connection timeouts control how long the package will wait for a response from the server before assuming the server is not available or is not responding. Command time outs control how long a task will wait for results to start being returned before deciding that the server is not responding. Both lessons seem pretty straight forward, and I felt pretty sheepish once I finally figured out what the issue was.  To be fair though, In the 5+ years that I have been working with SSIS, I could only recall one other time where I had to set the CommandTimeout property, and that memory only resurfaced while I was penning this post.

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• Maximize Performance and Availability with Oracle Data Integration

  - by Tanu Sood

  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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Alert: Oracle is hosting the 12c Launch Webcast for Oracle Data Integration and Oracle Golden Gate on Tuesday, November 12 (tomorrow) to discuss the new capabilities in detail and share customer perspectives. Hear directly from customer experts and executives from SolarWorld Industries America, British Telecom and Rittman Mead and get your questions answered live by product experts. Register for this complimentary webcast today and join in the discussion tomorrow. Author: Irem Radzik, Senior Principal Product Director, Oracle Organizations that want to use IT as a strategic point of differentiation prefer Oracle’s complete application offering to drive better business performance and optimize their IT investments. These enterprise applications are in the center of business operations and they contain critical data that needs to be accessed continuously, as well as analyzed and acted upon in a timely manner. These systems also need to operate with high-performance and availability, which means analytical functions should not degrade applications performance, and even system maintenance and upgrades should not interrupt availability. Oracle’s data integration products, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, provide the core foundation for bringing data from various business-critical systems to gain a broader, unified view. As a more advance offering to 3rd party products, Oracle’s data integration products facilitate real-time reporting for Oracle Applications without impacting application performance, and provide ability to upgrade and maintain the system without taking downtime. Oracle GoldenGate is certified for Oracle Applications, including E-Business Suite, Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, for moving transactional data in real-time to a dedicated operational reporting environment. This solution allows the app users to offload the resource-heavy queries to the reporting instance(s), reducing CPU utilization, improving OLTP performance, and extending the lifetime of existing IT assets. In addition, having a dedicated reporting instance with up-to-the-second transactional data allows optimizing the reporting environment and even decreasing costs as GoldenGate can move only the required data from expensive mainframe environments to cost-efficient open system platforms.  With real-time data replication capabilities GoldenGate is also certified to enable application upgrades and database/hardware/OS migration without impacting business operations. GoldenGate is certified for Siebel CRM, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and JD Edwards for supporting zero downtime upgrades to the latest app version. GoldenGate synchronizes a parallel, upgraded system with the old version in real time, thus enables continuous operations during the process. Oracle GoldenGate is also certified for minimal downtime database migrations for Oracle E-Business Suite and other key applications. GoldenGate’s solution also minimizes the risk by offering a failback option after the switchover to the new environment. Furthermore, Oracle GoldenGate’s bidirectional active-active data replication is certified for Oracle ATG Web Commerce to enable geographically load balancing and high availability for ATG customers. For enabling better business insight, Oracle Data Integration products power Oracle BI Applications with high performance bulk and real-time data integration. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is embedded in Oracle BI Applications version 11.1.1.7.1 and helps to integrate data end-to-end across the full BI Applications architecture, supporting capabilities such as data-lineage, which helps business users identify report-to-source capabilities. ODI is integrated with Oracle GoldenGate and provides Oracle BI Applications customers the option to use real-time transactional data in analytics, and do so non-intrusively. By using Oracle GoldenGate with the latest release of Oracle BI Applications, organizations not only leverage fresh data in analytics, but also eliminate the need for an ETL batch window and minimize the impact on OLTP systems. You can learn more about Oracle Data Integration products latest 12c version in our upcoming launch webcast and access the app-specific free resources in the new Data Integration for Oracle Applications Resource Center.

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• February OTN Member Offers

  - by Cassandra Clark

  This month we have a lot of NEW book discounts and another from Oracle Store. See full list below or go right to OTN Member Discount Page to get codes. Books Discounts - Apress Offers - 25% off eBooks bought @ apress.com. Book of the Month - Pro Oracle Database 11g Administration. Pearson - 35% off and free shipping in US C# 4.0 Unleashed Multicore Application Programming Oracle Press - 40% off and sample chapters of following titles. Oracle Streams 11g Data Replication JavaFX, A Beginner's Guide Oracle CRM on Demand Embedded Analytics Oracle CRM On Demand Combined Analyses Packt Publishing - 20% off print and 45% off ebook of below Oracle APEX titles. Oracle APEX 4.0 Cookbook Oracle Application Express 4.0 with Ext JS Oracle Application Express 3.2 - The Essentials and More Oracle Application Express Forms Converter Manning - 40% off all formats of books below: • The Joy of Clojure • Specification by Example  Manning is also offering a book excerpt and 42% off all formats of the following titles: • Portlets in Action • Tuscany SCA in Action                                                                   Oracle Store - OTN Member Exclusive: 15% off Oracle Open Office Enterprise Edition at Oracle Store To get discount codes please visit the OTN Member Discount Page.

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• Limitations of User-Defined Customer Events (FA Type Profile)

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  CC&B automatically creates field activities when a specific Customer Event takes place. This depends on the way you have setup your Field Activity Type Profiles, the templates within, and associated SP Condition(s) on the template. CC&B uses the service point type, its state and referenced customer event to determine which field activity type to generate.   Customer events available in the base product include: Cut for Non-payment (CNP) Disconnect Warning (DIWA) Reconnect for Payment (REPY) Reread (RERD) Stop Service (STOP) Start Service (STRT) Start/Stop (STSP)   Note the Field values/codes defined for each event.   CC&B comes with a flexibility to define new set of customer events. These can be defined in the Look Up - CUST_EVT_FLG. Values from the Look Up are used on the Field Activity Type Profile Template page.     So what's the use of having user-defined Customer Events? And how will the system detect such events in order to create field activity(s)?   Well, system can only detect such events when you reference a user-defined customer event on a Severance Event Type for an event type Create Field Activities.     This way you can create additional field activities of a specific field activity type for user-defined customer events.   One of our customers adopted this feature and created a user-defined customer event CNPW - Cut for Non-payment for Water Services. This event was then linked on a Field Activity Type Profile and referenced on a Severance Event - CUT FOR NON PAY-W. The associated Severance Process was configured to trigger a reconnection process if it was cancelled (done by defining a Post Cancel Algorithm). Whenever this Severance Event was executed, a specific type of Field Activity was generated for disconnection purposes. The Field Activity type was determined by the system from the Field Activity Type Profile referenced for the SP Type, SP's state and the referenced user-defined customer event. All was working well until the time when they realized that in spite of the Severance Process getting cancelled (when a payment was made); the Post Cancel Algorithm was not executed to start a Reconnection Severance Process for the purpose of generating a reconnection field activity and reconnecting the service.   Basically, the Post Cancel algorithm (if specified on a Severance Process Template) is triggered when a Severance Process gets cancelled because a credit transaction has affected/relieved a Service Agreement's debt.   So what exactly was happening? Now we come to actual question as to what are limitations in having user-defined customer event.   System defined/base customer events are hard-coded across the entire system. There is an impact even if you remove any customer event entry from the Look Up. User-defined customer events are not recognized by the system anywhere else except in the severance process, as described above.   There are few programs which have routines to first validate the completion of disconnection field activities, which were raised as a result of customer event CNP - Cut for Non-payment in order to perform other associated actions. One such program is the Post Cancel Algorithm, referenced on a Severance Process Template, generally used to reconnect services which were disconnected from other Severance Event, specifically CNP - Cut for Non-Payment. Post cancel algorithm provided by the product - SEV POST CAN does the following (below is the algorithm's description):   This algorithm is called after a severance process has been cancelled (typically because the debt was paid and the SA is no longer eligible to be on the severance process). It checks to see if the process has a completed 'disconnect' event and, if so, starts a reconnect process using the Reconnect Severance Process Template defined in the parameter.    Notice the underlined text. This algorithm implicitly checks for Field Activities having completed status, which were generated from Severance Events as a result of CNP - Cut for Non-payment customer event.   Now if we look back to the customer's issue, we can relate that the Post Cancel algorithm was triggered, but was not able to find any 'Completed' CNP - Cut for Non-payment related field activity. And hence was not able to start a reconnection severance process. This was because a field activity was generated and completed for a customer event CNPW - Cut for Non-payment of Water Services instead.   To conclude, if you introduce new customer events, you should be aware that you don't extend or simulate base customer events, the ones that are included in the base product, as they are further used to provide/validate additional business functions.  

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• 3 Trends for SMBs around Social, Mobile, and Sensor

  - by Socially_Aware_Enterprise

  While I often am talking to big companies or discussing enterprise solutions. There are times when individuals ask me about Small or Medium sized business trends.  Interestingly,  the Enterprise Social, Mobile, and Sensor initiatives I regularly discuss are in fact related to even the Mom and Pop storefront. The eco-system of new service players in the Social-Mobile-Sensor space generally emerge developing partnerships with enterprises as they develop and bring economy to scale to their services for the larger market. And of course Oracle has an entire division dedicated for delivering products and support to help emerging companies compete without the need to open an industrial strength credit line.. So here are some trends that we are helping large enterprises to deploy today, but small and medium businesses should be able to take advantage of by the end of this year and starting into 2015. 1) The typical small business is generally "Localized". But the ability to be "Hyper-Localized" will come as location based services become ubiquitous. Many small businesses have one or several storefronts and theirs are typically within a single regional economic footprint. While the internet provides global reach, it will be the businesses that invest in social, mobile and local that will win in the end.  Of course I am a huge SoMoLo evangelist. The SMBs' content and targeting with platforms for Geo-Fencing, Geo-Conquesting and Path-Matching to HHI are all going to be accessible to them, if not for Mobile Apps, then via Mobile messaging in Social Networks that offer it.. Expect to be able to target FaceBook messaging not by city, but by store or mall… This makes being able to be "Hyper-Local" even more important. And with new proximity services coming online more than ever before, SMBs will operate and service customers with pinpoint accuracy right down to where they stand in an aisle. Geo-Conquesting will be huge for small players to place ads when customers pass through competitors regions. Car Dealers are doing this now.. But also of course iBeacons are now very cheap and getting easier to put in retail stores. The ability for sales to happen anywhere in the store via a mobile phone or tablet is huge, as it will give the small shop the flexibility to not have to "Guard the Register" as more or most transactions will be digital. Thus, M-Commerce and T-Commerce will change the job of cashier dramatically.. 2) Intra-Brand Advocacy, the idea now is that rather than just depend on your trusty social media manager and his team, you are going to push more and more individuals with expertise inside the organization to help manage, reach-out, and utilize social channels to manage the incoming questions and answers customers need. While for years CRM was the tool of the enterprise, today CRMs enable this now "Salesforce et al" capability to trickle throughout the company. This gives greater pressure to organize roles, but also flatten out the organization. Internal collaboration around topics and customer needs is going to be the key for SMBs to finally get serious about customer experiences. Their customers are online and in social networks. This includes not just B2C SMBs but also B2B companies as well. Don't believe me? To find the players just use hashtag #SocialSelling and you will see… 3) The Visual Networks will begin to move from Content Aggregators to Content Collaboration platforms, which means Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, & others will begin to move to add more features brands want, first marketing platforms, rather than unique brand partnerships as they do today, but this will open ways for SMBs to engage with clear brand messaging and metrics. Eventually providing more "Collaboration" between Brand and Consumer.. Don't think for a minute Facebook bought Oculus Rift so you could see your timeline in 3-D. The Social Networks I advise customers to invest in are ones that are audio and visual intrinsically. Players from SoundCloud to Pinterest are deploying ways for brands to harness their interactive visual or audio based social networks to sell ad units aka brand messaging. While the Social Media revolution is going on, the emphasis was on the social, today it more and more about the media in social, that enterprises soon small and medium businesses will be connected to. 

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• Most Innovative IDM Projects: Awards at OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  On Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, Oracle recognized the winners of Innovation Awards 2012 at a ceremony presided over by Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President at Oracle. Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards recognize customers for achieving significant business value through innovative uses of Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings. Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. This year’s Award honors customers for their cutting-edge solutions driving business innovation and IT modernization using Oracle Fusion Middleware. The program has grown over the past 6 years, receiving a record number of nominations from customers around the globe. The winners were selected by a panel of judges that ranked each nomination across multiple different scoring categories. Congratulations to both Avea and ETS for winning this year’s Innovation Award for Identity Management. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Avea Company: Founded in 2004, AveA is the sole GSM 1800 mobile operator of Turkey and has reached a nationwide customer base of 12.8 million as of the end of 2011 Region: Turkey (EMEA) Products: Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics, Oracle Access Management Suite Business Drivers: ·         To manage the agility and scale required for GSM Operations and enable call center efficiency by enabling agents to change their identity profiles (accounts and entitlements) rapidly based on call load. ·         Enhance user productivity and call center efficiency with self service password resets ·         Enforce compliance and audit reporting ·         Seamless identity management between AveA and parent company Turk Telecom Innovation and Results: ·         One of the first Sun2Oracle identity management migrations designed for high performance provisioning and trusted reconciliation built with connectors developed on the ICF architecture that provides custom user interfaces for  dynamic and rapid management of roles and entitlements along with entitlement level attestation using closed loop remediation between Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics. ·         Dramatic reduction in identity administration and call center password reset tasks leading to 20% reduction in administration costs and 95% reduction in password related calls. ·         Enhanced user productivity by up to 25% to date ·         Enforced enterprise security and reduced risk ·         Cost-effective compliance management ·         Looking to seamlessly integrate with parent and sister companies’ infrastructure securely. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Education Testing Service (ETS)       See last year's winners here --Company: ETS is a private nonprofit organization devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing. Region: U.S.A (North America) Products: Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Identity Manager Business Drivers: ETS develops and administers more than 50 million achievement and admissions tests each year in more than 180 countries, at more than 9,000 locations worldwide.  As the business becomes more globally based, having a robust solution to security and user management issues becomes paramount. The organizations was looking for: ·         Simplified user experience for over 3000 company users and more than 6 million dynamic student and staff population ·         Infrastructure and administration cost reduction ·         Managing security risk by controlling 3rd party access to ETS systems ·         Enforce compliance and manage audit reporting ·         Automate on-boarding and decommissioning of user account to improve security, reduce administration costs and enhance user productivity ·         Improve user experience with simplified sign-on and user self service Innovation and Results: 1.    Manage Risk ·         Centralized system to control user access ·         Provided secure way of accessing service providers' application using federated SSO. ·         Provides reporting capability for auditing, governance and compliance. 2.    Improve efficiency ·         Real-Time provisioning to target systems ·         Centralized provisioning system for user management and access controls. ·         Enabling user self services. 3.    Reduce cost ·         Re-using common shared services for provisioning, SSO, Access by application reducing development cost and time. ·         Reducing infrastructure and maintenance cost by decommissioning legacy/redundant IDM services. ·         Reducing time and effort to implement security functionality in business applications (“onboard” instead of new development). ETS was able to fold in new and evolving requirement in addition to the initial stated goals realizing quick ROI and successfully meeting business objectives. Congratulations to the winners once again. We will be sure to bring you more from these Innovation Award winners over the next few months.

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• New DataCenter Options for Windows Azure

  - by ScottKlein

  Effective immediately, new compute and storage resource options are now available when selecting data center options in the Windows Azure Portal. "West US" and "East US" options are now available, for Compute and Storage. SQL Azure options for these two data centers will be available in the next few months. The official announcement can be found here.In terms of geo-replication:US East and West are paired together for Windows Azure Storage geo-replicationUS North and South are paired together for Windows Azure Storage geo-replicationThese two new data centers are now visible in the Windows Azure Management Portal effective immediately. Compute and Storage pricing remains the same across all data centers. Get started with Windows Azure through the free 90 day trial.

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• Oracle 11g Webcast Series 2

  - by Alex Blyth

  Hi allIve just updated the schedule for the second series (season?) of the Oracle DB 11g Webcasts we've been running over the past few months. We've paced ourselves a bit better this time round and are looking to touch on some core functionality, but also some non-database topics like Oracle VM & Linux and Data replication using Golden Gate and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI).As with the last series, we're running these sessions on Wednesdays at 1.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time and barring any hiccups they will be recorded and made available for playback.Keep an eye out here and on the schedule page for more details. The first session is next week - 14th April - covering Upgrading to Oracle 11g.CheersAlex

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• Eliminating Downtime During Database Upgrades: A Customer Case Study

  - by irem.radzik(at)oracle.com

  Planned outages, such as database, OS, hardware upgrades and migrations, are a fact of life. Even though they are "planned" and many of them are performed during "off business hours", they can still interrupt operations-- especially for global operations and online businesses. For this reason many IT organizations postpone these critical infrastructure improvement projects, which in turn result in delays in advancing business operations. This week, on Thursday January 13th, we will host a free webcast on this topic, and will feature Oracle GoldenGate's customer Atmos Energy. Atmos Energy implemented Oracle GoldenGate for eliminating downtime during their database upgrade from Oracle Database 8.1.7 to Oracle Database 11.1.0.7. Jos Francis, Lead DBA for Atmos, and Ronald Nedd, Sr. DBA for Atmos, will be presenting their database upgrade project and their solution architecture. Join us at this live webcast and hear from our customer and product management how to eliminate planned outages with Oracle GoldenGate's real-time, heterogeneous data replication capabilities.

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• Books are Dead! Long Live the Books!

  - by smisner

  We live in interesting times with regard to the availability of technical material. We have lots of free written material online in the form of vendor documentation online, forums, blogs, and Twitter. And we have written material that we can buy in the form of books, magazines, and training materials. Online videos and training – some free and some not free – are also an option. All of these formats are useful for one need or another. As an author, I pay particular attention to the demand for books, and for now I see no reason to stop authoring books. I assure you that I don’t get rich from the effort, and fortunately that is not my motivation. As someone who likes to refer to books frequently, I am still a big believer in books and have evidence from book sales that there are others like me. If I can do my part to help others learn about the technologies I work with, I will continue to produce content in a variety of formats, including books. (You can view a list of all of my books on the Publications page of my site and my online training videos at Pluralsight.) As a consumer of technical information, I prefer books because a book typically can get into a topic much more deeply than a blog post, and can provide more context than vendor documentation. It comes with a table of contents and a (hopefully accurate) index that helps me zero in on a topic of interest, and of course I can use the Search feature in digital form. Some people suggest that technology books are outdated as soon as they get published. I guess it depends on where you are with technology. Not everyone is able to upgrade to the latest and greatest version at release. I do assume, however, that the SQL Server 7.0 titles in my library have little value for me now, but I’m certain that the minute I discard the book, I’m going to want it for some reason! Meanwhile, as electronic books overtake physical books in sales, my husband is grateful that I can continue to build my collection digitally rather than physically as the books have a way of taking over significant square footage in our house! Blog posts, on the other hand, are useful for describing the scenarios that come up in real-life implementations that wouldn’t fit neatly into a book. As many years that I have working with the Microsoft BI stack, I still run into new problems that require creative thinking. Likewise, people who work with BI and other technologies that I use share what they learn through their blogs. Internet search engines help us find information in blogs that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Another great thing about blogs, also, is the connection to community and the dialog that can ensue between people with common interests. With the trend towards electronic formats for books, I imagine that we’ll see books continue to adapt to incorporate different forms of media and better ways to keep the information current. At the moment, I wish I had a better way to help readers with my last two Reporting Services books. In the case of the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step book, I have heard many cases of readers having problems with the sample database that shipped on CD – either the database was missing or it was corrupt. So I’ve provided a copy of the database on my site for download from http://datainspirations.com/uploads/rs2005sbsDW.zip. Then for the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 Reporting Services Step by Step book, we decided to avoid the database problem by using the AdventureWorks2008 samples that Microsoft published on Codeplex (although code samples are still available on CD). We had this silly idea that the URL for the download would remain constant, but it seems that expectation was ill-founded. Currently, the sample database is found at http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/37109 but I have no idea how long that will remain valid. My latest books (#9 and #10 which are milestones I never anticipated), Building Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 (McGraw Hill, 2011) and Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011), will not ship with a CD, but will provide all code samples for download at a site maintained by the respective publishers. I expect that the URLs for the downloads for the book will remain valid, but there are lots of references to other sites that can change or disappear over time. Does that mean authors shouldn’t make reference to such sites? Personally, I think the benefits to be gained from including links are greater than the risks of the links becoming invalid at some point. Do you think the time for technology books has come to an end? Is the delivery of books in electronic format enough to keep them alive? If technological barriers were no object, what would make a book more valuable to you than other formats through which you can obtain information?

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• WebCenter Sites 11gR1 Bundled Patch 1 is now available

  - by R.Hunter

  There is a new patch available for WebCenter Sites - 11gR1 Bundled Patch 1. The download links can be obtained from the WebCenter Sites Download page. Some of the highlights of WebCenter Sites 11gR1 Bundled Patch 1 are listed below: - UI Customization support  - A new developer’s guide is available for use in customizing the Contributor UI. Customizable UI components include the Dashboard, search views, tools bars, menus, and asset-forms. In addition, global or site specific configuration properties can be specified for controlling what is displayed in the UI. - Localization support – The contributor UI is localized for the following languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified &Traditional Chinese - Developer tools (CSDT) now supports connection to a remote Sites server- Security updates including a request authentication filter to prevent CSRF attacks, REST API updates, and more.- Session replication support in the management user interfaces- Bug fixes Please refer to the release notes and documentation for more information.

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• #OOW 2012 @PARIS...talking Oracle and Clouds, and Optimized Datacenter

  - by Eric Bezille

  For those of you who want to get most out of Oracle technologies to evolve your IT to the Next Wave, I encourage you to register to the up coming Oracle Optimized Datacenter event that will take place in Paris on November 28th. You will get the opportunity to exchange with Oracle experts and customers having successfully evolve their IT by leveraging Oracle technologies. You will also get the latest news on some of the Oracle systems announcements made during OOW 2012. During this event we will make an update about Oracle and Clouds, from private to public and hybrid models. So in preparing this session, I thought it was a good start to make a status of Cloud Computing in France, and CIO requirements in particular. Starting in 2009 with the first Cloud Camp in Paris, the market has evolved, but the basics are still the same : think hybrid. From Traditional IT to Clouds One size doesn't fit all, and for big companies having already an IT in place, there will be parts eligible to external (public) cloud, and parts that would be required to stay inside the firewalls, so ability to integrate both side is key.  None the less, one of the major impact of Cloud Computing trend on IT, reported by Forrester, is the pressure it makes on CIO to evolve towards the same model that end-users are now used to in their day to day life, where self-service and flexibility are paramount. This is what is driving IT to transform itself toward "a Global Service Provider", or for some as "IT "is" the Business" (see : Gartner Identifies Four Futures for IT and CIO), and for both models toward a Private Cloud Service Provider. In this journey, there is still a big difference between most of existing external Cloud and a firm IT : the number of applications that a CIO has to manage. Most cloud providers today are overly specialized, but at the end of the day, there are really few business processes that rely on only one application. So CIOs has to combine everything together external and internal. And for the internal parts that they will have to make them evolve to a Private Cloud, the scope can be very large. This will often require CIOs to evolve from their traditional approach to more disruptive ones, the time has come to introduce new standards and processes, if they want to succeed. So let's have a look at the different Cloud models, what type of users they are addressing, what value they bring and most importantly what needs to be done by the  Cloud Provider, and what is left over to the user. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS : what's provided and what needs to be done First of all the Cloud Provider will have to provide all the infrastructure needed to deliver the service. And the more value IT will want to provide, the more IT will have to deliver and integrate : from disks to applications. As we can see in the above picture, providing pure IaaS, left a lot to cover for the end-user, that’s why the end-user targeted by this Cloud Service is IT people. If you want to bring more value to developers, you need to provide to them a development platform ready to use, which is what PaaS is standing for, by providing not only the processors power, storage and OS, but also the Database and Middleware platform. SaaS being the last mile of the Cloud, providing an application ready to use by business users, the remaining part for the end-users being configuring and specifying the application for their specific usage. In addition to that, there are common challenges encompassing all type of Cloud Services : Security : covering all aspect, not only of users management but also data flows and data privacy Charge back : measuring what is used and by whom Application management : providing capabilities not only to deploy, but also to upgrade, from OS for IaaS, Database, and Middleware for PaaS, to a full Business Application for SaaS. Scalability : ability to evolve ALL the components of the Cloud Provider stack as needed Availability : ability to cover “always on” requirements Efficiency : providing a infrastructure that leverage shared resources in an efficient way and still comply to SLA (performances, availability, scalability, and ability to evolve) Automation : providing the orchestration of ALL the components in all service life-cycle (deployment, growth & shrink (elasticity), upgrades,...) Management : providing monitoring, configuring and self-service up to the end-users Oracle Strategy and Clouds For CIOs to succeed in their Private Cloud implementation, means that they encompass all those aspects for each component life-cycle that they selected to build their Cloud. That’s where a multi-vendors layered approach comes short in terms of efficiency. That’s the reason why Oracle focus on taking care of all those aspects directly at Engineering level, to truly provide efficient Cloud Services solutions for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. We are going as far as embedding software functions in hardware (storage, processor level,...) to ensure the best SLA with the highest efficiency. The beauty of it, as we rely on standards, is that the Oracle components that you are running today in-house, are exactly the same that we are using to build Clouds, bringing you flexibility, reversibility and fast path to adoption. With Oracle Engineered Systems (Exadata, Exalogic & SPARC SuperCluster, more specifically, when talking about Cloud), we are delivering all those components hardware and software already engineered together at Oracle factory, with a single pane of glace for the management of ALL the components through Oracle Enterprise Manager, and with high-availability, scalability and ability to evolve by design. To give you a feeling of what does that bring in terms just of implementation project timeline, for example with Oracle SPARC SuperCluster, we have a consistent track of record to have the system plug into existing Datacenter and ready in a week. This includes Oracle Database, OS, virtualization, Database Storage (Exadata Storage Cells in this case), Application Storage, and all network configuration. This strategy enable CIOs to very quickly build Cloud Services, taking out not only the complexity of integrating everything together but also taking out the automation and evolution complexity and cost. I invite you to discuss all those aspect in regards of your particular context face2face on November 28th.

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• ADF Reusable Artefacts

  - by Arda Eralp

  Primary reusable ADF Business Component: Entity Objects (EOs) View Objects (VOs) Application Modules (AMs) Framework Extensions Classes Primary reusable ADF Controller: Bounded Task Flows (BTFs) Task Flow Templates Primary reusable ADF Faces: Page Templates Skins Declarative Components Utility Classes Certain components will often be used more than once. Whether the reuse happens within the same application, or across different applications, it is often advantageous to package these reusable components into a library that can be shared between different developers, across different teams, and even across departments within an organization. In the world of Java object-oriented programming, reusing classes and objects is just standard procedure. With the introduction of the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture, applications can be further modularized into separate model, view, and controller layers. By separating the data (model and business services layers) from the presentation (view and controller layers), you ensure that changes to any one layer do not affect the integrity of the other layers. You can change business logic without having to change the UI, or redesign the web pages or front end without having to recode domain logic. Oracle ADF and JDeveloper support the MVC design pattern. When you create an application in JDeveloper, you can choose many application templates that automatically set up data model and user interface projects. Because the different MVC layers are decoupled from each other, development can proceed on different projects in parallel and with a certain amount of independence. ADF Library further extends this modularity of design by providing a convenient and practical way to create, deploy, and reuse high-level components. When you first design your application, you design it with component reusability in mind. If you created components that can be reused, you can package them into JAR files and add them to a reusable component repository. If you need a component, you may look into the repository for those components and then add them into your project or application. For example, you can create an application module for a domain and package it to be used as the data model project in several different applications. Or, if your application will be consuming components, you may be able to load a page template component from a repository of ADF Library JARs to create common look and feel pages. Then you can put your page flow together by stringing together several task flow components pulled from the library. An ADF Library JAR contains ADF components and does not, and cannot, contain other JARs. It should not be confused with the JDeveloper library, Java EE library, or Oracle WebLogic shared library. Reusable Component Description Data Control Any data control can be packaged into an ADF Library JAR. Some of the data controls supported by Oracle ADF include application modules, Enterprise JavaBeans, web services, URL services, JavaBeans, and placeholder data controls. Application Module When you are using ADF Business Components and you generate an application module, an associated application module data control is also generated. When you package an application module data control, you also package up the ADF Business Components associated with that application module. The relevant entity objects, view objects, and associations will be a part of the ADF Library JAR and available for reuse. Business Components Business components are the entity objects, view objects, and associations used in the ADF Business Components data model project. You can package business components by themselves or together with an application module. Task Flows & Task Flow Templates Task flows can be packaged into an ADF Library JAR for reuse. If you drop a bounded task flow that uses page fragments, JDeveloper adds a region to the page and binds it to the dropped task flow. ADF bounded task flows built using pages can be dropped onto pages. The drop will create a link to call the bounded task flow. A task flow call activity and control flow will automatically be added to the task flow, with the view activity referencing the page. If there is more than one existing task flow with a view activity referencing the page, it will prompt you to select the one to automatically add a task flow call activity and control flow. If an ADF task flow template was created in the same project as the task flow, the ADF task flow template will be included in the ADF Library JAR and will be reusable. Page Templates You can package a page template and its artifacts into an ADF Library JAR. If the template uses image files and they are included in a directory within your project, these files will also be available for the template during reuse. Declarative Components You can create declarative components and package them for reuse. The tag libraries associated with the component will be included and loaded into the consuming project. You can also package up projects that have several different reusable components if you expect that more than one component will be consumed. For example, you can create a project that has both an application module and a bounded task flow. When this ADF Library JAR file is consumed, the application will have both the application module and the task flow available for use. You can package multiple components into one JAR file, or you can package a single component into a JAR file. Oracle ADF and JDeveloper give you the option and flexibility to create reusable components that best suit you and your organization. You create a reusable component by using JDeveloper to package and deploy the project that contains the components into a ADF Library JAR file. You use the components by adding that JAR to the consuming project. At design time, the JAR is added to the consuming project's class path and so is available for reuse. At runtime, the reused component runs from the JAR file by reference.

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• ADF Business Components

  - by Arda Eralp

  ADF Business Components and JDeveloper simplify the development, delivery, and customization of business applications for the Java EE platform. With ADF Business Components, developers aren't required to write the application infrastructure code required by the typical Java EE application to: Connect to the database Retrieve data Lock database records Manage transactions   ADF Business Components addresses these tasks through its library of reusable software components and through the supporting design time facilities in JDeveloper. Most importantly, developers save time using ADF Business Components since the JDeveloper design time makes typical development tasks entirely declarative. In particular, JDeveloper supports declarative development with ADF Business Components to: Author and test business logic in components which automatically integrate with databases Reuse business logic through multiple SQL-based views of data, supporting different application tasks Access and update the views from browser, desktop, mobile, and web service clients Customize application functionality in layers without requiring modification of the delivered application The goal of ADF Business Components is to make the business services developer more productive.   ADF Business Components provides a foundation of Java classes that allow your business-tier application components to leverage the functionality provided in the following areas: Simplifying Data Access Design a data model for client displays, including only necessary data Include master-detail hierarchies of any complexity as part of the data model Implement end-user Query-by-Example data filtering without code Automatically coordinate data model changes with business services layer Automatically validate and save any changes to the database   Enforcing Business Domain Validation and Business Logic Declaratively enforce required fields, primary key uniqueness, data precision-scale, and foreign key references Easily capture and enforce both simple and complex business rules, programmatically or declaratively, with multilevel validation support Navigate relationships between business domain objects and enforce constraints related to compound components   Supporting Sophisticated UIs with Multipage Units of Work Automatically reflect changes made by business service application logic in the user interface Retrieve reference information from related tables, and automatically maintain the information when the user changes foreign-key values Simplify multistep web-based business transactions with automatic web-tier state management Handle images, video, sound, and documents without having to use code Synchronize pending data changes across multiple views of data Consistently apply prompts, tooltips, format masks, and error messages in any application Define custom metadata for any business components to support metadata-driven user interface or application functionality Add dynamic attributes at runtime to simplify per-row state management   Implementing High-Performance Service-Oriented Architecture Support highly functional web service interfaces for business integration without writing code Enforce best-practice interface-based programming style Simplify application security with automatic JAAS integration and audit maintenance "Write once, run anywhere": use the same business service as plain Java class, EJB session bean, or web service   Streamlining Application Customization Extend component functionality after delivery without modifying source code Globally substitute delivered components with extended ones without modifying the application   ADF Business Components implements the business service through the following set of cooperating components: Entity object An entity object represents a row in a database table and simplifies modifying its data by handling all data manipulation language (DML) operations for you. These are basically your 1 to 1 representation of a database table. Each table in the database will have 1 and only 1 EO. The EO contains the mapping between columns and attributes. EO's also contain the business logic and validation. These are you core data services. They are responsible for updating, inserting and deleting records. The Attributes tab displays the actual mapping between attributes and columns, the mapping has following fields: Name : contains the name of the attribute we expose in our data model. Type : defines the data type of the attribute in our application. Column : specifies the column to which we want to map the attribute with Column Type : contains the type of the column in the database   View object A view object represents a SQL query. You use the full power of the familiar SQL language to join, filter, sort, and aggregate data into exactly the shape required by the end-user task. The attributes in the View Objects are actually coming from the Entity Object. In the end the VO will generate a query but you basically build a VO by selecting which EO need to participate in the VO and which attributes of those EO you want to use. That's why you have the Entity Usage column so you can see the relation between VO and EO. In the query tab you can clearly see the query that will be generated for the VO. At this stage we don't need it and just use it for information purpose. In later stages we might use it. Application module An application module is the controller of your data layer. It is responsible for keeping hold of the transaction. It exposes the data model to the view layer. You expose the VO's through the Application Module. This is the abstraction of your data layer which you want to show to the outside word.It defines an updatable data model and top-level procedures and functions (called service methods) related to a logical unit of work related to an end-user task. While the base components handle all the common cases through built-in behavior, customization is always possible and the default behavior provided by the base components can be easily overridden or augmented. When you create EO's, a foreign key will be translated into an association in our model. It defines the type of relation and who is the master and child as well as how the visibility of the association looks like. A similar concept exists to identify relations between view objects. These are called view links. These are almost identical as association except that a view link is based upon attributes defined in the view object. It can also be based upon an association. Here's a short summary: Entity Objects: representations of tables Association: Relations between EO's. Representations of foreign keys View Objects: Logical model View Links: Relationships between view objects Application Model: interface to your application  

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• Examine your readiness for managing Enterprise Private Cloud

  - by Anand Akela

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Cloud computing promises to deliver greater agility to meet demanding  business needs, operational efficiencies, and lower cost. However these promises cannot be realized and enterprises may not be able to get the best value out of their enterprise private cloud computing infrastructure without a comprehensive cloud management solution . Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Take this new self-assessment quiz that measures the readiness of your enterprise private cloud. It scores your readiness in the following areas and discover where and how you can improve to gain total cloud control over your enterprise private cloud. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Complete Cloud Lifecycle Solution Check if you are ready to manage all phases of the building, managing, and consuming an enterprise cloud. You will learn how Oracle can help build and manage a rich catalog of cloud services – whether it is Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Database-as-a-Service, or Platform-as-a-Service, all from a single product. Integrated Cloud Stack Management Integrated management of the entire cloud stack – all the way from application to disk, is very important to eliminate the integration pains and costs that customers would have to otherwise incur by trying to create a cloud environment by integrating multiple point solutions. Business-Driven Clouds It is critical that an enterprise Cloud platform is not only able to run applications but also has deep business insight and visibility. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c enables creation of application-aware and business-driven clouds that has deep insight into applications, business services and transactions. As the leading providers of business applications and the middleware, we are able to offer you a cloud solution that is optimized for business services. Proactive Management Integration of the enterprise cloud infrastructure with support can allow cloud administrators to benefit from Automatic Service Requests (ASR), proactive patch recommendations, health checks and end-of-life advisory for all of the technology deployed within cloud. Learn more about solution for Enterprise Cloud and Cloud management by attending various sessions , demos and hand-on labs at Oracle Open World 2012 . Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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