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• An Interview with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  An interview with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg, by yours truly, titled “Challenging the Diabolical Developer: A Conversation with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg,” is now up on otn/java. Verburg, one of the leading movers and shakers in the Java community, is well known for his ‘diabolical developer” talks at JavaOne where he uncovers some of the worst practices that Java developers are prone to. He mentions a few in the interview: * “A lack of communication: Software development is far more a social activity than a technical one; most projects fail because of communication issues and social dynamics, not because of a bad technical decision. Sadly, many developers never learn this lesson.* No source control: Some developers simply store code in local file systems and e-mail the code in order to integrate their changes; yes, this still happens.* Design-driven design: Some developers are inclined to cram every design pattern from the Gang of Four (GoF) book into their projects. Of course, by that stage, they've actually forgotten why they're building the software in the first place.” He points to a couple of core assumptions and confusions that lead to trouble: “One is that developers think that the JVM is a magic box that will clean up their memory and make their code run fast, as well as make them cups of coffee. The JVM does help in a lot of cases, but bad code can and will still lead to terrible results! The other trend is to try to force Java (the language) to do something it's not very good at, such as rapid Web development. So you get a proliferation of overly complex frameworks, libraries, and techniques trying to get around the fact that Java is a monolithic, statically typed, compiled, OO environment. It's not a Golden Hammer!” Verburg has many insightful things to say about how to keep a Java User Group (JUG) going, about the “Adopt a JSR” program, bugathons, and much more. Check out the article here.

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• How do you KISS?

  - by Conor

  The KISS principle is a highly quoted design mantra. The aim of this principle is to stamp out unnecessary complexity on a project. This is a good thing, saving time, energy and money. It can lead to a relatively stress free implementation and a simple, elegant, maintainable end product. A lot of discussion on KISS provides mechanisms to simplify requirements, design and implementation. Things that spring to mind include: avoid scope creep; simple obvious design and code; minimal run-time dependencies; refactoring to maintain simplicity; etc. However there are a lot of implicit things that we do to KISS. Examples: small team sizes; minimal management layers; tidy desk; mastery of a single IDE; clear concise error messages; scripts to automate/encapsulate tasks; etc Why KISS practices do you apply? How have they been of benefit? I'm especially interested in non-obvious practices.

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• How to apply verification and validation on the following example

  - by user970696

  I have been following verification and validation questions here with my colleagues, yet we are unable to see the slight differences, probably caused by language barrier in technical English. An example: Requirement specification User wants to control the lights in 4 rooms by remote command sent from the UI for each room separately. Functional specification The UI will contain 4 checkboxes labelled according to rooms they control. When a checkbox is checked, the signal is sent to corresponding light. A green dot appears next to the checkbox When a checkbox is unchecked, the signal (turn off) is sent to corresponding light. A red dot appears next to the checkbox. Let me start with what I learned here: Verification, according to many great answers here, ensures that product reflects specified requirements - as functional spec is done by a producer based on requirements from customer, this one will be verified for completeness, correctness). Then design document will be checked against functional spec (it should design 4 checkboxes..), and the source code against design (is there a code for 4 checkboxes, functions to send the signals etc. - is it traceable to requirements). Okay, product is built and we need to test it, validate. Here comes our understanding trouble - validation should ensure the product meets requirements for its specific intended use which is basically business requirement (does it work? can I control the lights from the UI?) but testers will definitely work with the functional spec, making sure the checkboxes are there, working, labelled, etc. They are basically checking whether the requirements in functional spec were met in the final product, isn't that verification? (should not be, lets stick to ISO 12207 that only validation is the actual testing)

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• Is this a ridiculous way to structure a DB schema, or am I completely missing something?

  - by Jim

  I have done a fair bit of work with relational databases, and think I understand the basic concepts of good schema design pretty well. I recently was tasked with taking over a project where the DB was designed by a highly-paid consultant. Please let me know if my gut intinct - "WTF??!?" - is warranted, or is this guy such a genius that he's operating out of my realm? DB in question is an in-house app used to enter requests from employees. Just looking at a small section of it, you have information on the users, and information on the request being made. I would design this like so: User table: UserID (primary Key, indexed, no dupes) FirstName LastName Department Request table RequestID (primary Key, indexed, no dupes) <...> various data fields containing request details UserID -- foreign key associated with User table Simple, right? Consultant designed it like this (with sample data): UsersTable UserID FirstName LastName 234 John Doe 516 Jane Doe 123 Foo Bar DepartmentsTable DepartmentID Name 1 Sales 2 HR 3 IT UserDepartmentTable UserDepartmentID UserID Department 1 234 2 2 516 2 3 123 1 RequestTable RequestID UserID <...> 1 516 blah 2 516 blah 3 234 blah The entire database is constructed like this, with every piece of data encapsulated in its own table, with numeric IDs linking everything together. Apparently the consultant had read about OLAP and wanted the 'speed of integer lookups' He also has a large number of stored procedures to cross reference all of these tables. Is this valid design for a small to mid-sized SQL DB? Thanks for comments/answers...

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• Should components have sub-components in a component-based system like Artemis?

  - by Daniel Ingraham

  I am designing a game using Artemis, although this is more of philosophical question about component-based design in general. Let's say I have non-primitive data which applies to a given component (a Component "animal" may have qualities such as "teeth" or "diet"). There are three ways to approach this in data-driven design, as I see it: 1) Generate classes for these qualities using "traditional" OOP. I imagine this has negative implications for performance, as systems then must be made aware of these qualities in order to process them. It also seems counter to the overall philosophy of data-driven design. 2) Include these qualities as sub-components. This seems off, in that we are now confusing the role of components with that of entities. Moreover out of the box Artemis isn't capable of mapping these subcomponents onto their parent components. 3) Add "teeth", "diet", etc. as components to the overall entity alongside "animal". While this feels odd hierarchically, it may simply be a peculiarity of component-based systems. I suspect 3 is the correct way to think about things, but I was curious about other ideas.

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• Flash Player for IPTV

  - by Le Mystique

  Hi All, We have to design a flash player for three video sources of IPTV. Educational videos on the system that can be played on demand. (VOD or Video on Demand local) Streaming videos available on different websites that can be played on demand (VOD or Video on Demand remote) IPTV live streaming video feed Videos from three sources have to be played within single flash player that we need to design. There are 2 basic requirements: For the two VOD types, we have to provide the pause and play functionality. For IPTV, pause and play is not required, However, channel switching time is critically important here. The user should get the program behaviour as close to TV experience as possible. This means channel switching should be fast. To provide this, buffering of video is required for multiple channels. Now the questions is, is this possible? If yes, how? Secondly, what skill set (e.g. action script 3.0 , flash 10) should the flash programmer have to be able to design this? Thirdly is it as simple as making a normal FLV player? Or is it a more complex job?

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• The Start of a Blog

  - by dbradley

  So, here's my new blog up and running, who am I and what am I planning to write here?First off - here's a little about me:I'm a recent graduate from university (coming up to a year ago since I finished) studying Software Engineering on a four year course where the third year was an industrial placement. During the industrial placement I went to work for a company called Adfero in a "Technical Consultant" role as well as a junior "Information Systems Developer". Once I completed my placement I went back to complete my final year but also continued in my developer role 2/3 days a week with the company.Working part time while at uni always seems like a great idea until you get half way through the year. For me the problem was not so much having a lack of time, but rather a lack of interest in the course content having got a chance at working on real projects in a live environment. Most people who have been graduated a little while also find this - when looking back at uni work, it seem to be much more trivial from a problem solving point of view which I found to be true and I found key to uni work to actually be your ability to prove though how you talk about something that you comprehensively understand the basics.After completing uni I then returned full time to Adfero purely in the developer role which is where I've now been for almost a year and have now also taken on the title of "Information Systems Architect" where I'm working on some of the more high level design problems within the products.What I'm wanting to share on this blog is some of the interesting things I've learnt myself over the last year, the things they don't teach you in uni and pretty much anything else I find interesting! My personal favorite areas are text indexing, search and particularly good software engineering design - good design combined with good code makes the first step towards a well-written, maintainable piece of software.Hopefully I'll also be able to share a few of the products I've worked on, the mistake I've made and the software problems I've inherited from previous developers and had to heavily re-factor.

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• functional requirements - use wording based on verbs?

  - by yas

  Question: Should the functional requirements in a requirements doc use wording based on verbs? Context: School assignment, working in a team, working through the SDLC. The requirements doc has been done and we are now into design. Problem: The requirements doc has an enumerated list of what I'd call features of the app - the functional requirements. In that list are things that I'd think of as "how's" rather than "what's" and now, trying to work on design, I feel like a part of design has been prematurely dictated. I've not done this before! To me, I should be dealing strictly with things that describe "what." Example of current: Pretend that the job is to make an omelet. Listing: crack the egg, break into bowl, scramble, etc.; crosses over the line into the territory of how. Along that track, so does wording like: create, generate, list, calculate, determine, validate, etc. - verbs, basically. Right now, I have a list of requirements that are partially rooted in verbs. My idea of a requirements doc for an omelet would be more like: has two eggs, x ounces of ham, x ounces of bacon, x ounces of montery-jack cheese, x ounces of cilantro, etc. - nothing but what (nouns). I might have, and could have, spoken up before finalizing the requirements doc if I'd had any experience.

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• Do you write unit tests for all the time in TDD?

  - by mcaaltuntas

  I have been designing and developing code with TDD style for a long time. What disturbs me about TDD is writing tests for code that does not contain any business logic or interesting behaviour. I know TDD is a design activity more than testing but sometimes I feel it's useless to write tests in these scenarios. For example I have a simple scenario like "When user clicks check button, it should check file's validity". For this scenario I usually start writing tests for presenter/controller class like the one below. @Test public void when_user_clicks_check_it_should_check_selected_file_validity(){ MediaService service =mock(MediaService); View view =mock(View); when(view.getSelectedFile).thenReturns("c:\\Dir\\file.avi"); MediaController controller =new MediaController(service,view); controller.check(); verify(service).check("c:\\Dir\\file.avi"); } As you can see there is no design decision or interesting code to verify behaviour. I am testing values from view passed to MediaService. I usually write but don't like these kind of tests. What do yo do about these situations ? Do you write tests for all the time ? UPDATE : I have changed the test name and code after complaints. Some users said that you should write tests for the trivial cases like this so in the future someone might add interesting behaviour. But what about “Code for today, design for tomorrow.” ? If someone, including myself, adds more interesting code in the future the test can be created for it then. Why should I do it now for the trivial cases ?

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• SEO questions about PR, Page Structure, and Other

  - by jasondavis

  A couple of basic questions related to SEO. 1) If I have a site that has several different niches that I am trying to promote from. Example Web Developer broke down into section of Web Design, Graphic Design, Programming, Software for SEO purposes, would it be better to use subdomains for these main sections or use the main domain with a folder like structure? 2) Is PR different for each page of a domain or ever page has a PR of the same on that domain? Also do sub-domains have a different PR? 3) When entering a hugely over saturated niche such as web-design, is it even possible to compete with the big sites that have been ranked on google #1 page for years? 4) Lastly, I have read about how important titles, link anchors, and headings are for SEO and how content is the most important. So left's say we are building a standard header, body, sidebar, footer page. In the the actual markup, would it be better to make sure the main content comes before the sidebar on the page or does this probably not make a difference? 5) I seen mentioned in another answer here that microformats can help with SEO, is there any fact behind this? Thank you for any info on this

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• Feedback on meeting of the MSCC - 20.07.2013

  Impression of our meetup on 20.07.2013 Low quantity but high quality! Meetup summary: Quick introduction to ?MSCC? and interesting topics in general, especially for freshman from/at university. It also seems that the open concept of OUYA (Android-based gaming console) got some attention and hopefully new fans. More info is available online: http://www.ouya.tv/ Design contest The design contest is still going on... There's currently only one submission. Come on, you web & graphic designers in Mauritius - SHOW YOUR WORKAny draft will be published over here: MSCC Design Contest - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.200036533488751.1073741829.181737551985316&type=3 Goodies give-away And the first 2 one-month subscriptions for Pluralsight have been well received by attendees, too. Unfortunately, we didn't have any free WiFi at Talking Drums - so, we might have to consider another location for the next meetup. Change of schedule As we spoke about the advantages of gathering during the weekend, we worked out a schedule that could be applied to future meetups of the MSCC. I'm going to address this tomorrow during our regular meetings on Wednesday to see about the response of other members, too.

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• GlassFish T-shirt at JavaOne 2012

  - by arungupta

  There were 12 entries to the GlassFish T-shirt design contest. Each design was unique and very well thought out. But only one had to be picked and here is the winner! Many thanks to all the participants! A t-shirt will be reserved for each one of you whenever we meet :-) T-shirt designed by the community, for the community, and will be given to the community. Want to know more details about the design and concept ? Hear from the winner - Markus Eisele in his blog GlassFish City Revisited. So where do you get this t-shirt ? These t-shirts will be handed to the community members attending GlassFish Community Event (9/30, 11am - 1pm) and BoF (10/2, 6:30 pm). Other than the t-shirts, here are nine reasons to attend the community event. You need a JavaOne pass to attend this event so make sure to register for the conference. You don't necessarily need a full conference pass as any of the available options will do. Learn more about Java EE and GlassFish's presence at JavaOne 2012 at glassfish.org/javaone2012. Looking forward to see you at JavaOne!

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• Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-First

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-first.aspxThis is the second of two posts on some common strategies for approaching the job of writing tests.  The previous post covered test-after workflows where as this will focus on test-first.  Each workflow presented is a method of attack for adding tests to a project.  The more tools in your tool belt the better.  So here is a partial list of some test-first methodologies. Ping Pong Ping Pong is a methodology commonly used in pair programing.  One developer will write a new failing test.  Then they hand the keyboard to their partner.  The partner writes the production code to get the test passing.  The partner then writes the next test before passing the keyboard back to the original developer. The reasoning behind this testing methodology is to facilitate pair programming.  That is to say that this testing methodology shares all the benefits of pair programming, including ensuring multiple team members are familiar with the code base (i.e. low bus number). Test Blazer Test Blazing, in some respects, is also a pairing strategy.  The developers don’t work side by side on the same task at the same time.  Instead one developer is dedicated to writing tests at their own desk.  They write failing test after failing test, never touching the production code.  With these tests they are defining the specification for the system.  The developer most familiar with the specifications would be assigned this task. The next day or later in the same day another developer fetches the latest test suite.  Their job is to write the production code to get those tests passing.  Once all the tests pass they fetch from source control the latest version of the test project to get the newer tests. This methodology has some of the benefits of pair programming, namely lowering the bus number.  This can be good way adding an extra developer to a project without slowing it down too much.  The production coder isn’t slowed down writing tests.  The tests are in another project from the production code, so there shouldn’t be any merge conflicts despite two developers working on the same solution. This methodology is also a good test for the tests.  Can another developer figure out what system should do just by reading the tests?  This question will be answered as the production coder works there way through the test blazer’s tests. Test Driven Development (TDD) TDD is a highly disciplined practice that calls for a new test and an new production code to be written every few minutes.  There are strict rules for when you should be writing test or production code.  You start by writing a failing (red) test, then write the simplest production code possible to get the code working (green), then you clean up the code (refactor).  This is known as the red-green-refactor cycle. The goal of TDD isn’t the creation of a suite of tests, however that is an advantageous side effect.  The real goal of TDD is to follow a practice that yields a better design.  The practice is meant to push the design toward small, decoupled, modularized components.  This is generally considered a better design that large, highly coupled ball of mud. TDD accomplishes this through the refactoring cycle.  Refactoring is only possible to do safely when tests are in place.  In order to use TDD developers must be trained in how to look for and repair code smells in the system.  Through repairing these sections of smelly code (i.e. a refactoring) the design of the system emerges. For further information on TDD, I highly recommend the series “Is TDD Dead?”.  It discusses its pros and cons and when it is best used. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) Whereas TDD focuses on small unit tests that concentrate on a small piece of the system, Acceptance Tests focuses on the larger integrated environment.  Acceptance Tests usually correspond to user stories, which come directly from the customer. The unit tests focus on the inputs and outputs of smaller parts of the system, which are too low level to be of interest to the customer. ATDD generally uses the same tools as TDD.  However, ATDD uses fewer mocks and test doubles than TDD. ATDD often complements TDD; they aren’t competing methods.  A full test suite will usually consist of a large number of unit (created via TDD) tests and a smaller number of acceptance tests. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) BDD is more about audience than workflow.  BDD pushes the testing realm out towards the client.  Developers, managers and the client all work together to define the tests. Typically different tooling is used for BDD than acceptance and unit testing.  This is done because the audience is not just developers.  Tools using the Gherkin family of languages allow for test scenarios to be described in an English format.  Other tools such as MSpec or FitNesse also strive for highly readable behaviour driven test suites. Because these tests are public facing (viewable by people outside the development team), the terminology usually changes.  You can’t get away with the same technobabble you can with unit tests written in a programming language that only developers understand.  For starters, they usually aren’t called tests.  Usually they’re called “examples”, “behaviours”, “scenarios”, or “specifications”. This may seem like a very subtle difference, but I’ve seen this small terminology change have a huge impact on the acceptance of the process.  Many people have a bias that testing is something that comes at the end of a project.  When you say we need to define the tests at the start of the project many people will immediately give that a lower priority on the project schedule.  But if you say we need to define the specification or behaviour of the system before we can start, you’ll get more cooperation.   Keep these test-first and test-after workflows in your tool belt.  With them you’ll be able to find new opportunities to apply them.

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• Move exchange mailboxes cross forest

  - by Aceth

  Having a hard time migrating user mailboxes across 2 forests. I've set up ADMT 3.2, No dns issues and fully route-able between the domains etc. Have come to migrate user mailboxes and the exchange shell just comes back with ... [PS] C:New-MoveRequest -Identity "username" -TargetDatabase "maildb" -RemoteGlobalCatalog 'gdc.doman.local' -RemoteCredential (get-credential) -TargetDeliveryDomain 'sourcedomain.local' Parameter set cannot be resolved using the specified named parameters. + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [New-MoveRequest], ParameterBindingException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : AmbiguousParameterSet,New-MoveRequest We are running a mixed environment (windows server 2003 and up with exchange 2003 and exchange 2010 (different servers obviously)) as a source domain and full Server 2008 R2 servers in the target domain with only 1 exchange 2010 server. We have ran this command on the Exchange 2010 server on the target domain and when asked giving the credentials of an admin in source domain in the format : sourcedomain\source_administrator Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks Rhys

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• Databases in Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g is Here!

  - by chung.wu

  We hope that you enjoyed the launch event. If you missed it, you may still watch it via our on demand webcast, which is being produced and will be posted very shortly. 11gR1 is a major release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, and as one would expect from a big release, there are many new capabilities that appeal to a broad set of audience. Before going into the laundry list of new features, let's talk about the key themes for this release to put things in perspective. First, this release is about Business Driven Application Management. The traditional paradigm of component centric systems management simply cannot satisfy the management needs of modern distributed applications, as they do not provide adequate visibility of whether these applications are truly meeting the service level expectations of the business users. Business Driven Application Management helps IT manage applications according to the needs of the business users so that valuable IT resources can be better focused to help deliver better business results. To support Business Driven Application Management, 11gR1 builds on the work that we started in 10g to provide better support for user experience management. This capability helps IT better understand how users use applications and the experience that the applications provide so that IT can take actions to help end users get their work done more effectively. In addition, this release also delivers improved business transaction management capabilities to make it faster and easier to understand and troubleshoot transaction problems that impact end user experience. Second, this release includes strengthened Integrated Application-to-Disk Management. Every component of an application environment, from the application logic to the application server, to database, host machines and storage devices, etc... can affect end user experience. After user experience improvement needs are identified, IT needs tools that can be used do deep dive diagnostics for each of the application environment component, analyze configurations and deploy changes. Enterprise Manager 11gR1 extends coverage of key application environment components to include full support for Oracle Database 11gR2, Exadata V2, and Fusion Middleware 11g. For composite and Java application management, two key pieces of technologies, JVM Diagnostic and Composite Application Monitoring and Modeler, are now fully integrated into Enterprise Manager so there is no need to install and maintain separate tools. In addition, we have delivered the first set of integration between Enterprise Manager Grid Control and Enterprise Manager Ops Center so that hardware level events can be centrally monitored via Grid Control. Finally, this release delivers Integrated Systems Management and Support for customers of Oracle technologies. Traditionally, systems management tools and tech support were separate silos. When problems occur, administrators used internally deployed tools to try to solve the problems themselves. If they couldn't fix the problems, then they would use some sort of support website to get help from the vendor's support staff. Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g integrates problem diagnostic and remediation workflow. Administrators can use Oracle Enterprise Manager's various diagnostic tools to begin the troubleshooting process. They can also use the integrated access to My Oracle Support to look up solutions and download software patches. If further help is needed, administrators can open service requests from right within Oracle Enterprise Manager and track status update. Oracle's support staff, using Enterprise Manager's configuration management capabilities, can collect important configuration information about customer environments in order to expedite problem resolution. This tight integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support helps Oracle customers achieve a Superior Ownership Experience for their Oracle products. So there you have it. This is a brief 50,000 feet overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g. We know you are hungry for the details. We are going to write about it in the coming days and weeks. For those of you that absolutely can't wait to find out more, you may download our software to try it out today. In fact, for the first time ever, the initial release of Oracle Enterprise Manager is available for both 32 and 64 bit Linux. Additional O/S ports will arrive in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned on the Oracle Enterprise Manager blog for additional updates.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: Agility

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Agility in this context is defined as the ability to quickly develop and deploy an application. In theory, the speed at which your organization can develop and deploy an application on available hardware is identical to what you could deploy in a distributed environment. But in practice, this is not always the case. Having an option to use a distributed environment can be much faster for the deployment and even the development process. Implementation: When an organization designs code, they are essentially becoming a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to their own organization. To do that, the IT operations team becomes the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to the development teams. From there, the software is developed and deployed using an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. A simplified view of an ALM process is as follows: Requirements Analysis Design and Development Implementation Testing Deployment to Production Maintenance In an on-premise environment, this often equates to the following process map: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including physical plant, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to on-premise Testing servers. If no server capacity available, more resources procured through standard budgeting and ordering processes. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Server team involved to select platform and environments with available capacity. If no server capacity available, standard budgeting and procurement process followed. If no server capacity available, systems built, configured and put under standard organizational IT control. Systems configured for proper operating systems, patches, security and virus scans. System maintenance, HA/DR, backups and recovery plans configured and put into place. Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. In a distributed computing environment like Windows Azure, the process maps a bit differently: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including budget, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to Azure. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Code deployed to Azure. Point in time backup and recovery plans configured and put into place.(HA/DR and automated backups already present in Azure fabric) Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. This means that several steps can be removed or expedited. It also means that the business function requesting the application can be held directly responsible for the funding of that request, speeding the process further since the IT budgeting process may not be involved in the Azure scenario. An additional benefit is the “Azure Marketplace”, In effect this becomes an app store for Enterprises to select pre-defined code and data applications to mesh or bolt-in to their current code, possibly saving development time. Resources: Whitepaper download- What is ALM?  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743693  Whitepaper download - ALM and Business Strategy: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743690  LiveMeeting Recording on ALM and Windows Azure (registration required, but free): http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/visualstudio/contact-us.aspx?sbj=Developing with Windows Azure (ALM perspective) - 10:00-11:00 - 19th Jan 2011

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• SQL SERVER – Top 10 “Ease of Use” Features of expressor Studio

  - by pinaldave

  expressor Studio is new data integration platform that is being marketed as the most easy to use tool of its kind.  But “easy to use” can be a relative term – an expert can find a very complex system easy, but a beginner might be stumped.  A recent article online discussed exactly what makes expressor Studio so easy use, and here is my view on this subject. Simple Installation There is one pop-up for one .exe file, and nothing more.  You can’t get much simpler than this.  It is also in the familiar Windows design, so there should be no surprises. No 3rd party software dependency Have you ever tried to download software, only to be slowed down by the need to download a compatible system to run the program, and another to read the user manual, and so on?  expressor Studio was designed specifically to avoid this problem. Microsoft Office Like Ribbon Bar and Menus As mentioned before, everything is in the familiar Windows design, from the pop up windows to the tool bars and menus.  There should be no learning curve for using this program, or even simply trying to navigate around a new system. General Development Design Interface This software has been designed to be simple and straightforward.  Projects can be arranged in a simple “tree” design, that is totally collapsible and can easy be added to or “trimmed” with a click of a button.  It was meant to be logical and easy to follow. Integrated Contextual Help This is a fancy way of saying that you can practically yell “help!” if you do get stuck on something.  Solving a problem is as simple as highlighting and hitting F1 for contextual help. Visual Indicators and Messages Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly where something has gone wrong before trying to complete a project.  expressor Studio has a built in system to catch mistakes and highlight them in a bright color, flash a warning message, and even disable functions before you can continue – and possibly lose hours of work. Property Inputs and Selectors Every operator will have a list of requirements that need to be filled in.  But don’t worry; you won’t have to make stuff up to fill in the boxes.  Each one will have a drop-down menu with options to choose from – but not too many as to be confusing. Connection Wizards Configuring connections can be the hardest part of a project.  But not with the expressor Studioconnection wizard.  A familiar, Windows-style menu will walk you through connections so quickly you’ll forget what trouble it used to be. Templates With large, complex projects, a majority of your time is often spent simply setting up the files and inputting data.  But expressor Studio allows you to create one file and then save it as a template, saving you hours of boring data input. Extension Manager Let’s say that you need a little more functionality or some new features on your program. A lot of software requires you to download complex plug-ins that need to be decompressed and installed.  However, expressor Studio has extended its system to an Extension Manager, which allows for quick and easy installation of the functionality you need, without the need to download and decompress. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• Kanban Tools Review

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  The first two sessions on Sunday were Collaboration and why it is so hard and the following, which was a perfect following session was on Kanban.  While in that second session two online Saas Style Tools were mentioned; AgileZen and Leankit.  I decided right then and there that I would throw together some first impressions and setup some sample projects.  I did this by setting up an account and creating the projects. Agile Zen Account Creation Setting up the initial account required an e-mail verification, which is understandable.  Within a few seconds it was mailed out and I was logged in. Setting Up the Kanban Board The initial setup of the board was pretty easy.  I maybe clicked around an extra few times, but overall everything I needed to use the tool was immediately available.  The representation of everything was very similar to what one expects in a real Kanban Board too.  This is a HUGE plus, especially if a team is smart and places this tool in a centrally viewable area to allow for visibility. Each of the board items is just like a post it, being blue, grey, green, pink, or one of another few colors.  Dragging them onto each swim lane on the board was flawless, making changes through the work super easy and intuitive. The other thing I really liked about AgileZen is that the Kanban Board had the swim lanes setup immediately.  One can change them, but when you know you immediately need a Ready Lane, Working Lane, and a Complete Lane it is nice to just have them right in front of you in the interface.  In addition, the Backlog is simply a little tab on the left hand side.  This is perfect for the Backlog Queue.  Out of the way, with the focus on the primary items. Once  I got the items onto the board I was easily able to get back to the actual work at hand versus playing around with the tool.  The fact that it was so easy to use, fast and easy UX, and overall a great layout put me back to work on things I needed to do versus sitting a playing with the tool.  That, in the end is the key to using these tools. LeanKit Kanban Account Creation Setting up the account got me straight into the online tool.  This I thought was pretty cool. Setting Up the Kanban Board Setting up the Kanban Board within Leankit was a bit of trouble.  There were multiple UX issues in regard to process and intuitiveness.  The Leankit basically forces one to design the whole board first, making no assumptions about how the board should look.  The swim lanes in my humble opinion should be setup immediately without any manipulation with the most common lanes;  ready, working, and complete. The other UX hiccup that I had a problem with is that as soon as I managed to get the swim lanes into place, I wanted to remove the redundant Backlog Lane.  The Backlog Lane, or Backlog Bucket should be somewhere that I accidentally added as a lane.  Then on top of that I screwed up and added an item inside the lane, which then prevented me from deleting the lane.  I had to go back out of the lane manipulation, remove the item, and then remove the excess lane.  Summary Leankit wasn't a bad interface, it just wasn't as good as AgileZen.  The AgileZen interface was just better UX design overall.  AgileZen also presents a much better user interface graphical design all together.  It is much closer to what the Kanban Board would look like if it were a physical Kanban Board.  Since one of the HUGE reasons for Kanban is to increase visibility, the fact the design is similar to what a real Kanban Board is actually a pretty big deal. This is an image (click for larger) that shows the two Kanban Boards side by side.  The one on the left is AgileZen and the right is Leankit. Original Entry

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• InSync12 and Australia Visits: UX is Global, Regional, Everywhere!

  - by ultan o'broin

  I attended the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) and Quest International User Group's InSync12 event in Melbourne, Australia: the user group conference for Oracle products in the ANZ region. I demoed Oracle Fusion Applications and then presented how Oracle crafted the world class Fusion Apps user experience (UX). I explained about the Oracle user experience design pattern strategy of uptake for all apps, not just Fusion, and what our UX pattern externalization strategy means for customers, partners, and ADF developers. A great conference, lots of energy, the InSync12 highlights for me were Oracle's Senior Vice President Cliff Godwin’s fast-moving Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) roadshow with the killer Oracle Endeca user experience uptake, and Oracle ADF product outreachmeister Chris Muir’s (@chriscmuir) session on Oracle ADF Mobile solution and his hands-on mobile app development showing how existing ADF/JDev skills can build a secure, code once-deploy-to-many-device hybrid app solution in minutes. Cliff Godwin shows off the Oracle Endeca integration with Oracle E-Business Suite. Chris Muir talked the talk and then walked the walked with Oracle ADF Mobile. Applications UX was mixing it up with the crowd at InSync12 too, showing off cool mobile UX solutions, gathering data for future innovations, and engaging with EBS, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft apps customers and partners. User conferences such as InSync12 are an important part of our Oracle Applications UX user-centered design process, giving real apps users the opportunity to make real inputs and a way for us to watch and to listen to their needs and wants and get views on current and emerging UX too. Eric Stilan (@icondaddy) of Applications UX uses an iPad to gather feedback on the latest UX designs from conference attendees. While in Melbourne, I also visited impressive Oracle partner, Callista for a major ADF and UX pow-wow, and was the er, star of a very proactive event hosted by another partner Park Lane Information Technology (coordinated by Bambi Price (@bambiprice) of ODTUG) where I explained what UX is about, and how partner and customers can engage, participate and deploy that Applications UX scientific insight to advantage for their entire business. I also paired up with Oracle Australia in Sydney to visit key customers while there, and back at Oracle in Melbourne I spoke with sales consultants and account managers about regional opportunities and UX strategy, and came away with an understanding of what makes the Oracle market tick in Australia. Mobile worker solution development and user experience is hot news in Australia, and this was a great opportunity to team up with Chris Muir and show how the alignment of the twin stars of UX design patterns and ADF technology enables developers to make great-looking, usable apps that really sparkle. Our UX design patterns--or functional (UI) patterns, to use the developer world language--means that developers now have not only a great tool set to build apps on Oracle ADF/FMW but proven, tested usability solutions to solve common problems they can apply in the IDE too. In all, a whirlwind UX visit, packed with events and delivery opportunities, and all too short a time in the wonderful city of Melbourne. I need to get back there soon! For those who need a reminder, there's a website explaining how to get involved with, and participate in, Applications User Experience (including the Oracle Usability Advisory Board) events and programs. Thank you to AUSOUG, Quest, InSync, Callista, Park Lane IT, everyone at Oracle Australia, Chris Muir, and all the other people who came together to make this a productive visit. Stay tuned for more UX developments and engagements in the region on the Oracle VoX blog and Usable Apps website too!

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

  - by Tony Wolfram

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

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• Where can you find the Oracle Applications User Experience team in the next several months?

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Applications User ExperienceNovember is one of my favorite times of year at Oracle. The blast of OpenWorld work is over, and it’s time to get down to business and start taking our messages and our work on the road out to the user groups. We’re in the middle of planning all of that right now, so we decided to provide a snapshot of where you can see us and hear about the Oracle Applications User Experience – whether it’s Fusion Applications, PeopleSoft, or what we’re planning for the next-generation of Oracle Applications.On the road with Apps UX...In December, you can find us at UKOUG 2012 in Birmingham, UK: UKOUG, UK Oracle User Group Conference 2012?December 3 – 5, 2012?ICC, Birmingham, UKIn March, we will be at Alliance 2013 in Indianapolis, and our fingers are crossed for OBUG Connect 2013 in Antwerp:? Alliance 2013March 17 - 20, 2013 ?Indianapolis, IndianaOBUG Benelux Connect 2013?March 26, 2013?Antwerp, Belgium?? In April, you will see us at COLLABORATE13 in Denver:? Collaborate13April 7 - April 11, 2013 ?Denver, Colorado?? And in June, we round out the kick-off to summer at OHUG 2013 in Dallas and Kscope13 in New Orleans:? OHUG 2013June 9 -13, 2013?Dallas, Texas ODTUG Kscope13?June 23-27, 2013 ?New Orleans, LA? The Labs & DemosAs always, a hallmark of our team is our mobile usability labs. If you haven’t seen them, they are a great way for customers and partners to get a peek at what Oracle is working on next, and a chance for you to provide your candid perspective. Based on the interest and enthusiasm from customers last year at Collaborate, we are adding more demo-stations to our user group presence in the year ahead. If you want to see some of the work we are doing first-hand but don’t have a lot of time, the demo stations are a great way to get a quick update on the latest wow-factor we are researching. I can promise that you will see whatever we think is new and interesting at the demo stations first. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Apps UX DemostationFor Applications DevelopersMore and more, I get asked the question, “How do I build an application that looks like a Fusion?” My answer is Fusion Applications Design Patterns. You can find out more about how Fusion Applications developers can leverage ADF and the user experience best practices we developed for Fusion at sessions lead by Ultan O’Broin, Director of Global User Experience, in the year ahead. Ultan O'Broin, On Fusion Design Patterns Building mobile applications are also top of mind these days. If you want to understand how Oracle is approaching this strategy, check out our session on Mobile user experience design patterns with Mobile ADF.  In many cases, this will be presented by Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences, and in a few cases our ever-ready traveler Ultan O’Broin will be on deck. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, on Mobile User Experience Design PatternsApplications User ExperiencesFusion Applications continues to evolve, and you will see the new face of Fusion Applications at our executive sessions in the year ahead, which are led by vice president Jeremy Ashley or a hand-picked presenter, such as one of our Fusion User Experience Advocates.  Edward Roske, CEO InterRel Consulting & Fusion User Experience AdvocateAs always, our strategy is to take our lessons learned and spread them across the Applications product lines. A great example is the enhancements coming in the PeopleSoft user experience, which you can hear about from Harris Kravatz, Senior Manager, PeopleSoft User Experience. Fusion Applications ExtensibilityWe can’t talk about Fusion Applications without talking about how to make it look like your business. If tailoring Fusion applications is a question in your mind, and it should be, you should hit one of these sessions. These sessions will be lead by our own Killian Evers, Senior Director, Tim Dubois, User Experience Architect, and some well-trained Fusion User Experience Advocates.Find out moreIf you want to stay on top of where and when we will be, you can always sign up for our newsletter or check out the events page of usableapps.

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• How Do You Actually Model Data?

  Since the 1970’s Developers, Analysts and DBAs have been able to represent concepts and relations in the form of data through the use of generic symbols.  But what is data modeling?  The first time I actually heard this term I could not understand why anyone would want to display a computer on a fashion show runway. Hey, what do you expect? At that time I was a freshman in community college, and obviously this was a long time ago.  I have since had the chance to learn what data modeling truly is through using it. Data modeling is a process of breaking down information and/or requirements in to common categories called objects. Once objects start being defined then relationships start to form based on dependencies found amongst other existing objects.  Currently, there are several tools on the market that help data designer actually map out objects and their relationships through the use of symbols and lines.  These diagrams allow for designs to be review from several perspectives so that designers can ensure that they have the optimal data design for their project and that the design is flexible enough to allow for potential changes and/or extension in the future. Additionally these basic models can always be further refined to show different levels of details depending on the target audience through the use of three different types of models. Conceptual Data Model(CDM)Conceptual Data Models include all key entities and relationships giving a viewer a high level understanding of attributes. Conceptual data model are created by gathering and analyzing information from various sources pertaining to a project during the typical planning phase of a project. Logical Data Model (LDM)Logical Data Models are conceptual data models that have been expanded to include implementation details pertaining to the data that it will store. Additionally, this model typically represents an origination’s business requirements and business rules by defining various attribute data types and relationships regarding each entity. This additional information can be directly translated to the Physical Data Model which reduces the actual time need to implement it. Physical Data Model(PDMs)Physical Data Model are transformed Logical Data Models that include the necessary tables, columns, relationships, database properties for the creation of a database. This model also allows for considerations regarding performance, indexing and denormalization that are applied through database rules, data integrity. Further expanding on why we actually use models in modern application/database development can be seen in the benefits that data modeling provides for data modelers and projects themselves, Benefits of Data Modeling according to Applied Information Science Abstraction that allows data designers remove concepts and ideas form hard facts in the form of data. This gives the data designers the ability to express general concepts and/or ideas in a generic form through the use of symbols to represent data items and the relationships between the items. Transparency through the use of data models allows complex ideas to be translated in to simple symbols so that the concept can be understood by all viewpoints and limits the amount of confusion and misunderstanding. Effectiveness in regards to tuning a model for acceptable performance while maintaining affordable operational costs. In addition it allows systems to be built on a solid foundation in terms of data. I shudder at the thought of a world without data modeling, think about it? Data is everywhere in our lives. Data modeling allows for optimizing a design for performance and the reduction of duplication. If one was to design a database without data modeling then I would think that the first things to get impacted would be database performance due to poorly designed database and there would be greater chances of unnecessary data duplication that would also play in to the excessive query times because unneeded records would need to be processed. You could say that a data designer designing a database is like a box of chocolates. You will never know what kind of database you will get until after it is built.

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• Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management (SCM) Designs May Improve End User Productivity

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Applications User Experience on March 10, 2011 Michele Molnar, Senior Usability Engineer, Applications User Experience The Challenge: The SCM User Experience team, in close collaboration with product management and strategy, completely redesigned the user experience for Oracle Fusion applications. One of the goals of this redesign was to increase end user productivity by applying design patterns and guidelines and incorporating findings from extensive usability research. But a question remained: How do we know that the Oracle Fusion designs will actually increase end user productivity? The Test: To answer this question, the SCM Usability Engineers compared Oracle Fusion designs to their corresponding existing Oracle applications using the workflow time analysis method. The workflow time analysis method breaks tasks into a sequence of operators. By applying standard time estimates for all of the operators in the task, an estimate of the overall task time can be calculated. The workflow time analysis method has been recently adopted by the Applications User Experience group for use in predicting end user productivity. Using this method, a design can be tested and refined as needed to improve productivity even before the design is coded. For the study, we selected some of our recent designs for Oracle Fusion Product Information Management (PIM). The designs encompassed tasks performed by Product Managers to create, manage, and define products for their organization. (See Figure 1 for an example.) In applying this method, the SCM Usability Engineers collaborated with Product Management to compare the new Oracle Fusion Applications designs against Oracle’s existing applications. Together, we performed the following activities: Identified the five most frequently performed tasks Created detailed task scenarios that provided the context for each task Conducted task walkthroughs Analyzed and documented the steps and flow required to complete each task Applied standard time estimates to the operators in each task to estimate the overall task completion time Figure 1. The interactions on each Oracle Fusion Product Information Management screen were documented, as indicated by the red highlighting. The task scenario and script provided the context for each task.  The Results: The workflow time analysis method predicted that the Oracle Fusion Applications designs would result in productivity gains in each task, ranging from 8% to 62%, with an overall productivity gain of 43%. All other factors being equal, the new designs should enable these tasks to be completed in about half the time it takes with existing Oracle Applications. Further analysis revealed that these performance gains would be achieved by reducing the number of clicks and screens needed to complete the tasks. Conclusions: Using the workflow time analysis method, we can expect the Oracle Fusion Applications redesign to succeed in improving end user productivity. The workflow time analysis method appears to be an effective and efficient tool for testing, refining, and retesting designs to optimize productivity. The workflow time analysis method does not replace usability testing with end users, but it can be used as an early predictor of design productivity even before designs are coded. We are planning to conduct usability tests later in the development cycle to compare actual end user data with the workflow time analysis results. Such results can potentially be used to validate the productivity improvement predictions. Used together, the workflow time analysis method and usability testing will enable us to continue creating, evaluating, and delivering Oracle Fusion designs that exceed the expectations of our end users, both in the quality of the user experience and in productivity. (For more information about studying productivity, refer to the Measuring User Productivity blog.)

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• Reducing Deadlocks - not a DBA issue ?

  - by steveh99999

   As a DBA, I'm involved on an almost daily basis troubleshooting 'SQL Server' performance issues. Often, this troubleshooting soon veers away from a 'its a SQL Server issue' to instead become a wider application/database design/coding issue.One common perception with SQL Server is that deadlocking is an application design issue - and is fixed by recoding...  I see this reinforced by MCP-type questions/scenarios where the answer to prevent deadlocking is simply to change the order in code in which tables are accessed....Whilst this is correct, I do think this has led to a situation where many 'operational' or 'production support' DBAs, when faced with a deadlock, are happy to throw the issue over to developers without analysing the issue further....A couple of 'war stories' on deadlocks which I think are interesting :- Case One , I had an issue recently on a third-party application that I support on SQL 2008.  This particular third-party application has an unusual support agreement where the customer is allowed to change the index design on the third-party provided database.  However, we are not allowed to alter application code or modify table structure..This third-party application is also known to encounter occasional deadlocks – indeed, I have documentation from the vendor that up to 50 deadlocks per day is not unusual !So, as a DBA I have to support an application which in my opinion has too many deadlocks - but, I cannot influence the design of the tables or stored procedures for the application. This should be the classic - blame the third-party developers scenario, and hope this issue gets addressed in a future application release - ie we could wait years for this to be resolved and implemented in our production environment...But, as DBAs  can change the index layout, is there anything I could do still to reduce the deadlocks in the application ?I initially used SQL traceflag 1222 to write deadlock detection output to the SQL Errorlog – using this I was able to identify one table heavily involved in the deadlocks.When I examined the table definition, I was surprised to see it was a heap – ie no clustered index existed on the table.Using SQL profiler to see locking behaviour and plan for the query involved in the deadlock, I was able to confirm a table scan was being performed.By creating an appropriate clustered index - it was possible to produce a more efficient plan and locking behaviour.So, less locks, held for less time = less possibility of deadlocks. I'm still unhappy about the overall number of deadlocks on this system - but that's something to be discussed further with the vendor.Case Two,  a system which hadn't changed for months suddenly started seeing deadlocks on a regular basis. I love the 'nothing's changed' scenario, as it gives me the opportunity to appear wise and say 'nothings changed on this system, except the data'.. This particular deadlock occurred on a table which had been growing rapidly. By using DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS - the DBA team were able to see that the deadlocks seemed to be occurring shortly after auto-update stats had regenerated the table statistics using it's default sampling behaviour.As a quick fix, we were able to schedule a nightly UPDATE STATISTICS WITH FULLSCAN on the table involved in the deadlock - thus, greatly reducing the potential for stats to be updated via auto_update_stats, consequently reducing the potential for a bad plan to be generated based on an unrepresentative sample of the data. This reduced the possibility of a deadlock occurring.  Not a perfect solution by any means, but quick, easy to implement, and needed no application code changes. This fix gave us some 'breathing space'  to properly fix the code during the next scheduled application release.   The moral of this post - don't dismiss deadlocks as issues that can only be fixed by developers...

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