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• Making it GREAT! Oracle Partners Building Apps Workshop with UX and ADF in UK

  - by ultan o'broin

  Yes, making is what it's all about. This time, Oracle Partners in the UK were making great looking usable apps with the Oracle Applications Development Framework (ADF) and user experience (UX) toolkit. And what an energy-packed and productive event at the Oracle UK, Thames Valley Park, location it was. Partners learned the fundamentals of enterprise applications UX, why it's important, all about visual design, how to wireframe designs, and then how to build their already-proven designs in ADF. There was a whole day on mobile apps, learning about mobile design principles, free mobile UX and ADF resources from Oracle, and then trying it out. The workshop wrapped up with the latest Release 7 simplified UIs, Mobilytics, and other innovations from Oracle, and a live demo of a very neat ADF Mobile Android app built by an Oracle contractor. And, what a fun two days both Grant Ronald of ADF and myself had in running the workshop with such a great audience, too! I particularly enjoyed the wireframing and visual design sessions interaction; and seeing some outstanding work done by partners. Of note from the UK workshop were innovative design features not seen before and made me all the happier that developers were bringing their own ideas from the consumer IT world of mobility, simplicity, and social to the world of work apps in a smart way within an enterprise methodology too.  Partner wireframe exercise. Applying mobile design principles and UX design patterns means you've already productively making great usable apps! Next, over to Oracle ADF Mobile with it! One simple example from the design of a mobile field service app was that participants immediately saw how the UX and device functionality of the super UK-based app Hailo app could influence their designs (the London cabbie influence maybe?), as well as how we all use maps, cameras, barcode scanners and microphones on our phones could be used in work. And, of course, ADF Mobile has the device integration solutions there too! I wonder will U.S. workshops in Silicon Valley see an Uber UX influence (LOL)! That we also had partners experienced with Oracle Forms who could now offer a roadmap from Forms to Simplified UI and Mobile using ADF, and do it through through the cloud, really made this particular workshop go "ZING!" for me. Many thanks to the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) team for organizing this event with us, and to the representatives of the Oracle Partners that showed and participated so well. That's what I love out this outreach. It's a two-way, solid value-add for all. Interested? Why would partners and developers with ADF skills sign up for this workshop? Here's why: Learn to use the Oracle Applications User Experience design patterns as the usability building blocks for applications development in Oracle Application Development Framework. The workshop enables attendees to build modern and visually compelling desktop and mobile applications that look and behave like Oracle Cloud Applications, and that can co-exist with partner integrations, new, or existing applications deployments. Partners learn to offer customers and clients more than just coded functionality; instead they can provide a complete user experience with a roadmap for continued ROI from applications that also creating more business and attracts the kudos and respect from other makers of apps as they're wowed by the results. So, if you're a partner and interested in attending one of these workshops and benefitting from such learning, as well as having a platform to show off some of your own work, stay well tuned to your OPN channels, to this blog, to the VoX blog, and to the @usableapps Twitter account too. Can't wait? For developers and partners, some key mobile resources to explore now Oracle ADF Mobile UX Patterns and Components Wiki Oracle ADF Academy (Mobile) Oracle ADF Insider Essentials Oracle Applications Mobile User Experience Design Patterns and Guidance

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• Cloud – the forecast is improving

  - by Rob Farley

  There is a lot of discussion about “the cloud”, and how that affects people’s data stories. Today the discussion enters the realm of T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by Jorge Segarra. Over the years, companies have invested a lot in making sure that their data is good, and I mean every aspect of it – the quality of it, the security of it, the performance of it, and more. Experts such as those of us at LobsterPot Solutions have helped these companies with this, and continue to work with clients to make sure that data is a strong part of their business, not an oversight. Whether business intelligence systems are being utilised or not, every business needs to be able to rely on its data, and have the confidence in it. Data should be a foundation upon which a business is built. In the past, data had been stored in paper-based systems. Filing cabinets stored vital information. Today, people have server rooms with storage of various kinds, recognising that filing cabinets don’t necessarily scale particularly well. It’s easy to ‘lose’ data in a filing cabinet, when you have people who need to make sure that the sheets of paper are in the right spot, and that you know how things are stored. Databases help solve that problem, but still the idea of a large filing cabinet continues, it just doesn’t involve paper. If something happens to the physical ‘filing cabinet’, then the problems are larger still. Then the data itself is under threat. Many clients have generators in case the power goes out, redundant cables in case the connectivity dies, and spare servers in other buildings just in case they’re required. But still they’re maintaining filing cabinets. You see, people like filing cabinets. There’s something to be said for having your data ‘close’. Even if the data is not in readable form, living as bits on a disk somewhere, the idea that its home is ‘in the building’ is comforting to many people. They simply don’t want to move their data anywhere else. The cloud offers an alternative to this, and the human element is an obstacle. By leveraging the cloud, companies can have someone else look after their filing cabinet. A lot of people really don’t like the idea of this, partly because the administrators of the data, those people who could potentially log in with escalated rights and see more than they should be allowed to, who need to be trusted to respond if there’s a problem, are now a faceless entity in the cloud. But this doesn’t mean that the cloud is bad – this is simply a concern that some people may have. In new functionality that’s on its way, we see other hybrid mechanisms that mean that people can leverage parts of the cloud with less fear. Companies can use cloud storage to hold their backup data, for example, backups that have been encrypted and are therefore not able to be read by anyone (including administrators) who don’t have the right password. Companies can have a database instance that runs locally, but which has its data files in the cloud, complete with Transparent Data Encryption if needed. There can be a higher level of control, making the change easier to accept. Hybrid options allow people who have had fears (potentially very justifiable) to take a new look at the cloud, and to start embracing some of the benefits of the cloud (such as letting someone else take care of storage, high availability, and more) without losing the feeling of the data being close. @rob_farley

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• Auto-organized / smart inventory system?

  - by VeXe

  for the past week I've been working on an inventory system with Unity3D. At first I got help from the guys at Design3 but it wasn't too long till we split path, because I really didn't like the way they did their code, it didn't have any smell of OOP whatsoever. I took it further steps ahead - items take more than one slot, advanced placement system (items tries their best to find the best close fit), local mouse system (mouse gets trapped in active bag area), etc. Here's a demo of my work. What we would like to have in our game, is an auto-organizing feature - not auto-sort. We want this feature because our inventory's going to be in 'real-time' - not like in Resident Evil 1,2,3 etc where you would pause the game and do things in your inventory. Now imagine your self in a sticky situation surrounded by zombies, and you don't have bullets, you look around, you see that there are bullets nearby on the ground, so you go for them and try to pick them up, but they don't fit! you look at your inventory and find out that if you reorganize some of the items, it will fit! - now the player - in that situation doesn't have time to reorganize because he's surrounded with zombies and will die if he stops and organizes the inventory to make space (remember inventory in real-time, no pausing) - wouldn't it be nice for that to happen automatically? - Yes! (I believe this has been implemented in some games like Dungeon siege or something, so sure it's doable) take a look at this picture for example: Yes, so if you auto-sort the issue you will get your spaces but it's bad because: 1- Expensive: it doesn't need a whole sort operation to free those spaces, in the first picture, just slide the red item at the bottom to the very left, and you get the same spaces that you got from the auto-sort. 2- It's annoying to the player: "Who the F told you to re-order my stuff?" I'm not asking for "How to write the code" for this, I'm just asking for some guidance, where to look, what algorithms are involved? Is this something related to graphs and shortest path stuff? I hope not cuz I didn't manage to continue my college studies :/ But even if it is, just tell me and I will learn the stuff related. Notice there could be more than just one solution. So I guess the first thing I have to do is figure out if the situation is 'solvable' - if I know how to determine if a situation is solvable or not, then I can 'solve' it. I just need to know the conditions that makes it 'solvable'. And I believe there must be some algorithm/data structure for this. Here's a pic for more than one solution of trying to fit a 1x3 item: The arrows show just one of the solutions, but if you look you will find more than one. This is what I ultimately not auto-sorting but find a solution and applying it. Note that if I spend time on it I will come up with a way to solve it, but it wouldn't be the best way, it's like, holding a car wheel with your feet instead of your hands! XD Or just like trying to solve an issue that requires arrays, but you're not yet aware of their existence! So what is the right approach to this? Hope somebody helps, thanks a lot in advance :)

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• Free hosting solution for a very low-traffic website [duplicate]

  - by user966939

  This question already has an answer here: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? 4 answers I run a very low-traffic website (about 40 users, basically all of which are daily active on the site). I don't see it changing anytime soon either, as there is no way to sign up on the site right now. Until now I have just been using a sub-directory on a friend's host (shared), to host the web site. But in only a few weeks from now, his subscription will end, and he has no plans on renewing it. So of course this means I'll have to move on to something else. But I don't think I'll find someone who'd be willing to share a... shared host with me again. And besides, the software used on that server is ancient (PHP 4.4.9 + MySQL 4.1.22). There's one obvious solution that comes to mind, I guess: choose a better host and pay for it myself. The problem here is that I have no real fixed income, as I'm only a student. So even if the pricing is dirt cheap, I just can't be certain I will be able to afford it, every single month, for... at least 2 years maybe? So I've looked at free hosting solutions instead. The least requirement I had was that it was completely free of ads. But no matter where I look, I always find something in a corner or two ("what can you expect from a free host?" - yeah I know, but I guess it was worth a shot). For example, on Byethost (one of the free hosts I tried), if you trigger a PHP error while error reporting is set to E_ALL, you will spawn some hidden ad... Besides Byethost, I've tried 000Webhost, x10Hosting, 2Freehosting/1Freehosting, Wink.ws, and they are only worse. Okay, I'm running low on ideas. But! What if I just hosted the site myself, on my own computer? That could work. I actually do have my computer on practically 24/7. But not really. Sometimes I need to reboot it, and sometimes we even have power outages. And what if the hardware needs an upgrade? It's not such a big deal for me if the site went down, because I know what's going on; but what about the users? If I do decide to host it myself, is there some way to show users an alternate page instead of them just seeing a generic "server not found" page in the browser when the site is not accessible? Or is there something I have been missing out on? Is there a different kind of "web hosting" solution out there that I haven't heard of? Here is what I'm really looking for: Free (as in, no costs) NO ads Bandwidth enough for a low-traffic forum with roughly 40 users (Semi-)Up-to-date PHP and MySQL (at least not older than a year) No standard (non-extension) PHP functions turned off - such as sleep() The mbstring extension is enabled Disk space: at least 5 MB At least one MySQL database Some bonus points would be: Max execution time of PHP scripts can be set Remote access to MySQL database What would be the best solution for me? Is there one?

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• Monitoring Windows Azure Service Bus Endpoint with BizTalk 360?

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I'm currently working with a customer who is undergoing an initiative to expose some of their line of business applications to external partners and SAAS applications and as part of this we have been looking at using the Windows Azure Service Bus. For the first part of the project we were focused on some synchronous request response scenarios where an external application would use the Service Bus relay functionality to get data from some internal applications. When we were looking at the operational monitoring side of the solution it was obvious that although most of the normal server monitoring capabilities would be required for the on premise components we would have to look at new approaches to validate that the operation of the service from outside of the organization was working as expected. A number of months ago one of my colleagues Elton Stoneman wrote about an approach I have introduced with a number of clients in the past where we implement a diagnostics service in each service component we build. This service would allow us to make a call which would flex some of the working parts of the system to prove it was working within any SLA. This approach is discussed on the following article: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2011/12/12/the-value-of-a-diagnostics-service.aspx In our solution we wanted to take the same approach but we had to consider that the service clients were external to the service. We also had to consider that by going through Windows Azure Service Bus it's not that easy to make most of your standard monitoring solutions just give you an easy way to do this. In a previous article I have described how you can use BizTalk 360 to monitor things using a custom extension to the Web Endpoint Manager and I felt that we could use this approach to provide an excellent way to monitor our service bus endpoint. The previous article is available on the following link: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2012/09/12/150696.aspx   The Monitoring Solution BizTalk 360 currently has an easy way to hook up the endpoint manager to a url which it will then call and if a successful response is returned it then considers the endpoint to be in a healthy state. We would take advantage of this by creating an ASP.net web page which would be called by BizTalk 360 and behind this page we would implement the functionality to call the diagnostics service on our Service Bus endpoint. The ASP.net page could include logic to work out how to handle the response from the diagnostics service. For example if the overall result of the diagnostics service was successful but the call to the diagnostics service was longer than a certain amount of time then we could return an error and indicate the service is taking too long. The following diagram illustrates the monitoring pattern.   The diagnostics service which is hosted in the line of business application allows us to ping a simple message through the Azure Service Bus relay to the WCF services in the LOB application and we they get a response back indicating that the service is working fine. To implement this I used the exact same approach I described in my previous post to create a custom web page which calls the diagnostics service and then it would return an HTTP response code which would depend on the error condition returned or a 200 if it was successful. One of the limitations of this approach is that the competing consumer pattern for listening to messages from service bus means that you cannot guarantee which server would process your diagnostics check message but with BizTalk 360 you could simply add multiple endpoint checks so that it could access the individual on-premise web servers directly to ensure that each server is working fine and then check that messages can also be processed through the cloud. Conclusion It took me about 15 minutes to get a proof of concept of this up and running which was able to monitor our web services which had been exposed via Windows Azure Service Bus. I was then able to inherit all of the monitoring benefits of BizTalk 360 to provide an enterprise class monitoring solution for our cloud enabled API.

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• WF4 &ndash; Guess the number game!

  - by MarkPearl

  I posted yesterday how really good WF4 was looking. Today I thought I would show some real basics that I was able to figure out. This will be a simple example, I am going to make a flowchart workflow – which will prompt the user to guess the number until they guess the right number. Lets begin… Make a new project and make it a Workflow console Application. Then select the Workflow file and drag a FlowChart (2) to point 3. This will now show a green start circle in the designer form. We are going to work with primitives to start with. We are now going to drag a few objects onto the Workflow, We drag the WriteLine, Assign & Decision items onto the designer. Once they are dragged onto the designer we will want to link them up. The order that they are linked is critical since this will determine the order of the solution. In this case, we want the system to first ask “Guess a number”, then to wait for the user to input some code, and then to display “You got it” if they got it right, and “Try again” if they got it wrong. So we now link the arrows to the objects. This is done by moving the mouse pointer over the start objects and clicking on one of the toggles and then dragging it to the next object and releasing the button over one of the toggles. This will place an arrow from the source object to the target object. Okay… pretty simple stuff – now we just need these primitive objects to do stuff. Lets start with the WriteLine primitive. We place the text in inverted commas in the Text field. Because this field accepts any valid VB expression we could have put variables etc. in there if we wanted to. The next thing we want to do is allow the user to input a number. This brings up an interesting problem, if a user were to type in a number, there would need to be someway to declare a variable to hold that value for the life of the workflow. We can achieve this by declaring a variable. To declare a variable, move your cursor over the variables tab at the bottom of the workflow, and then type the name of the new variable in the “Create Variable” field and set it as shown in the image above. Now that we have a variable, we want to call the Console.Readline method and assign the inputted value from the Console to that variable. The code that cannot be seen is actually this – Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine()) We now have a workflow that first prompts the user for a number, then allows the user to type in a number. We are almost done, we just need to make the system react to the value inputted. There are a few ways we could do this, I am going to use the Decision item. So select the Decision object on the designer and then view its properties (F4 for me), and in the condition field place a condition. For simplicity sake I have decided that if the user guesses 10, they will have guessed the number. This is now the completed workflow. Its really easy to understand and shows some really powerful principles for Business applications. You can run the application and see what it does. Imagine writing business solutions that do not worry about the exact flow of objects, but simply allows a business analyst or someone to configure the solution to work exactly as the business rules would dictate. And if the rules changed six months later all they would need to do is re-drag some of the flows. Now I do not know if WF4 will allow for this, but it feels like it is a step in the right direct.

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• Oracle Executive Strategy Brief: Enterprise-Grade Cloud Applications

  - by B Shashikumar

  Cloud Computing has clearly evolved into one of the dominant secular trends in the industry. Organizations are looking to the cloud to change how they buy and consume IT. And its no longer about just lower up-front costs. The cloud promises to deliver greater agility and free up resources to focus on innovation versus running and maintaining systems. But are organizations actually realizing these benefits? The full promise of cloud is not being realized by customers who entrust their business to multiple niche cloud providers. While almost 9 out of 10 companies  expect more IT agility with cloud, only 47% are actually getting it (Source: 2011 State of Cloud Survey by Symantec). These niche cloud customers have also seen the promises of lower costs, efficiency gains, improved security, and compliance go unfulfilled. Having one cloud provider for customer relationship management (CRM) and another for human capital management (HCM), and then trying to glue these proprietary systems together while integrating to a back-office financial system can add to complexity and long-term costs. Completing a business process or generating an integrated report is cumbersome, and leverages incomplete data. Why can’t niche cloud providers deliver on the full promise of cloud? It’s simple: you still need to complete business processes. You still need reporting that enables you to take action using data from multiple systems. You still have to comply with SOX and other industry regulations. These requirements don’t go away just because you deploy in the cloud. Delivering lower up-front costs by enabling customers to buy software as a service (SaaS) is the easy part. To get real value that lasts longer than your quarterly report, it’s important to realize the benefits of cloud without compromising on functionality and while having the right level of control and flexibility. This is the true promise of cloud. Oracle’s cloud strategy centers around delivering the benefits of cloud—without compromise. We uniquely empower our customers with complete solutions and choice. From the richest functionality to integrated reporting and great user experience. It’s all available in the cloud. And it works not just with other Oracle cloud applications, but with your existing Oracle and third-party systems as well. This helps protect your current investments and extend their value as you journey to the cloud. We’ve made the necessary investments not only in our applications but also in the underlying technology that makes it all run—from the platform down to the hardware and operating system. We make it all. And we’ve engineered it to work together and be highly optimized for our customers, in the cloud. With Oracle enterprise-grade cloud applications, you get the benefits of cloud plus more power, more choice, and more confidence. Read more about how you can realize the true advantage of Cloud with Oracle Enterprise-grade Cloud applications in the Oracle Executive Strategy Brief here.  You can also attend an Oracle Cloud Conference event at a city near you. Register here. 

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• Options for different domain and hosting

  - by Carl

  The situation I have a hosting service (one.com) on which I have installed a wordpress.org site in a subdirectory 'wordpress': myhost.com/wordpress/ (myhost.com is actually my own domain, but it already has contents and I don't want wordpress/ to appear in the root of that domain.) I want to use a second domain for this site. Thinking I would be able to forward to the wordpress site without problems, I registered the domain at GoDaddy.com: mydomain.com What I want So when my visitors type in mydomaind.com, I want them to see the contents on myhost.com/wordpress/, and the same for all subpages (mydomain.com/a/subpage fetches from myhost.com/wordpress/a/subpage). Just a redirect isn't enough, I want my visitors to see only mydomain.com as their domain. Some notes If I set up forward with URL masking at GoDaddy, they just give a full frame, pointing to myhost.com/wordpress/. This isn't good enough for me, since mydomain.com will always show up in the adress bar, also for subpages (I want mydomain/a/subpage to show in the adress bar for a subpage). I believe this could in principle be done with a .htaccess file with URL rewriting, but I have no hosting with GoDaddy so I can't upload such a file there. Hosting with GoDaddy is very expensive (of course) so I don't want to do that. I don't think I can use DNS settings; the host of mydomain.com says they don't allow anyone else to point to their name servers. If possible, I wouldn't want to re-install the wordpress site, it would take quite some time. I'd prefer to keep it at myhost.com/wordpress/ (if possible) Anything involving transferring the domain is supposed to take 5-7 working days. I would need my site up-and-running earlier than that, so I'd like to avoid it if possible. Am I locked in? As it seems, I am rather locked-in with GoDaddy. I can't use the domain with .htaccess since I can't upload such a file (and won't pay for hosting by GoDaddy). I can't use any of their forward options since none of them do what I want (one just forwards, the one that masks the URL does it with frames). Would you agree? Possible solutions Transfer the domain to any hosting service with reasonable hosting pricing, as opposed to GoDaddy (I'd probably use one.com, the same host as for myhost.com, in that case), and there either re-install wordpress on the new account, or use .htaccess with URL rewrite on the new account to fetch the contents from myhost.com/wordpress/. Can this be set-up to work with sub-pages as well? And visitors won't ever see "myhost.com/wordpress", just "mydomain.com"? E.i., mydomain.com/a/subpage/ wold fetch from myhost.com/wordpress/a/subpage/? This might be a long shot but: Find some free (preferrably) hosting allowing to point to their nameservers Make DNS settings at GoDaddy so that my domain appears at the site above at that site, put a .htaccess file with URL rewriting to forward to myhost.com/wordpress/ Could this be possible? What services could I use in that case? As I see it, this would be the only way not to have to transfer a domain (taking 5-7 working days) and not having to re-install the wordpress site. Sorry for the long question. All info and ideas are welcome.

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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery - Part 2

  - by Bob Zurek

  As discussed in my last blog posting on this topic, Information Discovery, a core capability of the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery solution enables businesses to search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. With search as a core advanced capabilities of our product it is important to understand some of the key differences and capabilities in the underlying data store of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery and that is our Endeca Server. In the last post on this subject, we talked about Exploratory Search capabilities along with support for cascading relevance. Additional search capabilities in the Endeca Server, which differentiate from simple keyword based "search boxes" in other Information Discovery products also include: The Endeca Server Supports Set Search.  The Endeca Server is organized around set retrieval, which means that it looks at groups of results (all the documents that match a search), as well as the relationship of each individual result to the set. Other approaches only compute the relevance of a document by comparing the document to the search query – not by comparing the document to all the others. For example, a search for “U.S.” in another approach might match to the title of a document and get a high ranking. But what if it were a collection of government documents in which “U.S.” appeared in many titles, making that clue less meaningful? A set analysis would reveal this and be used to adjust relevance accordingly. The Endeca Server Supports Second-Order Relvance. Unlike simple search interfaces in traditional BI tools, which provide limited relevance ranking, such as a list of results based on key word matching, Endeca enables users to determine the most salient terms to divide up the result. Determining this second-order relevance is the key to providing effective guidance. Support for Queries and Filters. Search is the most common query type, but hardly complete, and users need to express a wide range of queries. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery also includes navigation, interactive visualizations, analytics, range filters, geospatial filters, and other query types that are more commonly associated with BI tools. Unlike other approaches, these queries operate across structured, semi-structured and unstructured content stored in the Endeca Server. Furthermore, this set is easily extensible because the core engine allows for pluggable features to be added. Like a search engine, queries are answered with a results list, ranked to put the most likely matches first. Unlike “black box” relevance solutions, which generalize one strategy for everyone, we believe that optimal relevance strategies vary across domains. Therefore, it provides line-of-business owners with a set of relevance modules that let them tune the best results based on their content. The Endeca Server query result sets are summarized, which gives users guidance on how to refine and explore further. Summaries include Guided Navigation® (a form of faceted search), maps, charts, graphs, tag clouds, concept clusters, and clarification dialogs. Users don’t explicitly ask for these summaries; Oracle Endeca Information Discovery analytic applications provide the right ones, based on configurable controls and rules. For example, the analytic application might guide a procurement agent filtering for in-stock parts by visualizing the results on a map and calculating their average fulfillment time. Furthermore, the user can interact with summaries and filters without resorting to writing complex SQL queries. The user can simply just click to add filters. Within Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, all parts of the summaries are clickable and searchable. We are living in a search driven society where business users really seem to enjoy entering information into a search box. We do this everyday as consumers and therefore, we have gotten used to looking for that box. However, the key to getting the right results is to guide that user in a way that provides additional Discovery, beyond what they may have anticipated. This is why these important and advanced features of search inside the Endeca Server have been so important. They have helped to guide our great customers to success. 

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• Thinking Local, Regional and Global

  - by Apeksha Singh-Oracle

  The FIFA World Cup tournament is the biggest single-sport competition: it’s watched by about 1 billion people around the world. Every four years each national team’s manager is challenged to pull together a group players who ply their trade across the globe. For example, of the 23 members of Brazil’s national team, only four actually play for Brazilian teams, and the rest play in England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Ukraine. Each country’s national league, each team and each coach has a unique style. Getting all these “localized” players to work together successfully as one unit is no easy feat. In addition to $35 million in prize money, much is at stake – not least national pride and global bragging rights until the next World Cup in four years time. Achieving economic integration in the ASEAN region by 2015 is a bit like trying to create the next World Cup champion by 2018. The team comprises Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. All have different languages, currencies, cultures and customs, rules and regulations. But if they can pull together as one unit, the opportunity is not only great for business and the economy, but it’s also a source of regional pride. BCG expects by 2020 the number of firms headquartered in Asia with revenue exceeding $1 billion will double to more than 5,000. Their trade in the region and with the world is forecast to increase to 37% of an estimated $37 trillion of global commerce by 2020 from 30% in 2010. Banks offering transactional banking services to the emerging market place need to prepare to repond to customer needs across the spectrum – MSMEs, SMEs, corporates and multi national corporations. Customers want innovative, differentiated, value added products and services that provide: • Pan regional operational independence while enabling single source of truth at a regional level • Regional connectivity and Cash & Liquidity  optimization • Enabling Consistent experience for their customers  by offering standardized products & services across all ASEAN countries • Multi-channel & self service capabilities / access to real-time information on liquidity and cash flows • Convergence of cash management with supply chain and trade finance While enabling the above to meet customer demands, the need for a comprehensive and robust credit management solution for effective regional banking operations is a must to manage risk. According to BCG, Asia-Pacific wholesale transaction-banking revenues are expected to triple to $139 billion by 2022 from $46 billion in 2012. To take advantage of the trend, banks will have to manage and maximize their own growth opportunities, compete on a broader scale, manage the complexity within the region and increase efficiency. They’ll also have to choose the right operating model and regional IT platform to offer: • Account Services • Cash & Liquidity Management • Trade Services & Supply Chain Financing • Payments • Securities services • Credit and Lending • Treasury services The core platform should be able to balance global needs and local nuances. Certain functions need to be performed at a regional level, while others need to be performed on a country level. Financial reporting and regulatory compliance are a case in point. The ASEAN Economic Community is in the final lap of its preparations for the ultimate challenge: becoming a formidable team in the global league. Meanwhile, transaction banks are designing their own hat trick: implementing a world-class IT platform, positioning themselves to repond to customer needs and establishing a foundation for revenue generation for years to come. Anand Ramachandran Senior Director, Global Banking Solutions Practice Oracle Financial Services Global Business Unit

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• New Oracle BI Applications released

  - by THE

  Oracle has just released two new Applications for Oracle Business Intelligence Analytics with the Normal 0 21 false false false DE 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} 7.9.6.x Extension Pack: Normal 0 21 false false false DE 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} · Oracle Manufacturing Analytics, part of the Oracle BI Applications product family, helps discrete and process manufacturing organizations optimize their supply networks by integrating data from across the enterprise value chain, thereby enabling executives, operations managers, cost accountants and production supervisors to make informed and actionable decisions related to manufacturing execution. Normal 0 21 false false false DE 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} · Oracle Enterprise Asset Management Analytics, part of the Oracle BI Applications product family, offers complete and enhanced visibility to enterprise-wide maintenance information. Pre-built reports covering Maintenance History, Maintenance Cost Analysis and Maintenance Work Orders, provide Maintenance Managers information to maximize performance, identify potential issues much in advance, and address them before they escalate into serious problems.  More Information about the existing Business Intelligence Analytics Applications can be found on this page: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/bi-applications-066544.html If you are not familiar with Oracle Manufacturing or Oracle Enterprise Asset Management, these PDFs might get you started: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/060289.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/057127.pdf

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• Migrating VB6 to HTML5 is not a fiction - Customer success story

  - by Webgui

  All of you VB developers in the present or past would probably find it hard to believe that the old VB code can be migrated and modernized into the latest .NET based HTML5 without having to rewrite the application. But we have been working on such tools for the past couple of years and already have several real world applications that were fully 'transposed' from VB6. The solution is called Instant CloudMove and its main tool is called the TranspositionStudio. It is a unique solution that relies on the concept of transposition. Transposition comes from mathematics and music and refers to exchanging elements while everything else remains the same or moving an element as is from one environment to another. This means that we are taking the source code and put it in a modern technological environment with relatively few adjustments.The concept is based on a set of Mapping Expressions which are basically links between an element in the source environment and one in the target environment that has the same functionality. About 95% of the code is usually mapped out-of-the-box and the rest is handled with easy-to-use mapping tools designed for Visual Studio developers providing them with a familiar environment and concepts for completing the mapping and allowing them to extend and customize existing mapping expressions. The solution is also based on a circular workflow that enables developers to make any changes as required until the result is satisfying.As opposed to existing migration solutions that offer automation are usually a “black box” to the user, the transposition concept enables full visibility, flexibility and control over the code and process at all times allowing to also add/change functionalities or upgrade the UI within the process and tools.This is exactly the case with our customer’s aging VB6 PMS (Property Management System) which needed a technological update as well as a design refresh. The decision was to move the VB6 application which had about 1 million lines of code into the latest web technology. Since the application was initially written 13 years ago and had many upgrades since the code must be very patchy and includes unused sections. As a result, the company Mihshuv Group considered rewriting the entire application in Java since it already had the knowledge. Rewrite would allow starting with a clean slate and designing functionality, database architecture, UI without any constraints. On the other hand, rewrite entitles a long and detailed specification work as well as a thorough QA and this translates into a long project with high risk and costs.So the company looked for a migration solution as an alternative; the research lead to Gizmox and after examining the technology it was decided to perform a hybrid project which would include an automatic transposition of the core of the VB6 application (200,000 lines of code) while they redesigning the UI, adding new functionality, deleting unused code and rewriting about 140 reports with Crystal Reports will be done manually using Visual WebGui development tools.The migration part of the project was completed in 65 days by 3 developers from Mihshuv Group guided by Gizmox migration experts while the rewrite and UI upgrade tasks took about the same. So in only a few months period Mihshuv Group generated an up-to-date product, written in the latest Web technology with modern, friendly UI and improved functionality. Guest selection screen of the original VB6 PMS Guest selection screen on the new web–based PMS Compared to the initial plan to rewrite the entire application in Java, the hybrid migration/rewrite approach taken by Mihshuv Group using Gizmox technology proved as a great decision. In terms of time and cost there were substantial savings; from a project that was priced for at least a year (without taking into account the huge risk and uncertainty) it became a few months project only. More about this and other customer stories can be found here

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• A* algorithm very slow

  - by Amaranth

  I have an programming a RTS game (I use XNA with C#). The pathfinding is working fine, except that when it has a lot of node to search in, there is a lag period of one or two seconds, it happens mainly when there is no path to the target destination, since it that situation there is more nodes to explore. I have the same problem when the path is shorter but selected more than 3 units (can't take the same path since the selected units can be in different part of the map). private List<NodeInfo> FindPath(Unit u, NodeInfo start, NodeInfo end) { Map map = GameInfo.GetInstance().GameMap; _nearestToTarget = start; start.MoveCost = 0; Vector2 endPosition = map.getTileByPos(end.X, end.Y).Position; //getTileByPos simply gets the tile in a 2D array with the X and Y indexes start.EstimatedRemainingCost = (int)(endPosition - map.getTileByPos(start.X, start.Y).Position).Length(); start.Parent = null; List<NodeInfo> openedNodes = new List<NodeInfo>(); ; List<NodeInfo> closedNodes = new List<NodeInfo>(); Point[] movements = GetMovements(u.UnitType); openedNodes.Add(start); while (!closedNodes.Contains(end) && openedNodes.Count > 0) { //Loop in nodes to find lowest cost NodeInfo currentNode = FindLowestCostOpenedNode(openedNodes); openedNodes.Remove(currentNode); closedNodes.Add(currentNode); Vector2 previousMouvement; if (currentNode.Parent == null) { previousMouvement = ConvertRotationToDirectionVector(u.Rotation); } else { previousMouvement = map.getTileByPos(currentNode.X, currentNode.Y).Position - map.getTileByPos(currentNode.Parent.X, currentNode.Parent.Y).Position; previousMouvement.Normalize(); } //For each neighbor foreach (Point movement in movements) { Point exploredGridPos = new Point(currentNode.X + movement.X, currentNode.Y + movement.Y); //Checks if valid move and checks if not if closed nodes list if (ValidNavigableNode(u.UnitType, new Point(currentNode.X, currentNode.Y), exploredGridPos) && !closedNodes.Contains(_gridMap[exploredGridPos.Y, exploredGridPos.X])) { NodeInfo exploredNode = _gridMap[exploredGridPos.Y, exploredGridPos.X]; Tile.TileType exploredTerrain = map.getTileByPos(exploredGridPos.X, exploredGridPos.Y).TerrainType; if(openedNodes.Contains(exploredNode)) { int newCost = currentNode.MoveCost + GetMoveCost(previousMouvement, movement, exploredTerrain); if (newCost < exploredNode.MoveCost) { exploredNode.Parent = currentNode; exploredNode.MoveCost = newCost; //Find nearest tile to the target (in case doesn't find path to target) //Only compares the node to the current nearest FindNearest(exploredNode); } } else { exploredNode.Parent = currentNode; exploredNode.MoveCost = currentNode.MoveCost + GetMoveCost(previousMouvement, movement, exploredTerrain); Vector2 exploredNodeWorldPos = map.getTileByPos(exploredGridPos.X, exploredGridPos.Y).Position; exploredNode.EstimatedRemainingCost = (int)(endPosition - exploredNodeWorldPos).Length(); //Find nearest tile to the target (in case doesn't find path to target) //Only compares the node to the current nearest FindNearest(exploredNode); openedNodes.Add(exploredNode); } } } } return closedNodes; } After that, I simply check if the end node is contained in the returned nodes. If so, I add the end node and each parent until I reach the start. If not, I add the nearestToTarget and each parent until I reach the start. I added a condition before calling FindPath so that only one unit can call a find path each frame (60 frame per second), but it makes no difference. I thought maybe I could solve this by allowing the find path to run in background while the game continues to run correctly, even if it takes a few frame (it is currently sequential sonce it is called in the update() of the unit if there's a target location but no path), but I don't really know how... I also though about sorting my opened nodes list by cost so I don't have to loop them, but I don't know if that would have an effect on the performance... Would there be other solutions? P.S. In the code, when I get the Move Cost, I check if the unit has to turn to perform the move, and the terrain type, nothing hard to do.

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• Use a custom value object or a Guid as an entity identifier in a distributed system?

  - by Kazark

  tl;dr I've been told that in domain-driven design, an identifier for an entity could be a custom value object, i.e. something other than Guid, string, int, etc. Can this really be advisable in a distributed system? Long version I will invent an situation analogous to the one I am currently facing. Say I have a distributed system in which a central concept is an egg. The system allows you to order eggs and see spending reports and inventory-centric data such as quantity on hand, usage, valuation and what have you. There area variety of services backing these behaviors. And say there is also another app which allows you to compose recipes that link to a particular egg type. Now egg type is broken down by the species—ostrich, goose, duck, chicken, quail. This is fine and dandy because it means that users don't end up with ostrich eggs when they wanted quail eggs and whatnot. However, we've been getting complaints because jumbo chicken eggs are not even close to equivalent to small ones. The price is different, and they really aren't substitutable in recipes. And here we thought we were doing users a favor by not overwhelming them with too many options. Currently each of the services (say, OrderSubmitter, EggTypeDefiner, SpendingReportsGenerator, InventoryTracker, RecipeCreator, RecipeTracker, or whatever) are identifying egg types with an industry-standard integer representation the species (let's call it speciesCode). We realize we've goofed up because this change could effect every service. There are two basic proposed solutions: Use a predefined identifier type like Guid as the eggTypeID throughout all the services, but make EggTypeDefiner the only service that knows that this maps to a speciesCode and eggSizeCode (and potentially to an isOrganic flag in the future, or whatever). Use an EggTypeID value object which is a combination of speciesCode and eggSizeCode in every service. I've proposed the first solution because I'm hoping it better encapsulates the definition of what an egg type is in the EggTypeDefiner and will be more resilient to changes, say if some people now want to differentiate eggs by whether or not they are "organic". The second solution is being suggested by some people who understand DDD better than I do in the hopes that less enrichment and lookup will be necessary that way, with the justification that in DDD using a value object as an ID is fine. Also, they are saying that EggTypeDefiner is not a domain and EggType is not an entity and as such should not have a Guid for an ID. However, I'm not sure the second solution is viable. This "value object" is going to have to be serialized into JSON and URLs for GET requests and used with a variety of technologies (C#, JavaScript...) which breaks encapsulation and thus removes any behavior of the identifier value object (is either of the fields optional? etc.) Is this a case where we want to avoid something that would normally be fine in DDD because we are trying to do DDD in a distributed fashion? Summary Can it be a good idea to use a custom value object as an identifier in a distributed system (solution #2)?

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• Oracle Excellence Award

  - by Hartmut Wiese

  CALL FOR NOMINATIONS 2014 Oracle Excellence Award: Sustainability Innovation Is your organization using an Oracle product to help with a sustainability initiative while reducing costs? Saving energy? Saving gas? Saving paper? For example, you may use Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management to design more eco-friendly products, Oracle Transportation Management to reduce fleet emissions, Oracle Exadata Database Machine to decrease power and cooling needs while increasing database performance, Oracle Business Intelligence to measure environmental impacts, or one of many other Oracle products. Your organization may be eligible for the 2014 Oracle Excellence Award: Sustainability Innovation. Submit a nomination form located here by Friday June 20 if your company is using any Oracle product to take an environmental lead as well as to reduce costs and improve business efficiencies by using green business practices. These awards will be presented during Oracle OpenWorld 2014 (September 28-October 2) in San Francisco.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 About the Award • Winners will be selected from the customer and/or partner nominations. Either a customer, their partner, or Oracle representative can submit the nomination form on behalf of the customer.• There is a nomination form here to discuss your use of Oracle products and how they have helped your sustainability efforts and reduced costs. • Winners will be selected based on the extent of the environmental impact they have had as well as the business efficiencies they have achieved through their combined use of Oracle products. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Nomination Eligibility • Your company uses at least one component of Oracle products, whether it's the Oracle database, business applications, Fusion Middleware, or Sun servers/storage. • This solution should be in production or in active development. • Nomination deadline: Friday June 20, 2014. Benefits to Award Winners • Award presented to winners during Oracle OpenWorld by Jeff Henley, Oracle Chairman of the Board • Free Oracle OpenWorld registration pass for each winning customer • 2014 Oracle Excellence Award: Sustainability Innovation award logo for inclusion on your own website &/or press release • Possible placement in Oracle Profit Magazine &/or Oracle Magazine • ‘Enable the Eco-Enterprise’ podcast opportunity See last year's winners here Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ______________________________________________________________________________________ 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;} Questions? Send an email to: [email protected] Follow Oracle’s Sustainability Solutions on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the Sustainability Matters blog Web page with award details:  http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/green/call-for-nominations-185050.html  

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• Is Your Company Social on the Inside?

  - by Mike Stiles

  As we talk about the extension of social from an outbound-facing marketing tool to a platform that will reach across the entire enterprise, servicing multiple functions of that enterprise, it might be time to take a look at how social can be effectively employed for internal communications. Remember the printed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Remember the emailed company newsletter? Yeah, nobody reads it. Why not? Shouldn’t your employees care about the company more than anything else in life and be voraciously hungry for any information related to it? The more realistic prospect is that a company’s employees don’t behave much differently at work where information is concerned than they do in their personal lives. They “tune in” to information that’s immediately relevant to them, that peaks their interest, and/or that’s presented in a visually engaging way. That currently makes an internal social platform the most ideal way to communicate within the organization. It not only facilitates more immediate, more targeted (and thus more relevant) messaging from the company out to employees, it sets a stage for employees to communicate with each other and efficiently get answers to questions from peers. It’s a collaboration tool on steroids. If you build such an internal social portal and you do it right, will employees use it? Considering social media has officially been declared more addictive than cigarettes, booze and sex…probably. But what does it mean to do an internal social platform “right”? The bar has been set pretty high. Your employees are used to Twitter and Facebook, and would roll their eyes at anything less simple or harder to navigate than those. All the Facebook best practices would apply to your internal social as well, including the importance of managing posting frequency, using photos and video, moderation & response, etc. And don’t worry, you won’t be the first to jump in. WPP's global digital agency Possible has its own social network called Colab. Nestle has “The Nest.” Red Robin’s got one. I myself got an in-depth look at McGraw-Hill’s internal social platform at Blogwell NYC. Some of these companies are building their own platforms, others are buying them off the shelf or customizing readymade solutions. But you won’t be the last either. Prescient Digital Media and the IABC learned 39% of companies don’t offer employees any social tools. Not a social network, not discussion forums, not even IM. And a great many continue to ban the use of Facebook and Twitter on the premises. That’s pretty astonishing since social has become as essential a modern day communications tool as the telephone. But such holdouts will pay a big price for being mired in fear while competitors exploit social connections unchallenged. Fish where the fish are. If social has become the way people communicate and take in information, let that be the way communication is trafficked in the organization.

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• Writing a method to 'transform' an immutable object: how should I approach this?

  - by Prog

  (While this question has to do with a concrete coding dilemma, it's mostly about what's the best way to design a function.) I'm writing a method that should take two Color objects, and gradually transform the first Color into the second one, creating an animation. The method will be in a utility class. My problem is that Color is an immutable object. That means that I can't do color.setRGB or color.setBlue inside a loop in the method. What I can do, is instantiate a new Color and return it from the method. But then I won't be able to gradually change the color. So I thought of three possible solutions: 1- The client code includes the method call inside a loop. For example: int duration = 1500; // duration of the animation in milliseconds int steps = 20; // how many 'cycles' the animation will take for(int i=0; i<steps; i++) color = transformColor(color, targetColor, duration, steps); And the method would look like this: Color transformColor(Color original, Color target, int duration, int steps){ int redDiff = target.getRed() - original.getRed(); int redAddition = redDiff / steps; int newRed = original.getRed() + redAddition; // same for green and blue .. Thread.sleep(duration / STEPS); // exception handling omitted return new Color(newRed, newGreen, newBlue); } The disadvantage of this approach is that the client code has to "do part of the method's job" and include a for loop. The method doesn't do it's work entirely on it's own, which I don't like. 2- Make a mutable Color subclass with methods such as setRed, and pass objects of this class into transformColor. Then it could look something like this: void transformColor(MutableColor original, Color target, int duration){ final int STEPS = 20; int redDiff = target.getRed() - original.getRed(); int redAddition = redDiff / steps; int newRed = original.getRed() + redAddition; // same for green and blue .. for(int i=0; i<STEPS; i++){ original.setRed(original.getRed() + redAddition); // same for green and blue .. Thread.sleep(duration / STEPS); // exception handling omitted } } Then the calling code would usually look something like this: // The method will usually transform colors of JComponents JComponent someComponent = ... ; // setting the Color in JComponent to be a MutableColor Color mutableColor = new MutableColor(someComponent.getForeground()); someComponent.setForeground(mutableColor); // later, transforming the Color in the JComponent transformColor((MutableColor)someComponent.getForeground(), new Color(200,100,150), 2000); The disadvantage is - the need to create a new class MutableColor, and also the need to do casting. 3- Pass into the method the actual mutable object that holds the color. Then the method could do object.setColor or similar every iteration of the loop. Two disadvantages: A- Not so elegant. Passing in the object that holds the color just to transform the color feels unnatural. B- While most of the time this method will be used to transform colors inside JComponent objects, other kinds of objects may have colors too. So the method would need to be overloaded to receive other types, or receive Objects and have instanceof checks inside.. Not optimal. Right now I think I like solution #2 the most, than solution #1 and solution #3 the least. However I'd like to hear your opinions and suggestions regarding this.

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• Concurrent Affairs

  - by Tony Davis

  I once wrote an editorial, multi-core mania, on the conundrum of ever-increasing numbers of processor cores, but without the concurrent programming techniques to get anywhere near exploiting their performance potential. I came to the.controversial.conclusion that, while the problem loomed for all procedural languages, it was not a big issue for the vast majority of programmers. Two years later, I still think most programmers don't concern themselves overly with this issue, but I do think that's a bigger problem than I originally implied. Firstly, is the performance boost from writing code that can fully exploit all available cores worth the cost of the additional programming complexity? Right now, with quad-core processors that, at best, can make our programs four times faster, the answer is still no for many applications. But what happens in a few years, as the number of cores grows to 100 or even 1000? At this point, it becomes very hard to ignore the potential gains from exploiting concurrency. Possibly, I was optimistic to assume that, by the time we have 100-core processors, and most applications really needed to exploit them, some technology would be around to allow us to do so with relative ease. The ideal solution would be one that allows programmers to forget about the problem, in much the same way that garbage collection removed the need to worry too much about memory allocation. From all I can find on the topic, though, there is only a remote likelihood that we'll ever have a compiler that takes a program written in a single-threaded style and "auto-magically" converts it into an efficient, correct, multi-threaded program. At the same time, it seems clear that what is currently the most common solution, multi-threaded programming with shared memory, is unsustainable. As soon as a piece of state can be changed by a different thread of execution, the potential number of execution paths through your program grows exponentially with the number of threads. If you have two threads, each executing n instructions, then there are 2^n possible "interleavings" of those instructions. Of course, many of those interleavings will have identical behavior, but several won't. Not only does this make understanding how a program works an order of magnitude harder, but it will also result in irreproducible, non-deterministic, bugs. And of course, the problem will be many times worse when you have a hundred or a thousand threads. So what is the answer? All of the possible alternatives require a change in the way we write programs and, currently, seem to be plagued by performance issues. Software transactional memory (STM) applies the ideas of database transactions, and optimistic concurrency control, to memory. However, working out how to break down your program into sufficiently small transactions, so as to avoid contention issues, isn't easy. Another approach is concurrency with actors, where instead of having threads share memory, each thread runs in complete isolation, and communicates with others by passing messages. It simplifies concurrent programs but still has performance issues, if the threads need to operate on the same large piece of data. There are doubtless other possible solutions that I haven't mentioned, and I would love to know to what extent you, as a developer, are considering the problem of multi-core concurrency, what solution you currently favor, and why. Cheers, Tony.

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• On a BPM Mission with Process Accelerators. Part 1: BPM as an ATV

  - by Cesare Rotundo

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Part 1: BPM as an ATV It’s always exciting to talk to customers that are in the middle of a BPM transformational journey. Their thirst for new processes to improve with BPM makes them explorers in a landscape of opportunities. They have discovered that with BPM the can “go places” they couldn’t reach before. In a way, learning how to generate value with BPM is like adopting a new mean of transportation. Apps are like regular cars: very efficient, but to be used on paved roads: the road/process has been traced, and there are fixed paths to follow to get from “opportunity to quote” or from “quote to cash”. Getting off the road is risky, and laying down new asphalt is slow and expensive. Custom development is like running: you can go virtually anywhere, following any path you like, yet it’s slow, and a lot of sweat. BPM allows you to go “off the beaten path” laid out by packaged apps, yet make fast progress compared to custom development. BPM is therefore more like an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV): less efficient than a car, but much faster than running, with a powerful enough engine that can get you places. The similarities between BPM and ATVs don’t stop here: you must learn to ride it even if you already know how to drive a car; you can reach places but figuring out the path to your destination is harder. Ultimately, with BPM as with an ATV, you reach places that you thought you could never reach, and you discover new destinations that provide great benefit to you … and that you didn’t even know existed! That’s where the sense of accomplishment that we heard from our BPM customers comes from, as well as the desire to share their experience, or even, as in the case of a County, the willingness to contribute their BPM solutions to help other agencies that face the same challenges. The question we wanted to answer is how can we teach organizations to drive ATV/BPM, thus leading them to deeper success with BPM, while increasing their awareness of the potential for reaching new targets, and finally equip them with the right tools. Like with ATVs, getting from point A to point B is more of a work of art than cruising on the highway by car. There is a lot we can do: after all many sought after destinations are common: someone else has been on the same path before. If only you could learn from their experience …

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• "The connection has timed out" - Please help!

  - by gon

  I recently installed a fresh Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a desktop, and the installation itself was successful (other than 'grub rescue' issue that I encountered but fixed) but this connection problem is really giving me a headache. Symptoms: 1. When I open the FireFox browser and try to connect to a website, it just hangs for a while saying "Connecting..." but eventually loads an error page "The connection has timed out". 2. It's not a browser problem (and I tried setting ipv6 thing to "true" at about:config) because running "sudo apt-get install [some-random-package]" at terminal fails ("E: Unable to locate package [package]") too. All other operations that need internet access are not working. 3. I certainly see a wired network (called "eth1") at the Network Manager, and it says "Connection Established" after disconnecting and then connecting again. I have tried almost everything that could be found from google search results still no luck. Their problems slightly differ from mine or the solutions just don't work. By the way it didn't have internet access when installing Ubuntu 12.04. (I ignored the message that I need internet to install Ubuntu) Could this be a problem? I'm sorry I don't remember if internet worked or not on the previous version of Ubuntu. :( I would really appreciate your help... I don't even know what more to do if this fails too.. Thanks!! Thanks for your comment. Here is the result of ifconfig: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b9 inet addr:10.10.65.185 Bcast:10.10.65.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::7aac:c0ff:fe3d:b2b9/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3907 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:771 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:393118 (393.1 KB) TX bytes:73472 (73.4 KB) Interrupt:16 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b8 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:17 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:204 (204.0 B) TX bytes:204 (204.0 B) route -n: Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 0.0.0.0 10.10.65.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 10.10.65.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0 /etc/resolv.conf: # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8) # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 8.8.4.4 nameserver 10.81.1.8 nameserver 10.1.2.10 nameserver 127.0.0.1 search yamatake.local /etc/network/interfaces: auto lo iface lo inet loopback #auto eth0 #iface eth0 inet dhcp #auto eth1 #iface eth1 inet dhcp And I'll also include the result of 'sudo lshw -C network' in case it might help: *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 10 serial: 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b9 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.121 duplex=full firmware=5764m-v3.35 ip=10.10.65.185 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:93 memory:fc000000-fc00ffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: eth1 version: 10 serial: 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b8 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.121 duplex=full firmware=5764m-v3.35 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:94 memory:fb000000-fb00ffff

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• Multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problem: find a feasible solution

  - by Onheiron

  My assignment is to use local search heuristics to solve the Multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problem, but to do so I first need to find a feasible solution to start with. Here is an example problem with what I tried so far. Problem R1 R2 R3 RESOUCES : 8 8 8 GROUPS: G1: 11.0 3 2 2 12.0 1 1 3 G2: 20.0 1 1 3 5.0 2 3 2 G3: 10.0 2 2 3 30.0 1 1 3 Sorting strategies To find a starting feasible solution for my local search I decided to ignore maximization of gains and just try to fit the resources requirements. I decided to sort the choices (strategies) in each group by comparing their "distance" from the multidimensional space origin, thus calculating SQRT(R1^2 + R2^2 + ... + RN^2). I felt like this was a keen solution as it somehow privileged those choices with resouce usages closer to each other (e.g. R1:2 R2:2 R3:2 < R1:1 R2:2 R3:3) even if the total sum is the same. Doing so and selecting the best choice from each group proved sufficent to find a feasible solution for many[30] different benchmark problems, but of course I knew it was just luck. So I came up with the problem presented above which sorts like this: R1 R2 R3 RESOUCES : 8 8 8 GROUPS: G1: 12.0 1 1 3 < select this 11.0 3 2 2 G2: 20.0 1 1 3 < select this 5.0 2 3 2 G3: 30.0 1 1 3 < select this 10.0 2 2 3 And it is not feasible because the resources consmption is R1:3, R2:3, R3:9. The easy solution is to pick one of the second best choices in group 1 or 2, so I'll need some kind of iteration (local search[?]) to find the starting feasible solution for my local search solution. Here are the options I came up with Option 1: iterate choices I tried to find a way to iterate all the choices with a specific order, something like G1 G2 G3 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 ... believeng that feasible solutions won't be that far away from the unfeasible one I start with and thus the number of iterations will keep quite low. Does this make any sense? If yes, how can I iterate the choices (grouped combinations) of each group keeping "as near as possibile" to the previous iteration? Option 2: Change the comparation term I tried to think how to find a better variable to sort the choices on. I thought at a measure of how "precious" a resource is based on supply and demand, so that an higer demand of a more precious resource will push you down the list, but this didn't help at all. Also I thought there probably isn't gonna be such a comparsion variable which assures me a feasible solution at first strike. I there such a variable? If not, is there a better sorting criteria anyways? Option 3: implement any known sub-optimal fast solving algorithm Unfortunately I could not find any of such algorithms online. Any suggestion?

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• SEO/Google: How should I handle multiple countries and domains?

  - by Valorized

  Hello. I'm the webmaster of an online shop based in Austria (Europe). Therefore we registered "example.at". We also own different other domain names like "example-shop.com" and "example.info". Currently all those domains are redirected (301) to the .at one. Still available is: "example.net" and "example.org" (and .ws/.cc), unfortunately not available: .de/.eu The .com is currently owned by one of our partners, the contract ends in 2012 but until then we have no chance to get this one. Recently I read more about geo-targeting and I noticed ONE big deal. The tld ".at" is hardly recognised in Germany (google.de) whereas it is excellently listed in Austria (google.at). As a result of the .at I cannot set the target location manually (or to unlisted). More info: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399&hl=en This is a big problem. I looked at Google Analytics and - although Germany is 10x as big as Austria - there are more visits from Austria. So, how should I config the domain in order to get the best results in both, Germany and Austria? I thought of some solutions: First I could stop redirecting the .info. Then there would be a duplicate of the .at one. Moreover, in Webmastertools, I could set the target location of the .info to Germany. As the .at still targets Austria, both would be targeted - however I don't now if google punishes one of them because of the duplicate content? Same as 1. but with .net or .org (I think .info is not a "nice" domain and moreover I think search engines prefer .com, .net or .org to .info). Same as 1. (or 2.) but with a rel="canonical" on the new one (pointing to the .at). Con: I don't think this will improve the situation, because it still tells google that the .at one is more important, like: "if .info points to .at, the target may still be Austria". rel="canonical" on the .at pointing to the new (.info or .net or .org). However I fear that this will have a negative impact on the listing on google.at because: "Hey, the well-known .at is not important anymore, so let's focus on the .info which is not well-known." - Therefore: bad position in search results. Redirect .at to the new (.info or .net or .org) with a 301-Redirect. Con: Might be worse than 4, we might loose Page-Rank (or "the value of the page", because google says that page rank is not important anymore). Moreover this might be even more confusing for the customers. In 3. or 4. customers don't get redirected, they do not see the canonical-meta-tag. So, dear experts, please tell me what the best option would be! Thank you very much for your advice in advance and please excuse the long question. I really appreciate this network! Please note: It's exactly the same content AND language. In Austria we speak German.

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• Upgrading to 9.2 - Info You Can Use (part 1)

  - by John Webb

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Rebekah Jackson joins our blog with a series of helpful hints on planning your upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2.   Find Features & Capabilities There are many ways that you might learn about new features and capabilities within our releases, but if you aren’t sure where to start or how best to go about it, we recommend: Go to www.peoplesoftinfo.com Select the product line you are interested in, and go to the ‘Release Content’ tab Use the Video Feature Overviews (VFOs) on YouTube and the Cumulative Feature Overview (CFO) tool to find features and functions. The VFOs are brief recordings that summarize some of our most popular capabilities. These recordings are great tools for learning about new features, or helping others to visualize the value they can bring to your organization. The VFOs focus on some of our highest value and most compelling new capabilities. We also provide summarized ‘Why Upgrade to 9.2’ VFOs for HCM, Financials, and Supply Chain. The CFO is a spreadsheet based tool that allows you to select the release you are currently on, and compare it to the new release. It will return the list of all new features and capabilities, by product. You can browse the full list and / or highlight areas that look particularly interesting. Once you have a list of features by product, use the Release Value Proposition, Pre-Release Notes, and the Release Notes documents to get more details on and supporting value statements about why those features will be helpful. Gather additional data and supporting information, including: Go to the Product Data Sheets tab, and review the respective data sheets. These summarize the capabilities in the product, and provide succinct value statements for the product and capabilities. The PeopleSoft 9.2 Upgrade page, which has many helpful resources. Important Notes:   -  We recommend that you go through the above steps for the application areas of interest, as well as for PeopleTools. There are many areas in PeopleTools 8.53 and the 9.2 application releases that combine technical and functional capabilities to deliver transformative value.    - We also recommend that you review the Portal Solutions content. With your license to PeopleSoft applications, you have access to many of the most powerful capabilities within the Interaction Hub.    -  If you have recently upgraded to PeopleSoft 9.1, and an immediate upgrade to 9.2 is simply not realistic, you can apply the same approaches described here to find untapped capabilities in your current products. Many of the features in 9.2 were delivered first in our 9.1 Feature Packs. To find the Release Value Proposition, Pre-Release Notes, and Release Notes for these releases, search on ‘PeopleSoft 9.1 Documentation Home Page’ on My Oracle Support, and select your desired product area. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Best way to load application settings

  - by enzom83

  A simple way to keep the settings of a Java application is represented by a text file with ".properties" extension containing the identifier of each setting associated with a specific value (this value may be a number, string, date, etc..). C# uses a similar approach, but the text file must be named "App.config". In both cases, in source code you must initialize a specific class for reading settings: this class has a method that returns the value (as string) associated with the specified setting identifier. // Java example Properties config = new Properties(); config.load(...); String valueStr = config.getProperty("listening-port"); // ... // C# example NameValueCollection setting = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings; string valueStr = setting["listening-port"]; // ... In both cases we should parse strings loaded from the configuration file and assign the ??converted values to the related typed objects (parsing errors could occur during this phase). After the parsing step, we must check that the setting values ??belong to a specific domain of validity: for example, the maximum size of a queue should be a positive value, some values ??may be related (example: min < max), and so on. Suppose that the application should load the settings as soon as it starts: in other words, the first operation performed by the application is to load the settings. Any invalid values for the settings ??must be replaced automatically with default values??: if this happens to a group of related settings, those settings are all set with default values. The easiest way to perform these operations is to create a method that first parses all the settings, then checks the loaded values ??and finally sets any default values??. However maintenance is difficult if you use this approach: as the number of settings increases while developing the application, it becomes increasingly difficult to update the code. In order to solve this problem, I had thought of using the Template Method pattern, as follows. public abstract class Setting { protected abstract bool TryParseValues(); protected abstract bool CheckValues(); public abstract void SetDefaultValues(); /// <summary> /// Template Method /// </summary> public bool TrySetValuesOrDefault() { if (!TryParseValues() || !CheckValues()) { // parsing error or domain error SetDefaultValues(); return false; } return true; } } public class RangeSetting : Setting { private string minStr, maxStr; private byte min, max; public RangeSetting(string minStr, maxStr) { this.minStr = minStr; this.maxStr = maxStr; } protected override bool TryParseValues() { return (byte.TryParse(minStr, out min) && byte.TryParse(maxStr, out max)); } protected override bool CheckValues() { return (0 < min && min < max); } public override void SetDefaultValues() { min = 5; max = 10; } } The problem is that in this way we need to create a new class for each setting, even for a single value. Are there other solutions to this kind of problem? In summary: Easy maintenance: for example, the addition of one or more parameters. Extensibility: a first version of the application could read a single configuration file, but later versions may give the possibility of a multi-user setup (admin sets up a basic configuration, users can set only certain settings, etc..). Object oriented design.

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• A programmer who doesn't get to program - where to turn? [closed]

  - by Just an Anon

  I'm in my mid 20's, and have been working as a full time programmer / developer for the last ~6 years, with several years of part-time freelancing before this, and three straight years of freelancing in the middle of this short career. I work mostly with PHP and the Drupal framework. By and large, I focus on programming custom pieces of functionality; these, of course, vary greatly from project to project. I've got years of solid experience with OOP (have done some Java & C# years ago, too) including intensive experience with front-end development, and even some design work. I've lead small teams (2-4 people) of developers. And of course, given the large amount of freelancing, I've got decent project- & client-management skills. My problem is staying motivated at any place of employment. In the time mentioned I've worked (full-time) at six local companies. The longest I've stayed at any company was just over a year. I find that I'll get hired and be very excited and motivated for the first few months, but the work quickly gets "stale." By that I mean that the interesting components (ie. the programming) get done, and the rest of the work turns into boring cleanup (move a button, add text, change colours, add a field). I don't get challenged, and I don't feel like I'm learning anything new. This happens repeatedly time and time again, and I always end up leaving for either a new opportunity, or to freelance. I'm wondering if perhaps I've painted myself into a corner with the rather niche work market (although with very high demand and good compensation) and need to explore other career choices. Another possibility is that I may be choosing the wrong places of employment, mostly small agencies, and need to look into working for a larger, more established firm. I find programming, writing code, and architecting solutions very rewarding. When I'm working on an interesting problem I lose all sense of time and 14-16 hours can fly by like minutes. I get the same exciting feeling when I'm doing high-level planning of a complex system, breaking up the work and figuring out how everything will tie-in together. I absolutely hate doing small, "stupid" changes that pose no challenge, yet seem to make up more and more of my work. I want to find a workplace where I will get to work on such tasks, be challenged, and improve in all areas of product development. This maybe a programming job, management, architecture of desktop apps, or may be managing a taco stand on a beach in Mexico - I don't know, and I need some advice and real-world feedback. What are some job areas worth exploring? The requirements are fairly simple: working with computers interacting with others challenging decent pay (I'm making just short of 90k / year with a month of vacation & some benefits, and would like to stay in this range, but am willing to take a temporary cut in pay for a more interesting position) Any advice would be much appreciated!

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