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  • Do MORE with WebCenter - Webcast Overview & TIES Tour

    - by Michael Snow
    Today's post is from Michelle Huff, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter `````````````````  In case you missed it, I presented on a webcast yesterday focused on how you can “Do More with Oracle WebCenter – Expand Beyond Content Management.” As you may remember, we rebranded Oracle’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite, which some people knew by the wonderfully techie three-letter acronyms -- UCM, URM & IPM -- to Oracle WebCenter Content last year. Since it’s a unified ECM platform, I’ve seen many customers over the years continue to expand the number of content-centric solutions and application integrations powered by WebCenter throughout their organizations. But, did you know WebCenter also provides portal, collaboration and web experience management capabilities as well? This enables you to leverage your existing investment in the WebCenter platform as well as the information you’re managing to create engaging sites, collaborative spaces, or self-service portals and composite applications. In the webcast I walked through six different ways that you can do more with WebCenter: Collaborative content contribution and sharing environment Share content across intranets and extranets Combine content in composite applications Create targeted online experiences Manage interactive social experiences Optimize multi-channel customer experiences Joining me on the call was Greg Utecht with TIES. TIES is a joint powers cooperative owned by 46 Minnesota school districts, represents 514 schools – and provides software applications, hardware and software, internet service and professional development designed by educators for education. I was having a lot of fun over the past few days talking with Greg about the TIES implementation and future plans with WebCenter. He joined me on the call for a little Q&A to explain how he’s using WebCenter today for their iContent implementation for document management, records management and archiving. And also covered how they have expanded their implementation to create a collaborative space called their HRPay System with WebCenter to facilitate collaboration and to better engage their users within the school districts. During our conversation a few questions came from the audience about their implementation. They were curious to see how the system looked – so let’s take a peak. This first screenshot shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon logging in, based on their credentials and role in their district. This shows the result of clicking on the SUBSCRIBE link on the main page. It allows the user to subscribe to parts of the portal which will e-mail him/her when those are updated in any way. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Resources link. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Finance Advisory link. It shows the discussion threads and document sharing areas. This shows the screen that appears when the forum topic on the preceding screen is clicked. This shows the screen portlet up close with shared documents. This shows the screen that appears when a shared document is clicked on. Note that there is also a download button and an update button, meaning people can work on these collaboratively. If you missed the webcast, check it out! You can watch the replay OnDemand HERE. If you attended the webcast, thanks for joining - I hoped you learned a little from the session. I learned that kids are getting digital report cards today! Wow, have times changed with technology. Uh oh, is this when I start saying “You know, back in my days…?”

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  • 2014 Conferences - JFokus, JavaLand & GeeCon!

    - by Heather VanCura
    There has been a delay in publishing these past event summaries from early 2014--JFokus in February, JavaLand in March, and GeeCon in May. As we plan for Devoxx UK next week, I found these summaries that did not make it past 'draft' stage.  We had some great successes with the first three events of 2014, a Java developer conference trifecta! Participation topics included Java, the JCP program overall and the Adopt-a-JSR programs.   First up in February was JFokus in Stockholm. The energy and talent in Stockholm is amazing and the conference organizers do a stellar job running it and welcoming the speakers of this event.  I enjoyed the city walk and speaker dinner, as well as many opportunities to interact with conference speakers and attendees, both during and after the conference hours. Reza Rehman invited me to speak during his Java EE 7 lab session about the Adopt-a-JSR program, and I gave a quickie session on the JCP and Adopt-a-JSR.  There was also a late night Birds of a Feather (BoF) session held jointly with Cecelia Borg, Martijn Verburg and Reza Rehman.  This was an interactive conversation with a focus on the Java EE community survey results and encouraging more community participation and collaboration in Java development.  The Java 8 keynote by Georges Saab and Mark Reinhold was also very entertaining,  I was sorry to miss FOSDEM happening the previous weekend this year in Brussels, but I hope to attend in 2015.  Favorite take home gift -- Lambdas cap! In March, the inaugural version of the JavaLand conference happened inside Phantasialand, an amusement park in Germany. Markus Eisele suggested having an Early Adopters area at the conference, which I was keen to implement. In 2013 at Devoxx Belgium we held some activities in the Hackergaren area around Lambdas and Java EE 7, so this was a great opportunity to expand on a more interactive conference format and Andreas Badelt from the program committee helped in the planning for this area.  Daniel Bryant and Mani Sarkar from the London Java Community led some general Adopt-a-JSR discussions and AdoptOpen JDK activities.  JCP Spec Leads, Anatole Tresch from Credit Suisse, leading JSR 354, Money & Currency API, and Ed Burns from Oracle, leading JSR 344, JavaServer Faces 2.2, attended to engage with conference attendees on their JSRs.  Favorite - Stephen Chin's roller coaster video. In May, GeeCon in Krakow was anther awesome conference!  The conference organizers were warm and welcoming and I enjoyed time getting to know the other speakers at the event. There was a JCP and Adopt-a-JSR participation session as well as a moderated panel session on Early Adopters.  We had an amazing panel -- Daniel Bryant, Arun Gupta, Tomasz Borek , and Peter Lawrey. The panel discussed the Adopt-a-JSR and Adopt OpenJDK program, and how the participants work together to get involved and contribute to both the Java SE and Java EE platforms.  If was an interesting discussion and sparked some new ideas on how Java User Groups in Poland and around the world can contribute in a significant and meaningful way to create better and more practical Java standards today and in the future.  Favorite take home gift - GeeCon mug!   These were some of the highlights of the events--looking forward to Devoxx UK next week.  I will publish these details tomorrow!

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  • Upgrades in 5 Easy Pieces

    - by Anne R.
    Even though there are a few select tasks that I have to do once or twice a year, I can’t remember how to do them! Or where to find the bits and pieces to complete the task. So I love it when someone consolidates everything under one spot. That’s what the CRM On Demand team has done with the upgrade information. Specifically, they have: Provided a “one-stop” area for managing upgrades at your company. Broken down the upgrade process into 5 (yes, 5) steps. Explained when and how to perform each step with dates specific to your pod. Included details about each step, visible by expanding the step. Translated the steps into 11 languages. Added a list of release-specific resources with links from the page. Now, just head for the Training and Support portal, click the Release Info tab, and walk through the “5 Essential Steps to a Successful Upgrade.” Before you continue, though, select your language from the drop-down list on the Release Info page. CRM On Demand now has the upgrade steps translated into 11 languages. On the Step page, you can expand each section in sequence and follow the more detailed instructions that appear. This will ensure that you’ve covered all your bases for each upgrade. Here’s a shortened version of the information that you’ll find: 1. Verify your Primary Contact Information. Have you checked your primary contact information to make sure you’re being notified of all upgrade information? Or do you want more users to receive upgrade announcements? This section provides you with the navigation path to do that in CRM On Demand. 2. Review your Key Upgrade Dates. If you expand this step, a nice table appears with your critical dates for the various milestones. IMPORTANT: When your CRM On Demand pod has been officially added to the upgrade schedule, closer to the release date itself, this table will display your specific timetable. 3. Migrate your Customizations from the Staging Environment before the Snapshot Date. Oracle refreshes the Staging data with a copy of your Production data made on the Production Snapshot Date. So this section lists considerations relevant to this step. It also reminds you of the 2-week period when you should not be making any changes in your Staging environment.   4. Conduct your Upgrade Validation on the Staging Environment. When the Customer Validation Testing period begins, you need to log in to your Staging Environment to validate that your key business processes and customizations continue to behave as expected. If your company utilizes Web Services, Web Links, Web Applets or Workflow, focus on testing these first. You generally have about two weeks for testing. If you run into problems during this time, follow the instructions shown in this section for logging a service request. It describes exactly how to fill out the fields in the SR for the fastest resolution. 5. Conduct "White Glove" Testing in your Upgraded Production Environment. Before users start using the upgrade, you should access a few tabs and reports. Doing this actually warms up the cache so that frequently used pages and reports will come up at normal speed on Monday morning, when users log in to the upgraded system. Resources listed under this step help you in further preparing for the upgrade. Now there’s also a new Documentation section on the right with links to these release-specific resources.   Very nice, I commented, when discussing these improvements with the “responsible party.” She confirmed that, yes, they tried to consolidate the upgrade information, translate it for better communication, simplify it into 5 easy pieces, and drive admins responsible for handling upgrades to this one site instead of sending out elaborate emails. Yes, I just love it when someone practically reaches out and holds my hand through a process. Next best thing to a wizard!

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  • 65536% Autogrowth!

    - by Tara Kizer
    Twice a year, we move our production systems to our disaster recovery site.  Last Saturday night was one of those days.  There are about 50 SQL Server databases to be moved to the DR site, which is done via database mirroring.  It takes only a few seconds to failover, but some databases have a bit more involved work such as setting up replication.  Everything went relatively smooth, but we encountered a weird bug on our most mission critical system.  After everything was successfully failed over to the DR site, it was noticed that mirroring was in a suspended state on one of the databases.  We thought we had run into a SQL Server 2005 bug that we had been encountering and were working with Microsoft on a fix.  Microsoft did fix it in both SQL Server 2005 service pack 3 cumulative update package 13 and service pack 4 cumulative update package 2, however SP3 CU13 and SP4 both recently failed on this system so we were not patched yet with the bug fix.  As the suspended state was causing us issues with replication, we dropped mirroring.  We then noticed we had 10MB of free disk space on the mount point where the principal’s data files are stored.  I knew something went amiss as this system should have at least 150GB free on that mount point.  I immediately checked the main database’s data file and was shocked to see an autgrowth size of 65536%.  The data file autogrew right before mirroring went into the suspended state. 65536%! I didn’t have a lot of time to research if this autgrowth problem was a known SQL Server bug, so I deferred that research to today.  A quick Google search yielded no results but emphasis on “quick”.  I checked our performance system, which was recently restored with a copy of the affected production database, and found the autogrowth setting to be 512MB.  So this autogrowth bug was encountered sometime in the last two weeks.  On February 26th, we had attempted to install SQL 2005 SP4 on production, however it had failed (PSS case open with Microsoft).  I suspected that the SP4 failure was somehow related to this autgrowth bug although that turned out not to be the case. I then tweeted (@TaraKizer) about this problem to see if the SQL Server community (#sqlhelp) had any insights.  It seems several people have either heard of this bug or encountered it.  Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter) referred me to this Connect item. Our affected database originated on SQL Server 2000 and was upgraded to SQL Server 2005 in 2007.  Back on SQL Server 2000, we were using the default file growth setting which was a percentage.  Sometime after the 2005 upgrade is when we changed it to 512MB.  Our situation seemed to fit the bug Aaron referred to me, so now the question was whether Microsoft had fixed it yet. I received a reply to my tweet from Amit Banerjee (twitter) that it had been fixed in SP3 CU1 (KB958004).  My affected system is SP3 CU8, so I was initially confused why we had encountered the bug.  Because I don’t read things fully, I had missed that there are additional steps you have to follow after applying the bug fix.  Amit set me straight.  Although you can read this information in the KB article, I will also copy it here in case you are as lazy as me and miss the most important section of it (although if you are as lazy as me, you won’t have read this far down my blog post): This hotfix will prevent only future occurrences of this problem. For example, if you restore a database from SQL Server 2000 to a SQL Server 2005 instance that contains this hotfix, this problem will not occur. However, if you already have a database that is affected by this problem, you must follow these steps to resolve this problem manually: Apply this hotfix. Set the file growth settings for the affected files to percentage settings, and then set the settings back to megabyte settings. Take the database offline, and then bring it back online. Verify that the values of the is_percent_growth column are correct in the sys.database_files system table and in the sys.master_files system table.

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  • Introducing the First Global Web Experience Management Content Management System

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    By Calvin Scharffs, VP of Marketing and Product Development, Lingotek Globalizing online content is more important than ever. The total spending power of online consumers around the world is nearly $50 trillion, a recent Common Sense Advisory report found. Three years ago, enterprises would have to translate content into 37 language to reach 98 percent of Internet users. This year, it takes 48 languages to reach the same amount of users.  For companies seeking to increase global market share, “translate frequently and fast” is the name of the game. Today’s content is dynamic and ever-changing, covering the gamut from social media sites to company forums to press releases. With high-quality translation and localization, enterprises can tailor content to consumers around the world.  Speed and Efficiency in Translation When it comes to the “frequently and fast” part of the equation, enterprises run into problems. Professional service providers provide translated content in files, which company workers then have to manually insert into their CMS. When companies update or edit source documents, they have to hunt down all the translated content and change each document individually.  Lingotek and Oracle have solved the problem by making the Lingotek Collaborative Translation Platform fully integrated and interoperable with Oracle WebCenter Sites Web Experience Management. Lingotek combines best-in-class machine translation solutions, real-time community/crowd translation and professional translation to enable companies to publish globalized content in an efficient and cost-effective manner. WebCenter Sites Web Experience Management simplifies the creation and management of different types of content across multiple channels, including social media.  Globalization Without Interrupting the Workflow The combination of the Lingotek platform with WebCenter Sites ensures that process of authoring, publishing, targeting, optimizing and personalizing global Web content is automated, saving companies the time and effort of manually entering content. Users can seamlessly integrate translation into their WebCenter Sites workflows, optimizing their translation and localization across web, social and mobile channels in multiple languages. The original structure and formatting of all translated content is maintained, saving workers the time and effort involved with inserting the text translation and reformatting.  In addition, Lingotek’s continuous publication model addresses the dynamic nature of content, automatically updating the status of translated documents within the WebCenter Sites Workflow whenever users edit or update source documents. This enables users to sync translations in real time. The translation, localization, updating and publishing of Web Experience Management content happens in a single, uninterrupted workflow.  The net result of Lingotek Inside for Oracle WebCenter Sites Web Experience Management is a system that more than meets the need for frequent and fast global translation. Workflows are accelerated. The globalization of content becomes faster and more streamlined. Enterprises save time, cost and effort in translation project management, and can address the needs of each of their global markets in a timely and cost-effective manner.  About Lingotek Lingotek is an Oracle Gold Partner and is going to be one of the first Oracle Validated Integrator (OVI) partners with WebCenter Sites. Lingotek is also an OVI partner with Oracle WebCenter Content.  Watch a video about how Lingotek Inside for Oracle WebCenter Sites works! Oracle WebCenter will be hosting a webinar, “Hitachi Data Systems Improves Global Web Experiences with Oracle WebCenter," tomorrow, September 13th. To attend the webinar, please register now! For more information about Lingotek for Oracle WebCenter, please visit http://www.lingotek.com/oracle.

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  • "Why We Chose Fusion CRM" by Vikas Bhambri, Managing Partner, The Athene Group

    - by Natalia Rachelson
    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;} A guest post by Vikas Bhambri, Managing Partner, The Athene Group This year The Athene Group (www.theathenegroup.com) celebrated our tenth anniversary. The company has accomplished a lot in ten years overcoming a number of hurdles and challenges to have grown organically to a 150+ person global company with offices in the US, UK, and India and customers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Now more than ever with the current global landscape from an economic and competitive standpoint it was vital that we make some changes to remain successful for the next ten years. There were two key initiatives that we discussed internally that would enable us to successfully accomplish this – collaboration and the concept of “insight to action”. With our existing Oracle CRM On Demand platform we had components of this but not the full depth and breadth that we were looking for. When we started to discuss Fusion CRM we immediately saw several next generation tools that would embrace these two objectives. For a consulting and development organization the collaboration required between business development and consulting delivery is as important as the collaboration required during the projects between the project delivery and account management teams. The Activity Streams functionality in Fusion CRM immediately addressed the communication of key discussion topics and exchanges around our clients. Of course when we saw the Oracle Social Network (which is part of our Fusion CRM roadmap) we were blown away. The combination OSN and our CRM is going to make us more effective as we discuss and work cohesively on client engagements – ensuring mutual success for both Athene and our clients. When we looked at “insight to action” we saw that we had a great platform when folks were at their desks, unfortunately a lot of our business development and consulting folks are on the road. The Fusion Mobile Sales and Fusion Outlook Desktop provide information to our teams when they are on the go. So that they can provide real-time information and react to real-time information provided by their peers. We are in the early stages of our transformative experience with Fusion CRM but we believe the platform along with our people and processes are going to help us achieve our goals in the future.

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  • First Impressions of a MacBook (from a PC guy)

    - by dgreen
    Disclaimer: I've been a PC guy my entire working career. I'd probably characterize myself as a power user. Never afraid to bust out the console line. But working with a Mac is totally foreign to me. So for those Mac guys who are curious, this is how your world appears from the outside to a computer literate person :)My Macbook Air has arrived! And it's a thing of beauty:First, the specs: 13" MacBook Air, 2.0GHz Core i7 processor. Upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100, SSD flash storage  = 256GB. The plan is ultimately to use this baby for some iOS development but also some decent lifting in Windows with Visual Studio. Done a lot of reading  and between VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Bootcamp...I'm going to go with VMWare Fusion for $49.99And now my impressions (please re-read disclaimer before proceeding!):I open the box and am trying to understand exactly how the magsafe connector works (and how to disconnect it).  Why does it have two socket outlet plugs? Who knows.  I feel like Hansel in Zoolander. The files are "in" the computer.Stuck in my external hard drive (usb). So how do I get to the files? To the Googles!Argh...it can't read my external NTFS drive. Fat32 can't support field over 4GB…problematic since some of my existing VMWare image files are much larger than 4GB. Didn't see this coming.Three year old loves iPhoto. Super easy to use. Don't even know what I'm doing but I've already (accidentally) discovered the image filtering options. Fun stuff.First thing I downloaded ever => Chrome. I need something to ground me, something familiar. My token, if you will (sorry, gratuitous Inception joke).Ok, I get it… Finder == windows explorer. But where is my hierarchical structure? I miss the tree :(On that note, yeah…how do I see what "path" my files reside in? I'm afraid to know the answer. You know what scares more though…this notion of a smart folder. Feel like the godfather - just get the job done, I don't care how you handle it, I don't want to know...just get it done. What the hell is AirDrop?Mail…just worked. Still in shock that they have a free client for yahoo mail (please no yahoo jokes).mail -> deleting a message takes 5 seconds. Have they heard of async?"Command" key instead of "Control" ok, then what the $%&^! is the control key for then"aliases" == shortcuts I thinkI don't see the file system. And I'm scared. All these things I'm downloading…these .dmg files (bad name) where are they going? Can't seem to delete when they're doneUgh...realized need to buy a mini-to-vga adaptor if I want to use my external monitor ($13 on ebay, $39 in apple store).Windows docking is trickiest for me…this notion of detached windows with a menu bar at the top. I don't like this paradigm, it's confusing. But maybe because I've been using Windows for too long.Evernote, Dropbox desktop clients seem almost identical…few quirks here and there I need to get used to.iTunes is still a bit gross. In a weird way it's actually worse on a Mac if thats possible. This is not the MacBook's fault…this is a software design issue. Overall: UI will take some getting used to. Can't decide if this represents the future and I'm stuck in the past…or this is the past and I've been spoiled by the future (which would be Windows…don't be hating I happen to be very productive in Win7)  So there you go - my 90 minute first impression of the MacBook universe.

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  • Should I break contract early?

    - by cbang
    About 7 months ago I made the switch from a 5 year permie role (as a support developer in C#) to a contract role. I did this because I was stagnating in my old role. The extra cash contracting is really helping too. Unfortunately my team leader has taken a dislike to me from day 1. He regularly tells me I went out contracting too early, and frequently remarks that people in their 20's have no idea what they are talking about (I am 29). I was recently given the task of configuring our reports via our in house reporting library. It works off of a database driven criteria base, with controls being loaded as needed. The configs can get fairly complex, with controls having various levels of dependency on each other. I had a short time frame to get 50 reports working, and I was told to just get the basic configuration done, after which they will be handed over to the reporting team for fine tuning, then the test team. Our updated system was deployed 2 weeks ago, and it turned out that about 15 reports had issues causing incorrect data to be returned. Upon investigation I discovered that the reporting team hadn't even looked at them, and the test team hadn't bothered to test the reports. In spite of this, my team leader has told me that it is 100% my fault. As a result, our help desk got hit hard. I worked back until 2am that night to fix the highest priority issues (on my wedding anniversary!). The next day I arrive at work at 7:45 am to continue with the fixes. I got no thanks, but keep getting repeatedly told by my manager that "I fucked up" and "this is all my fault". I told my team leader I would spend part of my weekend working to fix the remaining issues. His response was "so you fucking should! you fucked it all up!" in front of the rest of the team. I responded "No worries." and left. I spent a decent chunk of my weekend working on it. Within 2 business days of finding out about the issues, I had all the medium and high priority issues fixed. The only comments my team leader has made to me in the last 2 weeks is to tell me how I have caused a big mess, and to tell me it was all my fault. I get this multiple times a day. If I make any jokes to anyone else in the team, I get told not to be a smartass... even though the rest of the team jokes throughout the day. Apart from that, all I get is angry looks any time I am anywhere near the guy. I don't give any response other than "alright" or silence when he starts giving me a hard time. Today we found out that the pilot release for the next stage has been pushed back. My team leader has said this was caused by me (but the higher ups said no such thing). He also said I have "no understanding of the ramifications of my actions". My question is, should I break contract (I am contracted until June 30) and find another role? No one else in my team will speak up in my favour, as they are contractors too and have no interest in rocking the boat. I could complain to my team leaders boss, but I can't see that helping, as I will still be stuck in the same team. As this is my first contract, I imagine getting the next one will be hard without a reference. I can't figure out if this guy is trying to get me fired up to provoke a confrontation (the guy loves conflict), or if he is just venting anger, or what. Copping this blame day after day is really wearing me down and making me depressed... especially since I have a wife and kid to support).

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  • Workflow versioning

    - by Nitra
    I believe I have a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to workflow engines which I would appreciate if you could help me sort out. I'm not sure if my misunderstanding is specific to the workflow engine I'm using, or if it's a general misunderstanding. I happen to use Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). TLDR-version WWF allows you to implement business processes in long-running workflows (think months or even years). When started, the workflows can't be changed. But what business process can't change at any time? And if a business process changes, wouldn't you want your software to reflect this change for already started 'instances' of the business process? What am I missing? Background In WWF you define a workflow by combining a set of activites. There are different types of activities - some of them are for flow control, such as the IfElseActivity and the WhileActivty while others allows you to perform actual tasks, such as the CodeActivity wich allows you to run .NET code and the InvokeWebServiceActivity which allows you to call web services. The activites are combined to a workflow using a visual designer. You pretty much drag-and-drop activities from a toolbox to a designer area and connect the activites to each other. The workflow and activities have input paramters, output parameters and variables. We have a single workflow which sometimes runs in a matter of a few days, but it may run for 5-6 months. WWF takes care of persisting the workflow state (what activity are we currently executing, what are the variable values and so on). So far I think WWF makes sense. Some people will prefer to implement a software representation of a business process using a visual designer over writing all of it in code. So what's the issue then? What I don't really get is the following: WWF is designed to take care of long-running workflows. But at the same time, WWF has no built-in functionality which allows you to modify the running workflows. So if you model a business process using a workflow and run that for 6 months, you better hope that the business process does not change. Because if it do, you'll have to have multiple versions of the workflow executing at the same time. This seems like a fundamental design mistake to me, but at the same time it seems more likely that I've misunderstood something. For us, this has had some real-world effects: We release new versions every month, but some workflows may run for a year. This means that we have several versions of the workflow running in parallell, in other words several versions of the business logics. This is the same as having many differnt versions of your code running in production in the same system at the same time, which becomes a bit hard to understand for users. (depending on on whether they clicked a 'Start' button 9 or 10 months ago, the software will behave differently) Our workflow refers to different types of entities and since WWF now has persisted and serialized these we can't really refactor the entities since then existing workflows can't be resumed (deserialization will fail We've received some suggestions on how to handle this When we create a new version of the workflow, cancel all running workflows and create new ones. But in our workflows there's a lot of manual work involved and if we start from scratch a lot of people has to re-do their work. Track what has been done in the workflow and when you create a new one skip activites which have already been executed. I feel that this alternative may work for simple workflows, but it becomes hairy to automatically figure out what activities to skip if there's major refactoring done to a workflow. When we create a new version of the workflow, upgrade old versions using the new WWF 4.5 functionality for upgrading workflows. But then we would have to skip using the visual designer and write code to inject activities in the right places in the workflow. According to MSDN, this upgrade functionality is only intended for minor bug fixes and not larger changes. What am I missing?

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  • Best depth sorting method for a Top Down 2D game using a 3D physics engine

    - by Alic44
    I've spent many days googling this and still have issues with my game engine I'd like to ask about, which I haven't seen addressed before. I think the problem is that my game is an unusual combination of a completely 2D graphical approach using XNA's SpriteBatch, and a completely 3D engine (the amazing BEPU physics engine) with rotation mostly disabled. In essence, my question is similar to this one (the part about "faux 3D"), but the difference is that in my game, the player as well as every other creature is represented by 3D objects, and they can all jump, pick up other objects, and throw them around. What this means is that sorting by one value, such as a Z position (how far north/south a character is on the screen) won't work, because as soon as a smaller creature jumps on top of a larger creature, or a box, and walks backwards, the moment its z value is less than that other creature, it will appear to be behind the object it is actually standing on. I actually originally solved this problem by splitting every object in the game into physics boxes which MUST have a Y height equal to their Z depth. I then based the depth sorting value on the object's y position (how high it is off the ground) PLUS its z position (how far north or south it is on the screen). The problem with this approach is that it requires all moving objects in the game to be split graphically into chunks which match up with a physical box which has its y dimension equal to its z dimension. Which is stupid. So, I got inspired last night to rewrite with a fresh approach. My new method is a little more complex, but I think a little more sane: every object which needs to be sorted by depth in the game exposes the interface IDepthDrawable and is added to a list owned by the DepthDrawer object. IDepthDrawable contains: public interface IDepthDrawable { Rectangle Bounds { get; } //possibly change this to a class if struct copying of the xna Rectangle type becomes an issue DepthDrawShape DepthShape { get; } void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch); } The Bounds Rectangle of each IDepthDrawable object represents the 2D Axis-Aligned Bounding Box it will take up when drawn to the screen. Anything that doesn't intersect the screen will be culled at this stage and the remaining on-screen IDepthDrawables will be Bounds tested for intersections with each other. This is where I get a little less sure of what I'm doing. Each group of collisions will be added to a list or other collection, and each list will sort itself based on its DepthShape property, which will have access to the object-to-be-drawn's physics information. For starting out, lets assume everything in the game is an axis aligned 3D Box shape. Boxes are pretty easy to sort. Something like: if (depthShape1.Back > depthShape2.Front) //if depthShape1 is in front of depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. else if (depthShape1.Bottom > depthShape2.Top) //if depthShape1 is above depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. //if neither of these are true, depthShape2 must be in front or above. So, by sorting draw order by several different factors from the physics engine, I believe I can get a really correct draw order. My question is, is this a good way of going about this, or is there some tried and true, tested way which is completely different and has somehow completely eluded me on the internets? And, if this does seem like a good way to remake my draw order sorting, what's the right sorting algorithm for reordering the Bounds Rectangle collision lists, and how do you deal with a Bounds Rectangle colliding with two different object which don't collide with eachother. I know these are solved problems, but I've only been programming for a year so any specific input here will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far, ye who made it -- sorry it was so long!

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  • Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 now Live!

    - by Tarun Arora
    Today was the formal launch event for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5, a state-of-the-art development solution for building modern applications that span connected devices and continuous services, from the client to the cloud. The event was streamed live from http://visualstudiolaunch.com, S.Somasegar corporate vice president of the Developer Division opened the key note, Jason Zander dived deeper into how to leverage Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 to build modern application. Brian Harry all the awesome features in Visual Studio 2012 to improve the application lifecycle management.   I. Summary of the announcements made today 1. Visual Studio Updates coming this fall –  VS Update will better support agile teams, enable continuous quality, elevate SharePoint development with application lifecycle management (ALM) tools, and expand Visual Studio 2012 Windows development capabilities. It will be available as a community technology preview (CTP) later this month and in final release later this calendar year. A comprehensive list of what will be on offer can be found here. 2. Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop – Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop brings the newest desktop development capabilities in Visual Studio 2012 to Express users, too. You would be excited to know that the express SKU will support Integration with TFS among some of the other cool features I would like to mention Unit Testing, Unit Testing, Code Analysis, dependency management with NuGet a full list and download links can be found here. 3. F# tools for Visual Studio Express 2012 for web –  This F# Tools release adds in F# 3.0 components, such as the F# 3.0 compiler, F# Interactive, IDE support, and new F# features such as type providers and query expressions to your Visual Studio 2012 express for web. More details and download links can be found here. 4. Visual Studio TFS 2012 Power Tools – The TFS 2012 Power tools brings the goodness of Best Practice Analyzer, Process Template Editor, Storyboard Shapes, Team Explorer enhancements, TFPT command line, TFS Server Backups, etc via to your TFS 2012 installation. It can be downloaded right away from here. II. Road shows There will be many more community road shows this month packaged with hours of demos and discussions. The Visual Studio UK Team has just announced that there will be four UK launch events, face to face session including a product group speaker and partner sessions: Edinburgh, 1st October Manchester, 3rd October London, 4th October Reading, 5th October III. Get Started Download Visual Studio 2012 and the additional supporting software's from here. The Visual Studio development team has put together over 60 videos to help you learn about the new Visual Studio 2012 capabilities in more detail, and all of these will be available for watching here. IV. What’s Next A lot more exciting stuff lined up… Windows 8 Anticipated release: Oct. 26 (UPDATED 9/12) Windows Server 2012 Released (UPDATED 9/4) System Center 2012 Released (UPDATED 9/11) SQL Server 2012 Released (UPDATED 4/2) Internet Explorer 10 Anticipated release: Between Q3 2012 and early 2013 (UPDATED 5/3   Office 2013 Anticipated release: Q4 2012 or Q1 2013(UPDATED 9/12) Exchange 2013 Anticipated release: Q4 2012 (UPDATED 7/26) Visual Studio 2012 Released (UPDATED 9/12) Kinect for Windows Released (UPDATED 9/4) Windows Phone "Tango" and 8 "Tango": Released; Anticipated "Windows Phone 8" release: Q4 2012 (UPDATED 9/5) Dynamics ERP Online Anticipated release: September or October 2012 (UPDATED 7/20) Office 365 Anticipated update schedule: "Almost weekly"(UPDATED 9/12) Windows Azure Rumored CTP release: Spring 2012 (UPDATED 9/7) SharePoint 2013 Anticipated release: Q4 2012 (UPDATED 8/21) Enjoy

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  • How to Mentor a Junior Developer

    - by Josh Johnson
    This title is a little broad but I may need to give a little background before I can ask my question properly. I know that similar questions have been asked here already. But in my case I'm not asking if I should be mentoring someone or if the person is a good fit for being a software developer. That is not my place to judge. I have not been asked outright, but it is apparent that myself and other fellow senior developers are to mentor the new developers that start here. I have no problem with this whatsoever and, in many cases, it lends me a fresh perspective on things and I end up learning in the process. Also, I remember how beneficial it was in the beginning of my career when someone would take some time to teach me something. When I say "new developer" they could be anywhere from fresh out of college to having a year or two of experience. Recently and in the past we've had people start here who seem to have an attitude toward development/programming which is different from mine and hard for me to reconcile; they seem to extract just enough information to get the task done but not really learn from it. I find myself going over and over the same issues with them. I understand that part of this could be a personality thing, but I feel it's my job to do my best and sort of push them out of the nest while they're under my wing, so to speak. How can I impart just enough information so that they will learn but not give so much as to solve the problem for them? Or perhaps: What's the proper response to questions that are designed to take the path of least resistance and, in essence, force them to learn instead of take the easy way out? These questions are probably more general teaching questions and don't have that much to do specifically with software development. Note: I do not get a say in what tasks they are working on. Management doles the task out and it could be anything from a very simple bug fix to starting an entire application by themselves. While this is not ideal by any means and obviously presents its own gauntlet of challenges, I feel it's a topic best left for another question. So the best I can do is help them with the problem at hand and try to help them break it down into simpler problems and also check their commit logs and point out mistakes that they made. My main objectives are to: Help them out and give them the tools they need to start becoming more self-reliant. Steer them in the right direction and break bad development habits early on. Lessen the amount of time I spend with them (the personality type described above seems to need much more one-on-one time and does not do well over IM or email. While that's generally fine, I can't always stop what I'm working on, break my stride, and help them debug an error on a moments notice; I have my own projects that need to get done).

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  • links for 2010-12-23

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 extension packs (Wim Coekaerts Blog) Wim Coekaerts describes the the new extension pack in Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 and how it's different from 3.2 and earlier releases. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Creating OES SM instances on 64 bit systems "I've already opened a bug on this against OES 10gR3 CP5, but in case anyone else runs into it before it gets fixed I wanted to blog it too. (NOTE: CP5 is when official support was introduced for running OES on a 64 bit system with a 64 bit JVM)" - Chris Johnson (tags: oracle otn fusionmiddleware security) Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Shared loader directory, RAC and WebLogic Clustering "RAC is optional. Even the load balancer is optional. The feed from the agents also goes to the load balancer on a different port and it is routed to the available management server. In normal case, this is ok." - Porus Homi Havewala (tags: WebLogic oracle otn grid clustering) Magic Web Doctor: Thought Process on Upgrading WebLogic Server to 11g "Upgrading to new versions can be challenging task, but it's done for linear scalability, continuous enhanced availability, efficient manageability and automatic/dynamic infrastructure provisioning at a low cost." - Chintan Patel (tags: oracle otn weblogic upgrading) InfoQ: Using a Service Bus to Connect the Supply Chain Peter Paul van de Beek presents a case study of using a service bus in a supply channel connecting a wholesale supplier with hundreds of retailers, the overall context and challenges faced – including the integration of POS software coming from different software providers-, the solution chosen and its implementation, how it worked out and the lessons learned along the way. (tags: ping.fm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is released! - The Fat Bloke Sings The Fat Bloke spreads the news and shares some screenshots.  (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Leaks on Wikis: "Corporations...You're Next!" Oracle Desktop Virtualization Can Help. (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) "So what can you do to guard against these types of breaches where there is no outsider (or even insider) intrusion to detect per se, but rather someone with malicious intent is physically walking out the door with data that they are otherwise allowed to access in their daily work?" - Adam Hawley (tags: oracle otn virtualization security) OTN ArchBeat Podcast Guest Roster As the OTN ArchBeat Podcast enters its third year, it's time to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the guests who have participated in ArchBeat programs. Check out this who's who of ArchBeat podcast panelists, with links to their respective interviews and more. (tags: oracle otn oracleace podcast archbeat) Show Notes: Architects in the Cloud (ArchBeat) Now available! Part 2 (of 4) of the ArchBeat interview with Stephen G. Bennett and Archie Reed, the authors of "Silver Clouds, Dark Linings: A Concise Guide to Cloud Computing." (tags: oracle otn podcast cloud) A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration (Scott Nelson's Portal Productivity Ponderings) "I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went 'Boom.'" - Scott Nelson (tags: weblogic jdbc oracle jndi)

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  • Multitenant Design for SQL Azure: White Paper Available

    - by Herve Roggero
    Cloud computing is about scaling out all your application tiers, from web application to the database layer. In fact, the whole promise of Azure is to pay for just what you need. You need more IIS servers? No problemo... just spin another web server. You expect to double your storage needs for Azure Tables? No problemo; you are covered there too... just pay for your storage needs. But what about the database tier, SQL Azure? How do you add new databases easily, and transparently, so that your application simply uses more of SQL Azure if its needs to? Without changing a single line of code? And what if you need to scale back down? Welcome to the world of database scalability. There are many terms that describe database scalability, including data federation, multitenant designs, and even NoSQL depending on the technical solution you are implementing.  Because SQL Azure is a transactional database system, NoSQL is not really an option. However data federation and multitenant designs offer some very interesting scalability options that are worth considering. Data federation, a feature of SQL Azure that will be offered in the future, offers very interesting capabilities available natively on the SQL Azure platform. More to come in a few weeks... Multitenant designs on the other hand are design practices and technologies designed to help you reach flexible scalability options not available otherwise. The first incarnation of such a method was made available on CodePlex as an open source project (http://enzosqlshard.codeplex.com).  This project was an attempt to provide a sharding library for educational purposes.  All that sounds really cool... and really esoteric... almost a form of database "voodoo"... However after being on multiple Azure projects I am starting to see a real need. Customers want to be able to free themselves from the database tier, so that if they have 10 new customers tomorrow, all they need to do is add 2 more SQL Azure instances. It's that simple. How you achieve this, and suggested application design guidelines, are available in a white paper I just published.  The white paper offers two primary sections. The first section describes the business and technical problem at hand, and how to classify it according to specific design patterns. For example, I discuss compressed shards through schema separation. The second section offers a method for addressing the needs of a multitenant design using a new library, the big bother of the codeplex project mentioned previously (that I created earlier this year), complete with management interface and such. A Beta of this platform will be made available within weeks; as soon as the documentation will be ready.   I would like to ask you to drop me a quick email at [email protected] if you are going to download the white paper. It's not required, but it would help me get in touch with you for feedback.  You can download this white paper here:   http://www.bluesyntax.net/files/EnzoFramework.pdf . Thank you, and I am looking for feedback, thoughts and implementation opportunities.

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  • JavaOne Latin America 2012 Trip Report

    - by reza_rahman
    JavaOne Latin America 2012 was held at the Transamerica Expo Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil on December 4-6. The conference was a resounding success with a great vibe, excellent technical content and numerous world class speakers. Some notable local and international speakers included Bruno Souza, Yara Senger, Mattias Karlsson, Vinicius Senger, Heather Vancura, Tori Wieldt, Arun Gupta, Jim Weaver, Stephen Chin, Simon Ritter and Henrik Stahl. Topics covered included the JCP/JUGs, Java SE 7, HTML 5/WebSocket, CDI, Java EE 6, Java EE 7, JSF 2.2, JMS 2, JAX-RS 2, Arquillian and JavaFX. Bruno Borges and I manned the GlassFish booth at the Java Pavilion on Tuesday and Webnesday. The booth traffic was decent and not too hectic. We met a number of GlassFish adopters including perhaps one of the largest GlassFish deployments in Brazil as well as some folks migrating to Java EE from Spring. We invited them to share their stories with us. We also talked with some key members of the local Java community. Tuesday evening we had the GlassFish party at the Tribeca Pub. The party was definitely a hit and we could have used a larger venue (this was the first time we had the GlassFish party in Brazil). Along with GlassFish enthusiasts, a number of Java community leaders were there. We met some of the same folks again at the JUG leader's party on Wednesday evening. On Thursday Arun Gupta, Bruno Borges and I ran a hands-on-lab on JAX-RS, WebSocket and Server-Sent Events (SSE) titled "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". This is the same Java EE 7 lab run at JavaOne San Francisco. The lab provides developers a first hand glipse of how an HTML 5 powered Java EE application might look like. We had an overflow crowd for the lab (at one point we had about twenty people standing) and the lab went very well. The slides for the lab are here: Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket from Reza Rahman The actual contents for the lab is available here. Give me a shout if you need help getting it up and running. I gave two solo talks following the lab. The first was on JMS 2 titled "What’s New in Java Message Service 2". This was essentially the same talk given by JMS 2 specification lead Nigel Deakin at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JMS 2 simplified API, JMSContext injection, delivery delays, asynchronous send, JMS resource definition in Java EE 7, standardized configuration for JMS MDBs in EJB 3.2, mandatory JCA pluggability and the like. The session went very well, there was good Q & A and someone even told me this was the best session of the conference! The slides for the talk are here: What’s New in Java Message Service 2 from Reza Rahman My last talk for the conference was on JAX-RS 2 in the keynote hall. Titled "JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API" this was basically the same talk given by the specification leads Santiago Pericas-Geertsen and Marek Potociar at JavaOne San Francisco. I talked about the JAX-RS 2 client API, asyncronous processing, filters/interceptors, hypermedia support, server-side content negotiation and the like. The talk went very well and I got a few very kind complements afterwards. The slides for the talk are here: JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API from Reza Rahman On a more personal note, Sao Paulo has always had a special place in my heart as the incubating city for Sepultura and Soulfy -- two of my most favorite heavy metal musical groups of all time! Consequently, the city has a perpertually alive and kicking metal scene pretty much any given day of the week. This time I got to check out a solid performance by local metal gig Republica at the legendary Manifesto Bar. I also wanted to see a Dio Tribute at the Blackmore but ran out of time and energy... Overall I enjoyed the conference/Sao Paulo and look forward to going to Brazil again next year!

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  • Java EE @ No Fluff Just Stuff Tour

    - by reza_rahman
    If you work in the US and still don't know what the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Tour is, you are doing yourself a very serious disfavor. NFJS is by far the cheapest and most effective way to stay up to date through some world class speakers and talks. This is most certainly true for US enterprise Java developers in particular. Following the US cultural tradition of old-fashioned roadshows, NFJS is basically a set program of speakers and topics offered at major US cities year round. Many now famous world class technology speakers can trace their humble roots to NFJS. Via NFJS you basically get to have amazing training without paying for an expensive venue, lodging or travel. The events are usually on the weekends so you don't need to even skip work if you want (a great feature for consultants on tight budgets and deadlines). I am proud to share with you that I recently joined the NFJS troupe. My hope is that this will help solve the lingering problem of effectively spreading the Java EE message here in the US. For NFJS I hope my joining will help beef up perhaps much desired Java content. In any case, simply being accepted into this legendary program is an honor I could have perhaps only dreamed of a few years ago. I am very grateful to Jay Zimmerman for seeing the value in me and the Java EE content. The current speaker line-up consists of the likes of Neal Ford, Venkat Subramaniam, Nathaniel Schutta, Tim Berglund and many other great speakers. I actually had my tour debut on April 4-5 with the NFJS New York Software Symposium - basically a short train commute away from my home office. The show is traditionally one of the smaller ones and it was not that bad for a start. I look forward to doing a few more in the coming months (more on that a bit later). I had four talks back to back (really my most favorite four at the moment). The first one was a talk on JMS 2 - some of you might already know JMS is one of my most favored Java EE APIs. The slides for the talk are posted below: What’s New in Java Message Service 2 from Reza Rahman The next talk I delivered was my Cargo Tracker/Java EE + DDD talk. This talk basically overviews DDD and describes how DDD maps to Java EE using code examples/demos from the Cargo Tracker Java EE Blue Prints project. Applied Domain-Driven Design Blue Prints for Java EE from Reza Rahman The third talk I delivered was our flagship Java EE 7/8 talk. As you may know, currently the talk is basically about Java EE 7. I'll probably slowly evolve this talk to gradually transform it into a Java EE 8 talk as we move forward (I'll blog about that separately shortly). The following is the slide deck for the talk: JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond from Reza Rahman My last talk for the show was my JavaScript+Java EE 7 talk. This talk is basically about aligning EE 7 with the emerging JavaScript ecosystem (specifically AngularJS). The slide deck for the talk is here: JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7 from Reza Rahman Unsurprisingly this talk was well-attended. The demo application code is posted on GitHub. The code should be a helpful resource if this development model is something that interests you. Do let me know if you need help with it but the instructions should be fairly self-explanatory. My next NFJS show is the Central Ohio Software Symposium in Columbus on June 6-8 (sorry for the late notice - it's been a really crazy few weeks). Here's my tour schedule so far, I'll keep you up-to-date as the tour goes forward: June 6 - 8, Columbus Ohio. June 24 - 27, Denver Colorado (UberConf) - my most extensive agenda on the tour so far. July 18 - 20, Austin Texas. I hope you'll take this opportunity to get some updates on Java EE as well as the other awesome content on the tour?

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  • Comparing Isis, Google, and Paypal

    - by David Dorf
    Back in 2010 I was sure NFC would make great strides, but here we are two years later and NFC doesn't seem to be sticking. The obvious reason being the chicken-and-egg problem.  Retailers don't want to install the terminals until the phones support NFC, and vice-versa. So consumers continue to sit on the sidelines waiting for either side to blink and make the necessary investment.  In the meantime, EMV is looking for a way to sneak into the US with the help of the card brands. There are currently three major solutions that are battling in the marketplace.  All three know that replacing mag-stripe alone is not sufficient to move consumers.  Long-term it's the offers and loyalty programs combined with tendering that make NFC attractive. NFC solutions cross lots of barriers, so a strong partner system is required.  The solutions need to include the carriers, card brands, banks, handset manufacturers, POS terminals, and most of all lots of merchants.  Lots of coordination is necessary to make the solution seamless to the consumer. Google Wallet Google's problem has always been that only the Nexus phone has an NFC chip that supports their wallet.  There are a couple of additional phones out there now, but adoption is still slow.  They acquired Zavers a while back to incorporate digital coupons, but the the bulk of their users continue to be non-NFC.  They have taken an open approach by not specifying particular payment brands.  Google is piloting in San Francisco and New York, supporting both MasterCard PayPass and stored value. I suppose the other card brands may eventually follow.  There's no cost for consumers or merchants -- Google will make money via targeted ads. Isis Not long after Google announced its wallet, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile announced a joint venture called Isis.  They are in the unique position of owning the SIM in the phones they issue.  At first it seemed Isis was a vehicle for the carriers to compete with the existing card brands, but Isis later switched to a generic wallet that supports the major card brands.  Isis reportedly charges issuers a $5 fee per customer per year.  Isis will pilot this summer in Salt Lake City and Austin. PayPal PayPal, the clear winner in the online payment space beyond traditional credit cards, is trying to move into physical stores.  After negotiations with Google to provide a wallet broke off, PayPal decided to avoid NFC altogether, at least for now, and focus on payments without any physical card or phone.  By avoiding NFC, consumers don't need an NFC-enabled phone and merchants don't need a new reader.  Consumers must enter their phone number and PIN in the merchant's existing device, or they can enter their PIN in the PayPal inStore app running on their phone, then show the merchant a unique barcode which authorizes payment. Paypal is free for consumers and charges a fee for merchants.  Its not clear, at least to me, how PayPal handles fraudulent transactions and whether the consumer is protected. The wildcard is, of course, Apple.  Their mobile technologies set the standard, so incorporating NFC chips would certainly accelerate adoption of many payment solutions.  Their announcement today of the iOS Passbook is a step in the right direction, but stops short of handling payments. For those retailers that have invested in modern terminals, it seems the best strategy is to support all the emerging solutions and let the consumers choose the winner.

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  • Nominations now open for the Oracle FMW Excellence Awards 2014

    - by Greg Jensen
    2014 Oracle Excellence Award NominationsWho Is the Innovative Leader for Identity Management? •    Is your organization leveraging one of Oracle’s Identity and Access Management solutions in your production environment?•    Are you a leading edge organization that has adopted a forward thinking approach to Identity and Access Management processes across the organization?•    Are you ready to promote and highlight the success of your deployment to your peers? •    Would you a chance to win FREE registration to Oracle OpenWorld 2014? Oracle is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2014 Oracle Excellence Awards: Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation.  The Oracle Excellence Awards for Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation honor organizations using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique business value.  This year, the awards will recognize customers across nine distinct categories, including Identity and Access Management.  Oracle customers, who feel they are pioneers in their implementation of at least one of the Oracle Identity and Access Management offerings in a production environment or active deployment, should submit a nomination.  If submitted by June 20th, 2014, you will have a chance to win a FREE registration to Oracle OpenWorld 2014 (September 28 - October 2) in San Francisco, CA.  Top customers will be showcased at Oracle OpenWorld and featured in Oracle publications.   The  Identity and Access Management Nomination Form Additional benefits to nomineesNominating your organization opens additional opportunities to partner with Oracle such as:•    Promotion of your Customer Success StoriesProvides a platform for you to share the success of your initiatives and programs to peer groups raising the overall visibility of your team and your organization as a leader in security•    Social Media promotion (Video, Blog & Podcast)Reach the masses of Oracle’s customers through sharing of success stories, or customer created blog content that highlights the advanced thought leadership role in security with co-authored articles on Oracle Blog page that reaches close to 100,000 subscribers. There are numerous options to promote activities on Facebook, Twitter and co-branded activities using Video and Audio. •    Live speaking opportunities to your peersAs a technology leader within your organization, you can represent your organization at Oracle sponsored events (online, in person or webcasts) to help share the success of your organizations efforts building out your team/organization brand and success. •    Invitation to the IDM Architect ForumOracle is able to invite the right customers into the IDM Architect Forum which is an invite only group of customers that meet monthly to hear technology driven presentations from their own peers (not from Oracle) on today’s trends.  If you want to hear privately what some of the most successful companies in every industry are doing about security, this is the forum to be in. All presentations are private and remain within the forum, and only members can see take advantage of the lessons gained from these meetings.  To date, there are 125 members. There are many more advantages to partnering with Oracle, however, it can start with the simple nomination form for Identity and Access Management category of the 2014 Oracle Excellence Award 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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  • How views are changing in future versions of SQL

    - by Rob Farley
    April is here, and this weekend, SQL v11.0 (previous known as Denali, now known as SQL Server 2012) reaches general availability. And so I thought I’d share some news about what’s coming next. I didn’t hear this at the MVP Summit earlier this year (where there was lots of NDA information given, but I didn’t go), so I think I’m free to share it. I’ve written before about CTEs being query-scoped views. Well, the actual story goes a bit further, and will continue to develop in future versions. A CTE is a like a “temporary temporary view”, scoped to a single query. Due to globally-scoped temporary objects using a two-hashes naming style, and session-scoped (or ‘local’) temporary objects a one-hash naming style, this query-scoped temporary object uses a cunning zero-hash naming style. We see this implied in Books Online in the CREATE TABLE page, but as we know, temporary views are not yet supported in the SQL Server. However, in a breakaway from ANSI-SQL, Microsoft is moving towards consistency with their naming. We know that a CTE is a “common table expression” – this is proving to be a more strategic than you may have appreciated. Within the Microsoft product group, the term “Table Expression” is far more widely used than just CTEs. Anything that can be used in a FROM clause is referred to as a Table Expression, so long as it doesn’t actually store data (which would make it a Table, rather than a Table Expression). You can see this is not just restricted to the product group by doing an internet search for how the term is used without ‘common’. In the past, Books Online has referred to a view as a “virtual table” (but notice that there is no SQL 2012 version of this page). However, it was generally decided that “virtual table” was a poor name because it wasn’t completely accurate, and it’s typically accepted that virtualisation and SQL is frowned upon. That page I linked to says “or stored query”, which is slightly better, but when the SQL 2012 version of that page is actually published, the line will be changed to read: “A view is a stored table expression (STE)”. This change will be the first of many. During the SQL 2012 R2 release, the keyword VIEW will become deprecated (this will be SQL v11 SP1.5). Three versions later, in SQL 14.5, you will need to be in compatibility mode 140 to allow “CREATE VIEW” to work. Also consistent with Microsoft’s deprecation policy, the execution of any query that refers to an object created as a view (rather than the new “CREATE STE”), will cause a Deprecation Event to fire. This will all be in preparation for the introduction of Single-Column Table Expressions (to be introduced in SQL 17.3 SP6) which will finally shut up those people waiting for a decent implementation of Inline Scalar Functions. And of course, CTEs are “Common” because the Table Expression definition needs to be repeated over and over throughout a stored procedure. ...or so I think I heard at some point. Oh, and congratulations to all the new MVPs on this April 1st. @rob_farley

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  • Insurers Pushed to Transform Their Business

    - by Calvin Glenn
    Everyone in the P&C industry has heard it “We can’t do it.” “Nobody wants to do it.” “We can’t afford to do it.”  Unfortunately, what they’re referencing are the reasons many insurers are still trying to maintain their business processing on legacy policy administration systems, attempting to bide time until there is no other recourse but to give in, bite the bullet, and take on the monumental task of replacing an entire policy administration system (PAS). Just the thought of that project sends IT, Business Users and Management reeling. However, is that fear real?  It is a bit daunting when one realizes that a complete policy administration system replacement will touch most every function an insurer manages, from quoting and rating, to underwriting, distribution, and even customer service. With that, everyone has heard at least one horror story around a transformation initiative that has far exceeded budget and the promised implementation / go-live timeline.    But, does it have to be that hard?  Surely, in the age where a person can voice-activate their DVR to record a TV program from a cell phone, there has to be someone somewhere who’s figured out how to simplify this process. To be able to help insurers, of all sizes, transform and grow their business while also delivering on their overall objectives of providing speed to market, straight-through-processing for applications, quoting, underwriting, and simplified product development. Maybe we’re looking too hard and the answer is simple and straight-forward. Why replace the entire machine when all it really needs is a new part…a single enterprise rating system? This core, modular piece of the policy administration system is the foundation of product development and rate management that enables insurers to provide the right product at the right price to the right customer through the best channels at any given moment in time. The real benefit of a single enterprise rating system is the ability to deliver enhanced business capabilities, such as improved product management, streamlined underwriting, and speed to market. With these benefits, carriers have accomplished a portion of their overall transformation goal. Furthermore, lessons learned from the rating project can be applied to the bigger, down-the-road PAS project to support the successful completion of the overall transformation endeavor. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco, information was shared with attendees about a recent “go-live” project from an Oracle Insurance Tier 1 insurer who did what is proposed above…replaced just the rating portion of their legacy policy administration system with Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting.  This change provided the insurer greater flexibility to set rates that better reflect risk while enabling the company to support its market segment strategy. Using the Oracle Insurance Insbridge enterprise rating solution, the insurer was able to reduce processing time for agents and underwriters, gained the ability to support proprietary rating models and improved pricing accuracy.      There is mounting pressure on P&C insurers to produce growth and show net profitability in the midst of modest overall industry growth, large weather-related losses and intensifying competition for market share.  Insurers are also being asked to improve customer service, offer a differentiated value proposition and simplify insurance processes.  While the demands are many there is an easy answer…invest in and update the most mission critical application in your arsenal, the single enterprise rating system. Download the Podcast to listen to “Stand-Alone Rating Engine - Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market,” a podcast originally recorded in October 2013. Related Resources: White Paper: Stand-Alone Rating Engine: Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market Webcast On Demand: Stand-Alone Rating Engine and Core Transformation for P&C Insurers Don’t forget to keep up with us year-round: Facebook: www.facebook.com/oracleinsurance Twitter: www.twitter.com/oracleinsurance YouTube: www.youtube.com/oracleinsurance

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  • Slow Ubuntu 10.04 after long time unused

    - by Winston Ewert
    I'm at spring break so I'm back at my parent's house. I've turned my computer on which has been off since January and its unusably slow. This was not the case when I last used the computer in January. It is running 10.04, Memory: 875.5 MB CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ Available Disk Space: 330.8 GB I'm not seeing a large usage of either memory or Disk I/O. If I look at my list of processes there is only a very small amount of CPU usage. However, if I hover over the CPU usage graph that I've on the top bar, I sometimes get really high readings like 100%. It took a long time to boot, to open firefox, to open a link in firefox. As far as I can tell everything that the computer tries to do is just massively slow. Right now, I'm apt-get dist-upgrading to install any updates that I will have missed since last time this computer was on. Any ideas as to what is going on here? UPDATE: I thought to check dmesg and it has a lot of entries like this: [ 1870.142201] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1870.142206] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1870.142210] ata3.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1870.142217] ata3.00: cmd 60/08:10:c0:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 4096 in [ 1870.142218] res 41/40:00:c5:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1870.142221] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1870.142223] ata3.00: error: { UNC } [ 1870.143981] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1870.146758] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1870.146761] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1870.146777] ata3: EH complete [ 1872.092269] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1872.092274] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1872.092278] ata3.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1872.092285] ata3.00: cmd 60/08:00:c0:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in [ 1872.092287] res 41/40:00:c5:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1872.092289] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1872.092292] ata3.00: error: { UNC } [ 1872.094050] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1872.096795] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1872.096798] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1872.096814] ata3: EH complete [ 1874.042279] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1874.042285] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1874.042289] ata3.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1874.042296] ata3.00: cmd 60/08:10:c0:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 4096 in [ 1874.042297] res 41/40:00:c5:4a:65/00:00:03:00:00/40 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1874.042300] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1874.042302] ata3.00: error: { UNC } [ 1874.044048] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1874.046837] ata3.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd [ 1874.046840] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1874.046861] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code [ 1874.046863] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 1874.046867] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor] [ 1874.046872] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 1874.046874] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 1874.046883] 03 65 4a c5 [ 1874.046886] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed [ 1874.046892] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 03 65 4a c0 00 00 08 00 [ 1874.046900] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 56969925 [ 1874.046920] ata3: EH complete I'm not certain, but that looks like my problem may be a failing hard drive. But the drive is less then a year old, it really shouldn't be failing now...

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  • Lease Accounting Closed for Comment

    - by Theresa Hickman
    December 15, 2010 marked the last day to send public comments to FASB and IASB on lease accounting. June 2011 is the deadline for the final consideration of the Leases Exposure Draft that will be given to standard setters in order to create a new lease accounting standard. Landlords, lessees, retailers, airlines industry, etc. are all worried right now about the changes to lease accounting. They feel the changes will be too costly and complex without adding significant improvement to the quality and relevance of financial statements. In a nutshell, IASB and FASB want to abolish operating leases where the lessee records the periodic payments as an expense over time. The proposed changes will mean that the accounting for leases will move from the P&L and hit both the lessee's and lessor's balance sheets. For companies that occupy a lot of property, this could significantly increase their liabilities not to mention front-load much of the costs that they were able to spread out over time before. Why are IASB and FASB doing this? Their goal is to have consistent accounting for both the lessees and lessors with higher quality financial statements. Leasing is one of four major projects being undertaken by the IASB and FASB in order to complete convergence between US GAAP and IFRS. I spoke to our resident accounting expert Seamus Moran about this to better understand how this might impact accounting software. He reminded me that the proposed changes to both US GAAP and IFRS in respect to leases are "proposed." It is still inappropriate to account for leases the way they are being proposed and we still need to account for them in accordance to the current regulations, which is what current accounting software programs, such as E-Business Suite Release 12.1 and prior and PeopleSoft Enterprise support. The FASB (US GAAP) and IASB (IFRS) exposure drafts (EDs) that outline the proposal were published. The FASB edition was published on August 17th, with comments due by December 15th. The IASB edition was published on the same date, and comments were due in London on the same date. Exposure drafts are the method both the FASB and the IASB use to solicit General Acceptance, the "GA" in GAAP. Both Boards will consider the input they have received, and perhaps revise the proposal. The proposal has come in for some criticism, both from the finance houses and the uses of the leased assets. There is, given the opposition to it, an excellent chance that the Leasing proposal will be modified or rewritten. We will know this in about six months, the usual time it takes for the FASB and IASB to digest the comments they receive. If they feel the proposal has General Acceptance, they will issue the final Standard at that time; if not, they will issue a revised proposal with another year of comment of drafting. Oracle participates in the standard setting process and is fully aware of the leasing proposal. We have designs that would reflect the proposal in hand. These designs will be finalized when the proposal is finalized. It is likely that customers will develop new financial arrangements if the proposal is finalized, and we are working with customers and partners to stay in touch with people's business responses to the proposal. The IASB and FASB are aware that ERP companies will have to revise their software, and that the companies filing results under IFRS or under US GAAP will have to implement such software. The form and timing of the release of the updated software will depend on the schedule of the take up of the new standard, the complexity of the standard, and the releases supported at the time the standard becomes effective.

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  • Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

    - by Jeff
    Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

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  • Oracle Tutor: XPDL conversion (and why you should care)

    - by mary.keane
    You may have noticed that the Oracle Business Process Converter feature in Tutor 14 supports "XPDL" conversion to Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite (BPA), Oracle Business Process Management Suite (BPM), and Oracle Tutor, and you may have briefly wondered "what is XPDL?" before you moved on to the Visio import feature (a very popular feature in Tutor 14). This posting is for those who do not yet understand (or care) about XPDL and process modeling. Many of us (and I'm including myself) have spent years working in the process definition arena: we've written procedures, designed systems and software to help others write procedures, and have been responsible for embedding policies and procedures into training material for employees. We've worked with tools such as Oracle Tutor, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Word, and UPK. Most of us have never worked with "modeling tools" before, and we certainly never had to understand BPMN. It's a brave new world in this arena, and companies desperately need people with policy and procedural system expertise to be able to work with system analysts so there is a seamless transfer of knowledge from IT to employees. When working with applications, a picture is worth a thousand words, so eventually you're going to need to understand and be able to work with business process models. XPDL is an acronym for XML Process Definition Language, and it is an interchange format for business process models. It allows you to take a BPMN model that was developed in one workflow application such as BizAgi and import it into another workflow application or a true BPMN management system such as Oracle BPM. Specifically, the XPDL format contains the graphical information of a model as well as any executable information. By using a common format, models can be moved from a basic modeling application used by business owners to applications used by system architects. Over 80 applications support the XPDL format, including MetaStorm ProVision, BEA ALBPM, BizAgi, and Tibco. I mention these applications because we have provided XSLT mapping files specifically for these vendors. Oracle Business Process Converter was designed with user extensibility in mind, and thus users can add their own XML files so that additional XPDL models from other vendors can be converted to BPM, BPA, and Oracle Tutor. Instructions on how to add your own files can be found in Appendix 4 of the Oracle Business Converter manual. Let's take a visual look at how this works. Here is an example of a model devloped in BizAgi: This model can be created by the average business user without a large learning curve, and it's a good start for the system analyst who will be adding web services as well as for the business manager who manages the process described in the model. By exporting this model as XPDL, the information can be converted into Oracle BPA and Oracle BPM as well as converted to Oracle Tutor to become the framework for a procedure. Through this conversion feature, one graphic illustration of a business process can be used by a system analyst, business analyst, business manager, and employee, as seen below. Model Converted to Tutor Procedure Below is the task section of the procedure after conversion from an XPDL file. Model converted to BPA Model converted to BPM End users still want step by step instructions on how to perform their jobs, so procedures (Oracle Tutor) and application simulations (UPK) are still a critical piece of the solution. But IT professionals need graphic descriptions of how the applications work, regardless of whether there are any tasks involving humans. Now there is a way to convert procedures (Oracle Tutor docx files) and basic models (XPDL files) so that business managers and system analysts can share process information. References Wikipedia XPDL. Workflow Management Coalition, XPDL Support and Resources Oracle Business Process Converter manual, Oracle Tutor 14 Oracle Business Process Management 11g If you have any XPDL conversion stories to share, we'd love to hear from you. Best wishes for the coming new year, Mary Keane, Senior Development Manager, Oracle Tutor and BPM

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  • Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

    - by David Dorf
    When most people discuss mobile in retail, they immediately go to shopping applications.  While I agree the consumer side of mobile is huge, I believe its also important to arm store associates with mobile tools.  There are around a dozen major roll-outs of mobile POS to chain retailers, and all have been successful.  This does not, however, signal the demise of traditional registers.  Retailers will adopt mobile POS slowly and reduce the number of fixed registers over time, but there's likely to be a combination of both for the foreseeable future.  Even Apple retains at least one fixed register in every store, you just have to know where to look. The business benefits for mobile POS are pretty straightforward: 1. Faster checkout.  Walmart's CFO recently reported that for every second they shave off the average transaction time, they can potentially save $12M a year in labor.  I think its more likely that labor will be redeployed to enhance the customer experience. 2. Smarter associates.  The sales associates on the floor need the same access to information that consumers have, if not more.  They need ready access to product details, reviews, inventory, etc. to meet consumer expectations.  In a recent study, 40% of consumers said a savvy store associate can impact their final product selection more than a website. 3. Lower costs.  Mobile POS hardware (iPod touch + sled) costs about a fifth of fixed registers, not to mention the reclaimed space that can be used for product displays. But almost all Mobile POS solutions can claim those benefits equally.  Where there's differentiation is on the technical side.  Oracle recently announced availability of the Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, and it has three big technology advantages in the market: 1. Portable. We used a popular open-source component called PhoneGap that abstracts the app from the underlying OS and hardware so that iOS, Android, and other platforms could be supported.  Further, we used Web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript, which are commonly known by many programmers, as opposed to ObjectiveC which is more difficult to find.  The screen can adjust to different form-factors and sizes, just like you see with browsers.  In the future when a new, zippy device gets released, retailers will have the option to move to that device more easily than if they used a native app. 2. Flexible.  Our Mobile POS is free with the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service product.  Retailers can use any combination of fixed and mobile registers, and those ratios can change as required.  Perhaps start with 1 mobile and 4 fixed per store, then transition over time to 4 mobile and 1 fixed without any additional software licenses.  Our scalable solution supports lots of combinations. 3. Consistent.  Because our Mobile POS is fully integrated to our traditional POS, the same business logic is reused.  Third-party Mobile POS solutions often handle pricing, promotions, and tax calculations separately leading to possible inconsistencies within the store.  That won't happen with Oracle's solution. For many retailers, Mobile POS can lower costs, increase customer service, and generally enhance a consumer's in-store experience.  Apple led the way, but lots of other retailers are discovering the many benefits of adding mobile capabilities in their stores.  Just be sure to examine both the business and technology benefits so you get the most value from your solution for the longest period of time.

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