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  • jqGrid - customizing the multi-select option (restrict single selection and adding custom events)

    - by Renso
    Goal: Using the jgGrid to enable a selection of a checkbox for row selection - which is easy to set in the jqGrid - but also only allowing a single row to be selectable at a time while adding events based on whether the row was selected or de-selected. Environment: jQuery 1.4.4 jqGrid 3.4.4a Issue: The jqGrid does not support the option to restrict the multi-select to only allow for a single selection. You may ask, why bother with the multi-select checkbox function if you only want to allow for the selection of a single row? Good question, as an example, you want to reserve the selection of a row to trigger another kind of event and use the checkbox multi-select to handle a different kind of event; in other words, when I select the row I want something entirely different to happen than when I select to check off the checkbox for that row. Also the setSelection method of the jqGrid is a toggle and has no support for determining whether the checkbox has already been selected or not, So it will simply act as a switch - which it is designed to do - but with no way out of the box to only check off the box (as in not to de-select) rather than act like a switch. Furthermore, the getGridParam('selrow') does not indicate if the row was selected or de-selected, which seems a bit strange and is the main reason for this blog post. Solution: How this will act: When you check off a multi-select checkbox in the gird, and then commence to select another row by checking off that row's multi-select checkbox - I'm not talking there about clicking on the row but using the grid's multi-select checkbox - it will de-select the previous selection so that you are always left with only a single selection. Furthermore, once you select or de-select a multi-select checkbox, fire off an event that will be determined by whether or not the row was selected or de-selected, not just merely clicked on. So if I de-select the row do one thing but when selecting it do another. Implementation (this of course is only a partial code snippet):             multiselect: true,             multiboxonly: true,             onSelectRow: function (rowId) {                 var gridSelRow = $(item).getGridParam('selrow');                 var s;                 s = $(item).getGridParam('selarrrow');                 if (!s || !s[0]) {                     $(item).resetSelection();                     $('#productLineDetails').fadeOut();                     lastsel = null;                     return;                 }                 var selected = $.inArray(rowId, s) != -1;                 if (selected) {                     $('#productLineDetails').show();                 }                 else {                     $('#productLineDetails').fadeOut();                 }                 if (rowId && rowId !== lastsel && selected) {                     $(item).GridToForm(gridSelRow, '#productLineDetails');                     if (lastsel) $(item).setSelection(lastsel, false);                 }                 lastsel = rowId;             }, In the example code above: The "item" property is the id of the jqGrid. The following to settings ensure that the jqGrid will add the new column to select rows with a checkbox and also the not allow for the selection by clicking on the row but to force the user to have to click on the multi-select checkbox to select the row: multiselect: true, multiboxonly: true, Unfortunately the var gridSelRow = $(item).getGridParam('selrow') function will only return the row the user clicked on or rather that the row's checkbox was clicked on and NOT whether or not it was selected nor de-selected, but it retrieves the row id, which is what we will need. The following piece get's all rows that have been selected so far, as in have a checked off multi-select checkbox: var s; s = $(item).getGridParam('selarrrow'); Now determine if the checkbox the user just clicked on was selected or de-selected: var selected = $.inArray(rowId, s) != -1; If it was selected then show a container "#productLineDetails", if not hide that container away. The following instruction populates a form with the grid data using the built-in GridToForm method (just mentioned here as an example) ONLY if the row has been selected and NOT de-selected but more importantly to de-select any other multi-select checkbox that may have been selected: if (rowId && rowId !== lastsel && selected) {                     $(item).GridToForm(gridSelRow, '#productLineDetails');                     if (lastsel) $(item).setSelection(lastsel, false); }

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  • MVC Portable Areas &ndash; Deploying Static Files

    - by Steve Michelotti
    This is the second post in a series related to build and deployment considerations as I’ve been exploring MVC Portable Areas: #1 – Using Web Application Project to build portable areas #2 – Conventions for deploying portable area static files #3 – Portable area static files as embedded resources As I’ve been digging more into portable areas, one of the things I’ve liked best is the deployment story which enables my *.aspx, *.ascx pages to be compiled into the assembly as embedded resources rather than having to maintain all those files separately. In traditional web forms, that was always the thing to prevented developers from utilizing *.ascx user controls across projects (see this post for using portable areas in web forms).  However, though the aspx pages are embedded, the supporting static files (e.g., images, css, javascript) are *not*. Most of the demos available online today tend to brush over this issue and focus solely on the aspx side of things. But to create truly robust portable areas, it’s important to have a good story for these supporting files as well.  I’ve been working with two different approaches so far (of course I’d really like to hear if other people are using alternatives). Scenario For the approaches below, the scenario really isn’t that important. It could be something as trivial as this partial view: 1: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %> 2: <img src="<%: Url.Content("~/images/arrow.gif") %>" /> Hello World! The point is that there needs to be careful consideration for *any* scenario that links to an external file such as an image, *.css, *.js, etc. In the example shown above, it uses the Url.Content() method to convert to a relative path. But this method won’t necessary work depending on how you deploy your portable area. One approach to address this issue is to build your portable area project with MSDeploy/WebDeploy so that it is packaged properly before incorporating into the host application. All of the *.cs files are removed and the project is ready for xcopy deployment – however, I do *not* need the “Views” folder since all of the mark up has been compiled into the assembly as embedded resources. Now in the host application we create a folder called “Modules” and deploy any portable areas as sub-folders under that: At this point we can add a simple assembly reference to the Widget1.dll sitting in the Modules\Widget1\bin folder. I can now render the portable image in my view like any other portable area. However, the problem with that is that the view results in this:   It couldn’t find arrow.gif because it looked for /images/arrow.gif and it was *actually* located at /images/Modules/Widget1/images/arrow.gif. One solution is to make the physical location of the portable configurable from the perspective of the host like this: 1: <appSettings> 2: <add key="Widget1" value="Modules\Widget1"/> 3: </appSettings> Using the <appSettings> section is a little cheesy but it could be better formalized into its own section. In fact, if were you willing to rely on conventions (e.g., “Modules\{areaName}”) then then config could be eliminated completely. With this config in place, we could create our own Html helper method called Url.AreaContent() that “wraps” the OOTB Url.Content() method while simply pre-pending the area location path: 1: public static string AreaContent(this UrlHelper urlHelper, string contentPath) 2: { 3: var areaName = (string)urlHelper.RequestContext.RouteData.DataTokens["area"]; 4: var areaPath = (string)ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[areaName]; 5:   6: return urlHelper.Content("~/" + areaPath + "/" + contentPath); With these two items in place, we just change our Url.Content() call to Url.AreaContent() like this: 1: <img src="<%: Url.AreaContent("/images/arrow.gif") %>" /> Hello World! and the arrow.gif now renders correctly:     Since we’re just using our own Url.AreaContent() rather than the built-in Url.Content(), this solution works for images, *.css, *.js, or any externally referenced files.  Additionally, any images referenced inside a css file will work provided it’s a relative reference and not an absolute reference. An alternative to this approach is to build the static file into the assembly as embedded resources themselves. I’ll explore this in another post (linked at the top).

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  • New Management Console in Java SE Advanced 8u20

    - by Erik Costlow-Oracle
    Java SE 8 update 20 is a new feature release designed to provide desktop administrators with better control of their managed systems. The release notes for 8u20 are available from the public JDK release notes page. This release is not a Critical Patch Update (CPU). I would like to call attention to two noteworthy features of Oracle Java SE Advanced, the commercially supported version of Java SE for enterprises that require both support and specialized tools. The new Advanced Management Console provides a way to monitor and understand client systems at scale. It allows organizations to track usage and more easily create and manage client configuration like Deployment Rule Sets (DRS). DRS can control execution of tracked applications as well as specify compatibility of which application should use which Java SE installation. The new MSI Installer integrates into various desktop management tools, making it easier to customize and roll out different Java SE versions. Advanced Management Console The Advanced Management Console is part of Java SE Advanced designed for desktop administrators, whose users need to run many different Java applications. It provides usage tracking for those Applet & Web Start applications to help identify them for guided DRS creation. DRS can then be verified against the tracked data, to ensure that end-users can run their application against the appropriate Java version with no prompts. Usage tracking also has a different definition for Java SE than it does for most software applications. Unlike most applications where usage can be determined by a simple run-count, Java is a platform used for launching other applications. This means that usage tracking must answer both "how often is this Java SE version used" and "what applications are launched by it." Usage Tracking One piece of Java SE Advanced is a centralized usage tracker. Simply placing a properties file on the client informs systems to report information to this usage tracker, so that the desktop administrator can better understand usage. Information is sent via UDP to prevent any delay on the client. The usage tracking server resides at a central location on the intranet to collect information from those clients. The information is stored in a normalized database for performance, meaning that a single usage tracker can handle a large number of clients. Guided Deployment Rule Sets Deployment Rule Sets were introduced in Java 7 update 40 (September 2013) in order to help administrators control security prompts and guide compatibility. A previous post, Deployment Rule Sets by Example, explains how to configure a rule set so that most applications run against the most secure version but a specific applet may run against the Java version that was current several years ago. There are a different set of questions that can be asked by a desktop administrator in a large or distributed firm: Where are the Java RIAs that our users need? Which RIA needs which Java version? Which users need which Java versions? How do I verify these answers once I have them? The guided deployment rule set creation uses usage tracker data to identify applications both by certificate hash and location. After creating the rules, a comparison tool exists to verify them against the tracked data: If you intend to run an RIA, is it green? If something specific should be blocked, is it red? This makes user-testing easier. MSI Installer The Windows Installer format (MSI) provides a number of benefits for desktop administrators that customize or manage software at scale. Unlike the basic installer that most users obtain from Java.com or OTN, this installer is built around customization and integration with various desktop management products like SCCM. Desktop administrators using the MSI installer can use every feature provided by the format, such as silent installs/upgrades, low-privileged installations, or self-repair capabilities Customers looking for Java SE Advanced can download the MSI installer through their My Oracle Support (MOS) account. Java SE Advanced The new features in Java SE Advanced make it easier for desktop administrators to identify and control client installations at scale. Administrators at organizations that want either the tools or associated commercial support should consider Java SE Advanced.

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  • Java 6 Certified with Forms and Reports 10g for EBS 12

    - by John Abraham
    Java 6 is now certified with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms and Reports with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.6, 12.1.1 and higher). What? Wasn't this already certified? No, but a little background might be useful in understanding why this is a new announcement. We previously certified the use of Java 6 with E-Business Suite Release 12 -- with the sole exception of Oracle Application Server 10g components in the E-Business Suite technology stack. Oracle Application Server 10g originally included Java 1.4.2 as part of its distribution.  E-Business Suite 12 uses, amongst other things, the Oracle Forms and Reports 10g components running on Java 1.4. Java 1.4 in the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME is used exclusively by AS 10g Forms and Reports' for Java functionality.  This version of Java is separate from the Java distribution used by other parts of EBS such as Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J). What's new about this certification? You can now upgrade the older Java 1.4 libraries used by Oracle Forms & Reports 10g to Java 6. This allows you to upgrade the Java releases within the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME to the the same level as the rest of your E-Business Suite technology stack components. Why upgrade? This becomes particularly important for customers as individual vendors' support lifecycle for Java 1.4 reaches End of Life: Oracle's Sun JDK Release 1.4.2's End of Extended Support: February 2013 (Sustaining Support indefinitely after) IBM SDK and JRE 1.4.2's End of Service: September 2013 HP-UX Java 1.4.2's End-of-Life : May 2012 Along with Oracle Forms, Java lies at the heart of the Oracle E-Business Suite.  Small improvements in Java can have significant effects on the performance and stability of the E-Business Suite.  As a notable side-benefit, later versions of Java have improved built-in and third-party tools for JVM performance monitoring and tuning.Our standing recommendation is that you always stay current with the latest available Java update provided by your operating system vendor.  Don't forget to upgrade Forms & Reports to 10.1.2.3 E-Business Suite 12 originally shipped with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms & Reports 10.1.2.0.2.  That version is no longer eligible for Error Correction Support. New Forms and Reports 10g patches are now being released with Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 as the prerequisite. Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 was certified for EBS 12 environments in November 2008. If you haven't upgraded your EBS 12 environment to Forms & Reports 10.1.2.3, this is a good opportunity to do so. References Using Latest Update of Java 6.0 with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 455492.1) Overview of Using Java with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 418664.1) Oracle Lifetime Support Policy (Oracle Fusion Middleware) IBM Developer Kit Lifecycle Dates HP-UX Java - End of Life Policy & Release Naming Terminology Related Articles OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 Certified With EBS R12 Java 6 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

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  • What Counts For a DBA: Imagination

    - by drsql
    "Imagination…One little spark, of inspiration… is at the heart, of all creation." – From the song "One Little Spark", by the Sherman Brothers I have a confession to make. Despite my great enthusiasm for databases and programming, it occurs to me that every database system I've ever worked on has been, in terms of its inputs and outputs, downright dull. Most have been glorified e-spreadsheets, many replacing manual systems built on actual spreadsheets. I've created a lot of database-driven software whose main job was to "count stuff"; phone calls, web visitors, payments, donations, pieces of equipment and so on. Sometimes, instead of counting stuff, the database recorded values from other stuff, such as data from sensors or networking devices. Yee hah! So how do we, as DBAs, maintain high standards and high spirits when we realize that so much of our work would fail to raise the pulse of even the most easily excitable soul? The answer lies in our imagination. To understand what I mean by this, consider a role that, in terms of its output, offers an extreme counterpoint to that of the DBA: the Disney Imagineer. Their job is to design Disney's Theme Parks, of which I'm a huge fan. To me this has always seemed like a fascinating and exciting job. What must an Imagineer do, every day, to inspire the feats of creativity that are so clearly evident in those spectacular rides and shows? Here, if ever there was one, is a role where "dull moments" must be rare indeed, surely? I wanted to find out, and so parted with a considerable sum of money for my wife and I to have lunch with one; I reasoned that if I found one small way to apply their secrets to my own career, it would be money well spent. Early in the conversation with our Imagineer (Cindy Cote), the job did indeed sound magical. However, as talk turned to management meetings, budget-wrangling and insane deadlines, I came to the strange realization that, in fact, her job was a lot more like mine than I would ever have guessed. Much like databases, all those spectacular Disney rides bring with them a vast array of complex plumbing, lighting, safety features, and all manner of other "boring bits", kept well out of sight of the end user, but vital for creating the desired experience; and, of course, it is these "boring bits" that take up much of the Imagineer's time. Naturally, there is still a vital part of their job that is spent testing out new ideas, putting themselves in the place of a park visitor, from a 9-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother, and trying to imagine what experiences they'd like to have. It is these small, but vital, sparks of imagination and creativity that have the biggest impact. The real feat of a successful Imagineer is clearly to never to lose sight of this fact, in among all the rote tasks. It is the same for a DBA. Not matter how seemingly dull is the task at hand, try to put yourself in the shoes of the end user, and imagine how your input will affect the experience he or she will have with the database you're building, and how that may affect the world beyond the bits stored in your database. Then, despite the inevitable rush to be "done", find time to go the extra mile and hone the design so that it delivers something as close to that imagined experience as you can get. OK, our output still can't and won't reach the same spectacular heights as the "Journey into The Imagination" ride at EPCOT Theme Park in Orlando, where I first heard "One Little Spark". However, our imaginative sparks and efforts can, and will, make a difference to the user who now feels slightly more at home with a database application, or to the manager holding a report presented with enough clarity to drive an interesting decision or two. They are small victories, but worth having, and appreciated, or at least that's how I imagine it.

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  • SQL SERVER – Why Do We Need Master Data Management – Importance and Significance of Master Data Management (MDM)

    - by pinaldave
    Let me paint a picture of everyday life for you.  Let’s say you and your wife both have address books for your groups of friends.  There is definitely overlap between them, so that you both have the addresses for your mutual friends, and there are addresses that only you know, and some only she knows.  They also might be organized differently.  You might list your friend under “J” for “Joe” or even under “W” for “Work,” while she might list him under “S” for “Joe Smith” or under your name because he is your friend.  If you happened to trade, neither of you would be able to find anything! This is where data management would be very important.  If you were to consolidate into one address book, you would have to set rules about how to organize the book, and both of you would have to follow them.  You would also make sure that poor Joe doesn’t get entered twice under “J” and under “S.” This might be a familiar situation to you, whether you are thinking about address books, record collections, books, or even shopping lists.  Wherever there is a lot of data to consolidate, you are going to run into problems unless everyone is following the same rules. I’m sure that my readers can figure out where I am going with this.  What is SQL Server but a computerized way to organize data?  And Microsoft is making it easier and easier to get all your “addresses” into one place.  In the  2008 version of SQL they introduced a new tool called Master Data Services (MDS) for Master Data Management, and they have improved it for the new 2012 version. MDM was hailed as a major improvement for business intelligence.  You might not think that an organizational system is terribly exciting, but think about the kind of “address books” a company might have.  Many companies have lots of important information, like addresses, credit card numbers, purchase history, and so much more.  To organize all this efficiently so that customers are well cared for and properly billed (only once, not never or multiple times!) is a major part of business intelligence. MDM comes into play because it will comb through these mountains of data and make sure that all the information is consistent, accurate, and all placed in one database so that employees don’t have to search high and low and waste their time. MDM also has operational MDM functions.  This is not a redundancy.  Operational MDM means that when one employee updates one bit of information in the database, for example – updating a new address for a customer, operational MDM ensures that this address is updated throughout the system so that all departments will have the correct information. Another cool thing about MDM is that it features Master Data Services Configuration Manager, which is exactly what it sounds like.  It has a built-in “helper” that lets you set up your database quickly, easily, and with the correct configurations.  While talking about cool features, I can’t skip over the add-in for Excel.  This allows you to link certain data to Excel files for easier sharing and uploading. In summary, I want to emphasize that the scariest part of the database is slowly disappearing.  Everyone knows that a database – one consolidated area for all your data – is a good idea, but the idea of setting one up is daunting.  But SQL Server is making data management easier and easier with features like Master Data Services (MDS). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Master Data Services, MDM

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  • Moving the Oracle User Experience Forward with the New Release 7 Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud

    - by mvaughan
    By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User ExperienceIn September 2013, Release 7 for Oracle Cloud Applications became generally available for Oracle Sales Cloud and HCM Cloud. This significant release allowed the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team to finally talk freely about Simplified UI, a user experience project in the works since Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Simplified UI represents the direction that the Oracle user experience – for all of its enterprise applications – is heading. Oracle’s Apps UX team began by building a Simplified UI for sales representatives. You can find that today in Release 7, and it was demoed extensively during OpenWorld 2013 in San Francisco. This screenshot shows how Opportunities appear in the new Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud, a user interface built for sales reps.Analyst Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, saw Simplified UI at Oracle Openworld 2013 and talked about it with CRM Buyer in “Oracle Revs Its Cloud Engines for a Better Customer Experience.” Wettemann said there are distinct themes to the latest release: "One is usability. Oracle Sales Cloud, for example, is designed to have zero training for onboarding sales reps, which it does," she explained. "It is quite impressive, actually -- the intuitive nature of the application and the design work they have done with this goal in mind."The software uses as few buttons and fields as possible, she pointed out. "The sales rep doesn't have to ask, 'what is the next step?' because she can see what it is."In fact, there are three themes driving the usability that Wettemann noted. They are simplicity, mobility, and extensibility, and we write more about them on the Usable Apps web site. These three themes embody the strategy for Oracle’s cloud applications user experiences.  Simplified UI for Oracle Sales CloudIn developing a Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle’s UX team concentrated on the tasks that sales reps need to do most frequently, and are most important. “Knowing that the majority of their work lives are spent on the road and on the go, they need to be able to quickly get in and qualify and convert their leads, monitor and progress their opportunities, update their customer and contact information, and manage their schedule,” Jeremy Ashley, Vice President of the Applications UX team, said.Ashley said the Apps UX team has a good reason for creating a Simplified UI that focuses on self-service. “Sales people spend the day selling stuff,” he said. “The only reason they use software is because the company wants to track what they’re doing.” Traditional systems of tracking that information include filling in a spreadsheet of leads or sales. Oracle wants to automate this process for the salesperson, and enable that person to keep everyone who needs to know up-to-date easily and quickly. Simplified UI addresses that problem by providing light-touch input.  “It has to be useful to the salesperson,” Ashley said about the Sales Cloud user experience. Simplified UI can tell sales reps about key opportunities, or provide information about a contact in just a click or two. Customer information is accessible quickly and easily with Simplified UI for the Oracle Sales Cloud.Simplified UI for Sales Cloud can also be extended easily, Ashley said. Users usually just need to add various business fields or create and modify analytical reports. The way that Simplified UI is constructed allows extensibility to happen by hiding or showing a few necessary fields. The Settings user interface, starting in release 7, allows for the simple configuration of the most important visual elements. “With Sales cloud, we identified a need to make the application useful and very simple,” Ashley said. Simplified UI meets that need. Where can you find out more?To find out more about the simplified UI and Oracle’s ongoing investment in applications user experience innovations, come to one of our sessions at a user group conference near you. Stay tuned to the Voice of User Experience (VoX) blog – the next post will be about Simplified UI and HCM Cloud.

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  • WIF, ASP.NET 4.0 and Request Validation

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

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  • Where to start with game development?

    - by steven_desu
    I asked this earlier in this thread at stackoverflow.com. One of the early comments redirected me here to gamedev.stackexchange.com, so I'm reposting here. Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems as well as graphing problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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  • Where to start with game development?

    - by steven_desu
    Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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  • IPgallery banks on Solaris SPARC

    - by Frederic Pariente
    IPgallery is a global supplier of converged legacy and Next Generation Networks (NGN) products and solutions, including: core network components and cloud-based Value Added Services (VAS) for voice, video and data sessions. IPgallery enables network operators and service providers to offer advanced converged voice, chat, video/content services and rich unified social communications in a combined legacy (fixed/mobile), Over-the-Top (OTT) and Social Community (SC) environments for home and business customers. Technically speaking, this offer is a scalable and robust telco solution enabling operators to offer new services while controlling operating expenses (OPEX). In its solutions, IPgallery leverages the following Oracle components: Oracle Solaris, Netra T4 and SPARC T4 in order to provide a competitive and scalable solution without the price tag often associated with high-end systems. Oracle Solaris Binary Application Guarantee A unique feature of Oracle Solaris is the guaranteed binary compatibility between releases of the Solaris OS. That means, if a binary application runs on Solaris 2.6 or later, it will run on the latest release of Oracle Solaris.  IPgallery developed their application on Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 then runs it on Solaris 11, without any code modification or rebuild. The Solaris Binary Application Guarantee helps IPgallery protect their long-term investment in the development, training and maintenance of their applications. Oracle Solaris Image Packaging System (IPS) IPS is a new repository-based package management system that comes with Oracle Solaris 11. It provides a framework for complete software life-cycle management such as installation, upgrade and removal of software packages. IPgallery leverages this new packaging system in order to speed up and simplify software installation for the R&D and production environments. Notably, they use IPS to deliver Solaris Studio 12.3 packages as part of the rapid installation process of R&D environments, and during the production software deployment phase, they ensure software package integrity using the built-in verification feature. Solaris IPS thus improves IPgallery's time-to-market with a faster, more reliable software installation and deployment in production environments. Extreme Network Performance IPgallery saw a huge improvement in application performance both in CPU and I/O, when running on SPARC T4 architecture in compared to UltraSPARC T2 servers.  The same application (with the same activation environment) running on T2 consumes 40%-50% CPU, while it consumes only 10% of the CPU on T4. The testing environment comprised of: Softswitch (Call management), TappS (Telecom Application Server) and Billing Server running on same machine and initiating various services in capacity of 1000 CAPS (Call Attempts Per Second). In addition, tests showed a huge improvement in the performance of the TCP/IP stack, which reduces network layer processing and in the end Call Attempts latency. Finally, there is a huge improvement within the file system and disk I/O operations; they ran all tests with maximum logging capability and it didn't influence any benchmark values. "Due to the huge improvements in performance and capacity using the T4-1 architecture, IPgallery has engineered the solution with less hardware.  This means instead of deploying the solution on six T2-based machines, we will deploy on 2 redundant machines while utilizing Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM for higher availability and virtualization" Shimon Lichter, VP R&D, IPgallery In conclusion, using the unique combination of Oracle Solaris and SPARC technologies, IPgallery is able to offer solutions with much lower TCO, while providing a higher level of service capacity, scalability and resiliency. This low-OPEX solution enables the operator, the end-customer, to deliver a high quality service while maintaining high profitability.

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  • When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

    When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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  • Code Contracts: validating arrays and collections

    - by DigiMortal
    Validating collections before using them is very common task when we use built-in generic types for our collections. In this posting I will show you how to validate collections using code contracts. It is cool how much awful looking code you can avoid using code contracts. Failing code Let’s suppose we have method that calculates sum of all invoices in collection. We have class Invoice and one of properties it has is Sum. I don’t introduce here any complex calculations on invoices because we have another problem to solve in this topic. Here is our code. public static decimal CalculateTotal(IList<Invoice> invoices) {     var sum = invoices.Sum(p => p.Sum);     return sum; } This method is very simple but it fails when invoices list contains at least one null. Of course, we can test if invoice is null but having nulls in lists like this is not good idea – it opens green way for different coding bugs in system. Our goal is to react to bugs ASAP at the nearest place they occur. There is one more way how to make our method fail. It happens when invoices is null. I thing it is also one common bugs during development and it even happens in production environments under some conditions that are usually hardly met. Now let’s protect our little calculation method with code contracts. We need two contracts: invoices cannot be null invoices cannot contain any nulls Our first contract is easy but how to write the second one? Solution: Contract.ForAll Preconditions in code are checked using Contract.Ensures method. This method takes boolean value as argument that sais if contract holds or not. There is also method Contract.ForAll that takes collection and predicate that must hold for that collection. Nice thing is ForAll returns boolean. So, we have very simple solution. public static decimal CalculateTotal(IList<Invoice> invoices) {     Contract.Requires(invoices != null);     Contract.Requires(Contract.ForAll<Invoice>(invoices, p => p != null));       var sum = invoices.Sum(p => p.Sum);     return sum; } And here are some lines of code you can use to test the contracts quickly. var invoices = new List<Invoice>(); invoices.Add(new Invoice()); invoices.Add(null); invoices.Add(new Invoice()); //CalculateTotal(null); CalculateTotal(invoices); If your code is covered with unit tests then I suggest you to write tests to check that these contracts hold for every code run. Conclusion Although it seemed at first place that checking all elements in collection may end up with for-loops that does not look so nice we were able to solve our problem nicely. ForAll method of contract class offered us simple mechanism to check collections and it does it smoothly the code-contracts-way. P.S. I suggest you also read devlicio.us blog posting Validating Collections with Code Contracts by Derik Whittaker.

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  • Threading Overview

    - by ACShorten
    One of the major features of the batch framework is the ability to support multi-threading. The multi-threading support allows a site to increase throughput on an individual batch job by splitting the total workload across multiple individual threads. This means each thread has fine level control over a segment of the total data volume at any time. The idea behind the threading is based upon the notion that "many hands make light work". Each thread takes a segment of data in parallel and operates on that smaller set. The object identifier allocation algorithm built into the product randomly assigns keys to help ensure an even distribution of the numbers of records across the threads and to minimize resource and lock contention. The best way to visualize the concept of threading is to use a "pie" analogy. Imagine the total workset for a batch job is a "pie". If you split that pie into equal sized segments, each segment would represent an individual thread. The concept of threading has advantages and disadvantages: Smaller elapsed runtimes - Jobs that are multi-threaded finish earlier than jobs that are single threaded. With smaller amounts of work to do, jobs with threading will finish earlier. Note: The elapsed runtime of the threads is rarely proportional to the number of threads executed. Even though contention is minimized, some contention does exist for resources which can adversely affect runtime. Threads can be managed individually – Each thread can be started individually and can also be restarted individually in case of failure. If you need to rerun thread X then that is the only thread that needs to be resubmitted. Threading can be somewhat dynamic – The number of threads that are run on any instance can be varied as the thread number and thread limit are parameters passed to the job at runtime. They can also be configured using the configuration files outlined in this document and the relevant manuals.Note: Threading is not dynamic after the job has been submitted Failure risk due to data issues with threading is reduced – As mentioned earlier individual threads can be restarted in case of failure. This limits the risk to the total job if there is a data issue with a particular thread or a group of threads. Number of threads is not infinite – As with any resource there is a theoretical limit. While the thread limit can be up to 1000 threads, the number of threads you can physically execute will be limited by the CPU and IO resources available to the job at execution time. Theoretically with the objects identifiers evenly spread across the threads the elapsed runtime for the threads should all be the same. In other words, when executing in multiple threads theoretically all the threads should finish at the same time. Whilst this is possible, it is also possible that individual threads may take longer than other threads for the following reasons: Workloads within the threads are not always the same - Whilst each thread is operating on the roughly the same amounts of objects, the amount of processing for each object is not always the same. For example, an account may have a more complex rate which requires more processing or a meter has a complex amount of configuration to process. If a thread has a higher proportion of objects with complex processing it will take longer than a thread with simple processing. The amount of processing is dependent on the configuration of the individual data for the job. Data may be skewed – Even though the object identifier generation algorithm attempts to spread the object identifiers across threads there are some jobs that use additional factors to select records for processing. If any of those factors exhibit any data skew then certain threads may finish later. For example, if more accounts are allocated to a particular part of a schedule then threads in that schedule may finish later than other threads executed. Threading is important to the success of individual jobs. For more guidelines and techniques for optimizing threading refer to Multi-Threading Guidelines in the Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) whitepaper available from My Oracle Support

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  • Introducing Oracle User Productivity Kit (UPK) 12.1 Thursday 26th June 2014 – Oracle, Reading, Berkshire

    - by Kathryn Lustenberger
    Join Oracle UPK Product Management and Product Development In conjunction with Larmer Brown Register Now v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-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;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:"Table Grid"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:59; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt:solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} UPK Client Event – Introducing v12.1 Thursday 26th June 2014 Oracle Thames Valley Park, Reading, Berkshire Agenda Time Session 10.00am Registration and Coffee 10.30am Introductions and Objectives TWIN TRACK SESSION 10.45am Introduction to UPK (Standard) Version 12.1 Overview and Demonstration for delegates new to UPK Upgrading to UPK (Standard) Version 12.1 Demonstration of the latest release, for delegates with experience of UPK 12.25pm Q&A An opportunity for delegates to raise specific questions about the tool Q&A An opportunity for delegates to raise specific questions about the latest release 12.45pm Lunch 1.30pm Larmer Brown Development Tracker Larmer Brown’s Development Tracker addresses the challenge of ensuring that a Content Development Project will meet agreed deadlines, identifying risks with sufficient notice to take action 1.50pm Case Study How the Development Tracker addressed this client’s requirement to track, monitor and report progress on a large-scale implementation Project 2.10pm Larmer Brown Library Content for UPK This session will showcase some of Larmer Brown’s content library and consider how pre-built content can be used to your advantage 2.30pm Coffee Break 2.45pm Making the most of UPK Professional This presentation and demonstration seeks to unlock the potential of UPK Professional for those that may not be fully utilising the tool   3.20pm Case Study How this client has utilised the tracking and reporting features within UPK Professional 3.40pm Summary and Conclusions 4.00pm Close

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  • So You Want to Be a Social Media Director

    - by Mike Stiles
    Do you want to be a Social Media Director? Some say the title is already losing its relevance; that social should be a basic skill that is required and used no matter what your position is inside the enterprise. I suppose that’s visionary, and a fun thing for thought leaders to say. But in the vast majority of business organizations, we’re so far away from that reality that the thought of not having someone driving social’s implementation and guiding its proper usage conjures up images of anarchy. That said, social media has become so broad, so catch-all, and so extended across business functions, that today’s Social Media Director, depending on the size of their staff, must make jacks-of-all-trades look like one-trick-ponies. Just as the purview of the CMO has grown all-encompassing, the disciplines required of their heads of social are stacking up. Master of Content Every social pipeline you build must stay filled, with quantity and quality. Content takes time, and the job never stops. Never. And no, it’s not true that anybody can write. Master of Customer Experience You must have a passion for hearing from customers and making them really happy. Master of PR You must know how to communicate and leverage the trust you’ve built when crises strike. Couldn’t hurt to be a Master of Politics. Master of Social Technology So many social management tools on the market. You have to know what social tech ecosystem makes sense and avoid piecemeal point solutions. Master of Business Development Social for selling and prospecting is hot, and you have to know how to use social to do it. Master of Analytics Nothing else matters if you can’t prove social is helping the brand. That’s right, creative content guy has to also be a math and stats geek. Good luck with that. Master of Paid Media You’ve got to learn the language, learn the tactics, learn the vendors and learn how to measure results. Master of Education Guess who gets to teach everyone who has no clue how to use social for business. Master of Personal Likability You’ll be leading the voice, tone, image and personality of the brand. If you don’t instinctively know how to be liked by actual people, the brand will be starting from a deficit. How deep must you go in this parade of masteries? Again, that depends on your employer’s maturity level in social. Serious players recognize these as distinct disciplines requiring true experts for maximum effect. Less serious players will need you to execute personally in many of these areas. Do the best you can, and try to grow quickly at each. If you’re the sole person executing all social…well…you’re in the game of managing expectations and trying to socially educate your employer. The good news is, you should be making a certifiable killing. If you’re alone and your salary is modest, time to understand how many brands out there crave what you’ve mastered. Not to push back against thought leaders, but the need for brand social leadership has not gone away…not even a little bit. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Stefan Wagner, freeimages.com

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  • #altnetseattle &ndash; REST Services

    - by GeekAgilistMercenary
    Below are the notes I made in the REST Architecture Session I helped kick off with Andrew. RSS, ATOM, and such needed for better discovery.  i.e. there still is a need for some type of discovery. Difficult is modeling behaviors in a RESTful way.  ??  Invoking some type of state against an object.  For instance in the case of a POST vs. a GET.  The GET is easy, comes back as is, but what about a POST, which often changes some state or something. Challenge is doing multiple workflows with stateful workflows.  How does batch work.  Maybe model the batch as a resource. Frameworks aren’t particularly part of REST, REST is REST.  But point argued that REST is modeled, or part of modeling a state machine of some sort… ? Nothing is 100% reliable w/ REST – comparisons drawn with TCP/IP.  Sufficient probability is made however for the communications, but the idea of a possible failure has to be built into the usage model of REST. Ruby on Rails / RESTfully, and others used.  What were their issues, what do they do.  ATOM feeds, object serialized, using LINQ to XML w/ this.  No state machine libraries. Idempotent areas around REST and single change POST changes are inherent in the architecture. REST – one of the constrained languages is for the interaction w/ the system.  Limiting what can be done on the resources.  - disagreement, there is no agreed upon REST verbs. Sam Ruby – RESTful services.  Expanded the verbs within REST/HTTP pushes you off the web.  Of the existing verbs POST leaves the most up for debate. Robert Reem used Factory to deal with the POST to handle the new state.  The POST identifying what it just did by the return. Different states are put into POST, so that new prospective verbs, without creating verbs for REST/HTTP can be used to advantage without breaking universal clients. Biggest issue with REST services is their lack of state, yet it is also one of their biggest strengths.  What happens is that the client takes up the often onerous task of handling all state, state machines, and other extraneous resource management.  All the GETs, POSTs, DELETEs, INSERTs get all pushed into abstraction.  My 2 cents is that this in a way ends up pushing a huge proprietary burden onto the REST services often removing the point of REST to be simple and to the point. WADL does provide discovery and some state control (sort of?) Statement made, "WADL" isn't needed.  The JSON, XML, or other client side returned data handles this. I then applied the law of 2 feet rule for myself and headed to finish up these notes, post to the Wiki, and figure out what I was going to do next.  For the original Wiki entry check it out here. I will be adding more to this post with a subsequent post.  Please do feel free to post your thoughts and ideas about this, as I am sure everyone in the session will have more for elaboration.

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  • SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

    - by AjarnMark
    Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

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  • Live Event: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing - Two weeks and counting

    - by Bob Rhubart
    In just two weeks architects and others will gather at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, CA for the first Oracle Technology Network Architect Day event of 2013. This event focuses on Cloud Computing, and features sessions specifically focused on real-world examples of the implementation of cloud computing. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013              8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center              350 Oracle Pkwy              Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta Director, Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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  • Live Event: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing - Two weeks and counting

    - by Bob Rhubart
    In just two weeks architects and others will gather at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, CA for the first Oracle Technology Network Architect Day event of 2013. This event focuses on Cloud Computing, and features sessions specifically focused on real-world examples of the implementation of cloud computing. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013              8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center              350 Oracle Pkwy              Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta Director, Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Michael Timpanaro-Perrotta respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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  • Modernizr Rocks HTML5

    - by Laila
    HTML5 is a moving target.  At the moment, we don't know what will be in future versions.  In most circumstances, this really matters to the developer. When you're using Adobe Air, you can be reasonably sure what works, what is there, and what isn't, since you have a version of the browser built-in. With Metro, you can assume that you're going to be using at least IE 10.   If, however,  you are using HTML5 in a web application, then you are going to rely heavily on Feature Detection.  Feature-Detection is a collection of techniques that tell you, via JavaScript, whether the current browser has this feature natively implemented or not Feature Detection isn't just there for the esoteric stuff such as  Geo-location,  progress bars,  <canvas> support,  the new <input> types, Audio, Video, web workers or storage, but is required even for semantic markup, since old browsers make a pigs ear out of rendering this.  Feature detection can't rely just on reading the browser version and inferring from that what works. Instead, you must use JavaScript to check that an HTML5 feature is there before using it.  The problem with relying on the user-agent is that it takes a lot of historical data  to work out what version does what, and, anyway, the user-agent can be, and sometimes is, spoofed. The open-source library Modernizr  is just about the most essential  JavaScript library for anyone using HTML5, because it provides APIs to test for most of the CSS3 and HTML5 features before you use them, and is intelligent enough to alter semantic markup into 'legacy' 'markup  using shims  on page-load  for old browsers. It also allows you to check what video Codecs are installed for playing video. It also provides media queries  and conditional resource-loading (formerly YepNope.js.).  Generally, Modernizr gives you the choice of what you do about browsers that don't support the feature that you want. Often, the best choice is graceful degradation, but the resource-loading feature allows you to dynamically load JavaScript Shims to replace the standard API for missing or defective HTML5 functionality, called 'PolyFills'.  As the Modernizr site says 'Yes, not only can you use HTML5 today, but you can use it in the past, too!' The evolutionary progress of HTML5  requires a more defensive style of JavaScript programming where the programmer adopts a mindset of fearing the worst ( IE 6)  rather than assuming the best, whilst exploiting as many of the new HTML features as possible for the requirements of the site or HTML application.  Why would anyone want the distraction of developing their own techniques to do this when  Modernizr exists to do this for you? Laila

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  • MaxTotalSizeInBytes - Blind spots in Usage file and Web Analytics Reports

    - by Gino Abraham
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GinoAbraham/archive/2013/10/28/maxtotalsizeinbytes---blind-spots-in-usage-file-and-web-analytics.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint_strategery/archive/2012/04/16/usage-file-and-web-analytics-reports-with-blind-spots.aspx In my previous post (Troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 Web Analytics), I referenced a problem that can occur when exceeding the daily partition size for the LoggingDB, which generates the ULS message “[Partition] has exceeded the max bytes”. Below, I wanted to provide some additional info on this particular issue and help identify some options if this occurs. As an aside, this post only applies if you are missing portions of Usage data - think blind spots on intermittent days or user activity regularly sparse for the afternoon/evening. If this fits your scenario - read on. But if Usage logs are outright missing, go check out my Troubleshooting post first.  Background on the problem:The LoggingDB database has a default maximum size of ~6GB. However, SharePoint evenly splits this total size into fixed sized logical partitions – and the number of partitions is defined by the number of days to retain Usage data (by default 14 days). In this case, 14 partitions would be created to account for the 14 days of retention. If the retention were halved to 7 days, the LoggingDBwould be split into 7 corresponding partitions at twice the size. In other words, the partition size is generally defined as [max size for DB] / [number of retention days].Going back to the default scenario, the “max size” for the LoggingDB is 6200000000 bytes (~6GB) and the retention period is 14 days. Using our formula, this would be [~6GB] / [14 days], which equates to 444858368 bytes (~425MB) per partition per day. Again, if the retention were halved to 7 days (which halves the number of partitions), the resulting partition size becomes [~6GB] / [7 days], or ~850MB per partition.From my experience, when the partition size for any given day is exceeded, the usage logging for the remainder of the day is essentially thrown away because SharePoint won’t allow any more to be written to that day’s partition. The only clue that this is occurring (beyond truncated usage data) is an error such as the following that gets reported in the ULS:04/08/2012 09:30:04.78    OWSTIMER.EXE (0x1E24)    0x2C98    SharePoint Foundation    Health    i0m6     High    Table RequestUsage_Partition12 has 444858368 bytes that has exceeded the max bytes 444858368It’s also worth noting that the exact bytes reported (e.g. ‘444858368’ above) may slightly vary among farms. For example, you may instead see 445226812, 439123456, or something else in the ballpark. The exact number itself doesn't matter, but this error message intends to indicates that the reporting usage has exceeded the partition size for the given day.What it means:The error itself is easy to miss, which can lead to substantial gaps in the reporting data (your mileage may vary) if not identified. At this point, I can only advise to periodically check the ULS logs for this message. Down the road, I plan to explore if [Developing a Custom Health Rule] could be leveraged to identify the issue (If you've ever built Custom Health Rules, I'd be interested to hear about your experiences). Overcoming this issue also poses a challenge, with workaround options including:Lower the retentionBecause the partition size is generally defined as [max size] / [number of retention days], the first option is to lower the number of days to retain the data – the lower the retention, the lower the divisor and thus a bigger partition. For example, halving the retention from 14 to 7 days would halve the number of partitions, but double the partition size to ~850MB (e.g. [6200000000 bytes] / [7 days] = ~850GB partitions). Lowering it to 2 days would result in two ~3GB partitions… and so on.Recreate the LoggingDB with an increased sizeThe property MaxTotalSizeInBytes is exposed by OM code for the SPUsageDefinition object and can be updated with the example PowerShell snippet below. However, updating this value has no immediate impact because this size only applies when creating a LoggingDB. Therefore, you must create a newLoggingDB for the Usage Service Application. The gotcha: this effectively deletes all prior Usage databecause the Usage Service Application can only have a single LoggingDB.Here is an example snippet to update the "Page Requests" Usage Definition:$def=Get-SPUsageDefinition -Identity "page requests" $def.MaxTotalSizeInBytes=12400000000 $def.update()Create a new Logging database and attach to the Usage Service Application using the following command: Get-spusageapplication | Set-SPUsageApplication -DatabaseServer <dbServer> -DatabaseName <newDBname> Updated (5/10/2012): Once the new database has been created, you can confirm the setting has truly taken by running the following SQL Query (be sure to replace the database name in the following query with the name provided in the PowerShell above)SELECT * FROM [WSS_UsageApplication].[dbo].[Configuration] WITH (nolock) WHERE ConfigName LIKE 'Max Total Bytes - RequestUsage'

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  • Mind Reading with the Raspberry Pi

    - by speakjava
    Mind Reading With The Raspberry Pi At JavaOne in San Francisco I did a session entitled "Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert? Java and the Raspberry Pi".  As part of this I showed some demonstrations of things I'd done using Java on the Raspberry Pi.  This is the first part of a series of blog entries that will cover all the different aspects of these demonstrations. A while ago I had bought a MindWave headset from Neurosky.  I was particularly interested to see how this worked as I had had the opportunity to visit Neurosky several years ago when they were still developing this technology.  At that time the 'headset' consisted of a headband (very much in the Bjorn Borg style) with a sensor attached and some wiring that clearly wasn't quite production ready.  The commercial version is very simple and easy to use: there are two sensors, one which rests on the skin of your forehead, the other is a small clip that attaches to your earlobe. Typical EEG sensors used in hospitals require lots of sensors and they all need copious amounts of conductive gel to ensure the electrical signals are picked up.  Part of Neurosky's innovation is the development of this simple dry-sensor technology.  Having put on the sensor and turned it on (it powers off a single AAA size battery) it collects data and transmits it to a USB dongle plugged into a PC, or in my case a Raspberry Pi. From a hacking perspective the USB dongle is ideal because it does not require any special drivers for any complex, low level USB communication.  Instead it appears as a simple serial device, which on the Raspberry Pi is accessed as /dev/ttyUSB0.  Neurosky have published details of the command protocol.  In addition, the MindSet protocol document, including sample code for parsing the data from the headset, can be found here. To get everything working on the Raspberry Pi using Java the first thing was to get serial communications going.  Back in the dim distant past there was the Java Comm API.  Sadly this has grown a bit dusty over the years, but there is a more modern open source project that provides compatible and enhanced functionality, RXTXComm.  This can be installed easily on the Pi using sudo apt-get install librxtx-java.  Next I wrote a library that would send commands to the MindWave headset via the serial port dongle and read back data being sent from the headset.  The design is pretty simple, I used an event based system so that code using the library could register listeners for different types of events from the headset.  You can download a complete NetBeans project for this here.  This includes javadoc API documentation that should make it obvious how to use it (incidentally, this will work on platforms other than Linux.  I've tested it on Windows without any issues, just by changing the device name to something like COM4). To test this I wrote a simple application that would connect to the headset and then print the attention and meditation values as they were received from the headset.  Again, you can download the NetBeans project for that here. Oracle recently released a developer preview of JavaFX on ARM which will run on the Raspberry Pi.  I thought it would be cool to write a graphical front end for the MindWave data that could take advantage of the built in charts of JavaFX.  Yet another NetBeans project is available here.  Screen shots of the app, which uses a very nice dial from the JFxtras project, are shown below. I probably should add labels for the EEG data so the user knows which is the low alpha, mid gamma waves and so on.  Given that I'm not a neurologist I suspect that it won't increase my understanding of what the (rather random looking) traces mean. In the next blog I'll explain how I connected a LEGO motor to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi and then used my mind to control the motor!

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  • Have Your Cake and Eat it Too: Industry Best Practices + Flexibility

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    By Richard Garraputa, VP of Sales & Marketing, brij Richard joined brij in 1996 after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with degrees in Information Systems and Accounting. He directs brij’s overall strategies of both the business development and marketing departments. Companies looking for new ERP systems spend so much time comparing features and functions of software products but too often short change the value of their own processes.  Company managers I meet often claim that they are implementing a new ERP system so they can perform better and faster.  When asked how, the answer is often “by implementing best practices”.  But the term ‘best practices’ is frequently used to mean ‘doing things the way everyone else does them’ rather than a starting point or benchmark to build upon by adding your own value. Of course, implementing standardized processes across an enterprise is an important step in improving operational efficiencies.  But not all companies are alike.  Do you ever tell your customers “We are just like our competition and have no competitive differentiation”?  Probably not.  So why should the implementation of your business processes be just like your competitor’s?  Even within the same industry, companies differentiate themselves by leveraging their unique expertise and approach to business.  These unique aspects—the competitive differentiators that companies use to thrive in a crowded marketplace—can and should be supported by the implementation of business systems like ERP. Modern ERP systems like Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne have a broad and deep functional footprint designed to integrate a company’s core operations.  But how can a company take advantage of this footprint without blowing up their implementation budget?  Some ERP vendors claim to solve this challenge by stating that their systems come pre-configured with ‘best practices’.  Too often what they are really saying is that you will have to abandon your key operational differentiators to fit a vendor’s template for your business—or extend your implementation and postpone the realization of any benefits. Thankfully for midsize companies, there is an alternative to the undesirable options of extended implementation projects or abandoning their competitive differentiators.  Oracle Accelerate Solutions speed the time it takes to implement JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solution based on your unique business characteristics, getting your new ERP system up and running faster without forcing your business to fit a cookie-cutter solution. We’ve been a JD Edwards implementation partner since 1986 and we now leverage Oracle Business Accelerators—cloud based rapid implementation tools built and maintained by Oracle. Oracle Business Accelerators deliver the benefits of embedded industry best practices without forcing every customer in to one set of processes like many template or “clone and go” approaches do. You retain the ability to reconfigure your applications—without customization—as your business changes. Wielded by Oracle partners with industry-specific domain expertise, Oracle Accelerate Solution implementations powered by Oracle Business Accelerators help automate the application configuration to fit your business better, faster. For example, on a recent project at a manufacturing company, the project manager told me that Oracle Business Accelerators helped get them to Conference Room Pilot 20% faster than with a traditional approach. Time savings equal cost savings. And if ‘better and faster’ is your goal for your business performance, shouldn’t it be the goal for your ERP implementation as well? Established in 1986, brij has been dedicated solely to helping its customers implement Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions and to maximize the value of those customers’ IT investments. They are a Gold level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork and an Oracle Accelerate Solution provider.

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  • Expanding the Partner Ecosystem with Third-Party Plug-ins

    - by Joe Diemer
    Oracle Enterprise Manager’s extensibility capabilities are designed to allow customers and partners to adapt Enterprise Manager for management of heterogeneous environments with Plug-ins and Connectors.  Third-party developers continue to take advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Extensibility Development Kit (EDK) to build plug-ins to Enterprise Manager 12c, such as F5’s BIG IP Plug-in and Entuity’s Eye of the Storm Network Management Plug-In.  Partners can also validate their plug-ins through the Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) program, which assures customers that the plug-in has been tested and is functionally and technically sound, is designed in a reliable and standardized manner, and operates and performs as documented.   Two very recent examples of partners which have beta versions of their plug-ins are Blue Medora's VMware vSphere plug-in and the NetApp Storage plug-in.  VMware vSphere Plug-in by Blue Medora Blue Medora, an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) “Gold” member, which just announced that it is now signing up customers to try a beta version of their new VMware vSphere plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c.  According to Blue Medora, the vSphere plug-in monitors critical VMware metrics (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc) at the Host, VM, Cluster and Resource Pool levels.  It has minimal performance impact via an “agentless” approach that requires no installation directly on VMware servers.  It has discovery capabilities for VMware Datacenters, ESX Hosts, Clusters, Virtual Machines, and Datastores.  It offers integration of native VMware Events into Enterprise Manager, and it provides over 300 VMware-related health, availability, performance, and configuration metrics.  It comes with more than 30 out-of-the-box pre-defined thresholds and can manage VMware via a series of jobs split between cluster, host and VM target types.The company reports that the Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in supports vSphere versions 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0.  Platforms supported include Linux 64-bit, Windows, AIX and Solaris SPARC and x86.  Information about the plug-in, including how to sign up for the beta, is available at their web site at http://bluemedora.com after selecting the "Products" tab. NetApp Storage Plug-in NetApp believes the combination of storage system monitoring with comprehensive management of Oracle systems with Enterprise Manager will help customers reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications that rely on NetApp storage and Oracle technologies.  So, NetApp built a plug-in and reports that it has comprehensive availability and performance information for NetApp storage systems.  Using the plug-in, Oracle Enterprise Manager customers with NetApp storage solutions can track the association between databases and storage components and thereby respond to faults and IO performance bottlenecks quickly. With the latest configuration management capabilities, one can also perform drift analysis to make sure all storage systems are configured as per established gold standards. The company is also now signing up beta customers, which can be done at the NetApp Communities site at https://communities.netapp.com/groups/netapp-storage-system-plug-in-for-oem12c-beta. Learn More about Enterprise Manager Extensibility More plug-ins from other partners are soon to come, which I'll be reporting on them here.  To learn more about Enterprise Manager and how customers and partners can build plug-ins using the EDK to manage a multi-vendor data center, go to http://oracle.com/enterprisemanager in the Heterogeneous Management solution area.  The site also lists the plug-ins available with information on how to obtain them.  More info about the Oracle Validated Integration program can be found at the OPN Enterprise Manager Knowledge Zone in the "Develop" tab.

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