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• Wifi hotspot disconnected after some time

  - by Rohit Bansal

  I am trying to use my Ubuntu system as Wifi Hotspot, but for some reason Hotspot get disconnected on its own. Searching for the solution, I found this help : Why is my ethernet connection connecting and disconnecting repeatedly? Reading through the above article I used the following command sudo killall dnsmasq as a result I manage to establish hotspot for around 5-10 sec before getting disconnected as against immediately.... Here's the system log (in case needed) tail -f /var/log/syslog : Apr 1 23:31:42 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Starting dnsmasq... Apr 1 23:31:42 NetworkManager[901]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: ip-config -> activated (reason 'none') [70 100 0] Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq[4159]: started, version 2.57 cachesize 150 Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq[4159]: compile time options: IPv6 GNU-getopt DBus I18N DHCP TFTP IDN Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq-dhcp[4159]: DHCP, IP range 10.42.43.10 -- 10.42.43.100, lease time 1h Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq[4159]: reading /etc/resolv.conf Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq[4159]: using nameserver 220.226.6.104#53 Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq[4159]: using nameserver 220.226.100.40#53 Apr 1 23:31:42 dnsmasq[4159]: cleared cache Apr 1 23:31:42 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) successful, device activated. Apr 1 23:31:42 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) complete. Apr 1 23:31:42 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 4 of 5 (IP4 Configure Get) complete. Apr 1 23:31:42 dbus[885]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' (using servicehelper) Apr 1 23:31:42 dbus[885]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' Connection established at this point....now disconnecting after 10 sec... Apr 1 23:31:52 ntpdate[4194]: adjust time server 91.189.94.4 offset -0.011589 sec Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> (wlan0): IP6 addrconf timed out or failed. Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 4 of 5 (IP6 Configure Timeout) scheduled... Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 4 of 5 (IP6 Configure Timeout) started... Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) started... Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol tcp --destination-port 53 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol udp --destination-port 53 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol tcp --destination-port 67 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol udp --destination-port 67 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --in-interface wlan0 --jump REJECT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --out-interface wlan0 --jump REJECT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --in-interface wlan0 --out-interface wlan0 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --source 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 --in-interface wlan0 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --destination 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 --out-interface wlan0 --match state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table nat --insert POSTROUTING --source 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 ! --destination 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 --jump MASQUERADE Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol tcp --destination-port 53 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol udp --destination-port 53 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol tcp --destination-port 67 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert INPUT --in-interface wlan0 --protocol udp --destination-port 67 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --in-interface wlan0 --jump REJECT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --out-interface wlan0 --jump REJECT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --in-interface wlan0 --out-interface wlan0 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --source 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 --in-interface wlan0 --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table filter --insert FORWARD --destination 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 --out-interface wlan0 --match state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED --jump ACCEPT Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Executing: /sbin/iptables --table nat --insert POSTROUTING --source 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 ! --destination 10.42.43.0/255.255.255.0 --jump MASQUERADE Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Starting dnsmasq... Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) complete. Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 4 of 5 (IP6 Configure Timeout) complete. Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <warn> dnsmasq died with signal 9 Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: activated -> failed (reason 'sharing-start-failed') [100 120 18] Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq[4235]: started, version 2.57 cachesize 150 Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq[4235]: compile time options: IPv6 GNU-getopt DBus I18N DHCP TFTP IDN Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq-dhcp[4235]: DHCP, IP range 10.42.43.10 -- 10.42.43.100, lease time 1h Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <warn> Activation (wlan0) failed for access point (Reppify Ubuntu) Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq[4235]: reading /etc/resolv.conf Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq[4235]: using nameserver 220.226.6.104#53 Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq[4235]: using nameserver 220.226.100.40#53 Apr 1 23:32:01 dnsmasq[4235]: cleared cache Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <warn> Activation (wlan0) failed. Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none') [120 30 0] Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <info> (wlan0): deactivating device (reason 'none') [0] Apr 1 23:32:01 dbus[885]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' (using servicehelper) Apr 1 23:32:01 dbus[885]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' Apr 1 23:32:01 NetworkManager[901]: <error> [1333303321.565351] [nm-device-wifi.c:1815] nm_device_wifi_set_mode(): (wlan0): error setting mode 2

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• Rapid Evolution of Society & Technology

  - by Michael Snow

  We caught up with Brian Solis on the phone the other day and Christie Flanagan had a chance to chat with him and learn a bit more about him and some of the concepts he'll be addressing in our Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast on Thursday 12/13/12. «--- Interview with Brian Solis  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Be sure and register for this week's webcast ---» ------------------- Guest post by Brian Solis. Reposted (Borrowed) from his posting of May 24, 2012 Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise? - Brian Solis You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words. You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people. Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors. You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself. You’re a change agent and you truly wish to bring about change, but you’ve not invested time or resources to answer “why” in your endeavors to become a connected or social business. If we are to truly change, we must find purpose. We must uncover the essence of our business and the value it delivers to traditional and connected consumers. We must rethink the spirit of today’s embrace and clearly articulate how transformation is going to improve customer and employee experiences and relationships now and over time. Without doing so, any attempts at evolution will be thwarted by reality. In an era of Digital Darwinism, no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed. These are undisciplined times which require alternative approaches to recognize and pursue new opportunities. But everything begins with acknowledging the 360 view of the world that you see today is actually a filtered view of managed and efficient convenience. Today, many organizations that were once inspired by innovation and engagement have fallen into a process of marketing, operationalizing, managing, and optimizing. That might have worked for the better part of the last century, but for the next 10 years and beyond, new vision, leadership and supporting business models will be written to move businesses from rigid frameworks to adaptive and agile entities. I believe that today’s executives will undergo a great test; a test of character, vision, intention, and universal leadership. It starts with a simple, but essential question…what is your promise? Notice, I didn’t ask about your brand promise. Nor did I ask for you to cite your mission and vision statements. This is much more than value propositions or manufactured marketing language designed to hook audiences and stakeholders. I asked for your promise to me as your consumer, stakeholder, and partner. This isn’t about B2B or B2C, but instead, people to people, person to person. It is this promise that will breathe new life into an organization that on the outside, could be misdiagnosed as catatonic by those who are disrupting your markets. A promise, for example, is meant to inspire. It creates alignment. It serves as the foundation for your vision, mission, and all business strategies and it must come from the top to mean anything. For without it, we cannot genuinely voice what it is we stand for or stand behind. Think for a moment about the definition of community. It’s easy to confuse a workplace or a market where everyone simply shares common characteristics. However, a community in this day and age is much more than belonging to something, it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter The next few years will force a divide where companies are separated by intention as measured by actions and words. But, becoming a social business is not enough. Becoming more authentic and transparent doesn’t serve as a mantra for a renaissance. A promise is the ink that inscribes the spirit of the relationship between you and me. A promise serves as the words that influence change from within and change beyond the halls of our business. It is the foundation for a renewed embrace, one that must then find its way to every aspect of the organization. It’s the difference between a social business and an adaptive business. While an adaptive business can also be social, it is the culture of the organization that strives to not just use technology to extend current philosophies or processes into new domains, but instead give rise to a new culture where striving for relevance is among its goals. The tools and networks simply become enablers of a greater mission You are reading this because you believe in something more than what you’re doing today. While you fight for change within your organization, remember to aim for a higher purpose. Organizations that strive for innovation, imagination, and relevance will outperform those that do not. Part of your job is to lead a missionary push that unites the groundswell with a top down cascade. Change will only happen because you and other internal champions see what others can’t and will do what other won’t. It takes resolve. It takes the ability to translate new opportunities into business value. And, it takes courage. “This is a very noisy world, so we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us”-Steve Jobs ----------------------------------------------------------------- So -- where do you begin to evaluate the kind of experience you are delivering for your customers, partners, and employees?  Take a look at this White Paper: Creating a Successful and Meaningful Customer Experience on the Web and then have a cup of coffee while you listen to the sage advice of Guy Kawasaki in a short video below.   An interview with Guy Kawasaki on Maximizing Social Media Channels 

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• How to configure TATA Photon+ EC1261 HUAWEI

  - by user3215

  I'm running ubuntu 10.04. I have a newly purchased TATA Photon+ Internet connection which supports Windows and Mac. On the Internet I found a article saying that it could be configured on Linux. I followed the steps to install it on Ubuntu from this link. I am still not able to get online, and need some help. Also, it is very slow, but I was told that I would see speeds up to 3.1MB. I dont have wvdial installed and cannot install it from apt as I'm not connected to internet Booting from windows I dowloaded "wvdial" .deb package and tried to install on ubuntu but it's ended with dependency problem. Automatically, don't know how, I got connected to internet only for once. Immediately I installed wvdial package after this I followed the tutorials(I could not browse and upload the files here) . From then it's showing that the device is connected in the network connections but no internet connection. Once I disable the device, it won't show as connected again and I'll have to restart my system. Sometimes the device itself not detected(wondering if there is any command to re-read the all devices). output of wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.cof: #wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf Editing `/etc/wvdial.conf'. Scanning your serial ports for a modem. ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 115200 baud ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. Modem Port Scan<*1>: S1 S2 S3 WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 Z -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: Modem Identifier: ATI -- Manufacturer: +GMI: HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD ttyUSB2<*1>: Speed 9600: AT -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: Max speed is 9600; that should be safe. ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -- OK Found a modem on /dev/ttyUSB2. Modem configuration written to /etc/wvdial.conf. ttyUSB2<Info>: Speed 9600; init "ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0" output of wvdial: #wvdial --> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60 --> Cannot get information for serial port. --> Initializing modem. --> Sending: ATZ ATZ OK --> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 OK --> Sending: AT+CRM=1 AT+CRM=1 OK --> Modem initialized. --> Sending: ATDT#777 --> Waiting for carrier. ATDT#777 CONNECT --> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately. --> Starting pppd at Sat Oct 16 15:30:47 2010 --> Pid of pppd: 5681 --> Using interface ppp0 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> local IP address 14.96.147.104 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> remote IP address 172.29.161.223 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> primary DNS address 121.40.152.90 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> secondary DNS address 121.40.152.100 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] Output of log message /var/log/messages: Oct 16 15:29:44 avyakta-desktop pppd[5119]: secondary DNS address 121.242.190.180 Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Terminating on signal 15 Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Connect time 0.3 minutes. Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Sent 0 bytes, received 177 bytes. Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Connection terminated. Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB2 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: local IP address 14.96.147.104 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: remote IP address 172.29.161.223 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: primary DNS address 121.40.152.90 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: secondary DNS address 121.40.152.100 EDIT 1 : I tried the following sudo stop network-manager sudo killall modem-manager sudo /usr/sbin/modem-manager --debug > ~/mm.log 2>&1 & sudo /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon > ~/nm.log 2>&1 & Output of mm.log: #vim ~/mm.log: ** Message: Loaded plugin Option High-Speed ** Message: Loaded plugin Option ** Message: Loaded plugin Huawei ** Message: Loaded plugin Longcheer ** Message: Loaded plugin AnyData ** Message: Loaded plugin ZTE ** Message: Loaded plugin Ericsson MBM ** Message: Loaded plugin Sierra ** Message: Loaded plugin Generic ** Message: Loaded plugin Gobi ** Message: Loaded plugin Novatel ** Message: Loaded plugin Nokia ** Message: Loaded plugin MotoC Output of nm.log: #vim ~/nm.log: NetworkManager: <info> starting... NetworkManager: <info> modem-manager is now available NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: init! NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: update_system_hostname NetworkManager: SCPluginIfupdown: guessed connection type (eth0) = 802-3-ethernet NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: update_connection_setting_from_if_block: name:eth0, type:802-3-ethernet, id:Ifupdown (eth0), uuid: 681b428f-beaf-8932-dce4-678ed5bae28e NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: addresses count: 1 NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: No dns-nameserver configured in /etc/network/interfaces NetworkManager: nm-ifupdown-connection.c.119 - invalid connection read from /etc/network/interfaces: (1) addresses NetworkManager: SCPluginIfupdown: management mode: unmanaged NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.4/0000:02:02.0/net/eth1, iface: eth1) NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: device added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.4/0000:02:02.0/net/eth1, iface: eth1): no ifupdown configuration found. NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/lo, iface: lo) @

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• Ok it has been pointed out to me

  - by Ratman21

  That it seems my blog is more of poor me or pity me or I deserve a job blog.   Hmmm I wont say, I have not wined here as I have used this blog to vent my frustration on the whole out of work thing (lack of money, self worth, family issues and the never end bills coming my way) but, it was also me trying to reach to others in the same boat as well as advertising, hay I am out here, employers.   It was also said, that I don’t have any thing listed here on me, like a cover letter or resume. Well there is but, it was so many months and post ago. Also what I had posted is not current. So here is my most current cover and resume.   Scott L Newman 45219 Dutton Way Callahan, Fl. 32011 To Whom It May Concern: I am really interested in the IT vacancie that you have listed for your company. Maybe I don’t have all the qualifications you want (hold on don’t hit delete yet) yet! But maybe I do, as I have over 20 + years experience in "IT” RIGHT NOW.   Read the rest of my cover and my resume. You will see what my “IT” skills are and it will Show that I can to this work! I can bring to your company along with my, can do attitude, a broad range of skills, including: Certified CompTIA A+, Security+  and Network+ Technician §         2.5 years (NOC) Network experience on large Cisco based Wan – UK to Austria §         20 years experience MIS/DP – Yes I can do IBM mainframes and Tandem  non-stops too §         18 years experience as technical Help Desk support – panicking users, no problem §         18 years experience with PC/Server based system, intranet and internet systems §         10+ years experienced on: Microsoft Office, Windows XP and Data Network Fundamentals (YES I do windows) §         Strong trouble shooting skills for software, hard ware and circuit issues (and I can tell you what kind of horrors I had to face on all of them). §         Very experienced on working with customers on problems – again panicking users, no problem §         Working experience with Remote Access (VPN/SecurID) – I didn’t just study them I worked on/with them §         Skilled in getting info for and creating documentation for Operation procedures (I don’t just wait for them to give it to me I go out and get it. Waiting for info on working applications is, well dumb) Multiple software languages (Hey I have done some programming) And much more experiences in “IT” (Mortgage, stocks and financial information systems experience and have worked “IT” in a hospital) Can multitask, also have ability to adapt to change and learn quickly. (once was put in charge of a system that I had not worked with for over two years. Talk about having to relearn and adapt to changes but, I did it.) I would welcome the opportunity to further discuss this position with you. If you have questions or would like to schedule an interview, please contact me by phone at 904-879-4880 or on my cell 352-356-0945 or by e-mail at [email protected] or leave a message on my web site (http://beingscottnewman.webs.com/). I have enclosed/attached my resume for your review and I look forward to hearing from you.   Thank you for taking a moment to consider my cover letter and resume. I appreciate how busy you are. Sincerely, Scott L. Newman    Scott L. Newman 45219 Dutton Way, Callahan, FL 32011? H (904)879-4880 C (352)356-0945 ? [email protected] Web - http://beingscottnewman.webs.com/                                                       ______                                                                                       OBJECTIVE To obtain a Network Operation or Helpdesk position.     PROFILE Information Technology Professional with 20+ years of experience. Volunteer website creator and back-up sound technician at True Faith Christian Fellowship. CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+ Certified.   TECHNICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS   §         Technical Support §         Frame Relay §         Microsoft Office Suite §         Inventory Management §         ISDN §         Windows NT/98/XP §         Client/Vendor Relations §         CICS §         Cisco Routers/Switches §         Networking/Administration §         RPG §         Helpdesk §         Website Design/Dev./Management §         Assembler §         Visio §         Programming §         COBOL IV §               EDUCATION ? New HorizonsComputerLearningCenter, Jacksonville, Florida – CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+ Certified.             Currently working on CCNA Certification ?MottCommunity College, Flint, Michigan – Associates Degree - Data Processing and General Education ? Currently studying Japanese     PROFESSIONAL             TrueFaithChristianFellowshipChurch – Callahan, FL, October 2009 – Present Web site Tech ·        Web site Creator/tech, back up song leader and back up sound technician. Note church web site is (http://ambassadorsforjesuschrist.webs.com/) U.S. Census (temp employee) Feb. 23 to March 8, 2010 ·        Enumerator for NassauCounty   ThomasCreekBaptistChurch – Callahan, FL,     June 2008 – September 2009 Churchsound and video technician      ·        sound and video technician           Fidelity National Information Services ? Jacksonville, FL ? February 01, 2005 to October 28, 2008 Client Server Dev/Analyst I ·        Monitored Multiple Debit Card sites, Check Authorization customers and the Card Auth system (AuthNet) for problems with the sites, connections, servers (on our LAN) and/or applications ·        Night (NOC) Network operator for a large Wide Area Network (WAN) ·        Monitored Multiple Check Authorization customers for problems with circuits, routers and applications ·        Resolved circuit and/or router issues or assist circuit carrier in resolving issue ·        Resolved application problems or assist application support in resolution ·        Liaison between customer and application support ·        Maintained and updated the NetOps Operation procedures Guide ·        Kept the listing of equipment on the raised floor updated ·        Involved in the training of all Night Check and Card server operation operators ·        FNIS acquired Certegy in 2005. Was one of 3 kept on.   Certegy ? St.Pete, FL ? August 31, 2003 to February 1, 2005 Senior NetOps Operator(FNIS acquired Certegy in 2005 all of above jobs/skills were same as listed in FNIS) ·        Converting Documentation to Adobe format ·        Sole trainer of day/night shift System Management Center operators (SMC) ·        Equifax spun off Card/Check Dept. as Certegy. Certegy terminated contract with EDS. One of six in the whole IT dept that was kept on.   EDS  (Certegy Account) ? St.Pete, FL ? July 1, 1999 to August 31, 2003 Senior NetOps Operator ·        Equifax outsourced the NetOps dept. to EDS in 1999. ·        Same job skills as listed above for FNIS.   Equifax ? St.Pete&Tampa, FL ? January 1, 1991 to July 1, 1999 NetOps/Tandem Operator ·        All of the above for FNIS, except for circuit and router issues ·        Operated, monitored and trouble shot Tandem mainframe and servers on LAN ·        Supported in the operation of the Print, Tape and Microfiche rooms ·        Equifax acquired TelaCredit in 1991.   TelaCredit ? Tampa, FL ? June 28, 1989 to January 1, 1991 Tandem Operator ·        Operated and monitored Tandem Non-stop systems for Card and Check Auths ·        Operated multiple high-speed Laser printers and Microfiche printers ·        Mounted, filed and maintained 18 reel-to-reel mainframe tape drives, cartridges tape drives and tape library.

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• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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• First Foray&ndash;About timeout

  - by SQLMonger

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

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 &ndash; Network Management

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 14 &ndash; Insuring Integrity &amp; Availability

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Identify the characteristics of a network that keep data safe from loss or damage Protect an enterprise-wide network from viruses Explain network and system level fault tolerance techniques Discuss issues related to network backup and recovery strategies Describe the components of a useful disaster recovery plan and the options for disaster contingencies What are integrity and availability? Integrity – the soundness of a networks programs, data, services, devices, and connections Availability – How consistently and reliably a file or system can be accessed by authorized personnel A number of phenomena can compromise both integrity and availability including… security breaches natural disasters malicious intruders power flaws human error users etc Although you cannot predict every type of vulnerability, you can take measures to guard against the most damaging events. The following are some guidelines… Allow only network administrators to create or modify NOS and application system users. Monitor the network for unauthorized access or changes Record authorized system changes in a change management system’ Install redundant components Perform regular health checks on the network Check system performance, error logs, and the system log book regularly Keep backups Implement and enforce security and disaster recovery policies These are just some of the basics… Malware Malware refers to any program or piece of code designed to intrude upon or harm a system or its resources. Types of Malware… Boot sector viruses Macro viruses File infector viruses Worms Trojan Horse Network Viruses Bots Malware characteristics Some common characteristics of Malware include… Encryption Stealth Polymorphism Time dependence Malware Protection There are various tools available to protect you from malware called anti-malware software. These monitor your system for indications that a program is performing potential malware operations. A number of techniques are used to detect malware including… Signature Scanning Integrity Checking Monitoring unexpected file changes or virus like behaviours It is important to decide where anti-malware tools will be installed and find a balance between performance and protection. There are several general purpose malware policies that can be implemented to protect your network including… Every compute in an organization should be equipped with malware detection and cleaning software that regularly runs Users should not be allowed to alter or disable the anti-malware software Users should know what to do in case the anti-malware program detects a malware virus Users should be prohibited from installing any unauthorized software on their systems System wide alerts should be issued to network users notifying them if a serious malware virus has been detected. Fault Tolerance Besides guarding against malware, another key factor in maintaining the availability and integrity of data is fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the ability for a system to continue performing despite an unexpected hardware or software malfunction. Fault tolerance can be realized in varying degrees, the optimal level of fault tolerance for a system depends on how critical its services and files are to productivity. Generally the more fault tolerant the system, the more expensive it is. The following describe some of the areas that need to be considered for fault tolerance. Environment (Temperature and humidity) Power Topology and Connectivity Servers Storage Power Typical power flaws include Surges – a brief increase in voltage due to lightening strikes, solar flares or some idiot at City Power Noise – Fluctuation in voltage levels caused by other devices on the network or electromagnetic interference Brownout – A sag in voltage for just a moment Blackout – A complete power loss The are various alternate power sources to consider including UPS’s and Generators. UPS’s are found in two categories… Standby UPS – provides continuous power when mains goes down (brief period of switching over) Online UPS – is online all the time and the device receives power from the UPS all the time (the UPS is charged continuously) Servers There are various techniques for fault tolerance with servers. Server mirroring is an option where one device or component duplicates the activities of another. It is generally an expensive process. Clustering is a fault tolerance technique that links multiple servers together to appear as a single server. They share processing and storage responsibilities and if one unit in the cluster goes down, another unit can be brought in to replace it. Storage There are various techniques available including the following… RAID Arrays NAS (Storage (Network Attached Storage) SANs (Storage Area Networks) Data Backup A backup is a copy of data or program files created for archiving or safekeeping. Many different options for backups exist with various media including… These vary in cost and speed. Optical Media Tape Backup External Disk Drives Network Backups Backup Strategy After selecting the appropriate tool for performing your servers backup, devise a backup strategy to guide you through performing reliable backups that provide maximum data protection. Questions that should be answered include… What data must be backed up At what time of day or night will the backups occur How will you verify the accuracy of the backups Where and for how long will backup media be stored Who will take responsibility for ensuring that backups occurred How long will you save backups Where will backup and recovery documentation be stored Different backup methods provide varying levels of certainty and corresponding labour cost. There are also different ways to determine which files should be backed up including… Full backup – all data on all servers is copied to storage media Incremental backup – Only data that has changed since the last full or incremental backup is copied to a storage medium Differential backup – Only data that has changed since the last backup is coped to a storage medium Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery is the process of restoring your critical functionality and data after an enterprise wide outage has occurred. A disaster recovery plan is for extreme scenarios (i.e. fire, line fault, etc). A cold site is a place were the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exist but they are not appropriately configured. A warm site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists with some appropriately configured devices. A hot site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists and all are appropriately configured.

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• Thought Oracle Usability Advisory Board Was Stuffy? Wrong. Justification for Attending OUAB: ROI

  - by ultan o'broin

  Looking for reasons tell your boss why your organization needs to join the Oracle Usability Advisory Board or why you need approval to attend one of its meetings (see the requirements)? Try phrases such as "Continued Return on Investment (ROI)", "Increased Productivity" or "Happy Workers". With OUAB your participation is about realizing and sustaining ROI across the entire applications life-cycle from input to designs to implementation choices and integration, usage and performance and on measuring and improving the onboarding and support experience. If you think this is a boring meeting of middle-aged people sitting around moaning about customizing desktop forms and why the BlackBerry is here to stay, think again! How about this for a rich agenda, all designed to engage the audience in a thought-provoking and feedback-illiciting day of swirling interactions, contextual usage, global delivery, mobility, consumerizationm, gamification and tailoring your implementation to reflect real users doing real work in real environments.  Foldable, rollable ereader devices provide a newspaper-like UK for electronic news. Or a way to wrap silicon chips, perhaps. Explored at the OUAB Europe Meeting (photograph from Terrace Restaurant in TVP. Nom.) At the 7 December 2012 OUAB Europe meeting in Oracle Thames Valley Park, UK, Oracle partners and customers stepped up to the mic and PPT decks with a range of facts and examples to astound any UX conference C-level sceptic. Over the course of the day we covered much ground, but it was all related in a contextual, flexibile, simplication, engagement way aout delivering results for business: that means solving problems. This means being about the user and their tasks and how to make design and technology transforms work into a productive activity that users and bean counters will be excited by. The sessions really gelled for me: 1. Mobile design patterns and the powerful propositions for customers and partners offered by using the design guidance with Oracle ADF Mobile. Customers' and partners' developers existing ADF developers are now productive, efficient ADF Mobile developers applying proven UX guidance using ADF Mobile components and other Oracle Fusion Middleware in the development toolkit. You can find the Mobile UX Design Patterns and Guidance on Building Mobile Apps on OTN. 2. Oracle Voice and Apps. How this medium offers so much potentual in the enterprise and offers a window in Fusion Apps cloud webservices, Oracle RightNow NLP and Nuance technology. Exciting stuff, demoed live on a mobile phone. Stay tuned for more features and modalities and how you can tailor your own apps experience.  3. Oracle RightNow Natural Language Processing (NLP) Virtual Assistant technology (Ella): how contextual intervention and learning from users sessions delivers a great personalized UX for users interacting with Ella, a fifth generation VA to solve problems and seek knowledge. 4. BYOD Keynote: A balanced keynote address contrasting Fujitsu's explaining of the conceprt, challenges, and trends and setting the expectation that BYOD must be embraced in a flexible way,  with the resolute, crafted high security enterprise requirements that nuancing the BYOD concept and proposals with the realities of their world of water tight information and device sharing policies. Fascinating stuff, as well providing anecdotes to make us thing about out own DYOD Deployments. One size does not fit all. 5. Icon Cultural Surveys Results and Insights Arising: Ever wondered about the cultural appropriateness of icons used in software UIs and how these icons assessed for global use? Or considered that social media "Like" icons might be  unacceptable hand gestures in culture or enterprise? Or do the old world icons like Save floppy disk icons still find acceptable? Well the survey results told you. Challenges must be tested, over time, and context of use is critical now, including external factors such as the internet and social media adoption. Indeed the fears about global rejection of the face and hand icons was not borne out, and some of the more anachronistic icons (checkbooks, microphones, real-to-real tape decks, 3.5" floppies for "save") have become accepted metaphors for current actions. More importantly the findings brought into focus the reason for OUAB - engage with and illicit feedback though working groups before we build anything. 6. EReaders and Oracle iBook: What is the uptake and trends of ereaders? And how about a demo of an iBook with enterprise apps content?  Well received by the audience, the session included a live running poll of ereader usage. 7. Gamification Design Jam: Fun, hands on event for teams of Oracle staff, partners and customers, actually building gamified flows, a practice that can be applied right away by customers and partners.  8. UX Direct: A new offering of usability best practices, coming to an external website for you in 2013. FInd a real user, observe their tasks, design and approve, build and measure. Simple stuff to improve apps implications no end. 9. FUSE (an internal term only, basically Fusion Simplified Experience): demo of the new Face of Fusion Applications: inherently mobile, simple to use, social, personalizable and FAST, three great demos from the HCM, CRM and ICT world on how these UX designs can be used in different ways. So, a powerful breadth and depth of UX solutions and opporunities for customers and partners to engage with and explore how they can make their users happy and benefit their business reaping continued ROI from those apps investments. Find out more about the OUAB and how to get involved here ... 

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• Updated Agenda for OTN Architect Day Los Angeles (Oct 25)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles on October 25, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: Thursday October 25 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Sofitel Los Angeles 8555 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90048 Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Beverly Ballroom 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Beverly Ballroom 10:00 am - 10:30 am Monitoring and Managing Applications in the Cloud | Basheer Khan Oracle offers a broad portfolio of software and hardware products and services to enable public, private and hybrid clouds to power the enterprise. However, enterprise cloud computing presents new management challenges, that need to be addressed to realize the economic benefits of cloud computing. In this session you will learn about the methods and tools you can use to proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle Applications environment in the cloud, define service-level objectives, gain insight into your end users, and troubleshoot performance problems from a single console. Beverly Ballroom 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Dr. James Baty The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Beverly Ballroom Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Ashok Aletty Learn how Oracle Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Hollywood Room 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Beverly Ballroom Oracle Enterprise Manager | Perren Walker This session examines new Oracle Enterprise Manager monitoring, administration, and management features for Oracle Exalogic. It focuses on two management themes: cloud management related to virtualization and applications-to-disk management. For private cloud management, it discusses virtualization management features providing an enhanced set of application deployment capabilities enabling IaaS as well as PaaS interactions. Then from an end-to-end perspective, it covers the specific capabilities and—where applicable—best practices for machine, cloud, middleware, and application administration. Hollywood Room 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Beverly Ballroom Lounge 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Beverly Ballroom 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy ETS). Beverly Ballroom 21st Century SOA | Jeff Davies Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. We'll also take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Hollywood Room 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Beverly Ballroom 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Beverly Ballroom 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Beverly Ballroom Lounge Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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• Reviewing Retail Predictions for 2011

  - by David Dorf

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I've been busy thinking about what 2012 and beyond will look like for retail, and I have some interesting predictions to share.  But before I go there, let’s first review this year’s predictions before making new ones for 2012. 1. Alternate Payments We've seen several alternate payment schemes emerge over the last two years, and 2011 may be the year one of them takes hold. Any competition that can drive down fees will be good for everyone. I'm betting that Apple will add NFC chips to their next version of the iPhone, then enable payments in stores using iTunes accounts on the backend. Paypal will continue to make inroads, and Isis will announce a pilot. The iPhone 4S did not contain an NFC chip, so we’ll have to continuing waiting for the iPhone 5. PayPal announced its moving into in-store payments, and Google launched its wallet in selected cities.  Overall I think the payment scene is heating up and that trend will continue. 2. Engineered Systems The industry is moving toward purpose-built appliances that are optimized across the entire stack. Oracle calls these "engineered systems" and the first two examples are Exadata and Exalogic, but there are other examples from other vendors. These are particularly important to the retail industry because of the volume of data that must be processed. There should be continued adoption in 2011. Oracle reports that Exadata is its fasting growing product, and at the recent OpenWorld it announced the SuperCluster and Exalytics products, both continuing the engineered systems trend. SAP’s HANA continues to receive attention, and IBM also seems to be moving in this direction. 3. Social Analytics There are lots of tools that provide insight into how a brand is perceived across popular internet sites, but as far as I know, these tools are not industry specific. The next step needs to mine the data and determine how it should influence retail operations. The data needs to help retailers determine how they create promotions, which products to stock, and how to keep consumers engaged. Social data alone does not provide the answers, but its one more data point that will help retailers make better decisions. Look for some vendor consolidation to help make this happen. In March, Salesforce.com acquired leading social monitoring vendor Radian6 and followed up with acquisitions of Heroku and Model Metrics. The notion of Social CRM seems to be going more mainstream now. 4. 2-D Barcodes Look for more QRCodes on shelf-tags, in newspaper circulars, and on billboards. It's a great portal from the physical world into the digital one that buys us time until augmented reality matures further. Nobody wants to type "www", backslash, and ".com" on their phones. QRCodes are everywhere. ‘Nuff said. 5. In the words of Microsoft, "To the Cloud!" My favorite "cloud application" is Evernote. If you take notes on your work laptop, you will inevitably need those notes on your home PC. And if you manage to solve that problem, you'll need to access them from your mobile phone. Evernote stores your notes in the cloud and provides easy ways to access them. Being able to access a service from anywhere and not having to worry about backups, upgrades, etc. is great. Retailers will start to rely on cloud services, both public and private, in the coming year. There were no shortage of announcements in this area: Amazon’s cloud-based Kindle Fire, Apple’s iCloud, Oracle’s Public Cloud, etc. I saw an interesting presentation showing how BevMo moved their systems to the cloud.  Seems like retailers are starting to consider the cloud for specific uses. 6. F-CommerceTop of Form Move over "E" and "M" so we can introduce "F-Commerce," which should go mainstream in 2011. Already several retailers have created small stores on Facebook, and it won't be long before Facebook becomes a full-fledged channel in the omni-channel world of retail. The battle between Facebook and Google will heat up over retail, where both stand to make lots of money. JCPenney and ASOS both put their entire catalogs on Facebook, and lots of other retailers have connected Facebook to their e-commerce site. I still think selling from the newsfeed is the best approach, and several retailers are trying that approach as well. I just don’t see Google+ as a threat to Facebook, so I think that battle is over.  I called 2011 The Year of F-Commerce, and that was probably accurate. Its good to look back at predictions, but we also have to think about what was missed.  I didn't see Amazon entering the tablet business with such a splash, although in hindsight it was obvious. Nor did I think HP would fall so far so fast.  Look for my 2012 predictions coming soon.

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• TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

  - by Michael Snow

  We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available  On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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• Loading XML file containing leading zeros with SSIS preserving the zeros

  - by Compudicted

  Visiting the MSDN SQL Server Integration Services Forum oftentimes I could see that people would pop up asking this question: “why I am not able to load an element from an XML file that contains zeros so the leading/trailing zeros would remain intact?”. I started to suspect that such a trivial and often-required operation perhaps is being misunderstood by the developer community. I would also like to add that the whole state of affairs surrounding the XML today is probably also going to be increasingly affected by a motion of people who dislike XML in general and many aspects of it as XSD and XSLT invoke a negative reaction at best. Nevertheless, XML is in wide use today and its importance as a bridge between diverse systems is ever increasing. Therefore, I deiced to write up an example of loading an arbitrary XML file that contains leading zeros in one of its elements using SSIS so the leading zeros would be preserved keeping in mind the goal on simplicity into a table in SQL Server database. To start off bring up your BIDS (running as admin) and add a new Data Flow Task (DFT). This DFT will serve as container to adding our XML processing elements (besides, the XML Source is not available anywhere else other than from within the DFT). Double-click your DFT and drag and drop the XMS Source component from the Tool Box’s Data Flow Sources. Now, let the fun begin! Being inspired by the upcoming Christmas I created a simple XML file with one set of data that contains an imaginary SSN number of Rudolph containing several leading zeros like 0000003. This file can be viewed here. To configure the XML Source of course it is quite intuitive to point it to our XML file, next what the XML source needs is either an embedded schema (XSD) or it can generate one for us. In lack of the one I opted to auto-generate it for me and I ended up with an XSD that looked like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xs:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="XMasEvent"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CaseInfo"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ID" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CreatedDate" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="LastName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="FirstName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="SSN" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <!-- Becomes string -- > <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="DOB" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="Event" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ClosedDate" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> As an aside on the XML file: if your XML file does not contain the outer node (<XMasEvent>) then you may end up in a situation where you see just one field in the output. Now please note that the SSN element’s data type was chosen to be of unsignedByte (and this is for a reason). The reason is stemming from the fact all our figures in the element are digits, this is good, but this is not exactly what we need, because if we will attempt to load the data with this XSD then we are going to either get errors on the destination or most typically lose the leading zeros. So the next intuitive choice is to change the data type to string. Besides, if a SSIS package was already created based on this XSD and the data type change was done thereafter, one should re-set the metadata by right-clicking the XML Source and choosing “Advanced Editor” in which there is a refresh button at the bottom left which will do the trick. So far so good, we are ready to load our XML file, well actually yes, and no, in my experience typically some data conversion may be required. So depending on your data destination you may need to tweak the data types targeted. Let’s add a Data Conversion Task to our DFT. Your package should look like: To make the story short I only will cover the SSN field, so in my data source the target SQL Table has it as nchar(10) and we chose string in our XSD (yes, this is a big difference), under such circumstances the SSIS will complain. So will go and manipulate on the data type of SSN by making it Unicode String (DT_WSTR), World String per se. The conversion should look like: The peek at the Metadata: We are almost there, now all we need is to configure the destination. For simplicity I chose SQL Server Destination. The mapping is a breeze, F5 and I am able to insert my data into SQL Server now! Checking the zeros – they are all intact!

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• Webcast Q&A: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Last Thursday we had the second webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter, where customer Michael Chander from Qualcomm and Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal from Oracle Partner Keste shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering Qualcomm’s externally facing website and providing a seamless experience for their customers. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A.   Mike Chandler, Qualcomm Q: Did you run into any issues when integrating all of the different applications together?A: Definitely, our main challenges were in the area of user provisioning and security propagation, all the standard stuff you might expect when hooking up SSO for authentication and authorization. In addition, we spent several iterations getting the UI’s in sync. While everyone was given the same digital material to build too, each team interpreted and implemented it their own way. Initially as a user navigated, if you were looking for it, you could slight variations in color or font or width , stuff like that. So we had to pull all the developers responsible for the UI together and get pixel level agreement on a lot of things so we could ensure seamless transitions across applications. Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: Wow, there have been several. An SSO enabled environment was huge a win for our users. The portal application that this replaced had not really been invested in by the business. With this project, we had full business participation and backing, and it really showed in some key areas like the shopping experience. For example, while ordering in the previous site, the items did not have any pictures or really usable descriptions. A tremendous amount of work was done to try and make the site more intuitive and user friendly. Site performance has also drastically improved thanks to new hardware, improved database design, and of course the fact that ADF has made great strides in runtime performance. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: Within a large company, I’m sure there is always going to be competition for large projects, as there was here. Once we got through the technical analysis and settled on the technology choices, it was actually no resistance to implementing the solution. This project was fully driven by the business with the aim of long term growth. I can confidently say that the fact that this project was given the utmost importance by both the business and IT really help put down any resistance that you would typically see while implementing a new solution. Q: Given the performance, what do you estimate to be the top end capacity of the system? A:I think our top end capacity is really only limited by our hardware. I’m comfortable saying we could grow 10x on our current hardware, both in terms of transactions and users. We can easily spin up new JVM instances if needed. We already use less JVM’s than we had planned. In addition, ADF is doing a very good job with his connection pooling and application module pooling, so we see a very good ratio of users connected to the systems vs db connections, without impacting performace. Q: What's the overview or summary of feedback from the users interacting with the site?A: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both the business and our customers. They’re very happy with the new SSO environment , the new LAF, and the performance of the site. Of course, it’s not all roses. No matter what, there are always going to be people that don’t like the layout or the color scheme, etc. By and large though, customers are happy and the business is happy. Q: Can you describe the impressions about the site before and after the project within Qualcomm?A: Before the project, the site worked and people were using it, but most people were not happy with it. It was slow and tended to be a bit tempermental, for example a user would perform a transaction and the system would throw and unexpected error. The user could back up and retry the steps and things would work fine, so why didn’t work the first time?. From a UI perspective, we’d hear comments like it looked like it was built by a high school student.  Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal, Keste Q: Did you run into any obstacles when implementing the solution?A: It's interesting some people call them "obstacles" on this project we just called them "dependencies".  There were both technical and business related dependencies that we had to work out. Mike points out the SSO dependencies and the coordination and synchronization between the teams to have a seamless login experience and a seamless end user experience.  There was also a set of dependencies on the User Acceptance testing to make sure that everyone understood the use cases for how the system would be used.  With a branching into a new market and trying to match a simple user experience as many consumer sites have today, there was always a tendency for the team members to provide their suggestions on how things could be simpler.  But with all the work up front on the user design and getting the business driving this set of experiences, this minimized the downstream suggestions that tend to distract a team.  In this case, all the work up front allowed us to enumerate the "dependencies" and keep the distractions to a minimum. Q: Was there a lot of custom work that needed to be done for this particular solution?A: The focus for this particular solution was really on the custom processes. The interesting thing is that with the data flows and the integration with applications, there are some pre-built integrations, but realistically for the process flow, we had to build those. The framework and tooling we used made things easier so we didn’t have to implement core functionality, like transitioning from screen to screen or from flow to flow. The design feature of Task Flows really helped speed the development and keep the component infrastructure in line with the dynamic processes.  Task flows and other elements like Skins are core to the infrastructure or technology stack of Oracle. This then allowed the team to center the project focus around the business flows and use cases to meet the core requirements and keep the project on time. Q: What do you think were the keys to success for rolling out WebCenter?A:  The 5 main keys to success were: 1) Sponsorship from the whole organization around this project from senior executive agreement, business owners driving functionality, and IT development alignment; 2) Upfront design planning and use case definition to clearly define the project scope and requirements; 3) Focussed development and project management aligned with the top level goals and drivers; 4) User acceptance and usability testing along the way to identify potential issues and direct resolution of the issues;  and 5) Constant prioritization of the issues for development to fix by the business.  It also helps to have great team chemistry and really smart people working on the project. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action!  Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

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• XBRL - Moving from Production to Consumption

  - by jmorourke

  Here's an update on what’s new with XBRL and how it can actually benefit your organization versus adding extra time and costs to financial reporting.  On February 29th (leap day) of 2012 I attended the XBRL and Financial Analysis Technology Conference at Baruch College in NYC.  The event, which attracted over 300 XBRL gurus and fans was presented by XBRL US, The New York Society of Security Analysts’ Improved Corporate Reporting Committee, and Baruch College’s Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity.  The event featured keynotes from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the CFA Institute as well as panels covering alternative research tools and data, corporate reporting to stakeholders and a demonstration of XBRL analysis tools.  The program culminated in a presentation of the finalists and the winner of the $20,000 XBRL Challenge.    Some of the key points made in the sessions included: The focus of XBRL tools is moving from production to consumption. As of February 2012, over 9000 companies are reporting in XBRL, with over 10 million facts filed to date XBRL taxonomy extensions have dropped from 27% to 11% making comparisons easier The SEC reports that XBRL makes it easier to analyze disclosures, focus on accounting issues XBRL is helping standards-setters like the FASB speed their analysis of impacts of proposed accounting rule changes Companies like Thomson Reuters report that XBRL is helping speed the delivery of data to clients The most interesting part of the program though, was the session highlighting the 5 finalists in the XBRL Challenge competition and the winning solution.  The XBRL Challenge was launched in 2011 as a means of spurring the development of more end-user tools to help with the consumption of XBRL-based financial information.       Over an 8-month process handled by 5 judges, there were 84 registrants, 15 completed submissions, 5 finalists and one winner of the challenge.  All of the solutions are open-sourced tools and most of them focus on consuming XBRL-based data.  The 5 finalists included: Advanced XBRL Processing from Oxide solutions – XBRL viewer for taxonomies, filings and company data with peer comparison capabilities. Arrelle – API for XBRL processes, supports SEC Validations, RSS Feeds to access filings etc. Calcbench – XBRL data analysis tool that can be embedded in other web applications.  This tool can combine XBRL filings with real-time market data. XBRL to XL – allows the importing of XBRL data into Microsoft Excel for analysis, comparisons.  Users start on the web and populate Excel with XBRL data. XBurble – allows users to search and view XBRL filings, export to Excel, merge for comparison, and includes a workflow interface. The winner of the $20,000 XBRL Challenge prize was CalcBench.  More information about the XBRL Challenge and the finalists can be found at www.XBRLUS.org/challenge XBRL for Sustainability Reporting – other recent news on the XBRL front was the announcement by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) of an XBRL taxonomy for Sustainability Reporting.  This taxonomy was co-developed by the GRI and Deloitte and is designed to make the consumption of data found in Sustainability Reports much easier.  Although there is no government mandate to file Sustainability Reports in XBRL format, organizations that do use the GRI guidelines for Sustainability Reporting are encouraged to tag and submit their data voluntarily to the GRI – who will populate a database with Sustainability Reporting data and make this available to the public.  For more information about this initiative, you can go to the GRI web site:  www.globalreporting.org. So how does all of this benefit corporate filers and investors?  Since its introduction, the consensus in the market is that XBRL has mainly benefited the regulators and investment analysts who need to consume and analyze large volumes of financial data.  But with the emergence of more end-user tools for consuming and analyzing XBRL-based data, and the ability to perform quick comparisons of one company versus its peers and competitors in an industry group, will soon accelerate the benefits to corporate finance staff, as well as individual investors.  This could apply to financial results tagged in XBRL, as well as non-financial information such as Sustainability Reporting – which over the long-term will likely be integrated with financial reporting.   And as multiple regulators and agencies in a country adopt the XBRL standard for corporate filings, more benefits will accrue as companies will be able to leverage one set of XBRL-based financial data for multiple regulatory filings.     For more information about the latest developments in XBRL, check out the XBRL US or XBRL International web sites:  www.xbrl.org, www.xbrlus.org. For more information about what Oracle is doing to support XBRL, here are some links: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/disclosure-management-065892.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need more information:  [email protected]

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 5): Query Snapshots

  - by Simon Cooper

  If you've emailed us about a bug you've encountered with the EAP or beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, we probably asked you to send us a query snapshot of your databases. Here, I explain what a query snapshot is, and how it helps us fix your bug. Problem 1: Debugging users' bug reports When we started the Schema Compare project, we knew we were going to get problems with users' databases - configurations we hadn't considered, features that weren't installed, unicode issues, wierd dependencies... With SQL Compare, users are generally happy to send us a database backup that we can restore using a single RESTORE DATABASE command on our test servers and immediately reproduce the problem. Oracle, on the other hand, would be a lot more tricky. As Oracle generally has a 1-to-1 mapping between instances and databases, any databases users sent would have to be restored to their own instance. Furthermore, the number of steps required to get a properly working database, and the size of most oracle databases, made it infeasible to ask every customer who came across a bug during our beta program to send us their databases. We also knew that there would be lots of issues with data security that would make it hard to get backups. So we needed an easier way to be able to debug customers issues and sort out what strange schema data Oracle was returning. Problem 2: Test execution time Another issue we knew we would have to solve was the execution time of the tests we would produce for the Schema Compare engine. Our initial prototype showed that querying the data dictionary for schema information was going to be slow (at least 15 seconds per database), and this is generally proportional to the size of the database. If you're running thousands of tests on the same databases, each one registering separate schemas, not only would the tests would take hours and hours to run, but the test servers would be hammered senseless. The solution To solve these, we needed to be able to populate the schema of a database without actually connecting to it. Well, the IDataReader interface is the primary way we read data from an Oracle server. The data dictionary queries we use return their data in terms of simple strings and numbers, which we then process and reconstruct into an object model, and the results of these queries are identical for identical schemas. So, we can record the raw results of the queries once, and then replay these results to construct the same object model as many times as required without needing to actually connect to the original database. This is what query snapshots do. They are binary files containing the raw unprocessed data we get back from the oracle server for all the queries we run on the data dictionary to get schema information. The core of the query snapshot generation takes the results of the IDataReader we get from running queries on Oracle, and passes the row data to a BinaryWriter that writes it straight to a file. The query snapshot can then be replayed to create the same object model; when the results of a specific query is needed by the population code, we can simply read the binary data stored in the file on disk and present it through an IDataReader wrapper. This is far faster than querying the server over the network, and allows us to run tests in a reasonable time. They also allow us to easily debug a customers problem; using a simple snapshot generation program, users can generate a query snapshot that could be sent along with a bug report that we can immediately replay on our machines to let us debug the issue, rather than having to obtain database backups and restore databases to test systems. There are also far fewer problems with data security; query snapshots only contain schema information, which is generally less sensitive than table data. Query snapshots implementation However, actually implementing such a feature did have a couple of 'gotchas' to it. My second blog post detailed the development of the dependencies algorithm we use to ensure we get all the dependencies in the database, and that algorithm uses data from both databases to find all the needed objects - what database you're comparing to affects what objects get populated from both databases. We get information on these additional objects using an appropriate WHERE clause on all the population queries. So, in order to accurately replay the results of querying the live database, the query snapshot needs to be a snapshot of a comparison of two databases, not just populating a single database. Furthermore, although the code population queries (eg querying all_tab_cols to get column information) can simply be passed straight from the IDataReader to the BinaryWriter, we need to hook into and run the live dependencies algorithm while we're creating the snapshot to ensure we get the same WHERE clauses, and the same query results, as if we were populating straight from a live system. We also need to store the results of the dependencies queries themselves, as the resulting dependency graph is stored within the OracleDatabase object that is produced, and is later used to help order actions in synchronization scripts. This is significantly helped by the dependencies algorithm being a deterministic algorithm - given the same input, it will always return the same output. Therefore, when we're replaying a query snapshot, and processing dependency information, we simply have to return the results of the queries in the order we got them from the live database, rather than trying to calculate the contents of all_dependencies on the fly. Query snapshots are a significant feature in Schema Compare that really helps us to debug problems with the tool, as well as making our testers happier. Although not really user-visible, they are very useful to the development team to help us fix bugs in the product much faster than we otherwise would be able to.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features -------- list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed ----- case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download end...Activity Viewer 2012: Activity Viewer 2012 V 5.0.0.3: Planning to add new features: 1. Import/Export rules 2. Tabular mode multi servers connections.Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...OfflineBrowser: Release v1.2: This release includes some multi-threading support, a better progress bar, more JavaScript fixes, and a help system. This release is also portable (can run with no issues from a flash drive).CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-0-0-34288-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of ...CrmSvcUtil Generate Attribute Constants: Generate Attribute Constants (1.0.5018.28159): Built against version 5.0.15 of the CRM SDK Fixed issue where constant for primary key attribute was being duplicated in all entity classes Added ability to override base class for entity classesC# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen v2.1.3.api release: This is for the brave at heart, this is the maint release to update to the new movie api. please send feedback on fix requests.FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...Rawr: Rawr 5.4.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Sample MVC4 EF Codefirst Architecture: RazMVCWebApp ver 1.1: Signal R sample is added.CODE Framework: 4.0.30923.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.JayData -The unified data access library for JavaScript: JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like WebAPI, OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SQLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with KendoUI, Angular.js, Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video KendoUI examples: JayData example site Examples for map integration JayData example site What's new in JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition For detai...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.12.0.0: sync with rev. 2892 of the java version new PDF417 decoder improved Aztec decoder global speed improvements direct Kinect support for ColorImageFrame better Structured Append support many other small bug fixes and improvementsNew ProjectsCACHEDB: CLIENT-DATABASE || CLIENT_CACHEDB-DATABASEClassic WiX Burn Theme: A WiX Burn theme inspired by the classic WiX wizard user interface.CryptStr.Fody: A post-build weaver that encrypts literal strings in your .NET assemblies without breaking ClickOnce.Easy Code: A setting framework.EduSoft: This is a school eg.GameStuff: GameStuff is a library of Physics and Geometrics concepts for video game. Nekora Test Project: Nekora test projectPopCorn Console Game: Simple console gameRadioController: This project started from people installing Tablets in Mustangs. You would typically loose most control of the radio. This projects brings that back!Random searcher i pochodne: Wyszukiwarka plików multimedialnych i czego dusza zapragnie.SporkRandom: A .NET (C#, Visual Basic) interface for the true random number generator service of random.org

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• 7 Steps To Cut Recruiting Costs & Drive Exceptional Business Results

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  By Steve Viarengo, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Taleo Cloud Services  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In good times, trimming operational costs is an ongoing goal. In tough times, it’s a necessity. In both good times and bad, however, recruiting occurs. Growth increases headcount in good times, and opportunistic or replacement hiring occurs in slow business cycles. By employing creative recruiting strategies in tandem with the latest technology developments, you can reduce recruiting costs while driving exceptional business results. Here are some critical areas to focus on. 1.  Target Direct Cost Savings Total recruiting process expenses are the sum of external costs plus internal labor costs. Most organizations can reduce recruiting expenses with direct cost savings. While additional savings on indirect costs can be realized from process improvement and efficiency gains, there are direct cost savings and benefits readily available in three broad areas: sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting. 2. Sourcing: Reduce Agency Costs Agency search firm fees can amount to 35 percent of a new employee’s annual base salary. Typically taken from the hiring department budget, these fees may not be visible to HR. By relying on internal mobility programs, referrals, candidate pipelines, and corporate career Websites, organizations can reduce or eliminate this agency spend. And when you do have to pay third-party agency fees, you can optimize the value you receive by collaborating with agencies to identify referred candidates, ensure access to candidate data and history, and receive automatic notifications and correspondence. 3. Sourcing: Reduce Advertising Costs You can realize significant cost reductions by placing all job positions on your corporate career Website. This will allow you to reap a substantial number of candidates at minimal cost compared to job boards and other sourcing options. 4.  Sourcing: Internal Talent Pool Internal talent pools provide a way to reduce sourcing and advertising costs while delivering improved productivity and retention. Internal redeployment reduces costs and ramp-up time while increasing retention and employee satisfaction. 5.  Sourcing: External Talent Pool Strategic recruiting requires identifying and matching people with a given set of skills to a particular job while efficiently allocating sourcing expenditures. By using an e-recruiting system (which drives external talent pool management) with a candidate relationship database, you can automate prescreening and candidate matching while communicating with targeted candidates. Candidate relationship management can lower sourcing costs by marketing new job opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. By mining the talent pool in this fashion, you eliminate the need to source a new pool of candidates for each new requisition. Managing and mining the corporate candidate database can reduce the sourcing cost per candidate by as much as 50 percent. 6.  Assessments: Reduce Turnover Costs By taking advantage of assessments during the recruitment process, you can achieve a range of benefits, including better productivity, superior candidate performance, and lower turnover (providing considerable savings). Assessments also save recruiter and hiring manager time by focusing on a short list of qualified candidates. Hired for fit, such candidates tend to stay with the organization and produce quality work—ultimately driving revenue.  7. Green Recruiting: Reduce Paper and Processing Costs You can reduce recruiting costs by automating the process—and making it green. A paperless process informs candidates that you’re dedicated to green recruiting. It also leads to direct cost savings. E-recruiting reduces energy use and pollution associated with manufacturing, transporting, and recycling paper products. And process automation saves energy in mailing, storage, handling, filing, and reporting tasks. Direct cost savings come from reduced paperwork related to résumés, advertising, and onboarding. Improving the recruiting process through sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting not only saves costs. It also positions the company to improve the talent base during the recession while retaining the ability to grow appropriately in recovery. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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• Ubuntu 12.04 + Wifi not working

  - by user171154

  i'm having problems connecting over wireless. At the moment, I'm using wicd. It seems to get stuck on "Verifying AP association...". Without wicd I can get the connection up and ping the Net - but if I take eth0 down (ifconfig eth0 down), my wireless goes away too (same result if I unplug the wire instead). wicd is the only way I can bring eth0 back (which is the main reason I'm using it) - ifconfig eth0 and/or ifup eth0 do not re-enable the connection (I just discovered it leaves out the gateway. Adding the gateway back in re-enables the connection including wifi; I didn't want to delete the info about wicd above in case it gives someone an idea.) Doing it manually, despite the errors (which it would be nice to also resolve) - allows me to ping the outside world: ifup wlan0 ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument ssh stop/waiting ssh start/running, process 17336 ping -I wlan0 -c 4 8.8.8.8 PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) from 192.168.0.12 wlan0: 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=1 ttl=43 time=48.8 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=2 ttl=43 time=47.9 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=3 ttl=43 time=48.7 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=4 ttl=43 time=53.2 ms --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3003ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 47.975/49.711/53.235/2.063 ms # iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"TPLINK" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.427 GHz Access Point: 64:66:xx:xx:xx:22 Bit Rate=108 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-39 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:3 Missed beacon:0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: f0:7d:68:c1:b4:13 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.2.0-67-generic-pae firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:17 memory:dfbf0000-dfbfffff ip route default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 default via 192.168.0.1 dev wlan0 metric 100 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlan0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.102 192.168.0.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.12 (For the record, I have no idea what the 169.254.0.0 address is doing there.) uname -a 3.2.0-67-generic-pae #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 18:04:54 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux lshw -C network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 01 serial: 00:11:11:59:fc:09 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.121 duplex=full firmware=5751-v3.23a ip=192.168.0.102 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:16 memory:dfcf0000-dfcfffff *-network description: Wireless interface product: AR5418 Wireless Network Adapter [AR5008E 802.11(a)bgn] (PCI-Express) vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 /etc/network/interfaces # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8) auto lo iface lo inet loopback source /etc/network/interfaces.eth0 source /etc/network/interfaces.wlan0 /etc/network/interfaces.eth0 #Main Interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.0.102 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.0.1 /etc/network/interfaces.wlan0 auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet static address 192.168.0.12 gateway 192.168.0.1 dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1 8.8.8.8 netmask 255.255.255.0 wpa-driver wext wpa-ssid TPLINK wpa-ap-scan 1 wpa-proto RSN wpa-pairwise CCMP wpa-group CCMP wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK wpa-psk dca1badb5fd4e9axxx4xxdaaxxfa91xx610bxx6a7d57ef67af9809dxx6af42e39 /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant network={ ssid="TPLINK" psk="my password" key_mgmt=WPA-PSK proto=RSN pairwise=CCMP group=CCMP } ifdown eth0 ifdown: interface eth0 not configured ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:xx:xx:xx:09 inet addr:192.168.0.102 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::211:11ff:fe59:fc09/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:213690 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:155266 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:220057808 (220.0 MB) TX bytes:21137696 (21.1 MB) Interrupt:16 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:196412 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:196412 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:153270697 (153.2 MB) TX bytes:153270697 (153.2 MB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr f0:7d:xx:xx:xx:13 inet addr:192.168.0.12 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::f27d:68ff:fec1:b413/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:11335 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7287 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:2563290 (2.5 MB) TX bytes:855746 (855.7 KB) ifconfig eth0 down ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:09 inet addr:192.168.0.102 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::211:11ff:fe59:fc09/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:192 (192.0 B) TX bytes:94 (94.0 B) Interrupt:16 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:196418 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:196418 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:153270871 (153.2 MB) TX bytes:153270871 (153.2 MB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr f0:7d:xx:xx:xx:13 inet addr:192.168.0.12 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::f27d:68ff:fec1:b413/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:11359 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7293 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:2565482 (2.5 MB) TX bytes:856363 (856.3 KB) ip route default via 192.168.0.1 dev wlan0 metric 100 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlan0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.12 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.102 ping -I wlan0 -c 4 8.8.8.8 PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) from 192.168.0.12 wlan0: 56(84) bytes of data. --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 3024ms ping -I eth0 -c 3 router PING router (192.168.0.1) from 192.168.0.102 eth0: 56(84) bytes of data. --- router ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2015ms ping -I wlan0 -c 3 router PING router (192.168.0.1) from 192.168.0.12 wlan0: 56(84) bytes of data. --- router ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2014ms Let me know if you need more info. Thank you in advance.

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• Super constructor must be a first statement in Java constructor [closed]

  - by Val

  I know the answer: "we need rules to prevent shooting into your own foot". Ok, I make millions of programming mistakes every day. To be prevented, we need one simple rule: prohibit all JLS and do not use Java. If we explain everything by "not shooting your foot", this is reasonable. But there is not much reason is such reason. When I programmed in Delphy, I always wanted the compiler to check me if I read uninitializable. I have discovered myself that is is stupid to read uncertain variable because it leads unpredictable result and is errorenous obviously. By just looking at the code I could see if there is an error. I wished if compiler could do this job. It is also a reliable signal of programming error if function does not return any value. But I never wanted it do enforce me the super constructor first. Why? You say that constructors just initialize fields. Super fields are derived; extra fields are introduced. From the goal point of view, it does not matter in which order you initialize the variables. I have studied parallel architectures and can say that all the fields can even be assigned in parallel... What? Do you want to use the unitialized fields? Stupid people always want to take away our freedoms and break the JLS rules the God gives to us! Please, policeman, take away that person! Where do I say so? I'm just saying only about initializing/assigning, not using the fields. Java compiler already defends me from the mistake of accessing notinitialized. Some cases sneak but this example shows how this stupid rule does not save us from the read-accessing incompletely initialized in construction: public class BadSuper { String field; public String toString() { return "field = " + field; } public BadSuper(String val) { field = val; // yea, superfirst does not protect from accessing // inconstructed subclass fields. Subclass constr // must be called before super()! System.err.println(this); } } public class BadPost extends BadSuper { Object o; public BadPost(Object o) { super("str"); this. o = o; } public String toString() { // superconstructor will boom here, because o is not initialized! return super.toString() + ", obj = " + o.toString(); } public static void main(String[] args) { new BadSuper("test 1"); new BadPost(new Object()); } } It shows that actually, subfields have to be inilialized before the supreclass! Meantime, java requirement "saves" us from writing specializing the class by specializing what the super constructor argument is, public class MyKryo extends Kryo { class MyClassResolver extends DefaultClassResolver { public Registration register(Registration registration) { System.out.println(MyKryo.this.getDepth()); return super.register(registration); } } MyKryo() { // cannot instantiate MyClassResolver in super super(new MyClassResolver(), new MapReferenceResolver()); } } Try to make it compilable. It is always pain. Especially, when you cannot assign the argument later. Initialization order is not important for initialization in general. I could understand that you should not use super methods before initializing super. But, the requirement for super to be the first statement is different. It only saves you from the code that does useful things simply. I do not see how this adds safety. Actually, safety is degraded because we need to use ugly workarounds. Doing post-initialization, outside the constructors also degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and defeats the java final safety reenforcer. To conclude Reading not initialized is a bug. Initialization order is not important from the computer science point of view. Doing initalization or computations in different order is not a bug. Reenforcing read-access to not initialized is good but compilers fail to detect all such bugs Making super the first does not solve the problem as it "Prevents" shooting into right things but not into the foot It requires to invent workarounds, where, because of complexity of analysis, it is easier to shoot into the foot doing post-initialization outside the constructors degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and that degrade safety by defeating final access modifier When there was java forum alive, java bigots attecked me for these thoughts. Particularly, they dislaked that fields can be initialized in parallel, saying that natural development ensures correctness. When I replied that you could use an advanced engineering to create a human right away, without "developing" any ape first, and it still be an ape, they stopped to listen me. Cos modern technology cannot afford it. Ok, Take something simpler. How do you produce a Renault? Should you construct an Automobile first? No, you start by producing a Renault and, once completed, you'll see that this is an automobile. So, the requirement to produce fields in "natural order" is unnatural. In case of alarmclock or armchair, which are still chair and clock, you may need first develop the base (clock and chair) and then add extra. So, I can have examples where superfields must be initialized first and, oppositely, when they need to be initialized later. The order does not exist in advance. So, the compiler cannot be aware of the proper order. Only programmer/constructor knows is. Compiler should not take more responsibility and enforce the wrong order onto programmer. Saying that I cannot initialize some fields because I did not ininialized the others is like "you cannot initialize the thing because it is not initialized". This is a kind of argument we have. So, to conclude once more, the feature that "protects" me from doing things in simple and right way in order to enforce something that does not add noticeably to the bug elimination at that is a strongly negative thing and it pisses me off, altogether with the all the arguments to support it I've seen so far. It is "a conceptual question about software development" Should there be the requirement to call super() first or not. I do not know. If you do or have an idea, you have place to answer. I think that I have provided enough arguments against this feature. Lets appreciate the ones who benefit form it. Let it just be something more than simple abstract and stupid "write your own language" or "protection" kind of argument. Why do we need it in the language that I am going to develop?

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• CPU Usage in Very Large Coherence Clusters

  - by jpurdy

  When sizing Coherence installations, one of the complicating factors is that these installations (by their very nature) tend to be application-specific, with some being large, memory-intensive caches, with others acting as I/O-intensive transaction-processing platforms, and still others performing CPU-intensive calculations across the data grid. Regardless of the primary resource requirements, Coherence sizing calculations are inherently empirical, in that there are so many permutations that a simple spreadsheet approach to sizing is rarely optimal (though it can provide a good starting estimate). So we typically recommend measuring actual resource usage (primarily CPU cycles, network bandwidth and memory) at a given load, and then extrapolating from those measurements. Of course there may be multiple types of load, and these may have varying degrees of correlation -- for example, an increased request rate may drive up the number of objects "pinned" in memory at any point, but the increase may be less than linear if those objects are naturally shared by concurrent requests. But for most reasonably-designed applications, a linear resource model will be reasonably accurate for most levels of scale. However, at extreme scale, sizing becomes a bit more complicated as certain cluster management operations -- while very infrequent -- become increasingly critical. This is because certain operations do not naturally tend to scale out. In a small cluster, sizing is primarily driven by the request rate, required cache size, or other application-driven metrics. In larger clusters (e.g. those with hundreds of cluster members), certain infrastructure tasks become intensive, in particular those related to members joining and leaving the cluster, such as introducing new cluster members to the rest of the cluster, or publishing the location of partitions during rebalancing. These tasks have a strong tendency to require all updates to be routed via a single member for the sake of cluster stability and data integrity. Fortunately that member is dynamically assigned in Coherence, so it is not a single point of failure, but it may still become a single point of bottleneck (until the cluster finishes its reconfiguration, at which point this member will have a similar load to the rest of the members). The most common cause of scaling issues in large clusters is disabling multicast (by configuring well-known addresses, aka WKA). This obviously impacts network usage, but it also has a large impact on CPU usage, primarily since the senior member must directly communicate certain messages with every other cluster member, and this communication requires significant CPU time. In particular, the need to notify the rest of the cluster about membership changes and corresponding partition reassignments adds stress to the senior member. Given that portions of the network stack may tend to be single-threaded (both in Coherence and the underlying OS), this may be even more problematic on servers with poor single-threaded performance. As a result of this, some extremely large clusters may be configured with a smaller number of partitions than ideal. This results in the size of each partition being increased. When a cache server fails, the other servers will use their fractional backups to recover the state of that server (and take over responsibility for their backed-up portion of that state). The finest granularity of this recovery is a single partition, and the single service thread can not accept new requests during this recovery. Ordinarily, recovery is practically instantaneous (it is roughly equivalent to the time required to iterate over a set of backup backing map entries and move them to the primary backing map in the same JVM). But certain factors can increase this duration drastically (to several seconds): large partitions, sufficiently slow single-threaded CPU performance, many or expensive indexes to rebuild, etc. The solution of course is to mitigate each of those factors but in many cases this may be challenging. Larger clusters also lead to the temptation to place more load on the available hardware resources, spreading CPU resources thin. As an example, while we've long been aware of how garbage collection can cause significant pauses, it usually isn't viewed as a major consumer of CPU (in terms of overall system throughput). Typically, the use of a concurrent collector allows greater responsiveness by minimizing pause times, at the cost of reducing system throughput. However, at a recent engagement, we were forced to turn off the concurrent collector and use a traditional parallel "stop the world" collector to reduce CPU usage to an acceptable level. In summary, there are some less obvious factors that may result in excessive CPU consumption in a larger cluster, so it is even more critical to test at full scale, even though allocating sufficient hardware may often be much more difficult for these large clusters.

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• Using BizTalk to bridge SQL Job and Human Intervention (Requesting Permission)

  - by Kevin Shyr

  I start off the process with either a BizTalk Scheduler (http://biztalkscheduledtask.codeplex.com/releases/view/50363) or a manual file drop of the XML message.  The manual file drop is to allow the SQL  Job to call a "File Copy" SSIS step to copy the trigger file for the next process and allows SQL  Job to be linked back into BizTalk processing. The Process Trigger XML looks like the following.  It is basically the configuration hub of the business process <ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive xmlns:ns0="urn:com:something something">   <ns0:IsProcessAsync>YES</ns0:IsProcessAsync>   <ns0:IsPermissionRequired>YES</ns0:IsPermissionRequired>   <ns0:BusinessProcessName>Data Push</ns0:BusinessProcessName>   <ns0:EmailFrom>[email protected]</ns0:EmailFrom>   <ns0:EmailRecipientToList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientToList>   <ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>   <ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>This message was sent to request permission to start the Data Push process.  The SQL Job to be run is WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>   <ns0:SQLJobName>WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:SQLJobName>   <ns0:SQLJobStepName>Push_To_Production</ns0:SQLJobStepName>   <ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>1</ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>   <ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\TriggerCreatedByBizTalk\</ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>   <ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\Approved\</ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>   <ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\NotApproved\</ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath> </ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive>   Every node of this schema was promoted to a distinguished field so that the values can be used for decision making in the orchestration.  The first decision made is on the "IsPermissionRequired" field.     If permission is required (IsPermissionRequired=="YES"), BizTalk will use the configuration info in the XML trigger to format the email message.  Here is the snippet of how the email message is constructed. SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody     = new Eai.OrchestrationHelpers.XlangCustomFormatters.RawString(         MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest +         "<br><br>" +         "By moving the file, you are either giving permission to the process, or disapprove of the process." +         "<br>" +         "This is the file to move: \"" + PermissionTriggerToBeGenereatedHere +         "\"<br>" +         "(You may find it easier to open the destination folder first, then navigate to the sibling folder to get to this file)" +         "<br><br>" +         "To approve, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestApprovedPath +         "<br><br>" +         "To disapprove, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath +         "<br><br>" +         "The file will be IMMEDIATELY picked up by the automated process.  This is normal.  You should receive a message soon that the file is processed." +         "<br>" +         "Thank you!"     ); SQLJobSendNotification(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address) = "mailto:" + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientToList; SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.ContentType) = "text/html"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.Subject) = "Requesting Permission to Start the " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.BusinessProcessName; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.From) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailFrom; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.CC) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientCCList; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.EmailBodyFileCharset) = "UTF-8"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.SMTPHost) = "localhost"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.MessagePartsAttachments) = 2;   After the Permission request email is sent, the next step is to generate the actual Permission Trigger file.  A correlation set is used here on SQLJobName and a newly generated GUID field. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger xmlns:ns0="somethingsomething"><SQLJobName>Data Push</SQLJobName><CorrelationGuid>9f7c6b46-0e62-46a7-b3a0-b5327ab03753</CorrelationGuid></ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger> The end user (the human intervention piece) will either grant permission for this process, or deny it, by moving the Permission Trigger file to either the "Approved" folder or the "NotApproved" folder.  A parallel Listen shape is waiting for either response.   The next set of steps decide how the SQL Job is to be called, or whether it is called at all.  If permission denied, it simply sends out a notification.  If permission is granted, then the flag (IsProcessAsync) in the original Process Trigger is used.  The synchonous part is not really synchronous, but a loop timer to check the status within the calling stored procedure (for more information, check out my previous post:  http://geekswithblogs.net/LifeLongTechie/archive/2010/11/01/execute-sql-job-synchronously-for-biztalk-via-a-stored-procedure.aspx)  If it's async, then the sp starts the job and BizTalk sends out an email.   And of course, some error notification:   Footnote: The next version of this orchestration will have an additional parallel line near the Listen shape with a Delay built in and a Loop to send out a daily reminder if no response has been received from the end user.  The synchronous part is used to gather results and execute a data clean up process so that the SQL Job can be re-tried.  There are manu possibilities here.

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• Application Composer Series: Where and When to use Groovy

  - by Richard Bingham

  This brief post is really intended as more of a reference than an article. The table below highlights two things, firstly where you can add you own custom logic via groovy code (end column), and secondly (middle column) when you might use each particular feature. Obviously this applies only where Application Composer exists, namely Fusion CRM and Oracle Sales Cloud, and is based on current (release 8) functionality. Feature Most Common Use Case Groovy Field Triggers React to run-time data changes. Only fired when the field is changed and upon submit. Y Object Triggers To extend the standard processing logic for an object, based on record creation, updates and deletes. There is a split between these firing events, with some related to UI/ADF actions and others originating in the database. UI Trigger Points: After Create - fires when a new object record is created. Commonly used to set default values for fields. Before Modify - Fires when the end-user tries to modify a field value. Could be used for generic warnings or extra security logic. Before Invalidate - Fires on the parent object when one of its child object records is created, updated, or deleted. For building in relationship logic. Before Remove - Fires when an attempt is made to delete an object record. Can be used to create conditions that prevent deletes. Database Trigger Points: Before Insert in Database - Fires before a new object is inserted into the database. Can be used to ensure a dependent record exists or check for duplicates. After Insert in Database - Fires after a new object is inserted into the database. Could be used to create a complementary record. Before Update in Database -Fires before an existing object is modified in the database. Could be used to check dependent record values. After Update in Database - Fires after an existing object is modified in the database. Could be used to update a complementary record. Before Delete in Database - Fires before an existing object is deleted from the database. Could be used to check dependent record values. After Delete in Database - Fires after an existing object is deleted from the database. Could be used to remove dependent records. After Commit in Database - Fires after the change pending for the current object (insert, update, delete) is made permanent in the current transaction. Could be used when committed data that has passed all validation is required. After Changes Posted to Database - Fires after all changes have been posted to the database, but before they are permanently committed. Could be used to make additional changes that will be saved as part of the current transaction. Y Field Validation Displays a user entered error message based groovy logic validating the field value. The message is shown only when the validation logic returns false, and the logic is triggered only when tabbing out of the field on the user interface. Y Object Validation Commonly used where validation is needed across multiple related fields on the object. Triggered on the submit UI action. Y Object Workflows All Object Workflows are fired upon either record creation or update, along with the option of adding a custom groovy firing condition. Y Field Updates - change another field when a specified one changes. Intended as an easy way to set different run-time values (e.g. pick values for LOV's) plus the value field permits groovy logic entry. Y E-Mail Notification - sends an email notification to specified users/roles. Templates support using run-time value tokens and rich text. N Task Creation - for adding standard tasks for use in the worklist functionality. N Outbound Message - will create and send an XML payload of the related object SDO to a specified endpoint. N Business Process Flow - intended for approval using the seeded process, however can also trigger custom BPMN flows. N Global Functions Utility functions that can be called from any groovy code in Application Composer (across applications). Y Object Functions Utility functions that are local to the parent object. Usually triggered from within 'Buttons and Actions' definitions in Application Composer, although can be called from other code for that object (e.g. from a trigger). Y Add Custom Fields When adding custom fields there are a few places you can include groovy logic. Y Default Value - to add logic within setting the default value when new records are entered. Y Conditionally Updateable - to add logic to set the field to read-only or not. Y Conditionally Required - to add logic to set the field to required or not. Y Formula Field - Used to provide a new aggregate field that is entirely based on groovy logic and other field values. Y Simplified UI Layouts - Advanced Expressions Used for creating dynamic layouts for simplified UI pages where fields and regions show/hide based on run-time context values and logic. Also includes support for the depends-on feature as a trigger. Y Related References This Blog: Application Composer Series Extending Sales Guide: Using Groovy Scripts Groovy Scripting Reference Guide

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• Trouble with AABB collision response and physics

  - by WCM

  I have been racking my brain trying to figure out a problem I am having with physics and basic AABB collision response. I am fairly close as the physics are mostly right. Gravity feels good and movement is solid. The issue I am running into is that when I land on the test block in my project, I can jump off of it most of the time. If I repeatedly jump in place, I will eventually get stuck one or two pixels below the surface of the test block. If I try to jump, I can become free of the other block, but it will happen again a few jumps later. I feel like I am missing something really obvious with this. I have two functions that support the detection and function to return a vector for the overlap of the two rectangle bounding boxes. I have a single update method that is processing the physics and collision for the entity. I feel like I am missing something very simple, like an ordering of the physics vs. collision response handling. Any thoughts or help can be appreciated. I apologize for the format of the code, tis prototype code mostly. The collision detection function: public static bool Collides(Rectangle source, Rectangle target) { if (source.Right < target.Left || source.Bottom < target.Top || source.Left > target.Right || source.Top > target.Bottom) { return false; } return true; } The overlap function: public static Vector2 GetMinimumTranslation(Rectangle source, Rectangle target) { Vector2 mtd = new Vector2(); Vector2 amin = source.Min(); Vector2 amax = source.Max(); Vector2 bmin = target.Min(); Vector2 bmax = target.Max(); float left = (bmin.X - amax.X); float right = (bmax.X - amin.X); float top = (bmin.Y - amax.Y); float bottom = (bmax.Y - amin.Y); if (left > 0 || right < 0) return Vector2.Zero; if (top > 0 || bottom < 0) return Vector2.Zero; if (Math.Abs(left) < right) mtd.X = left; else mtd.X = right; if (Math.Abs(top) < bottom) mtd.Y = top; else mtd.Y = bottom; // 0 the axis with the largest mtd value. if (Math.Abs(mtd.X) < Math.Abs(mtd.Y)) mtd.Y = 0; else mtd.X = 0; return mtd; } The update routine (gravity = 0.001f, jumpHeight = 0.35f, moveAmount = 0.15f): public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { Acceleration.Y = gravity; Position += new Vector2((float)(movement * moveAmount * gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds), (float)(Velocity.Y * gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)); Velocity.Y += Acceleration.Y; Vector2 previousPosition = new Vector2((int)Position.X, (int)Position.Y); KeyboardState keyboard = Keyboard.GetState(); movement = 0; if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { movement -= 1; } if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { movement += 1; } if (Position.Y + 16 > GameClass.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { Velocity.Y = 0; Position = new Vector2(Position.X, GameClass.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - 16); IsOnSurface = true; } if (Collision.Collides(BoundingBox, GameClass.Instance.block.BoundingBox)) { Vector2 mtd = Collision.GetMinimumTranslation(BoundingBox, GameClass.Instance.block.BoundingBox); Position += mtd; Velocity.Y = 0; IsOnSurface = true; } if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) && !previousKeyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if (IsOnSurface) { Velocity.Y = -jumpHeight; IsOnSurface = false; } } previousKeyboard = keyboard; } This is also a full download to the project. https://www.box.com/s/3rkdtbso3xgfgc2asawy P.S. I know that I could do this with the XNA Platformer Starter Kit algo, but it has some deep flaws that I am going to try to live without. I'd rather go the route of collision response via an overlay function. Thanks for any and all insight!

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