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

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

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  • Broken Views

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    “SELECT *” isn’t just hazardous to performance, it can actually return blatantly wrong information. There are a number of blog posts and articles out there that actively discourage the use of the SELECT * FROM …syntax.  The two most common explanations that I have seen are: Performance:  The SELECT * syntax will return every column in the table, but frequently you really only need a few of the columns, and so by using SELECT * your are retrieving large volumes of data that you don’t need, but the system has to process, marshal across tiers, and so on.  It would be much more efficient to only select the specific columns that you need. Future-proof:  If you are taking other shortcuts in your code, along with using SELECT *, you are setting yourself up for trouble down the road when enhancements are made to the system.  For example, if you use SELECT * to return results from a table into a DataTable in .NET, and then reference columns positionally (e.g. myDataRow[5]) you could end up with bad data if someone happens to add a column into position 3 and skewing all the remaining columns’ ordinal position.  Or if you use INSERT…SELECT * then you will likely run into errors when a new column is added to the source table in any position. And if you use SELECT * in the definition of a view, you will run into a variation of the future-proof problem mentioned above.  One of the guys on my team, Mike Byther, ran across this in a project we were doing, but fortunately he caught it while we were still in development.  I asked him to put together a test to prove that this was related to the use of SELECT * and not some other anomaly.  I’ll walk you through the test script so you can see for yourself what happens. We are going to create a table and two views that are based on that table, one of them uses SELECT * and the other explicitly lists the column names.  The script to create these objects is listed below. IF OBJECT_ID('testtab') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE testtabgoIF OBJECT_ID('testtab_vw') IS NOT NULL DROP VIEW testtab_vwgo IF OBJECT_ID('testtab_vw_named') IS NOT NULL DROP VIEW testtab_vw_namedgo CREATE TABLE testtab (col1 NVARCHAR(5) null, col2 NVARCHAR(5) null)INSERT INTO testtab(col1, col2)VALUES ('A','B'), ('A','B')GOCREATE VIEW testtab_vw AS SELECT * FROM testtabGOCREATE VIEW testtab_vw_named AS SELECT col1, col2 FROM testtabgo Now, to prove that the two views currently return equivalent results, select from them. SELECT 'star', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vwSELECT 'named', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vw_named OK, so far, so good.  Now, what happens if someone makes a change to the definition of the underlying table, and that change results in a new column being inserted between the two existing columns?  (Side note, I normally prefer to append new columns to the end of the table definition, but some people like to keep their columns alphabetized, and for clarity for later people reviewing the schema, it may make sense to group certain columns together.  Whatever the reason, it sometimes happens, and you need to protect yourself and your code from the repercussions.) DROP TABLE testtabgoCREATE TABLE testtab (col1 NVARCHAR(5) null, col3 NVARCHAR(5) NULL, col2 NVARCHAR(5) null)INSERT INTO testtab(col1, col3, col2)VALUES ('A','C','B'), ('A','C','B')goSELECT 'star', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vwSELECT 'named', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vw_named I would have expected that the view using SELECT * in its definition would essentially pass-through the column name and still retrieve the correct data, but that is not what happens.  When you run our two select statements again, you see that the View that is based on SELECT * actually retrieves the data based on the ordinal position of the columns at the time that the view was created.  Sure, one work-around is to recreate the View, but you can’t really count on other developers to know the dependencies you have built-in, and they won’t necessarily recreate the view when they refactor the table. I am sure that there are reasons and justifications for why Views behave this way, but I find it particularly disturbing that you can have code asking for col2, but actually be receiving data from col3.  By the way, for the record, this entire scenario and accompanying test script apply to SQL Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1. So, let the developer beware…know what assumptions are in effect around your code, and keep on discouraging people from using SELECT * syntax in anything but the simplest of ad-hoc queries. And of course, let’s clean up after ourselves.  To eliminate the database objects created during this test, run the following commands. DROP TABLE testtabDROP VIEW testtab_vwDROP VIEW testtab_vw_named

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  • Getting Started with Cloud Computing

    - by juanlarios
    You’ve likely heard about how Office 365 and Windows Intune are great applications to get you started with Cloud Computing. Many of you emailed me asking for more info on what Cloud Computing is, including the distinction between "Public Cloud" and "Private Cloud". I want to address these questions and help you get started. Let's begin with a brief set of definitions and some places to find more info; however, an excellent place where you can always learn more about Cloud Computing is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. Public Cloud computing means that the infrastructure to run and manage the applications users are taking advantage of is run by someone else and not you. In other words, you do not buy the hardware or software to run your email or other services being used in your organization – that is done by someone else. Users simply connect to these services from their computers and you pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is taking advantage of the service. Examples of Public Cloud services include Office 365, Windows Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Hotmail, and others. Private Cloud computing generally means that the hardware and software to run services used by your organization is run on your premises, with the ability for business groups to self-provision the services they need based on rules established by the IT department. Generally, Private Cloud implementations today are found in larger organizations but they are also viable for small and medium-sized businesses since they generally allow an automation of services and reduction in IT workloads when properly implemented. Having the right management tools, like System Center 2012, to implement and operate Private Cloud is important in order to be successful. So – how do you get started? The first step is to determine what makes the most sense to your organization. The nice thing is that you do not need to pick Public or Private Cloud – you can use elements of both where it makes sense for your business – the choice is yours. When you are ready to try and purchase Public Cloud technologies, the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site is a good place to find links to each of the online services. In particular, if you are interested in a trial for each service, you can visit the following pages: Office 365, CRM Online, Windows Intune, and Windows Azure. For Private Cloud technologies, start with some of the courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy and then download and install the Microsoft Private Cloud technologies including Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 in your own environment and take it for a spin. Also, keep up to date with the Canadian IT Pro blog to learn about events Microsoft is delivering such as the IT Virtualization Boot Camps and more to get you started with these technologies hands on. Finally, I want to ask for your help to allow the team at Microsoft to continue to provide you what you need. Twice a year through something we call "The Global Relationship Study" – they reach out and contact you to see how they're doing and what Microsoft could do better. If you get an email from "Microsoft Feedback" with the subject line "Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners" between March 5th and April 13th, please take a little time to tell them what you think. Cloud Computing Resources: Microsoft Server and Cloud Computing site – information on Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and products. Microsoft Virtual Academy – for free online training to help improve your IT skillset. Office 365 Trial/Info page – get more information or try it out for yourself. Office 365 Videos – see how businesses like yours have used Office 365 to transition to the cloud. Windows Intune Trial/Info – get more information or try it out for yourself. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online page – information on trying and licensing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Additional Resources You May Find Useful: Springboard Series Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure. TechNet Evaluation Center Try some of our latest Microsoft products for free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy. AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers. Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording. Tech·Days Online Discover what's next in technology and innovation with Tech·Days session recordings, hands-on labs and Tech·Days TV.

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  • Moving StarterSTS to the (Azure) Cloud

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    Quite some people asked me about an Azure version of StarterSTS. While I kinda knew what I had to do to make the move, I couldn’t find the time. Until recently. This blog post briefly documents the necessary changes and design decisions for the next version of StarterSTS which will work both on-premise and on Azure. Provider Fortunately StarterSTS is already based on the idea of “providers”. Authentication, roles and claims generation is based on the standard ASP.NET provider infrastructure. This makes the migration to different data stores less painful. In my case I simply moved the ASP.NET provider database to SQL Azure and still use the standard SQL Server based membership, roles and profile provider. In addition StarterSTS has its own providers to abstract resource access for certificates, relying party registration, client certificate registration and delegation. So I only had to provide new implementations. Signing and SSL keys now go in the Azure certificate store and user mappings (client certificates and delegation settings) have been moved to Azure table storage. The one thing I didn’t anticipate when I originally wrote StarterSTS was the need to also encapsulate configuration. Currently configuration is “locked” to the standard .NET configuration system. The new version will have a pluggable SettingsProvider with versions for .NET configuration as well as Azure service configuration. If you want to externalize these settings into e.g. a database, it is now just a matter of supplying a corresponding provider. Moving between the on-premise and Azure version will be just a matter of using different providers. URL Handling Another thing that’s substantially different on Azure (and load balanced scenarios in general) is the handling of URLs. In farm scenarios, the standard APIs like ASP.NET’s Request.Url return the current (internal) machine name, but you typically need the address of the external facing load balancer. There’s a hotfix for WCF 3.5 (included in v4) that fixes this for WCF metadata. This was accomplished by using the HTTP Host header to generate URLs instead of the local machine name. I now use the same approach for generating WS-Federation metadata as well as information card files. New Features I introduced a cache provider. Since we now have slightly more expensive lookups (e.g. relying party data from table storage), it makes sense to cache certain data in the front end. The default implementation uses the ASP.NET web cache and can be easily extended to use products like memcached or AppFabric Caching. Starting with the relying party provider, I now also provide a read/write interface. This allows building management interfaces on top of this provider. I also include a (very) simple web page that allows working with the relying party provider data. I guess I will use the same approach for other providers in the future as well. I am also doing some work on the tracing and health monitoring area. Especially important for the Azure version. Stay tuned.

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  • Setting up your project

    - by ssoolsma
    Before any coding we first make sure that the project is setup correctly. (Please note, that this blog is all about how I do it, and incase i forget, i can return here and read how i used to do it. Maybe you come up with some idea’s for yourself too.) In these series we will create a minigolf scoring cart. Please note that we eventually create a fully functional application which you cannot use unless you pay me alot of money! (And i mean alot!)   1. Download and install the appropriate tools. Download the following: - TestDriven.Net (free version on the bottom of the download page) - nUnit TestDriven is a visual studio plugin for many unittest frameworks, which allows you to run  / test code very easily with a right click –> run test. nUnit is the test framework of choice, it works seamless with TestDriven.   2. Create your project Fire up visual studio and create your DataAccess project:  MidgetWidget.DataAccess is it’s name. (I choose MidgetWidget as name for the solution). Also, make sure that the MidgetWidget.DataAccess project is a c# ClassLibary Hit OK to create the solution. (in the above example the checkbox Create directory for solution is checked, because i’m pointing the location to the root of c:\development where i want MidgetWidget to be created.   3. Setup the database. You should have thought about a database when you reach this point. Let’s assume that you’ve created a database as followed: Table name: LoginKey Fields: Id (PK), KeyName (uniqueidentifier), StartDate (datetime), EndDate (datetime) Table name:  Party Fields: Id (PK), Key (uniqueidentifier, Created (datetime) Table name:  Person Fields: Id(PK),  PartyId (int), Name (varchar) Tablename: Score Fields: Id (PK), Trackid (int), PersonId (int), Strokes (int) Tablename: Track Fields: Id (PK), Name (varchar) A few things to take note about the database setup. I’ve singularized all tablenames (not “Persons“ but “Person”. This is because in a few minutes, when this is in our code, we refer to the database objects as single rows. We retrieve a single Person not a single “Persons” from the database.   4. Create the entity framework In your solution tree create a new folder and call it “DataModel”. Inside this folder: Add new item –> and choose ADO.NET Entity Data Model. Name it “Entities.edmx” and hit  “Add”. Once the edmx is added, open it (double click) and right click the white area and choose “Update model from database…". Now, point it to your database (i include sensitive data in the connectionstring) and select all the tables. After that hit “Finish” and let the entity framework do it’s code generation. Et Voila, after a few seconds you have set up your entity model. Next post we will start building the data-access! I’m off to the beach.

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  • Why I switch from Asana.com

    - by Anirudha
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/10/24/why-i-switch-from-asana.com.aspxI used Asana.com from 1-2 years. have nice experience to use it. it’s not so easy. When I started using it it’s make many confusion. Now I switch from it.   When I first time see I really didn’t understand how to make a private list. There is a icon on top click on it and make it private. After doing that I still not sure if this is working. There is a lot of confusion made that time. I discuss too much to figure out small small things. The UI is interesting but so hard to understand.  What I am looking for is just a list that I can hold private. I would like to share it only if I put them shared and put email address of person to hold them same list. Few days ago I see that My Win8 phone have a app that call Microsoft OneNote. The good thing of this MS app is that I can record my voice in the app. If someone want to make a list for future then he just need to say and this can be recorded.  This is awesome when you feel that Mobile keypad is just not so fast as a normal regular keyboard.   Google docs are another good option to handle this thing. Just make a word file and use it. share it with friend with many option. One best thing is this app have very simply UI then any other apps.   One more alternative is https://trello.com which you hear from joel on their blog http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/09/13.html There are many html5 and browser based, mobile based app. Many of them support multi platform feature. this means you can have them from PC to your Pocket. One good thing we all wanted is offline. if you are not online thing will be saved and push back to server when you will be online.   The biggest problem with some apps are they are attractive easy but hard to learn. Their one feature are not clearly defined what he does. This make frustration and confusion to user. When app are not simple to use people start stop trying to learn it. That’s all the problem I have with asana.com If you don’t want to try anything then what about Sticky Notes that is part of Windows 7. This app are still usable since you can store the text on it. If you know any good app to make a task list that provide access from tablet/mobile then put comment here. In the whole world of app there is a lot of app for doing this same thing differently. I mention few of them here. I hope this is nice to describe it.   Thanks for read my post.

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  • MySQL Server 5.6 defaults changes

    - by user12626240
    We're improving the MySQL Server defaults, as announced by Tomas Ulin at MySQL Connect. Here's what we're changing:  Setting  Old  New  Notes back_log  50  50 + ( max_connections / 5 ) capped at 900 binlog_checksum  off  CRC32  New variable in 5.6 binlog_row_event_max_size  1k  8k flush_time  1800  Windows changes from 1800 to 0  Was already 0 on other platforms host_cache_size  128  128 + 1 for each of the first 500 max_connections + 1 for every 20 max_connections over 500, capped at 2000  New variable in 5.6 innodb_autoextend_increment  8  64  Now affects *.ibd files. 64 is 64 megabytes innodb_buffer_pool_instances  0  8. On 32 bit Windows only, if innodb_buffer_pool_size is greater than 1300M, default is innodb_buffer_pool_size / 128M innodb_concurrency_tickets  500  5000 innodb_file_per_table  off  on innodb_log_file_size  5M  48M  InnoDB will always change size to match my.cnf value. Also see innodb_log_compressed_pages and binlog_row_image innodb_old_blocks_time 0  1000 1 second innodb_open_files  300  300; if innodb_file_per_table is ON, higher of table_open_cache or 300 innodb_purge_batch_size  20  300 innodb_purge_threads  0  1 innodb_stats_on_metadata  on  off join_buffer_size 128k  256k max_allowed_packet  1M  4M max_connect_errors  10  100 open_files_limit  0  5000  See note 1 query_cache_size  0  1M query_cache_type  on/1  off/0 sort_buffer_size  2M  256k sql_mode  none  NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION  See later post about default my.cnf for STRICT_TRANS_TABLES sync_master_info  0  10000  Recommend: master_info_repository=table sync_relay_log  0  10000 sync_relay_log_info  0  10000  Recommend: relay_log_info_repository=table. Also see Replication Relay and Status Logs table_definition_cache  400  400 + table_open_cache / 2, capped at 2000 table_open_cache  400  2000   Also see table_open_cache_instances thread_cache_size  0  8 + max_connections/100, capped at 100 Note 1: In 5.5 there was already a rule to make open_files_limit 10 + max_connections + table_cache_size * 2 if that was higher than the user-specified value. Now uses the higher of that and (5000 or what you specify). We are also adding a new default my.cnf file and guided instructions on the key settings to adjust. More on this in a later post. We're also providing a page with suggestions for settings to improve backwards compatibility. The old example files like my-huge.cnf are obsolete. Some of the improvements are present from 5.6.6 and the rest are coming. These are ideas, and until they are in an official GA release, they are subject to change. As part of this work I reviewed every old server setting plus many hundreds of emails of feedback and testing results from inside and outside Oracle's MySQL Support team and the many excellent blog entries and comments from others over the years, including from many MySQL Gurus out there, like Baron, Sheeri, Ronald, Schlomi, Giuseppe and Mark Callaghan. With these changes we're trying to make it easier to set up the server by adjusting only a few settings that will cause others to be set. This happens only at server startup and only applies to variables where you haven't set a value. You'll see a similar approach used for the Performance Schema. The Gurus don't need this but for many newcomers the defaults will be very useful. Possibly the most unusual change is the way we vary the setting for innodb_buffer_pool_instances for 32-bit Windows. This is because we've found that DLLs with specified load addresses often fragment the limited four gigabyte 32-bit address space and make it impossible to allocate more than about 1300 megabytes of contiguous address space for the InnoDB buffer pool. The smaller requests for many pools are more likely to succeed. If you change the value of innodb_log_file_size in my.cnf you will see a message like this in the error log file at the next restart, instead of the old error message: [Warning] InnoDB: Resizing redo log from 2*64 to 5*128 pages, LSN=5735153 One of the biggest challenges for the defaults is the millions of installations on a huge range of systems, from point of sale terminals and routers though shared hosting or end user systems and on to major servers with lots of CPU cores, hundreds of gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of fast disk space. Our past defaults were for the smaller systems and these change that to larger shared hosting or shared end user systems, still with a bias towards the smaller end. There is a bias in favour of OLTP workloads, so reporting systems may need more changes. Where there is a conflict between the best settings for benchmarks and normal use, we've favoured production, not benchmarks. We're very interested in your feedback, comments and suggestions.

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  • When will EBS 12.2 be released?

    - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)
    The most frequently asked question at OpenWorld this year was, "When will EBS 12.2 be released?" Sadly, Oracle's communication policies prohibit us from speculating about release dates for unreleased software. We are not permitted to give estimates, rough timelines, guesses, or anything else that remotely resembles specific guidance on release dates. You can monitor My Oracle Support and this blog for updates on EBS 12.2.  I'll post them here as soon as they're available.  I'm embedding an old favourite from 2007 in its entirety here, since it applies equally to new releases as well as certifications. "Loose Lips Sink Ships" (March 20, 2007)If I were to sort emails in my inbox into groups, the biggest -- by far -- would be the one for emails that start with, "When will _____ be certified with the E-Business Suite?"  I answer these dutifully but know that my replies can sometimes be maddening, for two reasons:  technical uncertainty, and Oracle's rules for such communications. On the Spiral Model of CertificationsTechnology stack certifications tend to be highly iterative in nature.  As a result, statements about certification dates tend to be accurate only when made in hindsight.  Laypeople are horrified to hear this, but it's the ugly truth.  Uncertainty is simply inherent to the process.  I've become inured to it over the years, but it might come as a surprise to you that it can take many cycles to get fully-released software to work together.  Take this scenario: We test a particular combination of Component A and B. If we encounter a problem, say, with Component A, we log a bug. We receive a new version of Component A. The process iterates again. The reality is this: until a certification is completed and released, there's no accurate way of telling how many iterations are yet to come.  This is true regardless of the number of iterations that have already been completed.  Our Lips Are SealedGenerally, people understand that things are subject to change, so the second reason I can't say anything specific is actually much more important than the first.  "Loose lips might sink ships" was coined in World War II in an effort to remind people that careless talk can have serious consequences.  Curiously, this applies to Oracle's communications about upcoming features, configurations, and releases, too.  As a publicly traded company, we have very strict policies that prohibit us from linking specific releases to specific dates.  If you've ever listened to an earnings call with analysts, you'll often hear them asking, "Can you add a little more color to that statement?"  For certifications, color is usually the only thing that I have.  Sometimes I can provide a bit more information about the technical nature of the certification in question, such as expected footprints or version levels.  I can occasionally share technical issues that we've found, too, to convey the degree of risk or complexity involved in the certification.  Aside from that, there's little additional information about specific dates, date ranges, or even speculation about dates that I can provide... that is, without having one of those uncomfortable conversations with Oracle Legal.  So, as much as it pains me to do so, when it comes to dates, I'm always forced to conclude with a generic reply that blandly states one of the following: We're working on that certification right now That certification is in the pipeline but hasn't been started yet We don't have plans for that certification Don't Shoot the MessengerThankfully, I've developed a thick skin over the years -- which is a good thing, considering the colorful and energetic responses I've received over the years after answering these questions.  However, on behalf of my Oracle colleagues who are faced with these questions every day in the field, I urge you to remember that they're required to follow these same corporate rules about date disclosures.  It never hurts to ask, but don't be too disappointed if we can't provide you with a detailed answer.  The Go-Go's had it right, after all.  Related Articles Webcast Replay Available: Technical Preview of EBS 12.2 Online Patching

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  • Customer Loyalty vs. Customer Engagement: Who Cares?

    - by Jeb Dasteel-Oracle
    Have you read the recent Forbes OracleVoice blog titled Customer Loyalty is Dead. Long Live Engagement!? If you haven’t, take a look. This article prompted lots of conversation in the social realm. Many who read the article voiced their reactions to the headline and now I’m jumping in to add my view. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Customer loyalty is still key. It’s the effect and engagement is the cause. We at least know that to be true for our customers. We are in an age where customers are demanding to be heard. We need them to be actively involved – or engaged – as well. Greater levels of customer engagement, properly targeted, positively correlate with satisfaction. Our data has shown us this over and over. Satisfied customers are more loyal and more willing to vocalize their satisfaction through referencing, and are more likely to purchase again, all of which in turn drives incremental revenue – from the customer doing the referencing AND the customer on the receiving end of that reference. Turning this around completely, if we begin to see the level of a customer’s engagement start to wane, this is an indicator that their satisfaction, loyalty, and future revenue are likely at risk. At Oracle, we’ve put in place many programs to target, encourage, and then track engagement, allowing us to measure engagement as a determinant of loyalty. Some of these programs include our Key Accounts, solution design and architectural, Executive Sponsorship, as well as executive advisory boards. Specific programs allow us to engage specific contacts within specific customer organizations (based on role) and then systematically track their engagement activities over time, along side of tracking customer satisfaction, loyalty, referenceability, and incremental revenue contribution. Continuous measurement of engagement allows us to better understand customer views of what it means to partner with a provider and adjust program participation to better meet the needs of the partnership. We can also track across customer segments, and design new programs that are even more effective than the ones we have in place today. In case you missed any of my previous Forbes articles, I’ve included links below for easy access. Award-Winning Companies Put Customers First The Power of Peer Networks: 5 Reasons to Get (and Stay) Involved Technology At Work: Traveling In Style Customer Central: 8 Strategies for Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business Technology at Work: Five Companies Doing IT Right /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Bowing to User Experience

    As a consumer of geeky news it is hard to check my Google Reader without running into two or three posts about Apples iPad and in particular the changes to the developer guidelines which seemingly restrict developers to using Apples Xcode tool and Objective-C language for iPad apps. One of the alternatives to Objective-C affected, is MonoTouch, an option with some appeal to me as it is based on the Mono implementation of C#. Seemingly restricted is the key word here, as far as I can tell, no official announcement has been made about its fate. For more details around MonoTouch for iPhone OS, check out Miguel de Icazas post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Apr-28.html. These restrictions have provoked some outrage as the perception is that Apple is arrogantly restricting developers freedom to create applications as they choose and perhaps unwittingly shortchanging iPhone/iPad users who wont benefit from these now never-to-be-made great applications. Apples response has mostly been to say they are concentrating on providing a certain user experience to their customers, and to do this, they insist everyone uses the tools they approve. Which isnt a surprising line of reasoning given Apple restricts the hardware used and content of the apps already. The vogue term for this approach is curated, as in a benevolent museum director selecting only the finest artifacts for display or a wise gardener arranging the plants in a garden just so. If this is what a curated experience is like it is hard to argue that consumers are not responding. My iPhone is probably the most satisfying piece of technology I own. Coming from the Razr, it really was an revolution in how the form factor, interface and user experience all tied together. While the curated approach reinvented the smart phone genre, it is easy to forget that this is not a new approach for Apple. Macbooks and Macs are Apple hardware that run Apple software. And theyve been successful, but not quite in the same way as the iPhone or iPad (based on early indications). Why not? Well a curated approach can only be wildly successful if the curator a) makes the right choices and b) offers choices that no one else has. Although its advantages are eroding, the iPhone was different from other phones, a unique, focused, touch-centric experience. The iPad is an attempt to define another category of computing. Macs and Macbooks are great devices, but are not fundamentally a different user experience than a PC, you still have windows, file folders, mouse and keyboard, and similar applications. So the big question for Apple is can they hold on to their market advantage, continuing innovating in user experience and stay on top? Or are they going be like Xerox, and the rest of the world says thank you for the windows metaphor, now let me implement that better? It will be exciting to watch, with Android already a viable competitor and Microsoft readying Windows Phone 7. And to close the loop back to the restrictions on developing for iPhone OS. At this point the main target appears to be Adobe and Adobe Flash. Apples calculation is that a) they dont need those developers or b) the developers they want will learn Apples stuff anyway. My guess is that they are correct; that as much as I like the idea of developers having more options, I am not going to buy a competitors product to spite Apple unless that product is just as usable. For a non-technical consumer, I dont know that this conversation even factors into the buying decision. If it did, wed be talking about how Microsoft is trying to retake a slice of market share from the behemoth that is Linux.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Oracle Excellence Award

    - by Hartmut Wiese
    CALL FOR NOMINATIONS 2014 Oracle Excellence Award: Sustainability Innovation Is your organization using an Oracle product to help with a sustainability initiative while reducing costs? Saving energy? Saving gas? Saving paper? For example, you may use Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management to design more eco-friendly products, Oracle Transportation Management to reduce fleet emissions, Oracle Exadata Database Machine to decrease power and cooling needs while increasing database performance, Oracle Business Intelligence to measure environmental impacts, or one of many other Oracle products. Your organization may be eligible for the 2014 Oracle Excellence Award: Sustainability Innovation. Submit a nomination form located here by Friday June 20 if your company is using any Oracle product to take an environmental lead as well as to reduce costs and improve business efficiencies by using green business practices. These awards will be presented during Oracle OpenWorld 2014 (September 28-October 2) in San Francisco.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 About the Award • Winners will be selected from the customer and/or partner nominations. Either a customer, their partner, or Oracle representative can submit the nomination form on behalf of the customer.• There is a nomination form here to discuss your use of Oracle products and how they have helped your sustainability efforts and reduced costs. • Winners will be selected based on the extent of the environmental impact they have had as well as the business efficiencies they have achieved through their combined use of Oracle products. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Nomination Eligibility • Your company uses at least one component of Oracle products, whether it's the Oracle database, business applications, Fusion Middleware, or Sun servers/storage. • This solution should be in production or in active development. • Nomination deadline: Friday June 20, 2014. Benefits to Award Winners • Award presented to winners during Oracle OpenWorld by Jeff Henley, Oracle Chairman of the Board • Free Oracle OpenWorld registration pass for each winning customer • 2014 Oracle Excellence Award: Sustainability Innovation award logo for inclusion on your own website &/or press release • Possible placement in Oracle Profit Magazine &/or Oracle Magazine • ‘Enable the Eco-Enterprise’ podcast opportunity See last year's winners here Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ______________________________________________________________________________________ Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Questions? Send an email to: [email protected] Follow Oracle’s Sustainability Solutions on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the Sustainability Matters blog Web page with award details:  http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/green/call-for-nominations-185050.html  

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  • MySQL Connector/Net 6.6.2 has been released

    - by fernando
    MySQL Connector/Net 6.6.2, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released.  This is the first of two beta releases intended to introduce users to the new features in the release.  This release is feature complete it should be stable enough for users to understand the new features and how we expect them to work.  As is the case with all non-GA releases, it should not be used in any production environment.  It is appropriate for use with MySQL server versions 5.0-5.6 It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.) The 6.6 version of MySQL Connector/Net brings the following new features:   * Stored routine debugging   * Entity Framework 4.3 Code First support   * Pluggable authentication (now third parties can plug new authentications mechanisms into the driver).   * Full Visual Studio 2012 support: everything from Server Explorer to Intellisense & the Stored Routine debugger. Stored Procedure Debugging ------------------------------------------- We are very excited to introduce stored procedure debugging into our Visual Studio integration.  It works in a very intuitive manner by simply clicking 'Debug Routine' from Server Explorer. You can debug stored routines, functions & triggers. Some of the new features in this release include:   * Besides normal breakpoints, you can define conditional & pass count breakpoints.   * Now the debugger editor shows colorizing.   * Now you can change the values of locals in a function scope (previously caused deadlock due to functions executing within their own transaction).   * Now you can also debug triggers for 'replace' sql statements.   * In general anything related to locals, watches, breakpoints, stepping & call stack should work in a similar way to the C#'s Visual Studio debugger. Some limitations remains, due to the current debugger architecture:   * Some MySQL functions cannot be debugged currently (get_lock, release_lock, begin, commit, rollback, set transaction level)..   * Only one debug session may be active on a given server. The Debugger is feature complete at this point. We look forward to your feedback. Documentation ------------------------------------- The documentation is still being developed and will be readily available soon (before Beta 2).  You can view current Connector/Net documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/connector-net.html You can find our team blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows. You can also post questions on our forums at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support! 

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  • Data Mining Email with Thunderbird

    - by user554629
    Oracle has many formal, searchable locations:  Service Requests, BugIDs, Technical Documents. These contain the results of an investigation for a customer crash situation;  they're created after the intense work of resolution is over, and typically contain the "root cause" of the failure ... but not the methods for identifying that cause. Email is still the standby for interacting with quickly formed groups of specialists, focusing on a particular incident.Customer BI, Network and System specialists;  Oracle Tech Support, Development, Consultants; OEM Database, OS technical support.   It is a chaotic, time-oriented set of configuration, call stacks, changes, techniques to discover and repair the failure. I needed to organize that information into something cohesive to prepare the blog entry on Teradata.  My corporate email client of choice is Thunderbird.   My original (flawed) search technique: R-Click on Inbox in Thunderbird left pane, and choose Search Messages Subject:  [ teradata ] Results: A new window titled "Search Messages"Single pane of selected messagesColumn headings:  Subject  From  Date  LocationNo preview window for messages There are 673 email entries in the result ( too many )  R-click icon just above the vertical scroll bar on the rightCheck [x] Tags Click on the Tags header to sort by "Important" View contents of message by double-clickingOpens in the Thunderbird Main Window in a new Tab Not what I was looking for, close the tab and try again. There has to be a better way.  ( and there is ) I need to be more productive, eliminating duplicate-chained messages, for example.   Even the Tag "Important" that was added during the investigation phase, is "not so much" for my current task. In the "Search Messages" window, click [ Save as Search Folder ] [ teradata ]  Appears as a new folder in my Inbox. Focus on that folder and the results appear with a list of messages like every other folder in the Inbox.Only the results of the search are shown A preview window is now available for each message Sort, Select message, Cursor Down ... navigates quickly through the messages. But wait, there's more ... Click Find ( Ctrl-F) Enter a search term for the message body, like.[ LIBPATH ] The search is "sticky" ... each message you cycle through wil focus ( and highlight) the LIBPATH search term. And still more .... Reset the Tag"Important" message.   Press "1" and the tag is removed Press "4" and a new Tag "ToDo" is applied After applying all of the tags, sort by Tag for a new message order Adjust the search criteria ... R-click on the [ teradata ] search folder, and choose Properties Add additional criteria to narrow the search Some of the information I'm looking for did not contain "teradata" in the subject line. + Body  [ contains ] [ Best Practices ] That's it.  Much more efficient search.   Thank you Thunderbird.

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  • Selective Suppression of Log Messages

    - by Duncan Mills
    Those of you who regularly read this blog will probably have noticed that I have a strange predilection for logging related topics, so why break this habit I ask?  Anyway here's an issue which came up recently that I thought was a good one to mention in a brief post.  The scenario really applies to production applications where you are seeing entries in the log files which are harmless, you know why they are there and are happy to ignore them, but at the same time you either can't or don't want to risk changing the deployed code to "fix" it to remove the underlying cause. (I'm not judging here). The good news is that the logging mechanism provides a filtering capability which can be applied to a particular logger to selectively "let a message through" or suppress it. This is the technique outlined below. First Create Your Filter  You create a logging filter by implementing the java.util.logging.Filter interface. This is a very simple interface and basically defines one method isLoggable() which simply has to return a boolean value. A return of false will suppress that particular log message and not pass it onto the handler. The method is passed the log record of type java.util.logging.LogRecord which provides you with access to everything you need to decide if you want to let this log message pass through or not, for example  getLoggerName(), getMessage() and so on. So an example implementation might look like this if we wanted to filter out all the log messages that start with the string "DEBUG" when the logging level is not set to FINEST:  public class MyLoggingFilter implements Filter {     public boolean isLoggable(LogRecord record) {         if ( !record.getLevel().equals(Level.FINEST) && record.getMessage().startsWith("DEBUG")){          return false;            }         return true;     } } Deploying   This code needs to be put into a JAR and added to your WebLogic classpath.  It's too late to load it as part of an application, so instead you need to put the JAR file into the WebLogic classpath using a mechanism such as the PRE_CLASSPATH setting in your domain setDomainEnv script. Then restart WLS of course. Using The final piece if to actually assign the filter.  The simplest way to do this is to add the filter attribute to the logger definition in the logging.xml file. For example, you may choose to define a logger for a specific class that is raising these messages and only apply the filter in that case.  <logger name="some.vendor.adf.ClassICantChange"         filter="oracle.demo.MyLoggingFilter"/> You can also apply the filter using WLST if you want a more script-y solution.

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  • When should I use a Process Model versus a Use Case?

    - by Dave Burke
    This Blog entry is a follow on to https://blogs.oracle.com/oum/entry/oum_is_business_process_and and addresses a question I sometimes get asked…..i.e. “when I am gathering requirements on a Project, should I use a Process Modeling approach, or should I use a Use Case approach?” Not surprisingly, the short answer is “it depends”! Let’s take a scenario where you are working on a Sales Force Automation project. We’ll call the process that is being implemented “Lead-to-Order”. I would typically think of this type of project as being “Process Centric”. In other words, the focus will be on orchestrating a series of human and system related tasks that ultimately deliver value to the business in a cost effective way. Put in even simpler terms……implement an automated pre-sales system. For this type of (Process Centric) project, requirements would typically be gathered through a series of Workshops where the focal point will be on creating, or confirming, the Future-State (To-Be) business process. If pre-defined “best-practice” business process models exist, then of course they could and should be used during the Workshops, but even in their absence, the focus of the Workshops will be to define the optimum series of Tasks, their connections, sequence, and dependencies that will ultimately reflect a business process that meets the needs of the business. Now let’s take another scenario. Assume you are working on a Content Management project that involves automating the creation and management of content for User Manuals, Web Sites, Social Media publications etc. Would you call this type of project “Process Centric”?.......well you could, but it might also fall into the category of complex configuration, plus some custom extensions to a standard software application (COTS). For this type of project it would certainly be worth considering using a Use Case approach in order to 1) understand the requirements, and 2) to capture the functional requirements of the custom extensions. At this point you might be asking “why couldn’t I use a Process Modeling approach for my Content Management project?” Well, of course you could, but you just need to think about which approach is the most effective. Start by analyzing the types of Tasks that will eventually be automated by the system, for example: Best Suited To? Task Name Process Model Use Case Notes Manage outbound calls Ö A series of linked human and system tasks for calling and following up with prospects Manage content revision Ö Updating the content on a website Update User Preferences Ö Updating a users display preferences Assign Lead Ö Reviewing a lead, then assigning it to a sales person Convert Lead to Quote Ö Updating the status of a lead, and then converting it to a sales order As you can see, it’s not an exact science, and either approach is viable for the Tasks listed above. However, where you have a series of interconnected Tasks or Activities, than when combined, deliver value to the business, then that would be a good indicator to lead with a Process Modeling approach. On the other hand, when the Tasks or Activities in question are more isolated and/or do not cross traditional departmental boundaries, then a Use Case approach might be worth considering. Now let’s take one final scenario….. As you captured the To-Be Process flows for the Sales Force automation project, you discover a “Gap” in terms of what the client requires, and what the standard COTS application can provide. Let’s assume that the only way forward is to develop a Custom Extension. This would now be a perfect opportunity to document the functional requirements (behind the Gap) using a Use Case approach. After all, we will be developing some new software, and one of the most effective ways to begin the Software Development Lifecycle is to follow a Use Case approach. As always, your comments are most welcome.

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  • Using NSpec at various architectural layers

    - by nono
    Having read the quick start at nspec.org, I realized that NSpec might be a useful tool in a scenario which was becoming a bit cumbersome with NUnit alone. I'm adding an OAuth (or, DotNetOpenAuth) to a website and quickly made a mess of writing test methods such as [Test] public void UserIsLoggedInLocallyPriorToInvokingExternalLoginAndExternalLoginSucceedsAndExternalProviderIdIsNotAlreadyAssociatedWithUserAccount() { ... } ... and I wound up with maybe a dozen permutations of this theme, for the user already being logged in locally and not locally, the external login succeeding or failing, etc. Not only were the method names unwieldy, but every test needed a setup that contained parts in common with a different set of other tests. I realized that NSpec's incremental setup capabilities would work great for this, and for a while I was trucking a long wonderfully, with code like act = () => { actionResult = controller.ExternalLoginCallback(returnUrl); }; context["The user is already logged in"] = () => { before = () => identity.Setup(x => x.IsAuthenticated).Returns(true); context["The external login succeeds"] = () => { before = () => oauth.Setup(x => x.VerifyAuthentication(It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(new AuthenticationResult(true, providerName, "provideruserid", "username", new Dictionary<string, string>())); context["External login already exists for current user"] = () => { before = () => authService.Setup(x => x.ExternalLoginExistsForUser(It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(true); it["Should add 'login sucessful' alert"] = () => { var alerts = (IList<Alert>)controller.TempData[TempDataKeys.AlertCollection]; alerts[0].Message.should_be_same("Login successful"); alerts[0].AlertType.should_be(AlertType.Success); }; it["Should return a redirect result"] = () => actionResult.should_cast_to<RedirectToRouteResult>(); }; context["External login already exists for another user"] = () => { before = () => authService.Setup(x => x.ExternalLoginExistsForAnyOtherUser(It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(true); it["Adds an error alert"] = () => { var alerts = (IList<Alert>)controller.TempData[TempDataKeys.AlertCollection]; alerts[0].Message.should_be_same("The external login you requested is already associated with a different user account"); alerts[0].AlertType.should_be(AlertType.Error); }; it["Should return a redirect result"] = () => actionResult.should_cast_to<RedirectToRouteResult>(); }; This approach seemed to work magnificently until I prepared to write test code for my ApplicationServices layer, to which I delegate viewmodel manipulation from my MVC controllers, and which coordinates the operations of the lower data repository layer: public void CreateUserAccountFromExternalLogin(RegisterExternalLoginModel model) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } public void AssociateExternalLoginWithUser(string userName, string provider, string providerUserId) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } public string GetLocalUserName(string provider, string providerUserId) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } I have no idea what in the world to name the test class, the test methods, or even if I should perhaps include the testing for this layer into the test class from my large code snippet above, so that a single feature or user action could be tested without regard to architectural layering. I can't find any tutorials or blog posts which cover more than simple examples, so I would appreciate any recommendations or pointing in the right direction. I would even welcome "your question is invalid"-type answers as long as some explanation is provided.

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  • Criminals and Other Illegal Characters

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    SQLTeam's favorite Slovenian blogger Mladen (b | t) had an interesting question on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MladenPrajdic/status/347057950470307841 I liked Kendal Van Dyke's (b | t) reply: http://twitter.com/SQLDBA/status/347058908801667072 And he was right!  This is one of those pretty-useless-but-sounds-interesting propositions that I've based all my presentations on, and most of my blog posts. If you read all the replies you'll see a lot of good suggestions.  I particularly like Aaron Bertrand's (b | t) idea of going into the Unicode character set, since there are over 65,000 characters available.  But how to find an illegal character?  Detective work? I'm working on the premise that if SQL Server will reject it as a name it would throw an error.  So all we have to do is generate all Unicode characters, rename a database with that character, and catch any errors. It turns out that dynamic SQL can lend a hand here: IF DB_ID(N'a') IS NULL CREATE DATABASE [a]; DECLARE @c INT=1, @sql NVARCHAR(MAX)=N'', @err NVARCHAR(MAX)=N''; WHILE @c<65536 BEGIN BEGIN TRY SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(CASE WHEN @c=1 THEN N'a' ELSE NCHAR(@c-1) END) + N' modify name=' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c)); RAISERROR(N'*** Trying %d',10,1,@c) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC(@sql); SET @c+=1; END TRY BEGIN CATCH SET @err=ERROR_MESSAGE(); RAISERROR(N'Ooops - %d - %s',10,1,@c,@err) WITH NOWAIT; BREAK; END CATCH END SET @sql=N'alter database ' + QUOTENAME(NCHAR(@c-1)) + N' modify name=[a]'; EXEC(@sql); The script creates a dummy database "a" if it doesn't already exist, and only tests single characters as a database name.  If you have databases with single character names then you shouldn't run this on that server. It takes a few minutes to run, but if you do you'll see that no errors are thrown for any of the characters.  It seems that SQL Server will accept any character, no matter where they're from.  (Well, there's one, but I won't tell you which. Actually there's 2, but one of them requires some deep existential thinking.) The output is also interesting, as quite a few codes do some weird things there.  I'm pretty sure it's due to the font used in SSMS for the messages output window, not all characters are available.  If you run it using the SQLCMD utility, and use the -o switch to output to a file, and -u for Unicode output, you can open the file in Notepad or another text editor and see the whole thing. I'm not sure what character I'd recommend to answer Mladen's question.  I think the standard tab (ASCII 9) is fine.  There's also several specific separator characters in the original ASCII character set (decimal 28-31). But of all the choices available in Unicode whitespace, I think my favorite would be the Mongolian Vowel Separator.  Or maybe the zero-width space. (that'll be fun to print!)  And since this is Mladen we're talking about, here's a good selection of "intriguing" characters he could use.

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM

    - by mseika
    PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM36 Presentations available for you to expand your overall awareness of the Oracle product portfolio; Click here to access Presentations.Dear partner I am pleased to inform you the availability of Innovations in Products presentations. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire partner's personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Moreover, we aim to inspire you to conduct further Product Training and Certifications. And finally we'll provide you a chance to join Ecosystem's Product specific Community to learn and to contribute. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle's product portfolio - for your and your customer's benefit. Be inspired to seek further Product Training and Certifications - Make your competence known and recognized! Brand yourself! Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall product portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Useful Links for you to bookmark: To access previously presented 30 Applications Products presentations and 6 Public Sector Value Proposition presentations, please click here. You might want to bookmark the Enablement blog page Oracle Partner Enablement. Please check this regularly as we publish here lots of good content here just for you. You might want to bookmark the Knowledge Zones page for solution-focused pages designed to jump start your path towards Specialization. You might want to bookmark the global event calendar page events.oracle.com. Delivery Format Innovations in Products ? program is a series of FREE prerecorded Oracle product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you'll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Partner Enablement EMEA

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM

    - by mseika
    PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM36 Presentations available for you to expand your overall awareness of the Oracle product portfolio; Click here to access Presentations.Dear partner I am pleased to inform you the availability of Innovations in Products presentations. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire partner's personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Moreover, we aim to inspire you to conduct further Product Training and Certifications. And finally we'll provide you a chance to join Ecosystem's Product specific Community to learn and to contribute. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle's product portfolio - for your and your customer's benefit. Be inspired to seek further Product Training and Certifications - Make your competence known and recognized! Brand yourself! Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall product portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Useful Links for you to bookmark: To access previously presented 30 Applications Products presentations and 6 Public Sector Value Proposition presentations, please click here. You might want to bookmark the Enablement blog page Oracle Partner Enablement. Please check this regularly as we publish here lots of good content here just for you. You might want to bookmark the Knowledge Zones page for solution-focused pages designed to jump start your path towards Specialization. You might want to bookmark the global event calendar page events.oracle.com. Delivery Format Innovations in Products ? program is a series of FREE prerecorded Oracle product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you'll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Partner Enablement EMEA

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  • Project Time Tracker

    - by Geertjan
    Based on yesterday's blog entry, let's do something semi useful and display, in the project popup, which is available when you right-click a project in the Projects window, the time since the last change was made anywhere in the project, i.e., we can listen recursively to any changes done within a project and then update the popup with the newly acquired information, dynamically: import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Collection; import java.util.List; import javax.swing.AbstractAction; import org.netbeans.api.project.Project; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectUtils; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.awt.StatusDisplayer; import org.openide.filesystems.FileAttributeEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileChangeListener; import org.openide.filesystems.FileEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileRenameEvent; import org.openide.util.Lookup; import org.openide.util.LookupEvent; import org.openide.util.LookupListener; import org.openide.util.Utilities; import org.openide.util.WeakListeners; @ActionID( category = "Demo", id = "org.ptt.TrackProjectSelectionAction") @ActionRegistration( lazy = false, displayName = "NOT-USED") @ActionReference( path = "Projects/Actions", position = 0) public final class TrackProjectSelectionAction extends AbstractAction implements LookupListener, FileChangeListener { private Lookup.Result<Project> projects; private Project context; private Long startTime; private Long changedTime; private DateFormat formatter; private List<Project> timedProjects; public TrackProjectSelectionAction() { putValue("popupText", "Timer"); formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"); timedProjects = new ArrayList<Project>(); projects = Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookupResult(Project.class); projects.addLookupListener( WeakListeners.create(LookupListener.class, this, projects)); resultChanged(new LookupEvent(projects)); } @Override public void resultChanged(LookupEvent le) { Collection<? extends Project> allProjects = projects.allInstances(); if (allProjects.size() == 1) { Project currentProject = allProjects.iterator().next(); if (!timedProjects.contains(currentProject)) { String currentProjectName = ProjectUtils.getInformation(currentProject).getDisplayName(); putValue("popupText", "Start Timer for Project: " + currentProjectName); StatusDisplayer.getDefault().setStatusText( "Current Project: " + currentProjectName); timedProjects.add(currentProject); context = currentProject; } } } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { refresh(); } protected void refresh() { startTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); String formattedStartTime = formatter.format(startTime); putValue("popupText", "Timer started: " + formattedStartTime + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); } @Override public void fileChanged(FileEvent fe) { changedTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("mm:ss"); String formattedLapse = formatter.format(changedTime - startTime); putValue("popupText", "Time since last change: " + formattedLapse + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); startTime = changedTime; } @Override public void fileFolderCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDataCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDeleted(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileRenamed(FileRenameEvent fre) {} @Override public void fileAttributeChanged(FileAttributeEvent fae) {} } Some more work needs to be done to complete the above, i.e., for each project you somehow need to maintain the start time and last change and redisplay that whenever the user right-clicks the project.

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM

    - by mseika
    PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM36 Presentations available for you to expand your overall awareness of the Oracle product portfolio; Click here to access Presentations.Dear partner I am pleased to inform you the availability of Innovations in Products presentations. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire partner's personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Moreover, we aim to inspire you to conduct further Product Training and Certifications. And finally we'll provide you a chance to join Ecosystem's Product specific Community to learn and to contribute. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle's product portfolio - for your and your customer's benefit. Be inspired to seek further Product Training and Certifications - Make your competence known and recognized! Brand yourself! Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall product portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Useful Links for you to bookmark: To access previously presented 30 Applications Products presentations and 6 Public Sector Value Proposition presentations, please click here. You might want to bookmark the Enablement blog page Oracle Partner Enablement. Please check this regularly as we publish here lots of good content here just for you. You might want to bookmark the Knowledge Zones page for solution-focused pages designed to jump start your path towards Specialization. You might want to bookmark the global event calendar page events.oracle.com. Delivery Format Innovations in Products ? program is a series of FREE prerecorded Oracle product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you'll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Partner Enablement EMEA

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

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

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  • Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight.

    - by mbcrump
    I had a reader email me the following question: “How do you create Speech Bubbles in Silverlight/WPF without adding any extra .dlls? Right off the bat, I know at least two ways to create the speech bubbles that look just like the ones in comic books. Using the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using the free 3rd party control named FreeBubbles (I used this before Blend 4). Unfortunately, we cannot use either of these as they will both add extra .dll’s to the project. So why wouldn’t you want to use one of those? I can think of a few reasons: You do not want to increase the size of your .XAP by including extra .dll’s. You do not have Expression Blend or the license to the use the .dll’s. You want a custom Speech Bubble that is not included in the four “Callout” Controls with Blend. Instead of using one of these methods, we will create a Speech Bubble in Blend 4 using Path element and a TextBlock. Before we get started, lets look at the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using Blend 4 you can simply drag/drop these controls onto your Silverlight application and you are ready to go. We can create all of these Speech Bubbles and even some of the modern bubbles used in recent comic books. Lets get started. Start up Expression Blend 4 and select the Pen Tool. On the Art Board, start connecting the dots like I did below. You can add a color if you wish. …keep going …complete Let’s go ahead and add some text to the Speech Bubble. Drag a TextBlock from the Panel and put it directly inside the Speech Bubble. Go ahead and set the TextAlignment to Center for the TextBlock. and give it some text. At this point, you could go ahead and create a user control if you want to reuse the Speech Bubble you created. Select both the Path and the TextBlock by clicking then while holding down CTRL and then Right Click them. Select Make Into User Control. Give it a name and then Build your project. Lets create another one using the Ellipse for the older comic book style of Speech Bubbles. Drag an Ellipse to the Artboard and give it a color. Now, grab the Pen and drag a triangle like I did below. Simply drag it over a corner of the Ellipse. Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. Lets go ahead and create a rounded rectangle one by adding a Rectangle to the Artboard. Go ahead and set the RadiuX and RadiusY to 25 to give it rounded edges. Let’s create another path and drag it right on top of our rounded rectangle like we did earlier. …looking good Select Combine then Unite and you will have a Path. At this point, you can go ahead and add a TextBlock like we did earlier. So let’s look at what we’ve created today using the path element and TextBlock. As you can tell, it required more work but meets the requirements. This was actually fun to do and I encourage anyone that visits my blog to send in request like this.  Subscribe to my feed

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM

    - by mseika
    PARTNER WEBCAST: INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS - PROGRAM36 Presentations available for you to expand your overall awareness of the Oracle product portfolio; Click here to access Presentations.Dear partner I am pleased to inform you the availability of Innovations in Products presentations. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire partner's personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Moreover, we aim to inspire you to conduct further Product Training and Certifications. And finally we'll provide you a chance to join Ecosystem's Product specific Community to learn and to contribute. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below. Innovations in Products will be presented as per the schedule below after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle's product portfolio - for your and your customer's benefit. Be inspired to seek further Product Training and Certifications - Make your competence known and recognized! Brand yourself! Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall product portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Useful Links for you to bookmark: To access previously presented 30 Applications Products presentations and 6 Public Sector Value Proposition presentations, please click here. You might want to bookmark the Enablement blog page Oracle Partner Enablement. Please check this regularly as we publish here lots of good content here just for you. You might want to bookmark the Knowledge Zones page for solution-focused pages designed to jump start your path towards Specialization. You might want to bookmark the global event calendar page events.oracle.com. Delivery Format Innovations in Products ? program is a series of FREE prerecorded Oracle product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you'll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Partner Enablement EMEA

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  • Taking a look at the Mindscape Phone Elements for WP7.

    - by mbcrump
    I recently heard that Mindscape HQ had released the Windows Phone 7 Controls and had to take a look at them. 100 FREE LICENSE GIVEAWAY! Before we get to the screenshots, you will be pleased to learn that my usergroup called “Allaboutxaml” has partnered with Mindscape HQ and are giving away 100 license. You can check out the site here to get your free controls. But please hurry as after the 100 are gone then I will not have any more to give away! A few links to read first: The official blog post from Mindscape HQ detailing the release. They also have the links to download the trial and get started. The phone elements official forum! So, let’s get started. After you download the controls go ahead and double click the .exe to get started installing them. After everything is installed then you will have the following program group. I’d recommend clicking on the Phone Elements Directory to get started: Let’s go over each element: Bin – Just the .DLL that’s required to use Mindscape HQ WP7 Controls in your project. Documentation – a .CHM File that will show you how to get your project up and running quickly. Resources – Just a few image files Samples – This is a full WP7 project that details every controls. The thing that I was most interested in was how the controls look and is it easy to use. I always believed if your paying for controls then you should hold my hand through using them. You will be pleased to know that Mindscape made it very easy to use. First, the WP7 project in the “Samples” folder just works. Double click on the solution file and you are in an emulator looking at the controls. Since you have the source code for every control, it’s a matter of copying/pasting the code in your project to get it to work. What I did, was play with the controls in the emulator until I found one I could use. Then I looked at the Visual Studio solution and found the Page that contained the control. Mindscape makes this very easy to do with their layout: So, the one that I was interested in was the Looping List Box.  Here is a demo of it: I wanted to see how they were populating the numbers 1-100 so I found the code behind and noticed it was just this one line. LoopingListBox1.DataSource = new NumericDataSource() { MinValue = 1, MaxValue = 100 }; In case you are wondering, the NumericDataSource was created by MindScape and you can view the Declaration to find out more about it:   So, the controls are pretty much that easy to use. Play with the emulator and find the control you want to use. Find the XAML file in the Sample Solution and copy/paste the code. Let’s go ahead and take a look at the controls available: They also have a great variety of Charting controls: Overall it’s a nice set of WP7 controls. Feel free to leave a comment below on anything you would like to see and I will make sure that Mindscape HQ get the message. Don’t forget if you are the first 100 people reading this article then you will get a free license.  Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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