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• Infiniband: a highperformance network fabric - Part I

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Introduction:At the OpenWorld this year I managed to chat with interesting people again - one of them answering Infiniband deepdive questions with ease by coffee turned out to be one of Oracle's IB engineers, Ted Kim, who actually actively participates in the Infiniband Trade Association and integrates Oracle solutions with this highspeed network. This is why I love attending OOW. He granted me an hour of his time to talk about IB. This post is mostly based on that tech interview.Start of the actual post: Traditionally datatransfer between servers and storage elements happens in networks with up to 10 gigabit/seconds or in SANs with up to 8 gbps fiberchannel connections. Happens. Well, data rather trickles through.But nowadays data amounts grow well over the TeraByte order of magnitude, and multisocket/multicore/multithread Servers hunger data that these transfer technologies just can't deliver fast enough, causing all CPUs of this world do one thing at the same speed - waiting for data. And once again, I/O is the bottleneck in computing. FC and Ethernet can't keep up. We have half-TB SSDs, dozens of TB RAM to store data to be modified in, but can't transfer it. Can't backup fast enough, can't replicate fast enough, can't synchronize fast enough, can't load fast enough. The bad news is, everyone is used to this, like back in the '80s everyone was used to start compile jobs and go for a coffee. Or on vacation. The good news is, there's an alternative. Not so-called "bleeding-edge" 8gbps, but (as of now) 56. Not layers of overhead, but low latency. And it is available now. It has been for a while, actually. Welcome to the world of Infiniband. Short history:Infiniband was born as a result of joint efforts of HPAQ, IBM, Intel, Sun and Microsoft. They planned to implement a next-generation I/O fabric, in the 90s. In the 2000s Infiniband (from now on: IB) was quite popular in the high-performance computing field, powering most of the top500 supercomputers. Then in the middle of the decade, Oracle realized its potential and used it as an interconnect backbone for the first Database Machine, the first Exadata. Since then, IB has been booming, Oracle utilizes and supports it in a large set of its HW products, it is the backbone of the famous Engineered Systems: Exadata, SPARC SuperCluster, Exalogic, OVCA and even the new DB backup/recovery box. You can also use it to make servers talk highspeed IP to eachother, or to a ZFS Storage Appliance. Following Oracle's lead, even IBM has jumped the wagon, and leverages IB in its PureFlex systems, their first InfiniBand Machines.IB Structural Overview: If you want to use IB in your servers, the first thing you will need is PCI cards, in IB terms Host Channel Adapters, or HCAs. Just like NICs for Ethernet, or HBAs for FC. In these you plug an IB cable, going to an IB switch providing connection to other IB HCAs. Of course you're going to need drivers for those in your OS. Yes, these are long-available for Solaris and Linux. Now, what protocols can you talk over IB? There's a range of choices. See, IB isn't accepting package loss like Ethernet does, and hence doesn't need to rely on TCP/IP as a workaround for resends. That is, you still can run IP over IB (IPoIB), and that is used in various cases for control functionality, but the datatransfer can run over more efficient protocols - like native IB. About PCI connectivity: IB cards, as you see are fast. They bring low latency, which is just as important as their bandwidth. Current IB cards run at 56 gbit/s. That is slightly more than double of the capacity of a PCI Gen2 slot (of ~25 gbit/s). And IB cards are equipped usually with two ports - that is, altogether you'd need 112 gbit/s PCI slots, to be able to utilize FDR IB cards in an active-active fashion. PCI Gen3 slots provide you with around ~50gbps. This is why the most IB cards are configured in an active-standby way if both ports are used. Once again the PCI slot is the bottleneck. Anyway, the new Oracle servers are equipped with Gen3 PCI slots, an the new IB HCAs support those too. Oracle utilizes the QDR HCAs, running at 40gbp/s brutto, which translates to a 32gbp/s net traffic due to the 10:8 signal-to-data information ratio. Consolidation techniques: Technology never stops to evolve. Mellanox is working on the 100 gbps (EDR) version already, which will be optical, since signal technology doesn't allow EDR to be copper. Also, I hear you say "100gbps? I will never use/need that much". Are you sure? Have you considered consolidation scenarios, where (for example with Oracle Virtual Network) you could consolidate your platform to a high densitiy virtualized solution providing many virtual 10gbps interfaces through that 100gbps? Technology never stops to evolve. I still remember when a 10mbps network was impressively fast. Back in those days, 16MB of RAM was a lot. Now we usually run servers with around 100.000 times more RAM. If network infrastrucure speends could grow as fast as main memory capacities, we'd have a different landscape now :) You can utilize SRIOV as well for consolidation. That is, if you run LDoms (aka Oracle VM Server for SPARC) you do not have to add physical IB cards to all your guest LDoms, and you do not need to run VIO devices through the hypervisor either (avoiding overhead). You can enable SRIOV on those IB cards, which practically virtualizes the PCI bus, and you can dedicate Physical- and Virtual Functions of the virtualized HCAs as native, physical HW devices to your guests. See Raghuram's excellent post explaining SRIOV. SRIOV for IB is supported since LDoms 3.1.  This post is getting lengthier, so I will rename it to Part I, and continue it in a second post. 

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• Best way to store a large amount of game objects and update the ones onscreen

  - by user3002473

  Good afternoon guys! I'm a young beginner game developer working on my first large scale game project and I've run into a situation where I'm not quite sure what the best solution may be (if there is a lone solution). The question may be vague (if anyone can think of a better title after having read the question, please edit it) or broad but I'm not quite sure what to do and I thought it would help just to discuss the problem with people more educated in the field. Before we get started, here are some of the questions I've looked at for help in the past: Best way to keep track of game objects Elegant way to simulate large amounts of entities within a game world What is the most efficient container to store dynamic game objects in? I've also read articles about different data structures commonly used in games to store game objects such as this one about slot maps, but none of them are really what I'm looking for. Also, if it helps at all I'm using Python 3 to design the game. It has to be Python 3, if I could I would use C++ or Unityscript or something else, but I'm restricted to having to use Python 3. My game will be a form of side scroller shooter game. In said game the player will traverse large rooms with large amounts of enemies and other game objects to update (think some of the larger areas in Cave Story or Iji). The player obviously can't see the entire room all at once, so there is a viewport that follows the player around and renders only a selection of the room and the game objects that it contains. This is not a foreign concept. The part that's getting me confused has to do with how certain game objects are updated. Some of them are to be updated constantly, regardless of whether or not they can be seen. Other objects however are only to be updated when they are onscreen (for example, an enemy would only be updated to react to the player when it is onscreen or when it is in a certain range of the screen). Another problem is that game objects have to be easily referable by other game objects; something that happens in the player's update() method may affect another object in the world. Collision detection in games is always a serious problem. I need a way of containing the game objects such that it minimizes the number of cases when testing for collisions against one another. The final problem is that of creating and destroying game objects. I think this problem is pretty self explanatory. To store the game objects then I've considered a number of different methods. The original method I had was to simply store all the objects in a hash table by an id. This method was simple, and decently fast as it allows all the objects to be looked up in O(1) complexity, and also allows them to be deleted fairly easily. Hash collisions would not be a major problem; I wasn't originally planning on using computer generated ids to store the game objects I was going to rely on them all using ids given to them by the game designer (such names would be strings like 'Player' or 'EnemyWeapon4'), and even if I did use computer generated ids, if I used a decent hashing algorithm then the chances of collisions would be around 1 in 4 billion. The problem with using a hash table however is that it is inefficient in checking to see what objects are in range of the viewport. Considering the fact that certain game objects move (as well as the viewport itself), the only solution I could think of in order to only update objects that are in the viewport would be to iterate through every object in the hash table and check if it is in the viewport or not, updating only the ones that are in the valid area. This would be incredibly slow in scenarios where the amount of game objects exceeds 500, or even 200. The second solution was to store everything in a 2-d list. The world is partitioned up into cells (a tilemap essentially), where each cell or tile is the same size and is square. Each cell would contain a list of the game objects that are currently occupying it (each game object would be inserted into a cell depending on the center of the object's collision mask). A 2-d list would allow me to take the top-left and bottom-right corners of the viewport and easily grab a rectangular area of the grid containing only the cells containing entities that are in valid range to be updated. This method also solves the problem of collision detection; when I take an entity I can find the cell that it is currently in, then check only against entities in it's cell and the 8 cells around it. One problem with this system however is that it prohibits easy lookup of game objects. One solution I had would be to simultaneously keep a hash table that would contain all the positions of the objects in the 2-d list indexed by the id of said object. The major problem with a 2-d list is that it would need to be rebuilt every single game frame (along with the hash table of object positions), which may be a serious detriment to game speed. Both systems have ups and downs and seem to solve some of each other's problems, however using them both together doesn't seem like the best solution either. If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, comments, opinions or solutions on new data structures or better implementations of the existing data structures I have in mind, please post, any and all criticism and help is welcome. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Please don't close the question because it has a bad title, I'm just bad with names!

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• Using Windows Previous Versions to access ZFS Snapshots (July 14, 2009)

  - by user12612012

  The Previous Versions tab on the Windows desktop provides a straightforward, intuitive way for users to view or recover files from ZFS snapshots.  ZFS snapshots are read-only, point-in-time instances of a ZFS dataset, based on the same copy-on-write transactional model used throughout ZFS.  ZFS snapshots can be used to recover deleted files or previous versions of files and they are space efficient because unchanged data is shared between the file system and its snapshots.  Snapshots are available locally via the .zfs/snapshot directory and remotely via Previous Versions on the Windows desktop. Shadow Copies for Shared Folders was introduced with Windows Server 2003 but subsequently renamed to Previous Versions with the release of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.  Windows shadow copies, or snapshots, are based on the Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) and, as the [Shared Folders part of the] name implies, are accessible to clients via SMB shares, which is good news when using the Solaris CIFS Service.  And the nice thing is that no additional configuration is required - it "just works". On Windows clients, snapshots are accessible via the Previous Versions tab in Windows Explorer using the Shadow Copy client, which is available by default on Windows XP SP2 and later.  For Windows 2000 and pre-SP2 Windows XP, the client software is available for download from Microsoft: Shadow Copies for Shared Folders Client. Assuming that we already have a shared ZFS dataset, we can create ZFS snapshots and view them from a Windows client. zfs snapshot tank/home/administrator@snap101zfs snapshot tank/home/administrator@snap102 To view the snapshots on Windows, map the dataset on the client then right click on a folder or file and select Previous Versions.  Note that Windows will only display previous versions of objects that differ from the originals.  So you may have to modify files after creating a snapshot in order to see previous versions of those files. The screenshot above shows various snapshots in the Previous Versions window, created at different times.  On the left panel, the .zfs folder is visible, illustrating that this is a ZFS share.  The .zfs setting can be toggled as desired, it makes no difference when using previous versions.  To make the .zfs folder visible: zfs set snapdir=visible tank/home/administrator To hide the .zfs folder: zfs set snapdir=hidden tank/home/administrator The following screenshot shows the Previous Versions panel when a file has been selected.  In this case the user is prompted to view, copy or restore the file from one of the available snapshots. As can be seen from the screenshots above, the Previous Versions window doesn't display snapshot names: snapshots are listed by snapshot creation time, sorted in time order from most recent to oldest.  There's nothing we can do about this, it's the way that the interface works.  Perhaps one point of note, to avoid confusion, is that the ZFS snapshot creation time isnot the same as the root directory creation timestamp. In ZFS, all object attributes in the original dataset are preserved when a snapshot is taken, including the creation time of the root directory.  Thus the root directory creation timestamp is the time that the directory was created in the original dataset. # ls -d% all /home/administrator         timestamp: atime         Mar 19 15:40:23 2009         timestamp: ctime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: mtime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: crtime         Mar 19 15:18:34 2009 # ls -d% all /home/administrator/.zfs/snapshot/snap101         timestamp: atime         Mar 19 15:40:23 2009         timestamp: ctime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: mtime         Mar 19 15:40:58 2009         timestamp: crtime         Mar 19 15:18:34 2009 The snapshot creation time can be obtained using the zfs command as shown below. # zfs get all tank/home/administrator@snap101NAME                             PROPERTY  VALUEtank/home/administrator@snap101  type      snapshottank/home/administrator@snap101  creation  Mon Mar 23 18:21 2009 In this example, the dataset was created on March 19th and the snapshot was created on March 23rd. In conclusion, Shadow Copies for Shared Folders provides a straightforward way for users to view or recover files from ZFS snapshots.  The Windows desktop provides an easy to use, intuitive GUI and no configuration is required to use or access previous versions of files or folders. REFERENCES FOR MORE INFORMATION ZFS ZFS Learning Center Introduction to Shadow Copies of Shared Folders Shadow Copies for Shared Folders Client

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• Maximize Performance and Availability with Oracle Data Integration

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Alert: Oracle is hosting the 12c Launch Webcast for Oracle Data Integration and Oracle Golden Gate on Tuesday, November 12 (tomorrow) to discuss the new capabilities in detail and share customer perspectives. Hear directly from customer experts and executives from SolarWorld Industries America, British Telecom and Rittman Mead and get your questions answered live by product experts. Register for this complimentary webcast today and join in the discussion tomorrow. Author: Irem Radzik, Senior Principal Product Director, Oracle Organizations that want to use IT as a strategic point of differentiation prefer Oracle’s complete application offering to drive better business performance and optimize their IT investments. These enterprise applications are in the center of business operations and they contain critical data that needs to be accessed continuously, as well as analyzed and acted upon in a timely manner. These systems also need to operate with high-performance and availability, which means analytical functions should not degrade applications performance, and even system maintenance and upgrades should not interrupt availability. Oracle’s data integration products, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, provide the core foundation for bringing data from various business-critical systems to gain a broader, unified view. As a more advance offering to 3rd party products, Oracle’s data integration products facilitate real-time reporting for Oracle Applications without impacting application performance, and provide ability to upgrade and maintain the system without taking downtime. Oracle GoldenGate is certified for Oracle Applications, including E-Business Suite, Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, for moving transactional data in real-time to a dedicated operational reporting environment. This solution allows the app users to offload the resource-heavy queries to the reporting instance(s), reducing CPU utilization, improving OLTP performance, and extending the lifetime of existing IT assets. In addition, having a dedicated reporting instance with up-to-the-second transactional data allows optimizing the reporting environment and even decreasing costs as GoldenGate can move only the required data from expensive mainframe environments to cost-efficient open system platforms.  With real-time data replication capabilities GoldenGate is also certified to enable application upgrades and database/hardware/OS migration without impacting business operations. GoldenGate is certified for Siebel CRM, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and JD Edwards for supporting zero downtime upgrades to the latest app version. GoldenGate synchronizes a parallel, upgraded system with the old version in real time, thus enables continuous operations during the process. Oracle GoldenGate is also certified for minimal downtime database migrations for Oracle E-Business Suite and other key applications. GoldenGate’s solution also minimizes the risk by offering a failback option after the switchover to the new environment. Furthermore, Oracle GoldenGate’s bidirectional active-active data replication is certified for Oracle ATG Web Commerce to enable geographically load balancing and high availability for ATG customers. For enabling better business insight, Oracle Data Integration products power Oracle BI Applications with high performance bulk and real-time data integration. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is embedded in Oracle BI Applications version 11.1.1.7.1 and helps to integrate data end-to-end across the full BI Applications architecture, supporting capabilities such as data-lineage, which helps business users identify report-to-source capabilities. ODI is integrated with Oracle GoldenGate and provides Oracle BI Applications customers the option to use real-time transactional data in analytics, and do so non-intrusively. By using Oracle GoldenGate with the latest release of Oracle BI Applications, organizations not only leverage fresh data in analytics, but also eliminate the need for an ETL batch window and minimize the impact on OLTP systems. You can learn more about Oracle Data Integration products latest 12c version in our upcoming launch webcast and access the app-specific free resources in the new Data Integration for Oracle Applications Resource Center.

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• Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Oracle RightNow CX is all about the customer experience, it’s about understanding what drives a good interaction and it’s about delivering a solution which works for our customers and by extension, their customers. One of the early guiding principles of Oracle RightNow was an 8-point strategy to providing good customer experiences. Establish a knowledge foundation Empowering the customer Empower employees Offer multi-channel choice Listen to the customer Design seamless experiences Engage proactively Measure and improve continuously The application suite provides all of the tools necessary to deliver a rewarding, repeatable and measurable relationship between business and customer. The Knowledge Authoring tool provides gap analysis, WYSIWIG editing (and includes HTML rich content for non-developers), multi-level categorisation, permission based publishing and Web self-service publishing. Oracle RightNow Customer Portal, is a complete web application framework that enables businesses to control their own end-user page branding experience, which in turn will allow customers to self-serve. The Contact Centre Experience Designer builds a combination of workspaces, agent scripting and guided assistances into a Desktop Workflow. These present an agent with the tools they need, at the time they need them, providing even the newest and least experienced advisors with consistently accurate and efficient information, whilst guiding them through the complexities of internal business processes. Oracle RightNow provides access points for customers to feedback about specific knowledge articles or about the support site in general. The system will generate ‘incidents’ based on the scoring of the comments submitted. This makes it easy to view and respond to customer feedback. It is vital, more now than ever, not to under-estimate the power of the social web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – they have the ability to cause untold amounts of damage to businesses with a single post – witness musician Dave Carroll and his protest song on YouTube, posted in response to poor customer services from an American airline. The first day saw 150,000 views and is currently at 12,011,375. The Times reported that within 4 days of the post, the airline’s stock price fell by 10 percent, which represented a cost to shareholders of $180 million dollars. It is a universally acknowledged fact, that when customers are unhappy, they will not come back, and, generally speaking, it only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. The idea that customer loyalty can be regained by using social media channels was the subject of a 2011 Survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey discovered that 68% of customers who posted a negative review about a holiday on a social networking site received a response from the business. It further found that 33% subsequently posted a positive review and 34% removed the original negative review. Cloud Monitor provides the perfect mechanism for seeing what is being said about a business on public Facebook pages, Twitter or YouTube posts; it allows agents to respond proactively – either by creating an Oracle RightNow incident or by using the same channel as the original post. This leaves step 8 – Measuring and Improving: How does a business know whether it’s doing the right thing? How does it know if its customers are happy? How does it know if its staff are being productive? How does it know if its staff are being effective? Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease. Oracle RightNow believes strongly in the customer owning their solution, and to provide the best foundation for success, Oracle University can give you the RightNow knowledge and skills you need. This is a selection of the courses offered: RightNow Customer Service Administration Rel 12.02 (3 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course familiarises users with the tasks and concepts needed to configure and maintain their system. RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course introduces basic CP structure and how to make changes to the look, feel and behaviour of their self-service pages RightNow Analytics Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand (Release 11.11 is available as In Class and Live Virtual Class) This course equips users with the skills necessary to understand data supplied by standard reports and to create custom reports RightNow Integration and Customization For Developers Rel 12.02 (5-days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course is for experienced web developers and offers an introduction to Add-In development using the Desktop Add-In Framework and introduces the core knowledge that developers need to begin integrating Oracle RightNow CX with other systems A full list of courses offered can be found on the Oracle University website. For more information and course dates please get in contact with your local Oracle University team. On top of the Service components, the suite also provides marketing tools, complex survey creation and tracking and sales functionality. I’m a fan of the application, and I think I’ve made that clear: It’s completely geared up to providing customers with support at point of need. It can be configured to meet even the most stringent of business requirements. Oracle RightNow is passionate about, and committed to, providing the best customer experience possible. Oracle RightNow CX is the application that makes it possible. About the Author: Sarah Anderson worked for RightNow for 4 years in both in both a consulting and training delivery capacity. She is now a Senior Instructor with Oracle University, delivering the following Oracle RightNow courses: RightNow Customer Service Administration RightNow Analytics RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration RightNow Marketing and Feedback

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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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• Ransomware: Why This New Malware is So Dangerous and How to Protect Yourself

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Ransomware is a type of malware that tries to extort money from you. One of the nastiest examples, CryptoLocker, takes your files hostage and holds them for ransom, forcing you to pay hundreds of dollars to regain access. Most malware is no longer created by bored teenagers looking to cause some chaos. Much of the current malware is now produced by organized crime for profit and is becoming increasingly sophisticated. How Ransomware Works Not all ransomware is identical. The key thing that makes a piece of malware “ransomware” is that it attempts to extort a direct payment from you. Some ransomware may be disguised. It may function as “scareware,” displaying a pop-up that says something like “Your computer is infected, purchase this product to fix the infection” or “Your computer has been used to download illegal files, pay a fine to continue using your computer.” In other situations, ransomware may be more up-front. It may hook deep into your system, displaying a message saying that it will only go away when you pay money to the ransomware’s creators. This type of malware could be bypassed via malware removal tools or just by reinstalling Windows. Unfortunately, Ransomware is becoming more and more sophisticated. One of the latest examples, CryptoLocker, starts encrypting your personal files as soon as it gains access to your system, preventing access to the files without knowing the encryption key. CryptoLocker then displays a message informing you that your files have been locked with encryption and that you have just a few days to pay up. If you pay them $300, they’ll hand you the encryption key and you can recover your files. CryptoLocker helpfully walks you through choosing a payment method and, after paying, the criminals seem to actually give you a key that you can use to restore your files. You can never be sure that the criminals will keep their end of the deal, of course. It’s not a good idea to pay up when you’re extorted by criminals. On the other hand, businesses that lose their only copy of business-critical data may be tempted to take the risk — and it’s hard to blame them. Protecting Your Files From Ransomware This type of malware is another good example of why backups are essential. You should regularly back up files to an external hard drive or a remote file storage server. If all your copies of your files are on your computer, malware that infects your computer could encrypt them all and restrict access — or even delete them entirely. When backing up files, be sure to back up your personal files to a location where they can’t be written to or erased. For example, place them on a removable hard drive or upload them to a remote backup service like CrashPlan that would allow you to revert to previous versions of files. Don’t just store your backups on an internal hard drive or network share you have write access to. The ransomware could encrypt the files on your connected backup drive or on your network share if you have full write access. Frequent backups are also important. You wouldn’t want to lose a week’s worth of work because you only back up your files every week. This is part of the reason why automated back-up solutions are so convenient. If your files do become locked by ransomware and you don’t have the appropriate backups, you can try recovering them with ShadowExplorer. This tool accesses “Shadow Copies,” which Windows uses for System Restore — they will often contain some personal files. How to Avoid Ransomware Aside from using a proper backup strategy, you can avoid ransomware in the same way you avoid other forms of malware. CryptoLocker has been verified to arrive through email attachments, via the Java plug-in, and installed on computers that are part of the Zeus botnet. Use a good antivirus product that will attempt to stop ransomware in its tracks. Antivirus programs are never perfect and you could be infected even if you run one, but it’s an important layer of defense. Avoid running suspicious files. Ransomware can arrive in .exe files attached to emails, from illicit websites containing pirated software, or anywhere else that malware comes from. Be alert and exercise caution over the files you download and run. Keep your software updated. Using an old version of your web browser, operating system, or a browser plugin can allow malware in through open security holes. If you have Java installed, you should probably uninstall it. For more tips, read our list of important security practices you should be following. Ransomware — CryptoLocker in particular — is brutally efficient and smart. It just wants to get down to business and take your money. Holding your files hostage is an effective way to prevent removal by antivirus programs after it’s taken root, but CryptoLocker is much less scary if you have good backups. This sort of malware demonstrates the importance of backups as well as proper security practices. Unfortunately, CryptoLocker is probably a sign of things to come — it’s the kind of malware we’ll likely be seeing more of in the future.     

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• How Can I Safely Destroy Sensitive Data CDs/DVDs?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You have a pile of DVDs with sensitive information on them and you need to safely and effectively dispose of them so no data recovery is possible. What’s the most safe and efficient way to get the job done? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader HaLaBi wants to know how he can safely destroy CDs and DVDs with personal data on them: I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and may cause harm. Scratching them badly is what I always do but it takes long time and I managed to read some of the data in the scratched CDs/DVDs. What’s the way to physically destroy a CD/DVD safely? How should he approach the problem? The Answer SuperUser contributor Journeyman Geek offers a practical solution coupled with a slightly mad-scientist solution: The proper way is to get yourself a shredder that also handles cds – look online for cd shredders. This is the right option if you end up doing this routinely. I don’t do this very often – For small scale destruction I favour a pair of tin snips – they have enough force to cut through a cd, yet are blunt enough to cause small cracks along the sheer line. Kitchen shears with one serrated side work well too. You want to damage the data layer along with shearing along the plastic, and these work magnificently. Do it in a bag, cause this generates sparkly bits. There’s also the fun, and probably dangerous way – find yourself an old microwave, and microwave them. I would suggest doing this in a well ventilated area of course, and not using your mother’s good microwave. There’s a lot of videos of this on YouTube – such as this (who’s done this in a kitchen… and using his mom’s microwave). This results in a very much destroyed cd in every respect. If I was an evil hacker mastermind, this is what I’d do. The other options are better for the rest of us. Another contributor, Keltari, notes that the only safe (and DoD approved) way to dispose of data is total destruction: The answer by Journeyman Geek is good enough for almost everything. But oddly, that common phrase “Good enough for government work” does not apply – depending on which part of the government. It is technically possible to recover data from shredded/broken/etc CDs and DVDs. If you have a microscope handy, put the disc in it and you can see the pits. The disc can be reassembled and the data can be reconstructed — minus the data that was physically destroyed. So why not just pulverize the disc into dust? Or burn it to a crisp? While technically, that would completely eliminate the data, it leaves no record of the disc having existed. And in some places, like DoD and other secure facilities, the data needs to be destroyed, but the disc needs to exist. If there is a security audit, the disc can be pulled to show it has been destroyed. So how can a disc exist, yet be destroyed? Well, the most common method is grinding the disc down to destroy the data, yet keep the label surface of the disc intact. Basically, it’s no different than using sandpaper on the writable side, till the data is gone. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Pace Layering Comes Alive

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false 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";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick hosts the IT Leaders Editorial on a monthly basis. By now, readers of this column are quite familiar with Oracle AppAdvantage, a unified framework of middleware technologies, infrastructure and applications utilizing a pace layered approach to enterprise systems platforms. 1. Standardize and Consolidate core Enterprise Applications by removing invasive customizations, costly workarounds and the complexity that multiple instances creates. 2. Move business specific processes and applications to the Differentiate Layer, thus creating greater business agility with process extensions and best of breed applications managed by cross- application process orchestration. 3. The Innovate Layer contains all the business capabilities required for engagement, collaboration and intuitive decision making. This is the layer where innovation will occur, as people engage one another in a secure yet open and informed way. 4. Simplify IT by minimizing complexity, improving performance and lowering cost with secure, reliable and managed systems across the entire Enterprise. But what hasn’t been discussed is the pace layered architecture that Oracle AppAdvantage adopts. What is it, what are its origins and why is it relevant to enterprise scale applications and technologies? It’s actually a fascinating tale that spans the past 20 years and a basic understanding of it provides a wonderful context to what is evolving as the future of enterprise systems platforms. It all begins in 1994 with a book by noted architect Stewart Brand, of ’Whole Earth Catalog’ fame. In his 1994 book How Buildings Learn, Brand popularized the term ‘Shearing Layers’, arguing that any building is actually a hierarchy of pieces, each of which inherently changes at different rates. In 1997 he produced a 6 part BBC Series adapted from the book, in which Part 6 focuses on Shearing Layers. In this segment Brand begins to introduce the concept of ‘pace’. Brand further refined this idea in his subsequent book, The Clock of the Long Now, which began to link the concept of Shearing Layers to computing and introduced the term ‘pace layering’, where he proposes that: “An imperative emerges: an adaptive [system] has to allow slippage between the differently-paced systems … otherwise the slow systems block the flow of the quick ones and the quick ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change. Embedding the systems together may look efficient at first but over time it is the opposite and destructive as well.” In 2000, IBM architects Ian Simmonds and David Ing published a paper entitled A Shearing Layers Approach to Information Systems Development, which applied the concept of Shearing Layers to systems design and development. It argued that at the time systems were still too rigid; that they constrained organizations by their inability to adapt to changes. The findings in the Conclusions section are particularly striking: “Our starting motivation was that enterprises need to become more adaptive, and that an aspect of doing that is having adaptable computer systems. The challenge is then to optimize information systems development for change (high maintenance) rather than stability (low maintenance). Our response is to make it explicit within software engineering the notion of shearing layers, and explore it as the principle that systems should be built to be adaptable in response to the qualitatively different rates of change to which they will be subjected. This allows us to separate functions that should legitimately change relatively slowly and at significant cost from that which should be changeable often, quickly and cheaply.” The problem at the time of course was that this vision of adaptable systems was simply not possible within the confines of 1st generation ERP, which were conceived, designed and developed for standardization and compliance. It wasn’t until the maturity of open, standards based integration, and the middleware innovation that followed, that pace layering became an achievable goal. And Oracle is leading the way. Oracle’s AppAdvantage framework makes pace layering come alive by taking a strategic vision 20 years in the making and transforming it to a reality. It allows enterprises to retain and even optimize their existing ERP systems, while wrapping around those ERP systems three layers of capabilities that inherently adapt as needed, at a pace that’s optimal for the enterprise.

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• A Visual Studio Release Grows in Brooklyn

  - by andrewbrust

  Yesterday, Microsoft held its flagship launch event for Office 2010 in Manhattan.  Today, the Redmond software company is holding a local launch event for Visual Studio (VS) 2010, in Brooklyn.  How come information workers get the 212 treatment and developers are relegated to 718? Well, here’s the thing: the Brooklyn Marriott is actually a great place for an event, but you need some intimate knowledge of New York City to know that.  NBC’s Studio 8H, where the Office launch was held yesterday (and from where SNL is broadcast) is a pretty small venue, but you’d need some inside knowledge to recognize that.  Likewise, while Office 2010 is a product whose value is apparent.  Appreciating VS 2010’s value takes a bit more savvy.  Setting aside its year-based designation, this release of VS, counting the old Visual Basic releases, is the 10th version of the product.  How can a developer audience get excited about an integrated development environment when it reaches double-digit version numbers?  Well, it can be tough.  Luckily, Microsoft sent Jay Schmelzer, a Group Program Manager from the Visual Studio team in Redmond, to come tell the Brooklyn audience why they should be excited. Turns out there’s a lot of reasons.  Support fro SharePoint development is a big one.  In previous versions of VS, that support has been anemic, at best.  Shortage of SharePoint developers is a huge issue in the industry, and this should help.  There’s also built in support for Windows Azure (Microsoft’s cloud platform) and, through a download, support for the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform.  ASP.NET MVC, a “close-to-the-metal” Web development option that does away with the Web Forms abstraction layer, has a first-class presence in VS.  So too does jQuery, the Open Source environment that makes JavaScript development a breeze.  The jQuery support is so good that Microsoft now contributes to that Open Source project and offers IntelliSense support for it in the code editor. Speaking of the VS code editor, it now supports multi-monitor setups, zoom-in, and block selection.  If you’re not a developer, this may sound confusing and minute.  I’ll just say that for people who are developers these are little things that really contribute to productivity, and that translates into lower development costs. The really cool demo, though, was around Visual Studio 2010’s new debugging features.  This stuff is hard to showcase, but I believe it’s truly breakthrough technology: imagine being able to step backwards in time to see what might have caused a bug.  Cool?  Now imagine being able to do that, even if you weren’t the tester and weren’t present while the testing was being done.  Then imagine being able to see a video screen capture of what the tester was doing with your app when the bug occurred.  VS 2010 allows all that.  This could be the demise of the IWOMM (“it works on my machine”) syndrome. After the keynote, I asked Schmelzer if any of Microsoft’s competitors have debugging tools that come close to VS 2010’s.  His answer was an earnest “we don’t think so.”  If that’s true, that’s a big deal, and a huge advantage for developer teams who adopt it.  It will make software development much cheaper and more efficient.  Kind of like holding a launch event at the Brooklyn Marriott instead of 30 Rock in Manhattan! VS 2010 (version 10) and Office 2010 (version 14) aren’t the only new product versions Microsoft is releasing right now.  There’s also SQL Server 2008 R2 (version 10.5), Exchange 2010 (version 8, I believe), SharePoint 2010 (version 4) and, of course, Windows 7.  With so many new versions at such levels of maturity, I think it’s fair to say Microsoft has reached middle-age.  How does a company stave off a potential mid-life crisis, especially when with young Turks like Google coming along and competing so fiercely?  Hard to say.  But if focusing on core value, including value that’s hard to play into a sexy demo, is part oft the answer, then Microsoft’s doing OK.  And if some new tricks, like Windows Phone 7, can gain some traction, that might round things out nicely. Are the legacy products old tricks, or are they revised classics?  I honestly don’t know, because it’s the market’s prerogative to pass that judgement.  I can say this though: based on today’s show, I think Microsoft’s been doing its homework.

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• A first look at ConfORM - Part 1

  - by thangchung

  All source codes for this post can be found at here.Have you ever heard of ConfORM is not? I have read it three months ago when I wrote an post about NHibernate and Autofac. At that time, this project really has just started and still in beta version, so I still do not really care much. But recently when reading a book by Jason Dentler NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook, I started to pay attention to it. Author have mentioned quite a lot of OSS in his book. And now again I have reviewed ConfORM once again. I have been involved in ConfORM development group on google and read some articles about it. Fabio Maulo spent a lot of work for the OSS, and I hope it will adapt a great way for NHibernate (because he contributed to NHibernate that). So what is ConfORM? It is stand for Configuration ORM, and it was trying to use a lot of heuristic model for identifying entities from C# code. Today, it's mostly Model First Driven development, so the first thing is to build the entity model. This is really important and we can see it is the heart of business software. Then we have to tell DB about the entity of this model. We often will use Inversion Engineering here, Database Schema is will create based on recently Entity Model. From now we will absolutely not interested in the DB again, only focus on the Entity Model.Fluent NHibenate really good, I liked this OSS. Sharp Architecture and has done so well in Fluent NHibernate integration with applications. A Multiple Database technical in Sharp Architecture is truly awesome. It can receive configuration, a connection string and a dll containing entity model, which would then create a SessionFactory, finally caching inside the computer memory. As the number of SessionFactory can be very large and will full of the memory, it has also devised a way of caching SessionFactory in the file. This post I hope this will not completely explain about and building a model of multiple databases. I just tried to mount a number of posts from the community and apply some of my knowledge to build a management model Session for ConfORM.As well as Fluent NHibernate, ConfORM also supported on the interface mapping, see this to understand it. So the first thing we will build the Entity Model for it, and here is what I will use the model for this article. A simple model for managing news and polls, it will be too easy for a number of people, but I hope not to bring complexity to this post.I will then have some code to build super type for the Entity Model. public interface IEntity<TId>    {        TId Id { get; set; }    } public abstract class EntityBase<TId> : IEntity<TId>    {        public virtual TId Id { get; set; }         public override bool Equals(object obj)        {            return Equals(obj as EntityBase<TId>);        }         private static bool IsTransient(EntityBase<TId> obj)        {            return obj != null &&            Equals(obj.Id, default(TId));        }         private Type GetUnproxiedType()        {            return GetType();        }         public virtual bool Equals(EntityBase<TId> other)        {            if (other == null)                return false;            if (ReferenceEquals(this, other))                return true;            if (!IsTransient(this) &&            !IsTransient(other) &&            Equals(Id, other.Id))            {                var otherType = other.GetUnproxiedType();                var thisType = GetUnproxiedType();                return thisType.IsAssignableFrom(otherType) ||                otherType.IsAssignableFrom(thisType);            }            return false;        }         public override int GetHashCode()        {            if (Equals(Id, default(TId)))                return base.GetHashCode();            return Id.GetHashCode();        }    } Database schema will be created as:The next step is to build the ConORM builder to create a NHibernate Configuration. Patrick have a excellent article about it at here. Contract of it below: public interface IConfigBuilder    {        Configuration BuildConfiguration(string connectionString, string sessionFactoryName);    } The idea here is that I will pass in a connection string and a set of the DLL containing the Entity Model and it makes me a NHibernate Configuration (shame that I stole this ideas of Sharp Architecture). And here is its code: public abstract class ConfORMConfigBuilder : RootObject, IConfigBuilder    {        private static IConfigurator _configurator;         protected IEnumerable<Type> DomainTypes;         private readonly IEnumerable<string> _assemblies;         protected ConfORMConfigBuilder(IEnumerable<string> assemblies)            : this(new Configurator(), assemblies)        {            _assemblies = assemblies;        }         protected ConfORMConfigBuilder(IConfigurator configurator, IEnumerable<string> assemblies)        {            _configurator = configurator;            _assemblies = assemblies;        }         public abstract void GetDatabaseIntegration(IDbIntegrationConfigurationProperties dBIntegration, string connectionString);         protected abstract HbmMapping GetMapping();         public Configuration BuildConfiguration(string connectionString, string sessionFactoryName)        {            Contract.Requires(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(connectionString), "ConnectionString is null or empty");            Contract.Requires(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(sessionFactoryName), "SessionFactory name is null or empty");            Contract.Requires(_configurator != null, "Configurator is null");             return CatchExceptionHelper.TryCatchFunction(                () =>                {                    DomainTypes = GetTypeOfEntities(_assemblies);                     if (DomainTypes == null)                        throw new Exception("Type of domains is null");                     var configure = new Configuration();                    configure.SessionFactoryName(sessionFactoryName);                     configure.Proxy(p => p.ProxyFactoryFactory<ProxyFactoryFactory>());                    configure.DataBaseIntegration(db => GetDatabaseIntegration(db, connectionString));                     if (_configurator.GetAppSettingString("IsCreateNewDatabase").ConvertToBoolean())                    {                        configure.SetProperty("hbm2ddl.auto", "create-drop");                    }                     configure.Properties.Add("default_schema", _configurator.GetAppSettingString("DefaultSchema"));                    configure.AddDeserializedMapping(GetMapping(),                                                     _configurator.GetAppSettingString("DocumentFileName"));                     SchemaMetadataUpdater.QuoteTableAndColumns(configure);                     return configure;                }, Logger);        }         protected IEnumerable<Type> GetTypeOfEntities(IEnumerable<string> assemblies)        {            var type = typeof(EntityBase<Guid>);            var domainTypes = new List<Type>();             foreach (var assembly in assemblies)            {                var realAssembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(assembly);                 if (realAssembly == null)                    throw new NullReferenceException();                 domainTypes.AddRange(realAssembly.GetTypes().Where(                    t =>                    {                        if (t.BaseType != null)                            return string.Compare(t.BaseType.FullName,                                          type.FullName) == 0;                        return false;                    }));            }             return domainTypes;        }    } I do not want to dependency on any RDBMS, so I made a builder as an abstract class, and so I will create a concrete instance for SQL Server 2008 as follows: public class SqlServerConfORMConfigBuilder : ConfORMConfigBuilder    {        public SqlServerConfORMConfigBuilder(IEnumerable<string> assemblies)            : base(assemblies)        {        }         public override void GetDatabaseIntegration(IDbIntegrationConfigurationProperties dBIntegration, string connectionString)        {            dBIntegration.Dialect<MsSql2008Dialect>();            dBIntegration.Driver<SqlClientDriver>();            dBIntegration.KeywordsAutoImport = Hbm2DDLKeyWords.AutoQuote;            dBIntegration.IsolationLevel = IsolationLevel.ReadCommitted;            dBIntegration.ConnectionString = connectionString;            dBIntegration.LogSqlInConsole = true;            dBIntegration.Timeout = 10;            dBIntegration.LogFormatedSql = true;            dBIntegration.HqlToSqlSubstitutions = "true 1, false 0, yes 'Y', no 'N'";        }         protected override HbmMapping GetMapping()        {            var orm = new ObjectRelationalMapper();             orm.Patterns.PoidStrategies.Add(new GuidPoidPattern());             var patternsAppliers = new CoolPatternsAppliersHolder(orm);            //patternsAppliers.Merge(new DatePropertyByNameApplier()).Merge(new MsSQL2008DateTimeApplier());            patternsAppliers.Merge(new ManyToOneColumnNamingApplier());            patternsAppliers.Merge(new OneToManyKeyColumnNamingApplier(orm));             var mapper = new Mapper(orm, patternsAppliers);             var entities = new List<Type>();             DomainDefinition(orm);            Customize(mapper);             entities.AddRange(DomainTypes);             return mapper.CompileMappingFor(entities);        }         private void DomainDefinition(IObjectRelationalMapper orm)        {            orm.TablePerClassHierarchy(new[] { typeof(EntityBase<Guid>) });            orm.TablePerClass(DomainTypes);             orm.OneToOne<News, Poll>();            orm.ManyToOne<Category, News>();             orm.Cascade<Category, News>(Cascade.All);            orm.Cascade<News, Poll>(Cascade.All);            orm.Cascade<User, Poll>(Cascade.All);        }         private static void Customize(Mapper mapper)        {            CustomizeRelations(mapper);            CustomizeTables(mapper);            CustomizeColumns(mapper);        }         private static void CustomizeRelations(Mapper mapper)        {        }         private static void CustomizeTables(Mapper mapper)        {        }         private static void CustomizeColumns(Mapper mapper)        {            mapper.Class<Category>(                cm =>                {                    cm.Property(x => x.Name, m => m.NotNullable(true));                    cm.Property(x => x.CreatedDate, m => m.NotNullable(true));                });             mapper.Class<News>(                cm =>                {                    cm.Property(x => x.Title, m => m.NotNullable(true));                    cm.Property(x => x.ShortDescription, m => m.NotNullable(true));                    cm.Property(x => x.Content, m => m.NotNullable(true));                });             mapper.Class<Poll>(                cm =>                {                    cm.Property(x => x.Value, m => m.NotNullable(true));                    cm.Property(x => x.VoteDate, m => m.NotNullable(true));                    cm.Property(x => x.WhoVote, m => m.NotNullable(true));                });             mapper.Class<User>(                cm =>                {                    cm.Property(x => x.UserName, m => m.NotNullable(true));                    cm.Property(x => x.Password, m => m.NotNullable(true));                });        }    } As you can see that we can do so many things in this class, such as custom entity relationships, custom binding on the columns, custom table name, ... Here I only made two so-Appliers for OneToMany and ManyToOne relationships, you can refer to it here public class ManyToOneColumnNamingApplier : IPatternApplier<PropertyPath, IManyToOneMapper>    {        #region IPatternApplier<PropertyPath,IManyToOneMapper> Members         public void Apply(PropertyPath subject, IManyToOneMapper applyTo)        {            applyTo.Column(subject.ToColumnName() + "Id");        }         #endregion         #region IPattern<PropertyPath> Members         public bool Match(PropertyPath subject)        {            return subject != null;        }         #endregion    } public class OneToManyKeyColumnNamingApplier : OneToManyPattern, IPatternApplier<PropertyPath, ICollectionPropertiesMapper>    {        public OneToManyKeyColumnNamingApplier(IDomainInspector domainInspector) : base(domainInspector) { }         #region Implementation of IPattern<PropertyPath>         public bool Match(PropertyPath subject)        {            return Match(subject.LocalMember);        }         #endregion Implementation of IPattern<PropertyPath>         #region Implementation of IPatternApplier<PropertyPath,ICollectionPropertiesMapper>         public void Apply(PropertyPath subject, ICollectionPropertiesMapper applyTo)        {            applyTo.Key(km => km.Column(GetKeyColumnName(subject)));        }         #endregion Implementation of IPatternApplier<PropertyPath,ICollectionPropertiesMapper>         protected virtual string GetKeyColumnName(PropertyPath subject)        {            Type propertyType = subject.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType();            Type childType = propertyType.DetermineCollectionElementType();            var entity = subject.GetContainerEntity(DomainInspector);            var parentPropertyInChild = childType.GetFirstPropertyOfType(entity);            var baseName = parentPropertyInChild == null ? subject.PreviousPath == null ? entity.Name : entity.Name + subject.PreviousPath : parentPropertyInChild.Name;            return GetKeyColumnName(baseName);        }         protected virtual string GetKeyColumnName(string baseName)        {            return string.Format("{0}Id", baseName);        }    } Everyone also can download the ConfORM source at google code and see example inside it. Next part I will write about multiple database factory. Hope you enjoy about it. happy coding and see you next part.

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• Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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• Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  As more and more business is being conducted via online channels, engaging users and making them more productive and efficient though these online channels is becoming critical. These users could be customers, partners or employees and while the respective channels through which they interact might be different, these users do increasingly interact with your business through the Web, or mobile devices or now through various social mediums.  Businesses need a user engagement strategy and solution that allows them to deliver targeted and personalized content and applications to users through the various online mediums and touch points.  The customer experience today is made up of an ongoing set of interactions with organizations across many channels, online and offline.  The Direct channel (including sales reps, email and mail) is an important point of contact, as is the Contact Center.  Contact Centers rely on the phone as a means of interacting with customers, and also more now than ever, the Web as well.  However, the online organization is often managed separately from the Contact Center organization within a business. In-store is an important channel for retailers, offering Point-of-Service for human interactions, and Kiosks which enable self-service. Kiosks are a Web-enabled touch point but in-store kiosks are often managed by the head of retail operations, rather than the online organization.  And of course, the online channel, including customer interactions with an organization via digital means -- on the website, mobile websites, and social networking sites, has risen to paramount importance in recent years in the customer experience. Historically all of these channels have been managed separately. The result of all of this fragmentation is that the customer touch points with an organization are siloed.  Their interactions online are not known and respected in their dealings in-store.  Their calls to the contact center are not taken as input into what the website offers them when they arrive. Think of how many times you’ve fallen victim to this. Your experience with the company call center is different than the experience in-store. Your experience with the company website on your desktop computer is different than your experience on your iPad. I think you get the point. But the customer isn’t the only one we need to look at here, as employees and the IT organization have challenges as well when it comes to online engagement. There are many common tools and technologies that organizations have been using to try and engage users, whether it’s customers, employees or partners. Some have adopted different blog and wiki technologies (some hosted, some open source, sometimes embedded in platforms), to things like tagging, file sharing and content management, or composite applications for self-service applications and activity streams. Basically, there are so many different tools & technologies that each address different aspects of user engagement. Now, one of the challenges with this, is that if we look at each individual tool, typically just implementing for example a file sharing and basic collaboration solution, may meet the needs of the business user for one aspect of user engagement, but it may not be the best solution to engage with customers and partners, or it may not fit with IT standards such as integrating with their single sign on tools or their corporate website. Often, the scenario is that businesses are having to acquire multiple pieces and parts as well as build custom applications to meet their needs. Leaving customers and partners with a more fragmented way of interacting with the company. Every organization has some sort of enterprise balancing act between the needs of the business user and the needs and restrictions enforced by enterprise IT groups. As we’ve been discussing, we all know that the expectations for online engagement have changed since the days of the static, one-size fits all website. With these changes have come some very difficult organizational challenges as well. Today, as a business user, you want to engage with your customers, and your customers expect you to know who they are. They expect you to recall the details they’ve provided to you on your website, to your CSRs and to your sales people. They expect you to remember their purchases, their preferences and their problems. And they expect you to know who they are, equally well, across channels, including your web presence. This creates a host of challenges for today’s business users. Delivering targeted, relevant content online is now essential for converting prospects into customers and for engendering long term loyalty. Business users need the ability to leverage customer data from different sources to fuel their segmentation and targeting strategies and to easily set-up, manage and optimize online campaigns. Also critical, they need the ability to accomplish these things on-the-fly, at the speed of the marketplace, while making iterative improvements.  These changing expectations put a host of demands on the IT organization as well. The web presence must be able to scale to support the delivery of personalized and targeted content to thousands of site visitors without sacrificing performance. And integration between systems becomes more important as well, as organizations strive to obtain one view of the customer culled from WCM data, CRM data and more. So then, how do you solve these challenges and meet the growing demands of your users?  You need a solution that: Unifies every customer interaction across all channels Personalizes the products and content that interest the customer and to the device Delivers targeted promotions to the right customer Engages and improve employee productivity Provides self-service access to applications Includes embedded in-context social   So how then do you achieve this level of online engagement, complete customer experience and engage your employees? The answer: Oracle WebCenter. If you want to learn how to get there, we encourage you to attend this webcast on Thursday Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites, where we'll talk about how you are able to transform your portal experience and optimize online engagement -- making your portals more interactive and more engaging across multiple channels. Register today!

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• Top Questions and Answers for Pluging into Oracle Database as a Service

  - by David Swanger

  Yesterday we hosted a comprehensive online forum that shared a comprehensive path to help your organization design, deploy, and deliver a Database as a Service cloud. If you missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand by registering here. We received numerous questions.  Below are highlights of the most informative: DBaaS requires a lengthy and careful design efforts. What is the minimum requirements of setting up a scaled-down environment and test it out? You should have an OEM 12c environment for DBaaS administration and then a target database deployment platform that has the key characteristics of what your production environment will look like. This could be a single server or it could be a small pool of hosts if your production DBaaS will be larger and you want to test a more robust / real world configuration with Zones and Pools or DR capabilities for example. How does this benefit companies having their own data center? This allows companies to transform their internal IT to a service delivery model for the database. The benefits to the company are significant cost savings, improved business agility and reduced risk. The benefits to the consumers (internal) of services if much fast provisioning, and response to change in business requirements. From a deployment perspective, is DBaaS's job solely DBA's job? The best deployment model enables the DBA (or end-user) to control the entire process. All resources required to deploy the service are pre-provisioned, and there are no external dependencies (on network, storage, sysadmins teams). The service is created either via a self-service portal or by the DBA. The purpose of self service seems to be that the end user does not rely on the DBA. I just need to give him a template. He decides how much AMM he needs. Why shall I set it one by one. That doesn't seem to be the purpose of self service. Most customers we have worked with define a standardized service catalog, with a few (2 to 5) different classes of service. For each of these classes, there is a pre-defined deployment template, and the user has the ability to select from some pre-defined service sizes. The administrator only has to create this catalog once. Each user then simply selects from the options offered in the catalog.  Looking at DBaaS service definition, it seems to be no different from a service definition provided by a well defined DBA team. Why do you attribute it to DBaaS? There are a couple of perspectives. First, some organizations might already be operating with a high level of standardization and a higher level of maturity from an ITIL or Service Management perspective. Their journey to DBaaS could be shorter and their Service Definition will evolve less but they still might need to add capabilities such as Self Service and Metering/Chargeback. Other organizations are still operating in highly siloed environments with little automation and their formal Service Definition (if they have one) will be a lot less mature today. Therefore their future state DBaaS will look a lot different from their current state, as will their Service Definition. How database as a service impact or help with "Click to Compute" or deploying "Database in cloud infrastructure" DBaaS enables Click to Compute. Oracle DBaaS can be implemented using three architecture models: Oracle Multitenant 12c, native consolidation using Oracle Database and consolidation using virtualization in infrastructure cloud. As Deploy session showed, you get higher consolidating density and efficiency using Multitenant and higher isolation using infrastructure cloud. Depending upon your business needs, DBaaS can be implemented using any of these models. How exactly is the DBaaS different from the traditional db? Storage/OS/DB all together to 'transparently' provide service to applications? Will there be across-databases access by application/user. Some key differences are: 1) The services run on a shared platform. 2) The services can be rapidly provisioned (< 15 minutes). 3) The services are dynamic and can be relocated, grown, shrunk as needed to meet business needs without disruption and rapidly. 4) The user is able to provision the services directly from a standardized service catalog.. With 24x7x365 databases its difficult to find off peak hrs to do basic admin tasks such as gathering stats, running backups, batch jobs. How does pluggable database handle this and different needs/patching downtime of apps databases might be serving? You can gather stats in Oracle Multitenant the same way you had been in regular databases. Regarding patching/upgrading, Oracle Multitenant makes patch/upgrade very efficient in that you can pre-provision a new version/patched multitenant db in a different ORACLE_HOME and then unplug a PDB from its CDB and plug it into the newer/patched CDB in seconds.  Thanks for all the great questions!  If you'd like to learn more and missed the online forum, you can watch it on demand here.

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• Identity Globe Trotters (Sep Edition): The Social Customer

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the inaugural edition of our monthly series - Identity Globe Trotters. Starting today, the last Friday of every month, we will explore regional commentary on Identity Management. We will invite guest contributors from around the world to share their opinions and experiences around Identity Management and highlight regional nuances, specific drivers, solutions and more. Today's feature is contributed by Michael Krebs, Head of Business Development at esentri consulting GmbH, a (SOA) specialized Oracle Gold Partner based in Ettlingen, Germany. In his current role, Krebs is dealing with the latest developments in Enterprise Social Networking and the Integration of Social Media within business processes.  By Michael Krebs The relevance of "easy sign-on" in the age of the "Social Customer" With the growth of Social Networks, the time people spend within those closed "eco-systems" is growing year by year. With social networks looking to integrate search engines, like Facebook announced some weeks ago, their relevance will continue to grow in contrast to the more conventional search engines. This is one of the reasons why social network accounts of the users are getting more and more like a virtual fingerprint. With the growing relevance of social networks the importance of a simple way for customers to get in touch with say, customer care or contract departments, will be crucial for sales processes in critical markets. Customers want to have one single point of contact and also an easy "login-method" with no dedicated usernames, passwords or proprietary accounts. The golden rule in the future social media driven markets will be: The lower the complexity of the initial contact, the better a company can profit from social networks. If you, for example, can generate a smart way of how an existing customer can use self-service portals, the cost in providing phone support can be lowered significantly. Recruiting and Hiring of "Digital Natives" Another particular example is "social" recruiting processes. The so called "digital natives" don´t want to type in their profile facts and CV´s in proprietary systems. Why not use the actual LinkedIn profile? In German speaking region, the market in the area of professional social networks is dominated by XING, the equivalent to LinkedIn. A few weeks back, this network also opened up their interfaces for integrating social sign-ons or the usage of profile data for recruiting-purposes. In the European (and especially the German) employment market, where the number of young candidates is shrinking because of the low birth rate in the region, it will become essential to use social-media supported hiring processes to find and on-board the rare talents. In fact, you will see traditional recruiting websites integrated with social hiring to attract the best talents in the market, where the pool of potential candidates has decreased dramatically over the years. Identity Management as a key factor in the Customer Experience process To create the biggest value for customers and also future employees, companies need to connect their HCM or CRM-systems with powerful Identity management solutions. With the highly efficient Oracle (social & mobile enabling) Identity Management solution, enterprises can combine easy sign on with secure connections to the backend infrastructure. This combination enables a "one-stop" service with personalized content for customers and talents. In addition, companies can collect valuable data for the enrichment of their CRM-data. The goal is to enrich the so called "Customer Experience" via all available customer channels and contact points. Those systems have already gained importance in the B2C-markets and will gradually spread out to B2B-channels in the near future. Conclusion: Central and "Social" Identity management is key to Customer Experience Management and Talent Management For a seamless delivery of "Customer Experience Management" and a modern way of recruiting the best talent, companies need to integrate Social Sign-on capabilities with modern CX - and Talent management infrastructure. This lowers the barrier for existing and future customers or employees to get in touch with sales, support or human resources. Identity management is the technology enabler and backbone for a modern Customer Experience Infrastructure. Oracle Identity management solutions provide the opportunity to secure Social Applications and connect them with modern CX-solutions. At the end, companies benefit from "best of breed" processes and solutions for enriching customer experience without compromising security. About esentri: esentri is a provider of enterprise social networking and brings the benefits of social network communication into business environments. As one key strength, esentri uses Oracle Identity Management solutions for delivering Social and Mobile access for Oracle’s CRM- and HCM-solutions. …..End Guest Post…. With new and enhanced features optimized to secure the new digital experience, the recently announced Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 enables organizations to securely embrace cloud, mobile and social infrastructures and reach new user communities to help further expand and develop their businesses. Additional Resources: Oracle Identity Management 11gR2 release Oracle Identity Management website Datasheet: Mobile and Social Access (pdf) IDM at OOW: Focus on Identity Management Facebook: OracleIDM Twitter: OracleIDM We look forward to your feedback on this post and welcome your suggestions for topics to cover in Identity Globe Trotters. Last Friday, every month!

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• Alternative way of developing for ASP.NET to WebForms - Any problems with this?

  - by John

  So I have been developing in ASP.NET WebForms for some time now but often get annoyed with all the overhead (like ViewState and all the JavaScript it generates), and the way WebForms takes over a lot of the HTML generation. Sometimes I just want full control over the markup and produce efficient HTML of my own so I have been experimenting with what I like to call HtmlForms. Essentially this is using ASP.NET WebForms but without the form runat="server" tag. Without this tag, ASP.NET does not seem to add anything to the page at all. From some basic tests it seems that it runs well and you still have the ability to use code-behind pages, and many ASP.NET controls such as repeaters. Of course without the form runat="server" many controls won't work. A post at Enterprise Software Development lists the controls that do require the tag. From that list you will see that all of the form elements like TextBoxes, DropDownLists, RadioButtons, etc cannot be used. Instead you use normal HTML form controls. But how do you access these HTML controls from the code behind? Retrieving values on post back is easy, you just use Request.QueryString or Request.Form. But passing data to the control could be a little messy. Do you use a ASP.NET Literal control in the value field or do you use <%= value % in the markup page? I found it best to add runat="server" to my HTML controls and then you can access the control in your code-behind like this: ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = "blah"; Here's a example that shows what you can do with a textbox and drop down list: Default.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="NoForm.Default" %> <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="NoForm.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form action="" method="post"> <label for="txtName">Name:</label> <input id="txtName" name="txtName" runat="server" /><br /> <label for="ddlState">State:</label> <select id="ddlState" name="ddlState" runat="server"> <option value=""></option> </select><br /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> </body> </html> Default.aspx.cs using System; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace NoForm { public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Default values string name = string.Empty; string state = string.Empty; if (Request.RequestType == "POST") { //If form submitted (post back) name = Request.Form["txtName"]; state = Request.Form["ddlState"]; //Server side form validation would go here //and actions to process form and redirect } ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = name; ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("ACT")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("NSW")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("NT")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("QLD")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("SA")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("TAS")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("VIC")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("WA")); if (((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.FindByValue(state) != null) ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Value = state; } } } As you can see, you have similar functionality to ASP.NET server controls but more control over the final markup, and less overhead like ViewState and all the JavaScript ASP.NET adds. Interestingly you can also use HttpPostedFile to handle file uploads using your own input type="file" control (and necessary form enctype="multipart/form-data"). So my question is can you see any problems with this method, and any thoughts on it's usefulness? I have further details and tests on my blog.

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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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• A Basic Thread

  - by Joe Mayo

  Most of the programs written are single-threaded, meaning that they run on the main execution thread. For various reasons such as performance, scalability, and/or responsiveness additional threads can be useful. .NET has extensive threading support, from the basic threads introduced in v1.0 to the Task Parallel Library (TPL) introduced in v4.0. To get started with threads, it's helpful to begin with the basics; starting a Thread. Why Do I Care? The scenario I'll use for needing to use a thread is writing to a file.  Sometimes, writing to a file takes a while and you don't want your user interface to lock up until the file write is done. In other words, you want the application to be responsive to the user. How Would I Go About It? The solution is to launch a new thread that performs the file write, allowing the main thread to return to the user right away.  Whenever the file writing thread completes, it will let the user know.  In the meantime, the user is free to interact with the program for other tasks. The following examples demonstrate how to do this. Show Me the Code? The code we'll use to work with threads is in the System.Threading namespace, so you'll need the following using directive at the top of the file: using System.Threading; When you run code on a thread, the code is specified via a method.  Here's the code that will execute on the thread: private static void WriteFile() { Thread.Sleep(1000); Console.WriteLine("File Written."); } The call to Thread.Sleep(1000) delays thread execution. The parameter is specified in milliseconds, and 1000 means that this will cause the program to sleep for approximately 1 second.  This method happens to be static, but that's just part of this example, which you'll see is launched from the static Main method.  A thread could be instance or static.  Notice that the method does not have parameters and does not have a return type. As you know, the way to refer to a method is via a delegate.  There is a delegate named ThreadStart in System.Threading that refers to a method without parameters or return type, shown below: ThreadStart fileWriterHandlerDelegate = new ThreadStart(WriteFile); I'll show you the whole program below, but the ThreadStart instance above goes in the Main method. The thread uses the ThreadStart instance, fileWriterHandlerDelegate, to specify the method to execute on the thread: Thread fileWriter = new Thread(fileWriterHandlerDelegate); As shown above, the argument type for the Thread constructor is the ThreadStart delegate type. The fileWriterHandlerDelegate argument is an instance of the ThreadStart delegate type. This creates an instance of a thread and what code will execute, but the new thread instance, fileWriter, isn't running yet. You have to explicitly start it, like this: fileWriter.Start(); Now, the code in the WriteFile method is executing on a separate thread. Meanwhile, the main thread that started the fileWriter thread continues on it's own.  You have two threads running at the same time. Okay, I'm Starting to Get Glassy Eyed. How Does it All Fit Together? The example below is the whole program, pulling all the previous bits together. It's followed by its output and an explanation. using System; using System.Threading; namespace BasicThread { class Program { static void Main() { ThreadStart fileWriterHandlerDelegate = new ThreadStart(WriteFile); Thread fileWriter = new Thread(fileWriterHandlerDelegate); Console.WriteLine("Starting FileWriter"); fileWriter.Start(); Console.WriteLine("Called FileWriter"); Console.ReadKey(); } private static void WriteFile() { Thread.Sleep(1000); Console.WriteLine("File Written"); } } } And here's the output: Starting FileWriter Called FileWriter File Written So, Why are the Printouts Backwards? The output above corresponds to Console.Writeline statements in the program, with the second and third seemingly reversed. In a single-threaded program, "File Written" would print before "Called FileWriter". However, this is a multi-threaded (2 or more threads) program.  In multi-threading, you can't make any assumptions about when a given thread will run.  In this case, I added the Sleep statement to the WriteFile method to greatly increase the chances that the message from the main thread will print first. Without the Thread.Sleep, you could run this on a system with multiple cores and/or multiple processors and potentially get different results each time. Interesting Tangent but What Should I Get Out of All This? Going back to the main point, launching the WriteFile method on a separate thread made the program more responsive.  The file writing logic ran for a while, but the main thread returned to the user, as demonstrated by the print out of "Called FileWriter".  When the file write finished, it let the user know via another print statement. This was a very efficient use of CPU resources that made for a more pleasant user experience. Joe

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• Data Binding to Attached Properties

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/14/data-binding-to-attached-properties.aspx When I was working on my C#/XAML game framework, I discovered I wanted to try to data bind my sprites to background objects. That way, I could update my objects and the draw functionality would take care of the work for me. After a little experimenting and web searching, it appeared this concept was an impossible dream. Of course, when has that ever stopped me? In my typical way, I started to massively dive down the rabbit hole. I created a sprite on a canvas, and I bound it to a background object. <Canvas Name="GameField" Background="Black"> <Image Name="PlayerStrite" Source="Assets/Ship.png" Width="50" Height="50" Canvas.Left="{Binding X}" Canvas.Top="{Binding Y}"/> </Canvas> Now, we wire the UI item to the background item. public MainPage() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += StartGame; }   void StartGame( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e ) { BindingPlayer _Player = new BindingPlayer(); _Player.X = Window.Current.Bounds.Height - PlayerSprite.Height; _Player.X = ( Window.Current.Bounds.Width - PlayerSprite.Width ) / 2.0; } Of course, now we need to actually have our background object. public class BindingPlayer : INotifyPropertyChanged { private double m_X; public double X { get { return m_X; } set { m_X = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   private double m_Y; public double Y { get { return m_Y; } set { m_Y = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } } I fired this baby up, and my sprite was correctly positioned on the screen. Maybe the sky wasn't falling after all. Wouldn't it be great if that was the case? I created some code to allow me to move the sprite, but nothing happened. This seems odd. So, I start debugging the application and stepping through code. Everything appears to be working. Time to dig a little deeper. After much profanity was spewed, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. The code only looked like it was working. What was really happening is that there was an exception being thrown in the background thread that I never saw. Apparently, the key call was the one to PropertyChanged. If PropertyChanged is not called on the UI thread, the UI thread ignores the call. Actually, it throws an exception and the background thread silently crashes. Of course, you'll never see this unless you're looking REALLY carefully. This seemed to be a simple problem. I just need to marshal this to the UI thread. Unfortunately, this object has no knowledge of this mythical UI Thread in which we speak. So, I had to pull the UI Thread out of thin air. Let's change our PropertyChanged call to look this. public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) Windows.ApplicationModel.Core.CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher.RunAsync( Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, new Windows.UI.Core.DispatchedHandler( () => { PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } ) ); } Now, we raised our notification on the UI thread. Everything is fine, people are happy, and the world moves on. You may have noticed that I didn't await my call to the dispatcher. This was intentional. If I am trying to update a slew of sprites, I don't want thread being hung while I wait my turn. Thus, I send the message and move on. It is worth nothing that this is NOT the most efficient way to do this for game programming. We'll get to that in another blog post. However, it is perfectly acceptable for a business app that is running a background task that would like to notify the UI thread of progress on a periodic basis. It is worth noting that this code was written for a Windows Store App. You can do the same thing with WP8 and WPF. The call to the marshaler changes, but it is the same idea.

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• Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  As if the Surface announcement on Monday wasn’t exciting enough, today Microsoft announce that Windows Phone 8 will be coming this fall.  That itself is great news, but the features coming were like confetti flying in all different directions.  Given this speed I couldn’t capture every feature they covered.  A summary of what I did capture is listed below starting with their eight main features. Common Core The first thing that they covered is that Windows Phone 8 will share a core OS with Windows 8.  It will also run natively on multiple cores.  They mentioned that they have run it on up to 64 cores to this point.  The phones as you might expect will at least start as dual core.  If you remember there were metrics saying that Windows Phone 7 performed operations faster on a single core than other platforms did with dual cores.  The metrics they showed here indicate that Windows Phone 8 runs faster on comparable dual core hardware than other platforms. New Screen Resolutions Screen resolution has never been an issue for me, but it has been a criticism of Windows Phone 7 in the media.  Windows Phone 8 will supports three screen resolutions: WVGA 800 x 480, WXGA 1280 x 768, and 720 1280x720.  Hopefully this makes pixel counters a little happier. MicroSD Support This was one of my pet peeves when I got my Samsung Focus. With Windows Phone 8 the operating system will support adding MicroSD cards after initial setup.  Of course this is dependent on the hardware company on implementing it, but I think we have seen that even feature phone manufacturers have not had a problem supporting this in the past. NFC NFC has been an anticipated feature for some time.  What Microsoft showed today included the fact that they didn’t just want it to be for the phone.  There is cross platform NFC functionality between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  The demos , while possibly a bit fanciful, showed would could be achieved even in a retail environment.  We are getting closer and closer to a Minority Report world with these technologies. Wallet Windows Phone 8 isn’t the first platform to have a wallet concept.  What they have done to differentiate themselves is to make it sot that it is not dependent on a SIM type chip like other platforms.  They have also expanded the concept beyond just banks to other types of credits such as airline miles. Nokia Mapping People have been envious of the Lumia phones having the Nokia mapping software.  Now all Windows Phone 8 devices will use NavTeq data and will have the capability to run in an offline fashion.  This is a major step forward from the Bing “touch for the next turn” maps. IT Administration The lack of features for enterprise administration and deployment was a complaint even before the Windows Phone 7 was released.  With the Windows Phone 8 release such features as Bitlocker and Secure boot will be baked into the OS. We will also have the ability to privately sign and distribute applications. Changing Start Screen Joe Belfiore made a big deal about this aspect of the new release.  Users will have more color themes available to them and the live tiles will be highly customizable. You will have the ability to resize and organize the tiles in a more dynamic way.  This allows for less important tiles or ones with less information to be made smaller.  And There Is More So what other tidbits came out of the presentation?  Later this summer the API for WP8 will be available.  There will be developer events coming to a city near you.  Another announcement of interest to developers is the ability to write applications at a native code level.  This is a boon for game developers and those who need highly efficient applications. As a topper on the cake there was mention of in app payment. On the consumer side we also found out that all updates will be available over the air.  Along with this came the fact that Microsoft will support all devices with updates for at least 18 month and you will be able to subscribe for early updates.  Update coming for Windows Phone 7.5 customers to WP7.8.  The main enhancement will be the new live tile features.  The big bonus is that the update will bypass the carriers.  I would assume though that you will be brought up to date with all previous patches that your carrier may not have released. There is so much more, but that is enough for one post.  Needless to say, EXCITING! del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 8,WP8,Windows Phone 7,WP7,Announcements,Microsoft

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• Proxied calls not working as expected

  - by AndyH

  I have been modifying an application to have a cleaner client/server split to allow for load splitting and resource sharing etc. Everything is written to an interface so it was easy to add a remoting layer to the interface using a proxy. Everything worked fine. The next phase was to add a caching layer to the interface and again this worked fine and speed was improved but not as much as I would have expected. On inspection it became very clear what was going on. I feel sure that this behavior has been seen many times before and there is probably a design pattern to solve the problem but it eludes me and I'm not even sure how to describe it. It is easiest explained with an example. Let's imagine the interface is interface IMyCode { List<IThing> getLots( List<String> ); IThing getOne( String id ); } The getLots() method calls getOne() and fills up the list before returning. The interface is implemented at the client which is proxied to a remoting client which then calls the remoting server which in turn calls the implementation at the server. At the client and the server layers there is also a cache. So we have :- Client interface | Client cache | Remote client | Remote server | Server cache | Server interface If we call getOne("A") at the client interface, the call is passed to the client cache which faults. This then calls the remote client which passes the call to the remote server. This then calls the server cache which also faults and so the call is eventually passed to the server interface which actually gets the IThing. In turn the server cache is filled and finally the client cache also. If getOne("A") is again called at the client interface the client cache has the data and it gets returned immediately. If a second client called getOne("B") it would fill the server cache with "B" as well as it's own client cache. Then, when the first client calls getOne("B") the client cache faults but the server cache has the data. This is all as one would expect and works well. Now lets call getLots( [ "C", "D" ] ). This works as you would expect by calling getOne() twice but there is a subtlety here. The call to getLots() cannot directly make use of the cache. Therefore the sequence is to call the client interface which in turn calls the remote client, then the remote server and eventually the server interface. This then calls getOne() to fill the list before returning. The problem is that the getOne() calls are being satisfied at the server when ideally they should be satisfied at the client. If you imagine that the client/server link is really slow then it becomes clear why the client call is more efficient than the server call once the client cache has the data. This example is contrived to illustrate the point. The more general problem is that you cannot just keep adding proxied layers to an interface and expect it to work as you would imagine. As soon as the call goes 'through' the proxy any subsequent calls are on the proxied side rather than 'self' side. Have I failed to learn or not learned something correctly? All this is implemented in Java and I haven't used EJBs. It seems that the example may be confusing. The problem is nothing to do with cache efficiencies. It is more to do with an illusion created by the use of proxies or AOP techniques in general. When you have an object whose class implements an interface there is an assumption that a call on that object might make further calls on that same object. For example, public String getInternalString() { return InetAddress.getLocalHost().toString(); } public String getString() { return getInternalString(); } If you get an object and call getString() the result depends where the code is running. If you add a remoting proxy to the class then the result could be different for calls to getString() and getInternalString() on the same object. This is because the initial call gets 'deproxied' before the actual method is called. I find this not only confusing but I wonder how I can control this behavior especially as the use of the proxy may be by a third party. The concept is fine but the practice is certainly not what I expected. Have I missed the point somewhere?

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• Implementing a Custom Coherence PartitionAssignmentStrategy

  - by jpurdy

  A recent A-Team engagement required the development of a custom PartitionAssignmentStrategy (PAS). By way of background, a PAS is an implementation of a Java interface that controls how a Coherence partitioned cache service assigns partitions (primary and backup copies) across the available set of storage-enabled members. While seemingly straightforward, this is actually a very difficult problem to solve. Traditionally, Coherence used a distributed algorithm spread across the cache servers (and as of Coherence 3.7, this is still the default implementation). With the introduction of the PAS interface, the model of operation was changed so that the logic would run solely in the cache service senior member. Obviously, this makes the development of a custom PAS vastly less complex, and in practice does not introduce a significant single point of failure/bottleneck. Note that Coherence ships with a default PAS implementation but it is not used by default. Further, custom PAS implementations are uncommon (this engagement was the first custom implementation that we know of). The particular implementation mentioned above also faced challenges related to managing multiple backup copies but that won't be discussed here. There were a few challenges that arose during design and implementation: Naive algorithms had an unreasonable upper bound of computational cost. There was significant complexity associated with configurations where the member count varied significantly between physical machines. Most of the complexity of a PAS is related to rebalancing, not initial assignment (which is usually fairly simple). A custom PAS may need to solve several problems simultaneously, such as: Ensuring that each member has a similar number of primary and backup partitions (e.g. each member has the same number of primary and backup partitions) Ensuring that each member carries similar responsibility (e.g. the most heavily loaded member has no more than one partition more than the least loaded). Ensuring that each partition is on the same member as a corresponding local resource (e.g. for applications that use partitioning across message queues, to ensure that each partition is collocated with its corresponding message queue). Ensuring that a given member holds no more than a given number of partitions (e.g. no member has more than 10 partitions) Ensuring that backups are placed far enough away from the primaries (e.g. on a different physical machine or a different blade enclosure) Achieving the above goals while ensuring that partition movement is minimized. These objectives can be even more complicated when the topology of the cluster is irregular. For example, if multiple cluster members may exist on each physical machine, then clearly the possibility exists that at certain points (e.g. following a member failure), the number of members on each machine may vary, in certain cases significantly so. Consider the case where there are three physical machines, with 3, 3 and 9 members each (respectively). This introduces complexity since the backups for the 9 members on the the largest machine must be spread across the other 6 members (to ensure placement on different physical machines), preventing an even distribution. For any given problem like this, there are usually reasonable compromises available, but the key point is that objectives may conflict under extreme (but not at all unlikely) circumstances. The most obvious general purpose partition assignment algorithm (possibly the only general purpose one) is to define a scoring function for a given mapping of partitions to members, and then apply that function to each possible permutation, selecting the most optimal permutation. This would result in N! (factorial) evaluations of the scoring function. This is clearly impractical for all but the smallest values of N (e.g. a partition count in the single digits). It's difficult to prove that more efficient general purpose algorithms don't exist, but the key take away from this is that algorithms will tend to either have exorbitant worst case performance or may fail to find optimal solutions (or both) -- it is very important to be able to show that worst case performance is acceptable. This quickly leads to the conclusion that the problem must be further constrained, perhaps by limiting functionality or by using domain-specific optimizations. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to design these more focused algorithms. In the specific case mentioned, we constrained the solution space to very small clusters (in terms of machine count) with small partition counts and supported exactly two backup copies, and accepted the fact that partition movement could potentially be significant (preferring to solve that issue through brute force). We then used the out-of-the-box PAS implementation as a fallback, delegating to it for configurations that were not supported by our algorithm. Our experience was that the PAS interface is quite usable, but there are intrinsic challenges to designing PAS implementations that should be very carefully evaluated before committing to that approach.

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• Data Source Security Part 1

  - by Steve Felts

  I’ve written a couple of articles on how to store data source security credentials using the Oracle wallet.  I plan to write a few articles on the various types of security available to WebLogic Server (WLS) data sources.  There are more options than you might think! There have been several enhancements in this area in WLS 10.3.6.  There are a couple of more enhancements planned for release WLS 12.1.2 that I will include here for completeness.  This isn’t intended as a teaser.  If you call your Oracle support person, you can get them now as minor patches to WLS 10.3.6.   The current security documentation is scattered in a few places, has a few incorrect statements, and is missing a few topics.  It also seems that the knowledge of how to apply some of these features isn’t written down.  The goal of these articles is to talk about WLS data source security in a unified way and to introduce some approaches to using the available features.  Introduction to WebLogic Data Source Security Options By default, you define a single database user and password for a data source.  You can store it in the data source descriptor or make use of the Oracle wallet.  This is a very simple and efficient approach to security.  All of the connections in the connection pool are owned by this user and there is no special processing when a connection is given out.  That is, it’s a homogeneous connection pool and any request can get any connection from a security perspective (there are other aspects like affinity).  Regardless of the end user of the application, all connections in the pool use the same security credentials to access the DBMS.   No additional information is needed when you get a connection because it’s all available from the data source descriptor (or wallet). java.sql.Connection conn =  mydatasource.getConnection(); Note: You can enter the password as a name-value pair in the Properties field (this not permitted for production environments) or you can enter it in the Password field of the data source descriptor. The value in the Password field overrides any password value defined in the Properties passed to the JDBC Driver when creating physical database connections. It is recommended that you use the Password attribute in place of the password property in the properties string because the Password value is encrypted in the configuration file (stored as the password-encrypted attribute in the jdbc-driver-params tag in the module file) and is hidden in the administration console.  The Properties and Password fields are located on the administration console Data Source creation wizard or Data Source Configuration tab. The JDBC API can also be used to programmatically specify a database user name and password as in the following.  java.sql.Connection conn = mydatasource.getConnection(“user”, “password”); According to the JDBC specification, it’s supposed to take a database user and associated password but different vendors implement this differently.  WLS, by default, treats this as an application server user and password.  The pair is authenticated to see if it’s a valid user and that user is used for WLS security permission checks.  By default, the user is then mapped to a database user and password using the data source credential mapper, so this API sort of follows the specification but database credentials are one-step removed from the application code.  More details and the rationale are described later. While the default approach is simple, it does mean that only one database user is doing all of the work.  You can’t figure out who actually did the update and you can’t restrict SQL operations by who is running the operation, at least at the database level.   Any type of per-user logic will need to be in the application code instead of having the database do it.  There are various WLS data source features that can be configured to provide some per-user information about the operations to the database. WebLogic Data Source Security Options This table describes the features available for WebLogic data sources to configure database security credentials and a brief description.  It also captures information about the compatibility of these features with one another. Feature Description Can be used with Can’t be used with User authentication (default) Default getConnection(user, password) behavior – validate the input and use the user/password in the descriptor. Set client identifier Proxy Session, Identity pooling, Use database credentials Use database credentials Instead of using the credential mapper, use the supplied user and password directly. Set client identifier, Proxy session, Identity pooling User authentication, Multi Data Source Set Client Identifier Set a client identifier property associated with the connection (Oracle and DB2 only). Everything Proxy Session Set a light-weight proxy user associated with the connection (Oracle-only). Set client identifier, Use database credentials Identity pooling, User authentication Identity pooling Heterogeneous pool of connections owned by specified users. Set client identifier, Use database credentials Proxy session, User authentication, Labeling, Multi-datasource, Active GridLink Note that all of these features are available with both XA and non-XA drivers. Currently, the Proxy Session and Use Database Credentials options are on the Oracle tab of the Data Source Configuration tab of the administration console (even though the Use Database Credentials feature is not just for Oracle databases – oops).  The rest of the features are on the Identity tab of the Data Source Configuration tab in the administration console (plan on seeing them all in one place in the future). The subsequent articles will describe these features in more detail.  Keep referring back to this table to see the big picture.

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• Clouds, Clouds, Clouds Everywhere, Not a Drop of Rain!

  - by sxkumar

  At the recently concluded Oracle OpenWorld 2012, the center of discussion was clearly Cloud. Over the five action packed days, I got to meet a large number of customers and most of them had serious interest in all things cloud.  Public Cloud - particularly the Oracle Cloud - clearly got a lot of attention and interest. I think the use cases and the value proposition for public cloud is pretty straight forward. However, when it comes to private cloud, there were some interesting revelations.  Well, I shouldn’t really call them revelations since they are pretty consistent with what I have heard from customers at other conferences as well as during 1:1 interactions. While the interest in enterprise private cloud remains to be very high, only a handful of enterprises have truly embarked on a journey to create what the purists would call true private cloud - with capabilities such as self-service and chargeback/show back. For a large majority, today's reality is simply consolidation and virtualization - and they are quite far off from creating an agile, self-service and transparent IT infrastructure which is what the enterprise cloud is all about.  Even a handful of those who have actually implemented a close-to-real enterprise private cloud have taken an infrastructure centric approach and are seeing only limited business upside. Quite a few were frank enough to admit that chargeback and self-service isn’t something that they see an immediate need for.  This is in quite contrast to the picture being painted by all those surveys out there that show a large number of enterprises having already implemented an enterprise private cloud.  On the face of it, this seems quite contrary to the observations outlined above. So what exactly is the reality? Well, the reality is that there is undoubtedly a huge amount of interest among enterprises about transforming their legacy IT environment - which is often seen as too rigid, too fragmented, and ultimately too expensive - to something more agile, transparent and business-focused. At the same time however, there is a great deal of confusion among CIOs and architects about how to get there. This isn't very surprising given all the buzz and hype surrounding cloud computing. Every IT vendor claims to have the most unique solution and there isn't a single IT product out there that does not have a cloud angle to it. Add to this the chatter on the blogosphere, it will get even a sane mind spinning.  Consequently, most  enterprises are still struggling to fully understand the concept and value of enterprise private cloud.  Even among those who have chosen to move forward relatively early, quite a few have made their decisions more based on vendor influence/preferences rather than what their businesses actually need.  Clearly, there is a disconnect between the promise of the enterprise private cloud and the current adoption trends.  So what is the way forward?  I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. But here is a perspective that many cloud practitioners have found useful and thus worth sharing. To take a step back, the fundamental premise of the enterprise private cloud is IT transformation. It is the quest to create a more agile, transparent and efficient IT infrastructure that is driven more by business needs rather than constrained by operational and procedural inefficiencies. It is the new way of delivering and consuming IT services - where the IT organizations operate more like enablers of  strategic services rather than just being the gatekeepers of IT resources. In an enterprise private cloud environment, IT organizations are expected to empower the end users via self-service access/control and provide the business stakeholders a transparent view of how the resources are being used, what’s the cost of delivering a given service, how well are the customers being served, etc.  But the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just remember how the business users have been at the forefront of public cloud adoption within enterprises and private cloud is no exception.   Such a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative. It requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. In my next blog,  I will share how essential it is for enterprise cloud technology to go hand-in hand with process re-engineering and organization changes to unlock true value of  enterprise cloud. I am sharing a short video from my session "Managing your private Cloud" at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. More videos from this session will be posted at the recently introduced Zero to Cloud resource page. Many other experts of Oracle enterprise private cloud solution will join me on this blog "Zero to Cloud"  and share best practices , deployment tips and information on how to plan, build, deploy, monitor, manage , meter and optimize the enterprise private cloud. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions and having an engaging conversion with you on this blog.

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• Weird vps server issue

  - by anon-user0

  I have an unmanaged linux vps Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). I have LNMP installed. Also php-fpm php-apc, varnish, memcache. I have (or rather had) several live sites on it. under normal load the server uses ~700 mb memory. But since last night its using only 20mb~ memory and a lot of the services seems to be down (according to htop) I only see nginx working and mysql starts up and goes does every few minutes on a loop. Here are some information on the server that might help you help me: root@server:~# uname -a Linux server 2.6.18-308.el5.028stab099.3 #1 SMP Wed Mar 7 15:56:00 MSK 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux - root@server:~# ifconfig -a lo Link encap:Local Loopback LOOPBACK MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) venet0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:127.0.0.2 P-t-P:127.0.0.2 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:12515 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:9541 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:7191214 (7.1 MB) TX bytes:536726 (536.7 KB) venet0:0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:176.31.158.78 P-t-P:176.31.158.78 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1 - root@server:~# netstat -l Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 *:http-alt *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN tcp6 0 0 [::]:http-alt [::]:* LISTEN tcp6 0 0 [::]:ssh [::]:* LISTEN Active UNIX domain sockets (only servers) Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 9307368 @/com/ubuntu/upstart - htop: http://i.stack.imgur.com/NHKYX.png EDIT: Stressed. mind was not working adding log: root@server:~# less /var/log/syslog Jun 27 05:27:42 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 27 05:39:01 server CRON[9298]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -delete) Jun 27 05:40:01 server CRON[9463]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jun 27 05:46:21 server sm-msp-queue[9480]: q5R1R7Ue004056: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:19:14, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=122407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 05:52:39 server sm-msp-queue[9480]: q5QMk7S9009582: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=03:06:32, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=842407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:00:01 server CRON[15671]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jun 27 06:06:22 server sm-msp-queue[15690]: q5R1R7Ue004056: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:39:15, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=212407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:09:01 server CRON[18114]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -delete) Jun 27 06:12:40 server sm-msp-queue[15690]: q5QMk7S9009582: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=03:26:33, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=932407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:20:02 server CRON[21888]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jun 27 06:26:22 server sm-msp-queue[21907]: q5R1R7Ue004056: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:59:15, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=302407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:27:02 server CRON[24021]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jun 27 06:32:40 server sm-msp-queue[21907]: q5QMk7S9009582: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=03:46:33, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=1022407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:39:01 server CRON[27941]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -delete) Jun 27 06:40:02 server CRON[28110]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jun 27 06:46:22 server sm-msp-queue[28125]: q5R1R7Ue004056: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=01:19:15, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=392407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:52:40 server sm-msp-queue[28125]: q5QMk7S9009582: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=04:06:33, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=1112407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 06:52:40 server sm-msp-queue[28125]: q5QMk7S9009582: q5R2e4uo028125: sender notify: Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours Jun 27 06:52:44 server sm-msp-queue[28125]: q5R2e4uo028125: to=root, delay=00:00:04, xdelay=00:00:04, mailer=relay, pri=33690, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:00:02 server CRON[1543]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jun 27 07:06:21 server sm-msp-queue[1560]: q5R2e4uo028125: to=root, delay=00:13:41, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=123690, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:09:01 server CRON[3986]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -delete) Jun 27 07:12:39 server sm-msp-queue[1560]: q5R1R7Ue004056: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=01:45:32, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=482407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:18:57 server sm-msp-queue[1560]: q5QMk7S9009582: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=04:32:50, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=1202407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:20:02 server CRON[7760]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jun 27 07:26:22 server sm-msp-queue[7775]: q5R2e4uo028125: to=root, delay=00:33:42, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=213690, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:27:01 server CRON[9887]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jun 27 07:32:40 server sm-msp-queue[7775]: q5R1R7Ue004056: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=02:05:33, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=572407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:38:58 server sm-msp-queue[7775]: q5QMk7S9009582: to=root, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=04:52:51, xdelay=00:06:18, mailer=relay, pri=1292407, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection timed out with [127.0.0.1] Jun 27 07:39:01 server CRON[13813]: (root) CMD ([ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth : root@server:~# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/simfs 20G 2.3G 18G 12% / - Jun 26 16:22:41 server varnishd[1413]: Child (32425) died signal=3 Jun 26 16:22:41 server varnishd[1413]: child (21687) Started Jun 26 16:22:41 server varnishd[1413]: Child (21687) said Child starts Jun 26 16:22:41 server varnishd[1413]: Child (21687) said SMF.s0 mmap'ed 1073741824 bytes of 1073741824 Jun 26 16:34:28 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 16:54:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 17:14:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 17:34:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 17:54:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 18:14:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 18:34:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 18:54:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 19:14:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 19:34:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 19:54:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 20:14:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 20:34:29 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 20:48:12 server exiting on signal 15 Jun 26 20:51:58 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 26 20:52:01 server varnishd[1324]: Platform: Linux,2.6.18-308.el5.028stab099.3,i686,-sfile,-smalloc,-hcritbit Jun 26 21:11:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 21:31:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 21:51:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 22:11:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 22:31:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 22:51:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 23:11:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 23:31:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 26 23:51:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 00:11:58 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 00:23:42 server exiting on signal 15 Jun 27 02:21:10 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 27 02:21:12 server varnishd[1341]: Platform: Linux,2.6.18-308.el5.028stab099.3,i686,-sfile,-smalloc,-hcritbit Jun 27 02:41:10 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 02:46:41 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 27 03:20:44 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 27 03:20:46 server varnishd[1238]: Platform: Linux,2.6.18-308.el5.028stab099.3,i686,-sfile,-smalloc,-hcritbit Jun 27 03:20:46 server varnishd[1238]: child (1239) Started Jun 27 03:20:46 server varnishd[1238]: Child (1239) said Child starts Jun 27 03:20:46 server varnishd[1238]: Child (1239) said SMF.s0 mmap'ed 1073741824 bytes of 1073741824 Jun 27 03:32:52 server exiting on signal 15 Jun 27 03:33:16 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 27 03:33:31 server varnishd[1372]: Platform: Linux,2.6.18-308.el5.028stab099.3,i686,-sfile,-smalloc,-hcritbit Jun 27 03:53:16 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 04:13:16 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 04:33:16 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 04:53:16 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 05:13:16 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 05:27:42 server syslogd 1.5.0#6ubuntu1: restart. Jun 27 05:53:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 06:13:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 06:33:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 06:53:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 07:13:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 07:33:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 07:53:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 08:13:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 08:33:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 08:53:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 09:13:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 09:33:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 09:53:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 10:13:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 10:33:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 10:53:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 11:13:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 11:33:17 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 11:53:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 12:13:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 12:33:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 12:53:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 13:13:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 13:33:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 13:53:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 14:13:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 14:33:18 server -- MARK -- Jun 27 14:53:18 server -- MARK -- -- root@server:~# cat /var/log/nginx/error.log 2012/06/27 03:32:54 [alert] 1199#0: worker process 1203 exited on signal 9 2012/06/27 03:32:54 [alert] 1199#0: worker process 1200 exited on signal 9 2012/06/27 03:32:54 [alert] 1199#0: worker process 1201 exited on signal 9 2012/06/27 03:32:54 [alert] 1199#0: worker process 1202 exited on signal 9 root@server:~# cat /var/log/nginx/access.log 31.210.99.87 - - [27/Jun/2012:09:09:08 +0400] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 172 "-" "-" 88.191.138.103 - - [27/Jun/2012:13:27:08 +0400] "GET /cms/cmx.jsp HTTP/1.1" 301 184 "-" "-" 88.191.138.103 - - [27/Jun/2012:13:27:08 +0400] "GET /iesvc/iesvc.jsp HTTP/1.1" 301 184 "-" "-" 88.191.138.103 - - [27/Jun/2012:13:27:08 +0400] "GET /cmd2/index.jsp HTTP/1.1" 301 184 "-" "-" 88.191.138.103 - - [27/Jun/2012:13:27:09 +0400] "GET /cmd/index.jsp HTTP/1.1" 301 184 "-" "-" 58.97.147.197 - - [27/Jun/2012:17:17:19 +0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 301 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/536.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/19.0.1084.56 Safari/536.5" 58.97.147.197 - - [27/Jun/2012:17:17:37 +0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 301 184 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/536.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/19.0.1084.56 Safari/536.5" 58.97.147.197 - - [27/Jun/2012:17:17:38 +0400] "-" 400 0 "-" "-" 58.97.147.197 - - [27/Jun/2012:17:17:38 +0400] "-" 400 0 "-" "-" 58.97.147.197 - - [27/Jun/2012:17:17:48 +0400] "-" 400 0 "-" "-" - root@server:~# cat /var/log/daemon.log Jun 26 20:48:10 server xinetd[1177]: Exiting... Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/daytime [file=/etc/xinetd.d/daytime] [line=28] Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/discard [file=/etc/xinetd.d/discard] [line=26] Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/echo [file=/etc/xinetd.d/echo] [line=25] Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/time [file=/etc/xinetd.d/time] [line=26] Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing chargen Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing chargen Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing daytime Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing daytime Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing discard Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing discard Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing echo Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing echo Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing time Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: removing time Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: xinetd Version 2.3.14 started with libwrap loadavg options compiled in. Jun 26 20:51:58 server xinetd[1174]: Started working: 0 available services Jun 26 20:52:01 server vnstatd[1330]: vnStat daemon 1.11 started. Jun 26 20:52:01 server vnstatd[1330]: Monitoring: venet0 Jun 27 00:23:41 server xinetd[1174]: Exiting... Jun 27 02:21:12 server vnstatd[1349]: vnStat daemon 1.11 started. Jun 27 02:21:12 server vnstatd[1349]: Monitoring: venet0 Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: attribute: disable should not be in default section [file=/etc/xinetd.conf] [line=12] Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/chargen [file=/etc/xinetd.conf] [line=15] Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/daytime [file=/etc/xinetd.d/daytime] [line=28] Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/discard [file=/etc/xinetd.d/discard] [line=26] Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/echo [file=/etc/xinetd.d/echo] [line=25] Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: Reading included configuration file: /etc/xinetd.d/time [file=/etc/xinetd.d/time] [line=26] Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing chargen Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing chargen Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing daytime Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing daytime Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing discard Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing discard Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing echo Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing echo Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing time Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: removing time Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: xinetd Version 2.3.14 started with libwrap loadavg options compiled in. Jun 27 03:20:44 server xinetd[1166]: Started working: 0 available services Jun 27 03:20:46 server vnstatd[1249]: vnStat daemon 1.11 started. Jun 27 03:20:46 server vnstatd[1249]: Monitoring: venet0 Jun 27 03:32:41 server xinetd[1166]: Exiting... Jun 27 03:33:32 server vnstatd[1380]: vnStat daemon 1.11 started. Jun 27 03:33:32 server vnstatd[1380]: Monitoring: venet0 root@server:~# - Anything else you need let me know

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