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  • Professional Scrum Developer (.NET) Training in London

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    On the 26th - 30th July in Microsoft’s offices in London Adam Cogan from SSW will be presenting the first Professional Scrum Developer course in the UK. I will be teaching this course along side Adam and it is a fantastic experience. You are split into teams and go head-to-head to deliver units of potentially shippable work in four two hour sprints. The Professional Scrum Developer course is the only course endorsed by both Microsoft and Ken Schwaber and they have worked together very effectively in brining this course to fruition. This course is the brain child of Richard Hundhausen, a Microsoft Regional Director, and both Adam and I attending the Trainer Prep in Sydney when he was there earlier this year. He is a fantastic trainer and no matter where you do this course you can be safe in the knowledge that he has trained and vetted all of the teachers. A tools version of Ken if you will Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide What is the Professional Scrum Developer course all about? Professional Scrum Developer course is a unique and intensive five-day experience for software developers. The course guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using the Scrum framework, Visual Studio 2010, and modern software engineering practices. Attendees will work in self-organizing, self-managing teams using a common instance of Team Foundation Server 2010. Who should attend this course? This course is suitable for any member of a software development team – architect, programmer, database developer, tester, etc. Entire teams are encouraged to attend and experience the course together, but individuals are welcome too. Attendees will self-organize to form cross-functional Scrum teams. These teams require an aggregate of skills specific to the selected case study. Please see the last page of this document for specific details. Product Owners, ScrumMasters, and other stakeholders are welcome too, but keep in mind that everyone who attends will be expected to commit to work and pull their weight on a Scrum team. What should you know by the end of the course? Scrum will be experienced through a combination of lecture, demonstration, discussion, and hands-on exercises. Attendees will learn how to do Scrum correctly while being coached and critiqued by the instructor, in the following topic areas: Form effective teams Explore and understand legacy “Brownfield” architecture Define quality attributes, acceptance criteria, and “done” Create automated builds How to handle software hotfixes Verify that bugs are identified and eliminated Plan releases and sprints Estimate product backlog items Create and manage a sprint backlog Hold an effective sprint review Improve your process by using retrospectives Use emergent architecture to avoid technical debt Use Test Driven Development as a design tool Setup and leverage continuous integration Use Test Impact Analysis to decrease testing times Manage SQL Server development in an Agile way Use .NET and T-SQL refactoring effectively Build, deploy, and test SQL Server databases Create and manage test plans and cases Create, run, record, and play back manual tests Setup a branching strategy and branch code Write more maintainable code Identify and eliminate people and process dysfunctions Inspect and improve your team’s software development process What does the week look like? This course is a mix of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, simulation, and hands-on software development. The bulk of the course will be spent working as a team on a case study application delivering increments of new functionality in mini-sprints. Here is the week at a glance: Monday morning and most of the day Friday will be spent with the computers powered off, so you can focus on sharpening your game of Scrum and avoiding the common pitfalls when implementing it. The Sprints Timeboxing is a critical concept in Scrum as well as in this course. We expect each team and student to understand and obey all of the timeboxes. The timebox duration will always be clearly displayed during each activity. Expect the instructor to enforce it. Each of the ½ day sprints will roughly follow this schedule: Component Description Minutes Instruction Presentation and demonstration of new and relevant tools & practices 60 Sprint planning meeting Product owner presents backlog; each team commits to delivering functionality 10 Sprint planning meeting Each team determines how to build the functionality 10 The Sprint The team self-organizes and self-manages to complete their tasks 120 Sprint Review meeting Each team will present their increment of functionality to the other teams = 30 Sprint Retrospective A group retrospective meeting will be held to inspect and adapt 10 Each team is expected to self-organize and manage their own work during the sprint. Pairing is highly encouraged. The instructor/product owner will be available if there are questions or impediments, but will be hands-off by default. You should be prepared to communicate and work with your team members in order to achieve your sprint goal. If you have development-related questions or get stuck, your partner or team should be your first level of support. Module 1: INTRODUCTION This module provides a chance for the attendees to get to know the instructors as well as each other. The Professional Scrum Developer program, as well as the day by day agenda, will be explained. Finally, the Scrum team will be selected and assembled so that the forming, storming, norming, and performing can begin. Trainer and student introductions Professional Scrum Developer program Agenda Logistics Team formation Retrospective Module 2: SCRUMDAMENTALS This module provides a level-setting understanding of the Scrum framework including the roles, timeboxes, and artifacts. The team will then experience Scrum firsthand by simulating a multi-day sprint of product development, including planning, review, and retrospective meetings. Scrum overview Scrum roles Scrum timeboxes (ceremonies) Scrum artifacts Simulation Retrospective It’s required that you read Ken Schwaber’s Scrum Guide in preparation for this module and course. MODULE 3: IMPLEMENTING SCRUM IN VISUAL STUDIO 2010 This module demonstrates how to implement Scrum in Visual Studio 2010 using a Scrum process template*. The team will learn the mapping between the Scrum concepts and how they are implemented in the tool. After connecting to the shared Team Foundation Server, the team members will then return to the simulation – this time using Visual Studio to manage their product development. Mapping Scrum to Visual Studio 2010 User Story work items Task work items Bug work items Demonstration Simulation Retrospective Module 4: THE CASE STUDY In this module the team is introduced to their problem domain for the week. A kickoff meeting by the Product Owner (the instructor) will set the stage for the why and what that will take during the upcoming sprints. The team will then define the quality attributes of the project and their definition of “done.” The legacy application code will be downloaded, built, and explored, so that any bugs can be discovered and reported. Introduction to the case study Download the source code, build, and explore the application Define the quality attributes for the project Define “done” How to file effective bugs in Visual Studio 2010 Retrospective Module 5: HOTFIX This module drops the team directly into a Brownfield (legacy) experience by forcing them to analyze the existing application’s architecture and code in order to locate and fix the Product Owner’s high-priority bug(s). The team will learn best practices around finding, testing, fixing, validating, and closing a bug. How to use Architecture Explorer to visualize and explore Create a unit test to validate the existence of a bug Find and fix the bug Validate and close the bug Retrospective Module 6: PLANNING This short module introduces the team to release and sprint planning within Visual Studio 2010. The team will define and capture their goals as well as other important planning information. Release vs. Sprint planning Release planning and the Product Backlog Product Backlog prioritization Acceptance criteria and tests Sprint planning and the Sprint Backlog Creating and linking Sprint tasks Retrospective At this point the team will have the knowledge of Scrum, Visual Studio 2010, and the case study application to begin developing increments of potentially shippable functionality that meet their definition of done. Module 7: EMERGENT ARCHITECTURE This module introduces the architectural practices and tools a team can use to develop a valid design on which to develop new functionality. The teams will learn how Scrum supports good architecture and design practices. After the discussion, the teams will be presented with the product owner’s prioritized backlog so that they may select and commit to the functionality they can deliver in this sprint. Architecture and Scrum Emergent architecture Principles, patterns, and practices Visual Studio 2010 modeling tools UML and layer diagrams SPRINT 1 Retrospective Module 8: TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT This module introduces Test Driven Development as a design tool and how to implement it using Visual Studio 2010. To maximize productivity and quality, a Scrum team should setup Continuous Integration to regularly build every team member’s code changes and run regression tests. Refactoring will also be defined and demonstrated in combination with Visual Studio’s Test Impact Analysis to efficiently re-run just those tests which were impacted by refactoring. Continuous integration Team Foundation Build Test Driven Development (TDD) Refactoring Test Impact Analysis SPRINT 2 Retrospective Module 9: AGILE DATABASE DEVELOPMENT This module lets the SQL Server database developers in on a little secret – they can be agile too. By using the database projects in Visual Studio 2010, the database developers can join the rest of the team. The students will see how to apply Agile database techniques within Visual Studio to support the SQL Server 2005/2008/2008R2 development lifecycle. Agile database development Visual Studio database projects Importing schema and scripts Building and deploying Generating data Unit testing SPRINT 3 Retrospective Module 10: SHIP IT Teams need to know that just because they like the functionality doesn’t mean the Product Owner will. This module revisits acceptance criteria as it pertains to acceptance testing. By refining acceptance criteria into manual test steps, team members can execute the tests, recording the results and reporting bugs in a number of ways. Manual tests will be defined and executed using the Microsoft Test Manager tool. As the Sprint completes and an increment of functionality is delivered, the team will also learn why and when they should create a branch of the codeline. Acceptance criteria Testing in Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft Test Manager Writing and running manual tests Branching SPRINT 4 Retrospective Module 11: OVERCOMING DYSFUNCTION This module introduces the many types of people, process, and tool dysfunctions that teams face in the real world. Many dysfunctions and scenarios will be identified, along with ideas and discussion for how a team might mitigate them. This module will enable you and your team to move toward independence and improve your game of Scrum when you depart class. Scrum-butts and flaccid Scrum Best practices working as a team Team challenges ScrumMaster challenges Product Owner challenges Stakeholder challenges Course Retrospective What will be expected of you and you team? This is a unique course in that it’s technically-focused, team-based, and employs timeboxes. It demands that the members of the teams self-organize and self-manage their own work to collaboratively develop increments of software. All attendees must commit to: Pay attention to all lectures and demonstrations Participate in team and group discussions Work collaboratively with other team members Obey the timebox for each activity Commit to work and do your best to deliver All teams should have these skills: Understanding of Scrum Familiarity with Visual Studio 201 C#, .NET 4.0 & ASP.NET 4.0 experience*  SQL Server 2008 development experience Software testing experience * Check with the instructor ahead of time for the exact technologies Self-organising teams Another unique attribute of this course is that it’s a technical training class being delivered to teams of developers, not pairs, and not individuals. Ideally, your actual software development team will attend the training to ensure that all necessary skills are covered. However, if you wish to attend an open enrolment course alone or with just a couple of colleagues, realize that you may be placed on a team with other attendees. The instructor will do his or her best to ensure that each team is cross-functional to tackle the case study, but there are no guarantees. You may be required to try a new role, learn a new skill, or pair with somebody unfamiliar to you. This is just good Scrum! Who should NOT take this course? Because of the nature of this course, as explained above, certain types of people should probably not attend this course: Students requiring command and control style instruction – there are no prescriptive/step-by-step (think traditional Microsoft Learning) labs in this course Students who are unwilling to work within a timebox Students who are unwilling to work collaboratively on a team Students who don’t have any skill in any of the software development disciplines Students who are unable to commit fully to their team – not only will this diminish the student’s learning experience, but it will also impact their team’s learning experience Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide Technorati Tags: Scrum,SSW,Pro Scrum Dev

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 11, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Good To Know - Conflicting View Objects and Shared Entity | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares his thoughts—and a sample application—dealing with an "interesting ADF behavior" encountered over the weekend. Patching Oracle Exalogic - Updating Linux on the Compute Nodes - Part 1 | Jos Nijhoff Jos Nijhoff launches a series of posts the deal with "patching the operating system on the modified Sun Fire X4170 M2 servers...dubbed compute nodes in Exalogic terminology." Expanding on requestaudit - Tracing who is doing what...and for how long | Kyle Hatlestad "One of the most helpful tracing sections in WebCenter Content (and one that is on by default) is the requestaudit tracing," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Kyle Hatlestad. Get up close and technical in his post. Oracle Data Integrator Presentation from NYOUG Webinar | Gurcan Orhan Oracle ACE Director and award-winning data warehouse architect Gurcan Orhan shares his presentation from the recent NYOUG LI SIG. SOA 11g Technology Adapters – ECID Propagation | Greg Mally "Many SOA Suite 11g deployments include the use of the technology adapters for various activities including integration with FTP, database, and files to name a few," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Greg Mally. "Although the integrations with these adapters are easy and feature rich, there can be some challenges from the operations perspective." Greg's post focuses on technical tips for dealing with one of these challenges. Missing Duties for RUP3 upgrade in Fusion Applications Richard from the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team explains how to safely apply policy store changes in thirteen easy steps. Thought for the Day "Well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • Make it simple. Make it work.

    - by Sean Feldman
    In 2010 I had an experience to work for a business that had lots of challenges. One of those challenges was luck of technical architecture and business value recognition which translated in spending enormous amount of manpower and money on creating C++ solutions for desktop client w/o using .NET to minimize “footprint” (2#) of the client application in deployment environments. This was an awkward experience, considering that C++ custom code was created from scratch to make clients talk to .NET backend while simple having .NET as a dependency would cut time to market by at least 50% (and I’m downplaying the estimate). Regardless, recent Microsoft announcement about .NET vNext has reminded me that experience and how short sighted architecture at that company was. Investment made into making C++ client that cannot be maintained internally by team due to it’s specialization in .NET have created a situation where code to maintain will be more brutal over the time and  number of developers understanding it will be going and shrinking. Not only that. The ability to go cross-platform (#3) and performance achievement gained with native compilation (#1) would be an immediate pay back. Why am I saying all this? To make a simple point to myself and remind again – when working on a product that needs to get to the market, make it simple, make it work, and then see how technology is changing and how you can adopt. Simplicity will not let you down. But a complex solution will always do.

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  • Partner Webcast - Extend Your Application Reach to Mobile Devices. The Fusion Way!

    - by Thanos
    Mobile access to enterprise applications is fast becoming a standard part of corporate life. Such applications increase organizational efficiency because mobile devices are more readily at hand than their desktop counterparts. However, the speed with which mobile platforms are evolving creates challenges as enterprises define their mobile strategies. Extending Oracle Enterprise and Fusion Applications to mobile devices comes natural with Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Mobile, which provides all the necessary tools, services, and infrastructure to protect against technology shifts. Oracle ADF Mobile, part of Oracle ADF - the strategic, standards based framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware, is an HTML5 and Java mobile development framework that enables developers to build and extend enterprise applications for iOS and Android from a single code base. Based on a hybrid mobile architecture, ADF Mobile supports access to native device services, enables offline applications and protects enterprise investments from future technology shifts. Oracle ADF Mobile is part of Oracle ADF, the strategic, standards based framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Join us to find out more about Oracle ADF Mobile and how to extend your applications to tablets & mobiles building the next generation mobile applications. Agenda: Enterprise Challenges & Mobile Computing Oracle ADF Mobile Features & Benefits Visual and Declarative Development Develop Once and Deploy Java Technology & Runtime Architecture Mobile Optimized User Experience Device Services Offline Support Authentication & Security Live Demonstration Q&A Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour Register Now! For any questions please contact us at [email protected] Visit our ISV Migration Center blog Or Follow us @oracleimc to learn more on Oracle Technologies, upcoming partner webcasts and events. Existing content available YouTube - SlideShare - Oracle Mix.

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  • Partner Webcast - Oracle SOA Suite 12c: Connect 4 Cloud, Mobile, IoT with On-premise

    - by Thanos Terentes Printzios
    The pace of new business projects continues to grow from increasing customer self-service to seamlessly connecting all your back office and in-the-field applications. At the same time increased integration complexity may seem inevitable as organizations are suddenly faced with the requirement to support three new integration challenges:  » Cloud Integration - integrate with the cloud, rapidly integrate a growing list of cloud applications with existing applications » Mobile Integration - the urgency to mobile-enable existing applications » IoT Integration - begin development on the latest trend of connecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices to your existing infrastructure. Oracle SOA Suite 12c, the latest version of the industry’s most complete and unified application integration and SOA solution, aims to simplify, accelerate and optimize integrations. Oracle SOA Suite 12c and its associated products, Oracle Managed File Transfer, Oracle Cloud and Application Adapters, B2B and healthcare integration, offer the industry’s most highly integrated platform for solving the increased integration challenges. Oracle SOA Suite 12c is a complete, integrated and best-of-breed platform. It enables next generation integration capabilities through: · A unified toolset for the development of services and composite applications.· A standards-based platform that is service enabled and easily consumable by modern web applications, allowing enterprises to quickly and easily adapt to changes in their business and IT environments.· Greater visibility, controls and analytics to govern how services and processes are deployed, reused and changed across their entire lifecycle. Join us to find out more about the new features of Oracle SOA Suite 12c and how it enables you to reduce time to market for new project integration and to reduce integration cost and complexity. Oracle SOA Suite is the ability to simplify by integrating the disparate requirements of cloud, mobile, and IoT devices with existing on-premise applications. Agenda: Oracle SOA Suite 12c new Features Cloud Integration Mobile Enablement Internet of Things (IoT) Summary - Q&A Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Presenter: Heba Fouad – FMW Specialist, Technology Adoption, ECEMEA Partner Business Development Date: Thursday, August 28th, 10pm CEST (8am UTC/11am EEST)Duration: 1 hour Register Here For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com

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  • Good Scoop: The PeopleSoft/IBM Backstory

    - by [email protected]
    By Brian Dayton on April 12, 2010 11:15 AM Sometimes you're searching for something online and you find an unrelated, bonus nugget. Last week I stumbled across an interesting blog post from Chris Heller of a PeopleSoft consulting shop in San Ramon, CA called Grey Sparling. I don't know these guys. But Chris, who apparently used to work on the PeopleTools team, wrote a great article on a pre-acquisition, would-be deal between IBM and PeopleSoft that would have standardized PeopleSoft on IBM technology. The behind-the-scenes perspective is interesting. His commentary on the challenges that the company and PeopleSoft customers would have encountered if the deal had gone through was also interesting: · "No common ownership. It's hard enough to get large groups of people to work together when they work for the same company, but with two separate companies it is much, much harder. Even within Oracle, progress on Fusion applications was slow until Thomas Kurian took over Fusion applications in addition to Fusion middleware." · "No customer buy-in. PeopleSoft customers weren't asking for a conversion to WebSphere, so the fact that doing that could have helped PeopleSoft stay independent wouldn't have meant much to them, especially since the cost of moving to whatever a "PeopleSoft built on WebSphere" would have been significant." · "No executive buy-in. This is related to the previous point, but it's worth calling out separately. If Oracle had walked away and the deal with IBM had gone through, and PeopleSoft customers got put through the wringer as part of WebSphere move, all of the PeopleSoft project teams would be put in the awkward position of explaining to their management why these additional costs and headaches were happening. Essentially they would need to "sell" the partnership internally to their own management team. That's not a fun conversation to have." I'm not surprised that something like this was in the works. But I did find the inside scoop and Heller's perspective on the challenges particularly interesting. Especially the advantages of aligning development of applications and infrastructure development under one roof. Here's a link to the whole blog entry.

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  • New York Coherence Special Interest Group, Jan 13 2011

    - by ruma.sanyal
    Please join us for our next exciting event. We are pleased to announce that Aleksander Seovic, Craig Blitz and Madhav Sathe will be presenting to our group. Presentation details are provided below. Time: 3:00pm - 6:00pm ET Where: Oracle Office, Room 30076, 520 Madison Avenue, 30th Floor, NY We will be providing snacks and beverages. Register! - Registration is required for building security. Presentations:? Getting the Most out of your Coherence Cluster with Oracle Enterprise Manager - Madhav Sathe, Principal Product Manager (Oracle) How To Build a Coherence Practice - Craig Blitz, Senior Principal Product Manager (Oracle) Congratulations on your decision to buy Oracle Coherence. We believe you have chosen an excellent product. Now the hard work begins. To help you get the most out of Coherence from both a project and enterprise perspective, this talk will introduce you to resources available from Oracle and through the Coherence ecosystem. The talk will also discuss best organizational practices you can implement to ensure success with Coherence. The speaker will use his significant experience with customers' Coherence deployment to show what works and what doesn't in practice. Coherence in the Cloud - Aleksandar Seovic, Founder and Managing Director (S4HC) Amazon Web Services cloud provides great and affordable foundation for the next generation of scalable web applications. Application servers, load balancers, and scalable storage can be provisioned in a matter of minutes and used for pennies an hour. However, AWS cloud also brings a set of new architectural challenges, such as transient file systems and dynamically assigned IP addresses. In this session we will look at a real-world example of how Coherence can be used to address some of these challenges and show why the combination of AWS cloud and Coherence has a great synergy.

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  • Adopting Technologies for the Sake of Technologies

    - by shiju
    Unlike other engineering industries, the software engineering industry is really lacking maturity. The lack of maturity can see in different aspects of entire software development life cycle. I think other engineering industries are well organised and structured with common, proven engineering practices. The software engineering industry is greatly a diverse industry with different operating systems, and variety of development platforms, programming languages, frameworks and tools. Now these days, people are going behind the hypes and intellectual thoughts without understanding their core business problems and adopting technologies and practices for the sake of technologies and practices and simply becoming a “poster child” of technologies and practices. Understanding the core business problem and providing best, solid solution with a platform neutral approach, will give you more business values and ROI, instead of blindly adopting technologies and tailor-made your applications for the sake of technologies and practices. People have been simply migrating their solutions in favour of new technologies and different versions of frameworks without any business need. The “Pepsi Challenge” in the Software Development  Pepsi Challenge marketing campaign of the 1980s was a popular and very interesting marketing promotion in which people taste one cup of Pepsi and another cup with Coca Cola. In the taste test, more than 50% of people were preferred Pepsi  over Coca Cola. The success story behind the Pepsi was more sweetness contains in the Pepsi cola. They have simply added more sugar and more people preferred more sweet flavour. You can’t simply identify the better one after sipping one cup of cola based on the sweetness which contains. These things have been happening in the software industry for choosing development frameworks and technologies. People have been simply choosing frameworks based on the initial sugary feeling without understanding its core strengths and weakness. The sugary framework might be more harmful when you develop real-world systems. There is not any silver bullet for solving all kind of problems and frameworks and tools do have strengths and weakness. So it would be better to understand their strength and weakness. And please keep in mind that you have to develop real apps to understand the real capabilities and weakness of a framework. Evaluating a technology based on few blog posts will harm your projects and these bloggers might be lacking real-world experience with the framework. The Problem with Align a Development Practice with Tools Recently I have observed a discussion in a group where one guy asked suggestions for practicing Continuous Delivery (CD) as part of the agile based application engineering. Then the discussion quickly went to using and choosing a Continuous Integration (CI) tool and different people suggested different Continuous Integration (CI) tools for simply practicing Continuous Delivery. If you have worked with core agile engineering practices, you could clearly know that the real essence of agile is neither choosing a tool nor choosing a process. By simply choosing CI tool from a particular vendor will not ensure that you are delivering an evolving software based on customer feedback. You have to understand the real essence of a engineering practice and choose a right tool for practicing it instead of simply focus on a particular tool for a practicing an development practice. If you want to adopt a practice, you need a solid understanding on it with its real essence where tools are just helping us for better automation. Adopting New Technologies for the Sake of Technologies The another problem is that developers have been a tendency to adopt new technologies and simply migrating their existing apps to new technologies. It is okay if your existing system is having problem  with a technology stack or or maintainability challenge with existing solution, and moving to new technology for solving the current problems. We have been adopting new technologies for solving new challenges like solving the scalability challenges when the application or user bases is growing unpredictably. Please keep in mind that all new technologies will become old after working with it for few years. The below Facebook status update of Janakiraman, expresses the attitude of a typical customer. For an example, Node.js is becoming a hottest buzzword in the software industry and many developers are trying to adopt Node.js for their apps. The important thing is that Node.js is a minimalist framework that does some great things for some problems, but it’s not a silver bullet. I have been also working with Node.js which is good for some problems, but really bad for choosing it for all kind of problems. By adopting new technologies for new projects is good if we could get real business values from it because newer framework would solve some existing well known problems and provide better solutions where it can incorporate good solutions for the latest challenges . But adopting a new technology for the sake of new technology is really bad idea. Another example is JavaScript is getting lot of attention so that lot of developers are developing heavy JavaScript centric web apps. First, they will adopt a client-side JavaScript MV* framework from AngularJS, Ember, Backbone etc, and develop a Single Page App(SPA) where they are repeating the mistakes we did in the past with server-side. The mistakes we did in the server-side is transforming to client-side. The problem is that people are just adopting new technologies, but not improving their solutions. I predict that many Single Page App will suck in the future. We need a hybrid approach where we should be able to leverage both server-side and client-side for developing next-generation web apps. The another problem is that if you like a particular framework, use it for all kind of apps. In the past, I know some Silverlight passionate guys were tried to use that framework for all kind of apps including larger line of business apps. And these days developers are migrating their existing Silverlight apps in favour of HTML5 buzzword. So the real question is, what is the business values we are getting from these apps when we are developing it for the sake of a particular technology instead of business need. The another problem is that our solutions consultants are trying to provide unnecessary solutions for the sake of a particular technology or for a hype. For an example, Big Data solutions are great for solving the problem of three Vs : volume, velocity and variety. But trying to put this for every application will make problems. Let’s say, there is a small web site running with limited budget and saying that we need a recommendation engine for the web site with a Hadoop based solution with a 16 node cluster, would be really horrible. If we really need a Hadoop based solution, got for it, but trying to put this for all application would be a big disaster. It would be great if could understand the core business problems first, and later choose a right framework for providing solutions for the actual business problem, instead of trying to provide so many solutions. The Problem with Tied Up to a Platform Vendor Some organizations and teams are tied up with a particular platform vendor where they don’t want to use any product other than their preferred or existing platform vendor. They will accept any product provided by the vendor regardless of its capability. This will lets you some benefits regards with integration and collaboration of different products provided by the same vendor, but it will loose your opportunity to provide better solution for your business problems. For a real world sample scenario, lot of companies have been using SAP for their ERP solutions. When they are thinking about mobility or thinking about developing hybrid mobile apps, they can easily find out a framework from SAP. SAP provides a framework for HTML 5 based UI development named SAPUI5. If you are simply adopting that framework only based for the preference of existing platform vendor, you might be loose different opportunities for providing better solution. Initially you might enjoy the sugary feeling provided by the platform vendor, but you have to think about developing apps which should be capable for solving future challenges. I am not saying that any framework is not good and I believe that all frameworks are good over another one for solving at least one problem. My point is that we should not tied up with any specific platform vendor unless your organization is having resource availability problems. Being Polyglot for Providing Right Solutions The modern software engineering industry is greatly diverse with different tools and platforms. Lot of open source frameworks and new programming languages have been releasing to the developer community, where choosing the right platform without any biased opinion, is really a difficult task. But it would really great if we could develop an attitude with platform neutral mindset and being a polyglot developer for providing better solutions based on the actual business problems. IMHO, we should learn a new programming language and a new framework every year. This will improve the quality of our developer capabilities and also improve the quality of our primary programming language skills. Being polyglot for individual developers and organizational teams will give you greater opportunity to your developer experience and also for your applications. Organizations can analyse their business problem without tied with any technology and later they can provide solutions by choosing different platform and tools. Summary    In this blog post, what I was trying to say that we should not tied up or biased with any development platform, technology, vendor or programming language and we should not adopt technologies and practices for the sake of technologies. If we are adopting a technology or a practice for the sake of it, we are simply becoming a “poster child” of the technology and practice. We should not become a poster child of other people’s intellectual thoughts and theories, instead of it we should become solutions developers and solutions consultants where we should be able to provide better solutions for the business problems. Being a polyglot developer is a good idea for improving your developer skills which lets you provide better solutions for the business problems. The most important thing is that we should become platform neutral developers where our passion should be for providing brilliant solutions. It would be great if we could provide minimalist, pragmatic business solutions. You can follow me on Twitter @shijucv

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  • EPPM Webcast Series Part II: Build – Consistently delivering successful projects to ensure financial success

    - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP
    Oracle Primavera invites you to the second in a series of three webcasts linking Enterprise Project Portfolio Management with enhanced operational performance and better financial results. Join us for the next installment of our 'Plan, Build, Operate' webcast series, as we look to address the challenges organizations face during the execution phase of their projects. Webcast II: Build – Consistently delivering successful projects to ensure financial success. This webcast will look at Three key questions: How do you maintain consistency in delivery whilst maintaining visibility and control? How do you deal with project risk and mitigation strategies? How do you ensure accurate reporting? Hear from Geoff Roberts, Industry Strategist from Oracle Primavera. Geoff will look at how solutions can help to address the challenges around: Visibility and governance Communication and complex coordination Collecting and reporting progress Measuring and reporting It is imperative that organizations understand the impact projects can have on their business. Attend this webcast and understand how consistently delivering successful projects is vital to the financial success of an asset intensive organisation. Register today! Please forward this invite to your colleagues who you think may benefit from attending.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 10-18-2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference | WebLogic Partner Community EMEA "The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. The yearly AMIS Review from Oracle Open World and JavaOne – slides available | Lucas Jellema Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema presents the complete collection of presentations from the latest edition of AMIS Technology's annual review of "news, trends, announcements, special finds and interesting rumors" from Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne. Fujitsu: Cloud Building with Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c In this video, Oracle ACE Director Debra Lilley from Fujitsu discusses Cloud Services delivery using Oracle VM 3 and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Webcast: ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter – October 30 Learn how ResCare solves content lifecycle challenges with Oracle WebCenter. Speakers: Joe Lichtefeld, VP of Application Services & PMO, ResCare Wayne Boerger, Product Manager, TEAM Informatics Doug Thompson, EVP Global Development, TEAM Informatics Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET Thought for the Day "There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience." — Archibald McLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) Source: softwarequotes.com

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  • Portal And Content – Introduction (1 of 7)

    - by Stefan Krantz
    The coming post over the next two months will be included in a new series. The idea is to help the reader to understand how to enable a versatile and manageable portal. Each post will go through a specific use case or lifecycle group of events that a Content Driven Portal requires the development team to consider. The current planning is to deliver following subjects, each topic will be enclosed in a separate blog post. Introduction – Introduction to the series of posts and what to expect at the end of the series Components, part 1 – UCM, Site Studio and high level introduction to content templates Components, part 2 – Page Templates and  Navigation model Components, part 3 – Applied Customization Framework for Content Presenter Taskflows Scenario 1 – Enable a Portal for runtime administration Scenario 2 – Enable a Portal for Internationalization Scenario 3 – Enable a Portal for Content Workflows Background This post series has been issued to help customers, partners and consultants to understand the concept of a WebCenter Portal project where the main focus or a majority of the portal has content interaction. Today the most portal installations Oracle WebCenter Portal is involved in have a vast majority of content based pages. Many of the Portal projects have or will run into challenges, to mitigate these challenges the portal and content lifecycle has to be well designed. The coming posts will address the main components that should be involved when creating such scenarios; it will also go into details on the process by describing three solution scenarios. The aim with the scenarios is to give the reader a more hands on understanding of the concept of building and architecting a Content Driven Portal. The selected scenarios are selected based on the most common use cases that we have identified until today.

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  • Why CFOs Should Care About Big Data

    - by jmorourke
    The topic of “big data” clearly has reached a tipping point in 2012.  With plenty of coverage over the past few years in the IT press, we are now starting to see the topic of “big data” covered in mainstream business press, including a cover story in the October 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review.  To help customers understand the challenges of managing “big data” as well as the opportunities that can be created by leveraging “big data”, Oracle has recently run and published the results of a customer survey, as well as white papers and articles on this topic.  Most recently, we commissioned a white paper titled “Mastering Big Data: CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity”. The premise here is that “big data” is not just a topic that CIOs should pay attention to, but one that CFOs should understand and take advantage of as well.  Clearly, whoever masters the art and science of big data will be positioned for competitive advantage in their industries or markets.  That’s why smart CFOs are taking control of big data and business analytics projects, not just to uncover new ways to drive growth in a slowing global economy, but also to be a catalyst for change in the enterprise.  With an increasing number of CFOs now responsible for overseeing IT investments and providing strategic insight to the board, CFOs will be increasingly called upon to take a leadership role in assessing the value of “big data” initiatives, building on their traditional skills in reporting and helping managers analyze data to support decision making. Here’s a link to the white paper referenced above, which is posted on the Oracle C-Central/CFO web site, as well as some other resources that can help CFOs master the topic of “big data”: White Paper “Mastering Big Data:  CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity CFO Market Watch article:  “Does Big Data Affect the CFO?” Oracle Survey Report:  “From Overload to Impact – An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Industry Challenges” Upcoming Big Data Webcast with Andrew McAfee Here’s a general link to Oracle C-Central/CFO in case you want to start there: www.oracle.com/c-central/cfo Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need additional information:  [email protected]

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  • Podcast Show Notes: Architect Meet-Up

    - by Bob Rhubart
    What happens when you get bunch of architects together and just let them talk? The latest ArchBeat Podcast features just such a conversation. The four participants in this conversation responded to a general invitation to my list of some three dozen Usual Suspects to join me on Skype for what I call a virtual meet-up. That conversation took place on March 20, 2012. The Participants Basheer Khan: Oracle ACE Director; Founder, President & CEO at Innowave Technology Lucas Jellema: Oracle ACE Director; CTO of AMIS Services Eric Stephens: a director of Enterprise Architecture at Oracle Derek Sharpe: director of Oracle’s Fusion Middleware Architecture Team The Conversation Listen to Part 1: Meeting the Mobile Challenge The conversation focuses on Oracle ADF Mobile and the challenges of defining a mobile strategy for the enterprise. Listen to Part 2: Mobile Security, Availability, and Usability (April 4) The conversation turns to the security, availability, and usability challenges in the evolution of the mobile enterprise. Listen to Part 3 Evolving Software Development Roles (April 11) The panel closes out the discussion with a look at the interplay between developers and architects, and the evolving nature of both roles.

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  • EMEA OTN Virtual Technology Summit - Hands-On Learning

    - by Thanos Terentes Printzios
    The Oracle Technology Network (OTN) is excited to invite you to our first Virtual Technology Summit. EMEA – Thursday July 10th / 9am to 1pm BST / 10am – 2pm CET / 12pm to 4pm MSK / GST - Register Now Learn first hand from Oracle ACEs, Java Champions, and Oracle product experts, as they share their insight and expertise on using Oracle technologies to meet today’s IT challenges. This interactive, online event offers four technical tracks, each with a unique focus on specific tools, technologies, and tips in these focus areas. Java – Big Trends and Technologies – Java lets you mine Big Data, build robust apps with HTML5, JavaScript and Java EE, and expand into the Internet of Things. Experts will present and you’ll be able to chat with them live online. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the Java community. Systems – OS Tips and Tricks for Sysadmins – Learn first hand how to configure Oracle Linux to run Oracle Database 11g and 12c, how to use the latest networking capabilities in Oracle Solaris 11, and how to troubleshoot networking problems in Unix and Linux systems. Database – Mastering Oracle Database Management & Development Techniques – Experts will present advanced features and management methods that will help you master your Oracle Database capabilities and drive greater performance, agility and manageability of your IT implementation. This track will build upon your skills with data management, migration, and performance. Middleware – The Architecture of Analytics: Big Time Big Data and Business Intelligence – This track will present a solution architect’s perspective on how business intelligence products in Oracle’s Fusion Middleware family and beyond fit into an effective big data architecture, and present insight and expertise from Oracle ACEs specializing in business Intelligence to help you meet your big data business intelligence challenges. This same content is being offered at 3 different dates listed below, at times convenient for all regions Americas - Wednesday July 9th EMEA – Thursday July 10th APAC English - July 16th 9am to 1pm PST12pm to 4pm  EST1 to 5 pm BRTRegister 9am to 1pm BST10am – 2pm CET12pm to 4pm MSK / GSTRegister IST – 10:00amSG – 12:30pmAEST – 2:30pmRegister The full event agenda is available at https://wikis.oracle.com/display/OTNVirtualTechSummit/Home

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for October 18, 2013

    - by OTN ArchBeat
    Enriching XMLType data using relational data – XQuery and fn:collection in action | Lucas Jellema Another detailed technical post from the always prolific Lucas Jellema. Evil Behind ChangeEventPolicy PPR in CRUD ADF 12c and WebLogic Stuck Threads | Andrejus Baranovskis The latest post from Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis is a bit of a preview of his presentation at the upcoming UKOUG 2013 event. Podcast: Interview with authors of "Hudson Continuous Integration in Practice" For your listening pleasure... Here's an Oracle Author Podcast Interview with "Hudson Continuous Integration in Practice" authors Ed Burns and Winston Prakash. Manual Recovery Mechanisms in SOA Suite and AIA | Shreenidhi Raghuram Solution architect Shreenidhi Raghuram's post combines information from several sources to provide "a quick reference for Manual Recovery of Faults within the SOA and AIA contexts." Event: Harnessing Oracle Weblogic and Oracle Coherence This OTN Virtual Developer Day event features eight sessions in two tracks, with presentations and hands-on labs for developers and architects delivered by experts in Weblogic, Coherence, and ADF. Registration is free. November 5th, 2013. 9am-1pm PT / 12pm-4pm ET / 1pm-5pm BRT Podcast: IoT Challenges and Opportunities - Part 2 Part 2 of the OTN ArchBeat Internet of Things podcast features a roundtable discussion of IoT challenges: massive data streams, security and privacy issues, evolving standards and protocols. Listen! Video: Design - ADF Architectural Patterns - Two for One Deal | Chris Muir Chris Muir explores the reuse of BTF workspaces across multiple applications and the advantages and disadvantages of reuse at the application level. Thought for the Day "Can't nothing make your life work if you ain't the architect." — Terry McMillan, American author (Born October 18, 1951) Source: brainyquote.com

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  • Slap the App on the VM for every private cloud solution! Really ?

    - by Anand Akela
    One of the key attractions of the general session "Managing Enterprise Private Cloud" at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 was an interactive role play depicting how to address some of the key challenges of planning, deploying and managing an enterprise private cloud. It was a face-off between Don DeVM, IT manager at a fictitious enterprise 'Vulcan' and Ed Muntz, the Enterprise Manager hero .   Don DeVM is really excited about the efficiency and cost savings from virtualization. The success he enjoyed from the infrastructure virtualization made him believe that for all cloud service delivery models ( database, testing or applications as-a-service ), he has a single solution - slap the app on the VM and here you go . However, Ed Muntz believes in delivering cloud services that allows the business units and enterprise users to manage the complete lifecycle of the cloud services they are providing, for example, setting up cloud, provisioning it to users through a self-service portal ,  managing and tuning the performance, monitoring and applying patches for database or applications. Watch the video of the face-off , see how Don and Ed address some of the key challenges of planning, deploying and managing an enterprise private cloud and be the judge ! ?

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  • Virtual Technology Summit Series

    - by CassandraClark-OTN
    The Oracle Technology Network (OTN) is excited to invite you to our first Virtual Technology Summit Series.   Learn first hand from Oracle ACEs, Java Champions, and Oracle product experts, as they share their insight and expertise on using Oracle technologies to meet today’s IT challenges. We are offering three chances to watch and interact with Oracle and community experts.  Register Now by clicking one of the links below! Americas - Wednesday July 9th - 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm  ET / 1 to 5 pm BRT EMEA – Thursday July 10th / 9am to 1pm BST / 10am – 2pm CET / 12pm to 4pm MSK / GST APAC English – July 16th / IST – 10:00am / SG – 12:30pm / AEST – 2:30pm ??These interactive, online events offer four technical tracks, each with a unique focus on specific tools, technologies, and tips in these focus areas: Java - Big Trends and Technologies - Java lets you mine Big Data, build robust apps with HTML5, JavaScript and Java EE, and expand into the Internet of Things. Experts will present and you’ll be able to chat with them live online. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the Java community. Systems – OS Tips and Tricks for Sysadmins – Learn first hand how to configure Oracle Linux to run Oracle Database 11g and 12c, how to use the latest networking capabilities in Oracle Solaris 11, and how to troubleshoot networking problems in Unix and Linux systems. Database - Mastering Oracle Database Management & Development Techniques – Oracle ACEs and product team experts will present advanced features and management methods that will help you master your Oracle Database capabilities and drive greater performance, agility and manageability of your IT implementation. This track will build upon your skills with data management, migration, and performance. Middleware - The Architecture of Analytics: Big Time Big Data and Business Intelligence – This track will present a solution architect’s perspective on how business intelligence products in Oracle’s Fusion Middleware family and beyond fit into an effective big data architecture, and present insight and expertise from Oracle ACEs specializing in business Intelligence to help you meet your big data business intelligence challenges.

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  • IBM Keynote: (hardware,software)–>{IBM.java.patterns}

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    On Sunday evening, September 30, 2012, Jason McGee, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect Cloud Computing, along with John Duimovich IBM Distinguished Engineer and Java CTO, gave an information- and idea-rich keynote that left Java developers with much to ponder.Their focus was on the challenges to make Java more efficient and productive given the hardware and software environments of 2012. “One idea that is very interesting is the idea of multi-tenancy,” said McGee, “and how we can move up the spectrum. In traditional systems, we ran applications on dedicated middleware, operating systems and hardware. A lot of customers still run that way. Now people introduce hardware virtualization and share the hardware. That is good but there is a lot more we can do. We can share middleware and the application itself.” McGee challenged developers to better enable the Java language to function in these higher density models. He spoke about the need to describe patterns that help us grasp the full environment that an application needs, whether it’s a web or full enterprise application. Developers need to understand the resources that an application interacts with in a way that is simple and straightforward. The task is to then automate that deployment so that the complexity of infrastructure can be by-passed and developers can live in a simpler world where the cloud can automatically configure the needed environment. McGee argued that the key, something IBM has been working on, is to use a simpler pattern that allows a cloud-based architecture to embrace the entire infrastructure required for an application and make it highly available, scalable and able to recover from failure. The cloud-based architecture would automate the complexity of setting up and managing the infrastructure. IBM has been trying to realize this vision for customers so they can describe their Java application environment simply and allow the cloud to automate the deployment and management of applications. “The point,” explained McGee, “is to package the executable used to describe applications, to drop it into a shared system and let that system provide some intelligence about how to deploy and manage those applications.”John Duimovich on Improvements in JavaMcGee then brought onstage IBM’s Distinguished Engineer and CTO for Java, John Duimovich, who showed the audience ways to deploy Java applications more efficiently.Duimovich explained that, “When you run lots of copies of Java in the cloud or any hypervisor virtualized system, there are a lot of duplications of code and jar files. IBM has a facility called ‘shared classes’ where we put shared code, read only artefacts in a cache that is sharable across hypervisors.” By putting JIT code in ahead of time, he explained that the application server will use 20% less memory and operate 30% faster.  He described another example of how the JVM allows for the maximum amount of sharing that manages the tenants and file sockets and memory use through throttling and control. Duimovich touched on the “thin is in” model and IBM’s Liberty Profile and lightweight runtime for the cloud, which allows for greater efficiency in interacting with the cloud.Duimovich discussed the confusion Java developers experience when, for example, the hypervisor tells them that that they have 8 and then 4 and then 16 cores. “Because hypervisors are virtualized, they can change based on resource needs across the hypervisor layer. You may have 10 instances of an operation system and you may need to reallocate memory, " explained Duimovich.  He showed how to resize LPARs, reallocate CPUs and migrate applications as needed. He explained how application servers can resize thread pools and better use resources based on information from the hypervisors.Java Challenges in Hardware and SoftwareMcGee ended the keynote with a summary of upcoming hardware and software challenges for the Java platform. He noted that one reason developers love Java is it allows them to ignore differences in hardware. He stated that the most important things happening in hardware were in network and storage – in developments such as the speed of SSD, the exploitation of high-speed, low-latency networking, and recent developments such as storage-class memory, and non-volatile main memory. “So we are challenged to maintain the benefits of Java and the abstraction it provides from hardware while still exploiting the new innovations in hardware,” said McGee.McGee discussed transactional messaging applications where developers send messages transactionally persist a message to storage, something traditionally done by backing messages on spinning disks, something mostly outdated. “Now,” he pointed out, “we would use SSD and store it in Flash and get 70,000 messages a second. If we stored it using a PCI express-based flash memory device, it is still Flash but put on a PCI express bus on a card closer to the CPU. This way I get 300,000 messages a second and 25% improvement in latency.” McGee’s central point was that hardware has a huge impact on the performance and scalability of applications. New technologies are enabling developers to build classes of Java applications previously unheard of. “We need to be able to balance these things in Java – we need to maintain the abstraction but also be able to exploit the evolution of hardware technology,” said McGee. According to McGee, IBM's current focus is on systems wherein hardware and software are shipped together in what are called Expert Integrated Systems – systems that are pre-optimized, and pre-integrated together. McGee closed IBM’s engaging and thought-provoking keynote by pointing out that the use of Java in complex applications is increasingly being augmented by a host of other languages with strong communities around them – JavaScript, JRuby, Scala, Python and so forth. Java developers now must understand the strengths and weaknesses of such newcomers as applications increasingly involve a complex interconnection of languages.

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  • IndyTechFest Recap

    - by Johnm
    The sun had yet to raise above the horizon on Saturday, May 22nd and I was traveling toward the location of the 2010 IndyTechFest. In my freshly awaken, and pre-coffee, state I reflected on the months that preceded this day and how quickly they slipped away. The big day had finally come and the morning dew glistened with a unique brightness that morning. What is this all about? For those who are unfamiliar with IndyTechFest, it is a regional conference held in Indianapolis and hosted by the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) and the Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (IndyPASS).  The event presents multiple tracks and sessions covering subjects such as Business Intelligence,  Database Administration, .NET Development, SharePoint Development, Windows Mobile Development as well as non-Microsoft topics such as Lean and MongoDB. This year's event was the third hosting of IndyTechFest. No man is an island No event such as IndyTechFest is executed by a single person. My fellow co-founders, with their highly complementary skill sets and philanthropy make the process very enjoyable. Our amazing volunteers and their aid were indispensible. The generous financial support of our sponsors that made the event and fabulous prizes possible. The spectacular line up of speakers who came from near and far to donate their time and knowledge. Our beloved attendees who sacrificed the first sunny Saturday in weeks to expand their skill sets and network with their peers. We are deeply appreciative. Challenges in preparation With the preparation of any event comes challenges. It is these challenges that makes the process of planning an event so interesting. This year's largest challenge was the location of the event. In the past two years IndyTechFest was held at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis. This facility has been the hub of the Indy technical community for many years. As the big day drew near, the facility's availability came into question due to some recent changes that had occurred with those who operated the facility. We began our search for an alternative option. Thankfully, the Marriott Indianapolis East was available, was very spacious and willing to work within the range of our budget. Within days of our event, the decision to move proved to be wise since the prior location had begun renovations to the interior. Whew! Always trust your gut. Every day it's getting better At the ending of each year, we huddle together, review the evaluations and identify an area in which the event could improve. This year's big opportunity for improvement resided in the prize give-away portion at the end of the day. In the 2008 event, admittedly, this portion was rather chaotic, rushed and disorganized. This year, we broke the drawing into two sections, of which each attendee received two tickets. The first ticket was a drawing for the mountain of books that were given away. The second ticket was a drawing for the big prizes, the 2 Xboxes, 3 laptops and iPad. We peppered the ticket drawings with gift card raffles and tossing t-shirts into the audience. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again Each year of IndyTechFest, we have offered a means for ad-hoc sessions or discussion groups to pop-up. To our disappointment it was something that never quite took off. We have always believed that this unique type of session was valuable and wanted to figure out a way to make it work for this year. A special thanks to Alan Stevens, who took on and facilitated the "open space" track and made it an official success. Share with your tweety When the attendee badges were designed we decided to place an emphasis on the attendee's Twitter account as well as the events hash-tag (#IndyTechFest) to encourage some real-time buzz during the day. At the host table we displayed a Twitter feed for all to enjoy. It was quite successful and encouraging use of social media. My badge was missing my Twitter account since it was recently changed. For those who care to follow my rather sparse tweets, my address is @johnnydata. Man, this is one long blog post! All in all it was a very successful event. It is always great to see new faces and meet old friends. The planning for the 2011 IndyTechFest will kick off very soon. We have more capacity for future growth and a truck full of great ideas. Stay tuned!

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  • 5 Things I Learned About the IT Labor Shortage

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    by Jim Lein | Sr. Principal Product Marketing Director | Oracle Midsize Programs | @JimLein 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";} 5 Things I Learned About the IT Labor Shortage A gentle autumn breeze is nudging the last golden leaves off the aspen trees. It’s time to wrap up the series that I started back in April, “The Growing IT Labor Shortage: Are You Feeling It?” Even in a time of relatively high unemployment, labor shortages exist depending on many factors, including location, industry, IT requirements, and company size. According to Manpower Groups 2013 Talent Shortage Survey, 35% of hiring managers globally are having difficulty filling jobs. Their top three challenges in filling jobs are: 1. lack of technical competencies (hard skills) 2. Lack of available applicants 3. Lack of experience The same report listed Technicians as the most difficult position to fill in the United States For most companies, Human Capital and Talent Management have never been more strategic and they are striving for ways streamline processes, reduce turnover, and lower costs (see this Oracle whitepaper, “ Simplify Workforce Management and Increase Global Agility”). Everyone I spoke to—partner, customer, and Oracle experts—agreed that it can be extremely challenging to hire and retain IT talent in today’s labor market. And they generally agreed on the causes: a. IT is so pervasive that there are myriad moving parts requiring support and expertise, b. thus, it’s hard for university graduates to step in and contribute immediately without experience and specialization, c. big IT companies generally aren’t the talent incubators that they were in the freewheeling 90’s due to bottom line pressures that require hiring talent that can hit the ground running, and d. it’s often too expensive for resource-strapped midsize companies to invest the time and money required to get graduates up to speed. Here are my top lessons learned from my conversations with the experts. 1. A Better Title Would Have Been, “The Challenges of Finding and Retaining IT Talent That Matches Your Requirements” There are more applicants than jobs but it’s getting tougher and tougher to find individuals that perfectly fit each and every role. Top performing companies are increasingly looking to hire the “almost ready”, striving to keep their existing talent more engaged, and leveraging their employee’s social and professional networks to quickly narrow down candidate searches (here’s another whitepaper, “A Strategic Approach to Talent Management”). 2. Size Matters—But So Does Location Midsize companies must strive to build cultures that compete favorably with what large enterprises can offer, especially when they aren’t within commuting distance of IT talent strongholds. They can’t always match the compensation and benefits offered by large enterprises so it's paramount to offer candidates high quality of life and opportunities to build their resumes in alignment with their long term career aspirations. 3. Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends It doesn’t always make sense to invest time and money in training an employee on a task they will not perform frequently. Or get in a bidding war for talent with skills that are rare and in high demand. Many midsize companies are finding that it makes good economic sense to contract with partners for remote support rather than trying to divvy up each and every role amongst their lean staff. Internal staff can be assigned to roles that will have the highest positive impact on achieving organizational goals. 4. It’s Actually Both “What You Know” AND “Who You Know” If I was hiring someone today I would absolutely leverage the social and professional networks of my co-workers. Period. Most research shows that hiring in this manner is less expensive and time consuming AND produces better results. There is also some evidence that suggests new hires from employees’ networks have higher job performance and retention rates. 5. I Have New Respect for Recruiters and Hiring Managers My hats off to them—it’s not easy hiring and retaining top talent with today’s challenges. Check out the infographic, “A New Day: Taking HR from Chaos to Control”, on Oracle’s Human Capital Management solutions home page. You can also explore all of Oracle’s HCM solutions from that page based on your role. You can read all the posts in this series by clicking on the links in the right sidebar. Stay tuned…we’ll continue to post thought leadership on HCM and Talent Management topics.

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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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  • Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

    - by raul.goycoolea
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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  • Facebook Connect Publish to Stream: how do I tag a user?

    - by Sean Cannon
    I have an application that allows martial arts trickers to 'battle' each other by initiating challenges and submitting videos and whatnot. When user A challenges user B, the application posts to the user's wall (the one who initiated the challenge). My question is how do I tag user B in the wall post? It essentially says "challenged John Do to a battle". I'd like "John Do" to link to his profile just like when you manually post something on your wall and use the @ symbol. I hope this makes sense. I've tried standard html for a link, and I've tried FBML. Neither are parsed and only render as plain text on the wall post. Thanks for any help!

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  • View centric design with Django

    - by wishi_
    Hi! I'm relatively new to Django and I'm designing a website that primarily needs usability experience, speaking of optimized CSS, HTML5 and UI stuff. It's very easy to use Django for data/Model centric design. Just designing a couple of Python classes and ./manage.py syncdb - there's your Model. But I'm dealing with a significant amount of View centric challenges. (Different user classes, different tasks, different design challenges.) The official Django tutorial cursorily goes through using a "Template". Is there any Design centric guide for Django, or a set of Templates that are ready and useable? I don't want to start from scratch using JS, HTML5, Ajax and everything. From the Model layer perspective Django is very rapid and delivering a working base system. I wonder whether there's something like that for the Views.

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  • SQL SERVER – What is MDS? – Master Data Services in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

    - by pinaldave
    What is MDS? Master Data Services helps enterprises standardize the data people rely on to make critical business decisions. With Master Data Services, IT organizations can centrally manage critical data assets company wide and across diverse systems, enable more people to securely manage master data directly, and ensure the integrity of information over time. (Source: Microsoft) Today I will be talking about the same subject at Microsoft TechEd India. If you want to learn about how to standardize your data and apply the business rules to validate data you must attend my session. MDS is very interesting concept, I will cover super short but very interesting 10 quick slides about this subject. I will make sure in very first 20 mins, you will understand following topics Introduction to Master Data Management What is Master Data and Challenges MDM Challenges and Advantage Microsoft Master Data Services Benefits and Key Features Uses of MDS Capabilities Key Features of MDS This slides decks will be followed by around 30 mins demo which will have story of entity, hierarchies, versions, security, consolidation and collection. I will be tell this story keeping business rules in center. We take one business rule which will be simple validation rule and will make it much more complex and yet very useful to product. I will also demonstrate few real life scenario where I will be talking about MDS and its usage. Do not miss this session. At the end of session there will be book awarded to best participant. My session details: Session: Master Data Services in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Date: April 12, 2010  Time: 2:30pm-3:30pm SQL Server Master Data Services will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2 and will improve Microsoft’s platform appeal. This session provides an in depth demonstration of MDS features and highlights important usage scenarios. Master Data Services enables consistent decision making by allowing you to create, manage and propagate changes from single master view of your business entities. Also with MDS – Master Data-hub which is the vital component helps ensure reporting consistency across systems and deliver faster more accurate results across the enterprise. We will talk about establishing the basis for a centralized approach to defining, deploying, and managing master data in the enterprise. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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