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  • Goodbye, Spreadsheets and Hello Modern ERP

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Steve Cox, Vice President, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies     Signs of the resurging economy continue to sprout, with green shoots rising across different sectors and industries. With the economy on the rebound, businesses are increasing their investment in technology to keep up with growth and evolving demands; as proof, Gartner recently increased its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2012 to $3.6 trillion, anticipating a 3 percent increase from 2011 spending.   One of the segments most reliant on technology to catapult growth is midsize companies – established businesses leveraging every competitive efficiency and advantage to compete with much larger enterprises. We find that to compete against the big guys, they need to create an internal technology infrastructure to fuel that growth. Goodbye, spreadsheets and hello modern ERP.   While many businesses postponed upgrading or replacing financial and HR management systems during the recession, now some have started dusting off RFPs and revisiting technology options. Years ago, midsize organizations used spreadsheet-based systems and processes to manage employees, customers, partners, products and revenue. We’ve found that as companies scale up, they are apt to avoid heavily customizing their existing systems, and instead are more prone to standardize on a modern, enterprise-class ERP system.   Modern ERP platforms enable growing companies to immediately address the most pressing challenges – accounting, talent management, customer retention, et. al. Midsize companies implement these systems and processes to help them earn more, go public or expand globally.   And today, choice is a primary factor when selecting an ERP solution. Businesses have more deployment options now than ever before, depending on their unique structures and needs. Whether the preference is on demand, cloud, hosted or on premise, a modular, scalable deployment is available to meet the need.   With modern ERP systems, business that once struggled to do more with fewer resources have access to the same quality tools as larger competitors. By adopting top tier ERP systems tailored to individual business needs, midsize companies can support business operations while creating an enterprise system that seamlessly scales up to fuel future growth. Meaning that the ERP decision that your company makes today, will have legs to serve your business for years to come.

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  • Games at Work Part 1: Introduction to Gamification and Applications

    - by ultan o'broin
    Games Are Everywhere How many of you (will admit to) remember playing Pong? OK then, do you play Angry Birds on your phone during work hours? Thought about why we keep playing online, video, and mobile games and what this "gamification" business we're hearing about means for the enterprise applications user experience? In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal says that playing computer and online games now provides more rewards for people than their real lives do. Games offer intrinsic rewards and happiness to the players as they pursue more satisfying work and the success, social connection, and meaning that goes with it. Yep, Gran Turismo, Dungeons & Dragons, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Boxing, and the rest are all forms of work it seems. Games are, in fact, work taken so seriously that governments now move to limit the impact of virtual gaming currencies on the real financial system. Anyone who spends hours harvesting crops on FarmVille realizes it’s hard work too. Yet games evoke a positive emotion in players who voluntarily stay engaged with games for hours, day after day. Some 183 million active gamers in the United States play on average 13 hours per week. Weekly, 5 million of those gamers play for longer than a working week (45 hours). So why not harness the work put into games to solve real-world problems? Or, in the case of our applications users, real-world work problems? What’s a Game? Jane explains that all games have four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. We need to look at what motivational ideas behind the dynamics of the game—what we call gamification—are appropriate for our users. Typically, these motivators are achievement, altruism, competition, reward, self-expression, and status). Common game techniques for leveraging these motivations include: Badging and avatars Points and awards Leader boards Progress charts Virtual currencies or goods Gifting and giving Challenges and quests Some technology commentators argue for a game layer on top of everything, but this layer is already part of our daily lives in many instances. We see gamification working around us already: the badging and kudos offered on My Oracle Support or other Oracle community forums, becoming a Dragon Slayer implementor of Atlassian applications, being made duke of your favorite coffee shop on Yelp, sharing your workout details with Nike+, or donating to Japanese earthquake relief through FarmVille, for example. And what does all this mean for the applications that you use in your work? Read on in part two...

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  • Playing with F#

    - by mroberts
    Project Euler is a awesome site.   When working with a new language it can be tricky to find problems that need solving, that are more complex than "Hello World" and simpler than a full blown application. Project Euler gives use just that, cool and thought provoking problems that usually don't take days to solve.  I've solved a number of questions with C# and some with Java.  BTW, I used Java because it had BigInteger support before .Net. A couple weeks ago, back when winter had a firm grip on Columbus, OH, I began playing (researching) with F#.  I began with Problem #1 from Project Euler.  I started by looking at my solution in C#. Here is my solution in C#. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3:   4: namespace Problem001 5: { 6: class Program 7: { 8: static void Main(string[] args) 9: { 10: List<int> values = new List<int>(); 11:   12: for (int i = 1; i < 1000; i++) 13: { 14: if (i % 3 == 0 || i % 5 == 0) 15: values.Add(i); 16: } 17: int total = 0; 18:   19: values.ForEach(v => total += v); 20:   21: Console.WriteLine(total); 22: Console.ReadKey(); 23: } 24: } 25: }   Now, after much tweaking and learning, here is my solution in F#.   1: open System 2:   3: let calc n = 4: [1..n] 5: |> List.map (fun x -> if (x % 3 = 0 || x % 5 = 0) then x else 0) 6: |> List.sum 7:   8: let main() = 9: calc 999 10: |> printfn "result = %d" 11: Console.ReadKey(true) |> ignore 12:   13: main() Just this little example highlights some cool things about F#. Type inference. F# infers the type of a value.  In the C# code above we declare a number of variables, the list, and a couple ints.  F# does not require this, it infers the calc (a function) accepts a int and returns a int. Great built in functionality for Lists.  List.map for example. BTW, I don’t think I’m spilling the beans by giving away the code for Problem 1.  It by far is the easiest question, IMHO, solved by 92,000+ people. Next I’ll look into writing a class library with F#.

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  • Oracle At QCon SF 2012

    - by Cassandra Clark - OTN
    Oracle Technology Network is a Platinum sponsor at QCon San Francisco.  (qconsf.com).  Don’t miss these great developer focused sessions: Shay ShmeltzerHow we simplified Web, Mobile and Cloud development for our own developers? - the Oracle StoryOver the past several years, Oracle has beendeveloping a new set of enterprise applications in what is probably one of thelargest Java based development project in the world. How do you take 3000 developers and make them productive? How do you insure the delivery of cutting edge UIs for both Mobile and Web channels? How do you enable Cloud baseddevelopment and deployment?  Come and learn how we did it at Oracle, and see how the same technologies and methodologies can apply to your development efforts. Dan SmithProject Lambda in Java 8Java SE 8 will include major enhancements to the Java Programming Language and its core libraries.  This suite of new features, known as Project Lambda in the OpenJDK community, includes lambda expressions, default methods, and parallel collections (and much more!).  The result will be a next-generation Java programming experience with more flexibility and better abstractions.   This talk will introduce the new Java features and offer a behind-the-scenes view of how they evolved and why they work the way that they do. Arun GuptaJSR 356: Building HTML5 WebSocket Applications in JavaThe family of HTML5 technologies has pushed the pendulum away from rich client technologies and toward ever-more-capable Web clients running on today’s browsers. In particular, WebSocket brings new opportunities for efficient peer-to-peer communication, providing the basis for a new generation of interactive and “live” Web applications. This session examines the efforts under way to support WebSocket in the Java programming model, from its base-level integration in the Java Servlet and Java EE containers to a new, easy-to-use API and toolset that are destined to become part of the standard Java platform. The full conference schedule is here: http://qconsf.com/sf2012/schedule/wednesday.jsp But wait, there’s more!  At the Oracle booth, we’ll also be covering: ·         Oracle ADF Mobile·         Oracle Developer Cloud Service·         Oracle ADF Essentials·         NetBeans Project Easel Lastly we’ll share the results of a short cloud survey at QConSF ater this week.  If you attended this year's Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences, it would be hard not to notice that Oracle is clearly "all-in" when it comes to the Cloud.  With Cloud computing being such a hot topic on many OTN members' minds, we'd like to know what you're doing in the cloud and invite you to take this short cloud survey.

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  • The Nine Cs of Customer Engagement

    - by Michael Snow
    Avoid Social Media Fatigue - Learn the 9 C's of Customer Engagement inside the Click Here The order you must follow to make the colored link appear in browsers. If not the default window link will appear 1. Select the word you want to use for the link 2. Select the desired color, Red, Black, etc 3. Select bold if necessary ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Templates use two sizes of fonts and the sans-serif font tag for the email. All Fonts should be (Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif) tags Normal size reading body fonts should be set to the size of 2. Small font sizes should be set to 1 !!!!!!!DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SIZE FONT FOR THE EMAILS!!!!!!!! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -- Have We Hit a Social-Media Plateau? In recent years, social media has evolved from a cool but unproven medium to become the foundation of pragmatic social business and a driver of business value. Yet, time is running out for businesses to make the most out of this channel. This isn’t a warning. It’s a fact. Join leading industry analyst R “Ray” Wang as he explains how to apply the nine Cs of engagement to strengthen customer relationships. Learn: How to overcome social-media fatigue and make the most of the medium Why engagement is the most critical factor in the age of overexposure The nine pillars of successful customer engagement Register for the eighth Webcast in the Social Business Thought Leaders series today. Register Now Thurs., Sept. 20, 2012 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: R “Ray” Wang Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research Christian Finn Senior Director, Product Management Oracle Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement SEV100103386 Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time.Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

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  • Navigational Flows in Web Forms

    - by Mona Rakibe
    Navigation flows in the Web UI is a common requirement. In 11.1.1.7 we do not have out of the box support for navigational flows but this is surely on our road-map.Until then this simple approach might meet some of the requirements. In this sample we use a trigger control and Web Form rules show navigation flow for Customer, Orders and Line Items. Start by creating  a new Web Form and adding 3 tabs as Customer,Order,Line Items.Add the elements to each tab. Change the visibility for Order and Line Items to false Tab1 : Customer Tab 2 : Order Tab 3 : Line Item N    Notice we have added trigger controls for Next & Back Buttons.        Now write form rules to change the visibility and selection of tabs based on the clicks of trigger You can now navigate through the forms using the trigger control. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:10%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} a So Solution to this sample can be downloaded from here.

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  • Managing Regulated Content in WebCenter: USDM and Oracle Offer a New Part 11 Compliant Solution for Life Sciences

    - by Michael Snow
    Guest post today provided by Oracle partner, USDM  Regulated Content in WebCenterUSDM and Oracle offer a new Part 11 compliant solution for Life Sciences (White Paper) Life science customers now have the ability to take advantage of all of the benefits of Oracle’s WebCenter Content, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management.   For the past year, USDM has been developing best practice compliance solutions to meet regulated content management requirements for 21 CFR Part 11 in WebCenter Content. USDM has been an expert in ECM for life sciences since 1999 and in 2011, certified that WebCenter was a 21CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform (White Paper).  In addition, USDM has built Validation Accelerators Packs for WebCenter to enable life science organizations to quickly and cost effectively validate this world class solution.With the Part 11 certification, Oracle’s WebCenter now provides regulated life science organizations  the ability to manage REGULATORY content in WebCenter, as well as the ability to take advantage of ALL of the additional functionality of WebCenter, including  a complete, open, and integrated portfolio of portal, web experience management, content management and social networking technology.  Here are a few screen shot examples of Part 11 functionality included in the product: E-Sign, E-Sign Rendor, Meta Data History, Audit Trail Report, and Access Reporting. Gone are the days that life science companies have to spend millions of dollars a year to implement, maintain, and validate ECM systems that no longer meet the ever changing business and regulatory requirements.  Life science companies now have the ability to use WebCenter Content, an ECM system with a substantially lower cost of ownership and unsurpassed functionality.Oracle has been #1 in life sciences because of their ability to develop cost effective, easy-to-use, scalable solutions which help increase insight and efficiency to drive growth for their customers.  Adding a world class ECM solution to this product portfolio allows life science organizations the chance to get rid of costly ECM systems that no longer meet their needs and use WebCenter, part of the Oracle Fusion Technology stack, with their other leading enterprise applications.USDM provides:•    Expertise in Life Science ECM Business Processes•    Prebuilt Life Science Configuration in WebCenter •    Validation Accelerator Packs for WebCenterUSDM is very proud to support Oracle’s expanding commitment to Life Sciences…. For more information please contact:  [email protected] Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: SICE

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummarySociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A. (SICE) is a Spanish company specializes in engineering and technology integration for intelligent transport systems and environmental control systems. They had a large quantity of engineering and environmental planning documents  which they wanted to manage, classify and integrate with their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. SICE adapted  Oracle WebCenter Content to classify and manage more than 30 different types, defined a security plan to ensure the integrity and recovery of various document types and integrated the document management solution with SICE’s third-party enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. SICE  accelerated time to market for all projects, minimized time required to identify and recover documents  and achieved greater efficiency in all operations. Company Overview Created in 1921, Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A. (SICE) currently specializes in engineering and technology integration for intelligent transport systems and environmental control systems. It has more than 2,500 employees, with operations in Spain and various locations in Latin America, the United States, Africa, and Australia. Business Challenges They had a large quantity of engineering and environmental planning documents generated in research and projects which they wanted to manage, classify and integrate with their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Solution Deployed SICE worked with the Oracle Partner ABAST Solutions to evaluate and choose the best document management system, ultimately selecting Oracle WebCenter Content over other options including  Documentum, SharePoint, OpenText, and Alfresco.They adapted Oracle WebCenter Content to classify and manage more than 30 different types, defined a security plan to ensure the integrity and recovery of various document types and integrated the document management solution  with SICE’s third-party enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to accelerate incorporation with the documentation system and ensure integrity ERP system data. Business Results SICE  accelerated time to market for all projects by releasing reports and information that support and validate engineering projects, stored all documents in a single repository with organizationwide accessibility, minimizing time required to identify and recover documents needed for reports to initiate and execute engineering and building projects. Overall they achieved greater efficiency in all operations, including technical and impact report development and construction documentation management. “The correct and efficient management of information is vital to our environmental management activity. Oracle WebCenter Content  serves as a basis for knowledge management practices, with the objective of adding greater value to everything that we do.” Manuel Delgado, IT Project Engineering, Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A Additional Information SICE Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content

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  • Architects, Leadership, and Influence

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Technical expertise is a given for architects. In addition to solid development experience, extensive knowledge of technical trends, tools, standards, and methodolgies (not to mention business accumen) provides the foundation for the decisions the architect must make in the effort to get all the pieces to work together. But even superior technical chops can't overcome a lack of leadership. Leadership is about influence: the ability to effectively communicate — to sell your ideas and defend your decisions in a manner that affects the decisions of the people around you. Leadership and influence are especially important in situations in which the architect may not have the authority to simply tell people what to do. And even when the architect has that kind of authority, influential leadership can mean the difference between gaining real buy-in and support from colleagues and stakeholders, and settling for their grudging acceptance (or worse). Guess which outcome is likely to produce the best results. In a previous post I presented some examples of the kind of criticism that is leveled at architects, a great deal of which can be attributed to a lack of leadership and influence on the part of the targets of that criticism. So it was serendipitous that I recently ran across a post on the Harvard Business Review blog written by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe. That post, When Your Influence Is Ineffective, includes this: [I]nfluence becomes ineffective when individuals become so focused on the desired outcome that they fail to fully consider the situation. While the influencer may still gain the short-term desired outcome, he or she can do long-term damage to personal effectiveness and the organization, as it creates an atmosphere of distrust where people stop listening, and the potential for innovation or progress is diminished. The need to "see the big picture" is a grossly reductive assesement of the architect's responsibilities — but that doesn't mean it's not true. That big picture perspective must encompass both the technological elements of the architecture and the elements responsible for implementing those technologies in compliance with the prescribed architecture. Technologies may be tempermental, but they don't have personalities or egos, and they are unlikely to carry a grudge — not yet, anyway (Hello, Skynet!).  Effective leadership and the ability to influence people can help to ensure that all the pieces fit and that they work together, today and tomorrow.

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  • Running C++ AMP kernels on the CPU

    - by Daniel Moth
    One of the FAQs we receive is whether C++ AMP can be used to target the CPU. For targeting multi-core we have a technology we released with VS2010 called PPL, which has had enhancements for VS 11 – that is what you should be using! FYI, it also has a Linux implementation via Intel's TBB which conforms to the same interface. When you choose to use C++ AMP, you choose to take advantage of massively parallel hardware, through accelerators like the GPU. Having said that, you can always use the accelerator class to check if you are running on a system where the is no hardware with a DirectX 11 driver, and decide what alternative code path you wish to follow.  In fact, if you do nothing in code, if the runtime does not find DX11 hardware to run your code on, it will choose the WARP accelerator which will run your code on the CPU, taking advantage of multi-core and SSE2 (depending on the CPU capabilities WARP also uses SSE3 and SSE 4.1 – it does not currently use AVX and on such systems you hopefully have a DX 11 GPU anyway). A few things to know about WARP It is our fallback CPU solution, not intended as a primary target of C++ AMP. WARP stands for Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform and you can read old info on this MSDN page on WARP. What is new in Windows 8 Developer Preview is that WARP now supports DirectCompute, which is what C++ AMP builds on. It is not currently clear if we will have a CPU fallback solution for non-Windows 8 platforms when we ship. When you create a WARP accelerator, its is_emulated property returns true. WARP does not currently support double precision.   BTW, when we refer to WARP, we refer to this accelerator described above. If we use lower case "warp", that refers to a bunch of threads that run concurrently in lock step and share the same instruction. In the VS 11 Developer Preview, the size of warp in our Ref emulator is 4 – Ref is another emulator that runs on the CPU, but it is extremely slow not intended for production, just for debugging. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Looking for an ultra portable laptop for Ubuntu

    - by prule
    Hi, I'm in the market for a new laptop, and portability is important since I really only use it when I'm travelling to and from work - primarily for programming. I've been searching high and low for something like this: less than 2kg hopefully Intel i5 (but negotiable) NO dvd drive - just don't need it 4G ram either 7200rpm disk or SSD (ssd preferable) 13 inch screen not too pricey (MacBook Air is about $1700 AUD) available in Australia The Dell Inspiron 13z and Lenovo Edge 13 look close, but I've not found anything that says I'm not going to have a fight with compatibility. The MacBook Air 13 looks like the PERFECT hardware, but I'm afraid it will just be easier to run MacOS than Ubuntu. I want to stay with Ubuntu, but the MacBook Air is only $1700 so I'm in danger of becoming another apple fanboi if I can't find anything competitive. Going through all the sites looking for stuff has been a huge waste of time System 76 doesn't deliver to Australia http://www.linux-laptop.net/ and http://www.linlap.com/ are hard work and not confidence inspiring http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/nsintro.html is hard work again, searching for every laptop they say has excellent compatibility on the web to find out what spec it is http://zareason.com/shop/Strata-Pro-13.html (at $1345 USD) looks interesting, but I've got no idea how much I'll get stung by customs importing Dell Inspiron 13z with i5, 4G, 320 7200rpm disk, ATI Mobility Radeon HD5430 - 1GB, Dell Wireless 1501 802.11b/g/n @ $1200 AUD seems like the only competitor but is it compatible? (Dell support offer no opinion - as far as they are concerned they only have 2 models that are certified for ubuntu) Am I worrying too much about the compatibility? Should I just go with Dell? Or switch to MacOS? (It would be good to have a searchable database that had the full machine specs, and compatibility - I'm thinking about building something... but I don't have much time right now...) Thanks. UPDATE I went with a MacBook Air. The price/weight/power was just right. Everything else was either too pricy (i5) or too heavy, or underpowered (SU7300 1.3GHz). Its a pity, because I didn't really want to leave Ubuntu. I'll still run it on my media center and spare (heavy) laptop.

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  • Building SANE from git-source produce backend missmatch on 12.04 even if built locally

    - by deinonychusaur
    It seems to me that with Ubuntu Precise Pangolin it is all but easy to do a proper install of SANE from source (git-repo). I've found other scanning issues trying to find an answer to this, where the output people posted seems to indicate they suffer the same issue (unknowingly). If I run on a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 with compiled SANE source from the git I get: $ scanimage -V scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.24git; backend version 1.0.22 (I basically followed the instructions on http://ubuntuportal.com/2012/02/how-to-get-an-canon-canoscan-lide-100-scanner-to-work-in-ubuntu-11-10linux-mint-12.html since I didn't find any other information making sure that sane was not installed prior to installation.) My primary interest is the epson2-backend. In 1.0.22 it offers the wrong TPU settings for Epson V700 (TPU2-mode wasn't supported in 1.0.22, and the scanner is useless to me if I don't have the TPU2-support). Since if I ask it to enter transparency mode, it shows 1.0.22 behaviour, it implies that the epson2-backend comes from 1.0.22 and not 1.0.24 even though I just built it. If I install SANE with prefix to a local folder and run that version of scanimage it still produces the mismatch. However, on another computer where I installed a custom 1.0.22 build of SANE prior to upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04, I can build and install the same SANE-git locally and have it correctly match backends: $ ./SANE/bin/scanimage -V scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.24git; backend version 1.0.24 $ scanimage -V scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.22; backend version 1.0.22 On this computer the 1.0.24 works correctly in finding TPU2 on Epson V700. So what am I missing/doing wrong? (And I want to replace 1.0.22 with 1.0.24 for the whole system, the local build was just debugging.) Any help would be much appreciated. Edit 1: Just tried compiling SANE using this instruction on Ubuntu 10.04 and it worked like a charm. However, when I upgraded to 12.04 (really would like to run 12.04), SANE was downgraded to 1.0.22. When trying the same set of instructions on 12.04 I was still out of luck -- the backend missmatch was there again (and I do have libusb-dev installed) Edit 2: I updated to Ubuntu 12.10 which now has the 1.0.23 SANE drivers. I haven't dared trying to compile from source on 12.10 since 1.0.23 is good enough for me. This is just a work-around and I would still like to know what's up with Ubuntu 12.04.

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  • WIF, ADFS 2 and WCF&ndash;Part 1: Overview

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    A lot has been written already about passive federation and integration of WIF and ADFS 2 into web apps. The whole active/WS-Trust feature area is much less documented or covered in articles and blogs. Over the next few posts I will try to compile all relevant information about the above topics – but let’s start with an overview. ADFS 2 has a number of endpoints under the /services/trust base address that implement the WS-Trust protocol. They are grouped by the WS-Trust version they support (/13 and /2005), the client credential type (/windows*, /username*, /certificate*) and the security mode (*transport, *mixed and message). You can see the endpoints in the MMC console under the Service/Endpoints page. So in other words, you use one of these endpoints (which exactly depends on your configuration / system setup) to request tokens from ADFS 2. The bindings behind the endpoints are more or less standard WCF bindings, but with SecureConversation (establishSecurityContext) disabled. That means that whenever you need to programmatically talk to these endpoints – you can (easily) create client bindings that are compatible. Another option is to use the special bindings that come with WIF (in the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Protocols.WSTrust.Bindings namespace). They are already pre-configured to be compatible with the ADFS endpoints. The downside of these bindings is, that you can’t use them in configuration. That’s definitely a feature request of mine for the next version of WIF. The next important piece of information is the so called Federation Service Identifier. This is the value that you (at least by default) have to use as a realm/appliesTo whenever you are requesting a token for ADFS (e.g. in  IdP –> RSTS scenario). Or (even more) technically speaking, ADFS 2 checks for this value in the audience URI restriction in SAML tokens. You can get to this value by clicking the “Edit Federation Service Properties” in the MMC when the Service tree-node is selected. OK – I will come back to this basic information in the following posts. Basically I want to go through the following scenarios: ADFS in the IdP role ADFS in the R-STS role (with a chained claims provider) Using the WCF bindings for automatic token issuance Using WSTrustChannelFactory for manual token handling Stay tuned…

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  • Move Data into the Grid for Scalable, Predictable Response Times

    - by JuergenKress
    CloudTran is pleased to introduce the availability of the CloudTran Transaction and Persistence Manager for creating scalable, reliable data services on the Oracle Coherence In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG). Use of IMDG architectures has been key to handling today’s web-scale loads because it eliminates database latency by storing important and frequently access data in memory instead of on disk. The CloudTran product lets developers easily use an IMDG for full ACID-compliant transactions without having to be concerned about the location or spread of data. The system has its own implementation of fast, scalable distributed transactions that does NOT depend on XA protocols but still guarantees all ACID properties. Plus, CloudTran asynchronously replicates data going into the IMDG to back-end datastores and back-up data centers, again ensuring ACID properties. CloudTran can be accessed through Java Persistence API (JPA via TopLink Grid) and now, through a new Low-Level API, or LLAPI. This is ideal for use in SOA applications that need data reliability, high availability, performance, and scalability. Still in limited beta release, the LLAPI gives developers the ability to use standard put/remove logic available in Coherence and then wrap logic with simple Spring annotations or XML+AspectJ to start transactions. An important feature of LLAPI is the ability to join transactions. This is a common outcome for SOA applications that need to reduce network traffic by aggregating data into single cache entries and then doing SOA service processing in the node holding the data. This results in the need to orchestrate transaction processing across multiple service calls. CloudTran has the capability to handle these “multi-client” transactions at speed with no loss in ACID properties. Developing software around an IMDG like Oracle Coherence is an important choice for today’s web-scale applications and services. But this introduces new architectural considerations to maintain scalability in light of increased network loads and data movement. Without using CloudTran, developers are faced with an incredibly difficult task to ensure data reliability, availability, performance, and scalability when working with an IMDG. Working with highly distributed data that is entirely volatile while stored in memory presents numerous edge cases where failures can result in data loss. The CloudTran product takes care of all of this, leaving developers with the confidence and peace of mind that all data is processed correctly. For those interested in evaluating the CloudTran product and IMDGs, take a look at this link for more information: http://www.CloudTran.com/downloadAPI.php, or, send your questions to [email protected]. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: Coherence,cloudtran,cache,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Eloqua Sales Awareness Training for Partners - London, November 28-29

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    We are pleased to invite you to the free of charge Oracle Eloqua Sales Awareness Training for Partners - London, November 28&29 - COME LEARN WHAT ALL THE BUZZ IS ABOUT! WHEN SALES & MARKETING BOND, REVENUE GROWS It’s not one thing that makes a company successful with marketing automation – it’s the combination of the best implementation, flexible long-term support and access to a community of marketing innovation that ensures you have the assistance you need every step of the way. Our customers choose Oracle|Eloqua because they know when sales and marketing work together, leads are called upon, quotas are crushed and revenues climb. Learn how Oracle|Eloqua can help you put marketing to work for you! COVERED IN THIS TRAINING Eloqua and the Customer Experience Strategy How Modern Marketing Works Introduction to Eloqua – Whiteboard POV Go To Market Playbook Competitive Landscape Integration Options Service Offerings With case studies, workshops and product demos to help you on your way to a new world of marketing expertise LOGISTICS If you are ready to join us on this journey, now’s the time to let us know! Tell us a little about your experience – complete this form to help us know you better (Please ignore if your firm has already completed) Complete this form to RSVP by Thursday, November 21, 2013. Find out more about the Oracle|Eloqua, join the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud Service Knowledge Zone and keep up on all the news! QUESTIONS? Contact [email protected] Please note that similar events will take place in other cities (Brussels, Istanbul and more come) later in 2014. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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  • Best Frameworks/libraries/engines for 2D multiplayer C# Webbased RPG

    - by Thirlan
    Title is a mouthful but important because I'm looking to meet a specific criteria and it's complex enough that I need a lot of help in finding what I'm looking for. I really want people's suggestions because I trust it a lot more than anything else, so I just need to clearly define what it is I want heh : P Game is a 2D RPG. Think of Secret of Mana. Game is online multiplayer, but not MMO sized. Game must be webbased! I'm looking to the future and want to hit as many platforms as possible. I'm leaning to Webgl because of this, but still looking around. Since the users are seeing the game through the webbrowser the front-end should be mainly responsible for drawing, taking input and some basic checking such as preliminary collision detection. This is important because it means the game engine is NOT on the client's machine. The server should be responsible for the game engine and all the calculations. This means the server is doing all the work and the client is mostly a dumb terminal. Server language is c# I'm looking for fast project execution so I want to use as many pre-existing tools as possible. This would make sense because I'm making a game here, not an engine. I'm not creating some new revolutionary graphics or pushing the physics engines to the next level. Preference for commercially supported tools. For game mechanics reasons and for reasons 4 and 5, don't think I can use existing 2D rpg engines. I've seen them out there and I fear that if I try and use them they will have too many restrictions, but will be happy to hear out suggestions. So all this means I need a game engine on the server, or maybe just a physics engine, and then I need another engine/library to draw everything that the server is sending to the client on the webbrowser. Maybe this is how 50% of games work on the web and there are plenty of frameworks that support this! I wouldn't actually don't know : ( but my gut is telling me that most webgames are single player and 90% of the game is running on the client. So... any suggestions?

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  • SQL 2014 does data the way developers want

    - by Rob Farley
    A post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, good that it fits with this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Joey D’Antoni (@jdanton) Ever since I got into databases, I’ve been a fan. I studied Pure Maths at university (as well as Computer Science), and am very comfortable with Set Theory, which undergirds relational database concepts. But I’ve also spent a long time as a developer, and appreciate that that databases don’t exactly fit within the stuff I learned in my first year of uni, particularly the “Algorithms and Data Structures” subject, in which we studied concepts like linked lists. Writing in languages like C, we used pointers to quickly move around data, without a database in sight. Of course, if we had a power failure all this data was lost, as it was only persisted in RAM. Perhaps it’s why I’m a fan of database internals, of indexes, latches, execution plans, and so on – the developer in me wants to be reassured that we’re getting to the data as efficiently as possible. Back when SQL Server 2005 was approaching, one of the big stories was around CLR. Many were saying that T-SQL stored procedures would be a thing of the past because we now had CLR, and that obviously going to be much faster than using the abstracted T-SQL. Around the same time, we were seeing technologies like Linq-to-SQL produce poor T-SQL equivalents, and developers had had a gutful. They wanted to move away from T-SQL, having lost trust in it. I was never one of those developers, because I’d looked under the covers and knew that despite being abstracted, T-SQL was still a good way of getting to data. It worked for me, appealing to both my Set Theory side and my Developer side. CLR hasn’t exactly become the default option for stored procedures, although there are plenty of situations where it can be useful for getting faster performance. SQL Server 2014 is different though, through Hekaton – its In-Memory OLTP environment. When you create a table using Hekaton (that is, a memory-optimized one), the table you create is the kind of thing you’d’ve made as a developer. It creates code in C leveraging structs and pointers and arrays, which it compiles into fast code. When you insert data into it, it creates a new instance of a struct in memory, and adds it to an array. When the insert is committed, a small write is made to the transaction to make sure it’s durable, but none of the locking and latching behaviour that typifies transactional systems is needed. Indexes are done using hashes and using bw-trees (which avoid locking through the use of pointers) and by handling each updates as a delete-and-insert. This is data the way that developers do it when they’re coding for performance – the way I was taught at university before I learned about databases. Being done in C, it compiles to very quick code, and although these tables don’t support every feature that regular SQL tables do, this is still an excellent direction that has been taken. @rob_farley

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  • Proven Approach to Financial Progress Using Modern Best Practice

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE by Larry Simcox, Sr. Director, Oracle Midsize Programs Top performing organizations generate 25 percent higher profit margins and grow at twice the rate of their competitors. How do they do it? Recently, Dr. Stephen G. Timme, President of FinListics Solutions and Adjunct Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, joined me on a webcast to answer that question. I've know Dr. Timme since my days at G-log when we worked together to help customers determine the ROI of transportation management solutions. We were also joined by Steve Cox, Vice President of Oracle Midsize Programs, who recently published an Oracle E-book, "Modern Best Practice Explained". In this webcast, Cox provides his perspective on how best performing companies are moving from best practice to modern best practice.  Watch the webcast replay and you'll learn about the easy to follow, top down approach to: Identify processes that should be targeted for improvement Leverage a modern best practice maturity model to start a path to progress Link financial performance gaps to operational KPIs Improve cash flow by benchmarking key financial metrics Develop intelligent estimates of achievable cash flow benefits Click HERE to watch a replay of the webcast. You might also be interested in the following: Video: Modern Best Practices Defined  AppCast: Modern Best Practices for Growing Companies Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Larry Simcox Senior Director, Oracle Midsize Programs responsible for supporting and creating marketing content ,communications, sales and partner program support for Oracle's go to market activities for midsize companies. I have over 17 years experience helping customers identify the value and ROI from their IT investment. I live in Charlotte NC with my family and my dog Dingo. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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  • Block-level deduplicating filesystem

    - by James Haigh
    I'm looking for a deduplicating copy-on-write filesystem solution for general user data such as /home and backups of it. It should use online/inline/synchronous deduplication at the block-level using secure hashing (for negligible chance of collisions) such as SHA256 or TTH. Duplicate blocks need not even touch the disk. The idea is that I should be able to just copy /home/<user> to an external HDD with the same such filesystem to do a backup. Simple. No messing around with incremental backups where corruption to any of the snapshots will nearly always break all later snapshots, and no need to use a specific tool to delete or 'checkout' a snapshot. Everything should simply be done from the file browser without worry. Can you imagine how easy this would be? I'd never have to think twice about backing-up again! I don't mind a performance hit, reliability is the main concern. Although, with specific implementations of cp, mv and scp, and a file browser plugin, these operations would be very fast, especially when there is a lot of duplication as they would only need to transfer the absent blocks. Accidentally using conventional copy tools that do not integrate with the FS would merely take longer, waste some bandwidth when copying remotely and waste some CPU, as the duplicate data would be re-read, re-transferred and re-hashed (although nothing would be re-written), but would absolutely not corrupt anything. (Some filesharing software may also be able to benefit by integrating with the FS.) So what's the best way of doing this? I've looked at some options: lessfs - Looks unmaintained. Any good? [Opendedup/SDFS][3] - Java? Could I use this on Android?! What does [SDFS][4] stand for? [Btrfs][5] - Some patches floating around on mailing list archives, but no real support. [ZFS][6] - Hopefully they'll one day relicense under a true Free/Opensource GPL-compatible licence. Also, 2 years ago I had a go at an attempt in Python using Fuse at the file-level to be used over the top of a typical solid FS such as EXT4, but I found Fuse for Python underdocumented and didn't manage to implement all of the system calls. My first post here, so I can't post more than 2 links until I get over 10 rep: [3]: http://www.opendedup.org/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SDFS&action=edit&redlink=1 [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs#Features [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Linux

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  • How to deal with malicious domain redirections?

    - by user359650
    It is possible for anybody to buy a domain name containing negative terms and point it to someone's website in order to damage their reputation. For instance someone could buy the domain child-pornography.com and point it to the address 64.34.119.12 which is the address behind stackoverflow.com and people navigating to the domain in question would end up visualizing content from StackExchange which would be detrimental to StackExchange's image. To illustrate this, I added the entry 64.34.119.12 child-pornography.com to my /etc/hosts file and tested. Here is what I obtained: I personally found this user experience terrible as someone could think that Stack Exchange are in favor of child pornography and awaiting support from the community to create a Q&A site about it. I tested with other websites and experienced other behaviors that I would categorize as follows: 1 - Useful 404 page (happens with stackoverflow.com): For me the worst way of handling this as the image of the targeted website is directly associated with the offending domain. The more useful the 404 page, the bigger the impression that the targeted website would be willing to help with child pornography. 2 - Redirection (happens with microsoft.com): For instance when accessing child-pornography.com you get redirected to www.microsoft.com. It isn't as bad as above as the offending domain name never appears alongside the targeted website's content, but still bad in my opinion as it gives the impression the targeted website bought the offending domain and redirected it to their website to get more traffic. 3 - Server error (happens with lemonde.fr): You get an error from the webserver which page doesn't contain any content that can be associated with the targeted website (e.g. default Apache 404 page, completely blank page). I believe that is good as the identify of the targeted website isn't revealed. Above are the various behaviors I experienced, but I also thought about a fourth way of dealing with this which is described below. 4 - Disclaimer page (haven't found any website implementing that technique): Display a message such as : "You ended here because someone bought and linked the child-pornography.com domain to our website. We do not own this domain and do not associate ourselves with it. This request has been logged by our servers and we will raise this issue with the competent authorities to have this domain taken down. If you want to access our website, please click here." The good thing about this method is that it can be implemented at application layer (good if you don't have control over web server which happens with some hosting solutions), allows you to protect yourself from any liability, and offer the visitor to be redirected to your own website. Which of the above options would you implement to deal with malicious domain linking (IMO only options 3 and 4 are worth considering) ?

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  • Oracle BPM and Open Data integration development

    - by drrwebber
    Rapidly developing Oracle BPM application solutions with data source integration previously required significant Java and JDeveloper skills. Now using open source tools for open data development significantly reduces the coding needed.  Key tasks can be performed with visual drag and drop designing combined with menu selections entry and automatic form generation directly from XSD schema definitions. The architecture used is extremely lightweight, portable, open platform and scalable allowing integration with a variety of Oracle and non-Oracle data sources and systems. Two videos available on YouTube walk through the process at both an introductory conceptual level and then a deep dive into the programming needed using JDeveloper, Oracle BPM composer and Oracle WLS (WebLogic Server) along with the CAM editor and Open-XDX open source tools. Also available are coding samples and resources from the GitHub project page, along with working online demonstration resources on the VerifyXML site. Combining Oracle BPM with these open source tools provides a comprehensive simple and elegant solution set. Development times are slashed and rapid prototyping is enabled. Also existing data sources can be integrated using open data formats with either XML or JSON along with CRUD accessing via the Open-XDX Java component. The Open-XDX tool is a code-free approach where data mapping is configured as templates using visual drag and drop in the CAM Editor open source tool.  XML or JSON is then automatically generated or processed (output or input) and appropriate SQL statements created to support the data accessing.   Also included is the ability to integrate with fillable PDF forms via the XML templates and the Java PDF form filling library.  Again minimal Java coding is needed to associate the XML source content with the PDF named fields.  The Oracle BPM forms can be automatically generated from XSD schema definitions that are built from the data mapping templates.  This dramatically simplifies development work as all the integration artifacts needed are created by the open source editor toolset. The developer level video is designed as a tutorial with segments, hands-on demonstrations and reviews.  This allows developers to learn the techniques and approaches used in incremental steps. The intended audience ranges from data analysts to developers and assumes only entry level Java skills and knowledge.  Most actions are menu driven while Java coding is limited to simply configuring values and parameters along with performing builds and deployments from JDeveloper and Oracle WLS.   Additional existing Oracle online training resources can be referenced on Oracle BPM and WLS that cover other normal delivery aspects such as user management and application deployment.

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  • Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04.2, Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

    - by black sensei
    i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance EDIT Hey, i just did another trial with 13.04 this time and still no luck. bios: secure-boot: disabled enable CSM : always 1-delete previous ubuntu partition and swap area partition.now having free space 2- used usb installer to prepare usb with ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso 3- rebooted : liveusb didnt detect windows 8, used something else 4-created partition ext4 for / 5-created partition for swap-area 6- default grub path is /dev/sda and clicked install Acer always boots into windows.

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  • Are closures with side-effects considered "functional style"?

    - by Giorgio
    Many modern programming languages support some concept of closure, i.e. of a piece of code (a block or a function) that Can be treated as a value, and therefore stored in a variable, passed around to different parts of the code, be defined in one part of a program and invoked in a totally different part of the same program. Can capture variables from the context in which it is defined, and access them when it is later invoked (possibly in a totally different context). Here is an example of a closure written in Scala: def filterList(xs: List[Int], lowerBound: Int): List[Int] = xs.filter(x => x >= lowerBound) The function literal x => x >= lowerBound contains the free variable lowerBound, which is closed (bound) by the argument of the function filterList that has the same name. The closure is passed to the library method filter, which can invoke it repeatedly as a normal function. I have been reading a lot of questions and answers on this site and, as far as I understand, the term closure is often automatically associated with functional programming and functional programming style. The definition of function programming on wikipedia reads: In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state. and further on [...] in functional code, the output value of a function depends only on the arguments that are input to the function [...]. Eliminating side effects can make it much easier to understand and predict the behavior of a program, which is one of the key motivations for the development of functional programming. On the other hand, many closure constructs provided by programming languages allow a closure to capture non-local variables and change them when the closure is invoked, thus producing a side effect on the environment in which they were defined. In this case, closures implement the first idea of functional programming (functions are first-class entities that can be moved around like other values) but neglect the second idea (avoiding side-effects). Is this use of closures with side effects considered functional style or are closures considered a more general construct that can be used both for a functional and a non-functional programming style? Is there any literature on this topic? IMPORTANT NOTE I am not questioning the usefulness of side-effects or of having closures with side effects. Also, I am not interested in a discussion about the advantages / disadvantages of closures with or without side effects. I am only interested to know if using such closures is still considered functional style by the proponent of functional programming or if, on the contrary, their use is discouraged when using a functional style.

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  • Is Innovation Dead?

    - by wulfers
    My question is has innovation died?  For large businesses that do not have a vibrant, and fearless leadership (see Apple under Steve jobs), I think is has.  If you look at the organizational charts for many of the large corporate megaliths you will see a plethora of middle managers who are so risk averse that innovation (any change involves risk) is choked off since there are no innovation champions in the middle layers.  And innovation driven top down can only happen when you have a visionary in the top ranks, and that is also very rare.So where is actual innovation happening, at the bottom layer, the people who live in the trenches…   The people who live for a challenge. So how can big business leverage this innovation layer?  Remove the middle management layer.   Provide an innovation champion who has an R&D budget and is tasked with working with the bottom layer of a company, the engineers, developers  and business analysts that live on the edge (Where the corporate tires meet the road). Here are two innovation failures I will tell you about, and both have been impacted by a company so risk averse it is starting to fail in its primary business ventures: This company initiated an innovation process several years ago.  The process was driven companywide with team managers being the central points of collection of innovative ideas.  These managers were given no budget to do anything with these ideas.  There was no process or incentive for these managers to drive it about their team.  This lasted close to a year and the innovation program slowly slipped into oblivion…. A second example:  This same company failed an attempt to market a consumer product in a line where there was already a major market leader.  This product was under development for several years and needed to provide some major device differentiation form the current market leader.  This same company had a large Lead Technologist community made up of real innovators in all areas of technology.  Did this same company leverage the skills and experience of this internal community,   NO!!! So to wrap this up, if large companies really want to survive, then they need to start acting like a small company.  Support those innovators and risk takers!  Reward them by implementing their innovative ideas.  Champion (from the top down) innovation (found at the bottom) in your companies.  Remember if you stand still you are really falling behind.Do it now!  Take a risk!

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  • More on Map Testing

    - by Michael Stephenson
    I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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