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• Oracle’s Web Experience Management

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Today’s guest post on Oracle’s Web Experience Management comes from a member of our WebCenter Evangelist team, Noël Jaffré, a Principal Technologist based in France.Oracle’s Web Experience Management (WEM) solution enables organizations to optimize the online channel for driving marketing and customer experience management success. It empowers business users to manage the web presence and create rich and engaging online experiences for customers and prospects. Oracle's WEM platform provides a framework to simplify the integration of Oracle, third-party and custom-built applications. This framework essentially allows the creation and integration of applications using one single business interface called the WEM interface. It includes the following: Single sign-on access control for all integrated applications using the Central Authentication Service (CAS) component. A single centralized administration window for user, role, and native applications management including site management. Community server management, gadget server management as well as management for partner integrated technologies. A Representational State Transfer (REST) API for accessing WebCenter Sites data. REST services are supported on both Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle WebCenter Sites Satellite Server to leverage the satellite server cache. All REST requests are cached for web consuming applications as well for the high performance delivery of native applications on the mobile channel. Oracle WebCenter Sites’ Web Experience Management environment enables organizations to deliver a compelling online experience to customers by simplifying the deployment and management of sophisticated and engaging websites. The WebCenter Sites platform automates the entire process of managing web content including: Authoring:  Business users can easily contribute and manage web content in real-time, with intuitive interfaces and drag-and-drop content authoring and layout capabilities designed for the non-technical user. Contextual Content Targeting: Marketers are empowered to create and manage targeted campaigns with relevant recommendations and promotions based on the context of the session of the visitor such as his or her navigation history, user profile, language, location or other information shared during the visitor session. Content Publishing and Deployment: It offers advanced multi-site management capabilities for departmental or regional sites, as well as strong multi-lingual and multi-locale content management. The remote satellite server caching infrastructure provides high-performance, distributed caching, tuned to deliver high-volume, targeted and multi-lingual sites. Analytics and Optimization: Business users and marketers have the ability to measure the effectiveness of their online content and campaigns at a granular level. Editors and marketers can immediately determine whether a given article or promotion is relevant to a particular customer segment. User-generated Content: Marketers can enable blogs, comments, rating and reviews on the website.  All comments and reviews posted to the website can be moderated from the administrator interface either manually or automatically using filters, whitelists, blacklists or community based moderation. Personalized Gadget Dashboards:  Site managers can deploy gadgets, small applications using web content, individually or as part of dashboards containing multiple gadgets.  These gadget dashboards enable site visitors to create their own “MyPage” on a given site where they can select and customize the gadgets that the site administrator has made available.  Any gadget that conforms to the iGoogle/OpenSocial standard can be made available to site visitors, or they can be created within the WEM interface. Oracle's WEM platform also provides a unique environment for the delivery of a rich, multichannel online experience for site visitors through its advanced management modules for mobile. With Oracle’s WEM solution, it’s easy to control branding and deliver a consistent message while repurposing web content for publication to mobile devices, kiosks and much more. This distinctive approach provides: HTML5 Delivery: HTML5 delivery which includes native support for adaptive design that responds to the user’s computer screen resolution and orientation. The approach is less driven by the particular hardware and more driven by the user’s interactions with the device. In other words, this approach takes both the screen interactions (either cursor or touch) and screen sizes and orientation into consideration. A Unique Native Mobile Extension Environment for Contributors: From the WEM interface, a contributor can directly manage their mobile channel, using the tooling already in place for driving the traditional web presence. This includes the mobile presentation, as well as mobile insite editing, drag and drop page layout, and in-context recommendations and personalization. Optimized REST APIs for High Performance Content Delivery on Native Mobile Device Applications: WebCenter Sites’ REST API uses the underlying HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to interact with resources. Resources support two types of input and output formats -- XML and JSON. REST calls are customizable to optimize the interactions between the content repositories and the client applications. Caching is essential to decrease network loads and improve overall reliability and usability of the applications and user interactions. REST results are cached through the highly efficient Oracle WebCenter Sites caching architecture.

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• A Quick Primer on SharePoint Customization

  - by PeterBrunone

  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:"Times New Roman","serif";} This one goes out to all the people who have been asked to change the way a SharePoint site looks.  Management wants to know how long it will take, and you can whip that out by tomorrow, right?  If you don't have time to prepare a treatise on what's involved, or if you just want to lend some extra weight to your case by quoting a blogger who was an MVP for seven years, then dive right in; this post is for you. There are three main components of SharePoint visual customization:   1)       Theme – A theme encompasses all the standardized text formatting and coloring (borders, fonts, etc), including the background images of various sections. All told, there could be around 50 images involved, and a few hundred CSS (style) classes.  Installing a theme once it’s been created is no great feat.  Given the number of pieces, of course, creating a new theme could take anywhere from a day to a week… once decisions have been made about the desired appearance. 2)      Master Page – A master page provides the framework for page layout.  This includes all the top and side menus, where content shows up, et cetera.  Master pages have been around for a long time in ASP.NET (Microsoft’s web development platform), and they do require some .NET programming knowledge.  Beyond that, in SharePoint, there are a few dozen controls which the system expects find on a given page.  They’re not all used at once, but if they’re not there when they’re needed, chaos ensues.  Estimating a custom master page is difficult, as it depends on the level of customization.  I’ve been on projects where I was brought in simply to fix some problems and add a few finishing touches, and it took 2-3 weeks.  Master page customization requires a large amount of testing time to make sure that the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and control placement all work well together. 3)      Individual page layout – Each page (ideally) uses a master page for its template, but within the content areas defined by the master page, web parts can be added, removed, and configured from within the browser.  The wireframe that Brent provided could most likely be completed simply by manipulating the content on the home page in this fashion, and we had allowed about a day of effort for the task.  If needed, further functionality can be provided by an experienced ASP.NET developer; custom forms are a common example.  This of course is a bit more in-depth than simple content manipulation and could take several days per page (or more; there’s really no way to quantify this without a set of requirements).   That’s basically it.  To recap:  Fonts and coloring are done with themes, and can take anywhere from a day to a week to create (not counting creative time); required technical skills include HTML, CSS, and image manipulation.  Templated layout is done with master pages, and generally requires a developer familiar with both ASP.NET and SharePoint in particular; it can have far-reaching consequences depending on the complexity of the changes, and could add weeks or months to a project.  Page layout can be as simple as content manipulation in the web browser, taking a few hours per page, or it can involve more detail, like custom forms, and can require programming expertise and significantly more development time.

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• Parent Objects

  - by Ali Bahrami

  Support for Parent Objects was added in Solaris 11 Update 1. The following material is adapted from the PSARC arc case, and the Solaris Linker and Libraries Manual. A "plugin" is a shared object, usually loaded via dlopen(), that is used by a program in order to allow the end user to add functionality to the program. Examples of plugins include those used by web browsers (flash, acrobat, etc), as well as mdb and elfedit modules. The object that loads the plugin at runtime is called the "parent object". Unlike most object dependencies, the parent is not identified by name, but by its status as the object doing the load. Historically, building a good plugin is has been more complicated than it should be: A parent and its plugin usually share a 2-way dependency: The plugin provides one or more routines for the parent to call, and the parent supplies support routines for use by the plugin for things like memory allocation and error reporting. It is a best practice to build all objects, including plugins, with the -z defs option, in order to ensure that the object specifies all of its dependencies, and is self contained. However: The parent is usually an executable, which cannot be linked to via the usual library mechanisms provided by the link editor. Even if the parent is a shared object, which could be a normal library dependency to the plugin, it may be desirable to build plugins that can be used by more than one parent, in which case embedding a dependency NEEDED entry for one of the parents is undesirable. The usual way to build a high quality plugin with -z defs uses a special mapfile provided by the parent. This mapfile defines the parent routines, specifying the PARENT attribute (see example below). This works, but is inconvenient, and error prone. The symbol table in the parent already describes what it makes available to plugins — ideally the plugin would obtain that information directly rather than from a separate mapfile. The new -z parent option to ld allows a plugin to link to the parent and access the parent symbol table. This differs from a typical dependency: No NEEDED record is created. The relationship is recorded as a logical connection to the parent, rather than as an explicit object name However, it operates in the same manner as any other dependency in terms of making symbols available to the plugin. When the -z parent option is used, the link-editor records the basename of the parent object in the dynamic section, using the new tag DT_SUNW_PARENT. This is an informational tag, which is not used by the runtime linker to locate the parent, but which is available for diagnostic purposes. The ld(1) manpage documentation for the -z parent option is: -z parent=object Specifies a "parent object", which can be an executable or shared object, against which to link the output object. This option is typically used when creating "plugin" shared objects intended to be loaded by an executable at runtime via the dlopen() function. The symbol table from the parent object is used to satisfy references from the plugin object. The use of the -z parent option makes symbols from the object calling dlopen() available to the plugin. Example For this example, we use a main program, and a plugin. The parent provides a function named parent_callback() for the plugin to call. The plugin provides a function named plugin_func() to the parent: % cat main.c #include <stdio.h> #include <dlfcn.h> #include <link.h> void parent_callback(void) { printf("plugin_func() has called parent_callback()\n"); } int main(int argc, char **argv) { typedef void plugin_func_t(void); void *hdl; plugin_func_t *plugin_func; if (argc != 2) { fprintf(stderr, "usage: main plugin\n"); return (1); } if ((hdl = dlopen(argv[1], RTLD_LAZY)) == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "unable to load plugin: %s\n", dlerror()); return (1); } plugin_func = (plugin_func_t *) dlsym(hdl, "plugin_func"); if (plugin_func == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "unable to find plugin_func: %s\n", dlerror()); return (1); } (*plugin_func)(); return (0); } % cat plugin.c #include <stdio.h> extern void parent_callback(void); void plugin_func(void) { printf("parent has called plugin_func() from plugin.so\n"); parent_callback(); } Building this in the traditional manner, without -zdefs: % cc -o main main.c % cc -G -o plugin.so plugin.c % ./main ./plugin.so parent has called plugin_func() from plugin.so plugin_func() has called parent_callback() As noted above, when building any shared object, the -z defs option is recommended, in order to ensure that the object is self contained and specifies all of its dependencies. However, the use of -z defs prevents the plugin object from linking due to the unsatisfied symbol from the parent object: % cc -zdefs -G -o plugin.so plugin.c Undefined first referenced symbol in file parent_callback plugin.o ld: fatal: symbol referencing errors. No output written to plugin.so A mapfile can be used to specify to ld that the parent_callback symbol is supplied by the parent object. % cat plugin.mapfile $mapfile_version 2 SYMBOL_SCOPE { global: parent_callback { FLAGS = PARENT }; }; % cc -zdefs -Mplugin.mapfile -G -o plugin.so plugin.c However, the -z parent option to ld is the most direct solution to this problem, allowing the plugin to actually link against the parent object, and obtain the available symbols from it. An added benefit of using -z parent instead of a mapfile, is that the name of the parent object is recorded in the dynamic section of the plugin, and can be displayed by the file utility: % cc -zdefs -zparent=main -G -o plugin.so plugin.c % elfdump -d plugin.so | grep PARENT [0] SUNW_PARENT 0xcc main % file plugin.so plugin.so: ELF 32-bit LSB dynamic lib 80386 Version 1, parent main, dynamically linked, not stripped % ./main ./plugin.so parent has called plugin_func() from plugin.so plugin_func() has called parent_callback() We can also observe this in elfedit plugins on Solaris systems running Solaris 11 Update 1 or newer: % file /usr/lib/elfedit/dyn.so /usr/lib/elfedit/dyn.so: ELF 32-bit LSB dynamic lib 80386 Version 1, parent elfedit, dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging information available Related Other Work The GNU ld has an option named --just-symbols that can be used in a similar manner: --just-symbols=filename Read symbol names and their addresses from filename, but do not relocate it or include it in the output. This allows your output file to refer symbolically to absolute locations of memory defined in other programs. You may use this option more than once. -z parent is a higher level operation aimed specifically at simplifying the construction of high quality plugins. Although it employs the same operation, it differs from --just symbols in 2 significant ways: There can only be one parent. The parent is recorded in the created object, and can be displayed by 'file', or other similar tools.

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• Fun with Aggregates

  - by Paul White

  There are interesting things to be learned from even the simplest queries.  For example, imagine you are given the task of writing a query to list AdventureWorks product names where the product has at least one entry in the transaction history table, but fewer than ten. One possible query to meet that specification is: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p JOIN Production.TransactionHistory AS th ON p.ProductID = th.ProductID GROUP BY p.ProductID, p.Name HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10; That query correctly returns 23 rows (execution plan and data sample shown below): The execution plan looks a bit different from the written form of the query: the base tables are accessed in reverse order, and the aggregation is performed before the join.  The general idea is to read all rows from the history table, compute the count of rows grouped by ProductID, merge join the results to the Product table on ProductID, and finally filter to only return rows where the count is less than ten. This ‘fully-optimized’ plan has an estimated cost of around 0.33 units.  The reason for the quote marks there is that this plan is not quite as optimal as it could be – surely it would make sense to push the Filter down past the join too?  To answer that, let’s look at some other ways to formulate this query.  This being SQL, there are any number of ways to write logically-equivalent query specifications, so we’ll just look at a couple of interesting ones.  The first query is an attempt to reverse-engineer T-SQL from the optimized query plan shown above.  It joins the result of pre-aggregating the history table to the Product table before filtering: SELECT p.Name FROM ( SELECT th.ProductID, cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th GROUP BY th.ProductID ) AS q1 JOIN Production.Product AS p ON p.ProductID = q1.ProductID WHERE q1.cnt < 10; Perhaps a little surprisingly, we get a slightly different execution plan: The results are the same (23 rows) but this time the Filter is pushed below the join!  The optimizer chooses nested loops for the join, because the cardinality estimate for rows passing the Filter is a bit low (estimate 1 versus 23 actual), though you can force a merge join with a hint and the Filter still appears below the join.  In yet another variation, the < 10 predicate can be ‘manually pushed’ by specifying it in a HAVING clause in the “q1” sub-query instead of in the WHERE clause as written above. The reason this predicate can be pushed past the join in this query form, but not in the original formulation is simply an optimizer limitation – it does make efforts (primarily during the simplification phase) to encourage logically-equivalent query specifications to produce the same execution plan, but the implementation is not completely comprehensive. Moving on to a second example, the following query specification results from phrasing the requirement as “list the products where there exists fewer than ten correlated rows in the history table”: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ); Unfortunately, this query produces an incorrect result (86 rows): The problem is that it lists products with no history rows, though the reasons are interesting.  The COUNT_BIG(*) in the EXISTS clause is a scalar aggregate (meaning there is no GROUP BY clause) and scalar aggregates always produce a value, even when the input is an empty set.  In the case of the COUNT aggregate, the result of aggregating the empty set is zero (the other standard aggregates produce a NULL).  To make the point really clear, let’s look at product 709, which happens to be one for which no history rows exist: -- Scalar aggregate SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = 709;   -- Vector aggregate SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = 709 GROUP BY th.ProductID; The estimated execution plans for these two statements are almost identical: You might expect the Stream Aggregate to have a Group By for the second statement, but this is not the case.  The query includes an equality comparison to a constant value (709), so all qualified rows are guaranteed to have the same value for ProductID and the Group By is optimized away. In fact there are some minor differences between the two plans (the first is auto-parameterized and qualifies for trivial plan, whereas the second is not auto-parameterized and requires cost-based optimization), but there is nothing to indicate that one is a scalar aggregate and the other is a vector aggregate.  This is something I would like to see exposed in show plan so I suggested it on Connect.  Anyway, the results of running the two queries show the difference at runtime: The scalar aggregate (no GROUP BY) returns a result of zero, whereas the vector aggregate (with a GROUP BY clause) returns nothing at all.  Returning to our EXISTS query, we could ‘fix’ it by changing the HAVING clause to reject rows where the scalar aggregate returns zero: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) BETWEEN 1 AND 9 ); The query now returns the correct 23 rows: Unfortunately, the execution plan is less efficient now – it has an estimated cost of 0.78 compared to 0.33 for the earlier plans.  Let’s try adding a redundant GROUP BY instead of changing the HAVING clause: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY th.ProductID HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ); Not only do we now get correct results (23 rows), this is the execution plan: I like to compare that plan to quantum physics: if you don’t find it shocking, you haven’t understood it properly :)  The simple addition of a redundant GROUP BY has resulted in the EXISTS form of the query being transformed into exactly the same optimal plan we found earlier.  What’s more, in SQL Server 2008 and later, we can replace the odd-looking GROUP BY with an explicit GROUP BY on the empty set: SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ); I offer that as an alternative because some people find it more intuitive (and it perhaps has more geek value too).  Whichever way you prefer, it’s rather satisfying to note that the result of the sub-query does not exist for a particular correlated value where a vector aggregate is used (the scalar COUNT aggregate always returns a value, even if zero, so it always ‘EXISTS’ regardless which ProductID is logically being evaluated). The following query forms also produce the optimal plan and correct results, so long as a vector aggregate is used (you can probably find more equivalent query forms): WHERE Clause SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p WHERE ( SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () ) < 10; APPLY SELECT p.Name FROM Production.Product AS p CROSS APPLY ( SELECT NULL FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () HAVING COUNT_BIG(*) < 10 ) AS ca (dummy); FROM Clause SELECT q1.Name FROM ( SELECT p.Name, cnt = ( SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID GROUP BY () ) FROM Production.Product AS p ) AS q1 WHERE q1.cnt < 10; This last example uses SUM(1) instead of COUNT and does not require a vector aggregate…you should be able to work out why :) SELECT q.Name FROM ( SELECT p.Name, cnt = ( SELECT SUM(1) FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = p.ProductID ) FROM Production.Product AS p ) AS q WHERE q.cnt < 10; The semantics of SQL aggregates are rather odd in places.  It definitely pays to get to know the rules, and to be careful to check whether your queries are using scalar or vector aggregates.  As we have seen, query plans do not show in which ‘mode’ an aggregate is running and getting it wrong can cause poor performance, wrong results, or both. © 2012 Paul White Twitter: @SQL_Kiwi email: [email protected]

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• How to configure VPN in Windows XP

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

  VPN Overview A VPN is a private network created over a public one. It’s done with encryption, this way, your data is encapsulated and secure in transit – this creates the ‘virtual’ tunnel. A VPN is a method of connecting to a private network by a public network like the Internet. An internet connection in a company is common. An Internet connection in a Home is common too. With both of these, you could create an encrypted tunnel between them and pass traffic, safely - securely. If you want to create a VPN connection you will have to use encryption to make sure that others cannot intercept the data in transit while traversing the Internet. Windows XP provides a certain level of security by using Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP). They are both considered tunneling protocols – simply because they create that virtual tunnel just discussed, by applying encryption. Configure a VPN with XP If you want to configure a VPN connection from a Windows XP client computer you only need what comes with the Operating System itself, it's all built right in. To set up a connection to a VPN, do the following: 1. On the computer that is running Windows XP, confirm that the connection to the Internet is correctly configured. • You can try to browse the internet • Ping a known host on the Internet, like yahoo.com, something that isn’t blocking ICMP 2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 3. In Control Panel, double click Network Connections 4. Click Create a new connection in the Network Tasks task pad 5. In the Network Connection Wizard, click Next. 6. Click Connect to the network at my workplace, and then click Next. 7. Click Virtual Private Network connection, and then click Next. 8. If you are prompted, you need to select whether you will use a dialup connection or if you have a dedicated connection to the Internet either via Cable, DSL, T1, Satellite, etc. Click Next. 9. Type a host name, IP or any other description you would like to appear in the Network Connections area. You can change this later if you want. Click Next. 10. Type the host name or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that you want to connect to, and then click Next. 11. You may be asked if you want to use a Smart Card or not. 12. You are just about done, the rest of the screens just verify your connection, click Next. 13. Click to select the Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop check box if you want one, if not, then leave it unchecked and click finish. 14. You are now done making your connection, but by default, it may try to connect. You can either try the connection now if you know its valid, if not, then just close it down for now. 15. In the Network Connections window, right-click the new connection and select properties. Let’s take a look at how you can customize this connection before it’s used. 16. The first tab you will see if the General Tab. This only covers the name of the connection, which you can also rename from the Network Connection dialog box by right clicking the connection and selecting to rename it. You can also configure a First connect, which means that Windows can connect the public network (like the Internet) before starting to attempt the ‘VPN’ connection. This is a perfect example as to when you would have configured the dialup connection; this would have been the first thing that you would have to do. It's simple, you have to be connected to the Internet first before you can encrypt and send data over it. This setting makes sure that this is a reality for you. 17. The next tab is the Options Tab. It is The Options tab has a lot you can configure in it. For one, you have the option to connect to a Windows Domain, if you select this check box (unchecked by default), then your VPN client will request Windows logon domain information while starting to work up the VPN connection. Also, you have options here for redialing. Redial attempts are configured here if you are using a dial up connection to get to the Internet. It is very handy to redial if the line is dropped as dropped lines are very common. 18. The next tab is the Security Tab. This is where you would configure basic security for the VPN client. This is where you would set any advanced IPSec configurations other security protocols as well as requiring encryption and credentials. 19. The next tab is the Networking Tab. This is where you can select what networking items are used by this VPN connection. 20. The Last tab is the Advanced Tab. This is where you can configure options for configuring a firewall, and/or sharing. Connecting to Corporate Now that you have your XP VPN client all set up and ready, the next step is to attempt a connection to the Remote Access or VPN server set up at the corporate office. To use the connection follow these simple steps. To open the client again, go back to the Network Connections dialog box. 1. One you are in the Network Connection dialog box, double-click, or right click and select ‘Connect’ from the menu – this will initiate the connection to the corporate office. 2. Type your user name and password, and then click Connect. Properties bring you back to what we just discussed in this article, all the global settings for the VPN client you are using. 3. To disconnect from a VPN connection, right-click the icon for the connection, and then click “Disconnect” Summary In this article we covered the basics of building a VPN connection using Windows XP. This is very handy when you have a VPN device but don’t have the ‘client’ that may come with it. If the VPN Server doesn’t use highly proprietary protocols, then you can use the XP client to connect with. In a future article I will get into the nuts and bolts of both IPSec and more detail on how to configure the advanced options in the Security tab of this client. 678: The remote computer did not respond. 930: The authentication server did not respond to authentication requests in a timely fashion. 800: Unable to establish the VPN connection. 623: The system could not find the phone book entry for this connection. 720: A connection to the remote computer could not be established. More on : http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Configure-VPN-Connection-Windows-XP.html

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• Spotlight on Claims: Serving Customers Under Extreme Conditions

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, recently attended the CII Spotlight on Claims event in London. Bad weather and its implications for the insurance industry have become very topical as the frequency and diversity of natural disasters - including rains, wind and snow - has surged across Europe this winter. On England's wettest day on record, the county of Cumbria was flooded with 12 inches of rain within 24 hours. Freezing temperatures wreaked havoc on European travel, causing high speed TVG trains to break down and stranding hundreds of passengers under the English Chanel in a tunnel all night long without heat or electricity. A storm named Xynthia thrashed France and surrounding countries with hurricane force, flooding ports and killing 51 people. After the Spring Equinox, insurers may have thought the worst had past. Then came along Eyjafjallajökull, spewing out vast quantities of volcanic ash in what is turning out to be one of most costly natural disasters in history. Such extreme events challenge insurance companies' ability to service their customers just when customers need their help most. When you add economic downturn and competitive pressures to the mix, insurers are further stretched and required to continually learn and innovate to meet high customer expectations with reduced budgets. These and other issues were hot topics of discussion at the recent "Spotlight on Claims" seminar in London, focused on how weather is affecting claims and the insurance industry. The event was organized by the CII (Chartered Insurance Institute), a group with 90,000 members. CII has been at the forefront in setting professional standards for the insurance industry for over a century. Insurers came to the conference to hear how they could better serve their customers under extreme weather conditions, learn from the experience of their peers, and hear about technological breakthroughs in climate modeling, geographic intelligence and IT. Customer case studies at the conference highlighted the importance of effective and constant communication in handling the overflow of catastrophe related claims. First and foremost is the need to rapidly establish initial communication with claimants to build their confidence in a positive outcome. Ongoing communication then needs to be continued throughout the claims cycle to mange expectations and maintain ownership of the process from start to finish. Strong internal communication to support frontline staff was also deemed critical to successful crisis management, as was communication with the broader insurance ecosystem to tap into extended resources and business intelligence. Advances in technology - such web based systems to access policies and enter first notice of loss in the field - as well as customer-focused self-service portals and multichannel alerts, are instrumental in improving customer satisfaction and helping insurers to deal with the claims surge, which often can reach four or more times normal workloads. Dynamic models of the global climate system can now be used to better understand weather-related risks, and as these models mature it is hoped that they will soon become more accurate in predicting the timing of catastrophic events. Geographic intelligence is also being used within a claims environment to better assess loss reserves and detect fraud. Despite these advances in dealing with catastrophes and predicting their occurrence, there will never be a substitute for qualified front line staff to deal with customers. In light of pressures to streamline efficiency, there was debate as to whether outsourcing was the solution, or whether it was better to build on the people you have. In the final analysis, nearly everybody agreed that in the future insurance companies would have to work better and smarter to keep on top. An appeal was also made for greater collaboration amongst industry participants in dealing with the extreme conditions and systematic stress brought on by natural disasters. It was pointed out that the public oftentimes judged the industry as a whole rather than the individual carriers when it comes to freakish events, and that all would benefit at such times from the pooling of limited resources and professional skills rather than competing in silos for competitive advantage - especially the end customer. One case study that stood out was on how The Motorists Insurance Group was able to power through one of the most devastating catastrophes in recent years - Hurricane Ike. The keys to Motorists' success were superior people, processes and technology. They did a lot of upfront planning and invested in their people, creating a healthy team environment that delivered "max service" even when they were experiencing the same level of devastation as the rest of the population. Processes were rapidly adapted to meet the challenge of the catastrophe and continually adapted to Ike's specific conditions as they evolved. Technology was fundamental to the execution of their strategy, enabling them anywhere access, on the fly reassigning of resources and rapid training to augment the work force. You can learn more about the Motorists experience by watching this video. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.

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• Advanced donut caching: using dynamically loaded controls

  - by DigiMortal

  Yesterday I solved one caching problem with local community portal. I enabled output cache on SharePoint Server 2007 to make site faster. Although caching works fine I needed to do some additional work because there are some controls that show different content to different users. In this example I will show you how to use “donut caching” with user controls – powerful way to drive some content around cache. About donut caching Donut caching means that although you are caching your content you have some holes in it so you can still affect the output that goes to user. By example you can cache front page on your site and still show welcome message that contains correct user name. To get better idea about donut caching I suggest you to read ScottGu posting Tip/Trick: Implement "Donut Caching" with the ASP.NET 2.0 Output Cache Substitution Feature. Basically donut caching uses ASP.NET substitution control. In output this control is replaced by string you return from static method bound to substitution control. Again, take a look at ScottGu blog posting I referred above. Problem If you look at Scott’s example it is pretty plain and easy by its output. All it does is it writes out current user name as string. Here are examples of my login area for anonymous and authenticated users:    It is clear that outputting mark-up for these views as string is pretty lame to implement in code at string level. Every little change in design will end up with new version of controls library because some parts of design “live” there. Solution: using user controls I worked out easy solution to my problem. I used cache substitution and user controls together. I have three user controls: LogInControl – this is the proxy control that checks which “real” control to load. AnonymousLogInControl – template and logic for anonymous users login area. AuthenticatedLogInControl – template and logic for authenticated users login area. This is the control we render for each user separately because it contains user name and user profile fill percent. Anonymous control is not very interesting because it is only about keeping mark-up in separate file. Interesting parts are LogInControl and AuthenticatedLogInControl. Creating proxy control The first thing was to create control that has substitution area where “real” control is loaded. This proxy control should also be available to decide which control to load. The definition of control is very primitive. <%@ Control EnableViewState="false" Inherits="MyPortal.Profiles.LogInControl" %> <asp:Substitution runat="server" MethodName="ShowLogInBox" /> But code is a little bit tricky. Based on current user instance we decide which login control to load. Then we create page instance and load our control through it. When control is loaded we will call DataBind() method. In this method we evaluate all fields in loaded control (it was best choice as Load and other events will not be fired). Take a look at the code. public static string ShowLogInBox(HttpContext context) {     var user = SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser;     string controlName;       if (user != null)         controlName = "AuthenticatedLogInControl.ascx";     else         controlName = "AnonymousLogInControl.ascx";       var path = "~/_controltemplates/" + controlName;     var output = new StringBuilder(10000);       using(var page = new Page())     using(var ctl = page.LoadControl(path))     using(var writer = new StringWriter(output))     using(var htmlWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(writer))     {         ctl.DataBind();         ctl.RenderControl(htmlWriter);     }     return output.ToString(); } When control is bound to data we ask to render it its contents to StringBuilder. Now we have the output of control as string and we can return it from our method. Of course, notice how correct I am with resources disposing. :) The method that returns contents for substitution control is static method that has no connection with control instance because hen page is read from cache there are no instances of controls available. Conclusion As you saw it was not very hard to use donut caching with user controls. Instead of writing mark-up of controls to static method that is bound to substitution control we can still use our user controls.

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• General monitoring for SQL Server Analysis Services using Performance Monitor

  - by Testas

  A recent customer engagement required a setup of a monitoring solution for SSAS, due to the time restrictions placed upon this, native Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon) and SQL Server Profiler Monitoring Tools was used as using a third party tool would have meant the customer providing an additional monitoring server that was not available.I wanted to outline the performance monitoring counters that was used to monitor the system on which SSAS was running. Due to the slow query performance that was occurring during certain scenarios, perfmon was used to establish if any pressure was being placed on the Disk, CPU or Memory subsystem when concurrent connections access the same query, and Profiler to pinpoint how the query was being managed within SSAS, profiler I will leave for another blogThis guide is not designed to provide a definitive list of what should be used when monitoring SSAS, different situations may require the addition or removal of counters as presented by the situation. However I hope that it serves as a good basis for starting your monitoring of SSAS. I would also like to acknowledge Chris Webb’s awesome chapters from “Expert Cube Development” that also helped shape my monitoring strategy:http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!6657.entrySimulating ConnectionsTo simulate the additional connections to the SSAS server whilst monitoring, I used ascmd to simulate multiple connections to the typical and worse performing queries that were identified by the customer. A similar sript can be downloaded from codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSrvAnalysisSrvcs.     File name: ASCMD_StressTestingScripts.zip. Performance MonitorWithin performance monitor,  a counter log was created that contained the list of counters below. The important point to note when running the counter log is that the RUN AS property within the counter log properties should be changed to an account that has rights to the SSAS instance when monitoring MSAS counters. Failure to do so means that the counter log runs under the system account, no errors or warning are given while running the counter log, and it is not until you need to view the MSAS counters that they will not be displayed if run under the default account that has no right to SSAS. If your connection simulation takes hours, this could prove quite frustrating if not done beforehand JThe counters used……  Object Counter Instance Justification System Processor Queue legnth N/A Indicates how many threads are waiting for execution against the processor. If this counter is consistently higher than around 5 when processor utilization approaches 100%, then this is a good indication that there is more work (active threads) available (ready for execution) than the machine's processors are able to handle. System Context Switches/sec N/A Measures how frequently the processor has to switch from user- to kernel-mode to handle a request from a thread running in user mode. The heavier the workload running on your machine, the higher this counter will generally be, but over long term the value of this counter should remain fairly constant. If this counter suddenly starts increasing however, it may be an indicating of a malfunctioning device, especially if the Processor\Interrupts/sec\(_Total) counter on your machine shows a similar unexplained increase Process % Processor Time sqlservr Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process % Processor Time msmdsrv Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process Working Set sqlservr If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Process Working Set msmdsrv If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Processor % Processor Time _Total and individual cores measures the total utilization of your processor by all running processes. If multi-proc then be mindful only an average is provided Processor % Privileged Time _Total To see how the OS is handling basic IO requests. If kernel mode utilization is high, your machine is likely underpowered as it's too busy handling basic OS housekeeping functions to be able to effectively run other applications. Processor % User Time _Total To see how the applications is interacting from a processor perspective, a high percentage utilisation determine that the server is dealing with too many apps and may require increasing thje hardware or scaling out Processor Interrupts/sec _Total  The average rate, in incidents per second, at which the processor received and serviced hardware interrupts. Shoulr be consistant over time but a sudden unexplained increase could indicate a device malfunction which can be confirmed using the System\Context Switches/sec counter Memory Pages/sec N/A Indicates the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk to resolve hard page faults. This counter is a primary indicator of the kinds of faults that cause system-wide delays, this is the primary counter to watch for indication of possible insufficient RAM to meet your server's needs. A good idea here is to configure a perfmon alert that triggers when the number of pages per second exceeds 50 per paging disk on your system. May also want to see the configuration of the page file on the Server Memory Available Mbytes N/A is the amount of physical memory, in bytes, available to processes running on the computer. if this counter is greater than 10% of the actual RAM in your machine then you probably have more than enough RAM. monitor it regularly to see if any downward trend develops, and set an alert to trigger if it drops below 2% of the installed RAM. Physical Disk Disk Transfers/sec for each physical disk If it goes above 10 disk I/Os per second then you've got poor response time for your disk. Physical Disk Idle Time _total If Disk Transfers/sec is above  25 disk I/Os per second use this counter. which measures the percent time that your hard disk is idle during the measurement interval, and if you see this counter fall below 20% then you've likely got read/write requests queuing up for your disk which is unable to service these requests in a timely fashion. Physical Disk Disk queue legnth For the OLAP and SQL physical disk A value that is consistently less than 2 means that the disk system is handling the IO requests against the physical disk Network Interface Bytes Total/sec For the NIC Should be monitored over a period of time to see if there is anb increase/decrease in network utilisation Network Interface Current Bandwidth For the NIC is an estimate of the current bandwidth of the network interface in bits per second (BPS). MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit High KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the high memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit Low KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the low memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Usage KB N/A Displays the memory usage of the server process. MSAS 2005: Memory File Store KB N/A Displays the amount of memory that is reserved for the Cache. Note if total memory limit in the msmdsrv.ini is set to 0, no memory is reserved for the cache MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Direct / sec N/A Displays the rate of queries answered from the cache directly MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Filtered / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered by filtering existing cache entry. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from File / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered from files. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Average time /query N/A Displays the average time of a query MSAS 2005: Connection Current connections N/A Displays the number of connections against the SSAS instance MSAS 2005: Connection Requests / sec N/A Displays the rate of query requests per second MSAS 2005: Locks Current Lock Waits N/A Displays thhe number of connections waiting on a lock MSAS 2005: Threads Query Pool job queue Length N/A The number of queries in the job queue MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file bytes written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file rows written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file 

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• Advice on learning programming languages and math.

  - by Joris Ooms

  I feel like I'm getting stuck lately when it comes to learning about programming-related things; I thought I'd ask a question here and write it all down in the hope to get some pointers/advice from people. Perhaps writing it down helps me put things in perspective for myself aswell. I study Interactive Multimedia Design. This course is based on two things: graphic design on one hand, and web development on the other hand. I have quite a decent knowledge of web-related languages (the usual HTML/JS/PHP) and I'll be getting a course on ASP.NET next year. In my free time, I have learnt how to work with CodeIgniter, aswell as some diving into Ruby (and Rails) and basic iOS programming. In my first year of college I also did a class on Java (19/20 on the end result). This grade doesn't really mean anything though; I have the basics of OOP down but Java-wise, we learnt next to nothing. Considering the time I have been programming in, for example, PHP.. I can't say I'm bad at it. I'm definitely not good or great at it, but I'm decent. My teachers tell me I have the programming thing down. They just tell me I should keep on learning. So that's what I do, and I try to take in as much as possible; however, sometimes I'm unsure where to start and I have this tendency to always doubt myself. Now, for the 'question'. I want to get into iOS programming. I know iOS programming boils down to programming in Cocoa Touch and Objective-C. I also know Obj-C is a superset of C. I have done a class on C a couple of years ago, but I failed miserably. I got stuck at pointers and never really understood them.. Until like a month ago. I suddenly 'got' it. I have been working through a book on Objective-C for a week or so now, and I understand the basics (I'm at like.. chapter 6 or so). However, I keep running into similar problems as the ones I had when I did the C class: I suck at math. No, really. I come from a Latin-Modern Languages background in high school and I had nearly no math classes back then. I wanted to study Computer Science, but I failed there because of the miserable state of my mathematics knowledge. I can't explain why I'm suddenly talking about math here though, because it isn't directly related to programming.. yet it is. For example, the examples in the book I'm reading now are about programming a fraction-calculator. All good, I can do the programming when I get the formulas down.. but it takes me a full day or more to actually get to that point. I also find it hard to come up with ideas for myself. I made one small iOS app the other day and it's just a button / label kind of thing. When I press the button, it generates a random number. That's really all I could come up with. Can you 'learn' that? It probably comes down to creativity, but evidently, I'm not too great at being creative. Are there any sites or resources out there that provide something like a basic list of things you can program when you're just starting out? Maybe I'm focusing on too many things at once. I want to keep my HTML/CSS at a decent level, while learning PHP and CodeIgniter, while diving into Ruby on Rails and learning Objective-C and the iOS SDK at the same time. I just want to be good at something, I guess. The problem is that I can't seem to be happy with my PHP stuff. I want more, something 'harder'; that's why I decided to pick up the iOS thing. Like I said, I have the basics down of a lot of different languages. I can program something simple in Java, in C, in Objective-C as of this week.. but it ends there. Mostly because I can't come up with ideas for more complex applications, and also because I just doubt myself: 'Oh, that's too complex, I can never do that'. And then it ends there. To conclude my rant, let me basically rephrase my questions into a 'tl;dr' part. A. I want to get into iOS programming and I have basic knowledge of C/Objective-C. However, I struggle to come up with ideas of my own and implement them and I also suck at math which is something that isn't directly related to, yet often needed while programming. What can I do? B. I have an interest in a lot of different programming languages and I can't stop reading/learning. However, I don't feel like I'm good in anything. Should I perhaps focus on just one language for a year or longer, or keep taking it all in at the same time and hope I'll finally get them all down? C. Are there any resources out there that provide basic ideas of things I can program? I'm thinking about 'simple' command-line applications here to help me while studying C/Obj-C away from the whole iPhone SDK. Like I said, the examples in my book are mainly math-based (fraction calculator) and it's kinda hard. :( Thanks a lot for reading my post. I didn't plan it to be this long but oh well. Thanks in advance for any answers.

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• Installing a DHCP Service On Win2k8 ( Windows Server 2008 )

  - by Akshay Deep Lamba

  Introduction Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a core infrastructure service on any network that provides IP addressing and DNS server information to PC clients and any other device. DHCP is used so that you do not have to statically assign IP addresses to every device on your network and manage the issues that static IP addressing can create. More and more, DHCP is being expanded to fit into new network services like the Windows Health Service and Network Access Protection (NAP). However, before you can use it for more advanced services, you need to first install it and configure the basics. Let’s learn how to do that. Installing Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Installing Windows Server 2008 DCHP Server is easy. DHCP Server is now a “role” of Windows Server 2008 – not a windows component as it was in the past. To do this, you will need a Windows Server 2008 system already installed and configured with a static IP address. You will need to know your network’s IP address range, the range of IP addresses you will want to hand out to your PC clients, your DNS server IP addresses, and your default gateway. Additionally, you will want to have a plan for all subnets involved, what scopes you will want to define, and what exclusions you will want to create. To start the DHCP installation process, you can click Add Roles from the Initial Configuration Tasks window or from Server Manager à Roles à Add Roles. Figure 1: Adding a new Role in Windows Server 2008 When the Add Roles Wizard comes up, you can click Next on that screen. Next, select that you want to add the DHCP Server Role, and click Next. Figure 2: Selecting the DHCP Server Role If you do not have a static IP address assigned on your server, you will get a warning that you should not install DHCP with a dynamic IP address. At this point, you will begin being prompted for IP network information, scope information, and DNS information. If you only want to install DHCP server with no configured scopes or settings, you can just click Next through these questions and proceed with the installation. On the other hand, you can optionally configure your DHCP Server during this part of the installation. In my case, I chose to take this opportunity to configure some basic IP settings and configure my first DHCP Scope. I was shown my network connection binding and asked to verify it, like this: Figure 3: Network connection binding What the wizard is asking is, “what interface do you want to provide DHCP services on?” I took the default and clicked Next. Next, I entered my Parent Domain, Primary DNS Server, and Alternate DNS Server (as you see below) and clicked Next. Figure 4: Entering domain and DNS information I opted NOT to use WINS on my network and I clicked Next. Then, I was promoted to configure a DHCP scope for the new DHCP Server. I have opted to configure an IP address range of 192.168.1.50-100 to cover the 25+ PC Clients on my local network. To do this, I clicked Add to add a new scope. As you see below, I named the Scope WBC-Local, configured the starting and ending IP addresses of 192.168.1.50-192.168.1.100, subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, default gateway of 192.168.1.1, type of subnet (wired), and activated the scope. Figure 5: Adding a new DHCP Scope Back in the Add Scope screen, I clicked Next to add the new scope (once the DHCP Server is installed). I chose to Disable DHCPv6 stateless mode for this server and clicked Next. Then, I confirmed my DHCP Installation Selections (on the screen below) and clicked Install. Figure 6: Confirm Installation Selections After only a few seconds, the DHCP Server was installed and I saw the window, below: Figure 7: Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Installation succeeded I clicked Close to close the installer window, then moved on to how to manage my new DHCP Server. How to Manage your new Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Like the installation, managing Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server is also easy. Back in my Windows Server 2008 Server Manager, under Roles, I clicked on the new DHCP Server entry. Figure 8: DHCP Server management in Server Manager While I cannot manage the DHCP Server scopes and clients from here, what I can do is to manage what events, services, and resources are related to the DHCP Server installation. Thus, this is a good place to go to check the status of the DHCP Server and what events have happened around it. However, to really configure the DHCP Server and see what clients have obtained IP addresses, I need to go to the DHCP Server MMC. To do this, I went to Start à Administrative Tools à DHCP Server, like this: Figure 9: Starting the DHCP Server MMC When expanded out, the MMC offers a lot of features. Here is what it looks like: Figure 10: The Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server MMC The DHCP Server MMC offers IPv4 & IPv6 DHCP Server info including all scopes, pools, leases, reservations, scope options, and server options. If I go into the address pool and the scope options, I can see that the configuration we made when we installed the DHCP Server did, indeed, work. The scope IP address range is there, and so are the DNS Server & default gateway. Figure 11: DHCP Server Address Pool Figure 12: DHCP Server Scope Options So how do we know that this really works if we do not test it? The answer is that we do not. Now, let’s test to make sure it works. How do we test our Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server? To test this, I have a Windows Vista PC Client on the same network segment as the Windows Server 2008 DHCP server. To be safe, I have no other devices on this network segment. I did an IPCONFIG /RELEASE then an IPCONFIG /RENEW and verified that I received an IP address from the new DHCP server, as you can see below: Figure 13: Vista client received IP address from new DHCP Server Also, I went to my Windows 2008 Server and verified that the new Vista client was listed as a client on the DHCP server. This did indeed check out, as you can see below: Figure 14: Win 2008 DHCP Server has the Vista client listed under Address Leases With that, I knew that I had a working configuration and we are done!

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• SPARC M7 Chip - 32 cores - Mind Blowing performance

  - by Angelo-Oracle

  The M7 Chip Oracle just announced its Next Generation Processor at the HotChips HC26 conference. As the Tech Lead in our Systems Division's Partner group, I had a front row seat to the extraordinary price performance advantage of Oracle current T5 and M6 based systems. Partner after partner tested  these systems and were impressed with it performance. Just read some of the quotes to see what our partner has been saying about our hardware. We just announced our next generation processor, the M7. This has 32 cores (up from 16-cores in T5 and 12-cores in M6). With 20 nm technology  this is our most advanced processor. The processor has more cores than anything else in the industry today. After the Sun acquisition Oracle has released 5 processors in 4 years and this is the 6th.  The S4 core  The M7 is built using the foundation of the S4 core. This is the next generation core technology. Like its predecessor, the S4 has 8 dynamic threads. It increases the frequency while maintaining the Pipeline depth. Each core has its own fine grain power estimator that keeps the core within its power envelop in 250 nano-sec granularity. Each core also includes Software in Silicon features for Application Acceleration Support. Each core includes features to improve Application Data Integrity, with almost no performance loss. The core also allows using part of the Virtual Address to store meta-data.  User-Level Synchronization Instructions are also part of the S4 core. Each core has 16 KB Instruction and 16 KB Data L1 cache. The Core Clusters  The cores on the M7 chip are organized in sets of 4-core clusters. The core clusters share  L2 cache.  All four cores in the complex share 256 KB of 4 way set associative L2 Instruction Cache, with over 1/2 TB/s of throughput. Two cores share 256 KB of 8 way set associative L2 Data Cache, with over 1/2 TB/s of throughput. With this innovative Core Cluster architecture, the M7 doubles core execution bandwidth. to maximize per-thread performance.  The Chip  Each  M7 chip has 8 sets of these core-clusters. The chip has 64 MB on-chip L3 cache. This L3 caches is shared among all the cores and is partitioned into 8 x 8 MB chunks. Each chunk is  8-way set associative cache. The aggregate bandwidth for the L3 cache on the chip is over 1.6TB/s. Each chip has 4 DDR4 memory controllers and can support upto 16 DDR4 DIMMs, allowing for 2 TB of RAM/chip. The chip also includes 4 internal links of PCIe Gen3 I/O controllers.  Each chip has 7 coherence links, allowing for 8 of these chips to be connected together gluelessly. Also 32 of these chips can be connected in an SMP configuration. A potential system with 32 chips will have 1024 cores and 8192 threads and 64 TB of RAM.  Software in Silicon The M7 chip has many built in Application Accelerators in Silicon. These features will be exposed to our Software partners using the SPARC Accelerator Program.  The M7  has built-in logic to decompress data at the speed of memory access. This means that applications can directly work on compressed data in memory increasing the data access rates. The VA Masking feature allows the use of part of the virtual address to store meta-data.  Realtime Application Data Integrity The Realtime Application Data Integrity feature helps applications safeguard against invalid, stale memory reference and buffer overflows. The first 4-bits if the Pointer can be used to store a version number and this version number is also maintained in the memory & cache lines. When a pointer accesses memory the hardware checks to make sure the two versions match. A SEGV signal is raised when there is a mismatch. This feature can be used by the Database, applications and the OS.  M7 Database In-Memory Query Accelerator The M7 chip also includes a In-Silicon Query Engines.  These accelerate tasks that work on In-Memory Columnar Vectors. Oracle In-Memory options stores data in Column Format. The M7 Query Engine can speed up In-Memory Format Conversion, Value and Range Comparisons and Set Membership lookups. This engine can work on Compressed data - this means not only are we accelerating the query performance but also increasing the memory bandwidth for queries.  SPARC Accelerated Program  At the Hotchips conference we also introduced the SPARC Accelerated Program to provide our partners and third part developers access to all the goodness of the M7's SPARC Application Acceleration features. Please get in touch with us if you are interested in knowing more about this program. 

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• AS11 Oracle B2B Sync Support - Series 2

  - by sinkarbabu.kirubanithi

  In the earlier series, we discussed about how to model "Sync Support" in Oracle B2B. And, we haven't discussed how the response can be consumed synchronously by the back-end application or initiator of sync request. In this sequel, we will see how we can extend it to the SOA composite applications to model the end-to-end usecase, this would help the initiator of sync request to receive the response synchronously. Series 2 - is little lengthier for blog standards so be prepared before you continue further :). Let's start our discussion with a high-level scenario where one need to initiate a synchronous request and get response synchronously. There are various approaches available, we will see one simplest approach here. Components Involved: 1. Oracle B2B 2. Oracle JCA JMS Adapter 3. Oracle BPEL 4. All of the above are wrapped up in a single SOA composite application. Oracle B2B: Skipping the "Sync Support" setup part in B2B, as we have already discussed that in the earlier series 1. Here we have provided "Sync Support" samples that can be imported to B2B directly and users can start testing the same in few minutes. Initiator Sample: This requires two JMS queues to be created, one for B2B to receive initial outbound sync request and the other is for B2B to deliver the incoming sync response to the back-end. Please enable "Use JMS Id" option in both internal listening and delivery channels. This would enable JCA JMS Adapter to correlate the initial B2B request and response and in turn it would be returned as synchronous response of BPEL. Internal Listening Channel Image: Internal Delivery Channel Image: To get going without much challenges, just create queues in Weblogic with the JNDI mentioned in the above two screenshots. If you want to use different names, then you may have to change the queue jndi names in sample after importing it into B2B. Here are the Queue related JNDI names used in the sample, 1. Internal Listening Channel Queue details, Name: JNDI Name: jms/b2b/syncreplyqueue 2. Internal Delivery Channel Queue details, Name: JNDI Name: jms/b2b/syncrequestqueue Here is the Initiator Sample Acme.zip Note: You may have to adjust the ip address of GlobalChips endpoint in the Delivery Channel. Responder Sample: Contains B2B meta-data and the Callout. Just import the sample and place the callout binary under "/tmp/callout" directory. If you choose to use a different location for callout, then you may have to change the same in B2B Configuration after importing the sample. Here are the artifacts, 1. Callout Source SampleCallout.java 2. Callout Binary sample-callout.jar 3. Responder Sample GlobalChips.zip Callout Details: Just gives the static response XML that needs to be sent back as response for the inbound sync request. For a sample purpose, we have given static response but in production you may have to invoke a web service or something similar to get the response. IMPORTANT NOTE: For Sync Support use case, responder is not expected to deliver the inbound sync request to backend as the process of delivering and getting the response from backend are expected from the Callout. This default behavior can be overridden by enabling the config property "b2b.SyncAppDelivery=true" in B2B config mbean (b2b-config.xml). This makes B2B to deliver the inbound sync request to be delivered to backend queue but the response to be sent to remote caller still has to come from Callout. 2. Oracle JCA JMS Adapter: On the initiator side, we have used JCA JMS Request/Reply pattern to send/receive the synchronous message from B2B. 3. Oracle BPEL: Exposes WS-SOAP Endpoint that takes payload as input and passes the same to B2B and returns the synchronous response of B2B as SOAP response. For outside world, it looks as if it is the synchronous web service endpoint but under the cover it uses JMS to trigger/initiate B2B to send and receive the synchronous response. 4. Composite application: All the components discussed above are wired in SOA composite application that helps to model a end-to-end synchronous use case. Here's the composite application sca_B2BSyncSample_rev1.0.jar, you may just deploy this to your AS11 SOA to make use of it. For any editing, you can just import the project in your JDEV under any SOA Application. Here are the composite application screenshots, Composite Application: BPEL With JCA JMS Adapter (Request/Reply):

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• Windows Azure End to End Examples

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m fascinated by the way people learn. I’m told there are several methods people use to understand new information, from reading to watching, from experiencing to exploring. Personally, I use multiple methods of learning when I encounter a new topic, usually starting with reading a bit about the concepts. I quickly want to put those into practice, however, especially in the technical realm. I immediately look for examples where I can start trying out the concepts. But I often want a “real” example – not just something that represents the concept, but something that is real-world, showing some feature I could actually use. And it’s no different with the Windows Azure platform – I like finding things I can do now, and actually use. So when I started learning Windows Azure, I of course began with the Windows Azure Training Kit – which has lots of examples and labs, presentations and so on. But from there, I wanted more examples I could learn from, and eventually teach others with. I was asked if I would write a few of those up, so here are the ones I use. CodePlex CodePlex is Microsoft’s version of an “Open Source” repository. Anyone can start a project, add code, documentation and more to it and make it available to the world, free of charge, using various licenses as they wish. Microsoft also uses this location for most of the examples we publish, and sample databases for SQL Server. If you search in CodePlex for “Azure”, you’ll come back with a list of projects that folks have posted, including those of us at Microsoft. The source code and documentation are there, so you can learn using actual examples of code that will do what you need. There’s everything from a simple table query to a full project that is sort of a “Corporate Dropbox” that uses Windows Azure Storage. The advantage is that this code is immediately usable. It’s searchable, and you can often find a complete solution to meet your needs. The disadvantage is that the code is pretty specific – it may not cover a huge project like you’re looking for. Also, depending on the author(s), you might not find the documentation level you want. Link: http://azureexamples.codeplex.com/site/search?query=Azure&ac=8    Tailspin Microsoft Patterns and Practices is a group here that does an amazing job at sharing standard ways of doing IT – from operations to coding. If you’re not familiar with this resource, make sure you read up on it. Long before I joined Microsoft I used their work in my daily job – saved a ton of time. It has resources not only for Windows Azure but other Microsoft software as well. The Patterns and Practices group also publishes full books – you can buy these, but many are also online for free. There’s an end-to-end example for Windows Azure using a company called “Tailspin”, and the work covers not only the code but the design of the full solution. If you really want to understand the thought that goes into a Platform-as-a-Service solution, this is an excellent resource. The advantages are that this is a book, it’s complete, and it includes a discussion of design decisions. The disadvantage is that it’s a little over a year old – and in “Cloud” years that’s a lot. So many things have changed, improved, and have been added that you need to treat this as a resource, but not the only one. Still, highly recommended. Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx Azure Stock Trader Sometimes you need a mix of a CodePlex-style application, and a little more detail on how it was put together. And it would be great if you could actually play with the completed application, to see how it really functions on the actual platform. That’s the Azure Stock Trader application. There’s a place where you can read about the application, and then it’s been published to Windows Azure – the production platform – and you can use it, explore, and see how it performs. I use this application all the time to demonstrate Windows Azure, or a particular part of Windows Azure. The advantage is that this is an end-to-end application, and online as well. The disadvantage is that it takes a bit of self-learning to work through.  Links: Learn it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684 Use it: https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/

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• Physical Directories vs. MVC View Paths

  - by Rick Strahl

  This post falls into the bucket of operator error on my part, but I want to share this anyway because it describes an issue that has bitten me a few times now and writing it down might keep it a little stronger in my mind. I've been working on an MVC project the last few days, and at the end of a long day I accidentally moved one of my View folders from the MVC Root Folder to the project root. It must have been at the very end of the day before shutting down because tests and manual site navigation worked fine just before I quit for the night. I checked in changes and called it a night. Next day I came back, started running the app and had a lot of breaks with certain views. Oddly custom routes to these controllers/views worked, but stock /{controller}/{action} routes would not. After a bit of spelunking I realized that "Hey one of my View Folders is missing", which made some sense given the error messages I got. I looked in the recycle bin - nothing there, so rather than try to figure out what the hell happened, just restored from my last SVN checkin. At this point the folders are back… but… view access  still ends up breaking for this set of views. Specifically I'm getting the Yellow Screen of Death with: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current context Here's the full error: Server Error in '/ClassifiedsWeb' Application. Compilation ErrorDescription: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.Compiler Error Message: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current contextSource Error: Line 1: @model ClassifiedsWeb.EntryViewModel Line 2: @{ Line 3: ViewBag.Title = Model.Entry.Title + " - " + ClassifiedsBusiness.App.Configuration.ApplicationName; Source File: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml    Line: 1 Compiler Warning Messages: Show Detailed Compiler Output: Show Complete Compilation Source: Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.272 Here's what's really odd about this error: The views now do exist in the /Views/Classifieds folder of the project, but it appears like MVC is trying to execute the views directly. This is getting pretty weird, man! So I hook up some break points in my controllers to see if my controller actions are getting fired - and sure enough it turns out they are not - but only for those views that were previously 'lost' and then restored from SVN. WTF? At this point I'm thinking that I must have messed up one of the config files, but after some more spelunking and realizing that all the other Controller views work, I give up that idea. Config's gotta be OK if other controllers and views are working. Root Folders and MVC Views don't mix As I mentioned the problem was the fact that I inadvertantly managed to drag my View folder to the root folder of the project. Here's what this looks like in my FUBAR'd project structure after I copied back /Views/Classifieds folder from SVN: There's the actual root folder in the /Views folder and the accidental copy that sits of the root. I of course did not notice the /Classifieds folder at the root because it was excluded and didn't show up in the project. Now, before you call me a complete idiot remember that this happened by accident - an accidental drag probably just before shutting down for the night. :-) So why does this break? MVC should be happy with views in the /Views/Classifieds folder right? While MVC might be happy, IIS is not. The fact that there is a physical folder on disk takes precedence over MVC's routing. In other words if a URL exists that matches a route the pysical path is accessed first. What happens here is that essentially IIS is trying to execute the .cshtml pages directly without ever routing to the Controller methods. In the error page I showed above my clue should have been that the view was served as: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml rather than c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Views\Classifieds\Show.cshtml But of course I didn't notice that right away, just skimming to the end and looking at the file name. The reason that /classifieds/list actually fires that file is that the ASP.NET Web Pages engine looks for physical files on disk that match a path. IOW, when calling Web Pages you drop the .cshtml off the Razor page and IIS will serve that just fine. So: /classifieds/list looks and tries to find /classifieds/list.cshtml and executes that script. And that is exactly what's happening. Web Pages is trying to execute the .cshtml file and it fails because Web Pages knows nothing about the @model tag which is an MVC specific template extension. This is why my breakpoints in the controller methods didn't fire and it also explains why the error mentions that the @model key word is invalid (@model is an MVC provided template enhancement to the Razor Engine). The solution of course is super simple: Delete the accidentally created root folder and the problem is solved. Routing and Physical Paths I've run into problems with this before actually. In the past I've had a number of applications that had a physical /Admin folder which also would conflict with an MVC Admin controller. More than once I ended up wondering why the index route (/Admin/) was not working properly. If a physical /Admin folder exists /Admin will not route to the Index action (or whatever default action you have set up, but instead try to list the directory or show the default document in the folder. The only way to force the index page through MVC is to explicitly use /Admin/Index. Makes perfect sense once you realize the physical folder is there, but that's easy to forget in an MVC application. As you might imagine after a few times of running into this I gave up on the Admin folder and moved everything into MVC views to handle those operations. Still it's one of those things that can easily bite you, because the behavior and error messages seem to point at completely different  problems. Moral of the story is: If you see routing problems where routes are not reaching obvious controller methods, always check to make sure there's isn't a physical path being mapped by IIS instead. That way you won't feel stupid like I did after trying a million things for about an hour before discovering my sloppy mousing behavior :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC   IIS7   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• What is this code?

  - by Aerovistae

  This is from the Evolution of a Programmer "joke", at the "Master Programmer" level. It seems to be C++, but I don't know what all this bloated extra stuff is, nor did any Google searches turn up anything except the joke I took it from. Can anyone tell me more about what I'm reading here? [ uuid(2573F8F4-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820) ] library LHello { // bring in the master library importlib("actimp.tlb"); importlib("actexp.tlb"); // bring in my interfaces #include "pshlo.idl" [ uuid(2573F8F5-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820) ] cotype THello { interface IHello; interface IPersistFile; }; }; [ exe, uuid(2573F890-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820) ] module CHelloLib { // some code related header files importheader(<windows.h>); importheader(<ole2.h>); importheader(<except.hxx>); importheader("pshlo.h"); importheader("shlo.hxx"); importheader("mycls.hxx"); // needed typelibs importlib("actimp.tlb"); importlib("actexp.tlb"); importlib("thlo.tlb"); [ uuid(2573F891-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820), aggregatable ] coclass CHello { cotype THello; }; }; #include "ipfix.hxx" extern HANDLE hEvent; class CHello : public CHelloBase { public: IPFIX(CLSID_CHello); CHello(IUnknown *pUnk); ~CHello(); HRESULT __stdcall PrintSz(LPWSTR pwszString); private: static int cObjRef; }; #include <windows.h> #include <ole2.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include "thlo.h" #include "pshlo.h" #include "shlo.hxx" #include "mycls.hxx" int CHello:cObjRef = 0; CHello::CHello(IUnknown *pUnk) : CHelloBase(pUnk) { cObjRef++; return; } HRESULT __stdcall CHello::PrintSz(LPWSTR pwszString) { printf("%ws\n", pwszString); return(ResultFromScode(S_OK)); } CHello::~CHello(void) { // when the object count goes to zero, stop the server cObjRef--; if( cObjRef == 0 ) PulseEvent(hEvent); return; } #include <windows.h> #include <ole2.h> #include "pshlo.h" #include "shlo.hxx" #include "mycls.hxx" HANDLE hEvent; int _cdecl main( int argc, char * argv[] ) { ULONG ulRef; DWORD dwRegistration; CHelloCF *pCF = new CHelloCF(); hEvent = CreateEvent(NULL, FALSE, FALSE, NULL); // Initialize the OLE libraries CoInitiali, NULL); // Initialize the OLE libraries CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED); CoRegisterClassObject(CLSID_CHello, pCF, CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER, REGCLS_MULTIPLEUSE, &dwRegistration); // wait on an event to stop WaitForSingleObject(hEvent, INFINITE); // revoke and release the class object CoRevokeClassObject(dwRegistration); ulRef = pCF->Release(); // Tell OLE we are going away. CoUninitialize(); return(0); } extern CLSID CLSID_CHello; extern UUID LIBID_CHelloLib; CLSID CLSID_CHello = { /* 2573F891-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820 */ 0x2573F891, 0xCFEE, 0x101A, { 0x9A, 0x9F, 0x00, 0xAA, 0x00, 0x34, 0x28, 0x20 } }; UUID LIBID_CHelloLib = { /* 2573F890-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820 */ 0x2573F890, 0xCFEE, 0x101A, { 0x9A, 0x9F, 0x00, 0xAA, 0x00, 0x34, 0x28, 0x20 } }; #include <windows.h> #include <ole2.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <stdio.h> #include "pshlo.h" #include "shlo.hxx" #include "clsid.h" int _cdecl main( int argc, char * argv[] ) { HRESULT hRslt; IHello *pHello; ULONG ulCnt; IMoniker * pmk; WCHAR wcsT[_MAX_PATH]; WCHAR wcsPath[2 * _MAX_PATH]; // get object path wcsPath[0] = '\0'; wcsT[0] = '\0'; if( argc > 1) { mbstowcs(wcsPath, argv[1], strlen(argv[1]) + 1); wcsupr(wcsPath); } else { fprintf(stderr, "Object path must be specified\n"); return(1); } // get print string if(argc > 2) mbstowcs(wcsT, argv[2], strlen(argv[2]) + 1); else wcscpy(wcsT, L"Hello World"); printf("Linking to object %ws\n", wcsPath); printf("Text String %ws\n", wcsT); // Initialize the OLE libraries hRslt = CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED); if(SUCCEEDED(hRslt)) { hRslt = CreateFileMoniker(wcsPath, &pmk); if(SUCCEEDED(hRslt)) hRslt = BindMoniker(pmk, 0, IID_IHello, (void **)&pHello); if(SUCCEEDED(hRslt)) { // print a string out pHello->PrintSz(wcsT); Sleep(2000); ulCnt = pHello->Release(); } else printf("Failure to connect, status: %lx", hRslt); // Tell OLE we are going away. CoUninitialize(); } return(0); }

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• Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp - Reading (UK) - October 1-12, 2012

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  REGISTER NOW: Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp Reading, UK, October 1-12, 2012! OPN invites you to join us for a 10-day implementation bootcamp on Oracle ATG Web Commerce in Reading, UK from October 1-12, 2012.This 10-day boot camp is designed to provide partners with hands-on experience and technical training to successfully build and deploy Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Applications. This particular boot camp is focused on helping partners develop the essential skills needed to implement every aspect of an ATG Commerce Application from scratch, (not CRS-based), with a specific goal of enabling experienced Java/J2EE developers with a path towards becoming functional, effective, and contributing members of an ATG implementation team. Built for both new and experienced ATG developers alike, the collaborative nature of this program and its exercises, have proven to be highly effective and extremely valuable in learning the best practices for implementing ATG solutions. Though not required, this bootcamp provides a structured path to earning a Certified Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Specialization! What Is Covered: This boot camp is for Application Developers and Software Architects wanting to gain valuable insight into ATG application development best practices, as well as relevant and applicable implementation experience on projects modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform. The following learning objectives are all critical, and are of equal priority in enabling this role to succeed. This learning boot camp will help with: Building a basic functional transaction-ready ATG Web Commerce 10 Application. Utilizing ATG’s platform features such as scenarios, slots, targeters, user profiles and segments, to create a personalized user experience. Building Nucleus components to support and/or extend application functionality. Understanding the intricacies of ATG order checkout and fulfillment. Specifying, designing and implementing new commerce features in ATG 10. Building a functional commerce application modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform, within an agile-based project team environment and under simulated real-world project conditions. Duration: The Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp is an instructor-led workshop spanning 10 days. Audience: Application Developers Software Architects Prerequisite Training and Environment Requirements: Programming and Markup Experience with Java J2EE, JavaScript, XML, HTML and CSS Completion of Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Specialist Development Guided Learning Path modules Participants will be required to bring their own laptop that meets the minimum specifications:   64-bit PC and OS (e.g. Windows 7 64-bit) 4GB RAM or more 40GB Hard Disk Space Laptops will require access to the Internet through Remote Desktop via Windows. Agenda Topics: Week 1 – Day 1 through 5 Build a Basic Commerce Application In week one of the boot camp training, we will apply knowledge learned from the ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Guided Learning Path modules, towards building a basic transaction-ready commerce application. There will be little to no lectures delivered in this boot camp, as developers will be fully engaged in ATG Application Development activities and best practices. Developers will work independently on the following lab assignments from day's 1 through 5: Lab Assignments  1 Environment Setup 2 Build a dynamic Home Page 3 Site Authentication 4 Build Customer Registration 5 Display Top Level Categories 6 Display Product Sub-Categories 7 Display Product List Page 8 Display Product Detail Page 9 ATG Inventory 10 Build “Add to Cart” Functionality 11 Build Shopping Cart 12 Build Checkout Page  13 Build Checkout Review Page 14 Create an Order and Build Order Confirmation Page 15 Implement Slots and Targeters for Personalization 16 Implement Pricing and Promotions 17 Order Fulfillment Back to top Week 2 – Day 6 through 10 Team-based Case Project In the second week of the boot camp training, participants will be asked to join a project team that will select a case project for the team to implement. Teams will be able to choose from four of the most common application types developed and deployed on the ATG platform. They are as follows: Hard goods with physical fulfillment, Soft goods with electronic fulfillment, a Service or subscription case example, a Course/Event registration case example. Team projects will have approximately 160 hours of use cases/stories for each team to build (40 hours per developer). Each day's Use Cases/Stories will build upon the prior day's work, and therefore must be fully completed at the end of each day. Please note that this boot camp intends to simulate real-world project conditions, and as such will likely require the need for project teams to possibly work beyond normal business hours. To promote further collaboration and group learning, each team will be asked to present their work and share the methodologies and solutions that they've applied to their cases at the end of each day. Location: Oracle Reading CVC TPC510 Room: Wraysbury Reading, UK 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM  Registration Fee (10 Days): US $3,375 Please click on the following link to REGISTER or  visit the Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp page for more information. Questions: Patrick Ty Partner Enablement, Oracle Commerce Phone: 310.343.7687 Mobile: 310.633.1013 Email: [email protected]

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• Find the best OpenWorld sessions for learning about UX highlights

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  Have you clicked through the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 catalog? It’s amazingly dense, as usual. But one thing we noticed this year is that nearly half of the sessions mention some component of user experience, which is a sea change in our world. It means that more people understand, appreciate, and desire an effective user experience, and it also means that Oracle’s investment in its next-generation applications user experience, such as Oracle Fusion Applications, is increasingly apparent and interesting to its customers. So how do you choose the user experience sessions that make the most sense for you and your organization? Read our list to find out which sessions we think offer the most value for those interested in finding out more about the Oracle Applications user experience. If you’re interested in Oracle’s strategy for its user experience: CON9438: Oracle Fusion Applications: Transforming Insight into Action10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 2007 CON9467: Oracle’s Roadmap to a Simple, Modern User Experience3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; Moscone West - 3002/3004 CON8718: Oracle Fusion Applications: Customizing and Extending with Oracle Composers11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4; Moscone West – 2008 GEN9663: General Session: A Panel of Masterminds—Where Are Oracle Applications Headed?1:45 - 2:45 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone North - Hall D If you’re interested in PeopleSoft/PeopleTools: GEN8928: General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product Roadmap3:15 - 4:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West - 3002/3004 CON9183: PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap4:45 - 5:45 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West - 3002/3004 CON8932: New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business User5:00 - 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 3007 If you’re interested in E-Business Suite: GEN8474: General Session: Oracle E-Business Suite—Strategy, Update, and Roadmap12:15 - 1:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West - 2002/2004 CON9026: Latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 User Interface and Usability Enhancements1:15 - 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 2016 If you’re interested in Siebel: CON9700: Siebel CRM Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap12:15 - 1:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1; Moscone West – 2009 CON9703: User Interface Innovations with the New Siebel “Open UI”10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2; Moscone West – 2009 If you’re interested in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne: HOL10452: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1 User Interface Changes10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; Marriott Marquis - Nob Hill AB CON9160: Showcase of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne User Experience1:15 - 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; InterContinental - Grand Ballroom B CON9159: Euphoria with the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne User Experience11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3; InterContinental - Grand Ballroom B If you’re interested in Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns: Functional design patterns that helped create the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience are now available. Learn more about these new, reusable usability solutions and best-practices at the Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF demopods during Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Or visit the OTN Lounge between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3, to talk to Ultan O'Broin from the Oracle Applications User Experience team.    Demopod location: Moscone Center, South Exhibition Hall Level 1, S-207 OTN (Oracle Technology Network) Lounge: Howard Street tent On the demogrounds: Head to the demogrounds to see new demos from the Applications User Experience team, including the new look for Fusion Applications and what we’re building for mobile platforms. Take a spin on our eye tracker, a very cool tool that we use to research the usability of a particular design. Visit the Usable Apps OpenWorld page to find out where our demopods will be located.Photo by Martin Taylor, Oracle Applications User ExperienceA tour takes place in one of the usability labs at Oracle’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. At our labs, on-site and at HQ: We are also recruiting participants for our on-site lab, in which we gather feedback on new user experience designs, and taking reservations for a charter bus that will bring you to Oracle headquarters for a lab tour Thursday, Oct. 4, or Friday, Oct. 5. Tours leave at 10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. from the Moscone Center in San Francisco. You’ll see more of our newest designs at the lab tour, and some of our research tools in action. For more information on any OpenWorld sessions, check the content catalog, also available at www.oracle.com/openworld. For information on Applications User Experience (Apps UX) sessions and activities, go to the Usable Apps OpenWorld page.

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• Java Cloud Service Integration using Web Service Data Control

  - by Jani Rautiainen

  Java Cloud Service (JCS) provides a platform to develop and deploy business applications in the cloud. In Fusion Applications Cloud deployments customers do not have the option to deploy custom applications developed with JDeveloper to ensure the integrity and supportability of the hosted application service. Instead the custom applications can be deployed to the JCS and integrated to the Fusion Application Cloud instance.This series of articles will go through the features of JCS, provide end-to-end examples on how to develop and deploy applications on JCS and how to integrate them with the Fusion Applications instance.In this article a custom application integrating with Fusion Application using Web Service Data Control will be implemented. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt: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:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Pre-requisites Access to Cloud instance In order to deploy the application access to a JCS instance is needed, a free trial JCS instance can be obtained from Oracle Cloud site. To register you will need a credit card even if the credit card will not be charged. To register simply click "Try it" and choose the "Java" option. The confirmation email will contain the connection details. See this video for example of the registration. Once the request is processed you will be assigned 2 service instances; Java and Database. Applications deployed to the JCS must use Oracle Database Cloud Service as their underlying database. So when JCS instance is created a database instance is associated with it using a JDBC data source. The cloud services can be monitored and managed through the web UI. For details refer to Getting Started with Oracle Cloud. JDeveloper JDeveloper contains Cloud specific features related to e.g. connection and deployment. To use these features download the JDeveloper from JDeveloper download site by clicking the “Download JDeveloper 11.1.1.7.1 for ADF deployment on Oracle Cloud” link, this version of JDeveloper will have the JCS integration features that will be used in this article. For versions that do not include the Cloud integration features the Oracle Java Cloud Service SDK or the JCS Java Console can be used for deployment. For details on installing and configuring the JDeveloper refer to the installation guide. For details on SDK refer to Using the Command-Line Interface to Monitor Oracle Java Cloud Service and Using the Command-Line Interface to Manage Oracle Java Cloud Service. Create Application In this example the “JcsWsDemo” application created in the “Java Cloud Service Integration using Web Service Proxy” article is used as the base. Create Web Service Data Control In this example we will use a Web Service Data Control to integrate with Credit Rule Service in Fusion Applications. The data control will be used to query data from Fusion Applications using a web service call and present the data in a table. To generate the data control choose the “Model” project and navigate to "New -> All Technologies -> Business Tier -> Data Controls -> Web Service Data Control" and enter following: Name: CreditRuleServiceDC URL: https://ic-[POD].oracleoutsourcing.com/icCnSetupCreditRulesPublicService/CreditRuleService?WSDL Service: {{http://xmlns.oracle.com/apps/incentiveCompensation/cn/creditSetup/creditRule/creditRuleService/}CreditRuleService On step 2 select the “findRule” operation: Skip step 3 and on step 4 define the credentials to access the service. Do note that in this example these credentials are only used if testing locally, for JCS deployment credentials need to be manually updated on the EAR file: Click “Finish” and the proxy generation is done. Creating UI In order to use the data control we will need to populate complex objects FindCriteria and FindControl. For simplicity in this example we will create logic in a managed bean that populates the objects. Open “JcsWsDemoBean.java” and add the following logic: Map findCriteria; Map findControl; public void setFindCriteria(Map findCriteria) { this.findCriteria = findCriteria; } public Map getFindCriteria() { findCriteria = new HashMap(); findCriteria.put("fetchSize",10); findCriteria.put("fetchStart",0); return findCriteria; } public void setFindControl(Map findControl) { this.findControl = findControl; } public Map getFindControl() { findControl = new HashMap(); return findControl; } Open “JcsWsDemo.jspx”, navigate to “Data Controls -> CreditRuleServiceDC -> findRule(Object, Object) -> result” and drag and drop the “result” node into the “af:form” element in the page: On the “Edit Table Columns” remove all columns except “RuleId” and “Name”: On the “Edit Action Binding” window displayed enter reference to the java class created above by selecting “#{JcsWsDemoBean.findCriteria}”: Also define the value for the “findControl” by selecting “#{JcsWsDemoBean.findControl}”. Deploy to JCS For WS DC the authentication details need to be updated on the connection details before deploying. Open “connections.xml” by navigating “Application Resources -> Descriptors -> ADF META-INF -> connections.xml”: Change the user name and password entry from: <soap username="transportUserName" password="transportPassword" To match the access details for the target environment. Follow the same steps as documented in previous article ”Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application”. Once deployed the application can be accessed with URL: https://java-[identity domain].java.[data center].oraclecloudapps.com/JcsWsDemo-ViewController-context-root/faces/JcsWsDemo.jspx When accessed the first 10 rules in the system are displayed: Summary In this article we learned how to integrate with Fusion Applications using a Web Service Data Control in JCS. In future articles various other integration techniques will be covered. 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• Big Data – Various Learning Resources – How to Start with Big Data? – Day 20 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data. In this article we will go over various learning resources related to Big Data. In this series we have covered many of the most essential details about Big Data. At the beginning of this series, I have encouraged readers to send me questions. One of the most popular questions is - “I want to learn more about Big Data. Where can I learn it?” This is indeed a great question as there are plenty of resources out to learn about Big Data and it is indeed difficult to select on one resource to learn Big Data. Hence I decided to write here a few of the very important resources which are related to Big Data. Learn from Pluralsight Pluralsight is a global leader in high-quality online training for hardcore developers.  It has fantastic Big Data Courses and I started to learn about Big Data with the help of Pluralsight. Here are few of the courses which are directly related to Big Data. Big Data: The Big Picture Big Data Analytics with Tableau NoSQL: The Big Picture Understanding NoSQL Data Analysis Fundamentals with Tableau I encourage all of you start with this video course as they are fantastic fundamentals to learn Big Data. Learn from Apache Resources at Apache are single point the most authentic learning resources. If you want to learn fundamentals and go deep about every aspect of the Big Data, I believe you must understand various concepts in Apache’s library. I am pretty impressed with the documentation and I am personally referencing it every single day when I work with Big Data. I strongly encourage all of you to bookmark following all the links for authentic big data learning. Haddop - The Apache Hadoop® project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. Ambari: A web-based tool for provisioning, managing, and monitoring Apache Hadoop clusters which include support for Hadoop HDFS, Hadoop MapReduce, Hive, HCatalog, HBase, ZooKeeper, Oozie, Pig and Sqoop. Ambari also provides a dashboard for viewing cluster health such as heat maps and ability to view MapReduce, Pig and Hive applications visually along with features to diagnose their performance characteristics in a user-friendly manner. Avro: A data serialization system. Cassandra: A scalable multi-master database with no single points of failure. Chukwa: A data collection system for managing large distributed systems. HBase: A scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables. Hive: A data warehouse infrastructure that provides data summarization and ad hoc querying. Mahout: A Scalable machine learning and data mining library. Pig: A high-level data-flow language and execution framework for parallel computation. ZooKeeper: A high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. Learn from Vendors One of the biggest issues with about learning Big Data is setting up the environment. Every Big Data vendor has different environment request and there are lots of things require to set up Big Data framework. Many of the users do not start with Big Data as they are afraid about the resources required to set up framework as well as a time commitment. Here Hortonworks have created fantastic learning environment. They have created Sandbox with everything one person needs to learn Big Data and also have provided excellent tutoring along with it. Sandbox comes with a dozen hands-on tutorial that will guide you through the basics of Hadoop as well it contains the Hortonworks Data Platform. I think Hortonworks did a fantastic job building this Sandbox and Tutorial. Though there are plenty of different Big Data Vendors I have decided to list only Hortonworks due to their unique setup. Please leave a comment if there are any other such platform to learn Big Data. I will include them over here as well. Learn from Books There are indeed few good books out there which one can refer to learn Big Data. Here are few good books which I have read. I will update the list as I will learn more. Ethics of Big Data Balancing Risk and Innovation Big Data for Dummies Head First Data Analysis: A Learner’s Guide to Big Numbers, Statistics, and Good Decisions If you search on Amazon there are millions of the books but I think above three books are a great set of books and it will give you great ideas about Big Data. Once you go through above books, you will have a clear idea about what is the next step you should follow in this series. You will be capable enough to make the right decision for yourself. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will wrap up this series of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• BizTalk Envelopes explained

  - by Robert Kokuti

  Recently I've been trying to get some order into an ESB-BizTalk pub/sub scenario, and decided to wrap the payload into standardized envelopes. I have used envelopes before in a 'light weight' fashion, and I found that they can be quite useful and powerful if used systematically. Here is what I learned. The Theory In my experience, Envelopes are often underutilised in a BizTalk solution, and quite often their full potential is not well understood. Here I try to simplify the theory behind the Envelopes within BizTalk.   Envelopes can be used to attach additional data to the ‘real’ data (payload). This additional data can contain all routing and processing information, and allows treating the business data as a ‘black box’, possibly compressed and/or encrypted etc. The point here is that the infrastructure does not need to know anything about the business data content, just as a post man does not need to know the letter within the envelope. BizTalk has built-in support for envelopes through the XMLDisassembler and XMLAssembler pipeline components (these are part of the XMLReceive and XMLSend default pipelines). These components, among other things, perform the following: XMLDisassembler Extracts the payload from the envelope into the Message Body Copies data from the envelope into the message context, as specified by the property schema(s) associated by the envelope schema. Typically, once the envelope is through the XMLDisassembler, the payload is submitted into the Messagebox, and the rest of the envelope data are copied into the context of the submitted message. The XMLDisassembler uses the Property Schemas, referenced by the Envelope Schema, to determine the name of the promoted Message Context element.   XMLAssembler Wraps the Message Body inside the specified envelope schema Populates the envelope values from the message context, as specified by the property schema(s) associated by the envelope schema. Notice that there are no requirements to use the receiving envelope schema when sending. The sent message can be wrapped within any suitable envelope, regardless whether the message was originally received within an envelope or not. However, by sharing Property Schemas between Envelopes, it is possible to pass values from the incoming envelope to the outgoing envelope via the Message Context. The Practice Creating the Envelope Add a new Schema to the BizTalk project:   Envelopes are defined as schemas, with the <Schema> Envelope property set to Yes, and the root node’s Body XPath property pointing to the node which contains the payload. Typically, you’d create an envelope structure similar to this: Click on the <Schema> node and set the Envelope property to Yes. Then, click on the Envelope node, and set the Body XPath property pointing to the ‘Body’ node:   The ‘Body’ node is a Child Element, and its Data Structure Type is set to xs:anyType.  This allows the Body node to carry any payload data. The XMLReceive pipeline will submit the data found in the Body node, while the XMLSend pipeline will copy the message into the Body node, before sending to the destination. Promoting Properties Once you defined the envelope, you may want to promote the envelope data (anything other than the Body) as Property Fields, in order to preserve their value in the message context. Anything not promoted will be lost when the XMLDisassembler extracts the payload from the Body. Typically, this means you promote everything in the Header node. Property promotion uses associated Property Schemas. These are special BizTalk schemas which have a flat field structure. Property Schemas define the name of the promoted values in the Message Context, by combining the Property Schema’s Namespace and the individual Field names. It is worth being systematic when it comes to naming your schemas, their namespace and type name. A coherent method will make your life easier when it comes to referencing the schemas during development, and managing subscriptions (filters) in BizTalk Administration. I developed a fairly coherent naming convention which I’ll probably share in another article. Because the property schema must be flat, I recommend creating one for each level in the envelope header hierarchy. Property schemas are very useful in passing data between incoming as outgoing envelopes. As I mentioned earlier, in/out envelopes do not have to be the same, but you can use the same property schema when you promote the outgoing envelope fields as you used for the incoming schema.  As you can reference many property schemas for field promotion, you can pick data from a variety of sources when you define your outgoing envelope. For example, the outgoing envelope can carry some of the incoming envelope’s promoted values, plus some values from the standard BizTalk message context, like the AdapterReceiveCompleteTime property from the BizTalk message-tracking properties. The values you promote for the outgoing envelope will be automatically populated from the Message Context by the XMLAssembler pipeline component. Using the Envelope Receiving Enveloped messages are automatically recognized by the XMLReceive pipeline, or any other custom pipeline which includes the XMLDisassembler component. The Body Path node will become the Message Body, while the rest of the envelope values will be added to the Message context, as defined by the Property Shemas referenced by the Envelope Schema. Sending The Send Port’s filter expression can use the promoted properties from the incoming envelope. If you want to enclose the sent message within an envelope, the Send Port XMLAssembler component must be configured with the fully qualified envelope name:   One way of obtaining the fully qualified envelope name is copy it off from the envelope schema property page: The full envelope schema name is constructed as <Name>, <Assembly> The outgoing envelope is populated by the XMLAssembler pipeline component. The Message Body is copied to the specified envelope’s Body Path node, while the rest of the envelope fields are populated from the Message Context, according to the Property Schemas associated with the Envelope Schema. That’s all for now, happy enveloping!

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• SSIS: Deploying OLAP cubes using C# script tasks and AMO

  - by DrJohn

  As part of the continuing series on Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly, this blog entry will focus on how to automate the deployment of OLAP cubes using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO). OLAP cube deployment is usually done using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard. However, this option was dismissed for a variety of reasons. Firstly, invoking external processes from SSIS is fraught with problems as (a) it is not always possible to ensure SSIS waits for the external program to terminate; (b) we cannot log the outcome properly and (c) it is not always possible to control the server's configuration to ensure the executable works correctly. Another reason for rejecting the Deployment Wizard is that it requires the 'answers' to be written into four XML files. These XML files record the three things we need to change: the name of the server, the name of the OLAP database and the connection string to the data mart. Although it would be reasonably straight forward to change the content of the XML files programmatically, this adds another set of complication and level of obscurity to the overall process. When I first investigated the possibility of using C# to deploy a cube, I was surprised to find that there are no other blog entries about the topic. I can only assume everyone else is happy with the Deployment Wizard! SSIS "forgets" assembly references If you build your script task from scratch, you will have to remember how to overcome one of the major annoyances of working with SSIS script tasks: the forgetful nature of SSIS when it comes to assembly references. Basically, you can go through the process of adding an assembly reference using the Add Reference dialog, but when you close the script window, SSIS "forgets" the assembly reference so the script will not compile. After repeating the operation several times, you will find that SSIS only remembers the assembly reference when you specifically press the Save All icon in the script window. This problem is not unique to the AMO assembly and has certainly been a "feature" since SQL Server 2005, so I am not amazed it is still present in SQL Server 2008 R2! Sample Package So let's take a look at the sample SSIS package I have provided which can be downloaded from here: DeployOlapCubeExample.zip  Below is a screenshot after a successful run. Connection Managers The package has three connection managers: AsDatabaseDefinitionFile is a file connection manager pointing to the .asdatabase file you wish to deploy. Note that this can be found in the bin directory of you OLAP database project once you have clicked the "Build" button in Visual Studio TargetOlapServerCS is an Analysis Services connection manager which identifies both the deployment server and the target database name. SourceDataMart is an OLEDB connection manager pointing to the data mart which is to act as the source of data for your cube. This will be used to replace the connection string found in your .asdatabase file Once you have configured the connection managers, the sample should run and deploy your OLAP database in a few seconds. Of course, in a production environment, these connection managers would be associated with package configurations or set at runtime. When you run the sample, you should see that the script logs its activity to the output screen (see screenshot above). If you configure logging for the package, then these messages will also appear in your SSIS logging. Sample Code Walkthrough Next let's walk through the code. The first step is to parse the connection string provided by the TargetOlapServerCS connection manager and obtain the name of both the target OLAP server and also the name of the OLAP database. Note that the target database does not have to exist to be referenced in an AS connection manager, so I am using this as a convenient way to define both properties. We now connect to the server and check for the existence of the OLAP database. If it exists, we drop the database so we can re-deploy. svr.Connect(olapServerName); if (svr.Connected) { // Drop the OLAP database if it already exists Database db = svr.Databases.FindByName(olapDatabaseName); if (db != null) { db.Drop(); } // rest of script } Next we start building the XMLA command that will actually perform the deployment. Basically this is a small chuck of XML which we need to wrap around the large .asdatabase file generated by the Visual Studio build process. // Start generating the main part of the XMLA command XmlDocument xmlaCommand = new XmlDocument(); xmlaCommand.LoadXml(string.Format("<Batch Transaction='false' xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine'><Alter AllowCreate='true' ObjectExpansion='ExpandFull'><Object><DatabaseID>{0}</DatabaseID></Object><ObjectDefinition/></Alter></Batch>", olapDatabaseName));  Next we need to merge two XML files which we can do by simply using setting the InnerXml property of the ObjectDefinition node as follows: // load OLAP Database definition from .asdatabase file identified by connection manager XmlDocument olapCubeDef = new XmlDocument(); olapCubeDef.Load(Dts.Connections["AsDatabaseDefinitionFile"].ConnectionString); // merge the two XML files by obtain a reference to the ObjectDefinition node oaRootNode.InnerXml = olapCubeDef.InnerXml;   One hurdle I had to overcome was removing detritus from the .asdabase file left by the Visual Studio build. Through an iterative process, I found I needed to remove several nodes as they caused the deployment to fail. The XMLA error message read "Cannot set read-only node: CreatedTimestamp" or similar. In comparing the XMLA generated with by the Deployment Wizard with that generated by my code, these read-only nodes were missing, so clearly I just needed to strip them out. This was easily achieved using XPath to find the relevant XML nodes, of which I show one example below: foreach (XmlNode node in rootNode.SelectNodes("//ns1:CreatedTimestamp", nsManager)) { node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } Now we need to change the database name in both the ID and Name nodes using code such as: XmlNode databaseID = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:Database/ns1:ID", nsManager); if (databaseID != null) databaseID.InnerText = olapDatabaseName; Finally we need to change the connection string to point at the relevant data mart. Again this is easily achieved using XPath to search for the relevant nodes and then replace the content of the node with the new name or connection string. XmlNode connectionStringNode = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:DataSources/ns1:DataSource/ns1:ConnectionString", nsManager); if (connectionStringNode != null) { connectionStringNode.InnerText = Dts.Connections["SourceDataMart"].ConnectionString; } Finally we need to perform the deployment using the Execute XMLA command and check the returned XmlaResultCollection for errors before setting the Dts.TaskResult. XmlaResultCollection oResults = svr.Execute(xmlaCommand.InnerXml);  // check for errors during deployment foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaResult oResult in oResults) { foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaMessage oMessage in oResult.Messages) { if ((oMessage.GetType().Name == "XmlaError")) { FireError(oMessage.Description); HadError = true; } } } If you are not familiar with XML programming, all this may all seem a bit daunting, but perceiver as the sample code is pretty short. If you would like the script to process the OLAP database, simply uncomment the lines in the vicinity of Process method. Of course, you can extend the script to perform your own custom processing and to even synchronize the database to a front-end server. Personally, I like to keep the deployment and processing separate as the code can become overly complex for support staff.If you want to know more, come see my session at the forthcoming SQLBits conference.

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• TFS 2010 SDK: Integrating Twitter with TFS Programmatically

  - by Tarun Arora

  Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp   Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing them in your social eco-system. Download Working Demo: Integrate Twitter - Tfs Programmatically   1. Setting up Twitter API Download Tweet Sharp from => https://github.com/danielcrenna/tweetsharp  Before you can start playing around with this, you will need to register an application on twitter. This is because Twitter uses the OAuth authentication protocol and will not issue an Access token unless your application is registered with them. Go to https://dev.twitter.com/ and register your application   Once you have registered your application, you will need ‘Customer Key’, ‘Customer Secret’, ‘Access Token’, ‘Access Token Secret’ 2. Connecting to Twitter using the Tweet Sharp API Create a new C# windows forms project and add reference to ‘Hammock.ClientProfile’, ‘Newtonsoft.Json’, ‘TweetSharp’ Add the following keys to the App.config (Note – The values for the keys below are in correct and if you try and connect using them then you will get an authorization failure error). Add a new class ‘TwitterProxy’ and use the following code to connect to the TwitterService (Read more about OAuthentication - http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth) using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Configuration;using TweetSharp; namespace WindowsFormsApplication2{ public class TwitterProxy { private static string _hero; private static string _consumerKey; private static string _consumerSecret; private static string _accessToken; private static string _accessTokenSecret;  public static TwitterService ConnectToTwitter() { _consumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerKey"]; _consumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerSecret"]; _accessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessToken"]; _accessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessTokenSecret"];  return new TwitterService(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, _accessToken, _accessTokenSecret); } }} Time to Tweet! _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); SendTweet will return the TweetStatus, If you do not get a 200 OK status that means you have failed authentication, please revisit the Access tokens. --RESPONSE: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Transaction: 1308476106-69292-41752 X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-Runtime: 0.03040 X-Transaction-Mask: a6183ffa5f44ef11425211f25 Pragma: no-cache X-Access-Level: read-write X-Revision: DEV X-MID: bd8aa0abeccb6efba38bc0a391a73fab98e983ea Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Server: hi Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked   3. Integrate with TFS In my blog post Connect to TFS Programmatically i have in depth demonstrated how to connect to TFS using the TFS API. 1: // Update the AppConfig with the URI of the Team Foundation Server you want to connect to, Make sure you have View Team Project Collection Details permissions on the server 2: private static string _myUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TfsUri"]; 3: private static TwitterService _twitterService = null; 4:   5: private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 6: { 7: lblNotes.Text = string.Empty; 8:   9: try 10: { 11: StringBuilder notes = new StringBuilder(); 12:   13: _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); 14:   15: _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); 16:   17: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 18: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); 19:   20: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 21:   22: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( 23: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 24: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 25:   26: // tpc = Team Project Collection 27: foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) 28: { 29: Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); 30: TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); 31:   32: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project Collection : {1}{0}", Environment.NewLine, tpc.Name); 33: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format("http://Lunartech.codeplex.com - Connecting to Team Project Collection : {0} ", tpc.Name)); 34:   35: // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' 36: var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( 37: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, 38: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 39:   40: foreach (var p in tpNodes) 41: { 42: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project : {1} - {2}{0}", Environment.NewLine, p.Resource.DisplayName,  "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex"); 43: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format(" Connected to Team Project: '{0}' – '{1}' ", p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex")); 44: } 45: } 46: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Updates posted on Twitter : {1} {0}", Environment.NewLine, @"http://twitter.com/lunartech1"); 47: lblNotes.Text = notes.ToString(); 48: } 49: catch (Exception ex) 50: { 51: lblError.Text = " Message : " + ex.Message + (ex.InnerException != null ? " Inner Exception : " + ex.InnerException : string.Empty); 52: } 53: }   The extensions you can build integrating TFS and Twitter are incredible!   Share this post :

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• Integration with Multiple Versions of BizTalk HL7 Accelerator Schemas

  - by Paul Petrov

  Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for HL7 comes with multiple versions of the HL7 implementation. One of the typical integration tasks is to receive one format and transmit another. For example, system A works HL7 v2.4 messages, system B with v2.3, and system C with v2.2. The system A is exchanging messages with B and C. The logical solution is to create schemas in separate namespaces for each system and assign maps on send ports. Schematic diagram of the messaging solution is shown below:   Nothing is complex about that conceptually. On the implementation level things can get nasty though because of the elaborate nature of HL7 schemas and sheer amount of message types involved. If trying to implement maps directly in BizTalk Map Editor one would quickly get buried by thousands of links between subfields of HL7 segments. Since task is repetitive because HL7 segments are reused between message types it's natural to take advantage of such modular structure and reduce amount of work through reuse. Here's where it makes sense to switch from visual map editor to old plain XSLT. The implementation is done in three steps. First, create XSL templates to map from segments of one version to another. This can be done using BizTalk Map Editor subsequently copying and modifying generated XSL code to create one xsl:template per segment. Group all segments for format mapping in one XSL file (we call it SegmentTemplates.xsl). Here's how template for the PID segment (Patient Identification) would look like this: <xsl:template name="PID"> <PID_PatientIdentification> <xsl:if test="PID_PatientIdentification/PID_1_SetIdPatientId"> <PID_1_SetIdPid> <xsl:value-of select="PID_PatientIdentification/PID_1_SetIdPatientId/text()" /> </PID_1_SetIdPid> </xsl:if> <xsl:for-each select="PID_PatientIdentification/PID_2_PatientIdExternalId"> <PID_2_PatientId> <xsl:if test="CX_0_Id"> <CX_0_Id> <xsl:value-of select="CX_0_Id/text()" /> </CX_0_Id> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="CX_1_CheckDigit"> <CX_1_CheckDigitSt> <xsl:value-of select="CX_1_CheckDigit/text()" /> </CX_1_CheckDigitSt> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed"> <CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed> <xsl:value-of select="CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed/text()" /> </CX_2_CodeIdentifyingTheCheckDigitSchemeEmployed> . . . // skipped for brevity This is the most tedious and time consuming part. Templates can be created for only those segments that are used in message interchange. Once this is done the rest goes much easier. The next step is to create message type specific XSL that references (imports) segment templates XSL file. Inside this file simple call segment templates in appropriate places. For example, beginning of the mapping XSL for ADT_A01 message would look like this:   <xsl:import href="SegmentTemplates_23_to_24.xslt" />  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" method="xml" version="1.0" />   <xsl:template match="/">    <xsl:apply-templates select="s0:ADT_A01_23_GLO_DEF" />  </xsl:template>   <xsl:template match="s0:ADT_A01_23_GLO_DEF">    <ns0:ADT_A01_24_GLO_DEF>      <xsl:call-template name="EVN" />      <xsl:call-template name="PID" />      <xsl:for-each select="PD1_PatientDemographic">        <xsl:call-template name="PD1" />      </xsl:for-each>      <xsl:call-template name="PV1" />      <xsl:for-each select="PV2_PatientVisitAdditionalInformation">        <xsl:call-template name="PV2" />      </xsl:for-each> This code simply calls segment template directly for required singular elements and in for-each loop for optional/repeating elements. And lastly, create BizTalk map (btm) that references message type specific XSL. It is essentially empty map with Custom XSL Path set to appropriate XSL: In the end, you will end up with one segment templates file that is referenced by many message type specific XSL files which in turn used by BizTalk maps. Once all segment maps are created they are widely reusable and all the rest work is very simple and clean.

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• Oracle Expands Sun Blade Portfolio for Cloud and Highly Virtualized Environments

  - by Ferhat Hatay

  Oracle announced the expansion of Sun Blade Portfolio for cloud and highly virtualized environments that deliver powerful performance and simplified management as tightly integrated systems.  Along with the SPARC T3-1B blade server, Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration and Oracle's optimized solution for Oracle WebLogic Suite, Oracle introduced the dual-node Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module with some impressive benchmark results.   Benchmarks on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module demonstrate the outstanding performance characteristics critical for running varied commercial applications used in cloud and highly virtualized environments.  These include best-in-class SPEC CPU2006 results with the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, six Fluent world records and 1.8 times the price-performance of the IBM Power 755 running NAMD, a prominent bio-informatics workload.   Benchmarks for Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module  SPEC CPU2006  The Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module demonstrated best in class SPECint_rate2006 results for all published results using the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, with a result of 679.  This result is 97% better than the HP BL460c G7 blade, 80% better than the IBM HS22V blade, and 79% better than the Dell M710 blade.  This result demonstrates the density advantage of the new Oracle's server module for space-constrained data centers.     Sun Blade X6275M2 (2 Nodes, Intel Xeon X5670 2.93GHz) - 679 SPECint_rate2006; HP ProLiant BL460c G7 (2.93 GHz, Intel Xeon X5670) - 347 SPECint_rate2006; IBM BladeCenter HS22V (Intel Xeon X5680)  - 377 SPECint_rate2006; Dell PowerEdge M710 (Intel Xeon X5680, 3.33 GHz) - 380 SPECint_rate2006.  SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 11/24/2010 and this report.    For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   Fluent The Sun Fire X6275 M2 server module produced world-record results on each of the six standard cases in the current "FLUENT 12" benchmark test suite at 8-, 12-, 24-, 32-, 64- and 96-core configurations. These results beat the most recent QLogic score with IBM DX 360 M series platforms and QLogic "Truescale" interconnects.  Results on sedan_4m test case on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module are 23% better than the HP C7000 system, and 20% better than the IBM DX 360 M2; Dell has not posted a result for this test case.  Results can be found at the FLUENT website.   ANSYS's FLUENT software solves fluid flow problems, and is based on a numerical technique called computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which is used in the automotive, aerospace, and consumer products industries. The FLUENT 12 benchmark test suite consists of seven models that are well suited for multi-node clustered environments and representative of modern engineering CFD clusters. Vendors benchmark their systems with the principal objective of providing comparative performance information for FLUENT software that, among other things, depends on compilers, optimization, interconnect, and the performance characteristics of the hardware.   FLUENT application performance is representative of other commercial applications that require memory and CPU resources to be available in a scalable cluster-ready format.  FLUENT benchmark has six conventional test cases (eddy_417k, turbo_500k, aircraft_2m, sedan_4m, truck_14m, truck_poly_14m) at various core counts.   All information on the FLUENT website (http://www.fluent.com) is Copyrighted1995-2010 by ANSYS Inc. Results as of November 24, 2010. For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   NAMD Results on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module running NAMD (a parallel molecular dynamics code designed for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems) show up to a 1.8X better price/performance than IBM's Power 7-based system.  For space-constrained environments, the ultra-dense Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module provides a 1.7X better price/performance per rack unit than IBM's system.     IBM Power 755 4-way Cluster (16U). Total price for cluster: $324,212. See IBM United States Hardware Announcement 110-008, dated February 9, 2010, pp. 4, 21 and 39-46.  Sun Blade X6275 M2 8-Blade Cluster (10U). Total price for cluster:  $193,939. Price/performance and performance/RU comparisons based on f1ATPase molecule test results. Sun Blade X6275 M2 cluster: $3,568/step/sec, 5.435 step/sec/RU. IBM Power 755 cluster: $6,355/step/sec, 3.189 step/sec/U. See http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/reports/system_perf.html. See http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/performance.html for more information, results as of 11/24/10.   For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   Reverse Time Migration The Reverse Time Migration is heavily used in geophysical imaging and modeling for Oil & Gas Exploration.  The Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module showed up to a 40% performance improvement over the previous generation server module with super-linear scalability to 16 nodes for the 9-Point Stencil used in this Reverse Time Migration computational kernel.  The balanced combination of Oracle's Sun Storage 7410 system with the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module cluster showed linear scalability for the total application throughput, including the I/O and MPI communication, to produce a final 3-D seismic depth imaged cube for interpretation. The final image write time from the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module nodes to Oracle's Sun Storage 7410 system achieved 10GbE line speed of 1.25 GBytes/second or better performance. Between subsequent runs, the effects of I/O buffer caching on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module nodes and write optimized caching on the Sun Storage 7410 system gave up to 1.8 GBytes/second effective write performance. The performance results and characterization of this Reverse Time Migration benchmark could serve as a useful measure for many other I/O intensive commercial applications. 3D VTI Reverse Time Migration Seismic Depth Imaging, see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/3d_vti_reverse_time_migration for more information, results as of 11/14/2010.                            

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