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• Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g next launch phase - what a week of product releases! Feedback from our

  - by Jürgen Kress

    Product releases: SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2) BPM Suite 11gR1 Released Oracle JDeveloper 11g (11.1.1.3.0) (Build 5660) Oracle WebLogic Server 11gR1 (10.3.3) Oracle JRockit (4.0) Oracle Tuxedo 11gR1 (11.1.1.1.0) Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control Release 1 (11.1.0.1.0) for Linux x86/x86-64 All Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR1 Software Download   BPM Suite 11gR1 Released by Manoj Das Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 became available for download from OTN and eDelivery. If you have been following our plans in this area, you know that this is the release unifying BEA ALBPM product, which became Oracle BPM10gR3, with the Oracle stack. Some of the highlights of this release are: BPMN 2.0 modeling and simulation Web based Process Composer for BPMN and Rules authoring Zero-code environment with full access to Oracle SOA Suite’s rich set of application and other adapters Process Spaces – Out-of-box integration with Web Center Suite Process Analytics – Native process cubes as well as integration with Oracle BAM You can learn more about this release from the documentation. Notes about downloading and installing Please note that Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 is delivered and installed as part of SOA 11.1.1.3.0, which is a sparse release (only incremental patch). To install: Download and install SOA 11.1.1.2.0, which is a full release (you can find the bits at the above location) Download and install SOA 11.1.1.3.0 During configure step (using the Fusion Middleware configuration wizard), use the Oracle Business Process Management template supplied with the SOA Suite11g (11.1.1.3.0) If you plan to use Process Spaces, also install Web Center 11.1.1.3.0, which also is delivered as a sparse release and needs to be installed on top of Web Center 11.1.1.2.0   SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2) released by Demed L'Her We just released SOA Suite 11gR1 Patch Set 2 (PS2)! You can download it as usual from: OTN (main platforms only) eDelivery (all platforms) 11gR1 PS2 is delivered as a sparse installer, that is to say that it is meant to be applied on the latest full install (11gR1 PS1). That’s great for existing PS1 users who simply need to apply the patch and run the patch assistant – but an extra step for new users who will first need to download SOA Suite 11gR1 PS1 (in addition to the PS2 patch). What’s in that release? Bug fixes of course but also several significant new features. Here is a short selection of the most significant ones: Spring component (for native Java extensibility and integration) SOA Partitions (to organize and manage your composites) Direct Binding (for transactional invocations to and from Oracle Service Bus) HTTP binding (for those of you trying to do away with SOAP and looking for simple GET and POST) Resequencer (for ordering out-of-order messages) WS Atomic Transactions (WS-AT) support (for propagation of transactions across heterogeneous environments) Check out the complete list of new features in PS2 for more (including links to the documentation for the above)! But maybe even more importantly we are also releasing Oracle Service Bus 11gR1 and BPM Suite 11gR1 at the same time – all on the same base platform (WebLogic Server 10.3.3)! (NB: it might take a while for all pages and caches to be updated with the new content so if you don’t find what you need today, try again soon!)   Are you Systems Integrations and Independent Software Vendors ready to adopt and to deliver? Make sure that you become trained: Local training calendars Register for the SOA Partner Community & Webcast www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa What is your feedback?  Who installed the software? please feel free to share your experience at http://twitter.com/soacommunity #soacommunity Technorati Tags: SOA partner community ACE Directoris SOA Suite PS2 BPM11g First feedback from our ACE Directors and key Partners:   Now, these are great times to start the journey into BPM! Hajo Normann Reuse of components across the Oracle 11G Fusion Middleware stack, BPM just is one of the components plugging into the stack and reuses all other components. Mr. Leon Smiers With BPM11g, Oracle offers a very competitive product which will have a big effect on the IT market. Guido Schmutz We have real BPMN 2.0, which get's executed. No more transformation from business models to executable models - just press the run button... Torsten Winterberg Oracle BPM Suite 11g brings Out-of-box integration with WebCenter Suite and Oracle ADF development framework. Andrejus Baranovskis With the release of BPM Suite 11g, Oracle has defined new standards for Business Process platforms. Geoffroy de Lamalle With User Messaging Service you can let Soa Suite 11g do all your Messaging Edwin Biemond

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• Infiniband: a highperformance network fabric - Part I

  - by Karoly Vegh

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

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• Process Centric Banking: Loan Origination Solution

  - by Manish Palaparthy

  There is an old proverb that goes, "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory". So, we keep doing numerous "Proof of Concepts" with our own products on various business cases to analyze them deeply, understand and explain to our customers. We then present our learnings as they happened. The awareness of each PoC should help readers increase the trustworthiness of the results coming out of these PoCs. I present one such PoC where we invested a lot of time&effort.  Process Centric Banking : Loan Origination Solution Loan Origination is a process by which a borrower applies for a new loan and the lender processes that application. Loan origination includes the series of steps taken by the bank from the point the customer shows interest in a loan product all the way to disbursal of funds. The Loan Origination process is relevant for many kind of lenders in Financial services: Banks, Credit Unions, NBFCs(Non Banking Financial Companies) and so on. For simplicity sake, I will use "Bank" as the lending institution in the rest of my article.  Loan Origination is one of the core processes for Banks as it is the process by which the it creates assets against which the Institution earns most of its profits from. A well tuned loan origination process can affect the Bank in many positive ways. Banks have always shown great interest in automating the loan origination process for the above reason. However, due the constant changes in customer environment, market dynamics, prevailing economic conditions, cost pressures & regulatory environment they run into lot of challenges. Let me categorize some of these challenges for you Customer Environment Multiple Channels: Customer can use any of the available channels (Internet Banking, Email, Fax, Branch, Phone Banking, ATM, Broker, Mobile, Snail Mail) to perform all or some of the activities related to her Visibility into the origination process: Expect immediate update on the status of loan processing & alert messages Reduced Turn Around Time: Expect loans to be processed with least turn around time Reduced loan processing fees: Partly due to market dynamics the customer expects the loan processing fee to be negligible Market Dynamics Competitive environment:  The competition keeps creating many variants of loan products to attract customers, the bank needs to create similar product variants with better offers to attract customers or keep existing ones Ability to migrate loans from one vendor to another: It has become really easy for retail customers to move from one bank to the other given the low fee of loan processing and highly attractive offers. How does the bank protect it's customer base while actively engaging with potential customers banking with competitor banks Flexibility to react to market developments: Market development greatly influence loan processing, underwriting, asset valuation, risk mitigation rules. Can the bank modify rules and policies, the idea is not just to react to market developments but to pro-actively manage new developments Economic conditions Constant change in various rates and their implications on the rates and rules applied when on-boarding a loan: How quickly can the bank apply changes to rates offered to customers when the central bank changes various rates Requirements of Audit by the central banker: Tough economic conditions have demanded much more stringent audit rules and tests. The banks needs to produce ready reports(historic & operational) for audit compliance Risk Mitigation: While risk mitigation has always been a key concern for the bank, this is the area where the bank's underwriters & risk analysts spend the maximum time when processing a loan application. In order to reduce TAT the bank cannot compromise on its risk mitigation strategies Cost pressures Reduce Cost of processing per application: To deliver a reduced loan processing fee to the customer, the bank needs to keep its cost per processing loan application low. Meet customer TAT expectations while reducing the queues and the systems being used to process the loan application: The loan application could potentially be spending a lot of time waiting in the queue for further processing. Different volumes & patterns of applications demand different queuing algorithms. The bank needs to have real-time visibility into these queues and have the flexibility to change queuing algorithms at runtime  Increase the use of electronic communication and reduce the branch channel usage: Lesser automation leads not only leads to Increased turn around time, it also impacts more costs to reach out to customers The objective of our PoC was to implement a Loan Origination Solution whose ownership lies with the bank and effectively meet the challenges listed above. We built a simple story board for the solution We then went about implementing our storyboard using Oracle BPM Suite, Webcenter Content : Imaging. The web UI has been built on ADF technolgies, while the integration with core-services has been implemented using the underlying SOA infrastructure. The BPM process model is quite exhaustive can meet all the challenges listed above to reasonable degree. A bank intending to implement an end-to-end Loan Origination Solution has multiple options at it's disposal. It can Develop a customer Loan Origination Application from scratch: Gives maximum opportunity to build what you want but inflexible to upgrade and maintain. Higher TCO in long term Buy a Packaged application & customize it: Customizing a generic loan application can be tedious and prove as difficult as above. Build it using many disparate & un-integrated tools: Initially seems easier than developing from scratch. But, without integrated tool sets this is not a viable approach either or A solution based on a Framework: Independent Services and Business Process Modeling provide decoupled architecture that is flexible. We built this framework end-to-end with processes the core process of loan origination & several sub-processes such as Analyse and define customer needs, customer credit verification, identity check processes, legal review process, New customer registration & risk assessment.

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• InnoDB Compression Improvements in MySQL 5.6

  - by Inaam Rana

  MySQL 5.6 comes with significant improvements for the compression support inside InnoDB. The enhancements that we'll talk about in this piece are also a good example of community contributions. The work on these was conceived, implemented and contributed by the engineers at Facebook. Before we plunge into the details let us familiarize ourselves with some of the key concepts surrounding InnoDB compression. In InnoDB compressed pages are fixed size. Supported sizes are 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16K. The compressed page size is specified at table creation time. InnoDB uses zlib for compression. InnoDB buffer pool will attempt to cache compressed pages like normal pages. However, whenever a page is actively used by a transaction, we'll always have the uncompressed version of the page as well i.e.: we can have a page in the buffer pool in compressed only form or in a state where we have both the compressed page and uncompressed version but we'll never have a page in uncompressed only form. On-disk we'll always only have the compressed page. When both compressed and uncompressed images are present in the buffer pool they are always kept in sync i.e.: changes are applied to both atomically. Recompression happens when changes are made to the compressed data. In order to minimize recompressions InnoDB maintains a modification log within a compressed page. This is the extra space available in the page after compression and it is used to log modifications to the compressed data thus avoiding recompressions. DELETE (and ROLLBACK of DELETE) and purge can be performed without recompressing the page. This is because the delete-mark bit and the system fields DB_TRX_ID and DB_ROLL_PTR are stored in uncompressed format on the compressed page. A record can be purged by shuffling entries in the compressed page directory. This can also be useful for updates of indexed columns, because UPDATE of a key is mapped to INSERT+DELETE+purge. A compression failure happens when we attempt to recompress a page and it does not fit in the fixed size. In such case, we first try to reorganize the page and attempt to recompress and if that fails as well then we split the page into two and recompress both pages. Now lets talk about the three major improvements that we made in MySQL 5.6.Logging of Compressed Page Images:InnoDB used to log entire compressed data on the page to the redo logs when recompression happens. This was an extra safety measure to guard against the rare case where an attempt is made to do recovery using a different zlib version from the one that was used before the crash. Because recovery is a page level operation in InnoDB we have to be sure that all recompress attempts must succeed without causing a btree page split. However, writing entire compressed data images to the redo log files not only makes the operation heavy duty but can also adversely affect flushing activity. This happens because redo space is used in a circular fashion and when we generate much more than normal redo we fill up the space much more quickly and in order to reuse the redo space we have to flush the corresponding dirty pages from the buffer pool.Starting with MySQL 5.6 a new global configuration parameter innodb_log_compressed_pages. The default value is true which is same as the current behavior. If you are sure that you are not going to attempt to recover from a crash using a different version of zlib then you should set this parameter to false. This is a dynamic parameter.Compression Level:You can now set the compression level that zlib should choose to compress the data. The global parameter is innodb_compression_level - the default value is 6 (the zlib default) and allowed values are 1 to 9. Again the parameter is dynamic i.e.: you can change it on the fly.Dynamic Padding to Reduce Compression Failures:Compression failures are expensive in terms of CPU. We go through the hoops of recompress, failure, reorganize, recompress, failure and finally page split. At the same time, how often we encounter compression failure depends largely on the compressibility of the data. In MySQL 5.6, courtesy of Facebook engineers, we have an adaptive algorithm based on per-index statistics that we gather about compression operations. The idea is that if a certain index/table is experiencing too many compression failures then we should try to pack the 16K uncompressed version of the page less densely i.e.: we let some space in the 16K page go unused in an attempt that the recompression won't end up in a failure. In other words, we dynamically keep adding 'pad' to the 16K page till we get compression failures within an agreeable range. It works the other way as well, that is we'll keep removing the pad if failure rate is fairly low. To tune the padding effort two configuration variables are exposed. innodb_compression_failure_threshold_pct: default 5, range 0 - 100,dynamic, implies the percentage of compress ops to fail before we start using to padding. Value 0 has a special meaning of disabling the padding. innodb_compression_pad_pct_max: default 50, range 0 - 75, dynamic, the  maximum percentage of uncompressed data page that can be reserved as pad.

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• Java EE and GlassFish Server Roadmap Update

  - by John Clingan

  2013 has been a stellar year for both the Java EE and GlassFish Server communities. On June 12, Oracle and its partners announced the release of Java EE 7, which delivers on three major themes – HTML5, developer productivity, and meeting enterprise demands. The online event attracted over 10,000 views in the first two days! During the online event, Oracle also announced the availability of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4, the world's first Java EE 7 compatible application server. The primary role of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition has been, and continues to be, driving adoption of the latest release of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition. Oracle also announced the Java EE 7 SDK, which bundles GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4, as a Java EE 7 learning aid. Last, Oracle publicly announced the Java EE 7 reference implementation based on GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4. Java EE is a popular platform, as evidenced by the 20+ Java EE 6 compatible implementations available to choose from. After the launch of Java EE 7 and GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4, we began planning the Java EE 8 roadmap, which was covered during the JavaOne Strategy Keynote. To summarize, there is a lot of interest in improving on HTML5 support, Cloud, and investigating NoSQL support. We received a lot of great feedback from the community and customers on what they would like to see in Java EE 8. As we approached JavaOne 2013, we started planning the GlassFish Server roadmap. What we announced at JavaOne was that GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.1 is scheduled for 2014. Here is an update to that roadmap. GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.1 is scheduled for 2014 We are planning updates as needed to GlassFish Server Open Source Edition, which is commercially unsupported As we head towards Java EE 8: The trunk will eventually transition to GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5 as a Java EE 8 implementation The Java EE 8 Reference Implementation will be derived from GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5. This replicates what has been done in past Java EE and GlassFish Server releases. Oracle will no longer release future major releases of Oracle GlassFish Server with commercial support – specifically Oracle GlassFish Server 4.x with commercial Java EE 7 support will not be released. Commercial Java EE 7 support will be provided from WebLogic Server. Oracle GlassFish Server will not be releasing a 4.x commercial version Expanding on that last bullet, new and existing Oracle GlassFish Server 2.1.x and 3.1.x commercial customers will continue to be supported according to the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. Oracle recommends that existing commercial Oracle GlassFish Server customers begin planning to move to Oracle WebLogic Server, which is a natural technical and license migration path forward: Applications developed to Java EE standards can be deployed to both GlassFish Server and Oracle WebLogic Server GlassFish Server and Oracle WebLogic Server have implementation-specific deployment descriptor interoperability (here and here). GlassFish Server 3.x and Oracle WebLogic Server share quite a bit of code, so there are quite a bit of configuration and (extended) feature similarities. Shared code includes JPA, JAX-RS, WebSockets (pre JSR 356 in both cases), CDI, Bean Validation, JAX-WS, JAXB, and WS-AT. Both Oracle GlassFish Server 3.x and Oracle WebLogic Server 12c support Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Coherence, Oracle Directory Server, Oracle Virtual Directory, Oracle Database, Oracle Enterprise Manager and are entitled to support for the underlying Oracle JDK. To summarize, Oracle is committed to the future of Java EE.  Java EE 7 has been released and planning for Java EE 8 has begun. GlassFish Server Open Source Edition continues to be the strategic foundation for Java EE reference implementation going forward. And for developers, updates will be delivered as needed to continue to deliver a great developer experience for GlassFish Server Open Source Edition. We are planning for GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5 as the foundation for the Java EE 8 reference implementation, as well as bundling GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 5 in a Java EE 8 SDK, which is the most popular distribution of GlassFish. This will allow GlassFish releases to be more focused on the Java EE platform and community-driven requirements. We continue to encourage community contributions, bug reports, participation on the GlassFish forum, etc. Going forward, Oracle WebLogic Server will be the single strategic commercially supported application server from Oracle. Disclaimer: The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract.It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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• Alternative Grid Layout for Silverlight suggestion

  - by brainbox

  I've proposed a suggestion to create alternative grid layout for Silverlight. Please vote for it if also faced the same problems. As i write before current Silverlight Grid Layout breakes best practices of HTML and Adobe Flex Grid layouts. Current defention based approach have following disadvantages that makes xaml coding very hard: 1. It is very hard to create new row. In that case you should rewriteall Grid.Row and Grid.Columns for all rows inserted below.2. Defenitions are static by their nature and because of it, it isimpossible to use grid for dynamic forms. Currently even in toolkit DataFormMicrosoft is using StackPanel. But StackPanel is not designed for multicolumn layout that have dataform. Here is a sample code of AdobeFlex datagrid, which incorporates bestpractices of HTML. <mx:Grid id="myGrid">        <!-- Define Row 1. -->       <mx:GridRow id="row1">           <!-- Define the first cell of Row 1. -->           <mx:GridItem>               <mx:Button label="Button 1"/>           </mx:GridItem>           <!-- Define the second cell of Row 1. -->           <mx:GridItem>               <mx:Button label="2"/>           </mx:GridItem>           <!-- Define the third cell of Row 1. -->           <mx:GridItem>               <mx:Button label="Button 3"/>           </mx:GridItem>       </mx:GridRow>        <!-- Define Row 2. -->       <mx:GridRow id="row2">           <!-- Define a single cell to span three columns of Row 2. -->           <mx:GridItem colSpan="3" horizontalAlign="center">               <mx:Button label="Long-Named Button 4"/>           </mx:GridItem>       </mx:GridRow>        <!-- Define Row 3. -->       <mx:GridRow id="row3">           <!-- Define an empty first cell of Row 3. -->           <mx:GridItem/>           <!-- Define a cell to span columns 2 and 3 of Row 3. -->           <mx:GridItem colSpan="2" horizontalAlign="center">               <mx:Button label="Button 5"/>           </mx:GridItem>       </mx:GridRow>    </mx:Grid>

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• RightNow CX @ OpenWorld: What to Experience

  - by Tony Berk

  We want to welcome our RightNow CX customers to Oracle OpenWorld next week. Get ready for a great week and a whole new experience! For a high level overview of what is going on during the week, please review these previous posts: Is There a Cloud Over OpenWorld? and What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12. Also, don't forget you can add on the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld to make your week even more complete and get involved with the Experience Revolution! Below is a highlight of only some of the RightNow related sessions at OpenWorld. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. No better way to start off than hearing where Oracle RightNow is going! Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from David Vap and his team of Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Interested in the Cloud and want to know why some leading CIOs are moving to the cloud? You can hear first hand from CIOs from Emerson, Intuit and Overstock.com: CIOs and Governance in the Cloud (CON9767) - Oct 3, 11:45 AM.   And of course there are a number of sessions that drill down into more specific areas. Here are just a few: Deliver Outstanding Customer Experiences: Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service (CON9771) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. This session covers how companies have delivered exceptional customer experiences and how the Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service roadmap will evolve in the future. The Oracle RightNow Contact Center Experience suite includes incident management, knowledge, guided processes, and other service capabilities to unify the customer experience across channels. Come learn about the powerful tools that enable even your junior agents to consistently provide outstanding service across all customer interaction channels. Self-Service in the Age of Data Intimacy (CON11516) - Oct 1, 3:15. Even though businesses are generating more and more data around their relationships and interactions with customers, very little of the information a business generates ends up available to the contact center and even less is made available to the online service experience. The generic one-size-fits-all approach that typifies most online service experiences ultimately fails to address all user needs, and that failure ultimately leads to the continued use of high-cost agent-assisted channels for low-value interactions. This session introduces Oracle RightNow Web Experience’s Virtual Assistant and discusses how you can deliver rich, engaging, highly personalized experiences with the quality of agent-assisted service at a much lower cost. Improve Chat Experiences: Best Practices for Chat Pilots and Deployments (CON11517) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. Today’s organizations are challenged to grow revenue and retain customers with fewer resources, and many have turned to chat as an approach to improving the customer experience, increasing sales conversions, and reducing costs at the same time. From setting goals and metrics and training staff to customizing and tuning the solution, this session provides best practices and lessons learned from a broad set of implementations to help you get the most out of your chat solution. Differentiated Experience with Web Service (CON9770) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. A reputation for excellent customer service can differentiate your brand and drive revenue. In this session, learn how to develop that reputation by transforming your online self-service into a highly interactive, branded customer experience. See live examples of how Oracle RightNow Web Experience has helped customers deliver on their Web service strategies. Unifying the Agent’s Engagement Console (CON11518) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. Does your customer experience suffer because your agents are toggling between multiple tools? Do your agent productivity and morale suffer as well? Come to this session to learn how Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service seamlessly unifies these disparate systems into a single engagement console. Regardless of channel, powerful adaptive tools consistently guide agents across contextually aware personalized workflows. Great agent experiences drive great customer experiences. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and the Oracle Customer Experience Portfolio (CON9775) - Oct 3, 10:15 AM. This session covers how Oracle’s integrated suite of customer experience (CX) products fits with the Oracle CX portfolio of products (Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management; the Oracle ATG, Oracle Endeca, and Oracle Knowledge product families; and Oracle Business Intelligence) to increase revenues, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce costs across the entire end-to-end customer lifecycle for companies that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses. Greater Insights from Customer Engagements (CON9773) Oct 4, 12:45 PM. In this session, hear how to leverage service interaction insights, customer feedback, and segmented service engagements to improve the customer experience. Discover how customers, such as J&P Cycles, learn and take action based on business insights gained through their customer engagements. Again, these are just some of the sessions, so check out the Content Catalog for details on Knowledge Management, Customization, Integration and more in the Oracle Develop stream for Customer Experience. Be sure to visit the Oracle DEMOgrounds in the Moscone West Exhibit Hall. If this is your first OpenWorld, welcome! If you are returning, hi again and enjoy!

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• Cloud to On-Premise Connectivity Patterns

  - by Rajesh Raheja

  Do you have a requirement to convert an Opportunity in Salesforce.com to an Order/Quote in Oracle E-Business Suite? Or maybe you want the creation of an Oracle RightNow Incident to trigger an on-premise Oracle E-Business Suite Service Request creation for RMA and Field Scheduling? If so, read on. In a previous blog post, I discussed integrating TO cloud applications, however the use cases above are the reverse i.e. receiving data FROM cloud applications (SaaS) TO on-premise applications/databases that sit behind a firewall. Oracle SOA Suite is assumed to be on-premise with with Oracle Service Bus as the mediation and virtualization layer. The main considerations for the patterns are are security i.e. shielding enterprise resources; and scalability i.e. minimizing firewall latency. Let me use an analogy to help visualize the patterns: the on-premise system is your home - with your most valuable possessions - and the SaaS app is your favorite on-line store which regularly ships (inbound calls) various types of parcels/items (message types/service operations). You need the items at home (on-premise) but want to safe guard against misguided elements of society (internet threats) who may masquerade as postal workers and vandalize property (denial of service?). Let's look at the patterns. Pattern: Pull from Cloud The on-premise system polls from the SaaS apps and picks up the message instead of having it delivered. This may be done using Oracle RightNow Object Query Language or SOAP APIs. This is particularly suited for certain integration approaches wherein messages are trickling in, can be centralized and batched e.g. retrieving event notifications on an hourly schedule from the Oracle Messaging Service. To compare this pattern with the home analogy, you are avoiding any deliveries to your home and instead go to the post office/UPS/Fedex store to pick up your parcel. Every time. Pros: On-premise assets not exposed to the Internet, firewall issues avoided by only initiating outbound connections Cons: Polling mechanisms may affect performance, may not satisfy near real-time requirements Pattern: Open Firewall Ports The on-premise system exposes the web services that needs to be invoked by the cloud application. This requires opening up firewall ports, routing calls to the appropriate internal services behind the firewall. Fusion Applications uses this pattern, and auto-provisions the services on the various virtual hosts to secure the topology. This works well for service integration, but may not suffice for large volume data integration. Using the home analogy, you have now decided to receive parcels instead of going to the post office every time. A door mail slot cut out allows the postman can drop small parcels, but there is still concern about cutting new holes for larger packages. Pros: optimal pattern for near real-time needs, simpler administration once the service is provisioned Cons: Needs firewall ports to be opened up for new services, may not suffice for batch integration requiring direct database access Pattern: Virtual Private Networking The on-premise network is "extended" to the cloud (or an intermediary on-demand / managed service offering) using Virtual Private Networking (VPN) so that messages are delivered to the on-premise system in a trusted channel. Using the home analogy, you entrust a set of keys with a neighbor or property manager who receives the packages, and then drops it inside your home. Pros: Individual firewall ports don't need to be opened, more suited for high scalability needs, can support large volume data integration, easier management of one connection vs a multitude of open ports Cons: VPN setup, specific hardware support, requires cloud provider to support virtual private computing Pattern: Reverse Proxy / API Gateway The on-premise system uses a reverse proxy "API gateway" software on the DMZ to receive messages. The reverse proxy can be implemented using various mechanisms e.g. Oracle API Gateway provides firewall and proxy services along with comprehensive security, auditing, throttling benefits. If a firewall already exists, then Oracle Service Bus or Oracle HTTP Server virtual hosts can provide reverse proxy implementations on the DMZ. Custom built implementations are also possible if specific functionality (such as message store-n-forward) is needed. In the home analogy, this pattern sits in between cutting mail slots and handing over keys. Instead, you install (and maintain) a mailbox in your home premises outside your door. The post office delivers the parcels in your mailbox, from where you can securely retrieve it. Pros: Very secure, very flexible Cons: Introduces a new software component, needs DMZ deployment and management Pattern: On-Premise Agent (Tunneling) A light weight "agent" software sits behind the firewall and initiates the communication with the cloud, thereby avoiding firewall issues. It then maintains a bi-directional connection either with pull or push based approaches using (or abusing, depending on your viewpoint) the HTTP protocol. Programming protocols such as Comet, WebSockets, HTTP CONNECT, HTTP SSH Tunneling etc. are possible implementation options. In the home analogy, a resident receives the parcel from the postal worker by opening the door, however you still take precautions with chain locks and package inspections. Pros: Light weight software, IT doesn't need to setup anything Cons: May bypass critical firewall checks e.g. virus scans, separate software download, proliferation of non-IT managed software Conclusion The patterns above are some of the most commonly encountered ones for cloud to on-premise integration. Selecting the right pattern for your project involves looking at your scalability needs, security restrictions, sync vs asynchronous implementation, near real-time vs batch expectations, cloud provider capabilities, budget, and more. In some cases, the basic "Pull from Cloud" may be acceptable, whereas in others, an extensive VPN topology may be well justified. For more details on the Oracle cloud integration strategy, download this white paper.

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• Cloud to On-Premise Connectivity Patterns

  - by Rajesh Raheja

  Do you have a requirement to convert an Opportunity in Salesforce.com to an Order/Quote in Oracle E-Business Suite? Or maybe you want the creation of an Oracle RightNow Incident to trigger an on-premise Oracle E-Business Suite Service Request creation for RMA and Field Scheduling? If so, read on. In a previous blog post, I discussed integrating TO cloud applications, however the use cases above are the reverse i.e. receiving data FROM cloud applications (SaaS) TO on-premise applications/databases that sit behind a firewall. Oracle SOA Suite is assumed to be on-premise with with Oracle Service Bus as the mediation and virtualization layer. The main considerations for the patterns are are security i.e. shielding enterprise resources; and scalability i.e. minimizing firewall latency. Let me use an analogy to help visualize the patterns: the on-premise system is your home - with your most valuable possessions - and the SaaS app is your favorite on-line store which regularly ships (inbound calls) various types of parcels/items (message types/service operations). You need the items at home (on-premise) but want to safe guard against misguided elements of society (internet threats) who may masquerade as postal workers and vandalize property (denial of service?). Let's look at the patterns. Pattern: Pull from Cloud The on-premise system polls from the SaaS apps and picks up the message instead of having it delivered. This may be done using Oracle RightNow Object Query Language or SOAP APIs. This is particularly suited for certain integration approaches wherein messages are trickling in, can be centralized and batched e.g. retrieving event notifications on an hourly schedule from the Oracle Messaging Service. To compare this pattern with the home analogy, you are avoiding any deliveries to your home and instead go to the post office/UPS/Fedex store to pick up your parcel. Every time. Pros: On-premise assets not exposed to the Internet, firewall issues avoided by only initiating outbound connections Cons: Polling mechanisms may affect performance, may not satisfy near real-time requirements Pattern: Open Firewall Ports The on-premise system exposes the web services that needs to be invoked by the cloud application. This requires opening up firewall ports, routing calls to the appropriate internal services behind the firewall. Fusion Applications uses this pattern, and auto-provisions the services on the various virtual hosts to secure the topology. This works well for service integration, but may not suffice for large volume data integration. Using the home analogy, you have now decided to receive parcels instead of going to the post office every time. A door mail slot cut out allows the postman can drop small parcels, but there is still concern about cutting new holes for larger packages. Pros: optimal pattern for near real-time needs, simpler administration once the service is provisioned Cons: Needs firewall ports to be opened up for new services, may not suffice for batch integration requiring direct database access Pattern: Virtual Private Networking The on-premise network is "extended" to the cloud (or an intermediary on-demand / managed service offering) using Virtual Private Networking (VPN) so that messages are delivered to the on-premise system in a trusted channel. Using the home analogy, you entrust a set of keys with a neighbor or property manager who receives the packages, and then drops it inside your home. Pros: Individual firewall ports don't need to be opened, more suited for high scalability needs, can support large volume data integration, easier management of one connection vs a multitude of open ports Cons: VPN setup, specific hardware support, requires cloud provider to support virtual private computing Pattern: Reverse Proxy / API Gateway The on-premise system uses a reverse proxy "API gateway" software on the DMZ to receive messages. The reverse proxy can be implemented using various mechanisms e.g. Oracle API Gateway provides firewall and proxy services along with comprehensive security, auditing, throttling benefits. If a firewall already exists, then Oracle Service Bus or Oracle HTTP Server virtual hosts can provide reverse proxy implementations on the DMZ. Custom built implementations are also possible if specific functionality (such as message store-n-forward) is needed. In the home analogy, this pattern sits in between cutting mail slots and handing over keys. Instead, you install (and maintain) a mailbox in your home premises outside your door. The post office delivers the parcels in your mailbox, from where you can securely retrieve it. Pros: Very secure, very flexible Cons: Introduces a new software component, needs DMZ deployment and management Pattern: On-Premise Agent (Tunneling) A light weight "agent" software sits behind the firewall and initiates the communication with the cloud, thereby avoiding firewall issues. It then maintains a bi-directional connection either with pull or push based approaches using (or abusing, depending on your viewpoint) the HTTP protocol. Programming protocols such as Comet, WebSockets, HTTP CONNECT, HTTP SSH Tunneling etc. are possible implementation options. In the home analogy, a resident receives the parcel from the postal worker by opening the door, however you still take precautions with chain locks and package inspections. Pros: Light weight software, IT doesn't need to setup anything Cons: May bypass critical firewall checks e.g. virus scans, separate software download, proliferation of non-IT managed software Conclusion The patterns above are some of the most commonly encountered ones for cloud to on-premise integration. Selecting the right pattern for your project involves looking at your scalability needs, security restrictions, sync vs asynchronous implementation, near real-time vs batch expectations, cloud provider capabilities, budget, and more. In some cases, the basic "Pull from Cloud" may be acceptable, whereas in others, an extensive VPN topology may be well justified. For more details on the Oracle cloud integration strategy, download this white paper.

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• WebLogic JDBC Use of Oracle Wallet for SSL

  - by Steve Felts

  Introduction Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) can be used to secure the connection between the middle tier “client”, WebLogic Server (WLS) in this case, and the Oracle database server.  Data between WLS and database can be encrypted.  The server can be authenticated so you have proof that the database can be trusted by validating a certificate from the server.  The client can be authenticated so that the database only accepts connections from clients that it trusts. Similar to the discussion in an earlier article about using the Oracle wallet for database credentials, the Oracle wallet can also be used with SSL to store the keys and certificates.  By using it correctly, clear text passwords can be eliminated from the JDBC configuration and client/server configuration can be simplified by sharing the wallet across multiple datasources. There is a very good Oracle Technical White Paper on using SSL with the Oracle thin driver at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/wp-oracle-jdbc-thin-ssl-130128.pdf [LINK1].  The link http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/weblogic/index-087556.html [LINK2] describes how to use WebLogic Server with Oracle JDBC Driver SSL. The information in this article is a guide on what steps need to be taken in the variety of available options; use the links above for details. SSL from the driver to the database server is basically turned on by specifying a protocol of “tcps” in the URL.  However, there is a fair amount of setup needed.  Also remember that there is an overhead in performance. Creating the wallets The common use cases are 1. “data encryption and server-only authentication”, requiring just a trust store, or 2. “data encryption and authentication of both tiers” (client and server), requiring a trust store and a key store. It is recommended to use the auto-login wallet type so that clear text passwords are not needed in the datasource configuration to open the wallet.  The store type for an auto-login wallet is “SSO” (Single Sign On), not “JKS” or “PKCS12” as in [LINK2].  The file name is “cwallet.sso”. Wallets are created using the orapki tool.  They need to be created based on the usage (encryption and/or authentication).  This is discussed in detail in [LINK1] in Appendix B or in the Advanced Security Administrator’s Guide of the Database documentation. Database Server Configuration It is necessary to update the sqlnet.ora and listener.ora files with the directory location of the wallet using WALLET_LOCATION.  These files also indicate whether or not SSL_CLIENT_AUTHENTICATION is being used (true or false). The Oracle Listener must also be configured to use the TCPS protocol.  The recommended port is 2484. LISTENER = (ADDRESS_LIST= (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcps)(HOST=servername)(PORT=2484))) WebLogic Server Classpath The WebLogic Server CLASSPATH must have three additional security files. The files that need to be added to the WLS CLASSPATH are $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.osdt_cert_1.0.0.0.jar $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.osdt_core_1.0.0.0.jar $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.oraclepki_1.0.0.0.jar One way to do this is to add them to PRE_CLASSPATH environment variable for use with the standard WebLogic scripts. Setting the Oracle Security Provider It’s necessary to enable the Oracle PKI provider on the client side.  This can either be done statically by updating the java.security file under the JRE or dynamically by setting it in a WLS startup class using java.security.Security.insertProviderAt(new oracle.security.pki.OraclePKIProvider (), 3); See the full example of the startup class in [LINK2]. Datasource Configuration When creating a WLS datasource, set the PROTOCOL in the URL to tcps as in the following. jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcps)(HOST=host)(PORT=port))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=myservice))) For encryption and server authentication, use the datasource connection properties: - javax.net.ssl.trustStore=location of wallet file on the client - javax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=”SSO” For client authentication, use the datasource connection properties: - javax.net.ssl.keyStore=location of wallet file on the client - javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=”SSO” Note that the driver connection properties for the wallet require a file name, not a directory name. Active GridLink ONS over SSL For completeness, there is another SSL usage for WLS datasources.  The communication with the Oracle Notification Service (ONS) for load balancing information and node up/down events can use SSL also. Create an auto-login wallet and use the wallet on the client and server.  The following is a sample sequence to create a test wallet for use with ONS. orapki wallet create -wallet ons -auto_login -pwd ONS_Wallet orapki wallet add -wallet ons -dn "CN=ons_test,C=US" -keysize 1024 -self_signed -validity 9999 -pwd ONS_Wallet orapki wallet export -wallet ons -dn "CN=ons_test,C=US" -cert ons/cert.txt -pwd ONS_Wallet On the database server side, it’s necessary to define the walletfile directory in the file $CRS_HOME/opmn/conf/ons.config and run onsctl stop/start. When configuring an Active GridLink datasource, the connection to the ONS must be defined.  In addition to the host and port, the wallet file directory must be specified.  By not giving a password, a SSO wallet is assumed. Summary To use SSL with the Oracle thin driver without any clear text passwords, use an SSO Oracle Wallet.  SSL support in the Oracle thin driver is available starting in 10g Release 2.

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• My Codemash 2011 Retrospective

  - by Greg Malcolm

  I just got back from Codemash yesterday, and still on an adrenaline buzz. Here's my take on this years encounter: The Awesome Nearly everybody in one place Codemash is the ultimate place to catch up with community friends. This is my 3rd year visiting and I've got to know a great number of very cool people through various conferences, Give Camps and other community events. I'm finding more and more that Codemash is the best place to catch up with everybody regardless of technology interest or location. Of course I always make a whole bunch more friends while I'm there! Yay! Open Spaced I found the open spaces didn't work so well last year. This year things went a lot smoother and the topics were engaging and fresh. While I miss Alan Steven's approach of running it like an agile project, it was very cool to see that it evolving. Laptops were often cracked open, not just once but frequently! For example: Jasmine - Paired on a javascript kata using the Jasmine javascript test runner J - Sat in on a J demo from local J enthusiast, Tracy Harms Watir - More pairing, this time using Ruby with the watir-webdriver through cucumber. I'd mostly forgotten that Cucumber runs just fine without Rails. It made a change to do without. The other spaces were engaging too, but I think that's enough for that topic. Javascript Shenanigans I've already mentioned that I attended a Jasmine kata session. Jasmine is close to my heart right now every since I discovered it while on the hunt for a decent Javascript testing framework for a javascript koans project earlier this year. Well, it also got covered in the Java Precompiler and Pillar's vendor session, which was great to see. Node.js was also a reoccurring theme. Node.js in a nutshell? It's an extremely scalable Event based I/O server which runs on Javascript. I'd already encountered through a Startup Weekend project and have been noticing increasing interest of late. After encountering more node.js driven excitement from my peers at codemash I absolutely had to attend the open space on it. At least 20 people turned up and by the end we had some answers, a whole ton of new questions and an impromptu user group in the form of a twitter channel (#nodemash). I have no idea where this is going to go or how big it is going to become, but if it can cross the chasm into the enterprise it could become huge... Scala Koans I'm a bit of a Koans addict, and I really need more exposure to functional languages so I gave the Scala Koans precompiler a try. Great fun! I'm really glad I attended because I found I had a whole ton of questions. Currently the koans are available here, and the answers are here. Opportunities While we're on the subject can we change the subject now? Hai Gregory, You really need to keep the drinking for later in the day. I mean seriously, you're 34 and you still do this every single time! Sure, you made it to Chad Fowler keynote ok, but you looking a rather pale weren't you? Also might have been nice to attend 'Netflicks in the Cloud' instead of 'Sleeping It Off For People Who Should Know Better'. Kthxbye PS: Stop talking to yourself Not that I entirely regret it, I've had some of my greatest insights through late night drunken conversations at the CodeMash bar. Just might be nice to reign it in a little and get something out of the next morning too. Diversity This is something that is in the back of my mind because of conversations at Codemash as well as throughout the year; I'm realizing more and more how discouraging the IT profession is for women. I notice in the community there has been a lot of attention paid to stamping out harrasment, which is good, but there also seems to be a massive PR issue. I really don't have any solutions, but I figure it can't hurt to pay more attention to whats going on... And in Other News I now have a picture of Chad Fowler giving me more cowbell! Sadly I managed to lose the cowbell later on. Hopefully it's gone to a Better Place. The Womack Family Band joined in with the musicians jam this year. There's my cowbell again! Why must you hide from me? I also finally went in the water for the first time in all the I've been coming to codemash. Why did I wait so long?!?

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• Collision Detection on floor tiles Isometric game

  - by Anivrom

  I am having a very hard to time figuring out a bug in my code. It should have taken me 20 minutes but instead I've been working on it for over 12 hours. I am writing a isometric tile based game where the characters can walk freely amongst the tiles, but not be able to cross over to certain tiles that have a collides flag. Sounds easy enough, just check ahead of where the player is going to move using a Screen Coordinates to Tile method and check the tiles array using our returned xy indexes to see if its collidable or not. if its not, then don't move the character. The problem I'm having is my Screen to Tile method isn't spitting out the proper X,Y tile indexes. This method works flawlessly for selecting tiles with the mouse. NOTE: My X tiles go from left to right, and my Y tiles go from up to down. Reversed from some examples on the net. Here's the relevant code: public Vector2 ScreentoTile(Vector2 screenPoint) { //Vector2 is just a object with x and y float properties //camOffsetX,Y are my camera values that I use to shift everything but the //current camera target when the target moves //tilescale = 128, screenheight = 480, the -46 offset is to center // vertically + 16 px for some extra gfx in my tile png Vector2 tileIndex = new Vector2(-1,-1); screenPoint.x -= camOffsetX; screenPoint.y = screenHeight - screenPoint.y - camOffsetY - 46; tileIndex.x = (screenPoint.x / tileScale) + (screenPoint.y / (tileScale / 2)); tileIndex.y = (screenPoint.x / tileScale) - (screenPoint.y / (tileScale / 2)); return tileIndex; } The method that calls this code is: private void checkTileTouched () { if (Gdx.input.justTouched()) { if (last.x >= 0 && last.x < levelWidth && last.y >= 0 && last.y < levelHeight) { if (lastSelectedTile != null) lastSelectedTile.setColor(1, 1, 1, 1); Sprite sprite = levelTiles[(int) last.x][(int) last.y].sprite; sprite.setColor(0, 0.3f, 0, 1); lastSelectedTile = sprite; } } if (touchDown) { float moveX=0,moveY=0; Vector2 pos = new Vector2(); if (player.direction == direction_left) { moveX = -(player.moveSpeed); moveY = -(player.moveSpeed / 2); Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("left")); } else if (player.direction == direction_upleft) { moveX = -(player.moveSpeed); moveY = 0; Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("upleft")); } else if (player.direction == direction_up) { moveX = -(player.moveSpeed); moveY = player.moveSpeed / 2; Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("up")); } else if (player.direction == direction_upright) { moveX = 0; moveY = player.moveSpeed; Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("upright")); } else if (player.direction == direction_right) { moveX = player.moveSpeed; moveY = player.moveSpeed / 2; Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("right")); } else if (player.direction == direction_downright) { moveX = player.moveSpeed; moveY = 0; Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("downright")); } else if (player.direction == direction_down) { moveX = player.moveSpeed; moveY = -(player.moveSpeed / 2); Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("down")); } else if (player.direction == direction_downleft) { moveX = 0; moveY = -(player.moveSpeed); Gdx.app.log("Movement", String.valueOf("downleft")); } //Player.moveSpeed is 1 //tileObjects.x is drawn in the center of the screen (400px,240px) // the sprite width is 64, height is 128 testX = moveX * 10; testY = moveY * 10; testX += tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).x + tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).sprite.getWidth() / 2; testY += tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).y + tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).sprite.getHeight() / 2; moveX += tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).x + tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).sprite.getWidth() / 2; moveY += tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).y + tileObjects.get(player.zIndex).sprite.getHeight() / 2; pos = ScreentoTile(new Vector2(moveX,moveY)); Vector2 pos2 = ScreentoTile(new Vector2(testX,testY)); if (!levelTiles[(int) pos2.x][(int) pos2.y].collides) { Vector2 newPlayerPos = ScreentoTile(new Vector2(moveX,moveY)); CenterOnCoord(moveX,moveY); player.tileX = (int)newPlayerPos.x; player.tileY = (int)newPlayerPos.y; } } } When the player is moving to the left (downleft-ish from the viewers point of view), my Pos2 X values decrease as expected but pos2 isnt checking ahead on the x tiles, it is checking ahead on the Y tiles(as if we were moving DOWN, not left), and vice versa, if the player moves down, it will check ahead on the X values (as if we are moving LEFT, instead of DOWN). instead of the Y values. I understand this is probably the most confusing and horribly written post ever, but I'm confused myself so I'm having a hard time explaining it to others lol. if you need more information please ask!! I'm so frustrated after over 12 hours of working on it I'm about to give up.

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• How do I do JavaScript Array Animation

  - by Henry

  I'm making a game but don't know how to do Array Animation with the png Array and game Surface that I made below. I'm trying to make it so that when the Right arrow key is pressed, the character animates as if it is walking to the right and when the Left arrow key is pressed it animates as if it is walking to the left (kind of like Mario). I put everything on a surface instead of the canvas. Everything is explained in the code below. I couldn't find help on this anywhere. I hope what I got below makes sense. I'm basically a beginner with JavaScript. I'll be back if more is needed: <!doctype html5> <html> <head></head> <script src="graphics.js"></script> <script src="object.js"></script> <body onkeydown ="keyDown(event)" onkeyup ="keyUp(event)" ></body> <script> //"Surface" is where I want to display my animation. It's like the HTML // canvas but it's not that. It's just the surface to where everything in the //game and the game itself will be displayed. var Surface = new Graphics(600, 400, "skyblue"); //here's the array that I want to use for animation var player = new Array("StandsRight.png", "WalksRight.png", "StandsLeft.png","WalksLeft.png" ); //Here is the X coordinate, Y coordinate, the beginning png for the animation, //and the object's name "player." I also turned the array into an object (but //I don't know if I was supposed to do that or not). var player = new Object(50, 100, 40, 115, "StandsRight.png","player"); //When doing animation I know that it requires a "loop", but I don't // know how to connect it so that it works with the arrays so that //it could animate. var loop = 0; //this actually puts "player" on screen. It makes player visible and //it is where I would like the animation to occur. Surface.drawObject(player); //this would be the key that makes "player" animation in the righward direction function keyDown(e) { if (e.keyCode == 39); } //this would be the key that makes "player" animation in the leftward direction function keyUp(e){ if (e.keyCode == 39); } //this is the Mainloop where the game will function MainLoop(); //the mainloop functionized function MainLoop(){ //this is how fast or slow I could want the entire game to go setTimeout(MainLoop, 10); } </script> </html> From here, are the "graphic.js" and the "object.js" files below. In this section is the graphics.js file. This graphics.js part below is linked to the: script src="graphics.js" html script section that I wrote above. Basically, below is a seperate file that I used for Graphics, and to run the code above, make this graphics.js code that I post below here, a separate filed called: graphics.js function Graphics(w,h,c) { document.body.innerHTML += "<table style='position:absolute;font- size:0;top:0;left:0;border-spacing:0;border- width:0;width:"+w+";height:"+h+";background-color:"+c+";' border=1><tr><td> </table>\n"; this.drawRectangle = function(x,y,w,h,c,n) { document.body.innerHTML += "<div style='position:absolute;font-size:0;left:" + x + ";top:" + y + ";width:" + w + ";height:" + h + ";background-color:" + c + ";' id='" + n + "'></div>\n"; } this.drawTexture = function(x,y,w,h,t,n) { document.body.innerHTML += "<img style='position:absolute;font-size:0;left:" + x + ";top:" + y + ";width:" + w + ";height:" + h + ";' id='" + n + "' src='" + t + "'> </img>\n"; } this.drawObject = function(o) { document.body.innerHTML += "<img style='position:absolute;font-size:0;left:" + o.X + ";top:" + o.Y + ";width:" + o.Width + ";height:" + o.Height + ";' id='" + o.Name + "' src='" + o.Sprite + "'></img>\n"; } this.moveGraphic = function(x,y,n) { document.getElementById(n).style.left = x; document.getElementById(n).style.top = y; } this.removeGraphic = function(n){ document.getElementById(n).parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById(n)); } } Finally, is the object.js file linked to the script src="object.js"" in the html game file above the graphics.js part I just wrote. Basically, this is a separate file too, so thus, in order to run or test the html game code in the very first section I wrote, a person has to also make this code below a separate file called: object.js I hope this helps: function Object(x,y,w,h,t,n) { this.X = x; this.Y = y; this.Velocity_X = 0; this.Velocity_Y = 0; this.Previous_X = 0; this.Previous_Y = 0; this.Width = w; this.Height = h; this.Sprite = t; this.Name = n; this.Exists = true; } In all, this game is made based on a tutorial on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2kUzgFM4lY&feature=relmfu I'm just trying to learn how to add animations with it now. I hope the above helps. If not, let me know. Thanks

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• Death March

  - by Nick Harrison

  It is a horrible sight to watch a project fail. There are few things as bad. Watching a project fail regardless of the reason is almost like sitting in a room with a "Dementor" from Harry Potter. It will literally suck all of the life and joy out of the room. Nearly every project that I have seen fail has failed because of political challenges or management challenges. Sometimes there are technical challenges that bring a project to its knees, but usually projects fail for less technical reasons. Here a few observations about projects failing for political reasons. Both the client and the consultants have to be committed to seeing the project succeed. Put simply, you cannot solve a problem when the primary stake holders do not truly want it solved. This could come from a consultant being more interested in extended the engagement. It could come from a client being afraid of what will happen to them once the problem is solved. It could come from disenfranchised stake holders. Sometimes a project is beset on all sides. When you find yourself working on a project that has this kind of threat, do all that you can to constrain the disruptive influences of the bad apples. If their influence cannot be constrained, you truly have no choice but to move on to a new project. Tough choices have to be made to make a project successful. These choices will affect everyone involved in the project. These choices may involve users not getting a change request through that they want. Developers may not get to use the tools that they want. Everyone may have to put in more hours that they originally planned. Steps may be skipped. Compromises will be made, but if everyone stays committed to the end goal, you can still be successful. If individuals start feeling disgruntled or resentful of the compromises reached, the project can easily be derailed. When everyone is not working towards a common goal, it is like driving with one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator. Not only will you not get to where you are planning, you will also damage the car and possibly the passengers as well.   It is important to always keep the end result in mind. Regardless of the development methodology being followed, the end goal is not comprehensive documentation. In all cases, it is working software. Comprehensive documentation is nice but useless if the software doesn't work.   You can never get so distracted by the next goal that you fail to meet the current goal. Most projects are ultimately marathons. This means that the pace must be sustainable. Regardless of the temptations, you cannot burn the team alive. Processes will fail. Technology will get outdated. Requirements will change, but your people will adapt and learn and grow. If everyone on the team from the most senior analyst to the most junior recruit trusts and respects each other, there is no challenge that they cannot overcome. When everyone involved faces challenges with the attitude "This is my project and I will not let it fail" "You are my teammate and I will not let you fail", you will in fact not fail. When you find a team that embraces this attitude, protect it at all cost. Edward Yourdon wrote a book called Death March. In it, he included a graph for categorizing Death March project types based on the Happiness of the Team and the Chances of Success.   Chances are we have all worked on Death March projects. We will all most likely work on more Death March projects in the future. To a certain extent, they seem to be inevitable, but they should never be suicide or ugly. Ideally, they can all be "Mission Impossible" where everyone works hard, has fun, and knows that there is good chance that they will succeed. If you are ever lucky enough to work on such a project, you will know that sense of pride that comes from the eventual success. You will recognize a profound bond with the team that you worked with. Chances are it will change your life or at least your outlook on life. If you have not already read this book, get a copy and study it closely. It will help you survive and make the most out of your next Death March project.

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• Memento with optional state?

  - by Korey Hinton

  EDIT: As pointed out by Steve Evers and pdr, I am not correctly implementing the Memento pattern, my design is actually State pattern. Menu Program I built a console-based menu program with multiple levels that selects a particular test to run. Each level more precisely describes the operation. At any level you can type back to go back one level (memento). Level 1: Server Type? [1] Server A [2] Server B Level 2: Server environment? [1] test [2] production Level 3: Test type? [1] load [2] unit Level 4: Data Collection? [1] Legal docs [2] Corporate docs Level 4.5 (optional): Load Test Type [2] Multi TIF [2] Single PDF Level 5: Command Type? [1] Move [2] Copy [3] Remove [4] Custom Level 6: Enter a keyword [setup, cleanup, run] Design States PROBLEM: Right now the STATES enum is the determining factor as to what state is BACK and what state is NEXT yet it knows nothing about what the current memento state is. Has anyone experienced a similar issue and found an effective way to handle mementos with optional state? static enum STATES { SERVER, ENVIRONMENT, TEST_TYPE, COLLECTION, COMMAND_TYPE, KEYWORD, FINISHED } Possible Solution (Not-flexible) In reference to my code below, every case statement in the Menu class could check the state of currentMemo and then set the STATE (enum) accordingly to pass to the Builder. However, this doesn't seem flexible very flexible to change and I'm struggling to see an effective way refactor the design. class Menu extends StateConscious { private State state; private Scanner reader; private ServerUtils utility; Menu() { state = new State(); reader = new Scanner(System.in); utility = new ServerUtils(); } // Recurring menu logic public void startPromptingLoop() { List<State> states = new ArrayList<>(); states.add(new State()); boolean redoInput = false; boolean userIsDone = false; while (true) { // get Memento from last loop Memento currentMemento = states.get(states.size() - 1) .saveMemento(); if (currentMemento == null) currentMemento = new Memento.Builder(0).build(); if (!redoInput) System.out.println(currentMemento.prompt); redoInput = false; // prepare Memento for next loop Memento nextMemento = null; STATES state = STATES.values()[states.size() - 1]; // get user input String selection = reader.nextLine(); switch (selection) { case "exit": reader.close(); return; // only escape case "quit": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento, selection).build(); states.clear(); break; case "back": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(previous(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); if (states.size() <= 1) { states.remove(0); } else { states.remove(states.size() - 1); states.remove(states.size() - 1); } break; case "1": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; case "2": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; case "3": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; case "4": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; default: if (state.equals(STATES.CATEGORY)) { String command = selection; System.out.println("Executing " + command + " command on: " + currentMemento.type + " " + currentMemento.environment); utility.executeCommand(currentMemento.nickname, command); userIsDone = true; states.clear(); nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento, selection).build(); } else if (state.equals(STATES.KEYWORD)) { nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); states.clear(); nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento, selection).build(); } else { redoInput = true; System.out.println("give it another try"); continue; } break; } if (userIsDone) { // start the recurring menu over from the beginning for (int i = 0; i < states.size(); i++) { if (i != 0) { states.remove(i); // remove all except first } } reader = new Scanner(System.in); this.state = new State(); userIsDone = false; } if (!redoInput) { this.state.restoreMemento(nextMemento); states.add(this.state); } } } }

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• Taking a Flying Leap

  - by Lance Shaw

  Yesterday, I went skydiving with three of my children.  It was thrilling, scary, invigorating and exciting. While there is obvious risk involved, the reward and feeling of success was well worth it. You might already be wondering what skydiving would have to with WebCenter, so let me explain. Implementing a skydiving program and becoming an instructor does not happen overnight.  It does not happen with the purchase of the needed technology. Not one of us would go out, buy a parachute, the harnesses, helmet and all the gear and be able to convince anyone that we are now ready to be a skydiving instructor. The fact is that obtaining the technology is merely a small piece of the overall process and so is the case with managing content in your company. You don't just buy the right software (Oracle WebCenter Content) and go to your boss and declare information management success. There is planning, research and effort that goes into deploying software of any kind and especially when it is as mission-critical to the success of your business as Enterprise Content Management. To become a certified skydiving instructor takes at least 3 years of commitment and often longer. In the United States, candidates must complete over 500 solo jumps of their own over a minimum of 36 months and then must complete additional rigorous training under observation.  When you consider the amount of time and effort involved, it's not unlike getting a college degree and anyone that has trusted their lives to one of these instructors will no doubt appreciate their dedication to the curriculum.  Implementing an ECM system won't take that long, but it certainly requires commitment, analysis and consideration. But guess what?  Humans are involved and that means that mistakes can happen and that rules change.  This struck me while reading an excellent post on darkreading.com by Glenn S. Phillips entitled "Mission Impossible: 4 Reasons Compliance is Impossible".  His over-arching point was that with information management and security, environments change and people are involved meaning the work is never done.  He stated that you can never claim your compliance efforts are complete because of the following reasons. People are involved.  And lets face it, some are more trustworthy than others. Change is Constant. There is always some new technology coming along that is disruptive. Consumer grade cloud file sharing and sync tools come to mind here. Compliance is interpreted, not defined.  Laws and the judges that read them are always on the move. Technology is a tool, not a complete solution. There is no magic pill. The skydiving analogy holds true here as well.  Ultimately, a single person packs your parachute.  For obvious reasons, you prefer that this person be trustworthy but there are no absolute guarantees of a 100% error-free scenario.  Weather and wind conditions are never a constant and the best-laid plans for a great day of skydiving are easily disrupted by forces outside of your control.  Rules and regulations vary by location and may be updated at any time and as I mentioned early on, even the best technology on its own will only get you started. The good news is that, like skydiving, with the right technology, the right planning, the right team and a proper understanding of the rules and regulations that govern your industry, your ECM deployment can be a great success.  Failure to plan for any of the 4 factors that Glenn outlined in his article will certainly put your deployment and maybe even your company at risk, so consider them carefully. As a final aside, for those of you who consider skydiving an incredibly dangerous and risky pastime, consider this comparative statistic.  In 2012, the U.S. Parachute Association recorded 19 fatal skydiving accidents in the U.S. out of roughly 3.1 million jumps.  That’s 0.006 fatalities per 1,000 jumps. By comparison, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that there were 34,080 deaths due to car accidents in 2012.  Based on the percentages, one could argue that it is safer to jump out of a plane than to drive to the airport where the skydiving will take place. While the way you manage, secure, classify, control, retain and dispose of company files may not carry as much risk as driving or skydiving, it certainly carries risk for the organization when not planned and deployed appropriately.  Consider all the factors involved in your organization as you make your content management plans.  For additional areas of consideration, be sure to download our free whitepaper on the topic entitled "The Top 10 Criteria for Choosing an ECM System" which is available for download here.

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• IRM Item Codes &ndash; what are they for?

  - by martin.abrahams

  A number of colleagues have been asking about IRM item codes recently – what are they for, when are they useful, how can you control them to meet some customer requirements? This is quite a big topic, but this article provides a few answers. An item code is part of the metadata of every sealed document – unless you define a custom metadata model. The item code is defined when a file is sealed, and usually defaults to a timestamp/filename combination. This time/name combo tends to make item codes unique for each new document, but actually item codes are not necessarily unique, as will become clear shortly. In most scenarios, item codes are not relevant to the evaluation of a user’s rights - the context name is the critical piece of metadata, as a user typically has a role that grants access to an entire classification of information regardless of item code. This is key to the simplicity and manageability of the Oracle IRM solution. Item codes are occasionally exposed to users in the UI, but most users probably never notice and never care. Nevertheless, here is one example of where you can see an item code – when you hover the mouse pointer over a sealed file. As you see, the item code for this freshly created file combines a timestamp with the file name. But what are item codes for? The first benefit of item codes is that they enable you to manage exceptions to the policy defined for a context. Thus, I might have access to all oracle – internal files - except for 2011_03_11 13:33:29 Board Minutes.sdocx. This simple mechanism enables Oracle IRM to provide file-by-file control where appropriate, whilst offering the scalability and manageability of classification-based control for the majority of users and content. You really don’t want to be managing each file individually, but never say never. Item codes can also be used for the opposite effect – to include a file in a user’s rights when their role would ordinarily deny access. So, you can assign a role that allows access only to specified item codes. For example, my role might say that I have access to precisely one file – the one shown above. So how are item codes set? In the vast majority of scenarios, item codes are set automatically as part of the sealing process. The sealing API uses the timestamp and filename as shown, and the user need not even realise that this has happened. This automatically creates item codes that are for all practical purposes unique - and that are also intelligible to users who might want to refer to them when viewing or assigning rights in the management UI. It is also possible for suitably authorised users and applications to set the item code manually or programmatically if required. Setting the item code manually using the IRM Desktop The manual process is a simple extension of the sealing task. An authorised user can select the Advanced… sealing option, and will see a dialog that offers the option to specify the item code. To see this option, the user’s role needs the Set Item Code right – you don’t want most users to give any thought at all to item codes, so by default the option is hidden. Setting the item code programmatically A more common scenario is that an application controls the item code programmatically. For example, a document management system that seals documents as part of a workflow might set the item code to match the document’s unique identifier in its repository. This offers the option to tie IRM rights evaluation directly to the security model defined in the document management system. Again, the sealing application needs to be authorised to Set Item Code. The Payslip Scenario To give a concrete example of how item codes might be used in a real world scenario, consider a Human Resources workflow such as a payslips. The goal might be to allow the HR team to have access to all payslips, but each employee to have access only to their own payslips. To enable this, you might have an IRM classification called Payslips. The HR team have a role in the normal way that allows access to all payslips. However, each employee would have an Item Reader role that only allows them to access files that have a particular item code – and that item code might match the employee’s payroll number. So, employee number 123123123 would have access to items with that code. This shows why item codes are not necessarily unique – you can deliberately set the same code on many files for ease of administration. The employees might have the right to unseal or print their payslip, so the solution acts as a secure delivery mechanism that allows payslips to be distributed via corporate email without any fear that they might be accessed by IT administrators, or forwarded accidentally to anyone other than the intended recipient. All that remains is to ensure that as each user’s payslip is sealed, it is assigned the correct item code – something that is easily managed by a simple IRM sealing application. Each month, an employee’s payslip is sealed with the same item code, so you do not need to keep amending the list of items that the user has access to – they have access to all documents that carry their employee code.

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• Agile Development Requires Agile Support

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile developmentAgile development has become the standard methodology for application development. The days of long term planning with giant Gantt waterfall charts and detailed requirements is fading away. For years the product planning process frustrated product owners and businesses because no matter the plan, nothing ever went to plan. Agile development throws the detailed planning out the window and instead focuses on giving developers some basic requirements and pointing them in the right direction. Constant collaboration via quick iterations with the end users, product owners, and the development team helps ensure the project is done correctly.  The various agile development methodologies have helped greatly with creating products faster, but not without causing new problems. Complicated application deployments now occur weekly or monthly. Most of the products are web-based and deployed as a software service model. System performance and availability of these apps becomes mission critical. This is all much different from the old process of mailing new releases of client-server apps on CD once per quarter or year.The steady stream of new products and product enhancements puts a lot of pressure on IT operations to keep up with the software deployments and adding infrastructure capacity. The problem is most operations teams still move slowly thanks to change orders, documentation, procedures, testing and other processes. Operations can slow the process down and push back on the development team in some organizations. The DevOps movement is trying to solve some of these problems by integrating the development and operations teams more together. Rapid change introduces new problemsThe rapid product change ultimately creates some application problems along the way. Higher rates of change increase the likelihood of new application defects. Delivering applications as a software service also means that scalability of applications is critical. Development teams struggle to keep up with application defects and scalability concerns in their applications. Fixing application problems is a never ending job for agile development teams. Fixing problems before your customers do and fixing them quickly is critical. Most companies really struggle with this due to the divide between the development and operations groups. Fixing application problems typically requires querying databases, looking at log files, reviewing config files, reviewing error logs and other similar tasks. It becomes difficult to work on new features when your lead developers are working on defects from the last product version. Developers need more visibilityThe problem is most developers are not given access to see server and application information in the production environments. The operations team doesn’t trust giving all the developers the keys to the kingdom to log in to production and poke around the servers. The challenge is either give them no access, or potentially too much access. Those with access can still waste time figuring out the location of the application and how to connect to it over VPN. In addition, reproducing problems in test environments takes too much time and isn't always possible. System administrators spend a lot of time helping developers track down server information. Most companies give key developers access to all of the production resources so they can help resolve application defects. The problem is only those key people have access and they become a bottleneck. They end up spending 25-50% of their time on a daily basis trying to solve application issues because they are the only ones with access. These key employees’ time is best spent on strategic new projects, not addressing application defects. This job should fall to entry level developers, provided they have access to all the information they need to troubleshoot the problems.The solution to agile application support is giving all the developers limited access to the production environment and all the server information they need to see. Some companies create their own solutions internally to collect log files, centralize errors or other things to address the problem. Some developers even have access to server monitoring or other tools. But they key is giving them access to everything they need so they can see the full picture and giving access to the whole team. Giving access to everyone scales up the application support team and creates collaboration around providing improved application support.Stackify enables agile application supportStackify has created a solution that can give all developers a secure and read only view of the entire production server environment without console or remote desktop access.They provide a web application that provides real time visibility to the important information that developers need to see. An application centric view enables them to see all of their apps across multiple datacenters and environments. They don’t need to know where the application is deployed, just the name of the application to find it and dig in to see more. All your developers can see server health, application health, log files, config files, windows event viewer, deployment history, application notes, and much more. They can receive email and text alerts when problems arise and even safely query your production databases.Stackify enables companies that do agile development to scale up their application support team by getting more team members involved. The lead developers can spend more time on new projects. Application issues can be fixed quicker than ever. Operations can spend less time helping developers collect server information. Agile application support starts with Stackify. Visit Stackify.com to learn more.

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• Some New .NET Downloads and Resources

  - by Kevin Grossnicklaus

  Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit.  It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft.  The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of.  The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today.  Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1.  You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)?  Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox).   With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target.  Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks.  Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment.  This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight.  You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model.   Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here.  You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/.   This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform.  If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs.  You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others.  Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies.  By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done.  Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need.  I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities.  Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results.  First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from.  For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings.  All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• Can Kind People Finish First?

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  by Jim Lein, Oracle Midsize Programs In an earlier post, I expressed my undying love for KIND Snacks' products. This month's Oracle Profit magazine features an interview with KIND Healthy Snacks Founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky entitled "Better Business". Lubetzky expresses his vision for making KIND a "not for profit only" company.  All great companies start with a good idea. In this case, that one great idea was to offer a healthy snack with ingredients you can "see and pronounce". That's one of things I really like about this company--that coupled with the fact that their snacks taste great. They compete in an over crowded playing field but I've found that it's rare to find an energy snack that both tastes good and is good for you.  A couple of interesting facts I learned from reading this article: 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 9 out of 10 consumers who try a KIND bar will purchase a KIND product again and recommend it to others KIND has the highest Net Promoter Score among the top 10 brands in the nutritional bar category (I confess I've never heard about this rating before but now that I have it's pretty cool) KIND's coporate mantra, "Do the Kind Thing" both encourages people to do random acts of kindness and provides easy mechanisms for doing so. Not coincidentally, I think, KIND is indeed a story about how nice guys can finish first. KIND has doubled in size every year for the last ten  years and now employees over 300 people, with sales exceeding $120M annually. Growth Applies Pressures One thing I know for certain from interacting our with fast growing customers over the last fifteen years is that growth applies myriad pressures across the organization--resources, processes, technology systems, and leadership agility. And it's easy to forget that Oracle was once an entrepreneurial startup and experienced all those same pressures that other growing companies are experiencing today. When asked by Profit Editor in Chief Aaron Lazenby, " What sort of pressure does KIND"s growth and success place on operations?", Lubetzky responded, "We have a demand planning process right now that is manual to a significant extent, and it just takes so much management time. It takes us days and sometimes weeks to produce information that is critical to our business—and by the time we get the results, we need revised data. Our sales leadership could go out selling, but instead they’re talking to our team about forecasts." Hitching Your Wagon to Oracle Lubetzky and his team selected Oracle for what I believe is our company's greatest strength: hitch your wagon to Oracle and you can trust that we will be there for the long run with the solutions you need and financial staying power. In Lubetzky's words, "The KIND philosophy requires you to have a long-term view of things; taking shortcuts may be the fastest way to get things done, but in the long term that can come back and bite you. Oracle is the type of company—and has the kind of platform—that is here for the long term. It’s not going to go away tomorrow. And Oracle is going to invest all the necessary resources into staying ahead of the game and improving." o next time you're in the supermarket or an REI (my favorite store in the world) or any of the other 80,000 locations that carry KIND, give one a try. Maybe some day you'll want to become a KIND Brand Ambassador.   Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Jim Lein I evangelize Oracle's enterprise solutions for growing midsize companies. I recently celebrated 15 years with Oracle, having joined JD Edwards in 1999. I'm based in Evergreen, Colorado and love relating stories about creativity and innovation whether they be about software, live music, or the mountains. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle.

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• Using Transaction Logging to Recover Post-Archived Essbase data

  - by Keith Rosenthal

  Data recovery is typically performed by restoring data from an archive.  Data added or removed since the last archive took place can also be recovered by enabling transaction logging in Essbase.  Transaction logging works by writing transactions to a log store.  The information in the log store can then be recovered by replaying the log store entries in sequence since the last archive took place.  The following information is recorded within a transaction log entry: Sequence ID Username Start Time End Time Request Type A request type can be one of the following categories: Calculations, including the default calculation as well as both server and client side calculations Data loads, including data imports as well as data loaded using a load rule Data clears as well as outline resets Locking and sending data from SmartView and the Spreadsheet Add-In.  Changes from Planning web forms are also tracked since a lock and send operation occurs during this process. You can use the Display Transactions command in the EAS console or the query database MAXL command to view the transaction log entries. Enabling Transaction Logging Transaction logging can be enabled at the Essbase server, application or database level by adding the TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION essbase.cfg setting.  The following is the TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION syntax: TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION [appname [dbname]] LOGLOCATION NATIVE ENABLE | DISABLE Note that you can have multiple TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION entries in the essbase.cfg file.  For example: TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION Hyperion/trlog NATIVE ENABLE TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION Sample Hyperion/trlog NATIVE DISABLE The first statement will enable transaction logging for all Essbase applications, and the second statement will disable transaction logging for the Sample application.  As a result, transaction logging will be enabled for all applications except the Sample application. A location on a physical disk other than the disk where ARBORPATH or the disk files reside is recommended to optimize overall Essbase performance. Configuring Transaction Log Replay Although transaction log entries are stored based on the LOGLOCATION parameter of the TRANSACTIONLOGLOCATION essbase.cfg setting, copies of data load and rules files are stored in the ARBORPATH/app/appname/dbname/Replay directory to optimize the performance of replaying logged transactions.  The default is to archive client data loads, but this configuration setting can be used to archive server data loads (including SQL server data loads) or both client and server data loads. To change the type of data to be archived, add the TRANSACTIONLOGDATALOADARCHIVE configuration setting to the essbase.cfg file.  Note that you can have multiple TRANSACTIONLOGDATALOADARCHIVE entries in the essbase.cfg file to adjust settings for individual applications and databases. Replaying the Transaction Log and Transaction Log Security Considerations To replay the transactions, use either the Replay Transactions command in the EAS console or the alter database MAXL command using the replay transactions grammar.  Transactions can be replayed either after a specified log time or using a range of transaction sequence IDs. The default when replaying transactions is to use the security settings of the user who originally performed the transaction.  However, if that user no longer exists or that user's username was changed, the replay operation will fail. Instead of using the default security setting, add the REPLAYSECURITYOPTION essbase.cfg setting to use the security settings of the administrator who performs the replay operation.  REPLAYSECURITYOPTION 2 will explicitly use the security settings of the administrator performing the replay operation.  REPLAYSECURITYOPTION 3 will use the administrator security settings if the original user’s security settings cannot be used. Removing Transaction Logs and Archived Replay Data Load and Rules Files Transaction logs and archived replay data load and rules files are not automatically removed and are only removed manually.  Since these files can consume a considerable amount of space, the files should be removed on a periodic basis. The transaction logs should be removed one database at a time instead of all databases simultaneously.  The data load and rules files associated with the replayed transactions should be removed in chronological order from earliest to latest.  In addition, do not remove any data load and rules files with a timestamp later than the timestamp of the most recent archive file. Partitioned Database Considerations For partitioned databases, partition commands such as synchronization commands cannot be replayed.  When recovering data, the partition changes must be replayed manually and logged transactions must be replayed in the correct chronological order. If the partitioned database includes any @XREF commands in the calc script, the logged transactions must be selectively replayed in the correct chronological order between the source and target databases. References For additional information, please see the Oracle EPM System Backup and Recovery Guide.  For EPM 11.1.2.2, the link is http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/epm_backup_recovery_1112200.pdf

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 &ndash; Network Management

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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• "Yes, but that's niche."

  - by Geertjan

  JavaOne 2012 has come to an end though it feels like it hasn't even started yet! What happened, time is a weird thing. Too many things to report on. James Gosling's appearance at the JavaOne community keynote was seen, by everyone (which is quite a lot) of people I talked to, as the highlight of the conference. It was interesting that the software for the Duke's Choice Award winning Liquid Robotics that James Gosling is now part of and came to talk about is a Swing application that uses the WorldWind libraries. It was also interesting that James Gosling pointed out to the conference: "There are things you can't do using HTML." That brings me to the wonderful counter argument to the above, which I spend my time running into a lot: "Yes, but that's niche." It's a killer argument, i.e., it kills all discussions completely in one fell swoop. Kind of when you're talking about someone and then this sentence drops into the conversation: "Yes, but she's got cancer now." Here's one implementation of "Yes, but that's niche": Person A: All applications are moving to the web, tablet, and mobile phone. That's especially true now with HTML5, which is going to wipe away everything everywhere and all applications are going to be browser based. Person B: What about air traffic control applications? Will they run on mobile phones too? And do you see defence applications running in a browser? Don't you agree that there are multiple scenarios imaginable where the Java desktop is the optimal platform for running applications? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. Here's another implementation, though it contradicts the above [despite often being used by the same people], since JavaFX is a Java desktop technology: Person A: Swing is dead. Everyone is going to be using purely JavaFX and nothing else. Person B: Does JavaFX have a docking framework and a module system? Does it have a plugin system?  These are some of the absolutely basic requirements of Java desktop software once you get to high end systems, e.g., banks, defence force, oil/gas services. Those kinds of applications need a web browser and so they love the JavaFX WebView component and they also love the animated JavaFX charting components. But they need so much more than that, i.e., an application framework. Aren't there requirements that JavaFX isn't meeting since it is a UI toolkit, just like Swing is a UI toolkit, and what they have in common is their lack, i.e., natively, of any kind of application framework? Don't people need more than a single window and a monolithic application structure? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. In other words, anything that doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy is "niche", for no other reason than that it doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy... regardless of the actual needs of real developers. Saying "Yes, but that's niche", kills the discussion completely, because it relegates one side of the conversation to the arcane and irrelevant corners of the universe. You're kind of like Cobol now, as soon as "Yes, but that's niche" is said. What's worst about "Yes, but that's niche" is that it doesn't enter into any discussion about user requirements, i.e., there's so few that need this particular solution that we don't even need to talk about them anymore. Note, of course, that I'm not referring specifically or generically to anyone or anything in particular. Just picking up from conversations I've picked up on as I was scurrying around the Hilton's corridors while looking for the location of my next presentation over the past few days. It does, however, mean that there were people thinking "Yes, but that's niche" while listening to James Gosling pointing out that HTML is not the be-all and end-all of absolutely everything. And so this all leaves me wondering: How many applications must be part of a niche for the niche to no longer be a niche? And what if there are multiple small niches that have the same requirements? Don't all those small niches together form a larger whole, one that should be taken seriously, i.e., a whole that is not a niche?

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• Adventures in Lab Management Configuration: Part 2 of 3

  - by Enrique Lima

  The first post was the high level overview. Now it is time for the details on what was done to the existing CMMI Project based on CMMI v 4.2. The first step was to go into Visual Studio, then from the Team Project Collection Settings and then to the Process Template Manager.  Once there, it was a matter of selecting the appropriate template (MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0) and download to a point I could reference later (for example C:\Templates). Then on to using the steps from the guidance post. Since I was using an x64 deployment, I will make reference to the path as <toolpath>, however the actual path to reference in a 64-bit environment is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE”. As I mentioned on the previous post, make sure to first perform a backup of the Configuration, Collection and Warehouse DBs.  If you did not apply any changes to the names and such, then you will find those as tfs_Configuration, tfs_DefaultCollection and tfs_Warehouse. Now, the work needed with the witadmin tool: That includes the uploading of the structures that differ from v4.2 to v5.0 There is likely going to be an issue with the naming of some fields. For example, TFS 2010 likes something along the lines of “Area ID”, whereas TFS 2008 would have had it as “AreaID”.  So, this will need to be corrected.  Some posts will have you go through this after the errors pop up.  I would recommend doing this process prior to executing the importwitd process.  witadmin listfields /collection:<path to collection> > c:\ListFields.txt Review the following fields: AreaID, review the Name property and validate if it states “AreaID”, the you will need to rename the Name field to reflect “Area ID”. ExternalLinkCount, RelatedLinkCount, HyperLinkCount, AttachedFileCount and IterationID would be the other fields to check. To correct the issue, then execute the following: witadmin changefield /collection:<path to collection> /n:"System.ExternalLinkCount" /name:"External Link Count" Repeat for Area ID, Related Link Count, Hyperlink Count, Attached File Count and Iteration ID.  Once this is done, proceed with the commands below. witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\TestCase.xml" witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\SharedStep.xml" witadmin importcategories /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\categories.xml" Modifications to the Bug Definition: First step is to export the existing definition. witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:bug /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyBug.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Repeat the process for the the Scenario or Requirement Type Definition witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:requirement /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyRequirement.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Provide the Bug Field Mapping definition, after creating the file as specified here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#TCMBugFieldMapping tcm bugfieldmapping /import /mappingfile:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\bugfieldmappings.xml" /collection:<path to collection> /teamproject:<project name>

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