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• Upgrading Agent Controllers in Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c

  - by S Stelting

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c recently released an upgrade for Solaris Agent Controllers. In this week's blog post, we'll show you how to upgrade agent controllers. Detailed instructions about upgrading Agent Controllers are available in the product documentation here. This blog post uses an Enterprise Controller which is configured for connected mode operation. If you'd like to apply the agent update in a disconnected installation, additional instructions are available here. Step 1: Download Agent Controller Updates With a connected mode Ops Center installation, you can check for product updates at any time by selecting the Enterprise Controller from the left-hand Administration navigation tab. Select the right-hand Action link “Ops Center Downloads” to open a pop-up dialog displaying any new product updates. In this example, the Enterprise Controller has already been upgraded to the latest version (Update 1, also shown as build version 2076) so only the Agent Controller updates will appear. There are three updates available: one for Solaris 10 X86, one for Solaris 8-10 SPARC, and one for all versions of Solaris 11. Note that the last update in the screen shot is the Solaris 11 update; for details on any of the downloads, place your mouse over the information icon under the details column for a pop-up text region. Select the software to download and click the Next button to display the Ops Center license agreement. Review and click the check box to accept the license agreement, then click the Next button to begin downloading the software. The status screen shows the current download status. If desired, you can perform the downloads as a background job. Simply click the check box, then click the next button to proceed to the summary screen. The summary screen shows the updates to be downloaded as well as the current status. Clicking the Finish button will close the dialog and return to the Browser UI. The download job will continue to run in Ops Center and progress can still be viewed from the jobs menu at the bottom of the browser window. Step 2: Check the Version of Existing Agent Controllers After the download job completes, you can check the availability of agent updates as well as the current versions of your Agent Controllers from the left-hand Assets navigation tab. Select “Operating Systems” from the pull-down tab lets to display only OS assets. Next, select “Solaris” in the left-hand tab to display the Solaris assets. Finally, select the Summary tab in the center display panel to show which versions of agent controllers are installed in your data center. Notice that a few of the OS assets are not displayed in the Agent Controllers tab. Ops Center will not display OS instances which do not have an Agent Controller installation. This includes Enterprise Controllers and Proxy Controllers (unless the agent has been activated on the OS instance) and and OS instances using agentless management. For Agent Controllers which support an update, the version of agent software (in this example, 2083) appears to the right of the currently installed version. Step 3: Upgrade Your Agent Controllers If desired, you can upgrade agent controllers from the previous screen by selecting the desired systems and clicking the upgrade button. Alternatively, you can click the link “Upgrade All Agent Controllers” in the right-hand Actions menu: In either case, a pop-up dialog lets you start the upgrade process. The first screen in the dialog lets you choose the upgrade method: Ops Center provides three ways to upgrade agent controllers: Automatic Upgrade: If Agent Controllers are running on all assets, Ops Center can automatically upgrade the software to the latest version without requiring any login credentials to the system SSH using a single set of credentials: If all assets use the same login credentials, you can apply a single set to all assets for the upgrade process. The log-in credentials are the same ones used for asset discovery and management, which are stored in the Plan Management navigation tab under Credentials. SSH using individual credentials: If assets use different login credentials, you can select a different set for each asset. After selecting the upgrade method, click the Next button to proceed to the summary screen. Click the Finish button to close the pop-up dialog and start the upgrade job for the agent controllers. The upgrade job runs a series of tasks in parallel, and will upgrade all agents which have been selected. Once the job completes, the OS instances in your data center will be upgraded and running the latest version of Agent Controller software.

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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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• Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

  - by BuckWoody

  I deal with computing architectures by first laying out requirements, and then laying in any constraints for it's success. Only then do I bring in computing elements to apply to the system. As an example, a requirement might be "world-side availability" and a constraint might be "with less than 80ms response time and full HA" or something similar. Then I can choose from the best fit of technologies which range from full-up on-premises computing to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. I also deal in abstraction layers - on-premises systems are fully under your control, in IaaS the hardware is abstracted (but not the OS, scale, runtimes and so on), in PaaS the hardware and the OS is abstracted and you focus on code and data only, and in SaaS everything is abstracted - you merely purchase the function you want (like an e-mail server or some such) and simply use it. When you think about solutions this way, the architecture moves to the primary factor in your decision. It's problem-first architecting, and then laying in whatever technology or vendor best fixes the problem. To that end, most architects design a solution using a graphical tool (I use Visio) and then creating documents that  let the rest of the team (and business) know what is required. It's the template, or recipe, for the solution. This is extremely easy to do for SaaS - you merely point out what the needs are, research the vendor and present the findings (and bill) to the business. IT might not even be involved there. In PaaS it's not much more complicated - you use the same Application Lifecycle Management and design tools you always have for code, such as Visual Studio or some other process and toolset, and you can "stamp out" the application in multiple locations, update it and so on. IaaS is another story. Here you have multiple machines, operating systems, patches, virus scanning, run-times, scale-patterns and tools and much more that you have to deal with, since essentially it's just an in-house system being hosted by someone else. You can certainly automate builds of servers - we do this as technical professionals every day. From Windows to Linux, it's simple enough to create a "build script" that makes a system just like the one we made yesterday. What is more problematic is being able to tie those systems together in a coherent way (as a solution) and then stamp that out repeatedly, especially when you might want to deploy that solution on-premises, or in one cloud vendor or another. Lately I've been working with a company called RightScale that does exactly this. I'll point you to their site for more info, but the general idea is that you document out your intent for a set of servers, and it will deploy them to on-premises clouds, Windows Azure, and other cloud providers all from the same script. In other words, it doesn't contain the images or anything like that - it contains the scripts to build them on-premises or on a cloud vendor like Microsoft. Using a tool like this, you combine the steps of designing a system (all the way down to passwords and accounts if you wish) and then the document drives the distribution and implementation of that intent. As time goes on and more and more companies implement solutions on various providers (perhaps for HA and DR) then this becomes a compelling investigation. The RightScale information is here, if you want to investigate it further. Yes, there are other methods I've found, but most are tied to a single kind of cloud, and I'm not into vendor lock-in. Poppa Bear Level - Hands-on EvaluateRightScale at no cost.  Just bring your Windows Azurecredentials and follow the these tutorials: Sign Up for Windows Azure Add     Windows Azure to a RightScale Account Windows Azure Virtual Machines     3-tier Deployment Momma Bear Level - Just the Right level... ;0)  WindowsAzure Evaluation Guide - if you are new toWindows Azure Virtual Machines and new to RightScale, we recommend that youread the entire evaluation guide to gain a more complete understanding of theWindows Azure + RightScale solution.    WindowsAzure Support Page @ support.rightscale.com - FAQ's, tutorials,etc. for  Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Work in Progress) Baby Bear Level - Marketing WindowsAzure Page @ www.rightscale.com - find overview informationincluding solution briefs and presentation & demonstration videos   Scale     and Automate Applications on Windows Azure  Solution Brief     - how RightScale makes Windows Azure Virtual Machine even better SQL     Server on Windows Azure  Solution Brief   -       Run Highly Available SQL Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

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• MSCC: Career & IT Fair 2014

  Already a couple of weeks ago, I've been addressed by Ibraahim and Yunus to see whether it would be interesting to participate in the 1st Career & IT Fair organised by the UoM Computer Club. Well, luckily we met at the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp and I wasn't too sure whether it would be possible for me to attend after all. The main reason is given because of work demand and furthermore due to the fact that the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community currently has no advertising material at all. Here's the brief statement of the event: "The UOM Students' Computer Club in collaboration with the UOM Students' Union and UOM CSE Department is organising a 'Career & IT Fair' on the 23rd and 24th April 2014. This event has for objective to provide a platform to tertiary students, secondary students as well as vocational students, the opportunity to meet job recruiters." Luckily, I was reminded that the 23rd is a Wednesday, and therefore I decided that it might be interesting to move our weekly Code & Coffee session to the university and hence be able to attend the career fair. As it turned out it was a great choice and thankfully Pritvi, Nadim as well as Ishwon volunteered to be around at the "community booth". Thankfully, the computer club gave us - the MSCC and the LUGM - one of their spaces in the lobby area of the Paul Octave Wiéhé Auditorium. My impression about the event Very well and professionally organised. Seriously, the lads over at the UoM Computer Club did a great job in organising their 2 days event, and felt very comfortable at any time. Actually, it was kind of amusing to some of the members constantly running around and checking everything. Even though that the whole process went smooth and easy off the hand. There were a couple of interesting pieces of information and announcements during the opening ceremony. For example, the Computer Science faculty is a very young one and has been initiated back in 1988 only - just by 4 staff members at that time. Now, after 25 years they have achieved quite a lot and there are currently 1.000+ active students attending the numerous lectures and courses. But there is no room to rest on previous achievements, and I was kind of surprised to hear that there are plans to extend the campus, and offer new lectures in the fields of nanotechnology, big data handling, and - crossing fingers - the introduction and establishment of a space control centre. Mauritius is already part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and hopefully there will be more activities into that direction in the near future. Community - Awareness and collaboration As stated earlier, I could only spent one morning but luckily other members of the MSCC and the LUGM stayed during the whole two days and provided answers to any interested person. As for me, I took the opportunity to get in touch with the other companies in the lobby. Mainly, to create some awareness about our IT communities but also to see whether there might be options for future engagement in common activities, too. So far, I was able to speak to representatives of the following companies: ACCA Mauritius Business at Work Infomil LinkByNet Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific Spherinity Training Institute Spoon Consulting Ltd. State Informatics Ltd. Unfortunately, I only had a quick chat with an HR representative of LinkByNet but I fully count on our MSCC members like Nitin or LUGM member Ronny to spread our intentions over there.  So far, all of the representatives were really interested in our concepts and activities and I'm currently catching up with an introduction flyer for the MSCC that I'm going to send out to all those contacts via mail. It would be great to have more craftsmen as well as professional support on board. Some pictures from the event MSCC: Fantastic outlook for the near future. Announcements were made on Big data, nanotechnology, and space control centre in Mauritius. Interesting! MSCC: The lobby area was cramped with students. Great way to exchange and network. Good luck to all candidates! Passing the relay staff to... I recommend you to continue to read about the first Career & IT Fair on Ish's blog. He has a great summary and more details on those two days of IT activities than I have. Thanks and feel free to leave a comment (or two)... 

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• Welcome to the ISV Migration Center (IMC) Team blog

  - by lukasz.romaszewski(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size: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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Welcome to the ISV Migration Center (IMC) Team blog.The IMC is a a team of senior Oracle technical consultants who's aim is to enable partners to rapidly and successfully adopt and implement Oracle's latest technology.  The IMC consultants are trained and equipped to deliver leading-edge, enterprise-quality technology solutions. This blog has been created to serve as an  information exchange platform on Oracle Fusion Middleware and Database products so you will find how-tos, articles, demos and other technical resources.  We will also publish our upcoming workshops, webcasts and seminars so make sure you check it regularly to get the latest updates.   Here's our team:Lukasz Romaszewski Java & middleware specialist, 8 years experience in architecting, developing and supporting enterprise solutions based on J2EE and Oracle Database technology. At Oracle from April 2008, working as an IMC Migration Consultant in Oracle Partner Hub in Cracow, Poland. Helping Oracle Partners in migrating their solutions to the latest Oracle Fusion Middleware stack, running hands-on migration workshops and seminars across Europe. Experienced in the following areas and products Oracle Weblogic Application Server 11gApplication Development Framework (ADF)Oracle SOA Suite 11gOracle Forms 6i, 10g and 11gOracle Database (PL/SQL, AQ, XML DB)Java EE 5.0 based architecture Murat Teksoz Oracle DB and DB options - Oracle Linux- Apex- Oracle Business intelligence specilist, 13 years experince in Database managment, Performans Tuning, Diagnosting ,Installation and Configurationg database, Database Security, High Avalibility and Disaster Recovery solutions. Working at Oracle IMC Istanbul from September 2008, delivering partner workshops and seminars in Europe and Central Asia. Experienced in the following areas and products Oracle 9i,10g,11g Database SolutionsOracle Partitioning, Total Recall Advantage compressingOracle High Avalability Solutions - Real Application ClusterOracle Disaster Recovery Solutions - Oracle DataguardOracle Grid ControlOracle LinuxOracle Business intelligence solutions - Oracle Bi 10g-11gMigration Tools (Sqldeveloper) - Migrate from SqlServer,Mysql,Sysbase,Db2 to Oracle DatabaseOracle APEX (Application Express Tool) Vadim Melnikov Oracle Database specialist with DB Options, Linux and virtualization skills. Vadim has more than 8 years experience with Oracle products and is now working as Database consultant in Oracle IMC Moscow as employee of FORS Development center, Russian Oracle Platinum partner. Helping Oracle Partners to migrate solutions to Oracle from other platforms and adopt new oracle technologies, running workshops and seminars. Experienced in the following areas and products Oracle Database 9i,10g,11g Database Solutions (SQL, PL/SQL, Installing, Configuring, Performance Tuning, Diagnosting, Database management)Oracle DB options (Partitioning, Total Recall, Advanced compression)Oracle Enterprise ManagerOracle Enterprise LinuxOracle VM 2 for x86Migration to Oracle DatabaseOracle Application Express Gokhan Gungor Java (J2EE) Lead Developer and Architect. Designed and Developed Web Applications, Middleware Systems/Services, Desktop Applications and Back-end Tools/Services using Java, WebLogic Server, JBoss and Open Source Frameworks. Joined Oracle in 2010 as Fussion middleware consultant in Istanbul IMC , responsible for running migration and adoption workshops and seminars covering Java technology, ADF, WebLogic and SOA and providing technical consultancy for migration projects. Experienced in the following areas and products Oracle WebLogic ServerApplication Development Framework (ADF)JDeveloperJava EE (EJB, JMS, Servlet, JSP, JSF, JavaMail, JTA, JAAS, JSTL, JAXB)Java SE (JavaBeans, JDBC, XML, XSL, RMI, JNDI, JAXP)Oracle Database 10g,11g Dmitry Nefedkin Oracle Middleware & Java specialist, 7+ years experience in developing, designing enterprise solutions based on Oracle Database and Middleware, developing Oracle e-Business Suite customizations, designing integration architecture within the companies . Joined Oracle team in October 2010 as IMC FMW Consultant in Oracle Alliances & Channels in Moscow, Russia. Experienced in the following areas and products Oracle Weblogic Application Server 11gOracle Service Bus 11gOracle SOA Suite 10g (BPEL PM, ESB, OWSM)Oracle Application Server 10gOracle Forms 6i and 9iOracle BI PublisherOracle ADF 10gOracle Database (SQL tuning, PL/SQL, AQ, Streams)Java EE 5 developmentCheck out our web site as well: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size: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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} http://www.oracle.com/partners/en/most-popular-resources/027930

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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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• 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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• Deep in the Heart of Texas

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Erika Webb, Manager, Fusion Applications UX User Assistance When I was first working in the usability field, the only way I could consider conducting a usability study was to bring a potential user to a lab environment where I could show them whatever I was interested in learning more about and ask them questions. While I hate to reveal just how long I have been working in this field, let's just say that pads of paper and a stopwatch were key tools for any test I conducted. Over the years, I have worked in simple labs with basic video taping equipment and not much else, and I have worked in corporate environments with sophisticated usability labs and state-of-the-art equipment. Years ago, we conducted all usability studies at the location of the user. If we wanted to see if there were any differences between users in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, we went to those places to run the test. A lab environment is very useful for many test situations. However, there has always been a debate in the usability field about whether bringing someone into a lab environment, however friendly we make it, somehow intrinsically changes the behavior of the user as compared to having them work in their own environment, at their own desk, and on their own computer. We developed systems to create a portable usability lab, so that we could go to the users that we needed to test.  Do lab environments change user behavior patterns? Then 9/11 hit. You may not remember, but no planes flew for weeks afterwards. Companies all over the world couldn't fly-in employees for meetings. Suddenly, traveling to the location of the users had an additional difficulty. The company I was working for at the time had usability specialists stuck in New York for days before they could finally rent a car and drive home to Colorado. This changed the world pretty suddenly, and technology jumped on the change. Companies offering Internet meeting tools were strugglinguntil no one could travel. The Internet boomed with collaboration tools that enabled people to work together wherever they happened to be. This change in technology has made a huge difference in my world. We use collaborative tools to bring our product concepts and ideas to the user across the Internet. As a global company, we benefit from having users from all over the world inform our designs. We now run usability studies with users all over the world in a single day, a feat we couldn't have accomplished 10 years ago by plane! Other technology companies have started to do more of this type of usability testing, since the tools have improved so dramatically. Plus, in our busy world, it's not always easy to find users who can take the time away from their jobs to come to our labs. reaching users where it is convenient for them greatly improves the odds that people do participate. I manage a team of usability specialists who live in India and California, whlie I live in Colorado. We have wonderful labs that we bring users into to show them our products. But very often, we run our studies remotely. We used to take the lab to the users now we use the labs, but we let the users stay where they are. We gain users who might not have been able to leave work to come to our labs, and they get to use the system they are familiar with. And we gain users nearly anywhere that we can set up an Internet connection, as long as the users have a phone, a broadband connection, and a compatible Web browser (with no pop-up blockers). After we recruit participants in a traditional manner, we send them an invitation to participate through the use of a telephone conference call and Web conferencing tool. At Oracle, we use Oracle Web Conference part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, which enables us to give the user control of the mouse, while we present a prototype or wireframe pictures. We can record the sessions over the Web and phone conference. We send the users instructions, plus tips to ensure that we won't have problems sharing screens. In some cases, when time is tight, we even run a five-minute "test session" with users a day in advance to be sure that we can connect. Prior to the test, we send users a participant script that contains information about the study, including any questionnaires. This is exactly the same script we give to participants who come to the labs. We ask users to print this before the beginning of the session. We generally run these studies by having a usability engineer in our usability labs, so that we can record the session as though the user were in the lab with us. Roughly 80% of our application software usability testing at Oracle is performed using remote methods. The probability of getting a   remote test participant decreases the higher up the person is in the target organization. We have a methodology checklist available to help our usability engineers work through the remote processes.

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• SPARC T4-4 Delivers World Record Performance on Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server delivered world record performance with subsecond response time on the Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 11. The SPARC T4-4 server achieved throughput of 430,000 cube-queries/hour with an average response time of 0.85 seconds and the median response time of 0.43 seconds. This was achieved by using only 60% of the available CPU resources leaving plenty of headroom for future growth. The SPARC T4-4 server operated on an Oracle OLAP cube with a 4 billion row fact table of sales data containing 4 dimensions. This represents as many as 90 quintillion aggregate rows (90 followed by 18 zeros). Performance Landscape Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark 4 Billion Fact Table Rows System Queries/hour Users* Response Time (sec) Average Median SPARC T4-4 430,000 7,300 0.85 0.43 * Users - the supported number of users with a given think time of 60 seconds Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 1 TB memory Data Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR) 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (each with 80 FMODs) Redo Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR with 8 HDD) Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) with Oracle OLAP option Benchmark Description The Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark is a workload designed to demonstrate and stress the Oracle OLAP product's core features of fast query, fast update, and rich calculations on a multi-dimensional model to support enhanced Data Warehousing. The bulk of the benchmark entails running a number of concurrent users, each issuing typical multidimensional queries against an Oracle OLAP cube consisting of a number of years of sales data with fully pre-computed aggregations. The cube has four dimensions: time, product, customer, and channel. Each query user issues approximately 150 different queries. One query chain may ask for total sales in a particular region (e.g South America) for a particular time period (e.g. Q4 of 2010) followed by additional queries which drill down into sales for individual countries (e.g. Chile, Peru, etc.) with further queries drilling down into individual stores, etc. Another query chain may ask for yearly comparisons of total sales for some product category (e.g. major household appliances) and then issue further queries drilling down into particular products (e.g. refrigerators, stoves. etc.), particular regions, particular customers, etc. Results from version 2 of the benchmark are not comparable with version 1. The primary difference is the type of queries along with the query mix. Key Points and Best Practices Since typical BI users are often likely to issue similar queries, with different constants in the where clauses, setting the init.ora prameter "cursor_sharing" to "force" will provide for additional query throughput and a larger number of potential users. Except for this setting, together with making full use of available memory, out of the box performance for the OLAP Perf workload should provide results similar to what is reported here. For a given number of query users with zero think time, the main measured metrics are the average query response time, the median query response time, and the query throughput. A derived metric is the maximum number of users the system can support achieving the measured response time assuming some non-zero think time. The calculation of the maximum number of users follows from the well-known response-time law N = (rt + tt) * tp where rt is the average response time, tt is the think time and tp is the measured throughput. Setting tt to 60 seconds, rt to 0.85 seconds and tp to 119.44 queries/sec (430,000 queries/hour), the above formula shows that the T4-4 server will support 7,300 concurrent users with a think time of 60 seconds and an average response time of 0.85 seconds. For more information see chapter 3 from the book "Quantitative System Performance" cited below. -- See Also Quantitative System Performance Computer System Analysis Using Queueing Network Models Edward D. Lazowska, John Zahorjan, G. Scott Graham, Kenneth C. Sevcik external local Oracle Database 11g – Oracle OLAP oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 11/2/2012.

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• Customizing UPK outputs (Part 2 - Player)

  - by [email protected]

  There are a few things that can be done to give the Player output a personalized look to match your corporate branding. In my previous post, I talked about changing the logo. In addition to the logo, you can change the graphic in the heading, button colors, border colors and many other items. Prior to making any customizations, I strongly recommend making a copy of the existing Player style. This will give you a backup in case things go wrong. I'd also recommend that you create your own brand. This way, when you install the newest updates from us, your brand will remain intact. Creating your own brand is pretty easy. Make sure you have modify permissions on the publishing styles directory, if you are using a multi-user installation. Under the Publishing/Styles folder, create a new folder with your company name. Copy all the publishing styles from the UPK folder to your newly created folder. Now, when you go through the Publishing wizard, you will have two categories to choose from: the UPK category or your custom category. Now, for updating the Player output. First, the graphic that appears on the right hand side of the Player. If you're using a multi-user installation, check out the player style from your custom brand. Open the player style. Open the img folder. The file named "banner_image.png" represents the graphic that appears on the right hand side of the player. It is currently sized at 425 x 54. Try to keep your graphic about the same size. Rename your graphic file to be "banner_image.png", and drag it into the img folder. Save the package. Check in the package if you are in a multi-user installation. You've just updated the banner heading! Next, let's work on updating some of the other colors in the player. All the customizable areas are located in the skin.css file which is in the root of the Player style. Many of our customers update the colors to match their own theme. You don't have to be a programmer to make these changes, honest. :) To change the colors in the player: Make a copy of the original skin.css file. (This is to make sure you have a working version to revert to, in case something goes wrong.) Open the skin.css file from the Player package. You can edit it using Notepad. Make the desired changes. Save the file. Save the package. Publish to view your new changes. When you open the skin.css, you will see groupings like this: .headerDivbar { height: 21px; background-color: #CDE2FD; } Change the value of the background-color to the color of your choice. Note that you cannot use "red" as a color, but rather you should enter the hexadecimal color code. If you don't know the color code, search the web for "hexadecimal colors" and you'll find many sites to provide the information. Here are a few of the variables that you can update. Heading: .headerDivbar -this changes the color of the banner that appears under the graphic Button colors: .navCellOn - changes the color of the mode buttons when your mouse is hovering on them. .navCellOff - changes the color of the mode buttons when the mouse is not over them Lines: .thorizontal - this is the color of the horizontal lines surrounding the outline .tvertical - this is the color of the vertical lines on the left and right margin in the outline. .tsep - this is the color of the line that separates the outline from the content area Search frame: .tocSearchColor - this is the color of the search area .tocFrameText - this is the background color of the TOC tree. Hint: If you want to try out the changes prior to updating the style, you can update the skin.css in some content you've already published for the player (it's located in the css folder of the player package). This way, you can immediately see the changes without going through publishing. Once you're happy with the changes, update the skin.css in player style. Want to customize more? Refer to the "Customizing the Player" section of the Content Development manual for more details on all the options in the skin.css that can be changed, and pictures of what each variable controls. I'd love to see how you've customized the player for your corporate needs. Also, if there are other areas of the player you'd like to modify but have not been able to, let us know. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. --Maria Cozzolino, Manager of Requirements & UI Design for UPK

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• To Bit or Not To Bit

  - by Johnm

  'Twas a long day of troubleshooting and firefighting and now, with most of the office vacant, you face a blank scripting window to create a new table in his database. Many questions circle your mind like dirty water gurgling down the bathtub drain: "How normalized should this table be?", "Should I use an identity column?", "NVarchar or Varchar?", "Should this column be NULLABLE?", "I wonder what apple blue cheese bacon cheesecake tastes like?" Well, there are times when the mind goes it's own direction. A Bit About Bit At some point during your table creation efforts you will encounter the decision of whether to use the bit data type for a column. The bit data type is an integer data type that recognizes only the values of 1, 0 and NULL as valid. This data type is often utilized to store yes/no or true/false values. An example of its use would be a column called [IsGasoline] which would be intended to contain the value of 1 if the row's subject (a car) had a gasoline engine and a 0 if the subject did not have a gasoline engine. The bit data type can even be found in some of the system tables of SQL Server. For example, the sysssispackages table in the msdb database which contains SQL Server Integration Services Package information for the packages stored in SQL Server. This table contains a column called [IsEncrypted]. A value of 1 indicates that the package has been encrypted while the value of 0 indicates that it is not. I have learned that the most effective way to disperse the crowd that surrounds the office coffee machine is to engage into SQL Server debates. The bit data type has been one of the most reoccurring, as well as the most enjoyable, of these topics. It contains a practical side and a philosophical side. Practical Consideration This data type certainly has its place and is a valuable option for database design; but it is often used in situations where the answer is really not a pure true/false response. In addition, true/false values are not very informative or scalable. Let's use the previously noted [IsGasoline] column for illustration. While on the surface it appears to be a rather simple question when evaluating a car: "Does the car have a gasoline engine?" If the person entering data is entering a row for a Jeep Liberty, the response would be a 1 since it has a gasoline engine. If the person is entering data is entering a row for a Chevrolet Volt, the response would be a 0 since it is an electric engine. What happens when a person is entering a row for the gasoline/electric hybrid Toyota Prius? Would one person's conclusion be consistent with another person's conclusion? The argument could be made that the current intent for the database is to be used only for pure gasoline and pure electric engines; but this is where the scalability issue comes into play. With the use of a bit data type a database modification and data conversion would be required if the business decided to take on hybrid engines. Whereas, alternatively, if the int data type were used as a foreign key to a reference table containing the engine type options, the change to include the hybrid option would only require an entry into the reference table. Philosophical Consideration Since the bit data type is often used for true/false or yes/no data (also called Boolean) it presents a philosophical conundrum of what to do about the allowance of the NULL value. The inclusion of NULL in a true/false or yes/no response simply violates the logical principle of bivalence which states that "every proposition is either true or false". If NULL is not true, then it must be false. The mathematical laws of Boolean logic support this concept by stating that the only valid values of this scenario are 1 and 0. There is another way to look at this conundrum: NULL is also considered to be the absence of a response. In other words, it is the equivalent to "undecided". Anyone who watches the news can tell you that polls always include an "undecided" option. This could be considered a valid option in the world of yes/no/dunno. Through out all of these considerations I have discovered one absolute certainty: When you have found a person, or group of persons, who are willing to entertain a philosophical debate of the bit data type, you have found some true friends.

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• Detecting Duplicates Using Oracle Business Rules

  - by joeywong-Oracle

  Recently I was involved with a Business Process Management Proof of Concept (BPM PoC) where we wanted to show how customers could use Oracle Business Rules (OBR) to easily define some rules to detect certain conditions, such as duplicate account numbers, duplicate names, high transaction amounts, etc, in a set of transactions. Traditionally you would have to loop through the transactions and compare each transaction with each other to find matching conditions. This is not particularly nice as it relies on more traditional approaches (coding) and is not the most efficient way. OBR is a great place to house these types’ of rules as it allows users/developers to externalise the rules, in a simpler manner, externalising the rules from the message flows and allows users to change them when required. So I went ahead looking for some examples. After quite a bit of time spent Googling, I did not find much out in the blogosphere. In fact the best example was actually from...... wait for it...... Oracle Documentation! (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28271_01/user.1111/e10228/rules_start.htm#ASRUG228) However, if you followed the link there was not much explanation provided with the example. So the aim of this article is to provide a little more explanation to the example so that it can be better understood. Note: I won’t be covering the BPM parts in great detail. Use case: Payment instruction file is required to be processed. Before instruction file can be processed it needs to be approved by a business user. Before the approval process, it would be useful to run the payment instruction file through OBR to look for transactions of interest. The output of the OBR can then be used to flag the transactions for the approvers to investigate. Example BPM Process So let’s start defining the Business Rules Dictionary. For the input into our rules, we will be passing in an array of payments which contain some basic information for our demo purposes. Input to Business Rules And for our output we want to have an array of rule output messages. Note that the element I am using for the output is only for one rule message element and not an array. We will configure the Business Rules component later to return an array instead. Output from Business Rules Business Rule – Create Dictionary Fill in all the details and click OK. Open the Business Rules component and select Decision Functions from the side. Modify the Decision Function Configuration Select the decision function and click on the edit button (the pencil), don’t worry that JDeveloper indicates that there is an error with the decision function. Then click the Ouputs tab and make sure the checkbox under the List column is checked, this is to tell the Business Rules component that it should return an array of rule message elements. Updating the Decision Service Next we will define the actual rules. Click on Ruleset1 on the side and then the Create Rule in the IF/THEN Rule section. Creating new rule in ruleset Ok, this is where some detailed explanation is required. Remember that the input to this Business Rules dictionary is a list of payments, each of those payments were of the complex type PaymentType. Each of those payments in the Oracle Business Rules engine is treated as a fact in its working memory. Implemented rule So in the IF/THEN rule, the first task is to grab two PaymentType facts from the working memory and assign them to temporary variable names (payment1 and payment2 in our example). Matching facts Once we have them in the temporary variables, we can then start comparing them to each other. For our demonstration we want to find payments where the account numbers were the same but the account name was different. Suspicious payment instruction And to stop the rule from comparing the same facts to each other, over and over again, we have to include the last test. Stop rule from comparing endlessly And that’s it! No for loops, no need to keep track of what you have or have not compared, OBR handles all that for you because everything is done in its working memory. And once all the tests have been satisfied we need to assert a new fact for the output. Assert the output fact Save your Business Rules. Next step is to complete the data association in the BPM process. Pay extra care to use Copy List instead of the default Copy when doing data association at an array level. Input and output data association Deploy and test. Test data Rule matched Parting words: Ideally you would then use the output of the Business Rules component to then display/flag the transactions which triggered the rule so that the approver can investigate. Link: SOA Project Archive [Download]

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• Writing an ASP.Net Web based TFS Client

  - by Glav

  So one of the things I needed to do was write an ASP.Net MVC based application for our senior execs to manage a set of arbitrary attributes against stories, bugs etc to be able to attribute whether the item was related to Research and Development, and if so, what kind. We are using TFS Azure and don’t have the option of custom templates. I have decided on using a string based field within the template that is not very visible and which we don’t use to write a small set of custom which will determine the research and development association. However, this string munging on the field is not very user friendly so we need a simple tool that can display attributes against items in a simple dropdown list or something similar. Enter a custom web app that accesses our TFS items in Azure (Note: We are also using Visual Studio 2012) Now TFS Azure uses your Live ID and it is not really possible to easily do this in a server based app where no interaction is available. Even if you capture the Live ID credentials yourself and try to submit them to TFS Azure, it wont work. Bottom line is that it is not straightforward nor obvious what you have to do. In fact, it is a real pain to find and there are some answers out there which don’t appear to be answers at all given they didn’t work in my scenario. So for anyone else who wants to do this, here is a simple breakdown on what you have to do: Go here and get the “TFS Service Credential Viewer”. Install it, run it and connect to your TFS instance in azure and create a service account. Note the username and password exactly as it presents it to you. This is the magic identity that will allow unattended, programmatic access. Without this step, don’t bother trying to do anything else. In your MVC app, reference the following assemblies from “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0”: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DataStoreLoader.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Common.dll If hosting this in Internet Information Server, for the application pool this app runs under, you will need to enable 32 Bit support. You also have to allow the TFS client assemblies to store a cache of files on your system. If you don’t do this, you will authenticate fine, but then get an exception saying that it is unable to access the cache at some directory path when you query work items. You can set this up by adding the following to your web.config, in the <appSettings> element as shown below: <appSettings> <!-- Add reference to TFS Client Cache --> <add key="WorkItemTrackingCacheRoot" value="C:\windows\temp" /> </appSettings> With all that in place, you can write the following code: var token = new Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.SimpleWebTokenCredential("{you-service-account-name", "{your-service-acct-password}"); var clientCreds = new Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.TfsClientCredentials(token); var currentCollection = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri(“https://{yourdomain}.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection”), clientCreds); TfsConfigurationServercurrentCollection.EnsureAuthenticated(); In the above code, not the URL contains the “defaultcollection” at the end of the URL. Obviously replace {yourdomain} with whatever is defined for your TFS in Azure instance. In addition, make sure the service user account and password that was generated in the first step is substituted in here. Note: If something is not right, the “EnsureAuthenticated()” call will throw an exception with the message being you are not authorised. If you forget the “defaultcollection” on the URL, it will still fail but with a message saying you are not authorised. That is, a similar but different exception message. And that is it. You can then query the collection using something like: var service = currentCollection.GetService<WorkItemStore>(); var proj = service.Projects[0]; var allQueries = proj.StoredQueries; for (int qcnt = 0; qcnt < allQueries.Count; qcnt++) {     var query = allQueries[qcnt];     var queryDesc = string.format(“Query found named: {0}”,query.Name); } You get the idea. If you search around, you will find references to the ServiceIdentityCredentialProvider which is referenced in this article. I had no luck with this method and it all looked too hard since it required an extra KB article and other magic sauce. So I hope that helps. This article certainly would have helped me save a boat load of time and frustration.

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• Swap partition not recognized (The disk drive with UUID=... is not ready yet or not present)

  - by ladaghini

  I think I had an encrypted swap partition, because I chose to encrypt my home directory during the installation. I believe that's what the line with /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 ... in my /etc/fstab is all about. I did something to bork my swap because on the next boot, I got a message (paraphrased): The disk drive for /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 is not ready yet or not present. Wait to continue. Press S to skip or M to manually recover. (As a side note, pressing S or M seemed to do nothing different from just waiting.) Here's what I've tried: This tutorial on how to fix the swap partition not mounting. However, in the above, the mkswap command fails because the device is busy. So I booted from a live USB, ran GParted to reformat the swap partition (which showed up as an unknown fs type), and chrooted into the broken system to try that tutorial again. I also adjusted /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and /etc/fstab to reflect the new UUID generated from formatting the partition as a swap. That still didn't work; instead of /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 not present, "The disk drive with UUID=[swap partition's UUID] is not ready yet or not present..." So I decided to start afresh as though I never had created a swap partition in the first place. From the Live USB, I deleted the swap partition altogether (which, again showed up in GParted as an unknown fs type), removed the swap and cryptswap entries in /etc/fstab as well as removed /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and /etc/crypttab. At this point the main system shouldn't be considered broken because there is no swap partition and no instructions to mount one, right? I didn't get any errors during startup. I followed the same instructions to create and encrypt the swap partition, starting with creating a partition for the swap, though I think fdisk said a reboot was necessary to see changes. I was confident the 3rd process above would work, but the problem yet persists. Some relevant info (/dev/sda8 is the swap partition): /etc/fstab file: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda6 during installation UUID=4c11e82c-5fe9-49d5-92d9-cdaa6865c991 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /boot was on /dev/sda5 during installation UUID=4031413e-e89f-49a9-b54c-e887286bb15e /boot ext4 defaults 0 2 # /home was on /dev/sda7 during installation UUID=d5bbfc6f-482a-464e-9f26-fd213230ae84 /home ext4 defaults 0 2 # swap was on /dev/sda8 during installation UUID=5da2c720-8787-4332-9317-7d96cf1e9b80 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0 output of sudo mount: /dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755) none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880) none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) /dev/sda5 on /boot type ext4 (rw) /dev/sda7 on /home type ext4 (rw) /home/undisclosed/.Private on /home/undisclosed type ecryptfs (ecryptfs_check_dev_ruid,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs,ecryptfs_sig=cbae1771abd34009,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=7cefe2f59aab8e58) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/undisclosed/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=undisclosed) output of sudo blkid (note that /dev/sda8 is missing): /dev/sda1: LABEL="SYSTEM" UUID="960490E80490CC9D" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda2: UUID="D4043140043126C0" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda3: LABEL="Shared" UUID="80F613E1F613D5EE" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda5: UUID="4031413e-e89f-49a9-b54c-e887286bb15e" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sda6: UUID="4c11e82c-5fe9-49d5-92d9-cdaa6865c991" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sda7: UUID="d5bbfc6f-482a-464e-9f26-fd213230ae84" TYPE="ext4" /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: UUID="41fa147a-3e2c-4e61-b29b-3f240fffbba0" TYPE="swap" output of sudo fdisk -l: Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xdec3fed2 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 409599 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 409600 210135039 104862720 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 210135040 415422463 102643712 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 415424510 625141759 104858625 5 Extended /dev/sda5 415424512 415922175 248832 83 Linux /dev/sda6 415924224 515921919 49998848 83 Linux /dev/sda7 515923968 621389823 52732928 83 Linux /dev/sda8 621391872 625141759 1874944 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: 1919 MB, 1919942656 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 233 cylinders, total 3749888 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xaf5321b5 /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume file: RESUME=UUID=5da2c720-8787-4332-9317-7d96cf1e9b80 /etc/crypttab file: cryptswap1 /dev/sda8 /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 output of sudo swapon -as: Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 partition 1874940 0 -1 output of sudo free -m: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1476 1296 179 0 35 671 -/+ buffers/cache: 590 886 Swap: 1830 0 1830 So, how can this be fixed?

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

  - by user12612012

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

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• Walmart and Fusion Apps

  - by ultan o'broin

  Photograph: Misha Vaughan I attended Fusion Apps (yes, I know I am supposed to say "Oracle Fusion Applications", but stuffy old style guides are a turn-off in interwebs conversations) User Experience Advocate (FXA) training in Long Beach, California last week; a suitable location as ODTUG KSCOPE 11 was kicking off and key players were in the area. As a member of Oracle's Apps-UX team I know the Fusion Apps messaging, natch, and done some other Fusion Apps go-to-market content work too. For the messaging details themselves, see Lonneke Dikmans (@lonnekedikmans) great blog, by the way. However, I wanted some 'formal' training combined with the opportunity to meet and learn from people already out there delivering those messages. The idea in me reaching out to Misha Vaughan, Apps-UX FXA maven, to get me onto this training was that in addition to my UX knowledge, I could leverage my location in EMEA and hit up customer events more quickly and easily. Those local user groups do like to hear the voice of locals too you know (so I need to work on that mid-Atlantic accent). I'm looking forward to such opportunities. The training was all smashing stuff, just the right level of detail, delivered professionally and with great style and humor. I was especially honored to be paired off for my er, coaching with Debra Lilley (@debralilley), who shared with everyone all kinds of tips and insights from her experiences of delivering the message and demo. For me, that was the real power of the FXA event--the communal, conversational aspect--the meeting up with people who had done all this for real, the sharing in their experiences, while learning along with other newbies. Sorry, but that all-important social aspect doesn't work so well with remote meetings. Katie Candland (Apps-UX) gave us a great tour of the Fusion Apps demo and included some useful presentational tips too (any excuse to buy that iPad). It's clear to me that the Fusion Apps messaging and demos really come alive with real-world examples that local application users will recognize, and I picked up some "yes, that's my job made easier" scene-stealers from Debra and Karen Brownfield too, to add to the great ones already provided. This power of examples shouldn't surprise anyone, they've long been a mainstay of applications user assistance, popular with users. We'll offer customers different types of example topics in the Fusion Apps online help too (stay tuned), and we know from research how important those 3S's (stories, scenarios, and simulations) are to users when they consume and apply information. Well, we've got the simulation, now it's time for more stories and scenarios. If you get a chance to participate in an FXA event (whether you are an Oracle employee or otherwise), I'd encourage it. It's committing your time and energy for sure, but I got real bang for the buck from it for my everyday job too. Listening to the room's feedback on the application demo really brought our internal design work to life, and I picked up on some things that I need to follow up on (like how you alphabetically sort stuff in other languages). User experience is after all, about users. What will I be doing next, and what would I like to see happen? Obviously, I need to develop my story-telling links with the people I met in Long Beach and do some practicing with the materials, and then get out there and deliver them at a suitable location. The demo is what it is right now, and that's a super-rich demo that I know everyone will want to see and ask questions about. Then, as mentioned by attendees at the FXA event, follow up on those translated and localized messages for EMEA (and APAC), that deal with different statutory or reporting requirements of the target markets. Given my background I would say that, wouldn't I? However, language is part of the UX, and international revenue is greater than US-only revenue for Oracle, so yes dear, we all need to get over the fact that enterprise apps users don't all speak, or want to speak, American-English. Most importantly perhaps, the continued development of a strong messaging community between Oracle and partners and customers where we can swap and share those FXA messaging stories and scenarios about Fusion Apps in a conversational way. The more the better, a combination of online and face-to-face meetings. I must also mention the great dinner after the event at Parker's Lighthouse, and the fun myself and Andrew Gilmour (Apps-UX) had at our end of the table talking about just about everything except Fusion Apps with Ronald Van Luttikhuizen and Ben Prusinski (who now understands the difference between Cork and Dublin people. I hope). Thanks to all the Apps-UXers who helped bring the FXA training to town, and to Debra and all the others that I am too jetlagged to mention right who were instrumental in making it happen for me. Here's to the next one. And the Walmart angle? That was me doing my Robert Scoble (ScO'bilizer?)-style guerilla smart phone research in Walmart in Long Beach, before the FXA event. It's all about stories for me. You can read more about it on the appslab blog (see the comments).

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• Unmet Dependencies with kdelibs5-data

  - by Jitesh

  I was trying to install Amarok 1.4 on Ubuntu 12.04 (Gnome-classic), by following this instructions. Problem started after giving these two commands dpkg -i kdelibs5-data_4.6.2-0ubuntu4_all.deb dpkg -i kdelibs-data_3.5.10.dfsg.1-5ubuntu2_all.deb Now, immediately after these commands, Ubuntu Updater popped up and gave me an error that the package catalog is broken and needs to be repaired. Nothing can be installed or removed till then. It also offered a suggestion to run apt-get install -f. I tried that, but again got the same error.Also tried apt-get clean followed by apt-get install -f. Again got the following output: jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get clean jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install -f Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following extra packages will be installed: kdelibs5-data The following packages will be upgraded: kdelibs5-data 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18 not upgraded. 2 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 2,832 kB of archives. After this operation, 2,998 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Get:1 http: //in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/precise-updates/main kdelibs5-data all 4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.2 [2,832 kB] Fetched 2,832 kB in 32s (86.6 kB/s) dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs5-data: libplasma3 (4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.2) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.80~) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. kate-data (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. katepart (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. dpkg: error processing kdelibs5-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs-data: kdelibs-data depends on kdelibs5-data; however: Package kdelibs5-data is not configured yet. No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already dpkg: error processing kdelibs-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: kdelibs5-data kdelibs-data W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ precise/partner i386 Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.canonical.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_partner_binary-i386_Packages) W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) As I thought the error was related to configuring kdelibs, I tried to configure using dpkg. But got the following errors: jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs5-data: libplasma3 (4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.2) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.80~) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. kate-data (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. katepart (4:4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1) breaks kdelibs5-data (<< 4:4.6.90) and is installed. Version of kdelibs5-data to be configured is 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu4. dpkg: error processing kdelibs5-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kdelibs-data: kdelibs-data depends on kdelibs5-data; however: Package kdelibs5-data is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing kdelibs-data (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: kdelibs5-data kdelibs-data jitesh@jitesh-desktop:~$ Now I dont have any idea how to proceed. I am unable to install anything from Software Centre or using Terminal now. Some basic info: Core2Duo, dual booting Ubuntu 12.04 with Win7. Fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 (not upgrade). Incidentally, I had first upgraded from 10.04 and had succesfully installed Amarok 1.4 following this same method. But due to other issues, i had to format and do a clean install of 12.04. Now when I tried to install Amarok 1.4, I'm getting these errors. I also have digiKam and k3b installed, if that can be of any help. I use digiKam a lot, so removing KDE is not feasible for me. Any help on this issue will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• How to build a great relationship with your colleagues

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When you start new job, you worry about your performance, about being able to do what the manager asks you to do, but you also worry about the relations with your colleagues. How will you get along with them? What if they don’t like you? Have you ever felt you’re „the new guy” and your colleagues have already their own way of talking one to each other, their own jokes? It’s a common feeling and can actually become stressful. I am Norbert, Middleware Presales Intern in Hungary and I’ve been working within Oracle for only 1 month. Joining such a big company has been a challenge from many perspectives. One of them was adapting with the environment and getting to know all my colleagues. You know it’s quite difficult to introduce yourself, to try to liaise with them and find some common topics, so I felt very lucky and comfortable when my manager introduced me to all of my colleagues. It was easier to accommodate and we basically we had a starting point for our discussions. We started to talk about what my position means, for how many years they’ve been within Oracle, other Oracle related topics, but also more personal stuff like what they do after work. Having this opportunity of talking with all of them helped me introduce myself in a proper way and actually I told them many things about myself. Networking wasn’t my best skill, but these first days were really helpful from a network point of view. What else can you do to get along with your colleagues? One second thing I consider as being really helpful in networking is asking work-related questions. For instance, when you don’t know how to do something or don’t understand it, asking one of your colleagues will also help you to make a connection with him and you could easily continue the discussion with some other topics which are more personal. It’s a very effective strategy and in a company like Oracle people are very willing to help you with your tasks and perform at a high level. If you see your colleagues going to lunch, you should join them. It will help you become part of their community, finding out what’s new in their lives, you’ll, step-by-step, take part in their conversations and be up to date with the hot topics they talk about. One other opportunity of becoming part of your colleagues’ community are the internal events. Subscribing to the local free time activities mailing list is very useful for finding out information about when they’re going out and have a drink or attending all sorts of events. For instance, this is how I’ve found out about a party within Oracle that most of the employees here attend. It’s a wonderful opportunity for chatting and make a stronger connection to some of them. How important is attending these events? Think about how much time you spend at work. You’d like to enjoy your work and the environment, so getting along with your colleagues is a nice thing to have. I recently attended a corporate party whose purpose was to facilitate the interaction and communication between employees. It was a real success and we had a lot of fun, especially because it was a costume party.  All the fancy dresses and funny clothes we wore made the atmosphere really enjoyable. It was easy to liaise with colleague with whom I had never interacted with before. There was a friendly spirit among us, chatting about personal stuff and about various pleasant things. Working in an international company is not an easy thing because you interact with many people and they have different styles, but all these opportunities of informal interaction are a good way to adapt to the new working environment.

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• Build 2012, some thoughts..

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

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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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• External USB 3 drive not recognized

  - by ilan123

  Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit seems not to recognize my external hard disk. It is a Vantec NST-310S3 external disk enclosure with a WD 3TB drive. The disk has two NTFS partitions. My PC is a dual boot system. Under Windows 7 the hard disk works fine but I can't make it work with Ubuntu. When the drive is connected to the PC then the command sudo fdisk -l seems to hang forever. Below are the output of lsusb and cat /proc/partitions without the external drive and then with it connected. I added also the last lines of the dmesg command at the end. First without the drive: ilan@linux:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 13ba:0017 Unknown PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse Adapter Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:c50e Logitech, Inc. Cordless Mouse Receiver Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0ac8:3420 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. Venus USB2.0 Camera ilan@linux:~$ cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks name 8 0 1953514584 sda 8 1 102400 sda1 8 2 629043200 sda2 8 3 367001600 sda3 8 4 1 sda4 8 5 471859200 sda5 8 6 157286400 sda6 8 7 324115456 sda7 8 8 4101120 sda8 11 0 1048575 sr0 Second with the USB 3 drive: ilan@linux:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 004 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 13ba:0017 Unknown PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse Adapter Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:c50e Logitech, Inc. Cordless Mouse Receiver Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0ac8:3420 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. Venus USB2.0 Camera ilan@linux:~$ cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks name 8 0 1953514584 sda 8 1 102400 sda1 8 2 629043200 sda2 8 3 367001600 sda3 8 4 1 sda4 8 5 471859200 sda5 8 6 157286400 sda6 8 7 324115456 sda7 8 8 4101120 sda8 11 0 1048575 sr0 8 16 2930266584 sdb ilan@linux:~$ lsusb -v -s 004:002 Bus 004 Device 002: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. Couldn't open device, some information will be missing Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 3.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 9 idVendor 0x174c ASMedia Technology Inc. idProduct 0x55aa bcdDevice 1.00 iManufacturer 2 iProduct 3 iSerial 1 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 44 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 2 bInterfaceClass 8 Mass Storage bInterfaceSubClass 6 SCSI bInterfaceProtocol 80 Bulk-Only iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0400 1x 1024 bytes bInterval 0 bMaxBurst 15 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0400 1x 1024 bytes bInterval 0 bMaxBurst 15 ilan@linux:~$ sudo fdisk -l [sudo] password for ilan: Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xf1b4f1ee Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 206848 1258293247 629043200 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 1258293248 1992296447 367001600 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 1992298494 3907028991 957365249 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5 1992298496 2936016895 471859200 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda6 2936018944 3250591743 157286400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda7 3250593792 3898824703 324115456 83 Linux /dev/sda8 3898826752 3907028991 4101120 82 Linux swap / Solaris dmesg output after connecting the external drive: [ 23.740567] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: Rx/Tx [ 23.740786] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 49.144673] usb 4-1: >new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd [ 49.163039] usb 4-1: >Parent hub missing LPM exit latency info. Power management will be impacted. [ 49.166789] usb 4-1: >New USB device found, idVendor=174c, idProduct=55aa [ 49.166793] usb 4-1: >New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1 [ 49.166796] usb 4-1: >Product: AS2105 [ 49.166799] usb 4-1: >Manufacturer: ASMedia [ 49.166801] usb 4-1: >SerialNumber: 0123456789ABCDEF [ 49.206372] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas [ 49.228891] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... [ 49.229042] scsi6 : usb-storage 4-1:1.0 [ 49.229115] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage [ 49.229116] USB Mass Storage support registered. [ 64.045528] scsi 6:0:0:0: >Direct-Access WDC WD30 EZRX-00MMMB0 80.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 64.046224] sd 6:0:0:0: >Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 [ 64.046881] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16). [ 64.047610] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] 5860533168 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) [ 64.048368] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] Write Protect is off [ 64.048373] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00 [ 64.048984] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] No Caching mode page present [ 64.048987] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 64.049297] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16). [ 64.050942] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] No Caching mode page present [ 64.050944] sd 6:0:0:0: >[sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 94.245006] usb 4-1: >reset SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd [ 94.262553] usb 4-1: >Parent hub missing LPM exit latency info. Power management will be impacted. [ 94.263805] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: >xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff8800d37d1c00 [ 94.263808] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: >xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff8800d37d1c40 [ 125.262722] usb 4-1: >reset SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd [ 125.280304] usb 4-1: >Parent hub missing LPM exit latency info. Power management will be impacted. [ 125.281511] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: >xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff8800d37d1c00 [ 125.281516] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: >xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff8800d37d1c40

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• Automating custom software installation in a zone

  - by mgerdts

  In Solaris 11, the internals of zone installation are quite different than they were in Solaris 10.  This difference allows the administrator far greater control of what software is installed in a zone.  The rules in Solaris 10 are simple and inflexible: if it is installed in the global zone and is not specifically excluded by package metadata from being installed in a zone, it is installed in the zone.  In Solaris 11, the rules are still simple, but are much more flexible:  the packages you tell it to install and the packages on which they depend will be installed. So, where does the default list of packages come from?  From the AI (auto installer) manifest, of course.  The default AI manifest is /usr/share/auto_install/manifest/zone_default.xml.  Within that file you will find:             <software_data action="install">                 <name>pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server</name>             </software_data> So, the default installation will install pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server.  Cool.  What is that?  You can figure out what is in the package by looking for it in the repository with your web browser (click the manifest link), or use pkg(1).  In this case, it is a group package (pkg:/group/), so we know that it just has a bunch of dependencies to name the packages that really wants installed. $ pkg contents -t depend -o fmri -s fmri -r solaris-small-server FMRI compress/bzip2 compress/gzip compress/p7zip ... terminal/luit terminal/resize text/doctools text/doctools/ja text/less text/spelling-utilities web/wget If you would like to see the entire manifest from the command line, use pkg contents -r -m solaris-small-server. Let's suppose that you want to install a zone that also has mercurial and a full-fledged installation of vim rather than just the minimal vim-core that is part of solaris-small-server.  That's pretty easy. First, copy the default AI manifest somewhere where you will edit it and make it writable. # cp /usr/share/auto_install/manifest/zone_default.xml ~/myzone-ai.xml # chmod 644 ~/myzone-ai.xml Next, edit the file, changing the software_data section as follows:             <software_data action="install">                 <name>pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server</name>                 <name>pkg:/developer/versioning/mercurial</name>                <name>pkg:/editor/vim</name>             </software_data> To figure out  the names of the packages, either search the repository using your browser, or use a command like pkg search hg. Now we are all ready to install the zone.  If it has not yet been configured, that must be done as well. # zonecfg -z myzone 'create; set zonepath=/zones/myzone' # zoneadm -z myzone install -m ~/myzone-ai.xml A ZFS file system has been created for this zone. Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20111113T004303Z.myzone.install Image: Preparing at /zones/myzone/root. Install Log: /system/volatile/install.15496/install_log AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.XfaWpE SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: myzone Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://localhost:1008/solaris/54453f3545de891d4daa841ddb3c844fe8804f55/ DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) Completed 169/169 34047/34047 185.6/185.6 PHASE ACTIONS Install Phase 46498/46498 PHASE ITEMS Package State Update Phase 169/169 Image State Update Phase 2/2 Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 531.813 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/myzone/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20111113T004303Z.myzone.install Now, for a few things that I've seen people trip over: Ignore that bit about man pages - it's wrong.  Man pages are already installed so long as the right facet is set properly.  And that's a topic for another blog entry. If you boot the zone then just use zlogin myzone, you will see that services you care about haven't started and that svc:/milestone/config:default is starting.  That is because you have not yet logged into the console with zlogin -C myzone. If the zone has been booted for more than a very short while when you first connect to the zone console, it will seem like the console is hung.  That's not really the case - hit ^L (control-L) to refresh the sysconfig(1M) screen that is prompting you for information.

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• The Customer Experience Imperative: A Game Changer for Brands

  - by Jeri Kelley

  By Anthony Lye, SVP, Cloud Applications Strategy, Oracle We know that customer experience has emerged as a primary differentiator for businesses today.  I’ve talked a lot about the new age of the empowered consumer. At Oracle we’ve spent a lot of time developing technologies and practices that our customers can implement to greatly improve their customer experience strategies. Of course I’m biased, but I think that we have created a portfolio of the best solutions on the planet to help organizations deal with the challenges of providing great customer experiences. We’ve done this because we started to witness some trends over the last few years. As the average person began to utilize social and mobile technologies more frequently and products commoditized, customer experience truly remained the only sustainable differentiator for businesses.In fact, we have seen that customer experience is often driving the success or the failure of a product or a brand. And as end customers have become more vocal about their experiences with companies on social and mobile channels, they now have the power to decide which brands will win and which brands will lose. To address this customer experience imperative, I believe that business today must do three things really well:Connect with your customers. You have to connect with customers whenever, wherever and however they want. Organizations must provide a great experience on their existing channels— the call center, the brick and mortar store, the field sales organizations, the websites and social properties. Businesses must also be great at managing and delivering journeys on these channels, while quickly adapting to embrace the new channels that emerge. You have to understand mobile. You have to understand social. You have to understand kiosks. These are all new routes to market, new channels where your customers may or may not show up. You have to interact with them where they are. You have to present information in a way that's meaningful to them. As well as providing what we would call a multichannel experience. We have to recognize that customers may start their experience on one channel, but end it on a different channel. It’s important that an organization’s technology solutions enable, not just a multichannel strategy, but a strategy that can power new channels and create customer journeys that cross these channels.Get to know your customers. Next, companies need to get to know the customer as intimately as the customer will allow. Today most customer interactions are anonymous, but it’s important for brands to know which customers drive value. Customers want to provide feedback. They want to share their opinions, but they want to know that those opinions are being heard and acted upon. For this to occur, we need to know much more about the customer and then reward them for their loyalty and for their advocacy.Enable connections. The last thing is to enable people to connect or transact with your brand. We've got to make it really, really simple for customers to do business with us. We can't make them repeat the steps; we can't make them tell us their identity for the fifth time as they move between organizations. These silos can no longer sustain or deliver a good customer experience. It's extremely important that companies be where customers want them to be—that we create profitable journeys for us and for them.Organizations have to make sure that there is a single source of truth that defines the customer. We have to make sure that the technology applications that we rely on understand not just the dimensions of multichannel, but of cross-channel too. We have to enable social at the very core of the overall architecture. We have to use historical analytics, real-time decisioning as well as predictive analytics to help personalize and drive an experience. And these are all technologies that IT needs, that IT is familiar with, but needs to enable for the line of business that in turn can enable for the end customer.  This means that we've got to make our solutions available to the customers in the cloud.In this new age of the empowered consumer, businesses have to focus on delivery mechanisms that reduce the overall TCO, while driving a rapid rate of innovation and a more rapid rate of deployment. At the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, I’ll discuss these issues and more. I hope that you can join us for what promises to be an unforgettable experience.

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• Updating a database connection password using a script

  - by Tim Dexter

  An interesting customer requirement that I thought was worthy of sharing today. Thanks to James for the requirement and Bryan for the proposed solution and me for testing the solution and proving it works :0) A customers implementation of Sarbanes Oxley requires them to change all database account passwords every 90 days. This is scripted leveraging shell scripts today for most of their environments. But how can they manage the BI Publisher connections? Now, the customer is running 11g and therefore using weblogic on the middle tier, which is the first clue to Bryans proposed solution. To paraphrase and embellish Bryan's solution a little; why not use a JNDI connection from BIP to the database. Then employ the web logic scripting engine to make updates to the JNDI as needed? BIP is completely uninvolved and with a little 'timing' users will be completely unaware of the password updates i.e. change the password when reports are not being executed. Perfect! James immediately tracked down the WLST script that could be used here, http://middlewaremagic.com/weblogic/?p=4261 (thanks Ravish) Now it was just a case of testing the theory. Some steps: Create the JNDI connection in WLS Create the JNDI connection in BI Publisher pointing to the WLS connection Build new data models using or re-point data sources to use the JNDI connection. Create the WLST script to update the WLS JNDI password as needed. Test! Some details. Creating the JNDI connection in web logic is pretty straightforward. Log into hte console and look for Data Sources under the Services section of the home page and click it Click New >> Generic Datasource Give the connection a name. For the JNDI name, prefix it with 'jdbc/' so I have 'jdbc/localdb' - this name is important you'll need it on the BIP side. Select your db type - this will influence the drivers and information needed on the next page. Being a company man, Im using an Oracle db. Click Next Select the driver of choice, theres lots I know, you can read about them I just chose 'Oracle's Driver (Thin) for Instance connections; Versions 9.0.1 and later' Click Next >> Next Fill out the db name (SID), server, port, username to connect and password >> Next Test the config to ensure you can connect. >> Next Now you need to deploy the connection to your BI server, select it and click Next. You're done with the JNDI config. Creating the JNDI connection on the Publisher side is covered here. Just remember to the connection name you created in WLS e.g. 'jdbc/localdb' Not gonna tell you how to do this, go read the user guide :0) Suffice to say, it works. This requires a little reading around the subject to understand the scripting engine and how to execute scripts. Nicely covered here. However a bit of googlin' and I found an even easier way of running the script. ${ServerHome}/common/bin/wlst.sh updatepwd.py Where updatepwd.py is my script file, it can be in another directory. As part of the wlst.sh script your environment is set up for you so its very simple to execute. The nitty gritty: Need to take Ravish's script above and create a file with a .py extension. Its going to need some modification, as he explains on the web page, to make it work in your environment. I played around with it for a while but kept running into errors. The script as is, tries to loop through all of your connections and modify the user and passwords for each. Not quite what we are looking for. Remember our requirement is to just update the password for a given connection. I also found another issue with the script. WLS 10.x does not allow updates to passwords using clear type ie un-encrypted text while the server is in production mode. Its a bit much to set it back to developer mode bounce it, change the passwords and then bounce and then change back to production and bounce again. After lots of messing about I finally came up with the following: ############################################################################# # # Update password for JNDI connections # ############################################################################# print("*** Trying to Connect.... *****") connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') print("*** Connected *****") edit() startEdit() print ("*** Encrypt the password ***") en = encrypt('hr') print "Encrypted pwd: ", en print ("*** Changing pwd for LocalDB ***") dsName = 'LocalDB' print 'Changing Password for DataSource ', dsName cd('/JDBCSystemResources/'+dsName+'/JDBCResource/'+dsName+'/JDBCDriverParams/'+dsName) set('PasswordEncrypted',en) save() activate() Its pretty simple and you can expand on it to loop through the data sources and change each as needed. I have hardcoded the password into the file but you can pass it as a parameter as needed using the properties file method. Im not going to get into the detail of that here but its covered with an example here. Couple of points to note: 1. The change to the password requires a server bounce to get the changes picked up. You can add that to the shell script you will use to call the script above. 2. The script above needs to be run from the MW_HOME\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain directory to get the encryption libraries set correctly. My command to run the whole script was: d:\oracle\bi_mw\wlserver_10.3\common\bin\wlst.cmd updatepwd.py - where wlst.cmd is the scripting command line and updatepwd.py was my update password script above. I have not quite spoon fed everything you need to make it a robust script but at least you know you can do it and you can work out the rest I think :0)

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• ASP.NET: Using pickup directory for outgoing e-mails

  - by DigiMortal

  Sending e-mails out from web applications is very common task. When we are working on or test our systems with real e-mail addresses we don’t want recipients to receive e-mails (specially if we are using some subset of real data9. In this posting I will show you how to make ASP.NET SMTP client to write e-mails to disc instead of sending them out. SMTP settings for web application I have seen many times the code where all SMTP information is kept in app settings just to read them in code and give to SMTP client. It is not necessary because we can define all these settings under system.web => mailsettings node. If you are using web.config to keep SMTP settings then all you have to do in your code is just to create SmtpClient with empty constructor. var smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); Empty constructor means that all settings are read from web.config file. What is pickup directory? If you want drastically raise e-mail throughput of your SMTP server then it is not very wise plan to communicate with it using SMTP protocol. it adds only additional overhead to your network and SMTP server. Okay, clients make connections, send messages out and it is also overhead we can avoid. If clients write their e-mails to some folder that SMTP server can access then SMTP server has e-mail forwarding as only resource-eager task to do. File operations are way faster than communication over SMTP protocol. The directory where clients write their e-mails as files is called pickup directory. By example, Exchange server has support for pickup directories. And as there are applications with a lot of users who want e-mail notifications then .NET SMTP client supports writing e-mails to pickup directory instead of sending them out. How to configure ASP.NET SMTP to use pickup directory? Let’s say, it is more than easy. It is very easy. This is all you need. <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">       <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\temp\maildrop\"/>     </smtp>   </mailSettings> </system.net> Now make sure you don’t miss come points: Pickup directory must physically exist because it is not created automatically. IIS (or Cassini) must have write permissions to pickup directory. Go through your code and look for hardcoded SMTP settings. Also take a look at all places in your code where you send out e-mails that there are not some custom settings used for SMTP! Also don’t forget that your mails will be written now to pickup directory and they are not sent out to recipients anymore. Advanced scenario: configuring SMTP client in code In some advanced scenarios you may need to support multiple SMTP servers. If configuration is dynamic or it is not kept in web.config you need to initialize your SmtpClient in code. This is all you need to do. var smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); smtpClient.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.SpecifiedPickupDirectory; smtpClient.PickupDirectoryLocation = pickupFolder; Easy, isn’t it? i like when advanced scenarios end up with simple and elegant solutions but not with rocket science. Note for IIS SMTP service SMTP service of IIS is also able to use pickup directory. If you have set up IIS with SMTP service you can configure your ASP.NET application to use IIS pickup folder. In this case you have to use the following setting for delivery method. SmtpDeliveryMethod.PickupDirectoryFromIis You can set this setting also in web.config file. <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp deliveryMethod="PickupDirectoryFromIis" />   </mailSettings> </system.net> Conclusion Who was still using different methods to avoid sending e-mails out in development or testing environment can now remove all the bad code from application and live on mail settings of ASP.NET. It is easy to configure and you have less code to support e-mails when you use built-in e-mail features wisely.

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