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• Updated SOA Documents now available in ITSO Reference Library

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Nine documents within the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) reference library have recently been updated. (Access to the ITSO collection is free to registered Oracle.com members -- and that membership is free.) All nine documents fall within the Service Oriented Architecture section of the ITSO collection, and cover the following topics: SOA Practitioner Guides Creating an SOA Roadmap (PDF, 54 pages, published: February 2012) The secret to successful SOA is to build a roadmap that can be successfully executed. SOA offers an opportunity to adopt an iterative technique to deliver solutions incrementally. This document offers a structured, iterative methodology to help you stay focused on business results, mitigate technology and organizational risk, and deliver successful SOA projects. A Framework for SOA Governance (PDF, 58 pages, published: February 2012) Successful SOA requires a strong governance strategy that designs-in measurement, management, and enforcement procedures. Enterprise SOA adoption introduces new assets, processes, technologies, standards, roles, etc. which require application of appropriate governance policies and procedures. This document offers a framework for defining and building a proper SOA governance model. Determining ROI of SOA through Reuse (PDF, 28 pages, published: February 2012) SOA offers the opportunity to save millions of dollars annually through reuse. Sharing common services intuitively reduces workload, increases developer productivity, and decreases maintenance costs. This document provides an approach for estimating the reuse value of the various software assets contained in a typical portfolio. Identifying and Discovering Services (PDF, 64 pages, published: March 2012) What services should we build? How can we promote the reuse of existing services? A sound approach to answer these questions is a primary measure for the success of a SOA initiative. This document describes a pragmatic approach for collecting the necessary information for identifying proper services and facilitating service reuse. Software Engineering in an SOA Environment (PDF, 66 pages, published: March 2012) Traditional software delivery methods are too narrowly focused and need to be adjusted to enable SOA. This document describes an engineering approach for delivering projects within an SOA environment. It identifies the unique software engineering challenges faced by enterprises adopting SOA and provides a framework to remove the hurdles and improve the efficiency of the SOA initiative. SOA Reference Architectures SOA Foundation (PDF, 70 pages, published: February 2012) This document describes they key tenets for SOA design, development, and execution environments. Topics include: service definition, service layering, service types, the service model, composite applications, invocation patterns, and standards. SOA Infrastructure (PDF, 86 pages, published: February 2012) Properly architected, SOA provides a robust and manageable infrastructure that enables faster solution delivery. This document describes the role of infrastructure and its capabilities. Topics include: logical architecture, deployment views, and Oracle product mapping. SOA White Papers and Data Sheets Oracle's Approach to SOA (white paper) (PDF, 14 pages, published: February 2012) Oracle has developed a pragmatic, holistic approach, based on years of experience with numerous companies to help customers successfully adopt SOA and realize measureable business benefits. This executive datasheet and whitepaper describe Oracle's proven approach to SOA. Oracle's Approach to SOA (data sheet) (PDF, 3 pages, published: March 2012) SOA adoption is complex and success is far from assured. This is why Oracle has developed a pragmatic, holistic approach, based on years of experience with numerous companies, to help customers successfully adopt SOA and realize measurable business benefits. This data sheet provides an executive overview of Oracle's proven approach to SOA.

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• DAC pack up all your troubles

  - by Tony Davis

  Visual Studio 2010, or perhaps its apparently-forthcoming sister, "SQL Studio", is being geared up to become the natural way for developers to create databases. Central to this drive is the introduction of 'data-tier application components', or DACs. Applications are developed as normal but when it comes to deployment, instead of supplying the DBA with a bunch of scripts to create the required database objects, the developer creates a single DAC Package ("DAC Pack"); a zipped XML file containing all the database objects needed by the application, along with versioning information, policies for deployment, and so on. It's an intriguing prospect. Developers can work on their development database using their existing tools and source control, and then package up the changes into a single DACPAC for deployment and management. DBAs get an "application level view" of how their instances are being used and the ability to collectively, rather than individually, manage the objects. The DBA needing to manage a large number of relatively small databases can use "DAC snapshots" to get a quick overview of what has changed across all the databases they manage. The reason that DAC packs haven't caused more excitement is that they can only be pushed to SQL Server 2008 R2, and they must be developed or inspected using Visual Studio 2010. Furthermore, what we see right now in VS2010 is more of a 'work-in-progress' or 'vision of the future', with serious shortcomings and restrictions that render it unsuitable for anything but small 'non-critical' departmental databases. The first problem is that DAC packs support a limited set of schema objects (corresponding closely to the features available on 'Azure'). This means that Service Broker queues, CLR Objects, and perhaps most critically security (permissions, certificates etc.), are off-limits. Applications that require these objects will need to add them via a post-deployment TSQL script, rather defeating the whole idea. More worrying still is the process for altering a database with a DAC pack. The grand 'collective' philosophy, whereby a single XML file can be used for deploying and managing builds and changes, extends, unfortunately, to database upgrades. Any change to a database object will result in the creation of a new database, copying the data from the old version, nuking the previous one, and then renaming the new one. Simple eh? The problem is that even something as trivial as adding a comment to a stored procedure in a 5GB database will require the server to find at least twice as much space, as well sufficient elbow-room in the transaction log for copying the largest table. Of course, you'll need to take the database offline for the full course of the deployment, which is likely to take a long time if there is a lot of data. This upgrade/rename process breaks the log chain, makes any subsequent full restore operation highly complicated, and will also break log shipping. As with any grand vision, the devil is always in the detail. It's hard to fathom why Microsoft hasn't used a SQL Compare-style approach to the upgrade process, altering a database with a change script, and this will surely be adopted in the near future. Something had to be in place for VS2010, but right now DAC packs only make sense for Azure. For this, they're cute, but hardly compelling. Nevertheless, DBAs would do well to get familiar with VS 2010 and DAC packs. Like it or not, they're both coming. Cheers, Tony.

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• Recent improvements in Console Performance

  - by loren.konkus

  Recently, the WebLogic Server development and support organizations have worked with a number of customers to quantify and improve the performance of the Administration Console in large, distributed configurations where there is significant latency in the communications between the administration server and managed servers. These improvements fall into two categories: Constraining the amount of time that the Console stalls waiting for communication Reducing and streamlining the amount of data required for an update A few releases ago, we added support for a configurable domain-wide mbean "Invocation Timeout" value on the Console's configuration: general, advanced section for a domain. The default value for this setting is 0, which means wait indefinitely and was chosen for compatibility with the behavior of previous releases. This configuration setting applies to all mbean communications between the admin server and managed servers, and is the first line of defense against being blocked by a stalled or completely overloaded managed server. Each site should choose an appropriate timeout value for their environment and network latency. In the next release of WebLogic Server, we've added an additional console preference, "Management Operation Timeout", to the Console's shared preference page. This setting further constrains how long certain console pages will wait for slowly responding servers before returning partial results. While not all Console pages support this yet, key pages such as the Servers Configuration and Control table pages and the Deployments Control pages have been updated to support this. For example, if a user requests a Servers Table page and a Management Operation Timeout occurs, the table is displayed with both local configuration and remote runtime information from the responding managed servers and only local configuration information for servers that did not yet respond. This means that a troublesome managed server does not impede your ability to manage your domain using the Console. To support these changes, these Console pages have been re-written to use the Work Management feature of WebLogic Server to interact with each server or deployment concurrently, which further improves the responsiveness of these pages. The basic algorithm for these pages is: For each configuration mbean (ie, Servers) populate rows with configuration attributes from the fast, local mbean server Find a WorkManager For each server, Create a Work instance to obtain runtime mbean attributes for the server Schedule Work instance in the WorkManager Call WorkManager.waitForAll to wait WorkItems to finish, constrained by Management Operation Timeout For each WorkItem, if the runtime information obtained was not complete, add a message indicating which server has incomplete data Display collected data in table In addition to these changes to constrain how long the console waits for communication, a number of other changes have been made to reduce the amount and scope of managed server interactions for key pages. For example, in previous releases the Deployments Control table looked at the status of a deployment on every managed server, even those servers that the deployment was not currently targeted on. (This was done to handle an edge case where a deployment's target configuration was changed while it remained running on previously targeted servers.) We decided supporting that edge case did not warrant the performance impact for all, and instead only look at the status of a deployment on the servers it is targeted to. Comprehensive status continues to be available if a user clicks on the 'status' field for a deployment. Finally, changes have been made to the System Status portlet to reduce its impact on Console page display times. Obtaining health information for this display requires several mbean interactions with managed servers. In previous releases, this mbean interaction occurred with every display, and any delay or impediment in these interactions was reflected in the display time for every page. To reduce this impact, we've made several changes in this portlet: Using Work Management to obtain health concurrently Applying the operation timeout configuration to constrain how long we will wait Caching health information to reduce the cost during rapid navigation from page to page and only obtaining new health information if the previous information is over 30 seconds old. Eliminating heath collection if this portlet is minimized. Together, these Console changes have resulted in significant performance improvements for the customers with large configurations and high latency that we have worked with during their development, and some lesser performance improvements for those with small configurations and very fast networks. These changes will be included in the 11g Rel 1 patch set 2 (10.3.3.0) release of WebLogic Server.

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• 65536% Autogrowth!

  - by Tara Kizer

  Twice a year, we move our production systems to our disaster recovery site.  Last Saturday night was one of those days.  There are about 50 SQL Server databases to be moved to the DR site, which is done via database mirroring.  It takes only a few seconds to failover, but some databases have a bit more involved work such as setting up replication.  Everything went relatively smooth, but we encountered a weird bug on our most mission critical system.  After everything was successfully failed over to the DR site, it was noticed that mirroring was in a suspended state on one of the databases.  We thought we had run into a SQL Server 2005 bug that we had been encountering and were working with Microsoft on a fix.  Microsoft did fix it in both SQL Server 2005 service pack 3 cumulative update package 13 and service pack 4 cumulative update package 2, however SP3 CU13 and SP4 both recently failed on this system so we were not patched yet with the bug fix.  As the suspended state was causing us issues with replication, we dropped mirroring.  We then noticed we had 10MB of free disk space on the mount point where the principal’s data files are stored.  I knew something went amiss as this system should have at least 150GB free on that mount point.  I immediately checked the main database’s data file and was shocked to see an autgrowth size of 65536%.  The data file autogrew right before mirroring went into the suspended state. 65536%! I didn’t have a lot of time to research if this autgrowth problem was a known SQL Server bug, so I deferred that research to today.  A quick Google search yielded no results but emphasis on “quick”.  I checked our performance system, which was recently restored with a copy of the affected production database, and found the autogrowth setting to be 512MB.  So this autogrowth bug was encountered sometime in the last two weeks.  On February 26th, we had attempted to install SQL 2005 SP4 on production, however it had failed (PSS case open with Microsoft).  I suspected that the SP4 failure was somehow related to this autgrowth bug although that turned out not to be the case. I then tweeted (@TaraKizer) about this problem to see if the SQL Server community (#sqlhelp) had any insights.  It seems several people have either heard of this bug or encountered it.  Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter) referred me to this Connect item. Our affected database originated on SQL Server 2000 and was upgraded to SQL Server 2005 in 2007.  Back on SQL Server 2000, we were using the default file growth setting which was a percentage.  Sometime after the 2005 upgrade is when we changed it to 512MB.  Our situation seemed to fit the bug Aaron referred to me, so now the question was whether Microsoft had fixed it yet. I received a reply to my tweet from Amit Banerjee (twitter) that it had been fixed in SP3 CU1 (KB958004).  My affected system is SP3 CU8, so I was initially confused why we had encountered the bug.  Because I don’t read things fully, I had missed that there are additional steps you have to follow after applying the bug fix.  Amit set me straight.  Although you can read this information in the KB article, I will also copy it here in case you are as lazy as me and miss the most important section of it (although if you are as lazy as me, you won’t have read this far down my blog post): This hotfix will prevent only future occurrences of this problem. For example, if you restore a database from SQL Server 2000 to a SQL Server 2005 instance that contains this hotfix, this problem will not occur. However, if you already have a database that is affected by this problem, you must follow these steps to resolve this problem manually: Apply this hotfix. Set the file growth settings for the affected files to percentage settings, and then set the settings back to megabyte settings. Take the database offline, and then bring it back online. Verify that the values of the is_percent_growth column are correct in the sys.database_files system table and in the sys.master_files system table.

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• Multitenant Design for SQL Azure: White Paper Available

  - by Herve Roggero

  Cloud computing is about scaling out all your application tiers, from web application to the database layer. In fact, the whole promise of Azure is to pay for just what you need. You need more IIS servers? No problemo... just spin another web server. You expect to double your storage needs for Azure Tables? No problemo; you are covered there too... just pay for your storage needs. But what about the database tier, SQL Azure? How do you add new databases easily, and transparently, so that your application simply uses more of SQL Azure if its needs to? Without changing a single line of code? And what if you need to scale back down? Welcome to the world of database scalability. There are many terms that describe database scalability, including data federation, multitenant designs, and even NoSQL depending on the technical solution you are implementing.  Because SQL Azure is a transactional database system, NoSQL is not really an option. However data federation and multitenant designs offer some very interesting scalability options that are worth considering. Data federation, a feature of SQL Azure that will be offered in the future, offers very interesting capabilities available natively on the SQL Azure platform. More to come in a few weeks... Multitenant designs on the other hand are design practices and technologies designed to help you reach flexible scalability options not available otherwise. The first incarnation of such a method was made available on CodePlex as an open source project (http://enzosqlshard.codeplex.com).  This project was an attempt to provide a sharding library for educational purposes.  All that sounds really cool... and really esoteric... almost a form of database "voodoo"... However after being on multiple Azure projects I am starting to see a real need. Customers want to be able to free themselves from the database tier, so that if they have 10 new customers tomorrow, all they need to do is add 2 more SQL Azure instances. It's that simple. How you achieve this, and suggested application design guidelines, are available in a white paper I just published.  The white paper offers two primary sections. The first section describes the business and technical problem at hand, and how to classify it according to specific design patterns. For example, I discuss compressed shards through schema separation. The second section offers a method for addressing the needs of a multitenant design using a new library, the big bother of the codeplex project mentioned previously (that I created earlier this year), complete with management interface and such. A Beta of this platform will be made available within weeks; as soon as the documentation will be ready.   I would like to ask you to drop me a quick email at [email protected] if you are going to download the white paper. It's not required, but it would help me get in touch with you for feedback.  You can download this white paper here:   http://www.bluesyntax.net/files/EnzoFramework.pdf . Thank you, and I am looking for feedback, thoughts and implementation opportunities.

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• Hide and Unhide Worksheets and Workbooks in Excel 2007 & 2010

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Hiding worksheets can be a simple way to protect data in Excel, or just a way reduce the clutter of a some tabs. Here are a couple very easy ways to hide and unhide worksheets and workbooks in Excel 2007 / 2010. Hiding a Worksheet Select the Worksheet you’d like to hide by clicking on the tab at the bottom. By holding down the Ctrl key while clicking you can select multiple tabs at one time. On the Home tab, click on Format, which can be found in the Cells group. Under Visibility,  select Hide & Unhide, then Hide Sheet.   You can also simply right-click on the tab, and select Hide.   Your worksheet will no longer be visible, however, the data contained in the worksheet can still be referenced on other worksheets.   Unhide a Worksheet To unhide a worksheet, you just do the opposite. On the Home tab, click on Format in the Cells group and then under Visibility,  select Hide & Unhide, then Unhide Sheet.   Or, you can right-click on any visible tab, and select Unhide.   In the Unhide pop up window, select the worksheet to unhide and click “OK.” Note: Although you can hide multiple sheets at once, you can only unhide one sheet at a time. Very Hidden Mode While hidden mode is nice, it’s not exactly ultra-secure. If you’d like to pump the security up a notch, there is also Very Hidden mode. To access Very Hidden setting, we’ll have to use the built-in Visual Basic Editor by hitting the Alt + F11 keys. Select the worksheet you wish to hide from the dropdown list under Properties or by single clicking the worksheet in the VBAProject window. Next, set the Visible property to  2 – xlSheetVeryHidden. Close out of the Visual Basic Editor when finished.   When the Very Hidden attribute is set on a worksheet, Unhide Sheet is still unavailable from within the Format setting on the Home tab.   To remove the Very Hidden attribute and display the worksheet again, go back into the Visual Basic Editor by hitting Alt + F11 again and setting the Visible property back to –1 – xlSheetVisible.  Close out of the Editor when finished. Hiding a Workbook To hide the entire Workbook, select the View tab, and then click the Hide button. You’ll see the Workbook has disappeared. Unhide a Workbook Select the View tab and click Unhide… … and your Workbook will be visible again.   Just a few simple ways to hide and unhide your Excel worksheets and workbooks. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Copy Worksheets in Excel 2007 & 2010Add Background Pictures To Excel 2007 WorksheetsMake Row Labels In Excel 2007 Freeze For Easier ReadingImport Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelMagnify Selected Cells In Excel 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster

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• Joy! | Important Information About Your iPad 3G

  - by Jeff Julian

  Looks like I was one of the lucky 114,000 who AT&T lost their email to “hackers”.  Why is “hackers” in “double quotes”.  I can just imagine some executive at AT&T in their “Oh No, We Messed Up Meeting” saying, what happened?  Then someone replied, well we have had a breach and “hackers” broke in (using the quote in the air gesture) and stole our iPad 3G customers emails. Oh well, I am sure my email has been sold and sold again by many different vendors, why not AT&T now.  At least Dorothy Attwood could have gave us her email to give to someone else instead of blinking it through a newsletter system. June 13, 2010 Dear Valued AT&T Customer, Recently there was an issue that affected some of our customers with AT&T 3G service for iPad resulting in the release of their customer email addresses. I am writing to let you know that no other information was exposed and the matter has been resolved.  We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, you can continue to use your AT&T 3G service on your iPad with confidence. Here’s some additional detail: On June 7 we learned that unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.  The self-described hackers wrote software code to randomly generate numbers that mimicked serial numbers of the AT&T SIM card for iPad – called the integrated circuit card identification (ICC-ID) – and repeatedly queried an AT&T web address.   When a number generated by the hackers matched an actual ICC-ID, the authentication page log-in screen was returned to the hackers with the email address associated with the ICC-ID already populated on the log-in screen. The hackers deliberately went to great efforts with a random program to extract possible ICC-IDs and capture customer email addresses.  They then put together a list of these emails and distributed it for their own publicity. As soon as we became aware of this situation, we took swift action to prevent any further unauthorized exposure of customer email addresses.  Within hours, AT&T disabled the mechanism that automatically populated the email address. Now, the authentication page log-in screen requires the user to enter both their email address and their password. I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk.  The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad.  AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected. While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website. AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites.   We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law. AT&T acted quickly to protect your information – and we promise to keep working around the clock to keep your information safe.  Thank you very much for your understanding, and for being an AT&T customer. Sincerely, Dorothy Attwood Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T Technorati Tags: AT&T,iPad 3G,Email

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• Oracle EMEA News Digest - May 2014

  - by Steve Walker

  Systems Oracle introduced a technology preview of an OpenStack® distribution that allows Oracle Linux and Oracle VM users to work with the open source cloud software. This provides customers with additional choices and interoperability while taking advantage of the efficiency, performance, scalability, and security of Oracle Linux and Oracle VM. The distribution is delivered as part of the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Premier Support offerings, at no additional cost. Oracle plans to work further with the OpenStack community to develop and enhance its enterprise-class capabilities to meet customer demands. Also in the Open Source arena, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL Fabric. MySQL Fabric provides an integrated system that makes it simpler to manage groups of MySQL databases. It delivers both high availability - via failure detection and failover - and scalability through automated data sharding. Oracle Database, Middleware and Technology The company made two announcements for Oracle Tuxedo, the #1 application server for C, C++, COBOL and Java deployments in private cloud or traditional data center environments. With enhanced management and monitoring features and tighter integration with Oracle technologies, the latest release of Oracle Tuxedo 12c enables organizations to dramatically increase application throughput, while reducing total cost of ownership and time to market for new application development and deployment. Oracle also introduced the latest release of its mainframe application rehosting platform, Oracle Tuxedo ART 12c, to help organizations speed up migration projects and accelerate the adoption of the new environment by current IT staff. It enables organizations to accelerate the rehosting of IBM mainframe applications and greatly enhance management and supportability of the rehosted applications while reducing costs and risk. Applications According to new Oracle studies, B2B and B2C commerce professionals find integrated, omni-channel customer experiences increasingly valuable to their organizations, and are continuing to invest in technologies and digital content strategies to facilitate them. The studies—one for B2B and one for B2C—surveyed e-commerce professionals in business and technology departments from around the world. Although the priorities, success metrics, and technology investments differed between the two groups, customer acquisition and retention emerged as common themes across B2B and B2C. Growing market share and enhancing customer experience are cited as top investment areas for all e-commerce professionals. In product news, Oracle announced the latest release of Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications (version 11.1.1.8.1, in case anyone asks). It includes prebuilt connectors between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards. Additionally, a new Oracle Human Resources Analytics module for developing and maintaining a skilled workforce has been introduced. In use at more than 4,000 companies worldwide, Oracle BI Applications support leading enterprise applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Oracle's Siebel CRM, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offering high-performing analytics at a lower cost. Industries For the Communications Industry, Oracle has launched a new release of the Oracle Communications Core Session Manager. This gives CSPs a new way to design, deploy and manage complex networking services and embrace next-generation technology, It provides them with an immediate entry point for  network function virtualization (NFV) efforts, allowing them to realize immediate benefits associated with network virtualization – including increased service agility and improved network resource sharing. And for the Utilities Industry, Oracle is releasing solutions with new business features and enhanced technical architecture that help position utilities for success now and into the future. Oracle has provided new releases for its customer information system,  meter data management system, customer self-service solution and mobile workforce management solution.

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• How to prepare for a programming competition? Graphs, Stacks, Trees, oh my! [closed]

  - by Simucal

  Last semester I attended ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) bi-annual programming competition at a local University. My University sent 2 teams of 3 people and we competed amongst other schools in the mid-west. We got our butts kicked. You are given a packet with about 11 problems (1 problem per page) and you have 4 hours to solve as many as you can. They'll run your program you submit against a set of data and your output must match theirs exactly. In fact, the judging is automated for the most part. In any case.. I went there fairly confident in my programming skills and I left there feeling drained and weak. It was a terribly humbling experience. In 4 hours my team of 3 people completed only one of the problems. The top team completed 4 of them and took 1st place. The problems they asked were like no problems I have ever had to answer before. I later learned that in order to solve them some of them effectively you have to use graphs/graph algorithms, trees, stacks. Some of them were simply "greedy" algo's. My question is, how can I better prepare for this semesters programming competition so I don't leave there feeling like a complete moron? What tips do you have for me to be able to answer these problems that involve graphs, trees, various "well known" algorithms? How can I easily identify the algorithm we should implement for a given problem? I have yet to take Algorithm Design in school so I just feel a little out of my element. Here are some examples of the questions asked at the competitions: ACM Problem Sets Update: Just wanted to update this since the latest competition is over. My team placed 1st for our small region (about 6-7 universities with between 1-5 teams each school) and ~15th for the midwest! So, it is a marked improvement over last years performance for sure. We also had no graduate students on our team and after reviewing the rules we found out that many teams had several! So, that would be a pretty big advantage in my own opinion. Problems this semester ranged from about 1-2 "easy" problems (ie bit manipulation, string manipulation) to hard (graph problems involving fairly complex math and network flow problems). We were able to solve 4 problems in our 5 hours. Just wanted to thank everyone for the resources they provided here, we used them for our weekly team practices and it definitely helped! Some quick tips that I have that aren't suggested below: When you are seated at your computer before the competition starts, quickly type out various data structures that you might need that you won't have access to in your languages libraries. I typed out a Graph data-structure complete with floyd-warshall and dijkstra's algorithm before the competition began. We ended up using it in our 2nd problem that we solved and this is the main reason why we solved this problem before anyone else in the midwest. We had it ready to go from the beginning. Similarly, type out the code to read in a file since this will be required for every problem. Save this answer "template" someplace so you can quickly copy/paste it to your IDE at the beginning of each problem. There are no rules on programming anything before the competition starts so get any boilerplate code out the way. We found it useful to have one person who is on permanent whiteboard duty. This is usually the person who is best at math and at working out solutions to get a head start on future problems you will be doing. One person is on permanent programming duty. Your fastest/most skilled "programmer" (most familiar with the language). This will save debugging time also. The last person has several roles between assessing the packet of problems for the next "easiest" problem, helping the person on the whiteboard work out solutions and helping the person programming work out bugs/issues. This person needs to be flexible and be able to switch between roles easily.

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• Math with Timestamp

  - by Knut Vatsendvik

  table.sql { border-width: 1px; border-spacing: 2px; border-style: dashed; border-color: #0023ff; border-collapse: separate; background-color: white; } table.sql th { border-width: 1px; padding: 1px; border-style: none; border-color: gray; background-color: white; -moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } table.sql td { border-width: 1px; padding: 3px; border-style: none; border-color: gray; background-color: white; -moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } .sql-keyword { color: #0000cd; background-color: inherit; } .sql-result { color: #458b74; background-color: inherit; } Got this little SQL quiz from a colleague.  How to add or subtract exactly 1 second from a Timestamp?  Sounded simple enough at first blink, but was a bit trickier than expected. If the data type had been a Date, we knew that we could add or subtract days, minutes or seconds using + or – sysdate + 1 to add one day sysdate - (1 / 24) to subtract one hour sysdate + (1 / 86400) to add one second Would the same arithmetic work with Timestamp as with Date? Let’s test it out with the following query SELECT   systimestamp , systimestamp + (1 / 86400) FROM dual; ---------- 03.05.2010 22.11.50,240887 +02:00 03.05.2010 The first result line shows us the system time down to fractions of seconds. The second result line shows the result as Date (as used for date calculation) meaning now that the granularity is reduced down to a second.   By using the PL/SQL dump() function, we can confirm this with the following query SELECT   dump(systimestamp) , dump(systimestamp + (1 / 86400)) FROM dual; ---------- Typ=188 Len=20: 218,7,5,4,8,53,9,0,200,46,89,20,2,0,5,0,0,0,0,0 Typ=13 Len=8: 218,7,5,4,10,53,10,0 Where typ=13 is a runtime representation for Date. So how can we increase the precision to include fractions of second? After investigating it a bit, we found out that the interval data type INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND could be used with the result of addition or subtraction being a Timestamp. Let’s try again our first query again, now using the interval data type. SELECT systimestamp,    systimestamp + INTERVAL '0 00:00:01.0' DAY TO SECOND(1) FROM dual; ---------- 03.05.2010 22.58.32,723659000 +02:00 03.05.2010 22.58.33,723659000 +02:00 Yes, it worked! To finish the story, here is one example showing how to specify an interval of 2 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes, 4 seconds and 111 thousands of a second. INTERVAL ‘2 6:30:4.111’ DAY TO SECOND(3)

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• how can I specify interleaved vertex attributes and vertex indices

  - by freefallr

  I'm writing a generic ShaderProgram class that compiles a set of Shader objects, passes args to the shader (like vertex position, vertex normal, tex coords etc), then links the shader components into a shader program, for use with glDrawArrays. My vertex data already exists in a VertexBufferObject that uses the following data structure to create a vertex buffer: class CustomVertex { public: float m_Position[3]; // x, y, z // offset 0, size = 3*sizeof(float) float m_TexCoords[2]; // u, v // offset 3*sizeof(float), size = 2*sizeof(float) float m_Normal[3]; // nx, ny, nz; float colour[4]; // r, g, b, a float padding[20]; // padded for performance }; I've already written a working VertexBufferObject class that creates a vertex buffer object from an array of CustomVertex objects. This array is said to be interleaved. It renders successfully with the following code: void VertexBufferObject::Draw() { if( ! m_bInitialized ) return; glBindBuffer( GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_nVboId ); glBindBuffer( GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_nVboIdIndex ); glEnableClientState( GL_VERTEX_ARRAY ); glEnableClientState( GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY ); glEnableClientState( GL_NORMAL_ARRAY ); glEnableClientState( GL_COLOR_ARRAY ); glVertexPointer( 3, GL_FLOAT, sizeof(CustomVertex), ((char*)NULL + 0) ); glTexCoordPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, sizeof(CustomVertex), ((char*)NULL + 12)); glNormalPointer(GL_FLOAT, sizeof(CustomVertex), ((char*)NULL + 20)); glColorPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, sizeof(CustomVertex), ((char*)NULL + 32)); glDrawElements( GL_TRIANGLES, m_nNumIndices, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, ((char*)NULL + 0) ); glDisableClientState( GL_VERTEX_ARRAY ); glDisableClientState( GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY ); glDisableClientState( GL_NORMAL_ARRAY ); glDisableClientState( GL_COLOR_ARRAY ); glBindBuffer( GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0 ); glBindBuffer( GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0 ); } Back to the Vertex Array Object though. My code for creating the Vertex Array object is as follows. This is performed before the ShaderProgram runtime linking stage, and no glErrors are reported after its steps. // Specify the shader arg locations (e.g. their order in the shader code) for( int n = 0; n < vShaderArgs.size(); n ++) glBindAttribLocation( m_nProgramId, n, vShaderArgs[n].sFieldName.c_str() ); // Create and bind to a vertex array object, which stores the relationship between // the buffer and the input attributes glGenVertexArrays( 1, &m_nVaoHandle ); glBindVertexArray( m_nVaoHandle ); // Enable the vertex attribute array (we're using interleaved array, since its faster) glBindBuffer( GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vShaderArgs[0].nVboId ); glBindBuffer( GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, vShaderArgs[0].nVboIndexId ); // vertex data for( int n = 0; n < vShaderArgs.size(); n ++ ) { glEnableVertexAttribArray(n); glVertexAttribPointer( n, vShaderArgs[n].nFieldSize, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, vShaderArgs[n].nStride, (GLubyte *) NULL + vShaderArgs[n].nFieldOffset ); AppLog::Ref().OutputGlErrors(); } This doesn't render correctly at all. I get a pattern of white specks onscreen, in the shape of the terrain rectangle, but there are no regular lines etc. Here's the code I use for rendering: void ShaderProgram::Draw() { using namespace AntiMatter; if( ! m_nShaderProgramId || ! m_nVaoHandle ) { AppLog::Ref().LogMsg("ShaderProgram::Draw() Couldn't draw object, as initialization of ShaderProgram is incomplete"); return; } glUseProgram( m_nShaderProgramId ); glBindVertexArray( m_nVaoHandle ); glDrawArrays( GL_TRIANGLES, 0, m_nNumTris ); glBindVertexArray(0); glUseProgram(0); } Can anyone see errors or omissions in either the VAO creation code or rendering code? thanks!

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• Come see us at JavaU at JavaOne!

  - by tmcginn

  In just a little under a month, JavaOne will be in full swing (no pun intended) and thousands of Java developers will gather to hear the latest Java news, immerse themselves in Java technology and learn some new things. This year, I am fortunate enough to be able to attend, along with my Java curriculum development colleagues Matt Heimer and Mike Williams. We start our week at JavaOne teaching a one-day session at JavaU on Sunday morning. If you have never attended a training session through JavaU, you should check it out. There are some terrific sessions this year, and it might help to justify your trip to JavaOne if you can say it was for training! This year I am teaching a one day session on Java SE 7 New Features - a great session for anyone interested in the specific details of what is new in Java SE 7. Matt is teaching a one-day session on Developing Portable Java EE applications with the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 API and Java Persistence 2.0 API  EJB, and Mike is doing a one-day session on developing Rich Client applications with Java SE 7 using Java FX 2. I asked Matt and Mike to tell me what developers can expect from their sessions. Matt: "My session will get you up to speed on everything you need to know to create portable Java EE 6 applications using EJB 3.1 and JPA 2. I am going to cover why everyone can benefit from using EJBs (and why developers should relearn them if they haven't looked at them for years). Students who attend my session will see JPA examples showcasing how to use relational databases in an enterprise applications without programming to JDBC and without writing SQL statements. EJB and JPA benefit from being paired together, so I will also show how transaction management is easier in a container. I encourage students to bring a laptop and code as they learn!" Mike: "My session covers how to develop a rich client application using Java FX 2. Starting with the basic concepts of JavaFX, students will see how a JavaFX application is built from its layout, to its controls, to its data structures. In addition, more advanced controls like charts, smart tables, and transitions will be added to the application. Finally, a quick review of JavaFX concurrency and data binding is included. Blended with the core concepts the session will include some of the latest JavaFX technology. This includes using Scene Builder to create a JavaFX UI and connecting your XML UI definition to Java code.  In addition, packaging of the JavaFX application will be covered with some examples of the new native packaging features." As I mentioned, my session covers the changes in the Java for SE 7, including the  language changes that were voted into Java SE 7 from Project Coin. I will also look at how you can take advantage if the the new I/O library (NIO.2) for writing applications that work with files, directories and file systems. We will also look at the changes in Asynchronous I/O that are a part of the changes in NIO/2. We will spend some time looking at the changes to the Java Virtual Machine as well, including support for dynamically typed languages (JSR-292). We will spend some time looking at the Java Concurrency enhancements (JSR-166), including the new Fork/Join framework. And we'll round out the day with a look at changes in Swing, XML and a number of smaller changes in the API's. And, if these topics aren't grabbing your interest, take a look at the other 10 sessions that range from topics on architecture to how to pass the Oracle Certified Programmer I and II exams. See you soon!

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• Is Oracle Policy Automation a Fit for My Agency? I'll bet it is.

  - by jeffrey.waterman

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Recently, I stumbled upon a new(-ish) whitepaper now posted on the Oracle Technology Network around Oracle Policy Automation (OPA). This paper is certain to become a must read for any customer interested in rules automation. What is OPA?  If you are not sitting in your favorite Greek restaurant waiting for that order of Saganaki to appear, OPA is Oracle’s solution for automated streamlining, standardizing, and the maintenance of policy. It is a specialized rules platform that simplifies the automation of rules and policies, putting the analysis in the hands of the analysts, not the IT organization. In other words, OPA allows the organization to be more efficient by eliminating (or at a minimum, reducing the engagement of) the middle man from the process. The whitepaper I mention above is titled, “Is Oracle Policy Automation a Good Fit for My Business?”. This short document walks the reader through use cases and advice for the reader to consider when deciding if OPA is right for their agency. The paper outlines many different scenarios, different uses of OPA in production today and, where OPA may not be a good fit. Many of the use case examples revolve around end user questionnaires or analyst research. What is often overlooked is OPA’s ability to act as a rules engine behind the scenes. That is, take inputs from one source (e.g., personnel data), process that data in OPA and send the output (e.g., pay data with benefits deductions) to a second source. The rules have been automated, no necessary human intervention to perform analysis. A few of my customers have used the embedded OPA solution to improve transaction processing and reduce the time spent analyzing exceptions. I suggest any reader whose organization is reliant on or deals with high complexity, volume or volatility in rules that are based on documentation – or which need to be documented – take a look at Oracle Policy Automation. You can find the white paper on Oracle Technology Network. You can find the white paper in the Oracle Policy Automation of the OTN. You can find more information around OPA on oracle.com. Finally, you can send me a question any time at [email protected] Thank you for reading. If you have any topics around Oracle Applications in the Federal or Public Sector industries you would like to see addressed in this blog, please leave suggestions in the comments section and I will do my best to address in a future post.

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• How to display a hierarchical skill tree in php

  - by user3587554

  If I have skill data set up in a tree format (where earlier skills are prerequisites for later ones), how would I display it as a tree, using php? The parent would be on top and have 3 children. Each of these children can then have one more child so its parent would be directly above it. I'm having trouble figuring out how to add the root element in the middle of the top div, and the child of the children below each child of the root. I'm not looking for code, but an explanation of how to do it. My data in array form is this: Data: Array ( [1] => Array ( [id] => 1 [title] => Jutsu [description] => Skill that makes you awesomer at using ninjutsu [tiers] => 1 [prereq] => [image] => images/skills/jutsu.png [children] => Array ( [2] => Array ( [id] => 2 [title] => fireball [description] => Increase your damage with fire jutsu and weapons [tiers] => 5 [prereq] => 1 [image] => images/skills/fireball.png [children] => Array ( [5] => Array ( [id] => 5 [title] => pin point [description] => Increases jutsu accuracy [tiers] => 5 [prereq] => 2 [image] => images/skills/pinpoint.png ) ) ) [3] => Array ( [id] => 3 [title] => synergy [description] => Reduce the amount of chakra needed to use ninjutsu [tiers] => 1 [prereq] => 1 [image] => images/skills/synergy.png ) [4] => Array ( [id] => 4 [title] => ebb & flow [description] => Increase the damage of water jutsu, water weapons, and reduce the damage of jutsu and weapons that use water element [tiers] => 5 [prereq] => 1 [image] => images/skills/ebbandflow.png [children] => Array ( [6] => Array ( [id] => 6 [title] => IQ [description] => Decrease the time it takes to learn a jutsu [tiers] => 5 [prereq] => 4 [image] => images/skills/iq.png ) ) ) ) ) ) An example would be this demo image minus the hover stuff.

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• Cloud Apps News @#OOW12

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  All eyes were on Oracle this past week and the news cycle was in full swing. What better time to make some key announcements that were guaranteed to create buzz ... and so we did. The name of the game was Cloud! Here are the key Cloud announcements for Apps, which included Fusion Tap that enables mobility across all Cloud Apps, HCM customer momentum in the Cloud, and our very first ERP Cloud Services customer. Oracle Unveils Oracle Fusion Tap for the iPadOracle Fusion Tap - Productivity Amplified Anywhere, Anytime "Both the enterprise and technology providers must recognize the need to innovate and adapt for the increasing mobility of the workforce - not just for sales teams, but across the organization," said Carter Lusher, Research Fellow and Chief Analyst of Enterprise Applications Ecosystem, Ovum. "A mobile application that quickly and powerfully allows employees to make connections, analyze data, and complete activities at any time and wherever they may be located drives new levels of business value and enhances efficiency. Frankly, mobile access is no longer a 'nice to have' but a 'must have.'"  "The mobile workforce is a business reality, and Oracle Fusion Tap is an example of how Oracle delivers mobile and cloud innovations that fundamentally improve productivity and how we work," said Chris Leone, Senior Vice President of Application Development, Oracle. "With Oracle Fusion Tap users will have an all-in-one, easily extensible app that puts mission-critical data and colleague connection at their fingertips." The entire release is available here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1855392 Customers Live on Oracle Fusion Human Capital ManagementOracle HCM Cloud Service Helps Power HR's Contribution to the Business "More than 25 of the 100-plus customers who have selected Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) are already live. Ardent Leisure, Peach Aviation, Toshiba Medical Systems and Zillow have deployed Oracle HCM Cloud Service and are using it to transform their HR operations. They join companies such as Principal Financial Group and Elizabeth Arden, who are already using Oracle HCM Cloud Service to help manage international growth and deliver pervasive, role-based, configurable solutions to their employees. With these recent go-lives, Oracle takes a leading position in successfully bringing live HCM customers in the cloud."  "As a technology company, Zillow looked to a partner who could scale with us. Zillow has gone live on Oracle HCM Cloud Service, which will give us the ability automate and streamline HR operations for our employees in the near future," said Sarah Bilton, Senior Director HR, Zillow. Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859573 Lending Club Selects Oracle ERP Cloud Service to Help Increase Insight and EfficienciesOracle ERP Cloud Service Provides an Open Architecture, Best-of-Breed Decision-Making, and Scalability in the Cloud "Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, has selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service to help improve decision-making and workflow, implement robust reporting, and take advantage of the inherent scalability and cost savings provided by the cloud. With more than 76,000 borrowers and 90,000 investors Lending Club utilizes technology and innovation to reduce the cost of traditional banking and offer borrowers better rates and investors better returns.  After an extensive search, Lending Club selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service due to the breadth and depth of capabilities and ongoing innovation of Oracle ERP Cloud Service, as well as Oracle's open architecture, industry leadership and commitment to partners." "Lending Club is an innovative, data-intensive, high-growth company and we needed a solution and partner that could match us," said Carrie Dolan, CFO, Lending Club. "We conducted a thorough review of our options, and Oracle ERP Cloud Service was the clear winner in terms of capabilities and business value as well as commitment to us as a customer." Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859020

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• Why is there no service-oriented language?

  - by Wolfgang

  Edit: To avoid further confusion: I am not talking about web services and such. I am talking about structuring applications internally, it's not about how computers communicate. It's about programming languages, compilers and how the imperative programming paradigm is extended. Original: In the imperative programming field, we saw two paradigms in the past 20 years (or more): object-oriented (OO), and service-oriented (SO) aka. component-based (CB). Both paradigms extend the imperative programming paradigm by introducing their own notion of modules. OO calls them objects (and classes) and lets them encapsulates both data (fields) and procedures (methods) together. SO, in contrast, separates data (records, beans, ...) from code (components, services). However, only OO has programming languages which natively support its paradigm: Smalltalk, C++, Java and all other JVM-compatibles, C# and all other .NET-compatibles, Python etc. SO has no such native language. It only comes into existence on top of procedural languages or OO languages: COM/DCOM (binary, C, C++), CORBA, EJB, Spring, Guice (all Java), ... These SO frameworks clearly suffer from the missing native language support of their concepts. They start using OO classes to represent services and records. This leads to designs where there is a clear distinction between classes that have methods only (services) and those that have fields only (records). Inheritance between services or records is then simulated by inheritance of classes. Technically, its not kept so strictly but in general programmers are adviced to make classes to play only one of the two roles. They use additional, external languages to represent the missing parts: IDL's, XML configurations, Annotations in Java code, or even embedded DSL like in Guice. This is especially needed, but not limited to, since the composition of services is not part of the service code itself. In OO, objects create other objects so there is no need for such facilities but for SO there is because services don't instantiate or configure other services. They establish an inner-platform effect on top of OO (early EJB, CORBA) where the programmer has to write all the code that is needed to "drive" SO. Classes represent only a part of the nature of a service and lots of classes have to be written to form a service together. All that boiler plate is necessary because there is no SO compiler which would do it for the programmer. This is just like some people did it in C for OO when there was no C++. You just pass the record which holds the data of the object as a first parameter to the procedure which is the method. In a OO language this parameter is implicit and the compiler produces all the code that we need for virtual functions etc. For SO, this is clearly missing. Especially the newer frameworks extensively use AOP or introspection to add the missing parts to a OO language. This doesn't bring the necessary language expressiveness but avoids the boiler platform code described in the previous point. Some frameworks use code generation to produce the boiler plate code. Configuration files in XML or annotations in OO code is the source of information for this. Not all of the phenomena that I mentioned above can be attributed to SO but I hope it clearly shows that there is a need for a SO language. Since this paradigm is so popular: why isn't there one? Or maybe there are some academic ones but at least the industry doesn't use one.

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• VirtualBox 3.2 is released! A Red Letter Day?

  - by Fat Bloke

  Big news today! A new release of VirtualBox packed full of innovation and improvements. Over the next few weeks we'll take a closer look at some of these new features in a lot more depth, but today we'll whet your appetite with the headline descriptions. To start with, we should point out that this is the first Oracle-branded version which makes today a real Red-letter day ;-)  Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2 Version 3.2 moves VirtualBox forward in 3 main areas ( handily, all beginning with "P" ) : performance, power and supported guest operating system platforms.  Let's take a look: Performance New Latest Intel hardware support - Harnessing the latest in chip-level support for virtualization, VirtualBox 3.2 supports new Intel Core i5 and i7 processor and Intel Xeon processor 5600 Series support for Unrestricted Guest Execution bringing faster boot times for everything from Windows to Solaris guests; New Large Page support - Reducing the size and overhead of key system resources, Large Page support delivers increased performance by enabling faster lookups and shorter table creation times. New In-hypervisor Networking - Significant optimization of the networking subsystem has reduced context switching between guests and host, increasing network throughput by up to 25%. New New Storage I/O subsystem - VirtualBox 3.2 offers a completely re-worked virtual disk subsystem which utilizes asynchronous I/O to achieve high-performance whilst maintaining high data integrity; New Remote Video Acceleration - The unique built-in VirtualBox Remote Display Protocol (VRDP), which is primarily used in virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, has been enhanced to deliver video acceleration. This delivers a rich user experience coupled with reduced computational expense, which is vital when servers are running hundreds of virtual machines; Power New Page Fusion - Traditional Page Sharing techniques have suffered from long and expensive cache construction as pages are scrutinized as candidates for de-duplication. Taking a smarter approach, VirtualBox Page Fusion uses intelligence in the guest virtual machine to determine much more rapidly and accurately those pages which can be eliminated thereby increasing the capacity or vm density of the system; New Memory Ballooning- Ballooning provides another method to increase vm density by allowing the memory of one guest to be recouped and made available to others; New Multiple Virtual Monitors - VirtualBox 3.2 now supports multi-headed virtual machines with up to 8 virtual monitors attached to a guest. Each virtual monitor can be a host window, or be mapped to the hosts physical monitors; New Hot-plug CPU's - Modern operating systems such Windows Server 2008 x64 Data Center Edition or the latest Linux server platforms allow CPUs to be dynamically inserted into a system to provide incremental computing power while the system is running. Version 3.2 introduces support for Hot-plug vCPUs, allowing VirtualBox virtual machines to be given more power, with zero-downtime of the guest; New Virtual SAS Controller - VirtualBox 3.2 now offers a virtual SAS controller, enabling it to run the most demanding of high-end guests; New Online Snapshot Merging - Snapshots are powerful but can eat up disk space and need to be pruned from time to time. Historically, machines have needed to be turned off to delete or merge snapshots but with VirtualBox 3.2 this operation can be done whilst the machines are running. This allows sophisticated system management with minimal interruption of operations; New OVF Enhancements - VirtualBox has supported the OVF standard for virtual machine portability for some time. Now with 3.2, VirtualBox specific configuration data is also stored in the standard allowing richer virtual machine definitions without compromising portability; New Guest Automation - The Guest Automation APIs allow host-based logic to drive operations in the guest; Platforms New USB Keyboard and Mouse - Support more guests that require USB input devices; New Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 - Support for the latest version of Oracle's flagship Linux platform; New Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") - Support for both the desktop and server version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution; And as a man once said, "just one more thing" ... New Mac OS X (experimental) - On Apple hardware only, support for creating virtual machines run Mac OS X. All in all this is a pretty powerful release packed full of innovation and speedups. So what are you waiting for?  -FB 

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for August 19-26, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of August 19-26, 2012. Now Available: Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 (3.2.09.23) The latest release of Oracle SQl Developer includes UI enhancements, 12c database support, and bug fixes. ADF Tutorial Chapter 3: Creating a Master-Detail taskflow | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena continues his ADF tutorial with a chapter devoted to view layer and using the data control to build pages that allow user to update reference data. GlassFish Community Event at JavaOne 2012 Don't miss out on this exclusive GlassFish Community Event on Sunday, September 30th from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in Moscone South. Register Now! Part of JavaOne 2012. Oracle BI 11g Book Authors – Podcast #9 | Art of Business Intelligence In this home-grown podcast, authors Christian Screen, Haroun Khan, and Adrian Ward talk about their new book, "Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial," about their sessions at Oracle OpenWorld, and about their ORACLENERD t-shirts. Oracle Service Bus duplicate message check using Coherence | Jan van Zoggel "Giving the fact that every message on our ESB has an unique messageID element in the SOAP header we could store this on disk, database or in memory,"says Jan van Zoggel. "With the help of Oracle Coherence this last option, in memory, is relatively simple." Even simpler with Jan's detailed instructions. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Boston - Sept 12 There are easier ways to increase your IT brainpower. Skip the electrodes and register for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, September 12, 2012. This free event includes 8 technical sessions, panel Q&A, roundtable discussions—and a free lunch. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Boston Marriott Burlington, One Burlington Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01803. Oracle BPM enable BAM | Peter Paul van de Beek "BAM enables you to make decisions based on real-time information gathered from your running processes," says Peter Paul van de Beek. "With BPMN processes you can use the standard Business Indicators that the BPM Suite offers you and use them to with BAM without much extra effort." Sample Application for Switching Application Module Data Sources | Andrejus Baranovskis A sample application and how-to guide from Oracle ACE Director and ADF expert Andrejus Baranovskis. ORCLville: Some Basic BI Thoughts "If we'd stop to consider what business intelligence really is, many of us might grow a different perspective about how we implement enterprise apps," says Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter. "What if we implemented with an eye to what kind of information we'd like to get from our enterprise apps?" Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released |Oracle's Virtualization Blog Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 was just released at the community and Oracle download sites, reports the Fat Bloke. This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Thought for the Day "The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes

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• Oracle Announces Release of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2

  - by Jay Zuckert

  Big things sometimes come in small packages.  Today Oracle announced the availability of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 which delivers a new HR self service user experience that fundamentally changes the way managers and employees interact with the HCM system.  Earlier this year we reviewed a number of new concept designs with our Customer Advisory Boards.  With the accelerated feature pack development cycle we have adopted, these innovations are  now available to all 9.1 customers without the need for an upgrade.   There are no new products that need to be licensed for the capabilities below. For more details on Feature Pack 2, please see the Oracle press release. Included in Feature Pack 2 is a new search-based menu-free navigation that allows managers to search for employees by name and take actions directly from the secure search results.  For example, a manager can now simply type in part of an employee’s first or last name and receive meaningful results from documents related to performance, compensation, learning, recruiting, career planning and more.   Delivered actions can be initiated directly from these search results and the actions are securely tied to HCM security and user role.  The feature pack also includes new pages that will enable managers to be more productive by aggregating key employee data into a single page.  The new Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary provide a consolidated view of data related to a manager’s team and individual team members, respectively.   The Manager Dashboard displays information relevant to their direct reports including team learning, objective alignment, alerts, and pending approvals requiring their attention.  The Talent Summary provides managers with an aggregated view of talent management-related data for an individual employee including performance history, salary history, succession options, total rewards, and competencies.   The information displayed in both the Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary is configurable by system administrators and can be personalized by each of your managers. Other Feature Pack 2 enhancements allow organizations to administer Matrix or Dotted-Line Relationship Management, which addresses the challenge of tracking and maintaining project-based organizations that cut across the enterprise and geographic regions.  From within the Company Directory and Org Viewer organization charts, managers now have access to manager self-service transactions from related actions.  More than 70 manager and employee self-service transactions have been tied into the related action framework accessible from Org Viewer, Manager Dashboard, Talent Summary and Secure Enterprise Search (SES) results.  In addition to making it easier to access manager self-service transactions, the feature pack delivers streamlined transaction pages making everyday tasks such as promoting an employee faster and more efficient. With the delivery of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2, Oracle continues to deliver on its commitment to our PeopleSoft customers.  With this feature pack, HCM 9.1 customers will be able to deploy the newest functionality quickly, without a major release upgrade, and realize added value from their existing PeopleSoft investment.    For customers newly deploying 9.1, a new download with all of Feature Pack 2  will be available early next year.   This will aslo include recertified upgrade paths from 8.8, 8.9 and 9.0, for customers in the upgrade process.

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• Incomplete upgrade 12.04 to 12.10

  - by David

  Everything was running smoothly. Everything had been downloaded from Internet, packages had been installed and a prompt asked for some obsolete programs/files to be removed or kept. After that the computer crashed and and to manually force a shutdown. I turned it on again and surprise I was on 12.10! Still the upgrade was not finished! How can I properly finish that upgrade? Here's the output I got in the command line after following posted instructions: i astrill - Astrill VPN client software i dayjournal - Simple, minimal, digital journal. i gambas2-gb-form - A gambas native form component i gambas2-gb-gtk - The Gambas gtk component i gambas2-gb-gtk-ext - The Gambas extended gtk GUI component i gambas2-gb-gui - The graphical toolkit selector component i gambas2-gb-qt - The Gambas Qt GUI component i gambas2-gb-settings - Gambas utilities class i A gambas2-runtime - The Gambas runtime i google-chrome-stable - The web browser from Google i google-talkplugin - Google Talk Plugin i indicator-keylock - Indicator for Lock Keys i indicator-ubuntuone - Indicator for Ubuntu One synchronization s i A language-pack-kde-zh-hans - KDE translation updates for language Simpl i language-pack-kde-zh-hans-base - KDE translations for language Simplified C i libapt-inst1.4 - deb package format runtime library idA libattica0.3 - a Qt library that implements the Open Coll idA libbabl-0.0-0 - Dynamic, any to any, pixel format conversi idA libboost-filesystem1.46.1 - filesystem operations (portable paths, ite idA libboost-program-options1.46.1 - program options library for C++ idA libboost-python1.46.1 - Boost.Python Library idA libboost-regex1.46.1 - regular expression library for C++ i libboost-serialization1.46.1 - serialization library for C++ idA libboost-signals1.46.1 - managed signals and slots library for C++ idA libboost-system1.46.1 - Operating system (e.g. diagnostics support idA libboost-thread1.46.1 - portable C++ multi-threading i libcamel-1.2-29 - Evolution MIME message handling library i libcmis-0.2-0 - CMIS protocol client library i libcupsdriver1 - Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Driver l i libdconf0 - simple configuration storage system - runt i libdvdcss2 - Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runti i libebackend-1.2-1 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libecal-1.2-10 - Client library for evolution calendars i libedata-cal-1.2-13 - Backend library for evolution calendars i libedataserver-1.2-15 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libexiv2-11 - EXIF/IPTC metadata manipulation library i libgdu-gtk0 - GTK+ standard dialog library for libgdu i libgdu0 - GObject based Disk Utility Library idA libgegl-0.0-0 - Generic Graphics Library idA libglew1.5 - The OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime en i libglew1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libglewmx1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libgnome-bluetooth8 - GNOME Bluetooth tools - support library i libgnomekbd7 - GNOME library to manage keyboard configura idA libgsoap1 - Runtime libraries for gSOAP i libgweather-3-0 - GWeather shared library i libimobiledevice2 - Library for communicating with the iPhone i libkdcraw20 - RAW picture decoding library i libkexiv2-10 - Qt like interface for the libexiv2 library i libkipi8 - library for apps that want to use kipi-plu i libkpathsea5 - TeX Live: path search library for TeX (run i libmagickcore4 - low-level image manipulation library i libmagickwand4 - image manipulation library i libmarblewidget13 - Marble globe widget library idA libmusicbrainz4-3 - Library to access the MusicBrainz.org data i libnepomukdatamanagement4 - Basic Nepomuk data manipulation interface i libnux-2.0-0 - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libnux-2.0-common - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libpoppler19 - PDF rendering library i libqt3-mt - Qt GUI Library (Threaded runtime version), i librhythmbox-core5 - support library for the rhythmbox music pl i libusbmuxd1 - USB multiplexor daemon for iPhone and iPod i libutouch-evemu1 - KernelInput Event Device Emulation Library i libutouch-frame1 - Touch Frame Library i libutouch-geis1 - Gesture engine interface support i libutouch-grail1 - Gesture Recognition And Instantiation Libr idA libx264-120 - x264 video coding library i libyajl1 - Yet Another JSON Library i linux-headers-3.2.0-29 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi i linux-headers-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.2.0 on i linux-image-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 64 i mplayerthumbs - video thumbnail generator using mplayer i myunity - Unity configurator i A openoffice.org-calc - office productivity suite -- spreadsheet i A openoffice.org-writer - office productivity suite -- word processo i python-brlapi - Python bindings for BrlAPI i python-louis - Python bindings for liblouis i rts-bpp-dkms - rts-bpp driver in DKMS format. i system76-driver - Universal driver for System76 computers. i systemconfigurator - Unified Configuration API for Linux Instal i systemimager-client - Utilities for creating an image and upgrad i systemimager-common - Utilities and libraries common to both the i systemimager-initrd-template-am - SystemImager initrd template for amd64 cli i touchpad-indicator - An indicator for the touchpad i ubuntu-tweak - Ubuntu Tweak i A unity-lens-utilities - Unity Utilities lens i A unity-scope-calculator - Calculator engine i unity-scope-cities - Cities engine i unity-scope-rottentomatoes - Unity Scope Rottentomatoes

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 21-27, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of October 21-27, 2012. OTN Architect Day: Los Angeles This is your brain on IT architecture. Stuff your cranium with architecture by attending Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles, October 25, 2012, at the Sofitel Los Angeles, 8555 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Technical sessions, panel Q&A, and peer roundtables—plus a free lunch. [NOTE: The event was last week, of course. Big thanks to the session presenters and especially to those Angelinos who came out for the event.] WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference"The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference," explains Juergen Kress, "is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner." Podcast: Are You Future Proof? The latest OTN ArchBeat Podcast series features Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Ronald van Luttikhuizen, three practicing architects in an open discussion about how changes in enterprise IT are raising the bar for success for software architects and developers. Play Oracle Vanquisher Here's a little respite from whatever it is you normally spend your time on. Oracle Vanquisher is an online diversion that makes a game of data center optimization. According to the description: "Armed with a cool Oracle vacuum pack suit and a strategic IT roadmap, you will thwart threats and optimize your data center to increase your company’s stock price and boost your company’s position." Mainly you avoid electric shock and killer birds. The current high score belongs to someone identified as 'TEN." My score? Never mind. Advanced Oracle SOA Suite OOW 2012 PresentationsThe Oracle SOA Product Management team has compiled a complete list of all twelve of their Oracle SOA Suite presentations from Oracle OpenWorld 2012, with links to the slide decks. OAM and OIM 11g Academies Looking for technical how-to content covering Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Identity Manager? The people behind the Oracle Middleware Security blog have indexed relevant blog posts into what they call "Academies." "These indexes contain the articles we’ve written that we believe provide long lasting guidance on OAM and OIM. Posts covered in these series include articles on key aspects of OAM and OIM 11g, best practice architectural guidance, integrations, and customizations." Oracle’s Analytics, Engineered Systems, and Big Data Strategy | Mark Rittman Part 1 of 3 in Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's series on Oracle Exalytics, Oracle R Enterprise and Endeca. Oracle ACE Directors Nordic Tour 2012 : Venues and BI Presentations | Mark RittmanOracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares information on the Oracle ACE Director Tour, as the community leaders make their way through the land of the midnight sun, with events in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. Following the Thread in OSB | Antony Reynolds Antony Reynolds recently led an Oracle Service Bus POC in which his team needed to get high throughput from an OSB pipeline. "Imagine our surprise when, on stressing the system, we saw it lock up, with large numbers of blocked threads." He shares the details of the problem and the solution in this extensive technical post. OW12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices | Andrejus Baranovskis The Oracle OpenWorld presentations keep coming! Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares the slides from "Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices," co-presented with Danilo Schmiedel from Opitz Consulting. Thought for the Day "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." — Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) Source: Quotes For Software Engineers

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• Game Object Factory: Fixing Memory Leaks

  - by Bunkai.Satori

  Dear all, this is going to be tough: I have created a game object factory that generates objects of my wish. However, I get memory leaks which I can not fix. Memory leaks are generated by return new Object(); in the bottom part of the code sample. static BaseObject * CreateObjectFunc() { return new Object(); } How and where to delete the pointers? I wrote bool ReleaseClassType(). Despite the factory works well, ReleaseClassType() does not fix memory leaks. bool ReleaseClassTypes() { unsigned int nRecordCount = vFactories.size(); for (unsigned int nLoop = 0; nLoop < nRecordCount; nLoop++ ) { // if the object exists in the container and is valid, then render it if( vFactories[nLoop] != NULL) delete vFactories[nLoop](); } return true; } Before taking a look at the code below, let me help you in that my CGameObjectFactory creates pointers to functions creating particular object type. The pointers are stored within vFactories vector container. I have chosen this way because I parse an object map file. I have object type IDs (integer values) which I need to translate them into real objects. Because I have over 100 different object data types, I wished to avoid continuously traversing very long Switch() statement. Therefore, to create an object, I call vFactoriesnEnumObjectTypeID via CGameObjectFactory::create() to call stored function that generates desired object. The position of the appropriate function in the vFactories is identical to the nObjectTypeID, so I can use indexing to access the function. So the question remains, how to proceed with garbage collection and avoid reported memory leaks? #ifndef GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS #define GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS //#include "MemoryManager.h" #include <vector> template <typename BaseObject> class CGameObjectFactory { public: // cleanup and release registered object data types bool ReleaseClassTypes() { unsigned int nRecordCount = vFactories.size(); for (unsigned int nLoop = 0; nLoop < nRecordCount; nLoop++ ) { // if the object exists in the container and is valid, then render it if( vFactories[nLoop] != NULL) delete vFactories[nLoop](); } return true; } // register new object data type template <typename Object> bool RegisterClassType(unsigned int nObjectIDParam ) { if(vFactories.size() < nObjectIDParam) vFactories.resize(nObjectIDParam); vFactories[nObjectIDParam] = &CreateObjectFunc<Object>; return true; } // create new object by calling the pointer to the appropriate type function BaseObject* create(unsigned int nObjectIDParam) const { return vFactories[nObjectIDParam](); } // resize the vector array containing pointers to function calls bool resize(unsigned int nSizeParam) { vFactories.resize(nSizeParam); return true; } private: //DECLARE_HEAP; template <typename Object> static BaseObject * CreateObjectFunc() { return new Object(); } typedef BaseObject*(*factory)(); std::vector<factory> vFactories; }; //DEFINE_HEAP_T(CGameObjectFactory, "Game Object Factory"); #endif // GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS

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• SQL Server Optimizer Malfunction?

  - by Tony Davis

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the audience when Adam Machanic declared the SQL Server optimizer to be essentially "stuck in 1997". It was during his fascinating "Query Tuning Mastery: Manhandling Parallelism" session at the recent PASS SQL Summit. Paraphrasing somewhat, Adam (blog | @AdamMachanic) offered a convincing argument that the optimizer often delivers flawed plans based on assumptions that are no longer valid with today’s hardware. In 1997, when Microsoft engineers re-designed the database engine for SQL Server 7.0, SQL Server got its initial implementation of a cost-based optimizer. Up to SQL Server 2000, the developer often had to deploy a steady stream of hints in SQL statements to combat the occasionally wilful plan choices made by the optimizer. However, with each successive release, the optimizer has evolved and improved in its decision-making. It is still prone to the occasional stumble when we tackle difficult problems, join large numbers of tables, perform complex aggregations, and so on, but for most of us, most of the time, the optimizer purrs along efficiently in the background. Adam, however, challenged further any assumption that the current optimizer is competent at providing the most efficient plans for our more complex analytical queries, and in particular of offering up correctly parallelized plans. He painted a picture of a present where complex analytical queries have become ever more prevalent; where disk IO is ever faster so that reads from disk come into buffer cache faster than ever; where the improving RAM-to-data ratio means that we have a better chance of finding our data in cache. Most importantly, we have more CPUs at our disposal than ever before. To get these queries to perform, we not only need to have the right indexes, but also to be able to split the data up into subsets and spread its processing evenly across all these available CPUs. Improvements such as support for ColumnStore indexes are taking things in the right direction, but, unfortunately, deficiencies in the current Optimizer mean that SQL Server is yet to be able to exploit properly all those extra CPUs. Adam’s contention was that the current optimizer uses essentially the same costing model for many of its core operations as it did back in the days of SQL Server 7, based on assumptions that are no longer valid. One example he gave was a "slow disk" bias that may have been valid back in 1997 but certainly is not on modern disk systems. Essentially, the optimizer assesses the relative cost of serial versus parallel plans based on the assumption that there is no IO cost benefit from parallelization, only CPU. It assumes that a single request will saturate the IO channel, and so a query would not run any faster if we parallelized IO because the disk system simply wouldn’t be able to handle the extra pressure. As such, the optimizer often decides that a serial plan is lower cost, often in cases where a parallel plan would improve performance dramatically. It was challenging and thought provoking stuff, as were his techniques for driving parallelism through query logic based on subsets of rows that define the "grain" of the query. I highly recommend you catch the session if you missed it. I’m interested to hear though, when and how often people feel the force of the optimizer’s shortcomings. Barring mistakes, such as stale statistics, how often do you feel the Optimizer fails to find the plan you think it should, and what are the most common causes? Is it fighting to induce it toward parallelism? Combating unexpected plans, arising from table partitioning? Something altogether more prosaic? Cheers, Tony.

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• Customers Discuss: Real-World Operational Reporting with Oracle GoldenGate

  - by Irem Radzik

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} As businesses leverage business intelligence and analytics for day-to-day decision making, operational reporting solutions become more and more common. While some companies can use their production OLTP system for running operational reports, for many it is too much overhead and performance impact for transaction processing systems.  Oracle GoldenGate’s real-time data integration capabilities enable companies to create a real-time replica of their OLTP systems, dedicated for operational reporting. This instance can be optimized for the reports needed as well such as containing only the tables needed from the source. Oracle GoldenGate has certified solutions for many Oracle applications such as EBusiness Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, to offload operational reporting to another reporting server that has real-time data feeding from the production system. At Oracle OpenWorld we will be hearing from a panel of Oracle GoldenGate customers how they deployed GoldenGate for operational reporting. Comcast, Turk Telekom, and Raymond James will be sharing their experiences and the benefits achieved when implementing GoldenGate’s solution. If you have performance degradation in your production systems due to reporting or ad-hoc queries, and you will be at OpenWorld, don’t miss this informative session: Real-World Operational Reporting with Oracle GoldenGate: Customer Panel-- Tuesday Oct 2nd 11:45am Mascone West 3005. For other data integration sessions at OpenWorld, please check our Focus-On document.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} If you cannot attend OpenWorld, please check out related white paper “Using Oracle GoldenGate to Achieve Operational Reporting for Oracle Applications” to learn more.

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• Green (Screen) Computing

  - by onefloridacoder

  I recently was given an assignment to create a UX where a user could use the up and down arrow keys, as well as the tab and enter keys to move through a Silverlight datagrid that is going be used as part of a high throughput data entry UI. And to be honest, I’ve not trapped key codes since I coded JavaScript a few years ago.  Although the frameworks I’m using made it easy, it wasn’t without some trial and error.    The other thing that bothered me was that the customer tossed this into the use case as they were delivering the use case.  Fine.  I’ll take a whack at anything and beat up myself and beg (I’m not beyond begging for help) the community for help to get something done if I have to. It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I thought I would hopefully save someone a few keystrokes if you wanted to build a green screen for your customer.   Here’s the ValueConverter to handle changing the strings to decimals and then back again.  The value is a nullable valuetype so there are few extra steps to take.  Usually the “ConvertBack()” method doesn’t get addressed but in this case we have two-way binding and the converter needs to ensure that if the user doesn’t enter a value it will remain null when the value is reapplied to the model object’s setter.  1: using System; 2: using System.Windows.Data; 3: using System.Globalization; 4:  5: public class NullableDecimalToStringConverter : IValueConverter 6: { 7: public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 8: { 9: if (!(((decimal?)value).HasValue)) 10: { 11: return (decimal?)null; 12: } 13: if (!(value is decimal)) 14: { 15: throw new ArgumentException("The value must be of type decimal"); 16: } 17:  18: NumberFormatInfo nfi = culture.NumberFormat; 19: nfi.NumberDecimalDigits = 4; 20:  21: return ((decimal)value).ToString("N", nfi); 22: } 23:  24: public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 25: { 26: decimal nullableDecimal; 27: decimal.TryParse(value.ToString(), out nullableDecimal); 28:  29: return nullableDecimal == 0 ? null : nullableDecimal.ToString(); 30: } 31: }            The ConvertBack() method uses TryParse to create a value from the incoming string so if the parse fails, we get a null value back, which is what we would expect.  But while I was testing I realized that if the user types something like “2..4” instead of “2.4”, TryParse will fail and still return a null.  The user is getting “puuu-lenty” of eye-candy to ensure they know how many values are affected in this particular view. Here’s the XAML code.   This is the simple part, we just have a DataGrid with one column here that’s bound to the the appropriate ViewModel property with the Converter referenced as well. 1: <data:DataGridTextColumn 2: Header="On-Hand" 3: Binding="{Binding Quantity, 4: Mode=TwoWay, 5: Converter={StaticResource DecimalToStringConverter}}" 6: IsReadOnly="False" /> Nothing too magical here.  Just some XAML to hook things up.   Here’s the code behind that’s handling the DataGridKeyup event.  These are wired to a local/private method but could be converted to something the ViewModel could use, but I just need to get this working for now. 1: // Wire up happens in the constructor 2: this.PicDataGrid.KeyUp += (s, e) => this.HandleKeyUp(e);   1: // DataGrid.BeginEdit fires when DataGrid.KeyUp fires. 2: private void HandleKeyUp(KeyEventArgs args) 3: { 4: if (args.Key == Key.Down || 5: args.Key == Key.Up || 6: args.Key == Key.Tab || 7: args.Key == Key.Enter ) 8: { 9: this.PicDataGrid.BeginEdit(); 10: } 11: }   And that’s it.  The ValueConverter was the biggest problem starting out because I was using an existing converter that didn’t take nullable value types into account.   Once the converter was passing back the appropriate value (null, “#.####”) the grid cell(s) and the model objects started working as I needed them to. HTH.

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