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• Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector

  - 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} One thing Oracle never seems to get enough credit for is its consistent quest to improve its products, even the ones as established as its back-office solutions. Here is another example of one of the latest improvements: Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector, or CLM. The latest EBS module geared specifically for the Federal acquisition community. Our existing customers have been asking Oracle for years to upgrade its Advanced Procurement Suite to meet the complex procurement processes of the Federal Government. You asked; we listened. Oracle, with direct input from Federal agencies, subject matter experts, integration partners, and the Federal acquisition community, has expanded and deepened its procurement suite to meet the unique demands of the Federal acquisition community. New benefits/features include: Contract Line Item/Sub-Line Item (CLIN/SLIN) structures Configurable Document Numbering Complex Pricing Contract Types ( as per FAR Part 16) Option lines and exercising of options Incremental Funding capability Support for multiple document types (delivery orders, BPA call orders, awards, agreements, IDIQ contracts) Requisition lines to fund modifications Workload assignment and milestones Contract Action Reporting to FPDS-NG I’ve been conducting many tests over the past few months and have been quite impressed with the depth of features and the seamless integration to Federal Financials, specifically the funds control within the financials. Again, thank you for reading. If you have suggestions for future posts, please leave them in the comments section and I’ll take it from there.

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• Announcing Key Functional White Papers for SIM and ReIM

  - by Oracle Retail Documentation Team

  Oracle Retail has published two new documents on My Oracle Support (https://support.oracle.com)  that provide partners and retailers with deeper functional information about two products: Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management (SIM) and Oracle Retail Invoice Matching. Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management Item Configuration White Paper (Doc ID 1507221.1) There is functionality within the Store Inventory Management system related to item configuration that spans across multiple concepts that apply to the application as a whole rather than to a specific area. This white paper covers numerous topics around item configuration including: Item Transaction Levels Item Long Description Pack Size Standard Unit of Measure Standard Unit of Measure Conversion Pack Items Simple Pack Conversion Items (Notional Packs) Ranging Items Item Status Non-Sellable Items Type-2 Item Recognition UPC-E Barcodes Non-Inventory Items Consignment and Concession Items Quick Response Codes Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Financial Transactions (Doc ID 1500209.1) This document explains the financial transactions that are posted by Oracle Retail Invoice Matching (ReIM). The scope of the document is limited to ReIM transactions only, and does not explain Retail Merchandising System (RMS), Finance, or Account Receivable transactions. ReIM follows the double-entry accounting standard, which works by recording the debit and credit of each financial transaction belonging to each party involved. Each transaction means a profit to one account (debit) and a loss to another account (credit). Full invoice match processing is completed in ReIM with payment recommendations communicated to Oracle Accounts Payable. ReIM matches merchandise orders and receipts against merchandise invoices, performing automated and manual matching, as well as discrepancy-resolution processing. Matched invoices are posted to interface staging tables specifying the amount and date to pay, vendor, site ID, General Ledger Chart of Accounts (GL CoA) information, and payment terms. Other payables documents, including debit memos, credit memos and credit notes are also interfaced to Accounts Payable through the ReIM staging tables (IM_AP_STAGE_HEAD and IM_AP_STAGE_DETAIL). For information about how ReIM engages in this processing, see the latest Oracle Retail Invoice Matching Operations Guide. Certain ReIM transactions are not interfaced to Oracle Payables, but instead are interfaced to Oracle General Ledger through the IM_FINANCIAL_STAGE table. When analyzing transactions posted through the staging tables, retailers should note the transaction type, Standard/Credit, as well as the sign in the amount field. Technically, a negative sign on a credit transaction changes the transaction to a debit entry, and vice versa. This document is concerned about the financial meaning of the transactions, and will avoid a discussion of negative numbers in T-charts.

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• I owe you an explanation

  - by Blueberry Coder

  Welcome to my blog! I am Frédéric Desbiens, a new member of the ADF Product Management team.  I joined Oracle only a few weeks ago. My boss is Grant Ronald, and I have the privilege to work in the same team as Susan Duncan, Frank Nimphius, Lynn Munsinger and Chris Muir. I share with them a passion for all things Java and ADF. With this blog, I hope to help you be more successful with our products – whether you are a customer or a partner. You may have heard of me before. Maybe you have my book in your bookshelf; or maybe we met at a conference. I went to JavaOne, ODTUG Kaleidoscope and Oracle OpenWorld in the past, when I worked for a major consulting firm. I will spare you all the details of my career; you can have a look at my LinkedIn profile if you are curious about my past.  Usually, my posts will be of a technical nature, and will focus on Oracle ADF and Oracle JDeveloper. SOA and portals have always been two topics of interest for me, however, and I will write about them. Over time, you will probably get acquainted with my « strategic » side as well. I devour history books, and always had a tendency to look at the big picture. I will probably not resist to the temptation of mixing IT and history, but this will be occasional, I promise!  At this point, I owe you an explanation about the title of the blog. I am French-Canadian, and wanted to evoke my roots in an obvious yet unobtrusive way. I was born in Chicoutimi, which is one of the main cities found in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. Traditionally, a large part of the wild blueberry production of the province of Québec come from there. A common nickname for the inhabitants is thus Les Bleuets, « The Blueberries » in English. I hope to see you around. You can also follow me on Twitter under  @BlueberryCoder.

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• Legality of similar games

  - by Jamie Taylor

  This is my first question on GD.SE, and I hope it's in the right place. A little background: I'm an amateur (read: not explicitly employed to develop games, but am employed as a software developer) game developer and took a ComSci with Games Development degree. My Question: What is the legal situation/standpoint of creating a copycat title? I know that there are only N number of ways of solving a problem, and N number of ways to design a piece of software. Say that an independent developer designed a copycat game (a Tetris clone in this example) for instance, and decided to use that game to generate income for themselves as well as interest for their other products. Say the developer adds a disclaimer into the software along the lines of "based on , originally released c. by ." Are there any legal problems/grey areas with the developer in this example releasing this game, commercially? Would they run into legal problems? Should the developer in this example expect cease and desist orders or law suit claims from original publishers? Have original publishers been known to, effectively, kill independent projects because they are a little too close to older titles? I know that there was, at least, one attempt by a group of independent developers to remake Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sega shut them down. I also know of Sega shutting down development of the independent Streets of Rage Remake. I know that "but it's an old game, your honour," isn't a great legal standpoint when it comes to defending yourself. But, could an independent developer have a law suit filed against them for re-implementing an older title in a new way? I know that there are a lot of copycat versions of the older titles like Tetris available on app stores (and similar services), and that it would be very difficult for a major publisher to shut them all down. Regardless of this, is making a Tetris (or other game) copycat/clone illegal? We were taught lots of different things at University, but we never covered copyright law. I'm presuming that their thought behind it was "IF these students get jobs in games development, they wont need to know anything about the legal side of it, because their employers will have legal departments... presumably" tl;dr Is it illegal to create a clone or copycat of an old title, and make money from it?

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• Retail in New York - a walk down 5th Avenue

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  It's the week of the NRF Big Show and all eyes in the retail industry are on New York. The Big Apple is famous for Big Retail -with a proliferation of incredibly iconic stores. The environment is exciting and familiar even to people visiting this small island for the first time. Most of us have travelled down Fifth Avenue watching movies and TV even if we have never set foot on American soil. I find it one of the most exciting retail cities in the world and I am thrilled this year to be here with so many of Oracle's International retail customers who are joining us for the Retail Exchange. The Oracle program brings retailers from all over the planet together to share ideas and be inspired by New York retail and the NRF event. The show celebrates its 100th year in 2011 and New York itself has been recognized globally as the capital of innovative retail for just as long.  Fifth Avenue is where many global brands have placed their flagship stores, and businesses are in constant competition to set themselves apart from their competitors - both in the store and from the street.  These flag ship retail destinations present what today's customers are finding most exciting and delightful about retail. For the tourist market, they may only visit these stores once, but the impression that a trip to a flagship store leaves with a customer can last a lifetime.  One of the stores that is currently turning heads on Fifth Avenue is Hollister, sister brand to Abercrombie and Fitch, which has filled its shop front with a massive live video (and audio) feed of surfers on the beach in California.  To complete the effect, they also have troughs of water in front of the video screens to bring the sea to the street.  And this isn't the only kind of surfing that retailers are considering today and multi-channel retail is a hot topic that all of the retailers joining the Retail Exchange are considering.   The rest of the world looks to the brands along Fifth Avenue for inspiration - how they take advantage of new opportunities, how they set themselves apart from their competitors and how they keep their products fresh and desirable. With these inspiring pioneers in New York, it's little wonder that NRF's Big Show is so popular, and that New York is viewed as one of the retail capitals of the world. It is a pleasure to be here with so many of the world's greatest international retailers.

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• Stuff I learned at Innovate 2011

  - by David Dorf

  After returning from the NRF Innovate 2011 conference, I picked up few nuggets I thought I'd share here.  These thoughts are a bit random, but I hope they're useful nonetheless.Kevin Kelly opened the conference with six verbs that represent the future.  They were Screening, Interacting, Sharing, Accessing, Flowing, and Generating.  It struck me that these are all ways in which we merge the digital and physical worlds.  The internet of things continues to gain momentum.Some buzzwords:  deal economy, subscription commerce, discovery (instead of search), curationThat last one, curation, came up over and over.  Retailers, especially those in fashion, are finding value in helping their customers organize and present their own collections.  Social media has made sharing such collections easy, and mobile lets them take those ideas into the stores.  Mannequins are becoming less relevant.I heard from both HauteLook and Gilt Groupe (flash sale retailers) that a large percentage of their visits come from mobile devices, and most of those are iOS devices.  I find it interesting that even though Android has passed iPhone in units shipped (and will eventually pass iOS as a whole), its still the Apple crowd that leads the way.RadioShack mentioned their Holiday Heroes campaigned was very successful.  They asked their Foursquare users to check-in at a gym, coffee shop, and transportation hub as part of being a hero.  For this feat, customers were awarded a special badge that was worth 20% off at their next store visit. They claim a 3.5x increase in ticket size vs. regular check-in customers, and a 5x increase vs those that don't check-in at all.I also learned of RadioShack's #28 campaign, which is apparently one of the largest Twitter trends ever.  Their partnership with LIVESTRONG has gotten them followers, impressions, and credit for supporting the fight against cancer.The guys at Invodo showed the importance of video to e-commerce.  They gave compelling examples of how video can show customers the value of products better than just words.The highlight of the show was Guy Kawasaki's talk on innovation, which was not only informative but also peppered with humor and personality.  Back in the early days of the internet boom, Guy turned down the CEO position at Yahoo! because the commute was too long.  By his calculation, that was a $2B mistake.There are other good accounts of the conference at the NRF Blog.

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• Goodbye, Spreadsheets and Hello Modern ERP

  - by Christine Randle

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

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• Workflow 4.5 is Awesome, cant wait for 5.0!

  - by JoshReuben

  About 2 years ago I wrote a blog post describing what I would like to see in Workflow vnext: http://geekswithblogs.net/JoshReuben/archive/2010/08/25/workflow-4.0---not-there-yet.aspx At the time WF 4.0 was a little rough around the edges – the State Machine was on codeplex and people were simulating state machines with Flowcharts. Last year I built a near- realtime machine management system using WF 4.0.1 – its managing the internal operations of this device: http://landanano.com/products/commercial   Well WF 4.5 has come a long way – many of my gripes have been addressed: C# expressions - no more VB 'AndAlso' clauses state machine awesomeness - can query current state many designer improvements - Document Outline is so much more succinct than Designer! Separate WCF Service Contract interfaces and ability to generate activities from contract operations ability to rehydrate to updated flow definitions via DynamicUpdateMap and WorkflowIdentity you can read about the new features here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh305677(VS.110).aspx   2013 could be the year of Workflow evangelism for .NET, as it comes together as the DSL language. Eg on Azure it could be used to graphically orchestrate between WebRoles, WorkerRoles and AppFabric Queues and the ServiceBus – that would be grand.   Here’s a list of things I’d like to see in Workflow 5.0: Stronger Parallelism support for true multithreaded workflows . A Workflow executes on a single thread – wouldn’t it be great if we had the ability to model TPL DataFlow? Parallel is not really parallel, just allows AsyncCodeActivity.     support for recursion an ExpressionTree activity with an editor design surface a math activity pack return of application level protocol (3.51 WF services) – automatically expose a state machine as a WCF service with bookmark Receive activities generated from OperationContract automatically placed in state transition triggers. A new HTML5 ActivityDesigner control – support with different CSS3  skinnable hooks,  remote connectivity (had to roll my own) A data flow view – crucial to understanding the big picture Ability to refactor a Sequence to custom activity in a separate .xaml file – like Expression Blend does for UserControl state machine global error handling - if all states goto an error state, you quickly get visual spagetti. Now you could nest a state machine, but what if you want an application level protocol whereby each state exposes certain WCF ops. DSL RAD editing - Make the Document Outline into a DSL editor for adding activities  – For WF to really succeed as a higher level of abstraction, It needs to be more productive than raw coding - drag & drop on the designer is currently too slow compared to just typing code. Extensible Wizard API - for pluggable WF editor experience other execution models beyond Sequence, Flowchart & StateMachine: SSIS, Behavior Trees,  Wolfram Model tool – surprise us! improvements to Designer debugging API - SourceLocation is tied to XAML file line number and char position, and ModelService access seems convoluted - why not leverage WPF LogicalTreeHelper / VisualTreeHelper ? Workflow Team , keep on rocking!

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• Tools for Enterprise Architects: OmniGraffle for iPad?

  - by pat.shepherd

  Well, I have to admit to being a bit of an Apple fan and, of course, and early adopter of gadgets and technology in general.  So, when FedEx showed up with my iPad 3G last week, I was a kid in a candy store.  One of the apps that my “buy finger” was hovering over for a while (like all of 3 days) was Omnigraffle for the iPad.  I imagined that it would be very cool to use this with a customer’s EA’s to sketch out Business, Application, Information and Technology architectures.  Instead of using the blackboard, this seemed to offer promise as a white-boarding tool with obvious benefits over a traditional white-board.  I figured I’d get a VGA adapter, plug it into the customer’s projector and off we would go with a great JAD tool.  The touch pad approach offered an additional hands-on kind of feel. So, I made the $49.99 purchase + the $29.99 VGA adapter and tried to give it a go.  Well, I was both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised.  It is both powerful and easy to use.  There are great stencils included for shapes, software icons, Visio shapes, and even UML notation.  There is even a free-hand tool that works well.  I created some diagrams pretty quickly.   The one below was just a test and took all of 10 minuets to do. The only problem was that Onmigraffle does not recognize the VGA output, so I was stopped dead in my tracks, as it were.  My use case was as a collaborative diagramming tool with other architects, though I can still use it off line.  I called Omnigraffle and they said that VGA support is on the feature request list so, hopefully, in a short amount of time, I can use the tool as I envisioned.   Review: Criteria Result Is it fun? Yes Is it Useful? Yes Does it Show Promise? Yes Did the VGA Output Work? No File/diagram Formats PDF, Onmigraffle proprietary, image   Quick Sample:     OmniGraffle for iPad - Products - The Omni Group

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  ORCLville: OOW 2012 - Crystal BallOracle ACE Director Floyd Teter cooks up some tongue-in-cheek predictions for news and announcements that might come out of Oracle OpenWorld 2012. What's your prediction? Oracle Optimized Solutions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 | Oracle Hardware Hardware matters, too! The people behind the Oracle Hardware blog have put together a list of Oracle Openworld 2012 sessions focused Oracle Optimized Solutions, "designed, pre-tested, tuned and fully documented architectures for optimal performance and availability." Just plug the session ID numbers into Schedule Builder and you're good to go. AIX Checklist for stable OBIEE deployment | Dick Dunbar "OBIEE is a complicated system with many moving parts and connection points," according to Oracle Business Inteligence escalation engineer Dick Dunbar. "The purpose of this article is to provide a checklist to discuss OBIEE deployment with your systems administrators." Demo for OPN: Coherence Management with EM Cloud Control 12c Oracle Partner Network members can check out a new Coherence Management demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of Management Pack for Oracle Coherence and JVM Diagnostics. "The demo flow showcases the key enhancements made in Enterprise Manager 12c release which includes new customizable performance summary, cache data management and configuration management," according to the WebLogic Partner Community EMEA blog. The Pragmatic Architect: To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before | Frank Buschmann "Many architects have technical knowledge that's both impressive and sound, which is indeed an inevitable basis for design success," says Frank Buschmann. "Yet, a lot of software projects fail or suffer due to severe challenges in their architecture. The key to mastery is how architects approach design, what they value, and where they focus their attention and work." As retail dies, whom will be the winners? | Peter Evans-Greenwood "The problem for many retailers is that how consumers shop has changed but the the retailers haven't adapted, " says Peter Evans-Greenwood. "Their sole virtue was to be the last step in a supply chain delivering somebody else's products to the consumer. However, being the last step in the supply chain is no longer a virtue when consumers skip across channels and can reach around the globe, no longer dependant on or limited to what they can find locally." Thought for the Day "Brains require stimulation. If you're locked into a pattern of work, work, and more work, your brain soon habituates - the same way that it lets you stop hearing a clock ticking. So, if you want to be more effective at work, you must, paradoxically, be less single-minded in your devotion to work. Anything you do—anything—that stimulates new segments of your brain will make you a more effective programmer or analyst. I promise, with a money-back guarantee." — Gerald M. Weinberg Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• ITT Corporation Goes Live on Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM)!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Back in Q2 of FY12, a division of ITT invited Oracle to demo our CRM On Demand product while the group was considering Salesforce.com. Chris Porter, our Oracle Direct sales representative learned the players and their needs and began to develop relationships. We lost that deal, but not Chris's persistence. A few months passed and Chris called on the ITT Shape Cutting Division's Director of Sales to see how things were going. Chris was told that the plan was for the division to buy more Salesforce.com. In fact, he informed Chris that he had just sent his team to Salesforce.com training. During the conversation, Chris mentioned that our new Oracle Sales Cloud Service could run with Outlook. This caused the ITT Sales Director to reconsider the plan to move forward with our competition. Oracle was invited back to demo the Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM) and after it concluded, the Director stated, "That just blew your competition away." The deal closed on June 5th , 2012 Our Oracle Platinum Partner, Intelenex, began the implementation with ITT on July 30th. We are happy to report that on September 18th, the ITT Shape Cutting Division successfully went live on Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM). About: ITT is a diversified leading manufacturer of highly engineered critical components and customized technology solutions for growing industrial end-markets in energy infrastructure, electronics, aerospace and transportation. Building on its heritage of innovation, ITT partners with its customers to deliver enduring solutions to the key industries that underpin our modern way of life. Founded in 1920, ITT is headquartered in White Plains, NY, with 8,500 employees in more than 30 countries and sales in more than 125 countries. The ITT Shape Cutting Division provides plasma lasers and controls with the Burny, Kaliburn, and AMC brands. Oracle Fusion Products: Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM) including: • Fusion CRM Base • Fusion Sales Cloud • Fusion Mobile and Desktop Integration • Automated Forecasting Adoption Model: SaaS Partner: Intelenex Business Drivers: The ITT Shape Cutting Division wanted to: better enable its Sales Force with email and mobile CRM capabilities simplify and automate its complex sales processes centrally manage and maintain customer contact information Why We Won: ITT was impressed with the feature-rich capabilities of Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM), including sales performance management and integration. The company also liked the product's flexibility and scalability for future growth. Expected Benefits: Streamlined accurate forecasting Increased customer manageability Improved sales performance Better visibility to customer information

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• Career Development: What should I learn next after Python? and Why? [closed]

  - by Josh

  Hi all I'm currently learning Python. I want to know what should I learn next out of these programming langauages: PHP Actionscript 3 Objective-C (iPhone applications) I work in the Multimedia industry and have decided to learn Python as a first programming language seriously because I would like to learn the basics of programming, to mainly write scripts at work that Automate task (eg. Edit multiple XML files quickly) At work we have a senior developer who knows Actionscript and PHP very well (although knows PHP better). We also have been developing iPhone applications for 2 weeks, Our senior developer could learn it although we have lots of work currently with PHP and Actionscript 3 type work and haven't had time or reason to pick up iOS development. Here are the reasons I want to learn each language, But I cannot decide what I'll learn next: PHP: I want to learn PHP because it will help with Web Development. PHP is very wanted by employers. Senior developer at work writes everything in it web sites, CMS etc. (including XML checks and scripts), I will learn a lot from him (once I learn the basics). However, I don't want to learn Web because you have to deal with lots of cross-browser problems. Actionscript 3: At work we are looking to put on another developer to help with online activities and very small games (using Actionscript 3.0 and Flash CS5) for (eg. First Aid Activities etc) I would like to do things that have a element of design as I'm better at Photoshop then developing. I want to be creative, I like to interact with users in a fun way. Objective-C (iPhone applications): We are a all mac office, we may get more iPhone, iPad application work(jobs) that need to be created. Work has found it nearly impossible to find good iPhone developers. I like apple products (Macs and iPhones), I would like to make my own games, applications in my spare time(if I knew how). Should I learn Actionscript first because it would be easier to learn then Objective-C? Should I learn PHP because it is very widely used? Should I learn Objective-C because it is really wanted by employers now?

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• Data-Driven SOA with Oracle Data Integrator

  - by Irem Radzik

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} By Mike Eisterer, Data integration is more than simply moving data in bulk or in real-time, it is also about unifying information for improved business agility and integrating it in today’s service-oriented architectures. SOA enables organizations to easily define services which may then be discovered and leveraged by varying consumers. These consumers may be applications, customer facing portals, or complex business rules which are assembling services to automate process. Data as a foundational service provider is a key component of today’s successful SOA implementations. Oracle offers the broadest and most integrated portfolio of products to help you define, organize, orchestrate and consume data services. If you are attending Oracle OpenWorld next week, you will have ample opportunity to see the latest Oracle Data Integrator live in action and work with it yourself in two offered Hands-on Labs. Visit the hands-on lab to gain experience firsthand: Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle SOA Suite: Hands-on- Lab (HOL10480) Wed Oct 3rd 11:45AM Marriott Marquis- Salon 1/2 To learn more about Oracle Data Integrator, please visit our Introduction Hands-on LAB: Introduction to Oracle Data Integrator (HOL10481) Mon Oct 1st 3:15PM, Marriott Marquis- Salon 1/2 If you are not able to attend OpenWorld, please check out our latest resources for Data Integration.

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• Our Favorite Highlights from OpenWorld 2012

  - by Kathy.Miedema

  By Kathy Miedema and Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience The Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team’s activities around OpenWorld expand every year, but this year we certainly raised the bar.   Members of our team helped deliver three, separate, all-day training events in the week prior to OpenWorld. Our Fusion User Experience Advocates (FXA) and Applications UX Sales Ambassadors (SAMBA) have all-new material around the Oracle user experience to deliver at conferences in the coming year - Fusion Applications design patterns, mobile design patterns, and the new face of Fusion. We also delivered a hands-on workshop sharing user experience tools for our customers that is designed to answer this question: "If I have no UX staff, what do I do?" We also spent the weeks just before OpenWorld preparing to talk about the new face of Fusion Applications, a greatly simplified entry experience into Fusion Applications for self-service users, CRM users, and IT managers who want to change the look and feel quickly. Special thanks to Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter for the first mention of our project.Jeremy Ashley, VP, Oracle Applications User Experience Customers may have seen one of the many OpenWorld session demos of the new face of Fusion, which will be available with Fusion Applications soon. It was shown in sessions by Oracle's Chris Leone, Anthony Lye, and our own Vice President, Jeremy Ashley, among others.   Leone reinforced the importance of user experience as one of three main design principles for Fusion Applications, emphasizing that Fusion was designed from the beginning to be intelligent, social, and mobile. User experience highlights of the new face of Fusion, he said, included the need for "zero training," and he called the experience "easy to use." He added that deploying it for HCM self-service would be effortless.  Customers take part in a usability lab tour during OpenWorld 2012. Customers also may have seen the new face of Fusion on the demogrounds or during one of our teams' chartered lab tours at the end of the week. We tested other new designs at our on-site lab in the Intercontinental Hotel, next to Moscone West. Applications User Experience team members show eye-tracking and mobile demos at OOW. We were also excited to kick off new branches of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, which now has groups in Latin America and the Middle East, in addition to North America and EMEA.   And we were pleasantly surprised by the interest in one of our latest research projects, Oracle Voice, which is designed to enable faster data input for on-the-go users. We offer a big thank-you to the Nuance demopod for sharing the demo with OpenWorld attendees.  For more information on our program and products like the new face of Fusion, please comment below. 

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• Now Shipping! NetAdvantage for .NET 2010 Volume 3!

  The new NetAdvantage Ultimate includes all four Line of Business user interface control sets for ASP .NET, Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight plus two advanced Data Visualization UI control sets for WPF and Silverlight. With six NetAdvantage products in one robust package, Infragistics® gives you hundreds of controls and infinite development possibilities. Unified XAML Product Strategy-Share Code, Get More Controls In the 10.3 release, Infragistics continues to deliver code parity between the XAML platforms, WPF and Silverlight. In the line of business toolsets, Infragistics introduces the new xamSchedule™, full-featured, Outlook® 2010-style schedule controls, and the new xamDataTree™, a data bound tree view that comfortably handles tens of thousands of tree nodes. Mimicking our Silverlight Drag and Drop Framework, the WPF Drag and Drop Framework CTP empowers you to add your own rich touches to your applications. Track Users' Behaviors New to all NetAdvantage Silverlight controls is the Infragistics Analytics Framework (IGAF), which empowers you to track user behavior in RIAs running on Silverlight 4. Building on the Microsoft® Silverlight Analytics Framework, with IGAF you can analyze the user's behaviors to ensure the experience you want to deliver. NetAdvantage for Windows Forms--New Office® 2010 Ribbon and Application Menu 2010 Create new experiences with Windows Forms. Now with Office 2010 styling, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms has new features such as Microsoft® Office 2010 ribbon and enhanced Infragistics.Excel to export the contents of the high performance WinGrid™ into Microsoft Excel® 2010. The new Windows Message Support enables Infragistics standalone editor controls to process numerous Windows® OS messages, allowing them to respond just like native controls to changes in the Windows environment. Create Faster Web 2.0 Experiences with NetAdvantage for ASP .NET Infragistics continues to push the envelope to deliver the fastest ASP .NET WebForms controls available on the market. Our lightning fast ASP .NET grids are now enhanced with XPS/PDF Exporting and Summary Rows. This release also includes support for jQuery Templating (as a CTP) within our WebDataGrid™ and WebDataTree™ controls allowing you to quickly cut down overall page size. Deliver Business Intelligence with Power, Flexibility and the Office 2010 Experience NetAdvantage for WPF Data Visualization and NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization help you deliver flexible, powerful and usable end user experiences in Business Intelligence applications. Both suites include the Pivot Grid that delivers the full power of online analytical processing (OLAP) to present multi-dimensional data, sliced and diced in cross-tabulated form for end users to drill down into, interact with and easily extract meaning from the data. Mapping Made Easy 10.3 marks the official release of the WPF Data Visualization xamMap™ control to map anything and everything from geographic to geo-spacial mapping data. Map layers allow you to add successive levels of detail, navigational panes for panning in all directions, color swatch panes that facilitate value scales like Choropleth shading, and scale panes allowing users to zoom-in and out. Both toolsets introduce the first of many relationship maps! With the xamOrgChart™ CTP you can map out organizational charts of up to 50K employees, competitive brackets (think World Cup) and any other relational, organizational map your application needs. http://www.infragistics.com span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Addressing threats introduced by the BYOD trend

  - by kyap

  With the growth of the mobile technology segment, enterprises are facing a new type of threats introduced by the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, where employees use their own devices (laptops, tablets or smartphones) not necessarily secured to access corporate network and information.In the past - actually even right now, enterprises used to provide laptops to their employees for their daily work, with specific operating systems including anti-virus and desktop management tools, in order to make sure that the pools of laptop allocated are spyware or trojan-horse free to access the internal network and sensitive information. But the BYOD reality is breaking this paradigm and open new security breaches for enterprises as most of the username/password based systems, especially the internal web applications, can be accessed by less or none protected device.To address this reality we can adopt 3 approaches:1. Coué's approach: Close your eyes and assume that your employees are mature enough to know what he/she should or should not do.2. Consensus approach: Provide a list of restricted and 'certified' devices to the internal network. 3. Military approach: Access internal systems with certified laptop ONLYIf you choose option 1: Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you find the others entries more useful :)If you choose option 2: The proliferation of new hardware and software updates every quarter makes this approach very costly and difficult to maintain.If you choose option 3: You need to find a way to allow the access into your sensitive application from the corporate authorized machines only, managed by the IT administrators... but how? The challenge with option 3 is to find out how end-users can restrict access to certain sensitive applications only from authorized machines, or from another angle end-users can not access the sensitive applications if they are not using the authorized machine... So what if we find a way to store the applications credential secretly from the end-users, and then automatically submit them when the end-users access the application? With this model, end-users do not know the username/password to access the applications so even if the end-users use their own devices they will not able to login. Also, there's no need to reconfigure existing applications to adapt to the new authenticate scheme given that we are still leverage the same username/password authenticate model at the application level. To adopt this model, you can leverage Oracle Enterprise Single Sign On. In short, Oracle ESSO is a desktop based solution, capable to store credentials of Web and Native based applications. At the application startup and if it is configured as an esso-enabled application - check out my previous post on how to make Skype essso-enabled, Oracle ESSO takes over automatically the sign-in sequence with the store credential on behalf of the end-users. Combined with Oracle ESSO Provisioning Gateway, the credentials can be 'pushed' in advance from an actual provisioning server, like Oracle Identity Manager or Tivoli Identity Manager, so the end-users can login into sensitive application without even knowing the actual username and password, so they can not login with other machines rather than those secured by Oracle ESSO.Below is a graphical illustration of this approach:With this model, not only you can protect the access to sensitive applications only from authorized machine, you can also implement much stronger Password Policies in terms of Password Complexity as well as Password Reset Frequency but end-users will not need to remember the passwords anymore.If you are interested, do not hesitate to check out the Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on products from OTN !

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• Critical Patch Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period

  - by Elke Phelps (Oracle Development)

  As previously blogged in the EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes entry, two important changes to the Oracle Lifetime Support policies were announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - San Francisco.  These changes affect E-Business Suite Releases 11i and 12.1. Critical Patch Updates for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support Period You may be wondering about the availability of Critical Patch Updates (CPU) for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support period.  The following details the E-Business Suite Critical Patch Update support policy for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support period: Oracle will continue to provide CPUs containing critical security fixes for E-Business Suite 11i.  CPUs will be packaged and released as as cumulative patches for both ATG RUP 6 and ATG RUP 7. As always, we try to minimize the number of patches and dependencies required for uptake of a CPU; however, there have been quite a few changes to the 11i baseline since its release.  For dependency reasons the 11i CPUs may require a higher number of files in order to bring them up to a consistent, stable, and well tested level. EBS 11i customer will continue to receive CPUs up to and including the October 2014 CPU. Where can I learn more? There are two interlocking policies that affect the E-Business Suite:  Oracle's Lifetime Support policies for each EBS release (timelines which were updated by this announcement), and the Error Correction Support policies (which state the minimum baselines for new patches). For more information about how these policies interact, see: Understanding Support Windows for E-Business Suite Releases What about E-Business Suite technology stack components? Things get more complicated when one considers individual techstack components such as Oracle Forms or the Oracle Database.  To learn more about the interlocking EBS+techstack component support windows, see these two articles: On Apps Tier Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users On Database Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users Where can I learn more about Critical Patch Updates?The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes a list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities, and links to other important documents.  Related Articles EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes Frequently Asked Questions about Latest EBS Support Changes Extended Support Fees Waived for E-Business Suite 11i and 12.0

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• Wrapping REST based Web Service

  - by PaulPerry

  I am designing a system that will be running online under Microsoft Windows Azure. One component is a REST based web service which will really be a wrapper (using proxy pattern) which calls the REST web services of a business partner, which has to do with BLOB storage (note: we are not using azure storage). The majority of the functionality will be taking a request, calling our partner web service, receiving the request and then passing that back to the client. There are a number of reasons for doing this, but one of the big ones is that we are going to support three clients: our desktop application (win and mac), mobile apps (iOS), and a web front end. Having a single API which we then send to our partner protects us if that partner ever changes. I want our service to support both JSON and XML for the data transfer format, JSON for web and probably XML for the desktop and mobile (we already have an XML parser in those products). Our partner also supports both of these formats. I was planning on using ASP.NET MVC 4 with the Web API. As I design this, the thing that concerns me is the static type checking of C#. What if the partner adds or removes elements from the data? We can probably defensively code for that, but I still feel some concern. Also, we have to do a fair amount of tedious coding, to setup our API and then to turn around and call our partner’s API. There probably is not much choice on it though. But, in the back of my mind I wonder if maybe a more dynamic language would be a better choice. I want to reach out and see if anybody has had to do this before, what technology solutions they have used to (I am not attached to this one, these days Azure can host other technologies), and if anybody who has done something like this can point out any issues that came up. Thanks! Researching the issue seems to only find solutions which focus on connecting a SOAP web service over a proxy server, and not what I am referring to here. Note: Cross posted (by suggestion) from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11906802/wrapping-rest-based-web-service Thank you!

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• Can working exclusively with niche apps or tech hurt your career in software development? How to get out of the cycle? [closed]

  - by Keoma

  I'm finding myself in a bit of a pickle. I've been at a pretty comfortable IT group for almost a decade. I got my start here working on web development, mostly CRUD, but have demonstrated the ability to figure out more complex problems. I'm not a rock star, but I have received many compliments on my programming aptitude, and technologists and architects have commented on my ability to pick things up (for example, I recently learned a very popular web framework that shall remain nameless since I don’t want to be identified). My problem is that, over time, my responsibilities have been shifting towards work such as support or ‘development’ with some rather niche products (afraid to mention here due to potential for being identified). Some of this work, if it includes anything resembling coding, is very menial scripting in languages such as Powershell or VBScript. The vast majority of the time, however, a typical day consists of going back and forth with the product’s vendor support to send them logs and apply configuration changes or patches they recommend. I’m basically starved for some actual software development. However, even though I’m more than capable of doing that development work (and actually do a much better job at it than anything else), our boss is more interested in the kind of work I mentioned above, her reasoning being that since no one else in the organization wants to do it, it must mean job security. This has been going on for close to 3 years, and the only reason I have held on is on the promise that we would eventually get more development projects assigned to us. Well, that turned out not to be true at all. A recent talk with the boss has just made it more explicitly clear, as she told me in no uncertain terms that it’s very likely that development work (web or otherwise) would go to another group. The reason given to me is that our we don’t have enough resources in our group to handle that. So now I find myself in the position that I either have to stay in what has essentially become a dead end IT job that is tied to the fortunes of a niche stack of apps, or try to find a position that will be better for my long term career. My problem (is it a problem?), however, is that compared to others, my development projects in the last three years are very sparse in number. To compound things, projects using the latest and most popular frameworks, amount to the big fat number of just one—with no work of that kind in the foreseeable future. I am very concerned that this sparseness in my resume is a deficit, and that it will hurt my chances of landing a different job. I’m also wondering how much it will hurt me, and whether that can be ameliorated with hobby projects of my own. I guess I’m looking for opinions. Thank you very much for reading.

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• What if you could work on anything you wanted?

  - by Nick Harrison

  What if you could work on anything you wanted? Redgate is doing an experiment of sorts this week.  Called Down Tools Week.    The idea is that they stopped working on their regular projects for a week and strike out on something that catches their attention and drives their passion. Evidently in many cases, these projects have turned out to be new features in their existing products that individual were interested in, some were internal iniatives and some where evidently off the wall new ideas.   Today is show and tell where they will share with each other what they have been working on. There may well be some interesting announcements coming out of this.    The prospects are exciting. I understand that Google does something similar allowing their employees a specified amount of time to work on projects of their own choosing.    This has been the breeding ground for some of my favorite services. It is a shame that more companies do not follow such practices.   Now I know that most companies cannot afford to shut down everything for a week and sometimes you can't really explore an interesting idea in 8 hours a week or however much time Google allocates, but still it may be worth while. What would happen if your company gave you as an individual 1 week each quarter to work on a project of your own design and see what happens?   I would be happen if you still had to get approval for before your week long adventure. Personally, I think that this could be a very effective use of training budgets.   Give me a week to research something on my own and you would be amazed at what I can find out.    Maybe this should be the prerequisite before starting a new project.   Stagger the team onboarding but have everyone spend a week long sabbatical studying BizTalk before starting a project that will hinge on BizTalk. The show and tell afterwards is a great way to keep everyone honest or at least reassure management that everyone is honest.    If your goal was to spend a week researching and exploring a new technology and you had to do a show and tell afterwards to show off what you had learned, then everyone can learn a bit of what you just learned.     Sounds like a promising win win for me. Maybe it is a pipe dream, but what if .... What would you work on if given the opportunity to work on anything you wanted?

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• 4.8M wasn't enough so we went for 5.055M tpmc with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel r2 :-)

  - by wcoekaer

  We released a new set of benchmarks today. One is an updated tpc-c from a few months ago where we had just over 4.8M tpmc at $0.98 and we just updated it to go to 5.05M and $0.89. The other one is related to Java Middleware performance. You can find the press release here. Now, I don't want to talk about the actual relevance of the benchmark numbers, as I am not in the benchmark team. I want to talk about why these numbers and these efforts, unrelated to what they mean to your workload, matter to customers. The actual benchmark effort is a very big, long, expensive undertaking where many groups work together as a big virtual team. Having the virtual team be within a single company of course helps tremendously... We already start with a very big server setup with tons of storage, many disks, lots of ram, lots of cpu's, cores, threads, large database setups. Getting the whole setup going to start tuning, by itself, is no easy task, but then the real fun starts with tuning the system for optimal performance -and- stability. A benchmark is not just revving an engine at high rpm, it's actually hitting the circuit. The tests require long runs, require surviving availability tests, such as surviving crashes -and- recovery under load. In the TPC-C example, the x4800 system had 4TB ram, 160 threads (8 sockets, hyperthreaded, 10 cores/socket), tons of storage attached, tons of luns visible to the OS. flash storage, non flash storage... many things at high scale that all have to be perfectly synchronized. During this process, we find bugs, we fix bugs, we find performance issues, we fix performance issues, we find interesting potential features to investigate for the future, we start new development projects for future releases and all this goes back into the products. As more and more customers, for Oracle Linux, are running larger and larger, faster and faster, more mission critical, higher available databases..., these things are just absolutely critical. Unrelated to what anyone's specific opinion is about tpc-c or tpc-h or specjenterprise etc, there is a ton of effort that the customer benefits from. All this work makes Oracle Linux and/or Oracle Solaris better platforms. Whether it's faster, more stable, more scalable, more resilient. It helps. Another point that I always like to re-iterate around UEK and UEK2 : we have our kernel source git repository online. Complete changelog of the mainline kernel, and our changes, easy to pull, easy to dissect, easy to know what went in when, why and where. No need to go log into a website and manually click through pages to hopefully discover changes or patches. No need to untar 2 tar balls and run a diff.

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• Seven Accounting Changes for 2010

  - by Theresa Hickman

  I read a very interesting article called Seven Accounting Changes That Will Affect Your 2010 Annual Report from SmartPros that nicely summarized how 2010 annual financial statements will be impacted.  Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of the changes: 1.  Changes to revenue recognition if you sell bundled products with multiple deliverables: Old Rule: You needed to objectively establish the “fair value” of each bundled item. So if you sold a dishwasher plus installation and could not establish the fair value of the installation, you might have to delay recognizing revenue of the dishwasher days or weeks later until it was installed. New Rule (ASU 2009-13): “Objective” proof of each service or good is no longer required; you can simply estimate the selling price of the installation and warranty. So the dishwasher vendor can recognize the dishwasher revenue immediately at the point of sale without waiting a few weeks for the installation. Then they can recognize the estimated value of the installation after it is complete. 2.  Changes to revenue recognition for devices with embedded software: Old Rule: Hardware devices with embedded software, such as the iPhone, had to follow stringent software revrec rules. This forced Apple to recognize iPhone revenues over two years, the period of time that software updates were provided. New Rule (ASU 2009-14): Software revrec rules no longer apply to these devices with embedded software; these devices can now follow ASU 2009-13. This allows vendors, such as Apple, to recognize revenue sooner. 3.  Fair value disclosures: Companies (both public and private) now need to spend extra time gathering, summarizing, and disclosing information about items measured at fair value, such as significant transfers in and out of Level 1(quoted market price), Level 2 (valuation based on observable markets), and Level 3 (valuations based on internal information). 4.  Consolidation of variable interest entities (a.k.a special purpose entities): Consolidation rules for variable interest entities now require a qualitative, not quantitative, analysis to determine the primary beneficiary. Instead of simply looking at the percentage of voting interests, the primary beneficiary could have less than the majority interests as long as it has the power to direct the activities and absorb any losses.  5.  XBRL: Starting in June 2011, all U.S. public companies are required to file financial statements to the SEC using XBRL. Note: Oracle supports XBRL reporting. 6.  Non-GAAP financial disclosures: Companies that report non-GAAP measures of performance, such as EBITDA in SEC filings, have more flexibility.  The new interpretations can be found here: http://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/guidance/nongaapinterp.htm.  7.  Loss contingencies disclosures: Companies should expect additional scrutiny of their loss disclosures, such as those from litigation losses, in their annual financial statements. The SEC wants more disclosures about loss contingencies sooner instead of after the cases are settled.

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• eSTEP Newsletter for October 2013 now available

  - by uwes

  Dear Partners,We would like to let you know that the October'13 issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains information on the following topics: Oracle Open World Summary Oracle Cloud: Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Database and Middleware Oracle Applications and Software as a Service Oracle Industries Oracle Partners and the "Internet of Things" JavaOne News MySQL News Corporate News Create Your HR Strategic Vision at Oracle HCM World Oracle Database Protection Redefined A Preview: Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance Oracle closed Tekelec acquisition Congratulations to ORACLE TEAM USA! Tech sectionARC M6 Oracle's SPARC M6 Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 - Oracle’s Most Scalable Engineered System Oracle Multitenant on SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition: Plug into the Cloud Oracle In-Memory Database Cache Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance New Benchmark-Results published (Sept. 2013) Video Interview: Elasticity, the Biggest Challenge Facing Data Centers Today Tech blog Announcing New Sun Storage 2500-M2 Drives SPARC Product Line Update ZFS RAID Calculator v6 What ships with ODA X3-2? Tech Article: Oracle Multitenant on SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris New release of Sun Rack II capacity calculator available Announcing: Oracle Solaris Cluster Product Bulletin, September 2013 Learning & events Planned TechCasts Quarterly Partner Update Live Webcast: Simplify and Accelerate Oracle Database deployment with Oracle VM Templates Join us for OTN's Virtual Developer Day - Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence.Learn from OOW 2013 what is going on in Virtualization How to Implementing Early Arriving Facts in ODI, Part I and Part II: Proof of Concept Overview Multi-Factor Authentication in Oracle WebLogic Using multi-factor authentication to protect web applications deployed on Oracle WebLogic. If Virtualization Is Free, It Can't Be Any Good—Right? Looking beyond System/HW SOA and User Interfaces Overcoming the challenges to developing user interfaces in a service oriented References Vodafone Romania Improves Business Agility and Customer Satisfaction, with 10x Faster Business Intelligence Delivery and 12x Faster Processing Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Captures 47% Market Share in a Competitive Market, Thanks to 24/7 Availability Home Credit and Finance Bank Accelerates Getting New Banking Products to Market Extra A Conversation with Java Champion Johan VosYou can find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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• Showrooming: What's the big deal?

  - by David Dorf

  There's been lots of chatter recently on how retailers will combat showrooming this holiday season.  Best Buy and Target, for example, plan to price-match certain online sites.  But from my perspective, the whole showrooming concept is overblown.  Yes, mobile phones make is easier to comparison-shop, but consumers have been doing that all along.  Retailers have to work hard to merchandise their stores with the right products at the right price with the right promotions.  Its Retail 101. Yeah ok, many websites don't have to charge tax so they have an advantage, but they also have to cover shipping costs. Brick-and-mortar stores have the opportunity to provide expertise, fit, and instant gratification all of which are pretty big advantages. I see lots of studies that claim a large percentage of shoppers are showrooming.  Now I don't do much shopping, but when I do I rarely see anyone scanning UPC codes in the aisles.  If you dig into those studies, the question is usually something like, "have you used your mobile phone to price compare while shopping in the last year."  Well yeah, I did it once -- out of the 20 shopping trips.  And by the way, the in-store price was close enough to just buy the item.  Based on casual observation and informal surveys of friends, showrooming is not the modus-operandi for today's busy shoppers. I never see people showrooming in grocery stores, and most people don't bother for fashion.  For big purchases like appliances and furniture, I bet most people do their research online before entering the store.  The cases where I've done it was to see if a promotion was in fact a good deal.  Or even to make sure the in-store price is the same as the online price for the same brand. So, if you think you're a victim of showrooming, I suggest you look at the bigger picture.  Are you providing an engaging store experience?  Are you allowing customers to shop the way they want to shop, using various touchpoints?  Are you monitoring the competition to ensure prices are competitive?  Are your promotions attracting the right customers? Hubert Jolly, CEO of Best Buy, recently commented that showrooming might just get more people into his stores. "Once customers are in our stores, they're ours to lose."

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• Facial Recognition for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  My son decided to do his science project on how the brain recognizes faces.  Faces are so complicated and important that the brain has a dedicated area for just that purpose.  During our research, we came across some emerging uses for facial recognition in the retail industry. If you believe the movies, recognizing faces as they walk by a camera is easy for computers but that's not the reality.  Huge investments are being made by the U.S. government in this area, with a focus on airport security.  Now, companies like Eye See are leveraging that research for marketing purposes.  They do things like track eyes while viewing newspaper ads to see which ads get more "eye time."  This can help marketers make better placement and color decisions. But what caught my eye (that was too easy) was their new mannequins that watch shoppers.  These mannequins, being tested at European retailers like Benetton, watch shoppers that walk by and identify their gender, race, and age.  This helps the retailer better understand the types of customers being attracted to the outfit on the mannequin.  Of course to be most accurate, the software has pictures of the employees so they can be filtered out.  Since the mannequins are closer to the shoppers and at eye-level, they are more accurate than traditional in-ceiling LP cameras. Marketing agency RedPepper is offering retailers the ability to recognize loyalty shoppers at their doors using Facedeal.  For customers that have opted into the program, when they enter the store their face is recognized and they are checked in.  Then, as a reward, they are sent an offer on their smartphone. It won't be long before retailers begin to listen to shoppers are they walk the aisles, then keywords can be collected and aggregated to give the retailer an idea of what people are saying about their stores and products.  Sentiment analysis based on what's said or even facial expressions can't be far off. Clearly retailers need to be cautions and respect customer privacy.  That's why these technologies are emerging slowly.  But since the next generation of shoppers are less concerned about privacy, I expect these technologies to appear sporadically in the next five years then go mainstream.  Time will tell.

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