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• How do you measure the value of your software?

  - by Mike

  Hi, One of the principles of agile is that you should measure working software: Working software is the primary measure of progress - 12 principles of Agile The thing is, while I can measure my software in terms of stories done, bugs squashed or the volume of defect reports decreasing, I'm stuck on how to measure the value of my software. If I use Mike Cohn as an example and his helping SalesForce.com deliver 500% more value to it's customers compared to the previous year* - how do I measure that increase? How do I measure where I am right now? Other metrics he uses are the number of features and the number of features per developer. This is something I could work out if my backlog was in good order and the stories were cut up by 'feature', but we're just starting out with Agile, so I need some way of working out what the value is we deliver now, then use a similar metric in say, six months, to see if we've increased our output. I've heard about measuring value of software by an uptick in revenue, or an increase in customer satisfaction (how would you measure that though?) but those increases could be attributed to anything in the company (sales, accounting, support) and not directly to the work my department is doing. So, how do you guys measure the value of your software and how did you start? Thanks, Mike *Succeeding With Agile - Mike Cohn

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• Mount SMB / AFP 13.10

  - by Jeffery

  I cannot seem to get Ubuntu to mount a mac share via SMB or AFP. I've tried the following... AFP: apt-get install afpfs-ng-utils mount_afp afp://user:password@localip/share /mnt/share Error given: "Could not connect, never got a reponse to getstatus, Connection timed out". Which is odd as I can access the share just fine via Mac. SMB: apt-get install cifs-utils nano /etc/fstab added the following line "//localip/share /mnt/share cifs username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm 0 0" mount -a Error given: root@Asrock:~# mount -a -vvv mount: fstab path: "/etc/fstab" mount: mtab path: "/etc/mtab" mount: lock path: "/etc/mtab~" mount: temp path: "/etc/mtab.tmp" mount: UID: 0 mount: eUID: 0 mount: spec: "//10.0.1.3/NAS" mount: node: "/mnt/NAS" mount: types: "cifs" mount: opts: "username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm" mount: external mount: argv[0] = "/sbin/mount.cifs" mount: external mount: argv[1] = "//10.0.1.3/NAS" mount: external mount: argv[2] = "/mnt/NAS" mount: external mount: argv[3] = "-v" mount: external mount: argv[4] = "-o" mount: external mount: argv[5] = "rw,username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm" mount.cifs kernel mount options: ip=10.0.1.3,unc=\\10.0.1.3\NAS,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm,user=user,pass=* mount error(22): Invalid argument Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) I don't really care which it uses I just want it to work! Am I doing something wrong?

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• Integrating Twitter Into An ASP.NET Website

  Twitter is a popular social networking web service for writing and sharing short messages. These tidy text messages are referred to as tweets and are limited to 140 characters. Users can leave tweets and follow other users directly from Twitter's website or by using the Twitter API. Twitter's API makes it possible to integrate Twitter with external applications. For example, you can use the Twitter API to display your latest tweets on your blog. A mom and pop online store could integrate Twitter such that a new tweet was added each time a customer completed an order. And ELMAH, a popular open-source error logging library, can be configured to send error notifications to Twitter. Twitter's API is implemented over HTTP using the design principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). In a nutshell, inter-operating with the Twitter API involves a client - your application - sending an XML-formatted message over HTTP to the server - Twitter's website. The server responds with an XML-formatted message that contains status information and data. While you can certainly interface with this API by writing your own code to communicate with the Twitter API over HTTP along with the code that creates and parses the XML payloads exchanged between the client and server, such work is unnecessary since there are many community-created Twitter API libraries for a variety of programming frameworks. This article shows how to integrate Twitter with an ASP.NET website using the Twitterizer library, which is a free, open-source .NET library for working with the Twitter API. Specifically, this article shows how to retrieve your latest tweets and how to post a tweet using Twitterizer. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Java Spotlight Episode 75: Greg Luck on JSR 107 Java Temporary Caching API

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Recorded live at Jfokus 2012, an interview with Greg Luck on JSR 107 Java Temporary Caching API. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel is Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, Java EE Developer Advocate. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News JavaOne 2012 call for papers is open (closes April 9th) LightFish, Adam Bien's lightweight telemetry application Java EE 6 sample code JavaFX 1.2 and 1.3 EOL Repeating Annotations in the Works Events March 26-29, EclipseCon, Reston, USA March 27, Virtual Developer Days - Java (Asia Pacific (English)),9:30 am to 2:00pm IST / 12:00pm to 4.30pm SGT  / 3.00pm - 7.30pm AEDT April 4-5, JavaOne Japan, Tokyo, Japan April 12, GreenJUG, Greenville, SC April 17-18, JavaOne Russia, Moscow Russia April 18–20, Devoxx France, Paris, France April 26, Mix-IT, Lyon, France, May 3-4, JavaOne India, Hyderabad, India Feature Interview Greg Luck founded Ehcache in 2003. He regularly speaks at conferences, writes and codes. He has also founded and maintains the JPam and Spnego open source projects, which are security focused. Prior to joining Terracotta in 2009, Greg was Chief Architect at Wotif.com where he provided technical leadership as the company went from a single product startup to a billion dollar public company with multiple product lines. Before that Greg was a consultant for ThoughtWorks with engagements in the US and Australia in the travel, health care, geospatial, banking and insurance industries. Before doing programming, Greg managed IT. He was CIO at Virgin Blue, Tempo Services, Stamford Hotels and Resorts and Australian Resorts. He is a Chartered Accountant, and spent 7 years with KPMG in small business and insolvency. Mail Bag What’s Cool RT @harkje: To update an earlier tweet: #JavaFX feels like Swing with added convenience methods, better looking widgets, nice effects and...

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• Oracle CRM in the UK- Gartner CRM Summit 2010

  - by divya.malik

  We are now headed to the UK to co-sponsor and participate in the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2010 on the 16th and 17th of March in London. Oracle CRM Vice President Mark Woollen will be presenting on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 from 15:20-15:50 on                                                                                                                                          CRM is dead, long live CRM?  Everyone is saying the world has changed and with it a new set of acronyms/buzzwords/vendors etc have appeared. What does this really mean for CRM software? Is it Dead or Alive? Listen to Mark’s view from Oracle and its customers.                  Location- Westbourne 2, Level –1. Also stop by the Oracle booth at the demogrounds.  The event looks promising with some great content from the Gartner analysts and from what the Gartner folks just told me, the event is oversold. And the weather in London town? As expected…slight showers on Monday with a high of 49 degrees F and partly cloudy on Tuesday, with a high of 50 degrees F.

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• Kansas City .NET UG March Meeting &ndash; Tonight!!!!

  - by John Alexander

  Meeting tonight!!! Food! Great giveaways including a full license of Infragistics for a year! See you there!! Meeting for March 23rd, 2010 WHERE: Centriq Training, 8700 State Line Road, Leawood, KS (Click WHEN: 6:00 PM TOPIC: Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle for Agile development Microsoft recently added secure development guidance for agile methodologies within their SDL. During this presentation, Nick will summarize the new guidance and discuss what makes this guidance successful for Agile development. SPEAKER: Nick Coblentz Nick Coblentz is a senior consultant within AT&T Consulting Services' Application Security Practice. He focuses on helping organizations build mature application security programs and secure development processes. Nick has provided consulting services to fortune 500 companies within the retail, financial services, banking, and health care sectors. SPONSOR: TekSystems TEKsystems® is the leading IT staffing and services company. Our capabilities span a wide range of services: from technical staff augmentation and direct placement services, to full management of IT projects and comprehensive workforce management solutions. With over 25 years of experience, we are experts at connecting technical professionals. Whether you are looking for the best IT talent, an experienced IT outsourcing partner, or a career in the IT industry, TEKsystems delivers.

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• CRM at Oracle Series: Email Marketing

  - by tony.berk

  Anyone doubt that companies are sending more and more emails out to their existing customers and prospects? Effective email marketing requires a scalable platform which integrates with your CRM system. The email marketing system should also have key capabilities to ensure your maximizing your investment such as handling email bounces and click thru, tracking open messages and adhering to customer opt out and other personalization options. As part of the "CRM at Oracle" series, we've discussed other marketing topics including web marketing integration, real-time decisions and marketing business intelligence. Today's "CRM at Oracle" slidecast discusses how Oracle replaced a number of legacy "bulk" email systems with Siebel Email Marketing and is taking advantage of key functionality and integration to other Siebel CRM components. CRM at Oracle: Email Marketing Click here to learn more about Siebel Email Marketing and other Siebel Marketing products. Are you enjoying the CRM at Oracle Series? We are working on more topics for this year, but if there is a particular CRM area or function which you'd like to hear how Oracle implemented it internally, leave us a comment and we'll try to get it on our list.

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• Join us for our WebLogic Communtiy webcast on November 2nd 2012! OOW update WebLogic & ExaLogic

  - by JuergenKress

  NOVEMBER 2nd, 2012 AT 11:00 -11:45 AM CET (BERLIN TIME) Do you want to learn the latest about WebLogic and ExaLogic? Would you like to know what did Oracle announce at Oracle OpenWorld 2012? Join us for our WebLogic Communtiy webcast on November 2nd 2012! Don't miss this unique opportunity and learn the latest announcement and product updates on WebLogic and ExaLogic portfolio. Agenda Update announced about Cloud Application Foundation ExaLogic Update Key examples from successful customer Updated Roadmap Q&A Register to Attend! To Join the Webcast (Employees and Partners) AND / OR DIAL IN If you would like to dial in to the audio portion of the Webconference. Call ID: 8000524 & Call Passcode: 333111 Austria : +43(0)19286512 Belgium: +32(0)24010528 Denmark: +4532729222 Finland: +358(0)923193923 France: +33(0)176728936 Germany: +49(0)69222216106 Ireland: +353(0)12475650 Italy: +39(0)236008198 Netherlands: +31(0)207143543 Norway: +4721033443 Spain: +34914143755 Sweden: +46(0)856619465 Switzerland: +41(0)445804003 United Kingdom: +44(0)2081181001 Please click here to find more Local Numbers. Presenters: Maciej Gruszka Senior Principal Product Manager Tel: +4 (0) 8601 156 464 E-Mail: [email protected] LinkedIn: http://pl.linkedin.com/pub/maciej-gruszka/2/169/89 Jürgen Kress WebLogic Partner Adoption EMEA Tel. +49 89 1430 1479 E-Mail: [email protected] LinkedIn: http://de.linkedin.com/in/kress Twitter: http://twitter.com/wlscommunity Delivery Format This FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Duration: 1 hour Looking forward to your participation! WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: WebLogic Community Webcast,webcst,OOW updates WebLogic ExaLogic,WebLogic ppt,presenation,sales,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Implementing a wrapping wire (like the Worms Ninja Rope) in a 2D physics engine

  - by Andrew Russell

  I've been trying out some rope-physics recently, and I've found that the "standard" solution - making a rope from a series of objects strung together with springs or joints - is unsatisfying. Especially when rope swinging is relevant to gameplay. I don't really care about a rope's ability to wrap up or sag (this can be faked for visuals anyway). For gameplay, what is important is the ability for the rope to wrap around the environment and then subsequently unwrap. It doesn't even have to behave like rope - a "wire" made up of straight line segments would do. Here's an illustration: This is very similar to the "Ninja Rope" from the game Worms. Because I'm using a 2D physics engine - my environment is made up of 2D convex polygons. (Specifically I am using SAT in Farseer.) So my question is this: How would you implement the "wrapping" effect? It seems pretty obvious that the wire will be made up of a series of line segments that "split" and "join". And the final (active) segment of that line, where the moving object attaches, will be a fixed-length joint. But what is the maths / algorithm involved for determining when and where the active line segment needs to be split? And when it needs to be joined with the previous segment? (Previously this question also asked about doing this for a dynamic environment - I've decided to split that off into other questions.)

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• Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties

  - by dwahlin

  I have the opportunity to teach a lot of people about Silverlight (amongst other technologies) and one of the topics that definitely confuses people initially is the concept of dependency properties. I confess that when I first heard about them my initial thought was “Why do we need a specialized type of property?” While you can certainly use standard CLR properties in Silverlight applications, Silverlight relies heavily on dependency properties for just about everything it does behind the scenes. In fact, dependency properties are an essential part of the data binding, template, style and animation functionality available in Silverlight. They simply back standard CLR properties. In this post I wanted to put together a (hopefully) simple explanation of dependency properties and why you should care about them if you’re currently working with Silverlight or looking to move to it.   What are Dependency Properties? XAML provides a great way to define layout controls, user input controls, shapes, colors and data binding expressions in a declarative manner. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes in order to make XAML work and an important part of that magic is the use of dependency properties. If you want to bind data to a property, style it, animate it or transform it in XAML then the property involved has to be a dependency property to work properly. If you’ve ever positioned a control in a Canvas using Canvas.Left or placed a control in a specific Grid row using Grid.Row then you’ve used an attached property which is a specialized type of dependency property. Dependency properties play a key role in XAML and the overall Silverlight framework. Any property that you bind, style, template, animate or transform must be a dependency property in Silverlight applications. You can programmatically bind values to controls and work with standard CLR properties, but if you want to use the built-in binding expressions available in XAML (one of my favorite features) or the Binding class available through code then dependency properties are a necessity. Dependency properties aren’t needed in every situation, but if you want to customize your application very much you’ll eventually end up needing them. For example, if you create a custom user control and want to expose a property that consumers can use to change the background color, you have to define it as a dependency property if you want bindings, styles and other features to be available for use. Now that the overall purpose of dependency properties has been discussed let’s take a look at how you can create them. Creating Dependency Properties When .NET first came out you had to write backing fields for each property that you defined as shown next: Brush _ScheduleBackground; public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return _ScheduleBackground; } set { _ScheduleBackground = value; } } Although .NET 2.0 added auto-implemented properties (for example: public Brush ScheduleBackground { get; set; }) where the compiler would automatically generate the backing field used by get and set blocks, the concept is still the same as shown in the above code; a property acts as a wrapper around a field. Silverlight dependency properties replace the _ScheduleBackground field shown in the previous code and act as the backing store for a standard CLR property. The following code shows an example of defining a dependency property named ScheduleBackgroundProperty: public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), null);   Looking through the code the first thing that may stand out is that the definition for ScheduleBackgroundProperty is marked as static and readonly and that the property appears to be of type DependencyProperty. This is a standard pattern that you’ll use when working with dependency properties. You’ll also notice that the property explicitly adds the word “Property” to the name which is another standard you’ll see followed. In addition to defining the property, the code also makes a call to the static DependencyProperty.Register method and passes the name of the property to register (ScheduleBackground in this case) as a string. The type of the property, the type of the class that owns the property and a null value (more on the null value later) are also passed. In this example a class named Scheduler acts as the owner. The code handles registering the property as a dependency property with the call to Register(), but there’s a little more work that has to be done to allow a value to be assigned to and retrieved from the dependency property. The following code shows the complete code that you’ll typically use when creating a dependency property. You can find code snippets that greatly simplify the process of creating dependency properties out on the web. The MVVM Light download available from http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com comes with built-in dependency properties snippets as well. public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), null); public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return (Brush)GetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty); } set { SetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty, value); } } The standard CLR property code shown above should look familiar since it simply wraps the dependency property. However, you’ll notice that the get and set blocks call GetValue and SetValue methods respectively to perform the appropriate operation on the dependency property. GetValue and SetValue are members of the DependencyObject class which is another key component of the Silverlight framework. Silverlight controls and classes (TextBox, UserControl, CompositeTransform, DataGrid, etc.) ultimately derive from DependencyObject in their inheritance hierarchy so that they can support dependency properties. Dependency properties defined in Silverlight controls and other classes tend to follow the pattern of registering the property by calling Register() and then wrapping the dependency property in a standard CLR property (as shown above). They have a standard property that wraps a registered dependency property and allows a value to be assigned and retrieved. If you need to expose a new property on a custom control that supports data binding expressions in XAML then you’ll follow this same pattern. Dependency properties are extremely useful once you understand why they’re needed and how they’re defined. Detecting Changes and Setting Defaults When working with dependency properties there will be times when you want to assign a default value or detect when a property changes so that you can keep the user interface in-sync with the property value. Silverlight’s DependencyProperty.Register() method provides a fourth parameter that accepts a PropertyMetadata object instance. PropertyMetadata can be used to hook a callback method to a dependency property. The callback method is called when the property value changes. PropertyMetadata can also be used to assign a default value to the dependency property. By assigning a value of null for the final parameter passed to Register() you’re telling the property that you don’t care about any changes and don’t have a default value to apply. Here are the different constructor overloads available on the PropertyMetadata class: PropertyMetadata Constructor Overload Description PropertyMetadata(Object) Used to assign a default value to a dependency property. PropertyMetadata(PropertyChangedCallback) Used to assign a property changed callback method. PropertyMetadata(Object, PropertyChangedCalback) Used to assign a default property value and a property changed callback.   There are many situations where you need to know when a dependency property changes or where you want to apply a default. Performing either task is easily accomplished by creating a new instance of the PropertyMetadata class and passing the appropriate values to its constructor. The following code shows an enhanced version of the initial dependency property code shown earlier that demonstrates these concepts: public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return (Brush)GetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty); } set { SetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), new PropertyMetadata(new SolidColorBrush(Colors.LightGray), ScheduleBackgroundChanged)); private static void ScheduleBackgroundChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var scheduler = d as Scheduler; scheduler.Background = e.NewValue as Brush; } The code wires ScheduleBackgroundProperty to a property change callback method named ScheduleBackgroundChanged. What’s interesting is that this callback method is static (as is the dependency property) so it gets passed the instance of the object that owns the property that has changed (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get to the object instance). In this example the dependency object is cast to a Scheduler object and its Background property is assigned to the new value of the dependency property. The code also handles assigning a default value of LightGray to the dependency property by creating a new instance of a SolidColorBrush. To Sum Up In this post you’ve seen the role of dependency properties and how they can be defined in code. They play a big role in XAML and the overall Silverlight framework. You can think of dependency properties as being replacements for fields that you’d normally use with standard CLR properties. In addition to a discussion on how dependency properties are created, you also saw how to use the PropertyMetadata class to define default dependency property values and hook a dependency property to a callback method. The most important thing to understand with dependency properties (especially if you’re new to Silverlight) is that they’re needed if you want a property to support data binding, animations, transformations and styles properly. Any time you create a property on a custom control or user control that has these types of requirements you’ll want to pick a dependency property over of a standard CLR property with a backing field. There’s more that can be covered with dependency properties including a related property called an attached property….more to come.

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• How do I roll back to the shipped version of Thunderbird?

  - by kallakafar

  I was using thunderbird v15.0 on ubuntu 12.04 LTS till now, and have the lightning extension installed to manage calendar within thunderbird application. everything was working fine until i decided to update thunderbird to the latest version 16.0 from ubuntu repository. installation was successful, and the profile everything was taken care of perfectly, except that now lightning is not working - it is disabled as lightning v1.7 is NOT compatible with latest thunderbird v16 yet. As a result i am at loss with all my scheduling. now, i would like to go back to thunderbird v15 so that i can use lightning. ubuntu repository only gives TB v16 now. on mozilla site, they are still giving v15 for linux, so i downloaded the tarball and uncompressed using command line. now i have a folder called thunderbird. there are no readme/ configuration files. there are following 'executable files' inside this folder: crashreporter, mozilla-remote-client, plugin-container, thunderbird and thunderbird-bin. i tried invoking thunderbird and thunderbird-bin from command line using sudo, still nothing is opening up. i have execute permissions for this folder contents. i m quite new to linux. please let me know why i m not able to launch thunderbird. did i install it incorrectly? please let me know if i can get a .deb package for TB v15.

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• A KSH adattárháza: Oracle Essbase és Oracle Database alapon

  - by Fekete Zoltán

  A magyar Központi Statisztikai Hivatal metaadat vezérelt adattárháza három fontos Oracle terméken nyugszik. Az interneten elérhetok az adatok a KSH Tájékoztatási adatbázis-ból. Data from KSH in English. Amikor ezeket a sorokat írom, péntek éjjel 21:36-kor 81 online felhasználó kérdezte le az adatokat. :) - Oracle Essbase multidimenziós OLAP szerver, technikai infó - Hyperion Interactive Reporting lekérdezo eszköz, technikai infó - Oracle Database Enterprise Edition Az angol nyelvu customer snapshot, azaz ügyfél történet: Hungarian Central Statistical Office Provides 200,000 External Users with Secure Online Access to Data. A magyar nyelvu sikersztori: A KSH statisztikai adatainak 60 százaléka elérheto böngészo és platform függetlenül évi mintegy 200 000 internetes felhasználó számára. A termék kiválasztásában, a projekt kialakításában és bevezetésében nagy szerepet vállalt a DSS Consulting Kft. és az Oracle Konzultáció. A projekt során elért legfontosabb eredmények: - adattárház: 150-200 egyideju felhasználó, éves szinten 200 000 felhasználót jelent - Essbase memória alapú tárolási struktúrája: közel valósideju hozzáférés - A rendszer platform és böngészo független, ezért a felhasználók széles köre érheti el a statisztikai adatokat. - Natív Java API és XMLA támogatással egyedi karbantartó alkalmazás - A statisztikus munkatársak speciális informatikai eloképzettség nélkül építik fel és gondozzák a multidimenzionális adatbázisokat - Az Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting: oszlopos, kereszttáblás, szekcionált, grafikonos, webes lekérdezések Letöltheto a következo KSH eloadás a HOUG konferenciáról 2009-bol: Hyperalea iacta est - a KSH Essbase alapú adattárház rendszere. A most megjelent sikersztori: angolul és magyarul.

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• How should you approach supporting rapidly-updating web browsers?

  - by Schnapple

  Today, Firefox 5 was released. If all goes according to plan, Firefox 7 will be out by the end of the year. Firefox has adopted the Google Chrome development model wherein version numbers are largely unimportant and so just supporting "the latest (publicly available) one" is probably the best strategy. But how do you best test that? As my QA guys have pointed out, if you tell the client that you support "the latest version" but a version comes out that breaks your site, then you have a problem because now you've stated you support a web browser you don't. And since both Firefox and Chrome now update themselves automatically, the average person probably has no clue or care what version they're running. And having them either not upgrade or roll back is nontrivial. I'm finding there are a number of organizations that mandate their employees use IE (the head of IT subscribes to the Microsoft school of thought), or mandate their employees use Firefox (the head of IT subscribes to the IE-is-insecure school of thought), so Chrome updating constantly was a non-issue. But now that Firefox is a member of that club, I can see this becoming a bigger issue soon. My guess, in the case of Firefox, would be that the Aurora channel is the key, but what is the best way to approach testing it? Should we fix anything that comes up as an issue in Aurora, or should we wait until closer to the scheduled release? Do people automate this sort of thing?

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• It’s On! Oracle Open World 2012 Opens Call for Papers is Open

  - by David Hope-Ross

  Oracle OpenWorld is among the world’s largest industry events for good reason. It offers a vast array of learning and networking opportunities in one of the planet’s great cities.  And one of the key reasons for its popularity among procurement and supply chain professionals is the prominence of presentations by customers.   If you’d like to deliver a presentation based on your experience, now is the time to submit your abstract for review by the selection panel. The competition is strong: roughly 18% of entries are accepted each year from more than 3,000 submissions. Review panels are made up of experts both internal and external to Oracle. Successful submissions often (but not exclusively) focus on customer successes, how-tos, or best practices. What’s in it for you? Recognition, for one thing. Accepted sessions are publicized in the content catalog, which goes live in mid-June, and sessions given by external speakers often prove the most popular. Plus, accepted speakers get a complimentary pass to Oracle OpenWorld with access to all sessions and networking events- that could save you up to $2,595!   Be sure designate your session for inclusion in the correct track by selecting  “APPLICATIONS: Supply Chain Management” or “APPLICATIONS: Sourcing and Procurement” from the Primary Track drop down menu.   We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

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• Formatting Keywords to UPPERCASE In Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  I received this question from a customer today, and it took me more than a few minutes to remember where this preference was located in SQL Developer. This tells me that the topic is ripe for blogging How do I go FROM: select * from scott.emp where ename like '%JEFF%' TO SELECT * FROM scott.emp WHERE ename LIKE '%JEFF%' It’s all in the formatting You need to access the formatting preferences under the Tools menu. It takes a bit of navigating to get there, so bear with me: Tools Database SQL Formatter Oracle Formatting Click ‘Edit’ on the profile Other Case change: ‘Keywords Uppercase’ It’s easy to find once you know where to look? You can tell it to leave the case alone, upper everything, upper only the keywords, lower everything. Accessing the Formatter Options We allow separate formatting options for different RDBMS. You need to make sure you’re accessing the ‘Oracle Formatting’ page in the preferences. You can then choose to edit the default options OR you can do what I have done – save the defaults as a new set of options. I’ve called my profile ‘JeffCustom.’ I can now switch back and forth now through different sets of formatting options. You need to hit the ‘Edit’ button to get to the formatting options editor. A good number of people seem to miss this. Select your profile, then hit the ‘Edit’ button

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• Here’s How to Filter Anything from Twitter’s Web Interface

  - by The Geek

  As a geek, I’m not subject to the normal whims of the populace, which can be annoying when you hang out on Twitter and there’s a flood of tweets about things you don’t care about. Here’s how to filter tweets in the Twitter web interface. To accomplish this, we’re going to use a user script, which means all you Internet Explorer users are pretty much left out in the cold. You’ll probably want to resort to using a client like TweetDeck instead. Image by catspyjamasnz Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Preliminary List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Unity Now Available Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7 Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic E.T. II – Extinction [Fake Movie Sequel Video] Remastered King’s Quest Games Offer Classic Gaming on Modern Machines Compare Your Internet Cost and Speed to Global Averages [Infographic]

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• Oracle VM Blade Cluster Reference Configuration

  - by Ferhat Hatay

  Today we are happy to announce the availability of the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration for Sun Blade 6000 modular systems.  The new Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration can help reduce the time to deploy virtual infrastructure by up to 98 percent when compared to multi-vendor configurations. Oracle's virtualization strategy is to simplify the deployment, management, and support of the enterprise stack from application to disk. The Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration is a single-vendor solution that addresses every layer of the virtualization stack with Oracle hardware and software components. It enables quick and easy deployment of the virtualized infrastructure using components that have been tested together and are all supported together by one vendor — Oracle. All components listed in the reference configuration have been tested together by Oracle, reducing the need for customer testing and the time-consuming and complex effort of designing and deploying a stable configuration. Benefitting from pre-installed Oracle VM Server for x86 software on Oracle’s highly scalable and reliable Sun Blade servers with built-in networking and Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line, the configuration provides high availability via the blade cluster as well as a documented best practice guide that helps reduce deployment time and cost for customers implementing highly virtualized applications or private cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) architectures. To further support easier, faster and lower-cost deployments, Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM are available for pre-install on select Sun x86 systems, and Oracle VM Templates are available for download for Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, Oracle Real Application Clusters, and many other Oracle products. Key benefits of the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration include: Faster time to value – Begin deploying applications immediately because the optimized software stack is pre-configured for best practices and is ready-to-run on the recommended hardware platforms. Reduced deployment cost and risk – The entire hardware and software stack has been tested and is supported together by Oracle. Elastic scalability – As capacity needs grow, the system can be easily scaled in multiple dimensions with the ability to add compute, storage, and networking resources independently. For more information, see: Oracle white paper: Accelerating deployment of virtualized infrastructures with the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration Oracle technical white paper: Best Practices and Guidelines for Deploying the Oracle VM Blade Cluster Reference Configuration

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• Option Trading: Getting the most out of the event session options

  - by extended_events

  You can control different aspects of how an event session behaves by setting the event session options as part of the CREATE EVENT SESSION DDL. The default settings for the event session options are designed to handle most of the common event collection situations so I generally recommend that you just use the defaults. Like everything in the real world though, there are going to be a handful of “special cases” that require something different. This post focuses on identifying the special cases and the correct use of the options to accommodate those cases. There is a reason it’s called Default The default session options specify a total event buffer size of 4 MB with a 30 second latency. Translating this into human terms; this means that our default behavior is that the system will start processing events from the event buffer when we reach about 1.3 MB of events or after 30 seconds, which ever comes first. Aside: What’s up with the 1.3 MB, I thought you said the buffer was 4 MB?The Extended Events engine takes the total buffer size specified by MAX_MEMORY (4MB by default) and divides it into 3 equally sized buffers. This is done so that a session can be publishing events to one buffer while other buffers are being processed. There are always at least three buffers; how to get more than three is covered later. Using this configuration, the Extended Events engine can “keep up” with most event sessions on standard workloads. Why is this? The fact is that most events are small, really small; on the order of a couple hundred bytes. Even when you start considering events that carry dynamically sized data (eg. binary, text, etc.) or adding actions that collect additional data, the total size of the event is still likely to be pretty small. This means that each buffer can likely hold thousands of events before it has to be processed. When the event buffers are finally processed there is an economy of scale achieved since most targets support bulk processing of the events so they are processed at the buffer level rather than the individual event level. When all this is working together it’s more likely that a full buffer will be processed and put back into the ready queue before the remaining buffers (remember, there are at least three) are full. I know what you’re going to say: “My server is exceptional! My workload is so massive it defies categorization!” OK, maybe you weren’t going to say that exactly, but you were probably thinking it. The point is that there are situations that won’t be covered by the Default, but that’s a good place to start and this post assumes you’ve started there so that you have something to look at in order to determine if you do have a special case that needs different settings. So let’s get to the special cases… What event just fired?! How about now?! Now?! If you believe the commercial adage from Heinz Ketchup (Heinz Slow Good Ketchup ad on You Tube), some things are worth the wait. This is not a belief held by most DBAs, particularly DBAs who are looking for an answer to a troubleshooting question fast. If you’re one of these anxious DBAs, or maybe just a Program Manager doing a demo, then 30 seconds might be longer than you’re comfortable waiting. If you find yourself in this situation then consider changing the MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY option for your event session. This option will force the event buffers to be processed based on your time schedule. This option only makes sense for the asynchronous targets since those are the ones where we allow events to build up in the event buffer – if you’re using one of the synchronous targets this option isn’t relevant. Avoid forgotten events by increasing your memory Have you ever had one of those days where you keep forgetting things? That can happen in Extended Events too; we call it dropped events. In order to optimizes for server performance and help ensure that the Extended Events doesn’t block the server if to drop events that can’t be published to a buffer because the buffer is full. You can determine if events are being dropped from a session by querying the dm_xe_sessions DMV and looking at the dropped_event_count field. Aside: Should you care if you’re dropping events?Maybe not – think about why you’re collecting data in the first place and whether you’re really going to miss a few dropped events. For example, if you’re collecting query duration stats over thousands of executions of a query it won’t make a huge difference to miss a couple executions. Use your best judgment. If you find that your session is dropping events it means that the event buffer is not large enough to handle the volume of events that are being published. There are two ways to address this problem. First, you could collect fewer events – examine you session to see if you are over collecting. Do you need all the actions you’ve specified? Could you apply a predicate to be more specific about when you fire the event? Assuming the session is defined correctly, the next option is to change the MAX_MEMORY option to a larger number. Picking the right event buffer size might take some trial and error, but a good place to start is with the number of dropped events compared to the number you’ve collected. Aside: There are three different behaviors for dropping events that you specify using the EVENT_RETENTION_MODE option. The default is to allow single event loss and you should stick with this setting since it is the best choice for keeping the impact on server performance low.You’ll be tempted to use the setting to not lose any events (NO_EVENT_LOSS) – resist this urge since it can result in blocking on the server. If you’re worried that you’re losing events you should be increasing your event buffer memory as described in this section. Some events are too big to fail A less common reason for dropping an event is when an event is so large that it can’t fit into the event buffer. Even though most events are going to be small, you might find a condition that occasionally generates a very large event. You can determine if your session is dropping large events by looking at the dm_xe_sessions DMV once again, this time check the largest_event_dropped_size. If this value is larger than the size of your event buffer [remember, the size of your event buffer, by default, is max_memory / 3] then you need a large event buffer. To specify a large event buffer you set the MAX_EVENT_SIZE option to a value large enough to fit the largest event dropped based on data from the DMV. When you set this option the Extended Events engine will create two buffers of this size to accommodate these large events. As an added bonus (no extra charge) the large event buffer will also be used to store normal events in the cases where the normal event buffers are all full and waiting to be processed. (Note: This is just a side-effect, not the intended use. If you’re dropping many normal events then you should increase your normal event buffer size.) Partitioning: moving your events to a sub-division Earlier I alluded to the fact that you can configure your event session to use more than the standard three event buffers – this is called partitioning and is controlled by the MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE option. The result of setting this option is fairly easy to explain, but knowing when to use it is a bit more art than science. First the science… You can configure partitioning in three ways: None, Per NUMA Node & Per CPU. This specifies the location where sets of event buffers are created with fairly obvious implication. There are rules we follow for sub-dividing the total memory (specified by MAX_MEMORY) between all the event buffers that are specific to the mode used: None: 3 buffers (fixed)Node: 3 * number_of_nodesCPU: 2.5 * number_of_cpus Here are some examples of what this means for different Node/CPU counts: Configuration None Node CPU 2 CPUs, 1 Node 3 buffers 3 buffers 5 buffers 6 CPUs, 2 Node 3 buffers 6 buffers 15 buffers 40 CPUs, 5 Nodes 3 buffers 15 buffers 100 buffers   Aside: Buffer size on multi-processor computersAs the number of Nodes or CPUs increases, the size of the event buffer gets smaller because the total memory is sub-divided into more pieces. The defaults will hold up to this for a while since each buffer set is holding events only from the Node or CPU that it is associated with, but at some point the buffers will get too small and you’ll either see events being dropped or you’ll get an error when you create your session because you’re below the minimum buffer size. Increase the MAX_MEMORY setting to an appropriate number for the configuration. The most likely reason to start partitioning is going to be related to performance. If you notice that running an event session is impacting the performance of your server beyond a reasonably expected level [Yes, there is a reasonably expected level of work required to collect events.] then partitioning might be an answer. Before you partition you might want to check a few other things: Is your event retention set to NO_EVENT_LOSS and causing blocking? (I told you not to do this.) Consider changing your event loss mode or increasing memory. Are you over collecting and causing more work than necessary? Consider adding predicates to events or removing unnecessary events and actions from your session. Are you writing the file target to the same slow disk that you use for TempDB and your other high activity databases? <kidding> <not really> It’s always worth considering the end to end picture – if you’re writing events to a file you can be impacted by I/O, network; all the usual stuff. Assuming you’ve ruled out the obvious (and not so obvious) issues, there are performance conditions that will be addressed by partitioning. For example, it’s possible to have a successful event session (eg. no dropped events) but still see a performance impact because you have many CPUs all attempting to write to the same free buffer and having to wait in line to finish their work. This is a case where partitioning would relieve the contention between the different CPUs and likely reduce the performance impact cause by the event session. There is no DMV you can check to find these conditions – sorry – that’s where the art comes in. This is  largely a matter of experimentation. On the bright side you probably won’t need to to worry about this level of detail all that often. The performance impact of Extended Events is significantly lower than what you may be used to with SQL Trace. You will likely only care about the impact if you are trying to set up a long running event session that will be part of your everyday workload – sessions used for short term troubleshooting will likely fall into the “reasonably expected impact” category. Hey buddy – I think you forgot something OK, there are two options I didn’t cover: STARTUP_STATE & TRACK_CAUSALITY. If you want your event sessions to start automatically when the server starts, set the STARTUP_STATE option to ON. (Now there is only one option I didn’t cover.) I’m going to leave causality for another post since it’s not really related to session behavior, it’s more about event analysis. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Oracle B2B 11g - Transport Layer Acknowledgement

  - by Nitesh Jain Oracle

  In Health Care Industry,Acknowledgement or Response should be sent back very fast. Once any message received, Acknowledgement should be sent back to TP. Oracle B2B provides a solution to send acknowledgement or Response from transport layer of mllp that is called as immediate acknowledgment. Immediate acknowledgment is generated and transmitted in the transport layer. It is an alternative to the functional acknowledgment, which generates after processing/validating the data in document layer. Oracle B2B provides four types of immediate acknowledgment: Default: Oracle B2B parses the incoming HL7 message and generates an acknowledgment from it. This mode uses the details from incoming payload and generate the acknowledgement based on incoming HL7 message control number, sender and application identification. By default, an Immediate ACK is a generic ACK. Trigger event can also sent back by using Map Trigger Event property. If mapping the MSH.10 of the ACK with the MSH.10 of the incoming business message is required, then enable the Map ACK Control ID property. Simple: B2B sends the predefined acknowledgment message to the sender without parsing the incoming message. Custom: Custom immediate Ack/Response mode gives a user to define their own response/acknowledgement. This is configurable using file in the Custom Immediate ACK File property. Negative: In this case, immediate ACK will be returned only in the case of exceptions.

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• Management and Monitoring Tools for Windows Azure

  - by BuckWoody

  With such a large platform, Windows Azure has a lot of moving parts. We’ve done our best to keep the interface as simple as possible, while giving you the most control and visibility we can. However, as with most Microsoft products, there are multiple ways to do something – and I’ve always found that to be a good strength. Depending on the situation, I might want a graphical interface, a command-line interface, or just an API so I can incorporate the management into my own tools, or have third-party companies write other tools. While by no means exhaustive, I thought I might put together a quick list of a few tools you can use to manage and monitor Windows Azure components, from our IaaS, SaaS and PaaS offerings. Some of the products focus on one area more than another, but all are available today. I’ll try and maintain this list to keep it current, but make sure you check the date of this post’s update – if it’s more than six months old, it’s most likely out of date. Things move fast in the cloud. The Windows Azure Management Portal The primary tool for managing Windows Azure is our portal – most everything you need is there, from creating new services to querying a database. There are two versions as of this writing – a Silverlight client version, and a newer HTML5 version. The latter is being updated constantly to be in parity with the Silverlight client. There’s a balance in this portal between simplicity and power – we’re following the “less is more” approach, with increasing levels of detail as you work through the portal rather than overwhelming you with a single, long “more is more” page. You can find the Portal here: http://windowsazure.com (then click “Log In” and then “Portal”) Windows Azure Management API You can also use programming tools to either write your own interface, or simply provide management functions directly within your solution. You have two options – you can use the more universal REST API’s, which area bit more complex but work with any system that can write to them, or the more approachable .NET API calls in code. You can find the reference for the API’s here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460799.aspx  All Class Libraries, for each part of Windows Azure: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee393295.aspx  PowerShell Command-lets PowerShell is one of the most powerful scripting languages I’ve used with Windows – and it’s baked into all of our products. When you need to work with multiple servers, scripting is really the only way to go, and the Windows Azure PowerShell Command-Lets allow you to work across most any part of the platform – and can even be used within the services themselves. You can do everything with them from creating a new IaaS, PaaS or SaaS service, to controlling them and even working with security and more. You can find more about the Command-Lets here: http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/documentation (older link, still works, will point you to the new ones as well) We have command-line utilities for other operating systems as well: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/downloads/  Video walkthrough of using the Command-Lets: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/SAC-859T  System Center System Center is actually a suite of graphical tools you can use to manage, deploy, control, monitor and tune software from Microsoft and even other platforms. This will be the primary tool we’ll recommend for managing a hybrid or contiguous management process – and as time goes on you’ll see more and more features put into System Center for the entire Windows Azure suite of products. You can find the Management Pack and README for it here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11324  SQL Server Management Studio / Data Tools / Visual Studio SQL Server has two built-in management and development, and since Version 2008 R2, you can use them to manage Windows Azure Databases. Visual Studio also lets you connect to and manage portions of Windows Azure as well as Windows Azure Databases. You can read more about Visual Studio here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee405484  You can read more about the SQL tools here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee621784.aspx  Vendor-Provided Tools Microsoft does not suggest or endorse a specific third-party product. We do, however, use them, and see lots of other customers use them. You can browse to these sites to learn more, and chat with their folks directly on how they support Windows Azure. Cerebrata: Tools for managing from the command-line, graphical diagnostics, graphical storage management - http://www.cerebrata.com/  Quest Cloud Tools: Monitoring, Storage Management, and costing tools - http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud-tools  Paraleap: Monitoring tool - http://www.paraleap.com/AzureWatch  Cloudgraphs: Monitoring too -  http://www.cloudgraphs.com/  Opstera: Monitoring for Windows Azure and a Scale-out pattern manager - http://www.opstera.com/products/Azureops/  Compuware: SaaS performance monitoring, load testing -  http://www.compuware.com/application-performance-management/gomez-apm-products.html  SOASTA: Penetration and Security Testing - http://www.soasta.com/cloudtest/enterprise/  LoadStorm: Load-testing tool - http://loadstorm.com/windows-azure  Open-Source Tools This is probably the most specific set of tools, and the list I’ll have to maintain most often. Smaller projects have a way of coming and going, so I’ll try and make sure this list is current. Windows Azure MMC: (I actually use this one a lot) http://wapmmc.codeplex.com/  Windows Azure Diagnostics Monitor: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/wazdmon  Azure Application Monitor: http://azuremonitor.codeplex.com/  Azure Web Log: http://www.xentrik.net/software/azure_web_log.html  Cloud Ninja:Multi-Tennant billing and performance monitor -  http://cnmb.codeplex.com/  Cloud Samurai: Multi-Tennant Management- http://cloudsamurai.codeplex.com/    If you have additions to this list, please post them as a comment and I’ll research and then add them. Thanks!

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• New ACS Resell Portfolio for OPN Members

  - by swalker

  Oracle Advanced Customer Support (ACS) Services is pleased to announce availability of the ACS Resell Portfolio to Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) members on June 28, 2012. The ACS Resell Portfolio is available to Gold level OPN members and above selling to end users with valid Oracle Premier Support/End User agreements, and in countries where ACS has a local in-country presence to support the partner business. ACS provides mission critical support services for complex IT environments to help maximize performance, achieve higher availability, and reduce risk. The ACS Resell Portfolio can be leveraged to reduce time to market and drive improved end user satisfaction. Including ACS services at point of license sale can maximize your success as an Oracle partner.     On July 10, 2012, Oracle ACS is hosting a 60-minute resell portfolio training session.  Topics include: ACS Resell Portfolio objectives   Partner participation requirements ACS portfolio services enabled for partner resell ACS sales engagement and transaction processes Contracting requirements Attend the following session to hear how you can maximize your profit opportunities by including ACS services, which compliment your solutions with integrated Oracle advanced support technologies.      July 10, 2012 4:00 PM CEST Webconference Session Number: 591 988 820 Session Password: ebh12345 Int’l: 706.501.7506 US: 866.589.6202 Call ID: 95867658 Click here for a list of toll-free international numbers. Please contact [email protected] with any questions or visit the ACS website.

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• Using an Apt Repository for Paid Software Updates

  - by Scott Warren

  I'm trying to determine a way to distribute software updates for a hosted/on-site web application that may have weekly and/or monthly updates. I don't want the customers who use the on-site product to have to worry about updating it manually I just want it to download and install automatically ala Google Chrome. I'm planning on providing an OVF file with Ubuntu and the software installed and configured. My first thought on how to distributed software is to create six Apt repositories/channels (not sure which would be better at this point) that will be accessed through SSH using keys so if a customer doesn't renew their subscription we can disable their account: Beta - Used internally on test data to check the package for major defects. Internal - Used internally on live data to check the package for defects (dog fooding stage). External 1 - Deployed to 1% of our user base (randomly selected) to check for defects. External 9 - Deployed to 9% of our user base (ramdonly selected) to check for defects. External 90 - Deployed to the remaining 90% of users. Hosted - Deployed to the hosted environment. It will take a sign off at each stage to move into the next repository in case problems are reported. My questions to the community are: Has anyone tried something like this before? Can anyone see a downside to this type of a procedure? Is there a better way?

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• You Can't Win on Price

  - by David Dorf

  This year I did the majority of my Christmas shopping from the comfort of my home office. There aren't many things in stores you can't find online these days. I find it easier to search, research, and compare products online rather than walking the mall anyway. But there's a segment of the population that likes to be in the store, touching the products. For those people, smartphones avail them some of the e-commerce features I mentioned right there in the aisles. First it was RedLaser, then TheFind, ShopSavvy and many others. But the one that should be scaring retailers is Amazon's PriceCheck application. It lets you scan the product barcode, take a picture of the product, or speak the product's name. Once the product is identified, it shows the online prices, with Amazon at the top of the list. Within 10 seconds you can order the item and Amazon Prime members get free 2-day shipping too. I don't think fashion and grocery retailers need to worry much, but I have to believe smartphones are helping Amazon win a little more of the brand-name hardgoods market. So what's a retailer to do? Best Buy has begun to put QR Codes on their shelf labels that are easily scanned by smartphones and take the consumer to a Best Buy Web page where they can get extended information about the product. The consumer is getting the additional information they want, and Best Buy avoids the price comparisons. Of course if a consumer chooses to use the Amazon PriceCheck app, then all bets are off. That's when Best Buy has to hope the in-store experience and customer service will save the sale. My point is that the internet makes information available to everyone, and smartphones make it available anywhere. Unless you want your store to be Amazon's local showroom, you need to be price-competitive but differentiate on other aspects of the shopping experience. With the cost of running a physical store, you can't win on price.

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• Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: The Insurance Industry’s Dream

  - by Jenna Danko

  On June 3rd, I saw the Gaylord Resort Centre in Washington D.C. become the hub of C level executives and managers of insurance carriers for the IASA 2013 Conference.  Insurance Accounting/Regulation and Technology sessions took the focus, but there were plenty of tertiary sessions for career development, which complemented the overall strong networking side of the conference.  As an exhibitor, Oracle, along with several hundred other product providers, welcomed the opportunity to display and demonstrate our solutions and we were encouraged by hustle and bustle of the exhibition floor.  The IASA organizers had pre-arranged fast track tours whereby interested conference delegates could sign up for a series of like-themed presentations from Vendors, giving them a level of 'Speed Dating' introductions to possible solutions and services.  Oracle participated in a number of these, which were very well subscribed.  Clearly, the conference had a strong business focus; however, attendees saw technology as a key enabler to get their processes done smarter, faster and cheaper.  As we navigated through the exhibition, it became clear from the inquiries that came to us that insurance carriers are gravitating to a number of focus areas: Navigating the maze of upcoming regulatory reporting changes. For US carriers with European holdings, Solvency II carries a myriad of rules and reporting requirements. Alignment across the globe of the Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) processes brings to the fore the National Insurance of Insurance commissioners' (NAIC) recent guidance manual publication. Doing more with less and to certainly expect more from technology for less dollars. The overall cost of IT, in particular hardware, has dropped in real terms (though the appetite for more has risen: more CPU, more RAM, more storage), but software has seen less change. Clearly, customers expect either to pay less or get a lot more from their software solutions for the same buck. Doing things smarter – A recognition that with the advance of technology to stand still no longer means you are technically going backwards. Technology and, in particular technology interactions with human business processes, has undergone incredible change over the past 5 years. Consumer usage (iPhones, etc.) has been at the forefront, but now at the Enterprise level ever more effective technology exploitation is beginning to take place. That data and, in particular gleaning knowledge from data, is refining and improving business processes.  Organizations are now consuming more data than ever before, and it is set to grow exponentially for some time to come.  Amassing large volumes of data is one thing, but effectively analyzing that data is another.  It is the results of such analysis that leads to improvements both in terms of insurance product offerings and the processes to support them. Regulatory Compliance, damned if you do and damned if you don’t! Clearly, around the globe at lot is changing from a regulatory perspective and it is evident that in terms of regulatory requirements, whilst there is a greater convergence across jurisdictions bringing uniformity, there is also a lot of work to be done in the next 5 years. Just like the big data, hidden behind effective regulatory compliance there often lies golden nuggets that can give competitive advantages. From Oracle's perspective, our Rating Engine, Billing, Document Management and Insurance Analytics solutions on display served to strike up good conversations and, as is always the case at conferences, it was a great opportunity to meet and speak with existing Oracle customers that we might not have otherwise caught up with for a while. Fortunately, I was able to catch up on a few sessions at the close of the Exhibition.  The speaker quality was high and the audience asked challenging, but pertinent, questions.  During Dr. Jackie Freiberg’s keynote “Bye Bye Business as Usual,” the author discussed 8 strategies to help leaders create a culture where teams consistently deliver innovative ideas by disrupting the status quo.  The very first strategy: Get wired for innovation.  Freiberg admitted that folks in the insurance and financial services industry understand and know innovation is important, but oftentimes they are slow adopters.  Today, technology and innovation go hand in hand. In speaking to delegates during and after the conference, a high degree of satisfaction could be measured from their positive comments of speaker sessions and the exhibitors. I suspect many will be back in 2014 with Indianapolis as the conference location. Did you attend the IASA Conference in Washington D.C.?  If so, I would love to hear your comments. Andrew Collins is the Director, Solvency II of Oracle Financial Services. He can be reached at andrew.collins AT oracle.com.

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• Schmelp Portal, Help Portal: Oracle Fusion Applications Help Online

  - by ultan o'broin

  Yes, the Oracle Fusion Applications Help (or "Help Portal" to us insiders) is now available. Click the link fusionhelp.oracle.com and check it out! Oracle Fusion Applications Help user interface If you're developing your own help for Fusion Apps, then you can use the newly published Oracle Fusion Help User Interface Guidelines to understand the best usage. These guidelines are also a handy way to get to the embedded help design patterns for Oracle Fusion Applications, now also available. To customize and extend the help content itself no longer requires the engagement of your IT Department or expensive project work. Customers can now use the Manage Custom Help capability to edit or add whatever content they need, make it secure and searchable, and develop a community around it too. You can see more of that capability in this slideshare.net presentation from UKOUG Ireland 2012 about the Oracle Fusion Applications User Assistance and Support Ecosystem by Ultan O'Broin and Richard Bingham. Manage Custom Help capability To understand the science and craft that went into the creation and delivery of the "Help Portal" (cardiac arrests all round in Legal and Marketing Depts), then check out this great white paper by Ultan O'Broin and Laurie Pattison: Putting the User into Oracle Fusion Applications User Assistance. So, what's with this "Help Portal" name? Well, that's an internal (that is, internal to Oracle) name only and we should all really call it by the correct product listing name: Oracle Fusion Applications Help. To be honest, I don't care what you call it as long as it is useful. However, these internal names can be problematic when talking with support or the licensing people. For years, we referred casually to the Oracle Applications Help or Oracle Applications Help System that ships with the Oracle E-Business Suite products as "iHelp". Then, somebody went and bought Siebel. Game over.

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