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  • E-Business Suite Sessions at Sangam 2013 in Hyderabad

    - by Sara Woodhull
    The Sangam 2013 conference, sponsored jointly by the All-India Oracle Users' Group (AIOUG) and India Oracle Applucations Users Group (IOAUG), will be in Hyderabad, India on November 8-9, 2013.  This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will offer two speaker sessions and a walk-in usability test of upcoming EBS user interface features.  It's only about two weeks away, so make your plans to attend if you are in India. Sessions Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Veshaal Singh, Senior Director, ATG Development Friday, Nov. 9, 11:00-12:00 This Oracle development session provides an overview of Oracle's product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for Oracle E-Business Suite technology. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Integration Options for Oracle E-Business Suite Rekha Ayothi, Lead Product Manager, ATG Friday, Nov. 9, 2:00-3:00 In this Oracle development session, you will get an understanding of how, when and where you can leverage Oracle's integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio. This session offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Usability Testing There will be multiple opportunities to participate in usability testing at Sangam '13.  The User Experience team is running a one-on-one usability study that requires advance registration.  In addition, we will be hosting a special walk-in usability lab to get feedback for new Oracle E-Business Suite OA Framework features.  The walk-in lab is a shorter usability experience that does not require any pre-registration.  In both cases, Oracle wants your feedback!  Even if you only have a few minutes, come by the User Experience Lab, meet the team, and try the walk-in lab.

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  • links for 2010-04-22

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Barry N. Perkins: Unique Business Value vs. Unique IT "Some solutions may look good today, solving a budget challenge by reducing cost, or solving a specific tactical challenge, but result in highly complex environments, that may be difficult to manage and maintain and limit the future potential of your business. Put differently, some solutions might push today's challenge into the future, resulting in a more complex and expensive solution." -- Barry N. Perkins, VP Oracle Modernization & Oracle Integrated Solutions (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture modernization) Paul Homchick: The Information Driven Value Chain - Part 2 Paul Homchick continues his series with a look "at the way investments have been made in enterprise software in an effort to create and manage value, and how systems are moving from a controlled-process approach design towards gathering and using dynamically using information." (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture) @vambenepe: The battle of the Cloud Frameworks: Application Servers redux? "The battle of the Cloud Frameworks has started," says William Vambenepe, "and it will look a lot like the battle of the Application Servers which played out over the last decade and a half." (tags: oracle otn cloud frameworks appserver) @ORACLENERD: COLLABORATE: Day 4 Wrap Up Oraclenerd feesses up: "The day started out with the realization that I pulled off the best (COLLABORATE - self annointed) prank ever. Twitter was...all atwitter about the fact that Mark Rittman was Oracle's Person of the Year. Of course it wasn't true. If you look at the picture, you'll realize that he's wearing exactly the same clothes in the magazine cover as he is in real life." (tags: collaborate2010 oracleace) Oracle's Hal Stern at Cloud Expo: "We've Moved from 'What' to 'How'" | Cloud Computing Journal "Hal also spoke a bit about building 'a sustainable IT model.' By this, he said he didn't mean the various Green IT and similar efforts that 'are all about data center efficiency. I think the operational model is just as important. Many enterprises are managing a tremendous amount of complexity, and it's hard to make this sustainable.'" -- Cloud News Desk (tags: oracle cloud cloudexpo halstern) @ORACLENERD: COLLABORATE: The Beach Party "Then tiki statues somehow were incorporated into various dances" -- Oracle ACE Chet "oraclenerd" Justice (tags: 0racle otn oracleace collaborate2010 oaug ioug lasvegas) David Andrews: Collaborate Day Two "Collaborate 2010 has focused on helping attendees understand what is already available and how to make more effective use of it. This does not sound exciting but it is extremely valuable. Most customers use only a small fraction of the capability of the products they already own. Helping them understand all the additional things they could be doing without buying anything more is very valuable." -- David Andrews (tags: oracle oaug collaborate2010 ioug)

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  • Second Edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook Has Been Published

    - by Jan Goyvaerts
    %COOKBOOKFRAME% The first edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook was published in May of 2009. It quickly became a bestseller, briefly holding the #1 spot in computer books on Amazon.com. It also had staying power. The ebook version was O’Reilly’s top seller during the whole year of 2010. So it’s no surprise that our editor at O’Reilly soon contacted us for a second edition. With Steven and I always being very busy, those plans were delayed until finally both of us found the time to update the book. Work started in January. Today you can buy your own copy of the second edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook. O’Reilly’s online shop sells the eBook in DRM-free ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats for $39.99 and the print version for $49.99. These are the list prices for the eBook and the print book. If you’re looking for a discount and free shipping of the print book, you can pre-order on one of the various Amazon sites. Deliveries should start soon. The discount rates differ and are subject to change. Amazon will also pay me an affiliate commission if you use one of these links, which pretty much doubles the income I get from the book. Amazon.com. Free shipping to the USA. Amazon.co.uk. Free shipping to the UK and Ireland. Amazon.fr. Free shipping to France, Monaco, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Amazon.de. Free shipping to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Belgium, and The Netherlands. If you don’t want to wait for the print book to arrive, the Kindle edition is already available for instant delivery. The Kindle edition works on Amazon’s Kindle hardware, and on PCs via Amazon’s Kindle software (free download). Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.fr Amazon.de I’ll blog more about the book in the coming days and weeks with details about what’s new in the second edition.

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  • &ldquo;Our Users are Doing Something Surprising&rdquo;&hellip; but what?

    - by antonio romero
    I’ve just started a discussion on the OWB Linkedin Group based on a blog post from Laura Klein’s “Users Know” blog, entitled “Your Users are Doing Something Surprising”… As a PM I found the post thought-provoking and a good reminder to learn from our customers: ...You may have written user stories and work flows... But you know who didn’t read your user stories? That’s right: your users. The result? Somewhere out there, a whole lot of your users are doing something totally unexpected with your product.... Your customers want to do something with your product so badly that they’re going out of their way to come up with clever ways to do it on their own. There are three excellent reasons for you to know what your customers are actually doing with your product: So you know if you are missing an opportunity to pivot your product or marketing So you know if you are missing an important feature So you don’t accidentally destroy a commonly used workaround or "unplanned feature" Truer words were rarely blogged. In fact just in the last few weeks I have had several "users" (some customers, and some internal to Oracle, in fact) turn up having built unexpected but powerful things around OWB, because it has such extensibility mechanisms built into it: OMB*Plus, the old Java APIs back before 10.2, and now the code template/knowledge module framework OWB shares with ODI. Some of our external users show astounding knowledge of how to make OWB really sing. (We hope to feature case studies from several of them over the course of the year on the OWB blog.) My question to all of you: can you identify things you have done or are doing with OWB or that you depend on in it that you think would come as a surprise to us? This could be either some development so advanced as to leave us all gob-smacked, or just some common (to you) thing that you use it for that you find enormously valuable but that you think is a bit off the theoretical "main line" use case of loading data warehouses. I invite the readers of this blog to come visit the OWB and ODI LinkedIn group and share their unusual applications of OWB or the very ordinary-looking features that you don’t want us to forget or would like us to extend. Your anecdotes will impress the crowd and will also help shape future data integration products from Oracle... Come on, surprise us. :)

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  • Is commented out code really always bad?

    - by nikie
    Practically every text on code quality I've read agrees that commented out code is a bad thing. The usual example is that someone changed a line of code and left the old line there as a comment, apparently to confuse people who read the code later on. Of course, that's a bad thing. But I often find myself leaving commented out code in another situation: I write a computational-geometry or image processing algorithm. To understand this kind of code, and to find potential bugs in it, it's often very helpful to display intermediate results (e.g. draw a set of points to the screen or save a bitmap file). Looking at these values in the debugger usually means looking at a wall of numbers (coordinates, raw pixel values). Not very helpful. Writing a debugger visualizer every time would be overkill. I don't want to leave the visualization code in the final product (it hurts performance, and usually just confuses the end user), but I don't want to loose it, either. In C++, I can use #ifdef to conditionally compile that code, but I don't see much differnce between this: /* // Debug Visualization: draw set of found interest points for (int i=0; i<count; i++) DrawBox(pts[i].X, pts[i].Y, 5,5); */ and this: #ifdef DEBUG_VISUALIZATION_DRAW_INTEREST_POINTS for (int i=0; i<count; i++) DrawBox(pts[i].X, pts[i].Y, 5,5); #endif So, most of the time, I just leave the visualization code commented out, with a comment saying what is being visualized. When I read the code a year later, I'm usually happy I can just uncomment the visualization code and literally "see what's going on". Should I feel bad about that? Why? Is there a superior solution? Update: S. Lott asks in a comment Are you somehow "over-generalizing" all commented code to include debugging as well as senseless, obsolete code? Why are you making that overly-generalized conclusion? I recently read Robert Glass' "Clean Code", which says: Few practices are as odious as commenting-out code. Don't do this!. I've looked at the paragraph in the book again (p. 68), there's no qualification, no distinction made between different reasons for commenting out code. So I wondered if this rule is over-generalizing (or if I misunderstood the book) or if what I do is bad practice, for some reason I didn't know.

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  • Recap: Oracle at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit

    - by kimberly.billings
    Getting to Vegas was no fun. As anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows, the SF airport shuts down one runway when it rains, causing major havoc. So rain, rain, rain on Sunday meant delay, delay, delay at the airport. Needless to say, my 6:30 pm flight didn't land in Vegas until 3:00 am! But the travel pains were worth it. There was a lot to be learned at the Gartner BI Summit this year, and the uptick in attendance was reflected in strong booth traffic and engaging conversations in the Oracle booth. Oracle customer, Dawn Conant, Director, Business Intelligence at Beckman Coulter, generated a lot of interest in her presentation about migrating from Business Objects to Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Edition with Oracle Database 11g. Dawn's story was a very relatable one, as many of the attendees had plans for similar projects. One of the most interesting Gartner-led sessions compared BI/DW megavendors, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. According to Gartner analyst Rita Sallam, these megavendors control about two-thirds of the BI market. Sallem attributes this in part to the fact that organizations are expanding their definitions of BI to also include analytics and performance management. In doing so, they require greater integration of BI applications with a broader set of applications and middleware. In a related session, a panel of Gartner analysts compared the Magic Quadrants for BI Platforms; CPM; Data Quality; Data Integration Tools; and Data Warehouses. Oracle is a leader in all of the Magic Quadrants in which it participates and has the most complete stack including hardware and software, according to Donald Feinberg. Feinberg also commented that in situations with VLDW and solid mixed workloads, Oracle Exadata is making a big difference! var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-13185312-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

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  • Advice for moving from custom domain hosted on blogspot to new custom domain on hosting provider [closed]

    - by Chan
    Need some advice :) a) Facts: 1. Currently, we have a blog www.thebigbigsky.net hosted on blogspot.com. The site has been up for around a year and google had cached some of the posts. 2. The idea for setting up the blog was to promote/share articles/write-up about personal development and self-growth, and also to offer counseling services related to them. 3. There is another subdomain - chinese.thebigbigsky.net hosting similar blog posts but in Chinese. This is hosted on blogspot as well. b) What we want to do: 1. We did some research on the internet and understood that, to make a website more popular, it is better to have a domain name that is related to the content of the site. Hence, in our case, a domain name containing "personal development" would be more ideal and easier for people to remember. 2. Hence, we are thinking to move away from blogspot to a meaningful new domain (example: personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com) and move all contents there. The new domain will be hosted on a hosting provider e.g. hostgator.com c) Here are the steps we have in mind: 1. Register the new domain (example: personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com) 2. Get a hosting provider hostgator.com 3. Setup a new site based on Wordpress, import all contents from existing blog to this new site - personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com. 4. Switch current blog back to thebigbigsky.blogspot.com 5. Switch DNS of www.thebigbigsky.net to point to the new site on hostgator.com 6. On hostgator.com, setup permanent redirect 301 of www.thebigbigsky.net to point to personaldevelopmetnwithxyz.com by following the tutorial mentioned here - http://www.blogbloke.com/migrating-redirecting-blogger-wordpress-htaccess-apache-best-method/ Questions: 1. Will it have major impact on the current google pagerank or SEO of thebigbigsky.net? As the site is not that popular, we assumed that the impact would not be a major one. 2. Is the domain personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com considered too long? (For SEO etc) 3. Steps c.4 and c.5 above - Will this work for our case? 4. How about the subdomain - chinese.thebigbigsky.net? We would like keep it as separate blog with the domain e.g. chinese.personaldevelopmentwithxyz.com 5. We added "facebook comments" to the existing post on www.thebigtbigsky.net and would not want to lose it. Will the comments still be there after we moved to the new domain? 6. Any better idea to do it? :) Thank you very much! regards, -chan

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  • Mark Zuckerberg tops the list of 50 Highest Rated CEOs. 3 Indian CEOs feature in the list.

    - by Gopinath
    Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook is rated as the best CEO according to a report released by the popular employee reviews website Glassdoor.com. 50,000 employees reviews submitted to Glassdoor in the past 1 year are considered for preparing the rating list and Zukerberg topped the list with 99 percent approval to the question “Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?”. Wow! That’s an amazing support to Zukergerg from his employees though stock market and share holders are not with him. Coincidently Facebook is also rated as the best company to work by Glassdoor in a recent survey. Here is the list of top 10 CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook; 99.3% Approval Bill McDermott & Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP; 99% Approval Dominic Barton, McKinsey & Company; 97% Approval Jim Turley, Ernst & Young; 96% Approval John E. Schlifske, Northwestern Mutual; 96% Approval Frank D’Souza, Cognizant Technology Solutions; 96% Approval Joe Tucci, EMC; 96% Approval Paul E. Jacobs, QUALCOMM; 95% Approval Richard K. Davis, U.S. Bank; 95% Approval Pierre Nanterme, Accenture; 95% Approval 3 Indian CEOs in the top 50 list – TCS, Wipro & MindTree The list featured three Indian CEOs and all the three are leading Software IT Services organizations in India and creating thousands of IT jobs.  Natarajan Chandrasekaran – the CEO of TCS is at 25th position, Krishnakumar Natarajan – the CEO of MindTree is at 28th position and  Wipro’s T.K.Kurien is at 44th position. Glad to see Indian CEO joining the global ranks. Tech Heavy Weights Google, Apple, Amazon & Microsoft aren’t in top 10 Another thing to note from this report is that the CEO’s of technology heavy weights Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are not in the top10 list- looks like their employees are not really happy with their bosses. At least not as happy as their peers at Facebook. Google CEO’s Larry Page is at 11th position, Jeff Bezos of Amazon at 16th position and Tim Cook of Apple is at 18th position. Well the Microsoft CEO is not even in the list of top 50!! You can read the complete list of ratings at Glassdoor.com’s blog. Photo Credit: Andrew Feinberg

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  • links for 2011-02-09

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Tech Cast Live - Java and Oracle, One Year Later - February 15th 10AM PST (Oracle Technology Network Blog (aka TechBlog)) (tags: ping.fm) The impact of IT decisions on organizational culture - O'Reilly Radar "While I believe we recognize the limiting qualities of IT decisions, I'd suggest we've insufficiently studied the degree to which those decisions in aggregate can have a large influence on organizational culture." - Jonathan Reichental, Ph.D. (tags: ITgovernance organizationalculture enterprisearchitecture) Women "computers" of World War II - Boing Boing "Before it came to mean laptops, PCs, or even room-sized machines, "computer" was what you called a person who did mathematical calculations for a living. That job was vitally important during World War II. And, like many vital jobs on the homefront, it was turned over to women..." (tags: computers history worldwar2) InfoQ: Book Excerpt and Interview: 100 SOA Questions Asked and Answered A new "100 SOA Questions Asked and Answered " book by Kerrie Holley and Ali Arsanjani provides a deep insight into SOA covering a wide spectrum of topics from SOA basics to its business and organizational impact, to SOA methods and architecture to SOA future. InfoQ spoke with Kerrie Holley and Ali Arsanjani about their book. (tags: ping.fm) @myfear: GlassFish City - Another view onto your favorite application server Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele runs GlassFish through CodeCity. (tags: oracle otn oracleace glassfish codecity) The Ron Batra Blog: Technology Whispers: Upcoming Presentations Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra shares details on upcoming presentations at OAUG events in the US and Dubai. (tags: oaug c11 oracle otn oracleace) Free ADF Training Event in the UK (Grant Ronald's Blog) Gobsmack survivor Grant Ronald with the details on an Oracle ADF training session he'll conduct on 11 May 2011 at the UK Oracle office in Reading. (tags: oracle otn adf) Java Spotlight Episode 16 - Richar Bair - The Java Spotlight Podcast The latest Java Spotlight podcast features an interview with Java Client Architect Richar Bair. (tags: oracle java podcast) Stewart Bryson: OBIEE 11g Migrations "[Rittman Mead's] Mark and Venkat have covered OBIEE migration methodologies in the past (see here, here and here), but I decided to throw my hat in the ring on the subject, as I had to develop a methodology for a client recently and wanted to share my experiences." - Stewart Bryson (tags: oracle otn obiee businessintelligence) Dr. Chris Harding: The golden thread of interoperability | Open Group Blog "There are so many things going on at every Conference by The Open Group that it is impossible to keep track of all of them, and this week’s Conference in San Diego, California, is no exception. The main themes are Cybersecurity, Enterprise Architecture, SOA and Cloud Computing." - Dr. Chris Harding (tags: entarch soa interoperability cloud) Marc Kelderman: OSB: Creating an Asynchronous / Fire-Forget WebService Call Creating a fire-and-forget call via OSB is simple, according to solution architect Marc Kelderman. "The trick is to send NO response back to the caller, only an HTTP response code, 200 or any other." (tags: oracle otn servicebus)

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  • Looking for Cutting-Edge Data Integration: 2014 Excellence Awards

    - by Sandrine Riley
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 It is nomination time!!! This year's Oracle Fusion Middleware Excellence Awards will honor customers and partners who are creatively using various products across Oracle Fusion Middleware. Think you have something unique and innovative with one or a few of our Oracle Data Integration products? We would love to hear from you! Please submit today. The deadline for the nomination is June 20, 2014. What you win: An Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation trophy One free pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2014 Priority consideration for placement in Profit magazine, Oracle Magazine, or other Oracle publications & press release Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation logo for inclusion on your own Website and/or press release Let us reminisce a little… For details on the 2013 Data Integration Winners: Royal Bank of Scotland’s Market and International Banking and The Yalumba Wine Company, check out this blog post: 2013 Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware Innovation… and the Winners for Data Integration are… and for details on the 2012 Data Integration Winners: Raymond James and Morrisons, check out this blog post: And the Winners of Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards in Data Integration are…  Now to view the 2013 Winners (for all categories). We hope to honor you! Here's what you need to do:  Click here to submit your nomination today.  And just a reminder: the deadline to submit a nomination is 5pm Pacific Time on June 20, 2014. /* 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;}

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  • I Choose iNada

    - by Mark Treadwell
    As a laptop and Kindle user, I have been looking at the usual cyclical Apple frenzy in the press with the same kind of amused tolerance I give my three-year-old son.  They never seem to learn, and they keep repeating the same things.  However when I ready articles like this, I am reminded that that is not always the case. I am a happy user of a monster-sized HP HDX laptop, HP touch screen all-in-one system, and multi-screen Dell desktops at home as well as a HP business laptop at work.  I have no iPod, iMac, iTouch or any other relationship with the company who wants to trademark the prefix “i”. I have not missed them. That is not to say that I have no technological gadgets.  I do.  They just do not dominate Every company wants to preserve their customer base, but Apple just does it too rigidly.  The buy-in necessary rubs me wrong.  When the fanboys scream about the next great iApple thing which will kill off another market segment (this time, the iPad will kill off laptops), the amused tolerance returns. From what I have seen, the iPad virtual keyboard is a poor substitute for an actual keyboard.  It was intended to let you get some kind of text into a device that is not really intended for keyboard input, but rather for touch manipulation of a designed interface.  I like the virtual keyboard on my LG Dare cell phone, but you will not catch me writing my next novel with it.  But, you hear, you can connect a real keyboard and get info from another computer.  That is when you realize that the iPad is not a true standalone device like a laptop.  You have to make more hardware purchases to get what you truly want.  It is an expensive accommodation to get you a different form of freedom. So if Apple made a product with me in mind, you can have it.  Everyone gets to make their own choice.  My choice is the iNada.

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  • Programming and Ubiquitous Language (DDD) in a non-English domain

    - by Sandor Drieënhuizen
    I know there are some questions already here that are closely related to this subject but none of them take Ubiquitous Language as the starting point so I think that justifies this question. For those who don't know: Ubiquitous Language is the concept of defining a (both spoken and written) language that is equally used across developers and domain experts to avoid inconsistencies and miscommunication due to translation problems and misunderstanding. You will see the same terminology show up in code, conversations between any team member, functional specs and whatnot. So, what I was wondering about is how to deal with Ubiquitous Language in non-English domains. Personally, I strongly favor writing programming code in English completely, including comments but ofcourse excluding constants and resources. However, in a non-English domain, I'm forced to make a decision either to: Write code reflecting the Ubiquitous Language in the natural language of the domain. Translate the Ubiquitous Language to English and stop communicating in the natural language of the domain. Define a table that defines how the Ubiquitous Language translates to English. Here are some of my thoughts based on these options: 1) I have a strong aversion against mixed-language code, that is coding using type/member/variable names etc. that are non-English. Most programming languages 'breathe' English to a large extent and most of the technical literature, design pattern names etc. are in English as well. Therefore, in most cases there's just no way of writing code entirely in a non-English language so you end up with mixed languages anyway. 2) This will force the domain experts to start thinking and talking in the English equivalent of the UL, something that will probably not come naturally to them and therefore hinders communication significantly. 3) In this case, the developers communicate with the domain experts in their native language while the developers communicate with each other in English and most importantly, they write code using the English translation of the UL. I'm sure I don't want to go for the first option and I think option 3 is much better than option 2. What do you think? Am I missing other options? UPDATE Today, about year later, having dealt with this issue on a daily basis, I have to say that option 3 has worked out pretty well for me. It wasn't as tedious as I initially feared and translating in real time while talking to the client wasn't a problem either. I also found the following advantages to be true, based on my experience. Translating the UL makes you pay more attention to defining the UL and even the domain itself, especially when you don't know how to translate a term and you have to start looking through dictionaries etc. This has even caused me to reconsider domain modeling decisions a few times. It helps you make your knowledge of the English language more profound. Obviously, your code is much more pleasant to look at instead of being a mind boggling obscenity.

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  • Sniffing out SQL Code Smells: Inconsistent use of Symbolic names and Datatypes

    - by Phil Factor
    It is an awkward feeling. You’ve just delivered a database application that seems to be working fine in production, and you just run a few checks on it. You discover that there is a potential bug that, out of sheer good chance, hasn’t kicked in to produce an error; but it lurks, like a smoking bomb. Worse, maybe you find that the bug has started its evil work of corrupting the data, but in ways that nobody has, so far detected. You investigate, and find the damage. You are somehow going to have to repair it. Yes, it still very occasionally happens to me. It is not a nice feeling, and I do anything I can to prevent it happening. That’s why I’m interested in SQL code smells. SQL Code Smells aren’t necessarily bad practices, but just show you where to focus your attention when checking an application. Sometimes with databases the bugs can be subtle. SQL is rather like HTML: the language does its best to try to carry out your wishes, rather than to be picky about your bugs. Most of the time, this is a great benefit, but not always. One particular place where this can be detrimental is where you have implicit conversion between different data types. Most of the time it is completely harmless but we’re  concerned about the occasional time it isn’t. Let’s give an example: String truncation. Let’s give another even more frightening one, rounding errors on assignment to a number of different precision. Each requires a blog-post to explain in detail and I’m not now going to try. Just remember that it is not always a good idea to assign data to variables, parameters or even columns when they aren’t the same datatype, especially if you are relying on implicit conversion to work its magic.For details of the problem and the consequences, see here:  SR0014: Data loss might occur when casting from {Type1} to {Type2} . For any experienced Database Developer, this is a more frightening read than a Vampire Story. This is why one of the SQL Code Smells that makes me edgy, in my own or other peoples’ code, is to see parameters, variables and columns that have the same names and different datatypes. Whereas quite a lot of this is perfectly normal and natural, you need to check in case one of two things have gone wrong. Either sloppy naming, or mixed datatypes. Sure it is hard to remember whether you decided that the length of a log entry was 80 or 100 characters long, or the precision of a number. That is why a little check like this I’m going to show you is excellent for tidying up your code before you check it back into source Control! 1/ Checking Parameters only If you were just going to check parameters, you might just do this. It simply groups all the parameters, either input or output, of all the routines (e.g. stored procedures or functions) by their name and checks to see, in the HAVING clause, whether their data types are all the same. If not, it lists all the examples and their origin (the routine) Even this little check can occasionally be scarily revealing. ;WITH userParameter AS  ( SELECT   c.NAME AS ParameterName,  OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(c.object_ID) AS ObjectName,  t.name + ' '     + CASE     --we may have to put in the length            WHEN t.name IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')             THEN '('               + CASE WHEN c.max_length = -1 THEN 'MAX'                ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(4),                    CASE WHEN t.name IN ('nchar', 'nvarchar')                      THEN c.max_length / 2 ELSE c.max_length                    END)                END + ')'         WHEN t.name IN ('decimal', 'numeric')             THEN '(' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.precision)                   + ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.Scale) + ')'         ELSE ''      END  --we've done with putting in the length      + CASE WHEN XML_collection_ID <> 0         THEN --deal with object schema names             '(' + CASE WHEN is_XML_Document = 1                    THEN 'DOCUMENT '                    ELSE 'CONTENT '                   END              + COALESCE(               (SELECT QUOTENAME(ss.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(sc.name)                FROM sys.xml_schema_collections sc                INNER JOIN Sys.Schemas ss ON sc.schema_ID = ss.schema_ID                WHERE sc.xml_collection_ID = c.XML_collection_ID),'NULL') + ')'          ELSE ''         END        AS [DataType]  FROM sys.parameters c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID  WHERE OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) <> 'sys'   AND parameter_id>0)SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(80),objectName+'.'+ParameterName),DataType FROM UserParameterWHERE ParameterName IN   (SELECT ParameterName FROM UserParameter    GROUP BY ParameterName    HAVING MIN(Datatype)<>MAX(DataType))ORDER BY ParameterName   so, in a very small example here, we have a @ClosingDelimiter variable that is only CHAR(1) when, by the looks of it, it should be up to ten characters long, or even worse, a function that should be a char(1) and seems to let in a string of ten characters. Worth investigating. Then we have a @Comment variable that can't decide whether it is a VARCHAR(2000) or a VARCHAR(MAX) 2/ Columns and Parameters Actually, once we’ve cleared up the mess we’ve made of our parameter-naming in the database we’re inspecting, we’re going to be more interested in listing both columns and parameters. We can do this by modifying the routine to list columns as well as parameters. Because of the slight complexity of creating the string version of the datatypes, we will create a fake table of both columns and parameters so that they can both be processed the same way. After all, we want the datatypes to match Unfortunately, parameters do not expose all the attributes we are interested in, such as whether they are nullable (oh yes, subtle bugs happen if this isn’t consistent for a datatype). We’ll have to leave them out for this check. Voila! A slight modification of the first routine ;WITH userObject AS  ( SELECT   Name AS DataName,--the actual name of the parameter or column ('@' removed)  --and the qualified object name of the routine  OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(ObjectID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(ObjectID) AS ObjectName,  --now the harder bit: the definition of the datatype.  TypeName + ' '     + CASE     --we may have to put in the length. e.g. CHAR (10)           WHEN TypeName IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')             THEN '('               + CASE WHEN MaxLength = -1 THEN 'MAX'                ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(4),                    CASE WHEN TypeName IN ('nchar', 'nvarchar')                      THEN MaxLength / 2 ELSE MaxLength                    END)                END + ')'         WHEN TypeName IN ('decimal', 'numeric')--a BCD number!             THEN '(' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), Precision)                   + ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), Scale) + ')'         ELSE ''      END  --we've done with putting in the length      + CASE WHEN XML_collection_ID <> 0 --tush tush. XML         THEN --deal with object schema names             '(' + CASE WHEN is_XML_Document = 1                    THEN 'DOCUMENT '                    ELSE 'CONTENT '                   END              + COALESCE(               (SELECT TOP 1 QUOTENAME(ss.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(sc.Name)                FROM sys.xml_schema_collections sc                INNER JOIN Sys.Schemas ss ON sc.schema_ID = ss.schema_ID                WHERE sc.xml_collection_ID = XML_collection_ID),'NULL') + ')'          ELSE ''         END        AS [DataType],       DataObjectType  FROM   (Select t.name AS TypeName, REPLACE(c.name,'@','') AS Name,          c.max_length AS MaxLength, c.precision AS [Precision],           c.scale AS [Scale], c.[Object_id] AS ObjectID, XML_collection_ID,          is_XML_Document,'P' AS DataobjectType  FROM sys.parameters c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID  AND parameter_id>0  UNION all  Select t.name AS TypeName, c.name AS Name, c.max_length AS MaxLength,          c.precision AS [Precision], c.scale AS [Scale],          c.[Object_id] AS ObjectID, XML_collection_ID,is_XML_Document,          'C' AS DataobjectType            FROM sys.columns c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID   WHERE OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) <> 'sys'  )f)SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(80),objectName+'.'   + CASE WHEN DataobjectType ='P' THEN '@' ELSE '' END + DataName),DataType FROM UserObjectWHERE DataName IN   (SELECT DataName FROM UserObject   GROUP BY DataName    HAVING MIN(Datatype)<>MAX(DataType))ORDER BY DataName     Hmm. I can tell you I found quite a few minor issues with the various tabases I tested this on, and found some potential bugs that really leap out at you from the results. Here is the start of the result for AdventureWorks. Yes, AccountNumber is, for some reason, a Varchar(10) in the Customer table. Hmm. odd. Why is a city fifty characters long in that view?  The idea of the description of a colour being 256 characters long seems over-ambitious. Go down the list and you'll spot other mistakes. There are no bugs, but just mess. We started out with a listing to examine parameters, then we mixed parameters and columns. Our last listing is for a slightly more in-depth look at table columns. You’ll notice that we’ve delibarately removed the indication of whether a column is persisted, or is an identity column because that gives us false positives for our code smells. If you just want to browse your metadata for other reasons (and it can quite help in some circumstances) then uncomment them! ;WITH userColumns AS  ( SELECT   c.NAME AS columnName,  OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(c.object_ID) AS ObjectName,  REPLACE(t.name + ' '   + CASE WHEN is_computed = 1 THEN ' AS ' + --do DDL for a computed column          (SELECT definition FROM sys.computed_columns cc           WHERE cc.object_id = c.object_id AND cc.column_ID = c.column_ID)     --we may have to put in the length            WHEN t.Name IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')             THEN '('               + CASE WHEN c.Max_Length = -1 THEN 'MAX'                ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(4),                    CASE WHEN t.Name IN ('nchar', 'nvarchar')                      THEN c.Max_Length / 2 ELSE c.Max_Length                    END)                END + ')'       WHEN t.name IN ('decimal', 'numeric')       THEN '(' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.precision) + ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.Scale) + ')'       ELSE ''      END + CASE WHEN c.is_rowguidcol = 1          THEN ' ROWGUIDCOL'          ELSE ''         END + CASE WHEN XML_collection_ID <> 0            THEN --deal with object schema names             '(' + CASE WHEN is_XML_Document = 1                THEN 'DOCUMENT '                ELSE 'CONTENT '               END + COALESCE((SELECT                QUOTENAME(ss.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(sc.name)                FROM                sys.xml_schema_collections sc                INNER JOIN Sys.Schemas ss ON sc.schema_ID = ss.schema_ID                WHERE                sc.xml_collection_ID = c.XML_collection_ID),                'NULL') + ')'            ELSE ''           END + CASE WHEN is_identity = 1             THEN CASE WHEN OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id,                'IsUserTable') = 1 AND COLUMNPROPERTY(object_id,                c.name,                'IsIDNotForRepl') = 0 AND OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id,                'IsMSShipped') = 0                THEN ''                ELSE ' NOT FOR REPLICATION '               END             ELSE ''            END + CASE WHEN c.is_nullable = 0               THEN ' NOT NULL'               ELSE ' NULL'              END + CASE                WHEN c.default_object_id <> 0                THEN ' DEFAULT ' + object_Definition(c.default_object_id)                ELSE ''               END + CASE                WHEN c.collation_name IS NULL                THEN ''                WHEN c.collation_name <> (SELECT                collation_name                FROM                sys.databases                WHERE                name = DB_NAME()) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS                THEN COALESCE(' COLLATE ' + c.collation_name,                '')                ELSE ''                END,'  ',' ') AS [DataType]FROM sys.columns c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID  WHERE OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) <> 'sys')SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(80),objectName+'.'+columnName),DataType FROM UserColumnsWHERE columnName IN (SELECT columnName FROM UserColumns  GROUP BY columnName  HAVING MIN(Datatype)<>MAX(DataType))ORDER BY columnName If you take a look down the results against Adventureworks, you'll see once again that there are things to investigate, mostly, in the illustration, discrepancies between null and non-null datatypes So I here you ask, what about temporary variables within routines? If ever there was a source of elusive bugs, you'll find it there. Sadly, these temporary variables are not stored in the metadata so we'll have to find a more subtle way of flushing these out, and that will, I'm afraid, have to wait!

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  • How to Use Your Android Phone as a Modem; No Rooting Required

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If your cellular provider’s mobile hotspot/tethering plans are too pricey, skip them and tether your phone to your computer without inflating your monthly bill. Read on to see how you can score free mobile internet. We recently received a letter from a How-To Geek reader, requesting help linking their Android phone to their laptop to avoid the highway robbery their cellular provider was insisting upon: Dear How-To Geek, I recently found out that my cellphone company charges $30 a month to use your smartphone as a data modem. That’s an outrageous price when I already pay an extra $15 a month charge just because they insist that because I have a smartphone I need a data plan because I’ll be using so much more data than other users. They expect me to pay what amounts to a $45 a month premium just to do some occasional surfing and email checking from the comfort of my laptop instead of the much smaller smartphone screen! Surely there is a work around? I’m running Windows 7 on my laptop and I have an Android phone running Android OS 2.2. Help! Sincerely, No Double Dipping! Well Double Dipping, this is a sentiment we can strongly related to as many of us on staff are in a similar situation. It’s absurd that so many companies charge you to use the data connection on the phone you’re already paying for. There is no difference in bandwidth usage if you stream Pandora to your phone or to your laptop, for example. Fortunately we have a solution for you. It’s not free-as-in-beer but it only costs $16 which, over the first year of use alone, will save you $344. Let’s get started! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC 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) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Make Efficient Use of Tab Bar Space by Customizing Tab Width in Firefox See the Geeky Work Done Behind the Scenes to Add Sounds to Movies [Video] Use a Crayon to Enhance Engraved Lettering on Electronics Adult Swim Brings Their Programming Lineup to iOS Devices Feel the Chill of the South Atlantic with the Antarctica Theme for Windows 7 Seas0nPass Now Offers Untethered Apple TV Jailbreaking

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  • How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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  • ACORD LOMA 2010: Building Insurance Companies in the Clouds

    - by [email protected]
    Chuck Johnston, vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance, participated in a featured speaking session at ACORD LOMA 2010. He provides an update on his discussions with insurers at the show and after his presentation. Every year I always make a point of walking the show floor at the ACORD LOMA technology conference to visit with colleagues and competitors, and try to get a feel for which way the industry will move over the next 12 months. Insurers are looking for substance in cloud (computing), trying to mix business with pleasure (monetizing social networks), and expect differentiation through commodity (Software as a Service). The disconnect at this show is that most vendors are still struggling with creating a clear path from Facebook to customer intimacy, SaaS to core cost savings and clouds to ubiquitous presence. Vendors need to find new ways to help insurers find the real value in these potentially disruptive technologies by understanding the changes coming to the insurance business and how these new technologies impact the new insurance business. Oracle's approach to understanding the evolving insurance industry comes from a discussion with our customers in our Insurance CIO Council, where one of our customers suggested we buy an insurance company to really understand our customers. We have decided to do the next best thing and build our own model of an insurance company, Alamere Insurance, that uses the latest technologies to transform its own business. Alamere will never issue an actual policy, but it does give us a framework to consider the impacts of changes in the insurance landscape and how Oracle technology meets the challenge or needs to evolve to help our customers be successful. In preparing for my talk at the conference using Alamere as my organizing theme, I found myself reading actuarial memoranda on CSO table changes and articles on underwriting theory that really made me think about my customer's problems first and foremost, and then how Oracle technology can provide answers. As much as I prefer techno-thrillers and sci-fi novels to actuarial papers for plane reading, I got very excited about the idea of putting myself back in the customer shoes I haven't worn in a decade, and really looking at how Oracle can power the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise. Talking to customers and industry people after the session, the idea of Alamere seemed to excite people and I got a lot of suggestions as to what lines of business we should model and where we should focus first on technology uptake. One customer said to a colleague that Oracle's attempt to "share their pain" was unique among vendors. More about Alamere, and the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise next time. Chuck Johnston is vice president of global strategy and alliances for Oracle Insurance.

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  • Source of (programmer) inefficiency

    - by Daniel
    I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to – simply - our own errors (because we are humans – well, almost all of us). I am not interested in how much we are productive or in how many adjustements the customer asks for when the work is done, but where and how each of us spend that part of its time in tasks that are unproductive and there is no one to blame except ourselves. Excluding ego - feeding and / or self – gratification, what I am trying to get (for all of us) is: what are the common issues eating our time; insight on reasons for that issues; identify simple way for us, personally (not delegating actions to other or our organizations), to correct our own problems. Please, do not think in academic terms but aim at the opportunity to compare our daily experiences and understand what are and how we try to fix our personal deficiencies. If you are interested to respond to this post, please: integrate the list if you see something important (or obvious) missing; highlight or name honestly your first issue tellng the way you try to address and solve your issue acting on yourself and yourself only in a sort of "continuous quality improving" My criteria for accepting the answer is: choose the best solution (feasibility and utility) to fix one (or more) of the problems of the list. Of course, selecting an error is not a vote on our skills: maybe we are hyper professional programmers and we lose ten minutes only every year or we are terribly inefficient, losing a couple of days a week: reasons for inefficiency could be really the same - but in a different scale. A possible list: Plain error in the names (variables, functions). Inability to see the obvious in your code. Misreading. Lack of concentration. Trying to use a technology you have not mastered. Errors with data types. Time required to understand your previous code or your documentation. Trying to do something more than requested because you enjoy it Using solutions more complicated than required because you enjoy it. Plain logical errors. Errors due to your fault in communications. Distraction My first personal issue: "Trying to use a technology you do not master." I have to use daily several technologies and I often need to spend significant time correcting code because my assumptions were plainly wrong. Reasons for this: production needs put high pressure and make difficult to find the time to learn. I try to address this reading technical books - as many as I can - even if this actually consumes a lot of time.

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  • MythTV lost recordings - "No recordings available" and no recording rules either

    - by nimasmi
    I have a c.6 year old mythtv database. I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04. This brought a MythTV upgrade from 0.24 to 0.25, which went well. Today, all my recordings have disappeared. They still exist in the /var/lib/mythtv/recordings folder, and the 'M' key in the Watch Recordings page says that there are 201 recordings available somewhere, but they will not display. See screenshot: (implicit thanks to whomever upvoted this, giving me sufficient reputation to upload images) Changing the filter does not remedy the fact that there is nothing shown in the lists. My Upcoming Recordings screen says that there are no rules set, but my list of previously recorded shows is still there, and has an entry from as recently as 3am today. mythbackend --printsched gives the following: user@box:~$ mythbackend --printsched 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537008 C mythbackend version: fixes/0.25 [v0.25.2-15-g46cab93] www.mythtv.org 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537043 C Qt version: compile: 4.8.1, runtime: 4.8.1 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537048 N Enabled verbose msgs: general 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537076 N Setting Log Level to LOG_INFO 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537142 I Added logging to the console 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537152 I Added database logging to table logging 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537279 N Setting up SIGHUP handler 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537373 N Using runtime prefix = /usr 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537394 N Using configuration directory = /home/user/.mythtv 2012-09-22 12:59:20.537999 I Assumed character encoding: en_GB.UTF-8 2012-09-22 12:59:20.538599 N Empty LocalHostName. 2012-09-22 12:59:20.538610 I Using localhost value of box 2012-09-22 12:59:20.538792 I Testing network connectivity to '192.168.1.2' 2012-09-22 12:59:20.539420 I Starting process manager 2012-09-22 12:59:20.541412 I Starting IO manager (read) 2012-09-22 12:59:20.541715 I Starting IO manager (write) 2012-09-22 12:59:20.541836 I Starting process signal handler 2012-09-22 12:59:20.684497 N Setting QT default locale to EN_GB 2012-09-22 12:59:20.684694 I Current locale EN_GB 2012-09-22 12:59:20.684813 N Reading locale defaults from /usr/share/mythtv//locales/en_gb.xml 2012-09-22 12:59:20.697623 I New static DB connectionDataDirectCon 2012-09-22 12:59:20.704769 I MythCoreContext: Connecting to backend server: 192.168.1.2:6543 (try 1 of 1) Calculating Schedule from database. Inputs, Card IDs, and Conflict info may be invalid if you have multiple tuners. 2012-09-22 12:59:27.710538 E MythSocket(21dfcd0:14): readStringList: Error, timed out after 7000 ms. 2012-09-22 12:59:27.710592 C Protocol version check failure. The response to MYTH_PROTO_VERSION was empty. This happens when the backend is too busy to respond, or has deadlocked in due to bugs or hardware failure. Things I have tried so far: restart the backend restart the frontend run mythtv-setup and check database passwords and IP addresses change the frontend setting for backend IP from localhost to 192.168.1.2 (the backend/frontend's IP) run optimize_mythdb.pl Other suggestions appreciated.

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  • BPEL 11.1.1.6 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations

    - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)
    Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite can either be custom integrations that you build yourself or prebuilt integrations from Oracle.  For more information about the differences between the two options for SOA integrations, see this previously-published certification announcement. There are five prebuilt BPEL business processes by Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 product teams: Oracle Price Protection (DPP) Complex Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (CMRO/AHL) Oracle Transportation Management (WMS, WSH, PO) Advanced Supply Chain Planning (MSC) Product Information Management (PIM/EGO) Last year we announced the certification of BPEL 11.1.1.5 for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA integrations.  The five prebuilt BPEL processes have now been certified with Oracle BPEL Process Manager 11g version 11.1.1.6 (in Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite 11g).  These prebuilt BPEL processes are certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 and higher. Note: The Supply Chain Trading Connector (CLN) product team has opted not to support BPEL 11g with their prebuilt business processes previously certified with BPEL 10.1.3.5.  If you have a requirement for that certification, I would recommend contacting your Oracle account manager to ensure that the Supply Chain team is notified appropriately.  For additional information about prebuilt integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3, please refer to the following documentation: Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle BPEL available in Oracle SOA Suite 11g (Note 1321776.1) Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6.0) Documentation Library Installing Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Business Process Management Suite Release Notes for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (11.1.1.6) Certified Platforms Linux x86 (Oracle Linux 4, 5) Linux x86 (RHEL 5) Linux x86 (SLES 10) Linux x86-64 (Oracle Linux 4, 5, 6) Linux x86-64 (RHEL 5) Linux x86-64 (SLES 10)  Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit) (9, 10, 11) HP-UX Itanium (11.23, 11.31) HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit) (11.23, 11.31) IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit) (5.3, 6.1, 7) IBM: Linux on System z (RHEL 5, SLES 10) Microsoft Windows Server (32-bit) (2003, 2008)  Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit) (2008 R2) Getting SupportIf you need support for the prebuilt EBS 12.1.3 BPEL business processes, you can log Service Requests against the Applications Technology Group product family. Related Articles BPEL 11.1.1.5 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations Webcast Replay Available: SOA Integration Options for E-Business Suite Securing E-Business Suite Web Services with Integrated SOA Gateway

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  • June IOUG events

    - by Mandy Ho
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) Regional Events: June 11-12, 2012 – Broomfield, CO 2-Day Seminar- “ High Performance PL/SQL & Oracle Database 11g New Features” Steven Feuerstein, generally considered the world’s leading PL/SQL expert, will be presenting his all-new, 2-day, “Higher Performance PL/SQL and Oracle 11g PL/SQL New Features” seminar on June 11 & 12 at Level 3 Communications in Broomfield, Colorado.  This will be Steven’s first Denver seminar in almost 4  years.  Who knows when he will offer another? http://www.rmoug.org/ June 14, 2012 – Ottawa, Ontario Pythian’s Gwen Shapira puts on 3 great presentations focused on NoSQL, making OLTP run fast and Big Data. http://www.oug-ottawa.org/pls/htmldb/f?p=327:27:1317735724699447::NO June 21, 2012 – Calgary, Alberta Big Data and Extreme Analytics Summit http://coug.ab.ca/ June 22, 2012 – Westborough, MA 10 Things You Probably Did Not Know? With Tom Kyte PL/SQL turns 23 years old this year. It was first introduced in 1988 with Oracle6 Database. This session looks at five technical things about PL/SQL you probably did not know: under-the-covers features that make PL/SQL quite simply the most efficient language with which to process data in the database. http://noug.com/  June 28/29, 2012 – Plano, Texas Jonathan Lewis Oracle Performance Seminars The DOUG (DALLAS ORACLE USERS GROUP) has invited SpeakTech to return to Dallas, and they’re bringing Jonathan Lewis! Topics are Beating the Oracle Optimizer – June 28, 2012, Trouble Shooting & Tuning – June 29, 2012 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3082448687

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  • How far is too far?

    - by David Dorf
    Previously I've talked about Safeway's personalized pricing as well as Target's use of analytics to learn about customers.  Then last week I read about Orbitz tailoring their hotel offers based on the browser used.  (Orbitz claims that Mac users are 40% more likely than PC users to book four- or five-star hotels.)  So just how far is too far when tailoring the retail experience? When most consumers read about these types of tactics, they tend to feel violated, as if someone was reading their personal diary.  Nobody wants to be tricked into buying things.  Walking into a grocery store and seeing crates of apples stacked high looks enticing, but the crates are just for display and the apples may be over a year old.  Even though its much cheaper to print markdown tags, many retailers manually write the price tags because consumers think they deal is better if the price is hand-written. The technology already exists to personalize prices and experiences for consumers.  People get upset thinking they paid more for something than a neighbor, but it already happens all the time with cars, flights, and the use of loyalty programs and coupons. There are many variables at play for any purchase.  They only difference is that the customer segments are getting smaller, sometimes reaching a size of one. There's two ways to look at this.  Retailers have always manipulated the environment to get consumers to buy more -- or -- Retailers are getting better at tuning the shopping experience for consumers.  I choose the latter, and so do most consumers by spending their money in the stores they like.  Consumers like to see fresh flowers at the entrance to the grocery store, and they like to see specials scrawled on chalkboards. The key is making sure that consumers benefit from the experience as well.  I'm willing to give up some personal information in exchange for discounts and more relevant marketing, and the next-generation of shoppers are even less concerned about privacy.  Retailers need to use all the tools available to differentiate their offers and connect with their customers. So if Orbitz wants to put three-star hotels at the top of the list for me because I'm using a PC, that's fine by me.

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  • Spotlight on an office - Dublin!

    - by Tim Koekkoek
    In this third instalment of our monthly topic ‘Spotlight on an Office’, we visit Dublin, Ireland Oracle has 5 offices in Dublin all in the EastPoint Business Park close to Dublin City centre. In Dublin there are currently 1,000 people working for Oracle. You’ll find, among others, a large part of OracleDirect, our inside sales organization, part of our EMEA Finance organization and employees from Product and Systems Development who work on the heart of Oracle’s products. Facilities EastPoint Business Park is located next to the Irish Financial Service Centre (IFSC) and is only one train stop away from Dublin city centre. This seafront business park and nearby amenities cater for staff’s needs, which include a Sandwich Bar, a Coffee Shop and a small Convenience Store and Newsagent. Moreover there is a Physical Therapy Clinic and Beauty Salon onsite, Pilates and Boot Camp classes, weekly WeightWatcher Classes, five football / tennis courts and an outdoor chess board. When the sun is shining On sunny days comfy, colourful beanbags are spread throughout the park to relax and every Wednesday there is the Irish Village Market providing staff with a variety of delicious gourmet foods from all over the world. Friday afternoons after work are often used by Oracle employees to start the weekend socializing in The Epicenter Cafe Bar & Venue. In the office In the Oracle offices, you have an open floor design and an open door policy which makes it really easy to walk over to your colleagues or a manager to discuss your projects and keep informed with what is going on. This way you also have a great chance to bond with your colleagues. In two of the Oracle buildings there are subsidized canteens especially for Oracle employees with chefs cooking something special everyday! One of the best things about Oracle in Dublin is that it is really multinational. Currently there are more than 25 languages spoken by Oracle employees. So you will work with colleagues from all around the globe, every day, which makes it a really interesting and exciting experience. Sport & Social There is also a dedicated Sport and Social Club, Oraclub. They organize many sport and social activities. It doesn’t matter which sport is your favourite, Oraclub caters for like-minded individuals and makes sure you can play or watch your favourite sport. Furthermore, Oraclub organizes exhibition matches to get you acquainted with some other sports. Last year the Gaelic Warriors (A Wheelchair Rugby club) held an exhibition match. Oraclub also offer Oracle parties, language courses and offer discounts on many events! So whether you want to go to a Robbie Williams concert, an exhibition of Van Gogh or a match of the Irish Rugby team, Oraclub is there for everyone! There are also plenty of possibilities to get involved in volunteering. Want to know more about the current vacancies in Dublin? Check https://campus.oracle.com for all of our vacancies.

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  • SQLAuthority News – SQL Server Wait Stats – eBook to Download on Kindle – Answer to FREE PDF Download Request

    - by pinaldave
    Being a book author is a completely new experience for me. I am yet to come across the issues faced by expert book authors. I assume that these interesting issues can be routine ones for expert book authors. One of the biggest requests I am getting for my SQL Server Wait Stats [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] book is my humble attempt to write a book. This is our very first experiment, and the book is beginning of the subject of SQL Server Wait Stats; we will come up with a new version of the book later next year when we have enough information for the SQL Server 2012 version. Following are the top 2 requests that I keep on receiving in emails, on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. “Please send us FREE PDF of your book so we do not have to purchase it.” “If you can share with us the eBook (free and downloadable) format of your book, we will share it with everybody we know and you will get additional exposure.” Here is my response for the abovementioned requests: If you really need my book and cannot purchase it due to financial trouble, then feel free to let me know and I will purchase it myself and ship it to you. If you are in a country where the print book not available, then you can buy the Kindle book, which is available online in any country, and you can just read it on your computer and mobile devices. You DO NOT have to own a Kindle to read a Kindle format book. You can freely download Kindle software on your desired format and purchase the book online. For next 5 days, the kindle book is available at 3.99 in USA, and in other countries, the price is anywhere between 3.99 and 5.99. The price will go up by USD 2 everywhere across the world after 1st November, 2011. Here is the link to download Kindle Software for free PC, WP7, and in marketplace for various other mobile devices. I thank you for giving warm response to SQL Server Wait Stats book. I am motivated to write the next expanded version of this book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Overload Avoidance

    - by mikef
    A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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  • My Reference for Amy Lewis

    - by Denise McInerney
    The 2013 election campaign for the PASS Board of Directors is underway. There are seven qualified candidates running this year. They all offer a wealth of experience volunteering for PASS and the SQL Server community. One of these candidates, Amy Lewis, asked me to write a reference for her to include on her candidate application. I have a lot of experience working with Amy and was pleased to provide this reference: I enthusiastically support Amy Lewis as a candidate for the PASS Board of Directors. I have known and worked with Amy in various PASS' volunteer capacities for years, starting when we were both leaders of SIGs (the precursors to the Virtual Chapters.) In that time I have seen Amy grow as a leader, taking on increasing responsibility and developing her leadership skills in the process. From the Program Committee to the BI Virtual Chapter to her local user group's SQL Saturday Amy has demonstrated a capacity to organize and lead volunteers. A successful leader delivers results, and does so in a way that encourages and empowers the people she is working with; Amy embodies this leadership style. As Director for Virtual Chapters I have most recently worked with Amy in her capacity of DW/BI VC Leader. This VC is one of our largest and most active, and Amy's leadership is a key contribution to that success. I was pleased to see that Amy was also thinking about succession and prepared other volunteers to take over the chapter leadership. Amy has shown an understanding of PASS' strategic goals and has focused her volunteer efforts to help us reach those goals. For the past couple of years we have been trying to expand PASS reach and relevance to SQL communities around the world. The VCs are a key vehicle for this expansion. Amy embraced this idea and organized the VC to engage volunteers in Europe & Australia and provide content that could reach SQL professionals in those regions. A second key strategy for PASS is expanding into the data analytics space. Again Amy rose to the occasion helping to shape the program for our first Business Analytics Conference and leveraging the BI VC to promote the event. By all measures I think Amy is prepared to serve on the Board and contribute in a positive way.

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