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• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Posts - August 8-14, 2014

  - by Bob Rhubart-Oracle

  5,307 people pay attention to the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page. Here are the Top 10 posts from that page for the last seven days, August 8-14, 2014. Podcast: ODTUG Kscope 2014: Anatomy of a User Conference - Part 3 There is more to a great user conference than a shared interest in Oracle products. In the final segment of this 3-part OTN ArchBeat Podcast panelists Danny Bryant , Chet "ORACLENERD" Justice, Cameron Lackpour, Debra Lilley, and Mike Riley discuss the nature and importance of community Oracle SOA Suite 12c: The LDAP Adapter quick and easy | Maarten Smeets Maarten Smeets' how-to post describes the installation and configuration of an LDAP server and browser (ApacheDS and Apache Directory Studio). Process level Exception Handling in BPM12c | Abhishek Mittal When an exception occurs while running a process flow you have two choices: 1) retry running the flow object that caused that process flow or 2) move the process instance to the next flow object in the main process flow. Abhishek Mittal shows you how to do both. Building a Responsive WebCenter Portal Application | JayJay Zheng Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng's article addresses the essentials of responsive web design, shows you how to design and develop a responsive WebCenter Portal application, and reviews key development considerations. Cloud Control authorization with Active Directory | Jeroen Gouma Jeroen Gouma takes you step-by-step through the user authortization process in Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. Video: CIOs Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions | Jessica Keyes The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions author Jessica Keyes talks about why input from users and developers is essential to CIOs who want to avoid being escorted out of the building by security guards. Read A CIO's Guide to Oracle Cloud Computing, a sample chapter from the book. Twitter Tuesday - Top 10 @ArchBeat Tweets - August 5-11, 2014 @OTNArchBeat followers from across the galaxy have spoken! Here are the Top 10 tweets for the past seven days. Topics include: Hyperion, OBIEE, ODI, Oracle MAF, and SOA Suite. Recap: Fusion Middleware Summer Camps - Lisbon 2014 | Simon Haslam Oracle ACE Director Simon Haslam's recap of his experience at the Oracle Fusion Middleware Summer Camp in Lisbon, Portugal will make you wish you had been there. WebLogic Data Source Connection Labeling | Steve Felts The connection labeling feature was added in WLS release 10.3.6, and enhanced in release WLS 12.1.3. This post by Steve Felts describes two new connection properties that can be configured on the data source descriptor. Why Mobile Apps <3 REST/JSON | Martin Jarvis Martin Jarvis explores the preference for REST and JSON over SOAP and XML for mobile web services.

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• Oracle's PeopleSoft Customer Advisory Boards Convene to Discuss Roadmap at Pleasanton Campus

  - by john.webb(at)oracle.com

  Last week we hosted all of the PeopleSoft CABs (Customer Advisory Boards) at our Pleasanton Development Center to review our detailed designs for future Feature Packs, PeopleSoft 9.2, and beyond. Over 150 customers from 79 companies attended representing a variety of industries, geographies, and company sizes. The PeopleSoft team relies heavily on this group to provide key input on our roadmap for applications as well as technology direction. A good product strategy is one part well thought out idea with many handfuls of customer validation, and very often our best ideas originate from these customer discussions. While the individual CABs have frequent interactions with our teams, it's always great to have all of them in one place and in person. Our attendance was up from last year which I attribute to two things: (1) More interest as a result of PeopleSoft 9.1 upgrade; (2) An improving economy allowing for more travel. Maybe we should index the second item meeting-to-meeting and use it as a market indicator - we'll see! We kicked off the day one session with an overview of the PeopleSoft Roadmap and I outlined our strategy around Feature Packs and PeopleSoft 9.2. Given the high adoption rate of PeopleSoft 9.1 (over 4x that of 9.0 given the same time lapse since the release date), there was a lot of interest around the 9.1 Feature Packs as a vehicle for continuous value. We provided examples of our 3 central design themes: Simplicity, Productivity, and lower TCO, including those already delivered via Feature Packs in 2010. A great example of this is the Company Directory feature in PeopleSoft HCM. The configuration capabilities and the new actionable links our CAB advised us on last Spring were made available to all customers late last year. We reviewed many more future Navigation changes that will fundamentally change the way users interact with PeopleSoft. Our old friend, the menu tree, is being relegated from center stage to a bit part, with new concepts like Activity Guides, Train Stops, Related Actions, Work Centers, Collaborative Workspaces, and Secure Enterprise Search bringing users what they need in a contextual, role based manner with fewer clicks. Paco Aubrejuan, our PeopleSoft GM, and Steve Miranda, the SVP for Fusion Applications, then discussed our plans around Oracle's Application Investment Strategy.  This included our continued investment in developing both PeopleSoft and Fusion as well as the co-existence strategy with new Fusion Apps integrating to PeopleSoft Apps. Should you want to view this presentation, a recording is available. Jeff Robbins, our lead PeopleTools Strategist, provided the roadmap for PeopleTools and discussed our continuing plan to deliver annual releases to further evolve the user experience. Numerous examples were highlighted with the Navigation techniques I mentioned previously. Jeff also provided a lot of food for thought around Lifecycle Management topics and how to remain current on releases with a  lower cost of ownership. Dennis Mesler, from Boise, was the guest speaker in this slot, who spoke about the new PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF). Regression Testing is a key cost component when product updates are applied. This new tool (which is free to all PeopleSoft customers as part of PeopleTools 8.51) provides a meta data driven approach to recording and executing test scripts. Coupled with what our Usage Monitor enables, PTF provides our customers a powerful tool to lower costs and manage product updates more efficiently and at the time of their choosing. Beyond the general session, we broke out into the individual CABs: HCM, Financials, ESA/ALM, SRM, SCM, CRM, and PeopleTools/ Technology. A day and half of very engaging discussions around our plans took place for each product pillar. More about that to follow in future posts.      We capped the first day with a reception sponsored by our partners: InfoSys, SmartERP (represented by Doris Wong), and Grey Sparling  Solutions (represented by Chris Heller and Larry Grey). Great to see these old friends actively engaged in the very busy PeopleSoft ecosystem!   Jeff Robbins previews the roadmap for PeopleTools with the PeopleSoft CAB  

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• Interviews: Going Beyond the Technical Quiz

  - by Tony Davis

  All developers will be familiar with the basic format of a technical interview. After a bout of CV-trawling to gauge basic experience, strengths and weaknesses, the interview turns technical. The whiteboard takes center stage and the challenge is set to design a function or query, or solve what on the face of it might seem a disarmingly simple programming puzzle. Most developers will have experienced those few panic-stricken moments, when one’s mind goes as blank as the whiteboard, before un-popping the marker pen, and hopefully one’s mental functions, to work through the problem. It is a way to probe the candidate’s knowledge of basic programming structures and techniques and to challenge their critical thinking. However, these challenges or puzzles, often devised by some of the smartest brains in the development team, have a tendency to become unnecessarily ‘tricksy’. They often seem somewhat academic in nature. While the candidate straight out of IT school might breeze through the construction of a Markov chain, a candidate with bags of practical experience but less in the way of formal training could become nonplussed. Also, a whiteboard and a marker pen make up only a very small part of the toolkit that a programmer will use in everyday work. I remember vividly my first job interview, for a position as technical editor. It went well, but after the usual CV grilling and technical questions, I was only halfway there. Later, they sat me alongside a team of editors, in front of a computer loaded with MS Word and copy of SQL Server Query Analyzer, and my task was to edit a real chapter for a real SQL Server book that they planned to publish, including validating and testing all the code. It was a tough challenge but I came away with a sound knowledge of the sort of work I’d do, and its context. It makes perfect sense, yet my impression is that many organizations don’t do this. Indeed, it is only relatively recently that Red Gate started to move over to this model for developer interviews. Now, instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the whiteboard challenges, the candidate can expect to sit with their prospective team, in front of Visual Studio, loaded with all the useful tools in the developer’s kit (ReSharper and so on) and asked to, for example, analyze and improve a real piece of software. The same principles should apply when interviewing for a database positon. In addition to the usual questions challenging the candidate’s knowledge of such things as b-trees, object permissions, database recovery models, and so on, sit the candidate down with the other database developers or DBAs. Arm them with a copy of Management Studio, and a few other tools, then challenge them to discover the flaws in a stored procedure, and improve its performance. Or present them with a corrupt database and ask them to get the database back online, and discover the cause of the corruption.

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• Part 9: EBS Customizations, how to track

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  In the previous blogs we were concentrating on the preparation tasks. We have defined standards, we know about the tools and techniques we will start with. Additionally, we have defined the modification strategy, and how to handle such topics best. Now we are ready to take the requirements! Such requirements coming over in spreadsheets, word files (like GAP documents), or in any other format. As we have to assign some attributes, we start numbering all that and assign a short name to each of these requirements (=CEMLI reference). We may also have already a Functional person assigned, and we might involve someone from the tech team to estimate, and we like to assign a status such as 'planned', 'estimated' etc. All these data are usually kept in spreadsheets, but I would put them into a database (yes, I am from Oracle :). If you don't have any good looking and centralized application already, please give a try with Oracle APEX. It should be up and running in a day and the imported sheets are than manageable concurrently!  For one of my clients I have created this CEMLI-DB; in between enriched with a lot of additional functionality, but initially it was just a simple centralized CEMLI tracking application. Why I am pointing out again the centralized method to manage such data? Well, your data quality will dramatically increase, if you let your project members see (also review and update) "your" data.  APEX allows you to filter, sort, print, and also export. And if you can spend some time to define proper value lists, everyone will gain from. APEX allows you to work in 'agile' mode, means you can improve your application step by step. Let's say you like to reference a document, or even upload the same, you can do that. Or, you need to classify the CEMLIs by release, just add this release field, same for business area or CEMLI type. One CEMLI record may then look like this: Prepare one or two (online) reports, to be ready to present your "workload" to the project management. Use such extracts also when you work offline (to prioritize etc.). But as soon as you are again connected, feed the data back into the central application. Note: I have combined this application with an additional issue tracker.  Here the most important element is the CEMLI reference, which acts as link to any other application (if you are not using APEX also as issue tracker :).  Please spend a minute to define such a reference (see blog Part 8: How to name Customizations).   Summary: Building the bridge from Gap analyse to the development has to be done in a controlled way. Usually the information is provided differently, but it is suggested to collect all requirements centrally. Oracle APEX is a great solution to enter and maintain such information in a structured, but flexible way. APEX helped me a lot to work with distributed development teams during the complete development cycle.

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• Oracle Unified Method (OUM) 6.1

  - by user714714

  ORACLE® UNIFIED METHOD RELEASE 6.1 Oracle’s Full Lifecycle Methodfor Deploying Oracle-Based Business Solutions About | Release | Access | Previous Announcements About Oracle is evolving the Oracle® Unified Method (OUM) to achieve the vision of supporting the entire Enterprise IT Lifecycle, including support for the successful implementation of every Oracle product. OUM replaces Legacy Methods, such as AIM Advantage, AIM for Business Flows, EMM Advantage, PeopleSoft's Compass, and Siebel's Results Roadmap. OUM provides an implementation approach that is rapid, broadly adaptive, and business-focused. OUM includes a comprehensive project and program management framework and materials to support Oracle's growing focus on enterprise-level IT strategy, architecture, and governance. Release OUM release 6.1 provides support for Application Implementation, Cloud Application Services Implementation, and Software Upgrade projects as well as the complete range of technology projects including Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Security, WebCenter, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Application Integration Architecture (AIA), Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Integration, and Custom Software. Detailed techniques and tool guidance are provided, including a supplemental guide related to Oracle Tutor and UPK. This release features: Project Manager and Consultant views provide quick access to material relevant to each role OUM Cloud Application Services Implementation Approach Solution Delivery Guide 3.0 and Project Workplan Template OUM Microsoft Project Workplan Template and User's Guide updated to facilitate review and removal of out-of-scope Activities and Tasks MC.050 Application Setup Template available in Microsoft Excel format in addition to Microsoft Word format BT.070 Abbreviated Project Management Framework Presentation Template Envision Examples for Enterprise Organization Structures (BA.020), Enterprise Business Context Diagram (BA.045), and High-Level Use Cases (BA.060) Implement Examples for System Context Diagram (RD.005), Business Use Case Model (RA.015), Use Case Model (RA.023), MoSCoW List (RD.045), and Analysis Specification (AN.100) Home Page drop-down menu allows access to the method by Role, Supplemental Guidance, Method Repository, or View For a comprehensive list of features and enhancements, refer to the "What's New" page of the Method Pack. Upcoming releases will provide expanded support for Oracle's Enterprise Application suites including product-suite specific materials and guidance for tailoring OUM to support various engagement types. Access Oracle Customers Oracle customers may obtain copies of the method for their internal use – including guidelines, templates, and tailored work breakdown structure – by contracting with Oracle for a consulting engagement of two weeks or longer and meeting some additional minimum criteria. Customers, who have a signed consulting contract with Oracle and meet the engagement qualification criteria, are permitted to download the current release of OUM for their perpetual use. They may also obtain subsequent releases published during a renewable, three-year access period. Training courses are also available to these customers. Contact your local Oracle Sales Representative about enrolling in the OUM Customer Program. Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Diamond, Platinum, and Gold Partners OPN Diamond, Platinum, and Gold Partners are able to access the OUM method pack, training courses, and collateral from the OPN Portal at no additional cost: Go to the OPN Portal at partner.oracle.com. Select "Sign In / Register for Account". Sign In. From the Product Resources section, select "Applications". From the Applications page, locate and select the "Oracle Unified Method" link. From the Oracle Unified Method Knowledge Zone, locate the "I want to:" section. From the I want to: section, locate and select "Implement Solutions". From the Implement Solution page, locate the "Best Practices" section. Locate and select the "Download Oracle Unified Method (OUM)" link. Previous Announcements Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 6.1 Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 6.0 Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.6 Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.5 Oracle Unified Method (OUM) Release 5.4 Oracle EMM Advantage Retired Retirement of Oracle EMM Advantage Planned for December 01, 2011

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• Oracle User Productivity Kit Translation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Oracle's customers just love the User Productivity Kit (UPK). I hear only great things about it from our international customers at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board meetings too. The UPK is the perfect solution for enterprise applications training needs (I previously reviewed a fine book about UPK btw). One question I am often asked is how source content created using the UPK can be translated into another language. I spoke with Peter Maravelias, Principal Product Strategy Manager for UPK about this recently. UPK is already optimized for easy source-target translation already. There is even a solution for re-recording demos. Here's what you can do to get your source content into another language: Use UPK's ability to automatically translate events and actions. UPK comes with XML templates that allow you to accomplish this in 21 languages with a simple publishing action switch. These templates even deal with the tricky business of using gender-based translations. Spanish localization template sample Japanese localization template sample Use the Import and Export localization features to export additional custom content in a format like XLIFF, easily handled by translation tools. You could also export and import in Word format. Re-record the sound (audio) files that go with the recordings, one per screen. UPK's granular approach to the sound files means that timing isn't an option. Retiming demos isn't required. A tip here with sound files and XLFF-exported custom content is to facilitate translation context by avoiding explicit references to actions going on in the screen recordings. A text based storyboard with screenshots accompanying the sound files should also be provided to the translators. Provide a glossary of terms too. Use the re-record option in UPK to record any demo from a translated application. This will allow all the translated UI labels to be automatically captured. You may be required to resize any action events here due to text expansion issues. Of course, you will need translated data in the translated application too, so plan for this in advance. However, source-target language skills aren't required for the re-recording. The UPK Player itself, of course, is also available from Oracle along with content and doc in 21 languages. The Developer and Setup is also translated in a smaller number of languages. Check the Oracle UPK website for latest details. UPK is a super solution for global enterprise applications training deployments allowing source content to be translated into multiple languages easily. See this post on the UPK blog for more insight too!

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• How to Quickly Add Multiple IP Addresses to Windows Servers

  - by Sysadmin Geek

  If you have ever added multiple IP addresses to a single Windows server, going through the graphical interface is an incredible pain as each IP must be added manually, each in a new dialog box. Here’s a simple solution. Needless to say, this can be incredibly monotonous and time consuming if you are adding more than a few IP addresses. Thankfully, there is a much easier way which allows you to add an entire subnet (or more) in seconds. Adding an IP Address from the Command Line Windows includes the “netsh” command which allows you to configure just about any aspect of your network connections. If you view the accepted parameters using “netsh /?” you will be presented with a list of commands each which have their own list of commands (and so on). For the purpose of adding IP addresses, we are interested in this string of parameters: netsh interface ipv4 add address Note: For Windows Server 2003/XP and earlier, “ipv4″ should be replaced with just “ip” in the netsh command. If you view the help information, you can see the full list of accepted parameters but for the most part what you will be interested in is something like this: netsh interface ipv4 add address “Local Area Connection” 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0 The above command adds the IP Address 192.168.1.2 (with Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0) to the connection titled “Local Area Network”. Adding Multiple IP Addresses at Once When we accompany a netsh command with the FOR /L loop, we can quickly add multiple IP addresses. The syntax for the FOR /L loop looks like this: FOR /L %variable IN (start,step,end) DO command So we could easily add every IP address from an entire subnet using this command: FOR /L %A IN (0,1,255) DO netsh interface ipv4 add address “Local Area Connection” 192.168.1.%A 255.255.255.0 This command takes about 20 seconds to run, where adding the same number of IP addresses manually would take significantly longer. A Quick Demonstration Here is the initial configuration on our network adapter: ipconfig /all Now run netsh from within a FOR /L loop to add IP’s 192.168.1.10-20 to this adapter: FOR /L %A IN (10,1,20) DO netsh interface ipv4 add address “Local Area Connection” 192.168.1.%A 255.255.255.0 After the above command is run, viewing the IP Configuration of the adapter now shows: Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic] Asian Temple in the Snow Wallpaper 10 Weird Gaming Records from the Guinness Book

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• Creating a branch for every Sprint

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  There are a lot of developers using version control these days, but a feature of version control called branching is very poorly understood and remains unused by most developers in favour of Labels. Most developers think that branching is hard and complicated. Its not! What is hard and complicated is a bad branching strategy. Just like a bad software architecture a bad branch architecture, or one that is not adhered to can prove fatal to a project. We I was at Aggreko we had a fairly successful Feature branching strategy (although the developers hated it) that meant that we could have multiple feature teams working at the same time without impacting each other. Now, this had to be carefully orchestrated as it was a Business Intelligence team and many of the BI artefacts do not lend themselves to merging. Today at SSW I am working on a Scrum team delivering a product that will be used by many hundreds of developers. SSW SQL Deploy takes much of the pain out of upgrading production databases when you are not using the Database projects in Visual Studio. With Scrum each Scrum Team works for a fixed period of time on a single sprint. You can have one or more Scrum Teams involved in delivering a product, but all the work must be merged and tested, ready to be shown to the Product Owner at the the Sprint Review meeting at the end of the current Sprint. So, what does this mean for a branching strategy? We have been using a “Main” (sometimes called “Trunk”) line and doing a branch for each sprint. It’s like Feature Branching, but with only ONE feature in operation at any one time, so no conflicts Figure: DEV folder containing the Development branches.   I know that some folks advocate applying a Label at the start of each Sprint and then rolling back if you need to, but I have always preferred the security of a branch. Like: being able to create a release from Main that has Sprint3 code even while Sprint4 is being worked on. being sure I can always create a stable build on request. Being able to guarantee a version (labels are not auditable) Be able to abandon the sprint without having to delete the code (rare I know, but would be a mess if it happened) Being able to see the flow of change sets through to a safe release It helps you find invalid dependencies when merging to Main as there may be some file that is in everyone’s Sprint branch, but never got checked in. (We had this at the merge of Sprint2) If you are always operating in this way as a standard it makes it easier to then add more scrum teams in the future. Muscle memory of this way of working. Don’t Like: Additional DB space for the branches Baseless merging between sprint branches when changes are directly ported Note: I do not think we will ever attempt this! Maybe a bit tougher to see the history between sprint branches since the changes go up through Main and down to another sprint branch Note: What you would have to do is see which Sprint the changes were made in and then check the history he same file in that Sprint. A little bit of added complexity that you would have to do anyway with multiple teams. Over time, you can end up with a lot of old unused sprint branches. Perhaps destroy with /keephistory can help in this case. Note: We ALWAYS delete the Sprint branch after it has been merged into Main. That is the theory anyway, and as you can see from the images Sprint2 has already been deleted. Why take the chance of having a problem rolling back or wanting to keep some of the code, when you can just abandon a branch and start a new one? It just seems easier and less painful to use a branch to me! What do you think?   Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS2010,Software Development,ALM,Branching

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• Poll Results: Foreign Key Constraints

  - by Darren Gosbell

  A few weeks ago I did the following post asking people – if they used foreign key constraints in their star schemas. The poll is still open if you are interested in adding to it, but here is what the chart looks like as of today. (at the bottom of the poll itself there is a link to the live results, unfortunately I cannot link the live results in here as the blogging platform blocks the required javascript)   Interestingly the results are fairly even. Of the 78 respondents, fractionally over half at least aim to start with referential integrity in their star schemas. I did not want to influence the results by sharing my opinion, but my personal preference is to always aim to have foreign key constraints. But at the same time, I am pragmatic about it, I do have projects where for various reasons some constraints are not defined. And I also have other designs that I have inherited, where it would just be too much work to go back and add foreign key constraints. If you are going to implement foreign keys in your star schema, they really need to be there at the start. In fact this poll was was the result of a feature request for BIDSHelper asking for a feature to check for null/missing foreign keys and I am entirely convinced that BIDS is the wrong place for this sort of functionality. BIDS is a design tool, your data needs to be constantly checked for consistency. It's not that I think that it's impossible to get a design working without foreign key constraints, but I like the idea of failing as soon as possible if there is an error and enforcing foreign key constraints lets me "fail early" if there are constancy issues with my data. By far the biggest concern with foreign keys is performance and I suppose I'm curious as to how often people actually measure and quantify this. I worked on a project a number of years ago that had very large data volumes and we did find that foreign key constraints did have a measurable impact, but what we did was to disable the constraints before loading the data, then enabled and checked them afterwards. This saved as time (although not as much as not having constraints at all), but still let us know early in the process if there were any consistency issues. For the people that do not have consistent data, if you have ETL processes that you control that are building your star schema which you also control, then to be blunt you only have yourself to blame. It is the job of the ETL process to make the data consistent. There are techniques for handling situations like missing data as well as  early and late arriving data. Ralph Kimball's book – The Data Warehouse Toolkit goes through some design patterns for handling data consistency. Having foreign key relationships can also help the relational engine to optimize queries as noted in this recent blog post by Boyan Penev

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• UPK Hands-on Labs at OHUG

  - by Karen Rihs

  Going to OHUG, June 18-22? Be sure to attend one or more UPK hands-on labs! Choose from Basic, Advanced, What's New, and Prebuilt Content!   Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Basic Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. June 20, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. The User Productivity Kit (UPK) is a comprehensive, cost-effective, customizable solution that helps your organization quickly create the critical documentation, training, and support materials needed to drive project team and user productivity throughout the lifecycle of your software. The User Productivity Kit provides system process documentation, user acceptance test scripts, comprehensive instructor-led training materials, web-based training materials, role-based performance support, and complete documentation. Also provided is the UPK Developer, which serves as a single-source development and customization tool to enable rapid content creation and customization. The User Productivity Kit delivers: Business process documentation for fit-gap analysis - providing time and cost savings that jump-start your implementation or upgrade User Acceptance test scripts to help test applications prior to go-live State-of-the-art instructional design tools to rapidly build and tailor documentation, instructor-led training materials, and web-based training to fit organizational needs Live-application performance support with transactional and procedural information to maximize user efficiency. By registering for this hands-on UPK workshop, participants will use UPK to build an application job aid and simulation that can be used as performance support for the application. But hurry, space is limited! Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Advanced Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 20, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will cover advanced concepts. In this workshop, you will gain an in-depth knowledge of working with the UPK Developer. Following this workshop, you will be able to: Create publishing categories Add a logo to a publishing project Publish using the newly created category Configure your own library view Manage topic history in a multi-user environment Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – What’s NEW! Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the new features included in the latest version 11.1. In this workshop, you will review most of the new features included in the UPK Developer. Oracle User Productivity Kit 11.1 Workshop – Prebuilt Content Stephen Armbruster, Oracle Corporation June 19, 2012, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. June 21, 2012, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. This special workshop is for those already familiar with UPK and will focus on the latest version 11.1. At the end of this workshop, you will be able to demonstrate how to: Import prebuilt content Modify content frames Add a decision frame Translate a topic into Spanish Stephen Armbruster is a principal sales consultant, specializing in HCM and UPK applications for Oracle over the past twelve years. In addition to his current role, he serves as an ambassador for the Fusion User Experience (UX) team and is tasked with evangelizing the UX for end users across all Oracle brands (Fusion, PSFT, JDE, and EBS).  He is also a trusted advisor to Oracle’s Product Management teams related to Learning Management Systems (LMS). Prior to joining Oracle, he was an instructor as well as an instructional technologist working in the medical diagnostics, high tech, and information management industries. As an expert in both LMS and UPK, he regularly speaks at Oracle conferences including Oracle OpenWorld and OHUG on topics that span using Oracle solutions to accomplish employee training, certification, and user adoption. His presentations are both entertaining and engaging.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-07-10

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Free Event Today: Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development This free event—another in the ongoing series of OTN Virtual Developer Days—focuses on Oracle Fusion development, and features three session tracks plus hands-on labs. Agenda and session abstracts are available now so you can be ready for the live event when it kicks off today, July 10, 9am to 1pm PST / 12pm to 4pm EST / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Podcast: The Role of the Cloud Architect - Part 1/3 In part one of this three-part conversation, cloud architects Ron Batra (AT&T) and James Baty (Oracle) talk about how cloud computing is driving the supply-chaining of IT and the "democratization of the activity of architecture." Middleware and Cloud Computing Book | Tom Laszewski Cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski describes Middleware and Cloud Computing by Frank Munz as "one of only a couple books that really discuss AWS and Oracle in depth." Cloud computing moves from fad to foundation | David Linthicum "When enterprises make cloud computing work, they view the application of the technology as a trade secret of sorts, so there are no press releases or white papers," says David Linthicum. "Indeed, if you see one presentation around a successful cloud computing case study, you can bet you're not hearing about 100 more." Oracle Real-Time Decisions: Combined Likelihood Models | Lukas Vermeer Lukas Vermeer concludes his extensive series of posts on decision models with a look "an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models." Running Oracle BPM 11g PS5 Worklist Task Flow and Human Task Form on Non-SOA Domain | Andrejus Baranovskis "With a standard setup, both the BPM worklist application and the Human task form run on the same SOA domain, where the BPM process is running," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "While this work fine, this is not what we want in the development, test and production environment." BAM design pointers | Kavitha Srinivasan "When using EMS (Enterprise Message Source) as a BAM feed, the best practice is to use one EMS to write to one Data Object," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Kavitha Srinivasan. "There is a possibility of collisions and duplicates when multiple EMS write to the same row of a DO at the same time." Changes in SOA Human Task Flow (Run-Time) for Fusion Applications | Jack Desai Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Jack Desai shares a troubleshooting tip. Thought for the Day "A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program." — Cem Kaner Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Customizing UPK outputs (Part 1)

  - by [email protected]

  If you are familiar with Oracle's User Productivity Kit, you are aware that UPK is a great product for rapidly developing application training. Did you know that you can also customize the UPK outputs to incorporate your company's logo, colors, and preferred styles? There are several areas that support customization: Logo - Within the developer, you can change the logo for all outputs at one time. Player - The player output uses a style sheet that can be updated to change colors, graphics and other visual branding. Documentation - The print documentation uses a Word-based template that can be modified to match your corporate standards. I'll discuss the first one today, and we'll cover the others in subsequent blogs. Before you begin: If you are working in a multi-user environment, ensure that you have "Modify" permissions for the Styles directory under the Publishing folder. Make a copy of the current styles. This recommendation is for backup purposes. If something goes wrong, you will have a way to recover. Consider creating your own category by creating a new folder under the Styles directory, and then copying the styles into your new folder. When you upgrade to future versions, the system will overwrite the standard styles with any new feature additions and updates that have been made. With your own category, all of your customizations will remain intact. To update the logos in all outputs: From the Tools Menu, choose Customize Logo. Select the category if necessary. Browse to select your logo. You can use any size logo, in any graphic format (*.bmp, *.gif, *.jpeg, *.jpg, *.png, or *.tif). The system will make a copy of your logo and add it to each of the publishing styles. Choose OK, and the update process begins. It may take a few minutes. Helpful hints: The logo you select is used "as is" - no resizing or cropping occurs during this process. The Customize Logo process automates replacing all the logo graphics for online deployment (small_logo.gif and large_logo.gif) and the headers in the documentation outputs. You can manually replace these graphics on an individual style basis if you prefer. The recommended logo size is 230 pixels wide x 44 pixels high. Prior to updating the logos, the system will display the size of the selected logo. If you use a logo that is much larger than the recommended size, the heading area will resize to fit the new logo, but that will impact the space available for your training material. If you are using a multi-user environment, the system will check out the publishing styles to you for the logo updates. After you review the styles, remember to check them in so the rest of your team can access the new changes. I'd be interested in hearing (or seeing) how you brand your UPK. Feel free to share in the comments! --Maria Cozzolino, Manager of Requirements & UI for UPK Product Development PS. For those of you who want to customize the player and documentation NOW, check out the detailed instructions in the Publishing Content chapter of the Content Development Guide.

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• PENGUIN IS GETTING READY FOR ORACLE OPENWORLD 2012

  - by Zeynep Koch

  Are you looking for reasons to attend Oracle Openworld, how about below Oracle Linux sessions and hands-on-labs.  1. General Session: Oracle Linux Strategy and Roadmap  In this session, Oracle executives will discuss Linux strategy; the roadmap; contributions to the Linux mainline kernel; and what's in store for upcoming releases of Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Don’t miss this session. 2. New Features in Oracle Linux- A Technical Deep Dive Collaborating with the Linux community, Oracle engineers contribute to advancing Linux for mission-critical deployments. In this technical session, attendees will learn about the recent developments in Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 3. Why Switch to Oracle Linux?  Oracle is the only company that provides a complete Linux solution from applications to disk, fully optimized for Oracle hardware and software, with one-stop support. In this session you will hear from two customers that have successfully implemented Oracle Linux and saved 50 to 90 percent on Linux support costs as well as the reasons to switch to Oracle Linux. 4. Debugging and Configuration Best Practices for Oracle Linux This is one of our best attended sessions and most informative. In this best practices session, learn how to save time and money while preventing headaches and hassles. Discover expert secrets to get your Linux systems up and running (and keep them running), avoid common pitfalls, prevent problems, and circumvent known issues. 5. Top Technical Tips for Automatic and Secure Oracle Linux Deployments In this session, attendees will learn about how to easily deploy and install Oracle Linux systems using various technologies like Kickstart, Oracle Enterprise Manager OpsCenter, and Oracle VM Templates for applications on Linux. Additionally, the session will share useful Linux security tips and introduce utilities to help with hardening and securely operating an Oracle Linux system. We also have a great session in Oracle Develop track: 6. DTrace for Oracle Linux Initially announced at last year's Oracle Openworld, DTrace for Oracle Linux is now available for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R.2. In this session held by one of the engineers working on the DTrace for Linux port, you will learn how you can use this powerful and flexible framework in your development environment. If you prefer to really have practical experience, don’t miss our two Hands-on-Labs where we will cover: HOL-1 : Oracle Linux Package Management: Configuring and Enabling Services In this session you will be Installing and configuring Oracle VM VirtualBox, importing the Oracle Linux virtual appliance. You will then use the package management on Oracle Linux using RPM and yum. You will also be able to review Ksplice, zero downtime kernel updates that enable you to apply security updates, patches and critical bug fixes without rebooting. HOL-2: Oracle Linux Storage Management with LVM and Device Mapper In this session you will learn about storage management with LVM2, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, Btrfs, preparing block devices, creating physical and logical volumes, creating file systems on top of logical volumes, and resizing file systems dynamically. You will also practice setting up software RAID devices, configuring encrypted block devices. You will also see Oracle Linux and Kpslice in the three demopods we will feature at Exhibition demogrounds. One in MySQL Connect and two in Oracle Openworld. What more do you need to come to San Francisco? Oh, I forgot to mention we also have great weather in fall.. Check out the Content Catalog and register to attend Oracle Linux sessions.

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• SQL SERVER – Select the Most Optimal Backup Methods for Server

  - by pinaldave

  Backup and Restore are very interesting concepts and one should be very much with the concept if you are dealing with production database. One never knows when a natural disaster or user error will surface and the first thing everybody wants is to get back on point in time when things were all fine. Well, in this article I have attempted to answer a few of the common questions related to Backup methodology. How to Select a SQL Server Backup Type In order to select a proper SQL Server backup type, a SQL Server administrator needs to understand the difference between the major backup types clearly. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let me offer it to you below. Select a Recovery Model First The very first question that you should ask yourself is: Can I afford to lose at least a little (15 min, 1 hour, 1 day) worth of data? Resist the temptation to save it all as it comes with the overhead – majority of businesses outside finances can actually afford to lose a bit of data. If your answer is YES, I can afford to lose some data – select a SIMPLE (default) recovery model in the properties of your database, otherwise you need to select a FULL recovery model. The additional advantage of the Full recovery model is that it allows you to restore the data to a specific point in time vs to only last backup time in the Simple recovery model, but it exceeds the scope of this article Backups in SIMPLE Recovery Model In SIMPLE recovery model you can select to do just Full backups or Full + Differential. Full Backup This is the simplest type of backup that contains all information needed to restore the database and should be your first choice. It is often sufficient for small databases, but note that it makes a big impact on the performance of your database Full + Differential Backup After Full, Differential backup picks up all of the changes since the last Full backup. This means if you made Full, Diff, Diff backup – the last Diff backup contains all of the changes and you don’t need the previous Differential backup. Differential backup is obviously smaller and carries less performance overhead Backups in FULL Recovery Model In FULL recovery model you can select Full + Transaction Log or Full + Differential + Transaction Log backup. You have to create Transaction Log backup, because at that time the log is being truncated. Otherwise your Transaction Log will grow uncontrollably. Full + Transaction Log Backup You would always need to perform a Full backup first. Then a series of Transaction log backup. Note that (in contrast to Differential) you need ALL transactions to log since the last Full of Diff backup to properly restore. Transaction log backups have the smallest performance overhead and can be performed often. Full + Differential + Transaction Log Backup If you want to ease the performance overhead on your server, you can replace some of the Full backup in the previous scenario with Differential. You restore scenario would start from Full, then the Last Differential, then all of the remaining transactions log backups Typical backup Scenarios You may say “Well, it is all nice – give me the examples now”. As you may already know, my favorite SQL backup software is SQLBackupAndFTP. If you go to Advanced Backup Schedule form in this program and click “Load a typical backup plan…” link, it will give you these scenarios that I think are quite common – see the image below. The Simplest Way to Schedule SQL Backups I hate to repeat myself, but backup scheduling in SQL agent leaves a lot to be desired. I do not know the simple way to schedule your SQL server backups than in SQLBackupAndFTP – see the image below. The whole backup scheduling with compression, encryption and upload to a Network Folder / HDD / NAS Drive / FTP / Dropbox / Google Drive / Amazon S3 takes just a few minutes – see my previous post for the review. Final Words This post offered an explanation for major backup types only. For more complicated scenarios or to research other options as usually go to MSDN. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Silverlight Cream for November 17, 2011 -- #1168

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Colin Eberhardt, Lazar Nikolov, WindowsPhoneGeek, Jesse Liberty, Peter Kuhn, Derik Whittaker, Chris Koenig, and Jeff Blankenburg(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Facebook Graph API and Silverlight Part 2 – Publishing data" Lazar Nikolov WP7: "Suppressing Zoom and Scroll interactions in the Windows Phone 7 WebBrowser Control" Colin Eberhardt Metro/WinRT/W8: "Tip/Trick when working with the Application Bar in WinRT/Metro (C#)" Derik Whittaker Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up Pete Brown announced the completion of his book: It’s a wrap! I’ve completed writing Silverlight 5 in Action From SilverlightCream.com: Suppressing Zoom and Scroll interactions in the Windows Phone 7 WebBrowser Control Colin Eberhardt's latest post is all about a helper class he wrote to suppress scrolling and pinch zoom of the WP7 browser control, which you might want to do if the browser is placed inside another control. Facebook Graph API and Silverlight Part 2 – Publishing data In this part 2 of his Facebook and Silverlight series, Lazar Nikolov shows how to post data to your profile or your friends' profiles Localizing a Windows Phone app Step by Step WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post is on Localizing a WP7 app .. another great tutorial with plenty of discussion, pictures, and a project to load up and follow Background Audio Part II: Copying Audio Files To Isolated Storage Continuing his WP7 series, Jesse Liberty has Part 2 of a mini-series on Background Audio up... in this episode he's using local audio and to do so, it must be in ISO Silverlight: Bugs in the multicast client In a Q/A session, Peter Kuhn was presented a nasty bug in the multicast client that he has verified exists in not only Silverlight 4 but also Silverlight 5 Beta, including a link to his entry on Connect. Tip/Trick when working with the Application Bar in WinRT/Metro (C#) Derik Whittaker offers up some good information about the Metro Application Bar and how to keep it where you want it New! Windows Phone Starter Kit for Podcasts Chris Koenig announced the release of a new starter kit for WP7... a starter kit for podcasts. Check out the links on Chris' site and the other two starter kits that are available 31 Days of Mango | Day #4: Compass Jeff Blankenburg continues with Day 4 of his Mango series with this post on the Compass and a cool app to demonstrate it 31 Days of Mango | Day #5: Gyroscope In Day 5, Jeff Blankenburg is talking about and discussing the gyroscope, of course if you have a phone as old as mine, you won't have a gyroscope and it's not on the emulator Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• AdventureWorks 2014 Sample Databases Are Now Available

  - by aspiringgeek

    Where in the World is AdventureWorks? Recently, SQL Community feedback from twitter prompted me to look in vain for SQL Server 2014 versions of the AdventureWorks sample databases we’ve all grown to know & love. I searched Codeplex, then used the bing & even the google in an effort to locate them, yet all I could find were samples on different sites highlighting specific technologies, an incomplete collection inconsistent with the experience we users had learned to expect.  I began pinging internally & learned that an update to AdventureWorks wasn’t even on the road map.  Fortunately, SQL Marketing manager Luis Daniel Soto Maldonado (t) lent a sympathetic ear & got the update ball rolling; his direct report Darmodi Komo recently announced the release of the shiny new sample databases for OLTP, DW, Tabular, and Multidimensional models to supplement the extant In-Memory OLTP sample DB.  What Success Looks Like In my correspondence with the team, here’s how I defined success: 1. Sample AdventureWorks DBs hosted on Codeplex showcasing SQL Server 2014’s latest-&-greatest features, including:  In-Memory OLTP (aka Hekaton) Clustered Columnstore Online Operations Resource Governor IO 2. Where it makes sense to do so, consolidate the DBs (e.g., showcasing Columnstore likely involves a separate DW DB) 3. Documentation to support experimenting with these features As Microsoft Senior SDE Bonnie Feinberg (b) stated, “I think it would be great to see an AdventureWorks for SQL 2014.  It would be super helpful for third-party book authors and trainers.  It also provides a common way to share examples in blog posts and forum discussions, for example.”  Exactly.  We’ve established a rich & robust tradition of sample databases on Codeplex.  This is what our community & our customers expect.  The prompt response achieves what we all aim to do, i.e., manifests the Service Design Engineering mantra of “delighting the customer”.  Kudos to Luis’s team in SQL Server Marketing & Kevin Liu’s team in SQL Server Engineering for doing so. Download AdventureWorks 2014 Download your copies of SQL Server 2014 AdventureWorks sample databases here.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 28 - November 3, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of Oct 28 - Nov 3, 2012. Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Mobile Development Platform Strategy Chart: ADF Mobile, WebCenter Sites, Portal, Content and Social "Unlike desktop web focused efforts, the world of mobile has undergone change at a feverish pace," says social enterprise expert John Brunswick. His extensive post charts various resources that will help you keep up. ADF Essentials - The Bare Necessities | Floyd Teter The experiment is over… And now Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares his impressions after spending some time with Oracle ADF Essentials, the free version of Oracle ADF. A review of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook | RedStack "More so than any other single piece of content that I have seen on the topic, it provides the information that a SOA administrator needs to know in order to successfully configure, manage, monitor, troubleshoot and backup an Oracle SOA environment." So says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team solution architect Mark Nelson of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook, by Ahmed Aboulnaga and Arun Pareek. Expanding the Oracle Enterprise Repository with functional documentation Capgemini middleware specialist Marc Kuijpers shares information on how Oracle Enterprise Repository can be configured "to contain functional assets, i.e. functional designs, use cases and a logical data model" to aid in SOA governance efforts. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what’s truly valuable. Easy way to access JPA with REST (JSON / XML) | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond shows you "what is possible with JPA-RS, how easy it is and howto setup your own EclipseLink REST service." Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic: when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. 2012 IOUG Virtualization SIG – Online Symposium on Nov 7 and Nov 8 | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares information on this week's IOUG Virtualization SIG online event. Does that make it a virtual virtualization event? Thought for the Day "If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning — and the response would be, 'We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more.'" — Mark Minasi Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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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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• Welcome 2011

  - by PSteele

  About this time last year, I wrote a blog post about how January of 2010 was almost over and I hadn’t done a single blog post.  Ugh…  History repeats itself. 2010 in Review If I look back at 2010, it was a great year in terms of technology and development: Visited Redmond to attend the MVP Summit in February.  Had a great time with the MS product teams and got to connect with some really smart people. Continued my work on Visual Studio Magazine’s “C# Corner” column.  About mid-year, the column changed from an every-other-month print column to an every-other-month print column along with bi-monthly web-only articles.  Needless to say, this kept me even busier and away from my blog. Participated in another GiveCamp!  Thanks to the wonderful leadership of Michael Eaton and all of his minions, GiveCamp 2010 was another great success.  Planning for GiveCamp 2011 will be starting soon… I switched to DVCS full time.  After years of being a loyal SVN user, I got bit by the DVCS bug.  I played around with both Mercurial and Git and finally settled on Mercurial.  It’s seamless integration with Windows Explorer along with it’s wealth of plugins made me fall in love.  I can’t imagine going back and using a centralized version control system. Continued to work with the awesome group of talent at SRT Solutions.  Very proud that SRT won it’s third consecutive FastTrack award! Jumped off the BlackBerry train and enjoying the smooth ride of Android.  It was time to replace the old BlackBerry Storm so I did some research and settled on the Motorola DroidX.  I couldn’t be happier.  Android is a slick OS and the DroidX is a sweet piece of hardware.  Been dabbling in some Android development with both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA (I like IntelliJ IDEA a lot better!).   2011 Plans On January 1st I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from the Microsoft MVP program letting me know that I had received the MVP award again for my community work in 2010.  I’m honored and humbled to be recognized by Microsoft as well as my peers! I’ll continue to do some Android development.  I’m currently working on a simple app to get me feet wet.  It may even makes it’s way into the Android Market. I’ve got a project that could really benefit from WPF so I’ll be diving into WPF this year.  I’ve played around with WPF a bit in the past – simple demos and learning exercises – but this will give me a chance to build an entire application in WPF.  I’m looking forward to the increased freedom that a WPF UI should give me. I plan on blogging a lot more in 2011! Technorati Tags: Android,MVP,Mercurial,WPF,SRT,GiveCamp

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• Logging connection strings

  If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft.   Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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• Oracle Linux Training Across Five Continents

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  The Oracle Linux System Administration course, a top selling course, provides you with a broad selection of key competencies you need to be a great Linux system administrator. And you can now take this course from your desk or in classrooms across all five contents. You can take this 5-day instructor-led course through the follow delivery methods: Training-on-Demand: Start training within 24 hours of registering. You following lecture material at your own pace via streaming video and book time on a lab environment to suit your schedule. Live-Virtual Event: Follow a live event from your own desk, no travel required. You can choose from a selection of events on the schedule to suit a different time zones. In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this course. Below is a selection of the in-class events already on the schedule. AFRICA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Nairobi, Kenya  13 October 2014  English  Johannesburg, South Africa  24 November 2014  English AMERICA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Mississauga, Canada  27 October 2014  English  Chicago, IL, United States  13 October 2014  English  Roseville, MN, United States  13 October 2014  English ASIA  Location  Date  Delivery  Jakarta, Indonesia  20 October 2014  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  25 August 2014  English  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  8 December 2014  English  Istanbul, Turkey  10 November 2014  Turkish   Dubai, United Arab Emirates  4 January 2015  English AUSTRALIA  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Canberra, Australia  20 October 2014  English  Melbourne, Australia  20 October 2014  English EUROPE  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Paris, France  6 October 2014  French  Milan, Italy  20 October 2014  Italian  Rome, Italy  8 September 2014  Italian  Bucharest, Romania  27 October 2014  Romanian  Madrid, Spain  1 September 2014  Spanish The Oracle Linux System Administration course is the recommended training course to prepare for you for the Oracle Linux 5 & 6 System Administrator OCA certification exam. Those who have acquired the skills provided in the Oracle Linux System Administration course, can advance their learning by taking the Oracle Linux Advanced Administration course. You can take this 5-day instructor led course as a live-virtual event or an in-class event. Below is a selection of the in-class events on the schedule:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Jakarta, Indonesia  27 October 2014  English  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  6 October 2014  English  Bangkok, Thailand  20 October 2014  English  Belmont, CA, United States  15 September 2014  English For information on the Oracle Linux curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux.

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• Understanding Data Science: Recent Studies

  - by Joe Lamantia

  If you need such a deeper understanding of data science than Drew Conway's popular venn diagram model, or Josh Wills' tongue in cheek characterization, "Data Scientist (n.): Person who is better at statistics than any software engineer and better at software engineering than any statistician." two relatively recent studies are worth reading.   'Analyzing the Analyzers,' an O'Reilly e-book by Harlan Harris, Sean Patrick Murphy, and Marck Vaisman, suggests four distinct types of data scientists -- effectively personas, in a design sense -- based on analysis of self-identified skills among practitioners.  The scenario format dramatizes the different personas, making what could be a dry statistical readout of survey data more engaging.  The survey-only nature of the data,  the restriction of scope to just skills, and the suggested models of skill-profiles makes this feel like the sort of exercise that data scientists undertake as an every day task; collecting data, analyzing it using a mix of statistical techniques, and sharing the model that emerges from the data mining exercise.  That's not an indictment, simply an observation about the consistent feel of the effort as a product of data scientists, about data science.  And the paper 'Enterprise Data Analysis and Visualization: An Interview Study' by researchers Sean Kandel, Andreas Paepcke, Joseph Hellerstein, and Jeffery Heer considers data science within the larger context of industrial data analysis, examining analytical workflows, skills, and the challenges common to enterprise analysis efforts, and identifying three archetypes of data scientist.  As an interview-based study, the data the researchers collected is richer, and there's correspondingly greater depth in the synthesis.  The scope of the study included a broader set of roles than data scientist (enterprise analysts) and involved questions of workflow and organizational context for analytical efforts in general.  I'd suggest this is useful as a primer on analytical work and workers in enterprise settings for those who need a baseline understanding; it also offers some genuinely interesting nuggets for those already familiar with discovery work. We've undertaken a considerable amount of research into discovery, analytical work/ers, and data science over the past three years -- part of our programmatic approach to laying a foundation for product strategy and highlighting innovation opportunities -- and both studies complement and confirm much of the direct research into data science that we conducted. There were a few important differences in our findings, which I'll share and discuss in upcoming posts.

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• Rewriting code under BSD license

  - by Frank

  I am currently studding OpengGL with OpenGL Supebible 5th edition. I've found interested for me some C++ code that is distributed with the book (see also on google code). That code is under New BSD License. I am writing my software on C# with SharpGL wrapper and I'd like to know following things: Can I rewrite that C++ to C#? edid: I'am interesting in using such things like GLBatch, GLShaderManager and some other thing from GLTools. Problem is that library is on C++, but I use C#. How do I have to mark my source code if I put it somewhere like to my github account? What disclaimer should be? Original disclaimer looks like: /* GLShaderManager.h Copyright (c) 2009, Richard S. Wright Jr. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. Neither the name of Richard S. Wright Jr. nor the names of other contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */ Edit: Should my copyright looks like after rewriting something like that? Copyright (c) 2014, My Name Copyright (c) 2009, Richard S. Wright Jr. All rights reserved. Redistribution...................

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• Upgrades in 5 Easy Pieces

  - by Anne R.

  Even though there are a few select tasks that I have to do once or twice a year, I can’t remember how to do them! Or where to find the bits and pieces to complete the task. So I love it when someone consolidates everything under one spot. That’s what the CRM On Demand team has done with the upgrade information. Specifically, they have: Provided a “one-stop” area for managing upgrades at your company. Broken down the upgrade process into 5 (yes, 5) steps. Explained when and how to perform each step with dates specific to your pod. Included details about each step, visible by expanding the step. Translated the steps into 11 languages. Added a list of release-specific resources with links from the page. Now, just head for the Training and Support portal, click the Release Info tab, and walk through the “5 Essential Steps to a Successful Upgrade.” Before you continue, though, select your language from the drop-down list on the Release Info page. CRM On Demand now has the upgrade steps translated into 11 languages. On the Step page, you can expand each section in sequence and follow the more detailed instructions that appear. This will ensure that you’ve covered all your bases for each upgrade. Here’s a shortened version of the information that you’ll find: 1. Verify your Primary Contact Information. Have you checked your primary contact information to make sure you’re being notified of all upgrade information? Or do you want more users to receive upgrade announcements? This section provides you with the navigation path to do that in CRM On Demand. 2. Review your Key Upgrade Dates. If you expand this step, a nice table appears with your critical dates for the various milestones. IMPORTANT: When your CRM On Demand pod has been officially added to the upgrade schedule, closer to the release date itself, this table will display your specific timetable. 3. Migrate your Customizations from the Staging Environment before the Snapshot Date. Oracle refreshes the Staging data with a copy of your Production data made on the Production Snapshot Date. So this section lists considerations relevant to this step. It also reminds you of the 2-week period when you should not be making any changes in your Staging environment.   4. Conduct your Upgrade Validation on the Staging Environment. When the Customer Validation Testing period begins, you need to log in to your Staging Environment to validate that your key business processes and customizations continue to behave as expected. If your company utilizes Web Services, Web Links, Web Applets or Workflow, focus on testing these first. You generally have about two weeks for testing. If you run into problems during this time, follow the instructions shown in this section for logging a service request. It describes exactly how to fill out the fields in the SR for the fastest resolution. 5. Conduct "White Glove" Testing in your Upgraded Production Environment. Before users start using the upgrade, you should access a few tabs and reports. Doing this actually warms up the cache so that frequently used pages and reports will come up at normal speed on Monday morning, when users log in to the upgraded system. Resources listed under this step help you in further preparing for the upgrade. Now there’s also a new Documentation section on the right with links to these release-specific resources.   Very nice, I commented, when discussing these improvements with the “responsible party.” She confirmed that, yes, they tried to consolidate the upgrade information, translate it for better communication, simplify it into 5 easy pieces, and drive admins responsible for handling upgrades to this one site instead of sending out elaborate emails. Yes, I just love it when someone practically reaches out and holds my hand through a process. Next best thing to a wizard!

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• Aptronyms: fitting the profession to the name

  - by Tony Davis

  Writing a recent piece on the pains of index fragmentation, I found myself wondering why, in SQL Server, you can’t set the equivalent of a fill factor, on a heap table. I scratched my head…who might know? Phil Factor, of course! I approached him with a due sense of optimism only to find that not only did he not know, he also didn’t seem to care much either. I skulked off thinking how this may be the final nail in the coffin of nominative determinism. I’ve always wondered if there was anything in it, though. If your surname is Plumb or Leeks, is there even a tiny, extra percentage chance that you’ll end up fitting bathrooms? Some examples are quite common. I’m sure we’ve all met teachers called English or French, or lawyers called Judge or Laws. I’ve also known a Doctor called Coffin, a Urologist called Waterfall, and a Dentist called Dentith. Two personal favorites are Wolfgang Wolf who ended up managing the German Soccer team, Wolfsburg, and Edmund Akenhead, a Crossword Editor for The Times newspaper. Having forgiven Phil his earlier offhandedness, I asked him for if he knew of any notable examples. He had met the famous Dr. Batty and Dr. Nutter, both Psychiatrists, knew undertakers called Death and Stiff, had read a book by Frederick Page-Turner, and suppressed a giggle at the idea of a feminist called Gurley-Brown. He even managed to better my Urologist example, citing the article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology (vol.49, pp.173-176, 1977) by A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon. What, however, if you were keen to gently nudge your child down the path to a career in IT? What name would you choose? Subtlety probably doesn’t really work, although in a recent interview, Rodney Landrum did congratulate PowerShell MVP Max Trinidad on being named after a SQL function. Grant “The Memory” Fritchey (OK, I made up that nickname) doesn’t do badly either. Some surnames, seem to offer a natural head start, although I know of no members of the Page-Reid clan in the profession. There are certainly families with the Table surname, although sadly, Little Bobby Tables was merely a legend by xkcd. A member of the well-known Key family would need to name their son Primary, or maybe live abroad, to make their mark. Nominate your examples of people seemingly destined, by name, for their chosen profession (extra points for IT). The best three will receive a prize. Cheers, Tony.

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