automate everything - Page 280

WARNING: RubyGems 1.2+ index not found for: RubyGems will revert to legacy indexes degrading per

- by Sam

WARNING: RubyGems 1.2+ index not found for: RubyGems will revert to legacy indexes degrading performance. If anyone can walk me through this problem I will give them $50.00 I've exhausted google, have reinstalled everything. All i want to to is gem install ... that's it

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Adding A Custom Dropdown in RCDC for Forefront Identity Manager 2010

- by Daniel Lackey

My latest exploration has been FIM 2010 for Identity Management. The following is a post of how to add a custom dropdown for the FIM Portal. I have decided to document this as I cannot find documentation on how to do this anywhere else. I hope that it finds useful to others. For starters, this was to me not an easy task to figure out. I really would like to know why it is so cumbersome to do something that seems like a lot of people would need to do, but that’s for another day J The dropdown I wanted to add was for ‘Account Status’ which would display if the account is ‘Enabled’ or ‘Disabled’ in the data source Active Directory. This option would also allow helpdesk users or admins to administer the userAccountControl attribute in AD from the FIM Portal interface. The first thing I had to do was create the attribute itself. This is done by going to Administration à Schema Management from the FIM 2010 portal. Once here, you click on All Attributes. What is listed here are all attributes and their associated Resource Types in FIM. To create the ‘AccountStatus’ attribute, click on New. As shown below, enter ‘AccountStatus’ with no spaces for the System Name and ‘Account Status’ for the Display Name. The Data Type is going to be ‘Indexed String’. Click Next. Leave everything on the Localization tab default and click Next. On the Validation tab as shown below, we will enter the regex expression ^(Enabled|Disabled)?$ with our two desired string values ‘Enabled’ and ‘Disabled’. Click on Finish and then and Submit to complete adding the attribute. The next step involves associating the attribute with a resource type. This is called ‘Binding’ the attribute. From the Schema Management page, click on All Bindings. From the page that comes up, click on New. As shown below, enter ‘User’ for the Resource Type and ‘Account Status’ for the Attribute Type. This is essentially binding the Account Status attribute to the ‘User’ Resource Type. Click Next. On the ‘Attribute Override’ tab, type in ‘Account Status’ for the Display Name field. Click Next. On the ‘Localization’ tab, click Next. On the ‘Validation’ tab, enter the regex expression ^(Enabled|Disabled)?$ we entered previously for the attribute. Click Finish and then Submit to complete. Now that the Attribute and the Binding are complete, you have to give users permission to see the attribute on the User Edit page. Go to Administration à Management Policy Rules. Look for the rule named Administration: Administrators can read and update Users and click on it. Once it opens, click on the ‘Target Resources’ tab and look at the section named Resource Attributes. Type in at the end the ‘Account Status’ attribute and check it with the validator. Once done click on OK to save the changes. Lastly, we need to add the actual dropdown control to the RCDC (Resource Control Display Configuration) for User Editing. Go to Administration à Resource Control Display Configuration. From here navigate until you find the RCDC named Configuration for User Editing RCDC and click on it. The following is what you will see: First step is to export the Configuration Data file. Click on the Export configuration link and save the file to your desktop of other folder. Find the file you just exported and open the file in your XML editor of choice. I use notepad but anything will work. Since we are adding a dropdown control, first find another control in the existing file that is already a dropdown in FIM. I used EmployeeType as my example. Copy the control from the beginning tag named <my:Control… to the ending tag </my:Control>. Now take what you copied and paste it in whatever location you desire within the form between two other controls. I chose to place the ‘Account Status’ field after the ‘Account Name’ field. After you paste the control you will need to modify so it looks like this: Notice where you specify what attribute you are dealing with where it has AccountStatus in the XML. Once you are complete with modifying this, save the file and make sure it is a .xml file. Now go back to the Configuration for User Editing screen and look at the section named ‘Configuration Data’. Click the ‘Browse’ button and find the XML file you just modified and choose it. Click OK on the bottom of the window and you are done! Now when you click on a user’s name in the FIM Portal, you should see the newly added dropdown box as below: Later I will post more about this drop down, specifically on how to automate actually ‘Disabling’ the account in the data source through the FIM Workflows and MAs. <my:Control my:Name="AccountStatus" my:TypeName="UocDropDownList" my:Caption="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.DisplayName}" my:Description="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.Description}" my:RightsLevel="{Binding Source=rights, Path=AccountStatus}"> <my:Properties> <my:Property my:Name="ValuePath" my:Value="Value"/> <my:Property my:Name="CaptionPath" my:Value="Caption"/> <my:Property my:Name="HintPath" my:Value="Hint"/> <my:Property my:Name="ItemSource" my:Value="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.LocalizedAllowedValues}"/> <my:Property my:Name="SelectedValue" my:Value="{Binding Source=object, Path=AccountStatus, Mode=TwoWay}"/> </my:Properties> </my:Control>

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Fix Windows Computer Problems with Microsoft Fix it Center

- by Matthew Guay

Fixing computer problems can often be difficult, but Microsoft is aiming to make it as simple as a couple clicks with. Here’s how you can easily fix computer problems with Microsoft’s new Fix it Center Beta. Last year Microsoft began offering small Fix it scripts that you could download and run to help solve common computer problems automatically. These were added to some of the most visited Windows help pages, and helped fix problems with things such as printing errors and Aero glass support. Now, the Fix it scripts have been bundled together with the Fix it Center, making fixing your computer even easier. This free tool works great on all editions of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Note: The Fix it Center is currently in beta, so only run if you are comfortable running beta software. Getting Started Download the Fix it Center installer (link below), and install as normal. The installer will download the remaining components, and then finish the installation. In Windows XP, if you have not yet installed .NET 2.0, you may see the following prompt. Click Yes to go to the download site, and once you’ve installed .NET 2.0, run the Fix it Center setup again. Also, the Fix it Center uses PowerShell to automate its fixes, but if it is not installed yet the installer will automatically download and install it. Find Fixes for Your PC Once Fix it Center is installed, you can personalize it for your computer. Select Now, and the click Next. It will scan your computer for problems with known solutions, and will offer to go ahead and install these troubleshooters. If you choose to not install them, you can always download them from within the Fix it Center at a later time. While those troubleshooters are downloading, you can create a Fix it account. This will give you additional help and support, and let you review Fix it solutions for all your computers from an online dashboard. You need a Windows Live ID to create an account. Also, choose whether or not to send information to Microsoft about your hardware and software problems. Get Problems Fixed Now that the Fix it Center is installed and has identified issues on your computer, it’s time to get the problems fixed. Here’s the default front screen in Windows 7, showing all of the available fixes. And here’s the Fix it Center running in Windows XP. Select one of the Troubleshooters to see more information about it, and click Run to start it. You can choose to either detect problems and have them fixed automatically, or you can choose for the Fix it Center to show you the solutions and let you choose whether to apply them or not. The defaults usually work good, and only take a couple minutes to apply the fixes, but you can select your own fixes if you’d rather be in control. It will scan your computer for known problems in this area, and then will show you the results. Here, Fix it determined that startup programs may be causing performance issues. Select Start System Configuration, and uncheck any of the programs you do not usually use. Once you’ve run a troubleshooter, you can see the issues it checked for and any problems it discovered. If you created the online account, you can also choose to view the details online. This will show all of your computers with Fix it Center and the fixes you’ve run on them. Conclusion Whether you’re a power user or new to computers, sometimes it’s best to just get your problems fixed and go on with life instead of digging through the registry, forums, and hacking your way to a solution. Remember the service is still in beta and may not work perfectly or solve your issues every time. But it’s something cool and worth a look. Links Download Microsoft Fix it Center Beta Fix additional problems with Microsoft’s Fix it Center Online Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable Windows Mobility Center in Windows 7 or VistaMake Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-InsUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Disable Security Center Popup Notifications in Windows VistaHow To Manage Action Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi

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Enable Automatic Code First Migrations On SQL Database in Azure Web Sites

- by Steve Michelotti

Now that Azure supports .NET Framework 4.5, you can use all the latest and greatest available features. A common scenario is to be able to use Entity Framework Code First Migrations with a SQL Database in Azure. Prior to Code First Migrations, Entity Framework provided database initializers. While convenient for demos and prototypes, database initializers weren’t useful for much beyond that because, if you delete and re-create your entire database when the schema changes, you lose all of your operational data. This is the void that Migrations are meant to fill. For example, if you add a column to your model, Migrations will alter the database to add the column rather than blowing away the entire database and re-creating it from scratch. Azure is becoming increasingly easier to use – especially with features like Azure Web Sites. Being able to use Entity Framework Migrations in Azure makes deployment easier than ever. In this blog post, I’ll walk through enabling Automatic Code First Migrations on Azure. I’ll use the Simple Membership provider for my example. First, we’ll create a new Azure Web site called “migrationstest” including creating a new SQL Database along with it: Next we’ll go to the web site and download the publish profile: In the meantime, we’ve created a new MVC 4 website in Visual Studio 2012 using the “Internet Application” template. This template is automatically configured to use the Simple Membership provider. We’ll do our initial Publish to Azure by right-clicking our project and selecting “Publish…”. From the “Publish Web” dialog, we’ll import the publish profile that we downloaded in the previous step: Once the site is published, we’ll just click the “Register” link from the default site. Since the AccountController is decorated with the [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute, the initializer will be called and the initial database is created. We can verify this by connecting to our SQL Database on Azure with SQL Management Studio (after making sure that our local IP address is added to the list of Allowed IP Addresses in Azure): One interesting note is that these tables got created with the default Entity Framework initializer – which is to create the database if it doesn’t already exist. However, our database did already exist! This is because there is a new feature of Entity Framework 5 where Code First will add tables to an existing database as long as the target database doesn’t contain any of the tables from the model. At this point, it’s time to enable Migrations. We’ll open the Package Manger Console and execute the command: PM> Enable-Migrations -EnableAutomaticMigrations This will enable automatic migrations for our project. Because we used the "-EnableAutomaticMigrations” switch, it will create our Configuration class with a constructor that sets the AutomaticMigrationsEnabled property set to true: 1: public Configuration() 2: { 3: AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = true; 4: } We’ll now add our initial migration: PM> Add-Migration Initial This will create a migration class call “Initial” that contains the entire model. But we need to remove all of this code because our database already exists so we are just left with empty Up() and Down() methods. 1: public partial class Initial : DbMigration 2: { 3: public override void Up() 4: { 5: } 6: 7: public override void Down() 8: { 9: } 10: } If we don’t remove this code, we’ll get an exception the first time we attempt to run migrations that tells us: “There is already an object named 'UserProfile' in the database”. This blog post by Julie Lerman fully describes this scenario (i.e., enabling migrations on an existing database). Our next step is to add the Entity Framework initializer that will automatically use Migrations to update the database to the latest version. We will add these 2 lines of code to the Application_Start of the Global.asax: 1: Database.SetInitializer(new MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<UsersContext, Configuration>()); 2: new UsersContext().Database.Initialize(false); Note the Initialize() call will force the initializer to run if it has not been run before. At this point, we can publish again to make sure everything is still working as we are expecting. This time we’re going to specify in our publish profile that Code First Migrations should be executed: Once we have re-published we can once again navigate to the Register page. At this point the database has not been changed but Migrations is now enabled on our SQL Database in Azure. We can now customize our model. Let’s add 2 new properties to the UserProfile class – Email and DateOfBirth: 1: [Table("UserProfile")] 2: public class UserProfile 3: { 4: [Key] 5: [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] 6: public int UserId { get; set; } 7: public string UserName { get; set; } 8: public string Email { get; set; } 9: public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } 10: } At this point all we need to do is simply re-publish. We’ll once again navigate to the Registration page and, because we had Automatic Migrations enabled, the database has been altered (*not* recreated) to add our 2 new columns. We can verify this by once again looking at SQL Management Studio: Automatic Migrations provide a quick and easy way to keep your database in sync with your model without the worry of having to re-create your entire database and lose data. With Azure Web Sites you can set up automatic deployment with Git or TFS and automate the entire process to make it dead simple.

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Seriously, It’s Time to Get Your Content Act Together

- by Mike Stiles

Branded content, content marketing, social content, brand journalism, we’re seeing those terms more and more. Why? The technology tools are coming together. We should know. We can gather big data, crunch it, listen to the public, moderate, respond, get to know the customer intimately, know what they like, know what they want, we can target, distribute, amplify, measure engagement and reaction, modify strategy and even automate a great deal of all that. An amazing machine, a sleek, smooth-running engine has been built such that all the parts can interact and work together to deliver peak performance and maximum output. But that engine isn’t going anywhere without any gas. Content is the gas. Yes, we curate other people’s content. We can siphon their gas. There’s tech to help with that too. But as for the creation of original, worthwhile content made for a specific audience, our audience, machines can’t do that…at least not yet. Curated content is great. But somebody has to originate the content for it to be curated and shared. And since the need for good, curated content is obviously large and the desire to share is there, it’s a winning proposition for a brand to be a consistent producer of original content. And yet, it feels like content is an issue we’re avoiding. There’s a reluctance to build a massive pipeline if you have no idea what you’re going to run through it. The C-suite often doesn’t know what content is, that it’s different from ads, where to get it, who makes it, how long it should be, what the point of it is if there’s no hard sell of the product, what it costs, how to use it, how to measure it, how to make sure it’s good, or how to make sure it will keep flowing. It could be the reason many brands aren’t pulling the trigger on socially enabling the enterprise. And that’s a shame, because there are a lot of creative, daring, experimental, uniquely talented entertainers and journalists chomping at the bit to execute content for brands. But for many corporate executives, content is “weird,” and the people who make it are even weirder. The content side of the equation is human. It’s art, but art that can be informed by data. The natural inclination is for brands to turn to their agencies for such creative endeavors. But agencies are falling into one of two categories. They’re failing to transition from ads to content. In “Content Era, What’s the Role of Agencies?” Alexander Jutkowitz says agencies were made for one-hit campaigns, not ongoing content. Or, they’re ready and capable but can’t get clients to do the right things. Agencies have to make money, even if it means continuing to do the wrong things because that’s all the client will agree to. So what we wind up with in the pipeline is advertising, marketing-heavy content, content that was obviously created or spearheaded by non-creative executives, random & inconsistent content, copy written for SEO bots, and other completely uninteresting nightmares. Frank Rose, author of “The Art of Immersion,” writes, “Content without story and excitement is noise pollution.” In the old days, you made an ad and inserted it into shows made by people who knew what they were doing. You could bask in that show’s success and leverage their audience. Now, you are tasked with attracting, amassing and holding your own audience. You may just want to make, advertise and sell your widgets. But now there’s a war on for a precious commodity, attention. People are busy. They have filters to keep uninteresting and irrelevant things out. They value their time and expect value back when they give it up. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says, "Your customers don't care about you, your products, your services…they care about themselves, their wants and their needs." Is it worth getting serious about content and doing it right? 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content (Custom Content Council). Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social (Content+). 78% of consumers think organizations that provide custom content want to build good relationships with them (TMG Custom Media). On the B2B side, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. an ad. So what’s the hang-up? Cited barriers to content marketing are lack of human resources (42%) and lack of budget (35%). 54% of brands don’t have a single on-site, dedicated content creator. And only 38% of brands have a content marketing strategy. Tech has built the biggest, most incredible stage for brands that’s ever been built. Putting something on that stage is your responsibility. Do a bad show, or no show at all, and you’ll be the beautiful, talented actress that never got discovered. @mikestilesPhoto: Gabriella Fabbri, stock.xchng

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Convert Video and Remove Commercials in Windows 7 Media Center with MCEBuddy 1.1

- by DigitalGeekery

Today look at MCEBuddy for Windows 7 Media Center. This handy app automatically takes your recorded TV files and converts them to MP4, AVI, WMV, or MPEG format. It even has the option to cut out those annoying commercials during the conversion process. Installation and Configuration Download and extract MCE Buddy. (Download link below) Run the setup.exe file and take all the default settings. Open MCEBuddy Configuration by going to Start > All Programs > MCEBuddy > MCEBuddy Configuration. Video Paths The MCEBuddy application is comprised of a single window. The first step you’ll want to take is to define your Source and Destination paths. The “Source” will most likely be your Recorded TV directory. The Destination should NOT be the same as the Source folder. Note: The Recorded TV directory in Windows 7 Media Center will only display and play WTV & DVR-MS files. To watch the converted MP4, AVI, WMV, or MPEG files in Windows Media Center you’ll need to add them to your Video Library or Movie Library. Video Conversion Next, choose your preferred format for conversion from the “Convert to” drop down list. The default is MP4 with the H.264 codec. You’ll find a wide variety of formats. The first set of conversion options in the drop down list will resize the video to 720 pixels wide. The next two sections maintain the original size, and the final section is for a variety of portable devices. Next, you’ll see a group of check boxes below the “Convert to” drop down list. The Commercial Skipping option will cut the commercials while converting the file. Sort By Series will create a sub-folder in your Destination folder for each TV show. Delete Original will delete the WTV file after conversion is complete. (This option is not recommended unless you are sure your files are converting properly and you no longer need the WTV file.) Start Minimized is ideal if you want to run MCEBuddy on Windows startup. Note: MCEBuddy installs and uses Comskip for commercial cutting by default. However, if you have ShowAnalyzer installed, it will use that application instead. Advanced Options To choose a specific time of day to perform the conversions, click the checkbox under the “Advanced Options,” and select the starting and ending times for conversion. For example, convert between 2 hours and 5 hours would be between 2 am and 5am. If you want MCEBuddy to constantly look for and immediately convert new recordings, leave the box unchecked. The “Video age” option lets you choose a specific number of days to wait before performing the conversion. This can be useful if you want to watch the recordings first and delete those you don’t wish to convert. You can also choose the “Sub Directories” if you’d like MCEBuddy to convert files that are in a sub-folder in your “Source” directory. Second Conversion As you might expect, this option allows MCEBuddy to perform a second conversion of your file. This can be useful if you want to use your first conversion to create a higher quality MP4 or AVI file for playback on a larger screen, and a second one for a portable device such as Zune or iPhone. The same options from the first conversion are also available for the second. You’ll want to choose a separate Destination folder for the second conversion. Start and Monitor Progress To start converting your video files, simply press the “Start” button at the bottom. You’ll be able to follow the progress in the “Current Activity” section. When all the video files have finished converting, or there are no current files to convert, MCEBuddy will display a “Started – Idle” status. Click “Stop” if you don’t want MCEBuddy to continue scanning for new files. Conclusion MCEBuddy 1.1 will convert all WTV files in it’s source folder. If you want to pick and choose which recordings to convert, you may want to define a source folder different than the Recorded TV folder and then just copy or move the files you wish to convert into the new source folder. The conversion process does take a good bit of time. If you choose the commercial skipping and second conversion options it can take several hours to fully convert one TV recording. Overall, MCEBuddy makes a nice Media Center addition for those that want to save some space with smaller size files, convert Recorded TV files for their portable device, or automatically remove commercials. If you’re looking for a different method to skip commercials check out our post on how to skip commercials in Windows 7 Media Center. Download MCEBuddy 1.1 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Skip Commercials in Windows 7 Media CenterHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Add Folders to the Movie Library in Windows 7 Media Center TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam

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Your thoughts on Best Practices for Scientific Computing?

- by John Smith

A recent paper by Wilson et al (2014) pointed out 24 Best Practices for scientific programming. It's worth to have a look. I would like to hear opinions about these points from experienced programmers in scientific data analysis. Do you think these advices are helpful and practical? Or are they good only in an ideal world? Wilson G, Aruliah DA, Brown CT, Chue Hong NP, Davis M, Guy RT, Haddock SHD, Huff KD, Mitchell IM, Plumbley MD, Waugh B, White EP, Wilson P (2014) Best Practices for Scientific Computing. PLoS Biol 12:e1001745. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001745 Box 1. Summary of Best Practices Write programs for people, not computers. (a) A program should not require its readers to hold more than a handful of facts in memory at once. (b) Make names consistent, distinctive, and meaningful. (c) Make code style and formatting consistent. Let the computer do the work. (a) Make the computer repeat tasks. (b) Save recent commands in a file for re-use. (c) Use a build tool to automate workflows. Make incremental changes. (a) Work in small steps with frequent feedback and course correction. (b) Use a version control system. (c) Put everything that has been created manually in version control. Don’t repeat yourself (or others). (a) Every piece of data must have a single authoritative representation in the system. (b) Modularize code rather than copying and pasting. (c) Re-use code instead of rewriting it. Plan for mistakes. (a) Add assertions to programs to check their operation. (b) Use an off-the-shelf unit testing library. (c) Turn bugs into test cases. (d) Use a symbolic debugger. Optimize software only after it works correctly. (a) Use a profiler to identify bottlenecks. (b) Write code in the highest-level language possible. Document design and purpose, not mechanics. (a) Document interfaces and reasons, not implementations. (b) Refactor code in preference to explaining how it works. (c) Embed the documentation for a piece of software in that software. Collaborate. (a) Use pre-merge code reviews. (b) Use pair programming when bringing someone new up to speed and when tackling particularly tricky problems. (c) Use an issue tracking tool. I'm relatively new to serious programming for scientific data analysis. When I tried to write code for pilot analyses of some of my data last year, I encountered tremendous amount of bugs both in my code and data. Bugs and errors had been around me all the time, but this time it was somewhat overwhelming. I managed to crunch the numbers at last, but I thought I couldn't put up with this mess any longer. Some actions must be taken. Without a sophisticated guide like the article above, I started to adopt "defensive style" of programming since then. A book titled "The Art of Readable Code" helped me a lot. I deployed meticulous input validations or assertions for every function, renamed a lot of variables and functions for better readability, and extracted many subroutines as reusable functions. Recently, I introduced Git and SourceTree for version control. At the moment, because my co-workers are much more reluctant about these issues, the collaboration practices (8a,b,c) have not been introduced. Actually, as the authors admitted, because all of these practices take some amount of time and effort to introduce, it may be generally hard to persuade your reluctant collaborators to comply them. I think I'm asking your opinions because I still suffer from many bugs despite all my effort on many of these practices. Bug fix may be, or should be, faster than before, but I couldn't really measure the improvement. Moreover, much of my time has been invested on defence, meaning that I haven't actually done much data analysis (offence) these days. Where is the point I should stop at in terms of productivity? I've already deployed: 1a,b,c, 2a, 3a,b,c, 4b,c, 5a,d, 6a,b, 7a,7b I'm about to have a go at: 5b,c Not yet: 2b,c, 4a, 7c, 8a,b,c (I could not really see the advantage of using GNU make (2c) for my purpose. Could anyone tell me how it helps my work with MATLAB?)

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Adopting DBVCS

- by Wes McClure

Identify early adopters Pick a small project with a small(ish) team. This can be a legacy application or a green-field application. Strive to find a team of early adopters that will be eager to try something new. Get the team on board! Research Research the tool(s) that you want to use. Some tools provide all of the features you would need while some only provide a slice of the pie. DBVCS requires the ability to manage a set of change scripts that update a database from one version to the next. Ideally a tool can track database versions and automatically apply updates. The change script generation process can be manual, but having diff tools available to automatically generate it can really reduce the overhead to adoption. Finally, an automated tool to generate a script file per database object is an added bonus as your version control system can quickly identify what was changed in a commit (add/del/modify), just like with code changes. Don’t settle on just one tool, identify several. Then work with the team to evaluate the tools. Have the team do some tests of the following scenarios with each tool: Baseline an existing database: can the migration tool work with legacy databases? Caution: most migration platforms do not support baselines or have poor support, especially the fad of fluent APIs. Add/drop tables Add/drop procedures/functions/views Alter tables (rename columns, add columns, remove columns) Massage data – migrations sometimes involve changing data types that cannot be implicitly casted and require you to decide how the data is explicitly cast to the new type. This is a requirement for a migrations platform. Think about a case where you might want to combine fields, or move a field from one table to another, you wouldn’t want to lose the data. Run the tool via the command line. If you cannot automate the tool in Continuous Integration what is the point? Create a copy of a database on demand. Backup/restore databases locally. Let the team give feedback and decide together, what tool they would like to try out. My recommendation at this point would be to include TSqlMigrations and RoundHouse as SQL based migration platforms. In general I would recommend staying away from the fluent platforms as they often lack baseline capabilities and add overhead to learn a new API when SQL is already a very well known DSL. Code migrations often get messy with procedures/views/functions as these have to be created with SQL and aren’t cross platform anyways. IMO stick to SQL based migrations. Reconciling Production If your project is a legacy application, you will need to reconcile the current state of production with your development databases. Find changes in production and bring them down to development, even if they are old and need to be removed. Once complete, produce a baseline of either dev or prod as they are now in sync. Commit this to your VCS of choice. Add whatever schema changes tracking mechanism your tool requires to your development database. This often requires adding a table to track the schema version of that database. Your tool should support doing this for you. You can add this table to production when you do your next release. Script out any changes currently in dev. Remove production artifacts that you brought down during reconciliation. Add change scripts for any outstanding changes in dev since the last production release. Commit these to your repository. Say No to Shared Dev DBs Simply put, you wouldn’t dream of sharing a code checkout, why would you share a development database? If you have a shared dev database, back it up, distribute the backups and take the shared version offline (including the dev db server once all projects are using DB VCS). Doing DB VCS with a shared database is bound to cause problems as people won’t be able to easily script out their own changes from those that others are working on. First prod release Copy prod to your beta/testing environment. Add the schema changes table (or mechanism) and do a test run of your changes. If successful you can schedule this to be run on production. Evaluation After your first release, evaluate the pain points of the process. Try to find tools or modifications to existing tools to help fix them. Don’t leave stones unturned, iteratively evolve your tools and practices to make the process as seamless as possible. This is why I suggest open source alternatives. Nothing is set in stone, a good example was adding transactional support to TSqlMigrations. We ran into situations where an update would break a database, so I added a feature to do transactional updates and rollback on errors! Another good example is generating change scripts. We have been manually making these for months now. I found an open source project called Open DB Diff and integrated this with TSqlMigrations. These were things we just accepted at the time when we began adopting our tool set. Once we became comfortable with the base functionality, it was time to start automating more of the process. Just like anything else with development, never be afraid to try to find tools to make your job easier! Enjoy -Wes

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Backup options in SharePoint 2007

- by sreejukg

It is very important to make sure the server farm backup is taking properly, making sure that in case of any disaster, the administrator has the latest backup that can be used to restore. This articles addresses some of the options available for backup/restore in SharePoint 2007 Backup There are two options that can be utilized to take backup of SharePoint sites. Using SharePoint Central Administration website Using SharePoint central administration website, you can do backup/restore from user interface. Using central administration website you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases Follow these steps to take backup of the server farm using central administration 1. Open Central administration website 2. Navigate to Operations -> Backup and Restore -> Perform a backup 3. Here you will have options to choose the item to back up. Select Farm (the top most item in the list) 4. Once you select the items to backup, click on “Continue to backup options” 5. Select “Full” as type of backup. 6. In the backup file location, enter the path where you need to store the backup. The path should be according to the UNC, for e.g. for c drive you may use \\server\c$\mybackupFolder 7. Click ok 8. Now you will be redirected to Backup and Restore Status page. This page shows the progress for the backup operation. You can use the refresh button to update the status of backup(this page will automatically refresh in every 30 seconds). Once completed you can find the files in the specified folder. Using STSADM website SharePoint comes with a STSADM command line tool. STSADM provides lot of administrative operations that can be performed on SharePoint 2007 sites. You can find STSADM command from the following location C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin (You may change the drive letter according to your installation) STSADM provides a method for performing the Office SharePoint Server 2007 administration tasks at the command line or by using batch files or scripts. STSADM provides access to operations not available by using the Central Administration site The general syntax for STSADM is as follows STSADM -operation Operation Name –parameter1 value1 –parameter2 value2 ……….. Using STSADM you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases To perform any STSADM, operation you need to be a member of administrators group. Follow these steps to take backup of SharePoint server farm using STSADM tool. Note: make sure you are logged in to the computer where central administration website is installed. 1. Open the Command prompt (You should run command prompt with administrator privileges) 2. Change the working directory to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin 3. Enter the command, then press enter Stsadm –o backup -directory <UNC path> -backupmethod full 4. You will get success / failure message once the command finishes. How to schedule the backup There is no option to schedule a backup using central administration site. Also there is no operation provided by STSADM to automate the backup. The farm administrators need to take backup in regular intervals. To achieve this, you can write a batch file that includes STSADM command to take full backup of the server. This batch file can be scheduled using windows task scheduler to execute in certain intervals. Sample of the batch file 1. Open notepad(or any other text editor) 2. Enter the following commands @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm.exe -o backup -directory "<\backup>" -backupmethod full echo completed 3. Save the file with .bat extension You can schedule this batch file as you require. Other Options Using STSADM tool, you will be able to take backup for individual site collection. The syntax for this is stsadm -o backup -url <URL name for site collection> -filename <file name> [-overwrite] The explanations for the parameters are as follows. -url The url of the site collection you need to backup -filename The name of the backup file. E.g. c:\backup.bak -overwrite optional. Indicates if the filename specified exists, whether to overwrite or not. If you are creating the batch file for scheduling the backup for a site collection, you may need to specify the backup filename automatically created. It is an option that you can generate the filename with date so that you can keep backup for each day. e.g. The following commands can be utilized create a site collection backup. @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== echo =============================================================== echo getting todays date to a variable echo =============================================================== @For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A in (‘Date /t’) do @( Set Day=%%A Set Month=%%B Set Year=%%C Set todayDate=%%C%%B%%A ) cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm -o backup -url <sitecollection url> -filename \\ServerName\ShareName\Backup_%todayDate%.bak -overwrite echo completed To read more about backup STSADM operation, read this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263441.aspx

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SQL SERVER – Parsing SSIS Catalog Messages – Notes from the Field #030

- by Pinal Dave

[Note from Pinal]: This is a new episode of Notes from the Field series. SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS) is one of the most key essential part of the entire Business Intelligence (BI) story. It is a platform for data integration and workflow applications. The tool may also be used to automate maintenance of SQL Server databases and updates to multidimensional cube data. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series I requested SSIS Expert Andy Leonard to discuss one of the most interesting concepts of SSIS Catalog Messages. There are plenty of interesting and useful information captured in the SSIS catalog and we will learn together how to explore the same. The SSIS Catalog captures a lot of cool information by default. Here’s a query I use to parse messages from the catalog.operation_messages table in the SSISDB database, where the logged messages are stored. This query is set up to parse a default message transmitted by the Lookup Transformation. It’s one of my favorite messages in the SSIS log because it gives me excellent information when I’m tuning SSIS data flows. The message reads similar to: Data Flow Task:Information: The Lookup processed 4485 rows in the cache. The processing time was 0.015 seconds. The cache used 1376895 bytes of memory. The query: USE SSISDB GO DECLARE @MessageSourceType INT = 60 DECLARE @StartOfIDString VARCHAR(100) = 'The Lookup processed ' DECLARE @ProcessingTimeString VARCHAR(100) = 'The processing time was ' DECLARE @CacheUsedString VARCHAR(100) = 'The cache used ' DECLARE @StartOfIDSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @StartOfIDString + '%' DECLARE @ProcessingTimeSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @ProcessingTimeString + '%' DECLARE @CacheUsedSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @CacheUsedString + '%' SELECT operation_id , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1))) AS LookupRowsCount , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1))) AS LookupProcessingTime , CASE WHEN (CONVERT(numeric(3,3),SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1))))) = 0 THEN 0 ELSE CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))) / CONVERT(numeric(3,3),SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)))) END AS LookupRowsPerSecond , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1))) AS LookupBytesUsed ,CASE WHEN (CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))))= 0 THEN 0 ELSE CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)))) / CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))) END AS LookupBytesPerRow FROM [catalog].[operation_messages] WHERE message_source_type = @MessageSourceType AND MESSAGE LIKE @StartOfIDSearchString GO Note that you have to set some parameter values: @MessageSourceType [int] – represents the message source type value from the following results: Value Description 10 Entry APIs, such as T-SQL and CLR Stored procedures 20 External process used to run package (ISServerExec.exe) 30 Package-level objects 40 Control Flow tasks 50 Control Flow containers 60 Data Flow task 70 Custom execution message Note: Taken from Reza Rad’s (excellent!) helper.MessageSourceType table found here. @StartOfIDString [VarChar(100)] – use this to uniquely identify the message field value you wish to parse. In this case, the string ‘The Lookup processed ‘ identifies all the Lookup Transformation messages I desire to parse. @ProcessingTimeString [VarChar(100)] – this parameter is message-specific. I use this parameter to specifically search the message field value for the beginning of the Lookup Processing Time value. For this execution, I use the string ‘The processing time was ‘. @CacheUsedString [VarChar(100)] – this parameter is also message-specific. I use this parameter to specifically search the message field value for the beginning of the Lookup Cache Used value. It returns the memory used, in bytes. For this execution, I use the string ‘The cache used ‘. The other parameters are built from variations of the parameters listed above. The query parses the values into text. The string values are converted to numeric values for ratio calculations; LookupRowsPerSecond and LookupBytesPerRow. Since ratios involve division, CASE statements check for denominators that equal 0. Here are the results in an SSMS grid: This is not the only way to retrieve this information. And much of the code lends itself to conversion to functions. If there is interest, I will share the functions in an upcoming post. If you want to get started with SSIS with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSIS

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SQL SERVER – An Efficiency Tool to Compare and Synchronize SQL Server Databases

- by Pinal Dave

There is no need to reinvent the wheel if it is already invented and if the wheel is already available at ease, there is no need to wait to grab it. Here is the similar situation. I came across a very interesting situation and I had to look for an efficient tool which can make my life easier and solve my business problem. Here is the scenario. One of the developers had deleted few rows from the very important mapping table of our development server (thankfully, it was not the production server). Though it was a development server, the entire development team had to stop working as the application started to crash on every page. Think about the lost of manpower and efficiency which we started to loose. Pretty much every department had to stop working as our internal development application stopped working. Thankfully, we even take a backup of our development server and we had access to full backup of the entire database at 6 AM morning. We do not take as a frequent backup of development server as production server (naturally!). Even though we had a full backup, the solution was not to restore the database. Think about it, there were plenty of the other operations since the last good full backup and if we restore a full backup, we will pretty much overwrite on the top of the work done by developers since morning. Now, as restoring the full backup was not an option we decided to restore the same database on another server. Once we had restored our database to another server, the challenge was to compare the table from where the database was deleted. The mapping table from where the data were deleted contained over 5000 rows and it was humanly impossible to compare both the tables manually. Finally we decided to use efficiency tool dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server from DevArt. dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server is a powerful, fast and easy to use SQL compare tool, capable of using native SQL Server backups as metadata source. (FYI we Downloaded dbForge Data Compare) Once we discovered the product, we immediately downloaded the product and installed on our development server. After we installed the product, we were greeted with the following screen. We clicked on the New Data Comparision to start our new comparison project. It brought up following screen. Here is the best part of the product, we just had to enter our database connection username and password along with source and destination details and we are done. The entire process is very simple and self intuiting. The best part was that for the source, we can either select database or even backup. This was indeed fantastic feature. Think about this, if you have a very big database, it will take long time to restore on the server. Once it is restored, you will be able to work with it. However, when you are working with dbForge Data Compare it will accept database backup as your source or destination. Once I click on the execute it brought up following screen where it displayed an excellent summary of the data compare. It has dedicated tabs for the what is changing in what table as well had details of the changed data. The best part is that, once we had reviewed the change. We click on the Synchronize button in the menu bar and it brought up following screen. You can see that the screen has very simple straight forward but very powerful features. You can generate a script to synchronize from target to source or even from source to target. Additionally, the database is a very complicated world and there are extensive options to configure various database options on the next screen. We also have the option to either generate script or directly execute the script to target server. I like to play on the safe side and I generated the script for my synchronization and later on after review I deployed the scripts on the server. Well, my team and we were able to get going from our disaster in less than 10 minutes. There were few people in our team were indeed disappointed as they were thinking of going home early that day but in less than 10 minutes they had to get back to work. There are so many other features in dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server, I am already planning to make this product company wide recommended product for Data Compare tool. Hats off to the team who have build this product. Here are few of the features salient features of the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server Perform SQL Server database comparison to detect changes Compare SQL Server backups with live databases Analyze data differences between two databases Synchronize two databases that went out of sync Restore data of a particular table from the backup Generate data comparison reports in Excel and HTML formats Copy look-up data from development database to production Automate routine data synchronization tasks with command-line interface Go Ahead and Download the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server right away. It is always a good idea to get familiar with the important tools before hand instead of learning it under pressure of disaster. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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Lync Server 2010

- by ManojDhobale

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software and its client software, such as Microsoft Lync 2010, enable your users to connect in new ways and to stay connected, regardless of their physical location. Lync 2010 and Lync Server 2010 bring together the different ways that people communicate in a single client interface, are deployed as a unified platform, and are administered through a single management infrastructure. Workload Description IM and presence Instant messaging (IM) and presence help your users find and communicate with one another efficiently and effectively. IM provides an instant messaging platform with conversation history, and supports public IM connectivity with users of public IM networks such as MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo!, and AOL. Presence establishes and displays a user’s personal availability and willingness to communicate through the use of common states such as Available or Busy. This rich presence information enables other users to immediately make effective communication choices. Conferencing Lync Server includes support for IM conferencing, audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing, and application sharing, for both scheduled and impromptu meetings. All these meeting types are supported with a single client. Lync Server also supports dial-in conferencing so that users of public switched telephone network (PSTN) phones can participate in the audio portion of conferences. Conferences can seamlessly change and grow in real time. For example, a single conference can start as just instant messages between a few users, and escalate to an audio conference with desktop sharing and a larger audience instantly, easily, and without interrupting the conversation flow. Enterprise Voice Enterprise Voice is the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offering in Lync Server 2010. It delivers a voice option to enhance or replace traditional private branch exchange (PBX) systems. In addition to the complete telephony capabilities of an IP PBX, Enterprise Voice is integrated with rich presence, IM, collaboration, and meetings. Features such as call answer, hold, resume, transfer, forward and divert are supported directly, while personalized speed dialing keys are replaced by Contacts lists, and automatic intercom is replaced with IM. Enterprise Voice supports high availability through call admission control (CAC), branch office survivability, and extended options for data resiliency. Support for remote users You can provide full Lync Server functionality for users who are currently outside your organization’s firewalls by deploying servers called Edge Servers to provide a connection for these remote users. These remote users can connect to conferences by using a personal computer with Lync 2010 installed, the phone, or a web interface. Deploying Edge Servers also enables you to federate with partner or vendor organizations. A federated relationship enables your users to put federated users on their Contacts lists, exchange presence information and instant messages with these users, and invite them to audio calls, video calls, and conferences. Integration with other products Lync Server integrates with several other products to provide additional benefits to your users and administrators. Meeting tools are integrated into Outlook 2010 to enable organizers to schedule a meeting or start an impromptu conference with a single click and make it just as easy for attendees to join. Presence information is integrated into Outlook 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) provides several integration features. Users can see if they have new voice mail within Lync 2010. They can click a play button in the Outlook message to hear the audio voice mail, or view a transcription of the voice mail in the notification message. Simple deployment To help you plan and deploy your servers and clients, Lync Server provides the Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Planning Tool and the Topology Builder. Lync Server 2010, Planning Tool is a wizard that interactively asks you a series of questions about your organization, the Lync Server features you want to enable, and your capacity planning needs. Then, it creates a recommended deployment topology based on your answers, and produces several forms of output to aid your planning and installation. Topology Builder is an installation component of Lync Server 2010. You use Topology Builder to create, adjust and publish your planned topology. It also validates your topology before you begin server installations. When you install Lync Server on individual servers, the installation program deploys the server as directed in the topology. Simple management After you deploy Lync Server, it offers the following powerful and streamlined management tools: Active Directory for its user information, which eliminates the need for separate user and policy databases. Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Control Panel, a new web-based graphical user interface for administrators. With this web-based UI, Lync Server administrators can manage their systems from anywhere on the corporate network, without needing specialized management software installed on their computers. Lync Server Management Shell command-line management tool, which is based on the Windows PowerShell command-line interface. It provides a rich command set for administration of all aspects of the product, and enables Lync Server administrators to automate repetitive tasks using a familiar tool. While the IM and presence features are automatically installed in every Lync Server deployment, you can choose whether to deploy conferencing, Enterprise Voice, and remote user access, to tailor your deployment to your organization’s needs.

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Help Prevent Carpal Tunnel Problems with Workrave

- by Matthew Guay

Whether for work or leisure, many of us spend entirely too much time on the computer everyday. This puts us at risk of having or aggravating Carpal Tunnel problems, but thanks to Workrave you can help to divert these problems. Workrave helps Carpal Tunnel problems by reminding you to get away from your computer periodically. Breaking up your computer time with movement can help alleviate many computer and office related health problems. Workrave helps by reminding you to take short pauses after several minutes of computer use, and longer breaks after continued use. You can also use it to keep from using the computer for too much You time in a day. Since you can change the settings to suit you, this can be a great way to make sure you’re getting the breaks you need. Install Workrave on Windows If you’re using Workrave on Windows, download (link below) and install it with the default settings. One installation setting you may wish to change is the startup. By default Workrave will run automatically when you start your computer; if you don’t want this, you can simply uncheck the box and proceed with the installation. Once setup is finished, you can run Workrave directly from the installer. Or you can open it from your start menu by entering “workrave” in the search box. Install Workrave in Ubuntu If you wish to use it in Ubuntu, you can install it directly from the Ubuntu Software Center. Click the Applications menu, and select Ubuntu Software Center. Enter “workrave” into the search box in the top right corner of the Software Center, and it will automatically find it. Click the arrow to proceed to Workrave’s page. This will give you information about Workrave; simply click Install to install Workrave on your system. Enter your password when prompted. Workrave will automatically download and install. When finished, you can find Workrave in your Applications menu under Universal Access. Using Workrave Workrave by default shows a small counter on your desktop, showing the length of time until your next Micro break (30 second break), Rest break (10 minute break), and max amount of computer usage for the day. When it’s time for a micro break, Workrave will popup a reminder on your desktop. If you continue working, it will disappear at the end of the timer. If you stop, it will start a micro-break which will freeze most on-screen activities until the timer is over. You can click Skip or Postpone if you do not want to take a break right then. After an hour of work, Workrave will give you a 10 minute rest break. During this it will show you some exercises that can help eliminate eyestrain, muscle tension, and other problems from prolonged computer usage. You can click through the exercises, or can skip or postpone the break if you wish. Preferences You can change your Workrave preferences by right-clicking on its icon in your system tray and selecting Preferences. Here you can customize the time between your breaks, and the length of your breaks. You can also change your daily computer usage limit, and can even turn off the postpone and skip buttons on notifications if you want to make sure you follow Workrave and take your rests! From the context menu, you can also choose Statistics. This gives you an overview of how many breaks, prompts, and more were shown on a given day. It also shows a total Overdue time, which is the total length of the breaks you skipped or postponed. You can view your Workrave history as well by simply selecting a date on the calendar. Additionally, the Activity tab in the Statics pane shows more info about your computer usage, including total mouse movement, mouse button clicks, and keystrokes. Conclusion Whether you’re suffering with Carpal Tunnel or trying to prevent it, Workrave is a great solution to help remind you to get away from your computer periodically and rest. Of course, since you can simply postpone or skip the prompts, you’ve still got to make an effort to help your own health. But it does give you a great way to remind yourself to get away from the computer, and especially for geeks, this may be something that we really need! Download Workrave Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout in XPAccess Your MySQL Server Remotely Over SSHHow to Secure Gaim Instant Messenger traffic at Work with SecureCRT and SSHConnect to VMware Server Console Over SSHDisclaimers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader

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Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

- by james.bayer

I got a question today about whether WebLogic Server has any tools to delete all messages from a JMS Queue. It just so happens that the WLS Console has this capability already. It’s available on the screen after the “Show Messages” button is clicked on a destination’s Monitoring tab as seen in the screen shot below. The console is great for something ad-hoc, but what if I want to automate this? Well it just so happens that the console is just a weblogic application layered on top of the JMX Management interface. If you look at the MBean Reference, you’ll find a JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean that includes the operation deleteMessages that takes a JMS Message Selector as an argument. If you pass an empty string, that is essentially a wild card that matches all messages. Coding a stand-alone JMX client for this is kind of lame, so let’s do something more suitable to scripting. In addition to the console, WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) based on Jython is another way to browse and invoke MBeans, so an equivalent interactive shell session to delete messages from a destination would looks like this: D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain>java weblogic.WLST Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ... Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell Type help() for help on available commands wls:/offline> connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'hotspot_domain'. Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead. wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig> serverRuntime() Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root. For more help, use help(serverRuntime) wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime> cd('JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0') wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> ls() dr-- DurableSubscribers -r-- BytesCurrentCount 0 -r-- BytesHighCount 174620 -r-- BytesPendingCount 0 -r-- BytesReceivedCount 253548 -r-- BytesThresholdTime 0 -r-- ConsumersCurrentCount 0 -r-- ConsumersHighCount 0 -r-- ConsumersTotalCount 0 -r-- ConsumptionPaused false -r-- ConsumptionPausedState Consumption-Enabled -r-- DestinationInfo javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport(compositeType=javax.management.openmbean.CompositeType(name=DestinationInfo,items=((itemName=ApplicationName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ModuleName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=SerializedDestination,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ServerName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=Topic,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=VersionNumber,itemType=javax.management.op ule-0!Queue-0, Queue=true, SerializedDestination=rO0ABXNyACN3ZWJsb2dpYy5qbXMuY29tbW9uLkRlc3RpbmF0aW9uSW1wbFSmyJ1qZfv8DAAAeHB3kLZBABZTeXN0ZW1Nb2R1bGUtMCFRdWV1ZS0wAAtKTVNTZXJ2ZXItMAAOU3lzdGVtTW9kdWxlLTABAANBbGwCAlb6IS6T5qL/AAAACgEAC0FkbWluU2VydmVyAC2EGgJW+iEuk+ai/wAAAAsBAAtBZG1pblNlcnZlcgAthBoAAQAQX1dMU19BZG1pblNlcnZlcng=, ServerName=JMSServer-0, Topic=false, VersionNumber=1}) -r-- DestinationType Queue -r-- DurableSubscribers null -r-- InsertionPaused false -r-- InsertionPausedState Insertion-Enabled -r-- MessagesCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesDeletedCurrentCount 3 -r-- MessagesHighCount 2 -r-- MessagesMovedCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesPendingCount 0 -r-- MessagesReceivedCount 3 -r-- MessagesThresholdTime 0 -r-- Name SystemModule-0!Queue-0 -r-- Paused false -r-- ProductionPaused false -r-- ProductionPausedState Production-Enabled -r-- State advertised_in_cluster_jndi -r-- Type JMSDestinationRuntime -r-x closeCursor Void : String(cursorHandle) -r-x deleteMessages Integer : String(selector) -r-x getCursorEndPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorSize Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorStartPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getItems javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),Integer(count) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),Long(messageHandle) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),String(messageID) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(messageID) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state) -r-x getNext javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x getPrevious javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x importMessages Void : javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[],Boolean(replaceOnly) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(java.lang.String),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData,Integer(java.lang.Integer) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(selector),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData -r-x pause Void : -r-x pauseConsumption Void : -r-x pauseInsertion Void : -r-x pauseProduction Void : -r-x preDeregister Void : -r-x resume Void : -r-x resumeConsumption Void : -r-x resumeInsertion Void : -r-x resumeProduction Void : -r-x sort Long : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),String[](fields),Boolean[](ascending) wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> cmo.deleteMessages('') 2 where the domain name is “hotspot_domain”, the JMS Server name is “JMSServer-0”, the Queue name is “Queue-0” and the System Module is named “SystemModule-0”. To invoke the operation, I use the “cmo” object, which is the “Current Management Object” that represents the currently navigated to MBean. The 2 indicates that two messages were deleted. Combining this WLST code with a recent post by my colleague Steve that shows you how to use an encrypted file to store the authentication credentials, you could easily turn this into a secure automated script. If you need help with that step, a long while back I blogged about some WLST basics. Happy scripting.

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Answers to “What source control system do you use?” (and some winners)

- by jamiet

About a month ago I posed a question here on my blog SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff) in which I asked SQL Server developers to answer the following questions: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? I had some really great responses (I highly recommend going and reading them). I promised that the five best, most thought-provoking, responses (as determined by me) would win one of five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect; here are the five that I chose (note that if you responded but did not leave a means of getting in touch then you weren’t considered for one of the prizes – sorry): In general, I don't think the management overhead and licensing cost associated with TFS is worthwhile if all you're doing is using source control. To get value from TFS, at a minimum you need to be using team build, and possibly other stuff as well, such as the sharepoint integration. If that's all you need, then svn with Tortoise would be my first choice. If you want to add build automation later, you can do this with cruisecontrol (is it still called that?), JetBrains, etc. For a long time I thought that Redgate's claims about "bridging the SSMS-VS divide" were a load of hot air, since in my experience anyone who knew what they were doing was using Visual Studio, in particular SSDT and its predecessors. However, on a recent client I was putting in source control for the first time, and I discovered that the "divide" really does exist. That client has ended up using svn with Redgate SQL Source Control, with no build automation, but with scope to add it in the future. Gavin Campbell I think putting the DB under source control is a great idea. I have issues with the earlier versions of SQL Source Control in that it provides little help in versioning the DB. I think the latest version merges SQL Compare and SQL Source Control together. Which is how it should have been all along. Sure I have the DB scripts in SVN, but I can't automate DB builds and changes without more tools. Frankly I'm surprised databases don't have some sort of versioning built into them. Nick Portelli Source control has been immensely useful and saved me from a lot of rework on more than one occasion. I have learned that you have to be extremely careful checking in data. Our system is internal only so during the system production run once a week, if there is a problem that I can fix easily(for example, a control table points to a file in the wrong environment), I'll do it directly in production so the run can continue as soon as possible since we have a specified time window. We do full test runs to minimize this but it has come up once or twice. We use Red-Gate source control to "push" from the test environment to the production environment. There have been a couple of occasions where the test environment with the wrong setting was pushed back over the production environment because the change was made only in production. Gotta keep an eye on that. Alan Dykes Goodness is it manual. And can be extremely painful at times. Not only are we running thin, we are constrained on the tools we can get ($$ must mean free). Certainly no excuse, and a great opportunity to improve my skills by learning new things. But... Getting buy in a on a proven process or methodology is hard, takes time, and diverts us from development. If SQL Source Control is easy to use and proven oh boy could you get some serious fans around here! Seriously though, as the "accidental dba" of this shop any new ideas / easy to implement tools can make a world of difference in productivity and most importantly accuracy. Manual = bad. :) John Hennesey (who left his email address) The one thing I would love to know more about is the unique challenges of working with databases as source code - you can store scripts, but are they written as deployment scripts with all the logic about how to apply them to an existing DB? Where is that baseline DB? Where's the data? How does a team share the data and the code? It's a real challenge. Merrill Aldrich Congratulations to the five of you. Red Gate will be in touch with you soon about your free licenses. Thank you to all those that responded. And again, go and check out all the responses – those above are only small proportion from what is a very interesting comment thread. @Jamiet

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Parner Webcast - Innovations in Products Program

- by Richard Lefebvre

We are pleased to invite you to join the Innovations in Products –webcast. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Innovations in Products will be presented on the 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Innovations in Products is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Application portfolio – for your and your customer’s benefit Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Note: At the latter part of this email you have also 17 links into the recent Applications Products presentations and 6 links into the Public Sector Value Proposition presentations that were presented in Innovations in Industries -program. Product breakout sessions: Topics Speaker To Register Fusion Applications Technology and Extensibility: A next-generation platform that adapts to client needs. Matthew Johnson, Sr. Director, SCM Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion Applications - Transforming your Back-Office Accounting Function: Changing how people work in back office functions to drive value add Liam Nolan, Director, ERP Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM & Talent Overview & Extensibility: A more in-depth look into a personalized HCM solution Synco Jonkeren, Vice-President HCM Product Development & Management, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM Compensation Planning: Compensate To Compete Rosie Warner, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Enterprise PLM for the Product Value Chain: Oracle Enterprise PLM offers Industry specific solutions that cover the Product Value Chain Ulf Köster, Sales Development Leader Enterprise PLM, Oracle Western Europe CLICK HERE Oracle's Asset Management and Maintenance Solution: What you need to know to successfully implement Oracle Asset Management solutions within Oracle Installed Base Philip Carey, Asset Management and Maintenance Solution Specialist CLICK HERE For more details please visit Innovations in Products and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery Format Innovations in Products –program is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months. The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: July 2nd 2012 October 1st 2012 January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. Duration Maximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Recent Innovations in Products presentations Applications Products presented on April the 2nd, 2012 Speaker To Register Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy James Penfold , Senior Director, Applications Product Development and Product Management CLICK HERE Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review Jaime Losantos Viñolas, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution Vikram K Singla, Business Development Director, Supply Chain Management Applications, UK CLICK HERE Oracle Transportation Management Dominic Regan, Senior Director Oracle Transportation Management EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management Lionel Albert, Senior Director Value Chain Planning, EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences Maria Ramirez , CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview Nicholas Cox , EMEA Sales Development Director - Enterprise Performance Management CLICK HERE Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 Daniela Lazar , Senior EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register CRM / ATG: Best-in-Class CRM & Commerce Maria Ramirez , Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / Automate Business Rules for Maximum Efficiency with OPA (Oracle Policy Automation) Marco Nilo, Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / InQuira Toby Baker, Principal Sales Consultant, CRM Product Specialist Team CLICK HERE EPM / Business Intelligence Foundation Suite – Sales and Product Updates Liviu Nitescu, Senior BI Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM / Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.1 - Sales & Product Updates Andreea Voinea, EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / JDE EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management Overview Mirela Andreea Nasta , ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / Spotlights on iExpenses Elena Nita ,ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE MDM / Master Data Management Martin Boyd , Senior Director Product Strategy CLICK HERE Product break through session Fusion Applications Human Capital Management Rosie Warner , Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Recent Innovations in Industries Value Proposition presentations January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register Process Modernisation Iemke Idsingh Public Sector Solutions Director CLICK HERE Shared Services Ann Smith Business Development Director, Shared Services CLICK HERE Strengthening Financial Discipline Whilst Delivering Cashable Savings Philippa Headley UK Sales Development Director Public Sector - EPM Solutions CLICK HERE Social Welfare Industry Solutions Christian Wernberg-Tougaard Industry Director - Social Welfare CLICK HERE Police Industry Solutions Jeff Penrose Solution Sales Director CLICK HERE Tax and Revenue Management Industry Solutions Andre van der Post Global Director - Tax Solutions and Strategy CLICK HERE

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Exadata Parameter _AUTO_MANAGE_EXADATA_DISKS

- by AVargas

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE HE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99" LatentStyleCount="267" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/ UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/ /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Exadata auto disk management is controlled by the parameter _AUTO_MANAGE_EXADATA_DISKS. The default value for this parameter is TRUE.When _AUTO_MANAGE_EXADATA_DISKS is enabled, Exadata automate the following disk operations:If a griddisk becomes unavailable/available, ASM will OFFLINE/ONLINE it.If a physicaldisk fails or its status change to predictive failure, for all griddisks built on it ASM will DROP FORCE the failed ones and DROP the ones with predictive failures.If a flashdisk performance degrades, if there are griddisks built on it, they will be DROPPED FORCE in ASM.If a physicaldisk is replaced, the celldisk and griddisks will be recreated and the griddisks will be automatically ADDED in ASM, if they were automatically dropped by ASM. If you manually drop the disks, that will not happen.If a NORMAL, ONLINE griddisk is manually dropped, FORCE option should not be used, otherwise the disk will be automatically added back in ASM. If a gridisk is inactivated, ASM will automatically OFFLINE it.If a gridisk is activated, ASM will automatically ONLINED it. There are some error conditions that may require to temporarily disable _AUTO_MANAGE_EXADATA_DISKS.Details on MOS 1408865.1 - Exadata Auto Disk Management Add disk failing and ASM Rebalance interrupted with error ORA-15074. Immediately after taking care of the problem _AUTO_MANAGE_EXADATA_DISKS should be set back to its default value of TRUE. Full details on Auto disk management feature in Exadata (Doc ID 1484274.1)

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Lessons learned from Word 2007 automation with c# 2008

- by robertphyatt

My organization has an ongoing project to take documents produced for internal regulations and such, change some of the formatting and then export it as PDF. Our requirements were that only one person would be doing this, but it has been painfully tedious and sometimes error-prone to do by hand. Enter the fearless developer to automate the situation! Since I am one of those guys that just plain does not like VB, I wanted to do the automation in the ever-so-much-more-familiar C#. While Microsoft had made a dll that makes such a task easier, documentation on MSDN is pretty lame and most of the forumns and posts on the internet had little to do with my task. So, I feel like I can give back to the community and make a post here of the things I have learned so far. I hope this is helpful to whoever stumbles upon it. Steps to do this: 1) First of all, make some sort of a project and use some sort of a means to get the filename of the word document you are trying to open. I got the filename the user wanted with an openFileDialog tied to a button that I labeled 'Browse': private void btnBrowse_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { try { DialogResult myResult = openFileDialog1.ShowDialog(); if (myResult.Equals(DialogResult.OK)) { if (openFileDialog1.SafeFileName.EndsWith(".doc")) { txtFileName.Text = openFileDialog1.SafeFileName; paramSourceDocPath = openFileDialog1.FileName; paramExportFilePath = openFileDialog1.FileName.Replace(".doc", ".pdf"); } else { txtFileName.Text = "only something that end with .doc, please"; } } } catch (Exception err) { lblError.Text = err.Message; } } 2) Add in "using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;" after setting your project to reference Microsoft.Office.Core and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word so that you don't have to add "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word" to the front of everything. 3) Now you are ready to play. You will need to have a copy of word open and a copy of your word document that you want to modify open to be able to make the changes that are needed. The word interop dll likes using ref on all the parameters passed in, and likes to have them as objects. If you don't want to specify the parameter, you have to give it a "Type.Missing". I suggest creating some objects that you reuse all over the place to maintain sanity. object paramMissing = Type.Missing; ApplicationClass wordApplication = new ApplicationClass(); Document wordDocument = wordApplication.Documents.Open( ref paramSourceDocPath, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing); 4) There are many ways to modify the text of the inside of the word document. One of the ways that was most effective for me was to break it down by paragraph and then do things on each paragraph by what style the particular paragraph had. foreach (Paragraph thisParagraph in wordDocument.Content.Paragraphs) { string strStyleName = ((Style)thisParagraph.get_Style()).NameLocal; string strText = thisParagraph.Range.Text; //Do whatever you need to do } 5) Sometimes you want to insert a new line character somewhere in the text or insert text into the document, etc. There are a few ways you can do this: you can either modify the text of a paragraph by doing something like this ('\r' makes a new paragraph, '\v' will make a newline without making a new paragraph. If you remove a '\r' from the text, it will eliminate the paragraph you removed it from): thisParagraph.Range.Text = "A\vNew Paragraph!\r" + thisParagraph.Range.Text; OR you could select where you want to insert it and have it act like you were typing in Word like any normal user (note: if you do not collapse the range first, you will overwrite the thing you got the range from) object oCollapseDirectionEnd = WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd; object oCollapseDirectionStart = WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseStart; Range rangeInsertAtBeginning = thisParagraph.Range; Range rangeInsertAtEnd = thisParagraph.Range; rangeInsertAtBeginning.Collapse(ref oCollapseDirectionStart); rangeInsertAtEnd.Collapse(ref oCollapseDirectionEnd); rangeInsertAtBeginning.Select(); wordApplication.Selection.TypeText("Blah Blah Blah"); rangeInsertAtEnd.Select(); wordApplication.Selection.TypeParagraph(); 6) If you want to make text columns, like a newspaper or newsletter, you have to modify the page layout of the document or a section of the document to make it happen. In my case, I only wanted a particular section to have that, and I wanted to have a black line before and after the newspaper-like text columns. First you need to do a section break on either side of what you wanted, then you take the section and modify the page layout. Then you can modify the borders of the section (or another object in the word document). I also show here how to modify the alignment of a paragraph. object oSectionBreak = WdBreakType.wdSectionBreakContinuous; //These ranges were set while I was going through the paragraphs of my document, like I was showing earlier rangeHeaderStart.InsertBreak(ref oSectionBreak); rangeHeaderEnd.InsertBreak(ref oSectionBreak); //change the alignment to justify object oRangeHeaderStart = rangeStartJustifiedAlignment.Start; object oRangeHeaderEnd = rangeHeaderEnd.End; Range rangeHeader = wordDocument.Range(ref oRangeHeaderStart, ref oRangeHeaderEnd); rangeHeader.Paragraphs.Alignment = WdParagraphAlignment.wdAlignParagraphJustify; //find the section break and make it into triple text columns foreach (Section mySection in wordDocument.Sections) { if (mySection.Range.Start == rangeHeaderStart.Start) { mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns.Add(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing); mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns.Add(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing); //I didn't like the default spacing and column widths. This is how I adjusted them. foreach (TextColumn txtc in mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns) { try { txtc.SpaceAfter = 151.6f; txtc.Width = 7; } catch (Exception) { txtc.Width = 151.6f; } } } } That is all I have time for today! I hope this was helpful to someone!

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Imaging: Paper Paper Everywhere, but None Should be in Sight

- by Kellsey Ruppel

Author: Vikrant Korde, Technical Architect, Aurionpro's Oracle Implementation Services team My wedding photos are stored in several empty shoeboxes. Yes...I got married before digital photography was mainstream...which means I'm old. But my parents are really old. They have shoeboxes filled with vacation photos on slides (I doubt many of you have even seen a home slide projector...and I hope you never do!). Neither me nor my parents should have shoeboxes filled with any form of photographs whatsoever. They should obviously live in the digital world...with no physical versions in sight (other than a few framed on our walls). Businesses grapple with similar challenges. But instead of shoeboxes, they have file cabinets and warehouses jam packed with paper invoices, legal documents, human resource files, material safety data sheets, incident reports, and the list goes on and on. In fact, regulatory and compliance rules govern many industries, requiring that this paperwork is available for any number of years. It's a real challenge...especially trying to find archived documents quickly and many times with no backup. Which brings us to a set of technologies called Image Process Management (or simply Imaging or Image Processing) that are transforming these antiquated, paper-based processes. Oracle's WebCenter Content Imaging solution is a combination of their WebCenter suite, which offers a robust set of content and document management features, and their Business Process Management (BPM) suite, which helps to automate business processes through the definition of workflows and business rules. Overall, the solution provides an enterprise-class platform for end-to-end management of document images within transactional business processes. It's a solution that provides all of the capabilities needed - from document capture and recognition, to imaging and workflow - to effectively transform your ‘shoeboxes’ of files into digitally managed assets that comply with strict industry regulations. The terminology can be quite overwhelming if you're new to the space, so we've provided a summary of the primary components of the solution below, along with a short description of the two paths that can be executed to load images of scanned documents into Oracle's WebCenter suite. WebCenter Imaging (WCI): the electronic document repository that provides security, annotations, and search capabilities, and is the primary user interface for managing work items in the imaging solution SOA & BPM Suites (workflow): provide business process management capabilities, including human tasks, workflow management, service integration, and all other standard SOA features. It's interesting to note that there a number of 'jumpstart' processes available to help accelerate the integration of business applications, such as the accounts payable invoice processing solution for E-Business Suite that facilitates the processing of large volumes of invoices WebCenter Enterprise Capture (WEC): expedites the capture process of paper documents to digital images, offering high volume scanning and importing from email, and allows for flexible indexing options WebCenter Forms Recognition (WFR): automatically recognizes, categorizes, and extracts information from paper documents with greatly reduced human intervention WebCenter Content: the backend content server that provides versioning, security, and content storage There are two paths that can be executed to send data from WebCenter Capture to WebCenter Imaging, both of which are described below: 1. Direct Flow - This is the simplest and quickest way to push an image scanned from WebCenter Enterprise Capture (WEC) to WebCenter Imaging (WCI), using the bare minimum metadata. The WEC activities are defined below: The paper document is scanned (or imported from email). The scanned image is indexed using a predefined indexing profile. The image is committed directly into the process flow 2. WFR (WebCenter Forms Recognition) Flow - This is the more complex process, during which data is extracted from the image using a series of operations including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Classification, Extraction, and Export. This process creates three files (Tiff, XML, and TXT), which are fed to the WCI Input Agent (the high speed import/filing module). The WCI Input Agent directory is a standard ingestion method for adding content to WebCenter Imaging, the process for doing so is described below: WEC commits the batch using the respective commit profile. A TIFF file is created, passing data through the file name by including values separated by "_" (underscores). WFR completes OCR, classification, extraction, export, and pulls the data from the image. In addition to the TIFF file, which contains the document image, an XML file containing the extracted data, and a TXT file containing the metadata that will be filled in WCI, are also created. All three files are exported to WCI's Input agent directory. Based on previously defined "input masks", the WCI Input Agent will pick up the seeding file (often the TXT file). Finally, the TIFF file is pushed in UCM and a unique web-viewable URL is created. Based on the mapping data read from the TXT file, a new record is created in the WCI application. Although these processes may seem complex, each Oracle component works seamlessly together to achieve a high performing and scalable platform. The solution has been field tested at some of the largest enterprises in the world and has transformed millions and millions of paper-based documents to more easily manageable digital assets. For more information on how an Imaging solution can help your business, please contact [email protected] (for U.S. West inquiries) or [email protected] (for U.S. East inquiries). About the Author: Vikrant is a Technical Architect in Aurionpro's Oracle Implementation Services team, where he delivers WebCenter-based Content and Imaging solutions to Fortune 1000 clients. With more than twelve years of experience designing, developing, and implementing Java-based software solutions, Vikrant was one of the founding members of Aurionpro's WebCenter-based offshore delivery team. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Package Manager Console For More Than Managing Packages

- by Steve Michelotti

Like most developers, I prefer to not have to pick up the mouse if I don’t have to. I use the Executor launcher for almost everything so it’s extremely rare for me to ever click the “Start” button in Windows. I also use shortcuts keys when I can so I don’t have to pick up the mouse. By now most people know that the Package Manager Console that comes with NuGet is PowerShell embedded inside of Visual Studio. It is based on its PowerConsole predecessor which was the first (that I’m aware of) to embed PowerShell inside of Visual Studio and give access to the Visual Studio automation DTE object. It does this through an inherent $dte variable that is automatically available and ready for use. This variable is also available inside of the NuGet Package Manager console. Adding a new class file to a Visual Studio project is one of those mundane tasks that should be easier. First I have to pick up the mouse. Then I have to right-click where I want it file to go and select “Add –> New Item…” or “Add –> Class…” If you know the Ctrl+Shift+A shortcut, then you can avoid the mouse for adding a new item but you have to manually assign a shortcut for adding a new class. At this point it pops up a dialog just so I can enter the name of the class I want. Since this is one of the most common tasks developers do, I figure there has to be an easier way and a way that avoids picking up the mouse and popping up dialogs. This is where your embedded PowerShell prompt in Visual Studio comes in. The first thing you should do is to assign a keyboard shortcut so that you can get a PowerShell prompt (i.e., the Package Manager console) quickly without ever picking up the mouse. I assign “Ctrl+P, Ctrl+M” because “P + M” stands for “Package Manager” so it is easy to remember: At this point I can type this command to add a new class: PM> $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", "Foo.cs") which will result in the class being added: At this point I’ve satisfied my original goal of not having to pick up a mouse and not having the “Add New Item” dialog pop up. However, having to remember that $dte method call is not very user-friendly at all. The best thing to do is to make this a re-usable function that always loads when Visual Studio starts up. There is a $profile variable that you can use to figure out where that location is for your machine: PM> $profile C:\Users\steve.michelotti\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\NuGet_profile.ps1 If the NuGet_profile.ps1 file does not already exist, you can just create it yourself and place it in the directory. Now you can put a function inside like this: 1: function addClass($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 8: } Since it’s in the NuGet_profile.ps1 file, this function will automatically always be available for me after starting Visual Studio. Now I can simply do this: PM> addClass Foo At this point, we have a *very* nice developer experience. All I did to add a new class was: “Ctrl-P, Ctrl-M”, then “addClass Foo”. No mouse, no pop up dialogs, no complex commands to remember. In fact, PowerShell gives you auto-completion as well. If I type “addc” followed by [TAB], then intellisense pops up: You can see my custom function appear in intellisense above. Now I can type the next letter “c” and [TAB] to auto-complete the command. And if that’s still too many key strokes for you, then you can create your own PowerShell custom alias for your function like this: PM> Set-Alias addc addClass PM> addc Foo While all this is very useful, I did run into some issues which prompted me to make even further customization. This command will add the new class file to the current active directory. Depending on your context, this may not be what you want. For example, by convention all view model objects go in the “Models” folder in an MVC project. So if the current document is in the Controllers folder, it will add your class to that folder which is not what you want. You want it to always add it to the “Models” folder if you are adding a new model in an MVC project. For this situation, I added a new function called “addModel” which looks like this: 1: function addModel($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $modelsDir = $dte.ActiveSolutionProjects[0].UniqueName.Replace(".csproj", "") + "\Models" 8: $dte.Windows.Item([EnvDTE.Constants]::vsWindowKindSolutionExplorer).Activate() 9: $dte.ActiveWindow.Object.GetItem($modelsDir).Select([EnvDTE.vsUISelectionType]::vsUISelectionTypeSelect) 10: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 11: } First I figure out the path to the Models directory on line #7. Then I activate the Solution Explorer window on line #8. Then I make sure the Models directory is selected so that my context is correct when I add the new class and it will be added to the Models directory as desired. These are just a couple of examples for things you can do with the PowerShell prompt that you have available in the Package Manager console. As developers we spend so much time in Visual Studio, why would you not customize it so that you can work in whatever way you want to work?! The next time you’re not happy about the way Visual Studio makes you do a particular task – automate it! The sky is the limit.

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Limiting Audit Exposure and Managing Risk – Q&A and Follow-Up Conversation

- by Tanu Sood

Thanks to all who attended the live ISACA webcast on Limiting Audit Exposure and Managing Risk with Metrics-Driven Identity Analytics. We were really fortunate to have Don Sparks from ISACA moderate the webcast featuring Stuart Lincoln, Vice President, IT P&L Client Services, BNP Paribas, North America and Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics. Stuart’s insights given the team’s role in providing IT for P&L Client Services and his tremendous experience in identity management and establishing sustainable compliance programs were true value-add at yesterday’s webcast. And if you are a healthcare organization looking to solve your compliance and security challenges, we recommend you join us for a live webcast on Tuesday, November 29 at 10 am PT. The webcast will feature experts from Kaiser Permanente, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Oracle and the focus of the discussion will be around the compliance challenges a healthcare organization faces and best practices for tackling those. Here are the details: Healthcare IT News Webcast: Managing Risk and Enforcing Compliance in Healthcare with Identity Analytics Tuesday, November 29, 201110:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET Register Today The ISACA webcast replay is now available on-demand and the slides are also available for download. Since we didn’t have time to address all the questions we received during the live Q&A portion of the webcast, we have captured responses to the remaining questions here. Please continue to provide us your feedback and insights from your experience in deploying identity compliance solutions. Q. Can you please clarify the mechanism utilized to populate the Identity Warehouse from each individual application's access management function / files? A. Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) supports direct imports from applications. Data collection is based on Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) that eliminates the need to write connectors to different applications. Oracle Identity Analytics’ import engine supports complex entitlement feeds saved as either text files or XML. The imports can be scheduled on a periodic basis or triggered as needed. If the applications are synchronized with a user provisioning solution like Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics has a seamless integration to pull in data from Oracle Identity Manager. Q. Can you provide a short summary of the new features in your latest release of Oracle Identity Analytics? A. Oracle recently announced availability of enhanced Oracle Identity Analytics. This release focused on easing the certification process by offering risk analytics driven certification, advanced certification screens, business centric views and significant improvement in performance including 3X faster data imports, 3X faster certification campaign generation and advanced auto-certification features, that will allow organizations to improve user productivity by up to 80%. Closed-loop risk feedback and IT policy monitoring with Oracle Identity Manager, a leading user provisioning solution, allows for more accurate certification reviews. And, OIA's improved performance enables customers to scale compliance initiatives supporting millions of user entitlements across thousands of applications, whether on premise or in the cloud, without compromising speed or integrity. Q. Will ISACA grant a CPE credit for attending this ISACA-sponsored webinar today? A. From ISACA: Hello and thank you for your interest in the 2011 ISACA Webinar Program! Unfortunately, there are no CPEs offered for this program, archived or live. We will be looking into the feasibility of offering them in the future. Q. Would you be able to use this to help manage licenses for software? That is to say - could it track software that is not used by a user, thus eliminating the software license? A. OIA’s integration with Oracle Identity Manager, a leading user provisioning solution, allows organizations to detect ghost accounts or unused accounts via account reconciliation. Based on company’s policies, this could trigger an automated workflow for account deletion or asking for further investigation. Closed-loop feedback between the two solutions would then allow visibility into the complete audit trail of when the account was detected, the action taken, by whom, when and the current status. Q. We have quarterly attestations and .xls mechanisms are not working. Once the identity data is correlated in Identity Analytics, do you then automate access certification? A. OIA’s identity warehouse analyzes and correlates identity data across various resources that allows OIA to determine a user’s risk profile, who the access review request should go to, along with all the relevant access details of the user. The access certification manager gets notification on what to review, when and the relevant data is presented in a business friendly screen. Based on the result of the access certification process, actions are triggered and results recorded and archived. Access review managers have visual risk indicators that also allow them to prioritize access certification tasks and efforts. Q. How does Oracle Identity Analytics work with Cloud Security? A. For enterprises looking to build their own cloud(s), Oracle offers a set of security services that cloud developers can leverage including Oracle Identity Analytics. For enterprises looking to manage their compliance requirements but without hosting those in-house and instead having a hosting provider offer managed Identity Management services to the organizations, Oracle Identity Analytics can be leveraged much the same way as you’d in an on-premise (within the enterprise) environment. In fact, organizations today are leveraging Oracle Identity Analytics to manage identity compliance in both these ways. Q. Would you recommend this as a cost effective solution for a smaller organization with @ 2,500 users? A. The key return-on-investment (ROI) on Oracle Identity Analytics is derived from automating compliance processes thereby eliminating administrative overhead, minimizing errors, maintaining cost- and time-effective sustainable compliance processes and minimizing audit exposures and penalties. Of course, there are other tangible benefits that are derived from an Oracle Identity Analytics implementation as outlined in the webcast. For a quantitative analysis of your requirements and potential ROI calculation, we recommend you refer to the Forrester Study on Total Economic Impact of Oracle Identity Analytics. For an in-person discussion, please email Richard Caldwell.

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Extending Database-as-a-Service to Provision Databases with Application Data

- by Nilesh A

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Database as a Service (DBaaS) empowers Self Service/SSA Users to rapidly spawn databases on demand in cloud. The configuration and structure of provisioned databases depends on respective service template selected by Self Service user while requesting for database. In EM12c, the DBaaS Self Service/SSA Administrator has the option of hosting various service templates in service catalog and based on underlying DBCA templates.Many times provisioned databases require production scale data either for UAT, testing or development purpose and managing DBCA templates with data can be unwieldy. So, we need to populate the database using post deployment script option and without any additional work for the SSA Users. The SSA Administrator can automate this task in few easy steps. For details on how to setup DBaaS Self Service Portal refer to the DBaaS CookbookIn this article, I will list steps required to enable EM 12c DBaaS to provision databases with application data in two distinct ways using: 1) Data pump 2) Transportable tablespaces (TTS). The steps listed below are just examples of how to extend EM 12c DBaaS and you can even have your own method plugged in part of post deployment script option. Using Data Pump to populate databases These are the steps to be followed to implement extending DBaaS using Data Pump methodolgy: Production DBA should run data pump export on the production database and make the dump file available to all the servers participating in the database zone [sample shown in Fig.1] -- Full exportexpdp FULL=y DUMPFILE=data_pump_dir:dpfull1%U.dmp, data_pump_dir:dpfull2%U.dmp PARALLEL=4 LOGFILE=data_pump_dir:dpexpfull.log JOB_NAME=dpexpfull Figure-1: Full export of database using data pump Create a post deployment SQL script [sample shown in Fig. 2] and this script can either be uploaded into the software library by SSA Administrator or made available on a shared location accessible from servers where databases are likely to be provisioned Normal 0 -- Full importdeclare h1 NUMBER;begin-- Creating the directory object where source database dump is backed up. execute immediate 'create directory DEST_LOC as''/scratch/nagrawal/OracleHomes/oradata/INITCHNG/datafile''';-- Running import h1 := dbms_datapump.open (operation => 'IMPORT', job_mode => 'FULL', job_name => 'DB_IMPORT10'); dbms_datapump.set_parallel(handle => h1, degree => 1); dbms_datapump.add_file(handle => h1, filename => 'IMP_GRIDDB_FULL.LOG', directory => 'DATA_PUMP_DIR', filetype => 3); dbms_datapump.add_file(handle => h1, filename => 'EXP_GRIDDB_FULL_%U.DMP', directory => 'DEST_LOC', filetype => 1); dbms_datapump.start_job(handle => h1); dbms_datapump.detach(handle => h1);end;/ Figure-2: Importing using data pump pl/sql procedures Using DBCA, create a template for the production database – include all the init.ora parameters, tablespaces, datafiles & their sizes SSA Administrator should customize “Create Database Deployment Procedure” and provide DBCA template created in the previous step. In “Additional Configuration Options” step of Customize “Create Database Deployment Procedure” flow, provide the name of the SQL script in the Custom Script section and lock the input (shown in Fig. 3). Continue saving the deployment procedure. Figure-3: Using Custom script option for calling Import SQL Now, an SSA user can login to Self Service Portal and use the flow to provision a database that will also populate the data using the post deployment step. Using Transportable tablespaces to populate databases Copy of all user/application tablespaces will enable this method of populating databases. These are the required steps to extend DBaaS using transportable tablespaces: Production DBA needs to create a backup of tablespaces. Datafiles may need conversion [such as from Big Endian to Little Endian or vice versa] based on the platform of production and destination where DBaaS created the test database. Here is sample backup script shows how to find out if any conversion is required, describes the steps required to convert datafiles and backup tablespace. SSA Administrator should copy the database (tablespaces) backup datafiles and export dumps to the backup location accessible from the hosts participating in the database zone(s). Create a post deployment SQL script and this script can either be uploaded into the software library by SSA Administrator or made available on a shared location accessible from servers where databases are likely to be provisioned. Here is sample post deployment SQL script using transportable tablespaces. Using DBCA, create a template for the production database – all the init.ora parameters should be included. NOTE: DO NOT choose to bring tablespace data into this template as they will be created SSA Administrator should customize “Create Database Deployment Procedure” and provide DBCA template created in the previous step. In the “Additional Configuration Options” step of the flow, provide the name of the SQL script in the Custom Script section and lock the input. Continue saving the deployment procedure. Now, an SSA user can login to Self Service Portal and use the flow to provision a database that will also populate the data using the post deployment step. More Information: Database-as-a-Service on Exadata Cloud Podcast on Database as a Service using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Installation and Administration guide, Cloud Administration guide DBaaS Cookbook Screenwatch: Private Database Cloud: Set Up the Cloud Self-Service Portal Screenwatch: Private Database Cloud: Use the Cloud Self-Service Portal Stay Connected: Twitter | Face book | You Tube | Linked in | Newsletter

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SSIS: Building SQL databases on-the-fly using concatenated SQL scripts

- by DrJohn

Over the years I have developed many techniques which help automate the whole SQL Server build process. In my current process, where I need to build entire OLAP data marts on-the-fly, I make regular use of a simple but very effective mechanism to concatenate all the SQL Scripts together from my SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) projects. This proves invaluable because in two clicks I can redeploy an entire SQL Server database with all tables, views, stored procedures etc. Indeed, I can also use the concatenated SQL scripts with SSIS to build SQL Server databases on-the-fly. You may be surprised to learn that I often redeploy the database several times per day, or even several times per hour, during the development process. This is because the deployment errors are logged and you can quickly see where SQL Scripts have object dependency errors. For example, after changing a table structure you may have forgotten to change any related views. The deployment log immediately points out all the objects which failed to build so you can fix and redeploy the database very quickly. The alternative approach (i.e. doing changes in the database directly using the SSMS UI) would require you to check all dependent objects before making changes. The chances are that you will miss something and wonder why your app returns the wrong data – a common problem caused by changing a table without re-creating dependent views. Using SQL Projects in SSMS A great many developers fail to make use of SQL Projects in SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio). To me they are invaluable way of organizing your SQL Scripts. The screenshot below shows a typical SSMS solution made up of several projects – one project for tables, another for views etc. The key point is that the projects naturally fall into the right order in file system because of the project name. The number in the folder or file name ensures that the projects the SQL scripts are concatenated together in the order that they need to be executed. Hence the script filenames start with 100, 110 etc. Concatenating SQL Scripts To concatenate the SQL Scripts together into one file, I use notepad.exe to create a simple batch file (see example screenshot) which uses the TYPE command to write the content of the SQL Script files into a combined file. As the SQL Scripts are in several folders, I simply use several TYPE command multiple times and append the output together. If you are unfamiliar with batch files, you may not know that the angled bracket (>) means write output of the program into a file. Two angled brackets (>>) means append output of this program into a file. So the command-line DIR > filelist.txt would write the content of the DIR command into a file called filelist.txt. In the example shown above, the concatenated file is called SB_DDS.sql If, like me you place the concatenated file under source code control, then the source code control system will change the file's attribute to "read-only" which in turn would cause the TYPE command to fail. The ATTRIB command can be used to remove the read-only flag. Using SQLCmd to execute the concatenated file Now that the SQL Scripts are all in one big file, we can execute the script against a database using SQLCmd using another batch file as shown below: SQLCmd has numerous options, but the script shown above simply executes the SS_DDS.sql file against the SB_DDS_DB database on the local machine and logs the errors to a file called SB_DDS.log. So after executing the batch file you can simply check the error log to see if your database built without a hitch. If you have errors, then simply fix the source files, re-create the concatenated file and re-run the SQLCmd to rebuild the database. This two click operation allows you to quickly identify and fix errors in your entire database definition.Using SSIS to execute the concatenated file To execute the concatenated SQL script using SSIS, you simply drop an Execute SQL task into your package and set the database connection as normal and then select File Connection as the SQLSourceType (as shown below). Create a file connection to your concatenated SQL script and you are ready to go. Tips and TricksAdd a new-line at end of every fileThe most common problem encountered with this approach is that the GO statement on the last line of one file is placed on the same line as the comment at the top of the next file by the TYPE command. The easy fix to this is to ensure all your files have a new-line at the end.Remove all USE database statementsThe SQLCmd identifies which database the script should be run against. So you should remove all USE database commands from your scripts - otherwise you may get unintentional side effects!!Do the Create Database separatelyIf you are using SSIS to create the database as well as create the objects and populate the database, then invoke the CREATE DATABASE command against the master database using a separate package before calling the package that executes the concatenated SQL script.

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Disaster Recovery Discovery

- by Rodney Landrum

Last weekend I joined several of my IT staff on a mission to perform a DR test in our remote CoLo center in a large South East city of the US. Can I be more obtuse? The goal was simple for me as the sole DBA in a throng of Windows, Storage, Network and SAN admins – restore the databases and make them work. There were 4 applications that back ended to 7 SQL Server databases on 4 different SQL Server instances. We would maintain the original server names, but beyond that it was fair game. We had time to prepare so I was able to script out or otherwise automate the recovery process. I used sp_help_revlogin for three of the servers, a bit of a cheat actually because restoring the Master database on the target DR servers was the specified course of action according to the DR procedures ( the caveat “IF REQUIRED” left it open to interpretation. I really wanted to avoid the step of restoring Master for a number of reasons but mainly because I did not want to deal with issues starting SQL Services afterward. Having to account for the location of TempDB and the version conflicts of the resource DBs were just two of the battles I chose not to fight. Not to mention other system database location problems that might arise and prevent SQL from starting. I was going to have to restore all of the user databases anyway, so I would not really gain any benefit, outside of logins, for taking the time to restore the source Master database over the newly installed one on the fresh server. What I wanted was the ability to restore the Master database as a user database, call it Master_Mine, from a backup on the source system and then use that restored database to script the SQL Logins and passwords on the DR systems. While I did not attempt this on the trip, the thought stuck in my mind and this past week I succeeded at scripting user accounts and passwords using only a restored copy of the Master database. Granted there were several challenges to overcome. Also, as is usual for any work like this the usual disclaimers apply: This is not something that I would imagine Microsoft would condone or support and this was really only an experiment for me to learn if it was even possible. While I have tested the process with success, I do not know that I would use this technique in a documented procedure because future updates for SQL Server will render this technique non-functional. I thought at first, incorrectly of course, that I could use sp_help_revlogin on a restored copy of the master database I named Master_Mine. Since sp_help_revlogin uses system schema objects, sys.syslogins and sys.server_principals, this was not going to work because all results would come from the main Master database. To test this I added a SQL login via SSMS, backed up Master, restored it as Master_Mine, and then deleted the login. Even though the test account I created should presumably still be in the Master_Mine database, I should be able to get to it and script out its creation with its password hash so that I would not need to know the password, but any applications that stored that password would not have to be altered in the DR scenario. They would just work as expected. Once I realized that would not work I began looking deeper. Knowing that sys.syslogins and sys.server_principals are system views, their underlying code should be available with sp_helptext, right? They were. And this led me to discover the two tables sys.sysxlgns and sys.sysprivs, where the data I needed was stored. These tables existed in both the real Master and the restored copy, Master_Mine. I used this information to tweak the sp_help_revlogin stored procedure to use these tables instead to create the logins cursor used in sp_help_revlogin. For the password hash, sp_help_revlogin uses the function LoginProperty() which takes a user name and option ‘passwordhash’ to return the hash for the user. Unfortunately, it requires the login to exist in the Master database. This would not work. So another slight modification I had to make was to pull the password hash itself (pwdhash from sys.sysxlgns) into the logins cursor and comment out the section of sp_help_revlogin that uses LoginProperty. Instead, I pass the pwdhash value as the variable @PWD_varbinary to the sp_hexadecimal stored procedure which is also created by and used within the code provided by Microsoft in the link above for sp_help_revlogin. The final challenge: sys.sysxlgns and sys.server_principals are visible only within a Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) query window in SSMS or within SQLCDMD. To open a DAC connection you have to be logged in on the SQL Server itself, via RDP in my case, and you preface the server name in the query connection with ADMIN:, so that the server connection looks like ADMIN:ServerName. From there you can create the modified stored procedure in the restored copy of a Master database from a source system as whatever name you like, and then run the modified stored procedure. I named my new stored procedure usp_help_revlogin_MyMaster. Upon execution I was happy to see the logins and password hashes that I needed to apply from the source Master database without having to restore over the new Master system database and without the need to access the original server (assuming it was down due to whatever disaster put it in that state). You will note that I am not providing full code samples here of the modifications. I will say that it was a slight bit of work and anyone who needed to do this for whatever reason, could fairly easily roll their own solution with the information provided herein. My goal, as I said was to prove that this could be done and provide another option if required to ease the burden of getting SQL Servers up and available in an emergency situation where alternatives may be more challenging or otherwise unavailable.

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Most Innovative IDM Projects: Awards at OpenWorld

- by Tanu Sood

On Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, Oracle recognized the winners of Innovation Awards 2012 at a ceremony presided over by Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President at Oracle. Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards recognize customers for achieving significant business value through innovative uses of Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings. Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. This year’s Award honors customers for their cutting-edge solutions driving business innovation and IT modernization using Oracle Fusion Middleware. The program has grown over the past 6 years, receiving a record number of nominations from customers around the globe. The winners were selected by a panel of judges that ranked each nomination across multiple different scoring categories. Congratulations to both Avea and ETS for winning this year’s Innovation Award for Identity Management. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Avea Company: Founded in 2004, AveA is the sole GSM 1800 mobile operator of Turkey and has reached a nationwide customer base of 12.8 million as of the end of 2011 Region: Turkey (EMEA) Products: Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics, Oracle Access Management Suite Business Drivers: · To manage the agility and scale required for GSM Operations and enable call center efficiency by enabling agents to change their identity profiles (accounts and entitlements) rapidly based on call load. · Enhance user productivity and call center efficiency with self service password resets · Enforce compliance and audit reporting · Seamless identity management between AveA and parent company Turk Telecom Innovation and Results: · One of the first Sun2Oracle identity management migrations designed for high performance provisioning and trusted reconciliation built with connectors developed on the ICF architecture that provides custom user interfaces for dynamic and rapid management of roles and entitlements along with entitlement level attestation using closed loop remediation between Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics. · Dramatic reduction in identity administration and call center password reset tasks leading to 20% reduction in administration costs and 95% reduction in password related calls. · Enhanced user productivity by up to 25% to date · Enforced enterprise security and reduced risk · Cost-effective compliance management · Looking to seamlessly integrate with parent and sister companies’ infrastructure securely. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Education Testing Service (ETS) See last year's winners here --Company: ETS is a private nonprofit organization devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing. Region: U.S.A (North America) Products: Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Identity Manager Business Drivers: ETS develops and administers more than 50 million achievement and admissions tests each year in more than 180 countries, at more than 9,000 locations worldwide. As the business becomes more globally based, having a robust solution to security and user management issues becomes paramount. The organizations was looking for: · Simplified user experience for over 3000 company users and more than 6 million dynamic student and staff population · Infrastructure and administration cost reduction · Managing security risk by controlling 3rd party access to ETS systems · Enforce compliance and manage audit reporting · Automate on-boarding and decommissioning of user account to improve security, reduce administration costs and enhance user productivity · Improve user experience with simplified sign-on and user self service Innovation and Results: 1. Manage Risk · Centralized system to control user access · Provided secure way of accessing service providers' application using federated SSO. · Provides reporting capability for auditing, governance and compliance. 2. Improve efficiency · Real-Time provisioning to target systems · Centralized provisioning system for user management and access controls. · Enabling user self services. 3. Reduce cost · Re-using common shared services for provisioning, SSO, Access by application reducing development cost and time. · Reducing infrastructure and maintenance cost by decommissioning legacy/redundant IDM services. · Reducing time and effort to implement security functionality in business applications (“onboard” instead of new development). ETS was able to fold in new and evolving requirement in addition to the initial stated goals realizing quick ROI and successfully meeting business objectives. Congratulations to the winners once again. We will be sure to bring you more from these Innovation Award winners over the next few months.

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