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• Less Can Be More In E-Commerce

  - by Michael Hylton

  Today’s consumers are inundated with product choices and vendors. Visit your favorite electronics retailer and see the vast assortment of flat panel televisions. Or the variety of detergents at the supermarket. All of this can be daunting for the average consumer who is looking for the products and services that interest them.  In a study titled “Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing”, the author, Sheena Iyengar found that participants actually reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections and wrote better essays when their original set of options had been limited. The same can be said for e-commerce and your website. Being able to quickly convert shoppers into buyers with effective merchandising is what makes leading businesses successful. You want to engage each individual visitor with the most-relevant content to drive higher conversions and order values while decreasing abandonment, but predicting what will resonate with each customer is difficult. In a world of choices, online merchandizing tools can help personalize, streamline, and refine what your customers view when they browse your online catalog. The key to being effective is to align your products and content as closely as possible with the customer’s needs. The goal on the home page is to promote your brand and push visitors farther into the site. The home page is often the starting point for repeat customers as well as for new visitors hoping to address their current product needs. As the customer selects different filters and narrows the choices, valuable information is being provided to the retailer about the customer’s current need—regardless of previous search behavior or what other customers with a similar demographic profile have purchased. Together with search pages, category browse pages are among the primary options available to customers as a means of finding products on your site. Once a customer reaches the product detail page, it is clear what that person desires, regardless of the segment the customer falls into. However, don’t disregard campaign-based promotions completely. A campaign targeted to all customers but featuring rule-driven promotions tied to the product can be effective. Click here to learn more about merchandizing techniques so what your customer sees if half full and not half empty.

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• DevConnections Spring 2010 Speaker Evals and Tips

  As a conference speaker, I always look forward to hearing from attendees whether they felt my sessions were valuable and worth their time.  Its always gratifying  get a high score, but of course its the (preferably constructive) criticism thats key to continued improvement.  Im by no means the best technical presenter around, and Im always looking for ways to improve. Ive recently spoken at a few events, including TechEd and an Ohio event called Stir Trek.  DevConnections was actually back in April, but theyre just getting their final evals out to speakers.  TechEd, of course, does online evals so immediately after your talks you can see what people think.  Ill try and post my TechEd evals in the next week or so. I gave 3 talks at DevConnections Spring 2010 / VS2010 Launch which I discussed in this previous blog post.  In this follow-up, Im just going to share some eval info and my thoughts on it, albeit a couple of months later. Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools Evals Turned In: 27 Overall Eval: 3.74 Average Score: 3.47 89% found the technical level Just Right.  7.4% thought it was too basic (3.6% did not respond).  Since nobody thought the content was Too complex, I could perhaps have added some more complex material, but having about 90% say its Just Right is pretty good. 92% said at least 50% of the material was new to them.  36% said 75% or more was new.  Thats also pretty good, I think. 77.8% can use the information immediately; 15% can use it within 2-6 months (7.2 % no response). Overall 78% rated the session Excellent, 18% Good, 4% Fair. All comments (9): Steve did a great job Excellent session! It was good. Im now super excited to attend Steves other sessions later today.  Very useful. One of the best speakers here.  Bring him back to future conferences please. Continue to have this session with new and old stuff.  I always find something I did not know about. Excellent!  This was the best session Ive seen all week. Did not increase font on all pages could not see. For Steve to have had more sessions. Note to self make the fonts bigger across the board.  Otherwise, this is all good for my ego. :)  This is always a very popular session and one I really enjoy giving.  Tips and Tricks talks are pretty easy because you dont have to go in depth with any particular thing, and theyre almost always with existing technology so youre not dealing with betas, lack of documentation, and other issues.  Its an easy session to do well, in my experience, and one which I think attendees definitely appreciate.   Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 Evals Turned In: 23 Overall Eval: 3.77 Average Score: 3.47 (wow, I cant believe I scored better on this talk than the tips and tricks talk, which Ive given many times and was more excited about) 96% found the technical level Just Right.  90% found 50% or more of the material to be new.  43% can use the info immediately, and another 43% can use it within 2-6 months I guess that speaks to adoption rates of MVC 2 among my attendees Overall 74% said the session was Excellent, 22% Good.  4% No Response. All Comments (6): Great job, thank you. Great speaker! Really good, a little lost in the code at some points, but great information. Speaker needs to repeat questions from audience for everyone to hear. Exceeded my expectations. Great speaker, very informative. I really do try to religiously repeat questions from the audience for everyone to hear, but obviously I didnt do it 100% of the time.  Note to self remember to repeat questions.  That and making fonts big are really basic speaker best practices, which just goes to prove that fundamentals are always something that can be perfected.   SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Evals Turned In: 8 (!) Overall Eval: 3.63 Average Score: 3.47 As I recall this was one of the last talks of the day / show, which might account for the low number of evals turned in.  I dont recall speaking to an empty room for this talk, although it certainly wasnt as crowded as the tips and tricks talk. 100% found the technical level Just Right.  100% found at least half the material new.  62.5% can use it at once and 37.5% within 2-6 months.  62.5% rated the session Excellent overall; 37.5% Good.  Im thinking there were 5 evals with all 4s checked and 3 with all 3s checked (4 = Excellent, 3 = Good) All Comments (3): This covered many topics Ive read about recently, and it helped reinforce them. It was a nice overview of the solid principle, but I thought there might be specifics for MVC2.  I am glad there is not. Move a little slower. Ok, so another fundamental dont go too fast.  Looks like I got one fundamental tip from the comments of each talk. My Take-Aways Remember the fundamentals.  Its worth going through a checklist prior to presenting to make sure these things are fresh in your mind.  Increase all font sizes.  Repeat all questions from audience members without microphones (this is also a great way to stall for time, btw).  Resist the urge to move too quickly especially if youre nervous or short of time.  Writing this up in a blog post also further reinforces these fundamentals for me, which is one of the main reasons why I do it I retain things better when I write them, and even moreso when I write them for public consumption since I have to really think about what Im saying.  And maybe a few of you find this interesting or helpful, which is a bonus. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Using IIS Logs for Performance Testing with Visual Studio

  - by Tarun Arora

  In this blog post I’ll show you how you can play back the IIS Logs in Visual Studio to automatically generate the web performance tests. You can also download the sample solution I am demo-ing in the blog post. Introduction Performance testing is as important for new websites as it is for evolving websites. If you already have your website running in production you could mine the information available in IIS logs to analyse the dense zones (most used pages) and performance test those pages rather than wasting time testing & tuning the least used pages in your application. What are IIS Logs To help with server use and analysis, IIS is integrated with several types of log files. These log file formats provide information on a range of websites and specific statistics, including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, user information and site visits as well as dates, times and queries. If you are using IIS 7 and above you will find the log files in the following directory C:\Interpub\Logs\ Walkthrough 1. Download and Install Log Parser from the Microsoft download Centre. You should see the LogParser.dll in the install folder, the default install location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Log Parser 2.2. LogParser.dll gives us a library to query the iis log files programmatically. By the way if you haven’t used Log Parser in the past, it is a is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. More details… 2. Create a new test project in Visual Studio. Let’s call it IISLogsToWebPerfTestDemo.   3.  Delete the UnitTest1.cs class that gets created by default. Right click the solution and add a project of type class library, name it, IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine. Delete the default class Program.cs that gets created with the project. 4. Under the IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project add a reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework – c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework.dll LogParser also called MSUtil - c:\users\tarora\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\IisLogsToWebPerfTest\IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine\obj\Debug\Interop.MSUtil.dll 5. Right click IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project and add a new classes – IISLogReader.cs The IISLogReader class queries the iis logs using the log parser. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using MSUtil; using LogQuery = MSUtil.LogQueryClassClass; using IISLogInputFormat = MSUtil.COMIISW3CInputContextClassClass; using LogRecordSet = MSUtil.ILogRecordset; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using System.Diagnostics; namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine { // By making use of log parser it is possible to query the iis log using select queries public class IISLogReader { private string _iisLogPath; public IISLogReader(string iisLogPath) { _iisLogPath = iisLogPath; } public IEnumerable<WebTestRequest> GetRequests() { LogQuery logQuery = new LogQuery(); IISLogInputFormat iisInputFormat = new IISLogInputFormat(); // currently these columns give us suffient information to construct the web test requests string query = @"SELECT s-ip, s-port, cs-method, cs-uri-stem, cs-uri-query FROM " + _iisLogPath; LogRecordSet recordSet = logQuery.Execute(query, iisInputFormat); // Apply a bit of transformation while (!recordSet.atEnd()) { ILogRecord record = recordSet.getRecord(); if (record.getValueEx("cs-method").ToString() == "GET") { string server = record.getValueEx("s-ip").ToString(); string path = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-stem").ToString(); string querystring = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-query").ToString(); StringBuilder urlBuilder = new StringBuilder(); urlBuilder.Append("http://"); urlBuilder.Append(server); urlBuilder.Append(path); if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(querystring)) { urlBuilder.Append("?"); urlBuilder.Append(querystring); } // You could make substitutions by introducing parameterized web tests. WebTestRequest request = new WebTestRequest(urlBuilder.ToString()); Debug.WriteLine(request.UrlWithQueryString); yield return request; } recordSet.moveNext(); } Console.WriteLine(" That's it! Closing the reader"); recordSet.close(); } } }   6. Connect the dots by adding the project reference ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine’ to ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’. Right click the ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’ project and add a new class ‘WebTest1Coded.cs’ The WebTest1Coded.cs inherits from the WebTest class. By overriding the GetRequestMethod we can inject the log files to the IISLogReader class which uses Log parser to query the log file and extract the web requests to generate the web test request which is yielded back for play back when the test is run. namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTest { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting.Rules; using IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine; // This class is a coded web performance test implementation, that simply passes // the path of the iis logs to the IisLogReader class which does the heavy // lifting of reading the contents of the log file and converting them to tests. // You could have multiple such classes that inherit from WebTest and implement // GetRequestEnumerator Method and pass differnt log files for different tests. public class WebTest1Coded : WebTest { public WebTest1Coded() { this.PreAuthenticate = true; } public override IEnumerator<WebTestRequest> GetRequestEnumerator() { // substitute the highlighted path with the path of the iis log file IISLogReader reader = new IISLogReader(@"C:\Demo\iisLog1.log"); foreach (WebTestRequest request in reader.GetRequests()) { yield return request; } } } }   7. Its time to fire the test off and see the iis log playback as a web performance test. From the Test menu choose Test View Window you should be able to see the WebTest1Coded test show up. Highlight the test and press Run selection (you can also debug the test in case you face any failures during test execution). 8. Optionally you can create a Load Test by keeping ‘WebTest1Coded’ as the base test. Conclusion You have just helped your testing team, you now have become the coolest developer in your organization! Jokes apart, log parser and web performance test together allow you to save a lot of time by not having to worry about what to test or even worrying about how to record the test. If you haven’t already, download the solution from here. You can take this to the next level by using LogParser to extract the log files as part of an end of day batch to a database. See the usage trends by user this solution over a longer term and have your tests consume the web requests now stored in the database to generate the web performance tests. If you like the post, don’t forget to share … Keep RocKiNg!

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Guizhou Power Grid Company

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryGuizhou Power Grid Company is responsible for power grid planning, construction, management, and power distribution in Guizhou Province, serving 39 million people. Giuzhou has 49,823 employees and an annual revenue of over $5 Billion. The business objectives were to consolidate information contained in disparate systems into a single knowledge repository and provide a safe and efficient way for staff and managers to access, query, share, manage, and store business information. Guizhou Power Grid Company saved more than US$693,000 in storage costs, reduced  average search times from 180 seconds to 5 seconds and solved 80% to 90% of technology and maintenance issues by searching the Oracle WebCenter Content management system. Company OverviewA wholly owned subsidiary of China Southern Power Grid Company Limited, Guizhou Power Grid Company is responsible for power grid planning, construction, management, and power distribution in Guizhou Province, serving 39 million people. Giuzhou has 49,823 employees and an annual revenue of over $5 Billion. Business ChallengesThe business objectives were to consolidate information contained in disparate systems, such as the customer relationship management and power grid management systems, into a single knowledge repository and provide a safe and efficient way for staff and managers to access, query, share, manage, and store business information. Solution DeployedGuizhou Power Grid Company  implemented Oracle WebCenter Content to build a content management system that enabled the secure, integrated management and storage of information, such as documents, records, images, Web content, and digital assets. The content management solution was integrated with the power grid, customer service, maintenance, and other business systems, as well as the corporate Web site. Business Results Saved more than US$693,000 in storage costs and shortened the material distribution time by integrating the knowledge management solution with the power grid, customer service, maintenance, and other business systems, as well as the corporate Web site Enabled staff to search 31,650 documents using catalogs, multidimensional attributes, and knowledge maps, reducing average search times from 180 seconds to 5 seconds and saving approximately 1,539 hours in annual search time Gained comprehensive document management, format transformation, security, and auditing capabilities Enabled users to upload new documents and supervisors to check the accuracy of these documents online, resulting in improved information quality control Solved 80% to 90% of technology and maintenance issues by searching the Oracle content management system for information, ensuring IT staff can respond quickly to users’ technical problems Improved security by using role-based access controls to restrict access to confidential documents and information Supported the efficient classification of corporate knowledge by using Oracle’s metadata functions to collect, tag, and archive documents, images, Web content, and digital assets “We chose Oracle WebCenter Content, as it is an outstanding integrated content management platform. It has allowed us to establish a system to access, query, share, manage, and store our corporate assets. This has laid a solid foundation for Guizhou Power Grid Company to improve management practices.” Luo Sixi, Senior Information Consultant, Guizhou Power Grid Company Additional Information Guizhou Power Grid Company Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content

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• The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

  - by GGBlogger

  As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Hitachi Data Systems

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter Watch this Webcast to see a live demo on how HDS creates multilingual content for their 35+ regional websites  Solution SummaryHitachi Data Systems (HDS) provides mid-range and high-end storage systems, software and services. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. HDS is based in Santa Clara, California, and has over 5,300 employees in more then 100 countries and regions. HDS's main objectives were to provide a consistent message across all their sites, to maintain a tight governance structure across their messages and related content, expand the use of the existing content management systems and implement a centralized translation management system. HDS implemented a global web content management system based on Oracle WebCenter Content and integrated the Lingotek translation management system to manage their multilingual content. The implemented solution provides each Geo with the ability to expand their web offering to meet local market needs, while staying aligned with the Corporate Web Guidelines Company OverviewHitachi Data Systems (HDS) provides mid-range and high-end storage systems, software and services. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. and part of the Hitachi Information Systems & Telecommunications Division. The company sells through direct and indirect channels in more than 170 countries and regions. Its customers include of 50 percent of the Fortune 100 companies. HDS is based in Santa Clara California and has over 5,300 employees in more than 100 countries and regions. Business ChallengesHDS has over 35 global websites and the lack of global web capabilities led to inconsistency of messaging, slower time to market and failed to address local language needs. There was an extensive operational overhead due to manual and redundant processes. Translation efforts where superficial, inconsistent and wasteful and the lack of translation automation tools discouraged localization.  HDS's main objectives were to provide a consistent message across all their sites, to maintain a tight governance structure across their messages and related content, expand the use of the existing content management systems and implement a centralized translation management system. Solution DeployedHDS implemented a global web content management system based on Oracle WebCenter Content. The solution supports decentralized publishing for their 35+ global sites to address local market needs while ensuring editorial and brand review trough embedded review processes. They integrated the Lingotek translation management system into Oracle WebCenter Content to manage their multilingual content. Business Results Provides each Geo with the ability to expand their web offering to meet local market needs, while staying aligned with the Corporate Web Guidelines Enables end-to-end content lifecycle management across multiple languages Leverage translation memory for reuse and consistency Reduce time to market with central repository of translated content Additional Information HDS Webcast Oracle WebCenter Content Lingotek website

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 16, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  X.509 Certificate Revocation Checking Using OCSP protocol with Oracle WebLogic Server 12c | Abhijit Patil Abhijit Patil's article focuses on how to use X.509 Certificate Revocation Checking Functionality with the OCSP protocol to validate in-bound certificates. Although this article focuses on inbound OCSP validation using OCSP, Oracle WebLogic Server 12c also supports outbound OCSP validation. Leveraging Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management for Everyday BI Needs "Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management (OSSM) is built-upon the premise that a scorecard system should not be separate from the BI system, like many comparable tools are today," says author Kevin McGinely. "Instead of a separate application with its own data, its own data definitions, and its own front-end, Oracle made the choice to integrate OSSM directly into OBIEE." Applying BI for personal productivity recognition and gamification | Capgemini Oracle Blog "It is quite obvious that if you want people to participate you need an appealing and intuitive user interface," says Capgemini's Henk Vermeulen in this interesting exploration of gamification in the enterprise. Build and release OSB projects with Maven | Edwin Biemond "With Maven we are able to build and deploy OSB projects," says Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond. "The artifacts generated by Maven called snaphosts and releases can be automatically uploaded to a software repository. These versioned OSB jars can then be downloaded by the OSB Servers and deployed." Biemond shows you how in this detailed technical post. ADF Generator for Dynamic ADF BC and ADF UI | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis' post is an extension of his OOW12 presentation, "Oracle ADF Implementations Around the Globe: Best Practices," and includes the sample application he promised to share. Service-oriented organizations have a head start in the cloud race | ZDNet ZDNet SOA blogger Joe McKendrick offers a snapshot of a recent report Forrester analyst James Staten. Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: X509 Fallback to Form | Debasish BhattacharyaOracle Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Debasish Bhattacharya shares a solution that resulted from brainstorming with colleagues Chris Johnson and Brian Eidelman. "The solution is not very difficult," says Bhattacharya, "though it needs some additional configurations and coding." It's all presented in this detailed post. Agile Architecture | David Sprott "There is ample evidence that Agile Architecture is a primary contributor to business agility, yet we do not have a well understood architecture management system that integrates with Agile methods," observes David Sprott in this extensive post. Thought for the Day "Operating systems are like underwear — nobody really wants to look at them." — Bill Joy Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Consolidating Oracle E-Business Suite R12 on Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster

  - by Giri Mandalika

  An Optimized Solution for Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) R12 12.1.3 is now available on oracle.com.     The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle E-Business Suite This solution was centered around the engineered system, SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. Check the business and technical white papers along with a bunch of relevant useful resources online at the above optimized solution page for EBS. What is an Optimized Solution? Oracle's Optimized Solutions are designed, tested and fully documented architectures that are tuned for optimal performance and availability. Optimized solutions are NOT pre-packaged, fully tuned, ready-to-install software bundles that can be downloaded and installed. An optimized solution is usually a well documented architecture that was thoroughly tested on a target platform. The technical white paper details the deployed application architecture along with various observations from installing the application on target platform to its behavior and performance in highly available and scalable configurations. Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Use Case Multiple E-Business Suite R12 12.1.3 application modules were tested in this optimized solution -- Financials (online - oracle forms & web requests), Order Management (online - oracle forms & web req uests) and HRMS (online - web requests & payroll batch). The solution will be updated with additional application modules, when they are available. Oracle Solaris Cluster is responsible for the high availability portion of the solution. Performance Data For the sake of completeness, test results were also documented in the optimized solution white paper. Those test results are mainly for educational purposes only. They give good sense of application behavior under the circumstances the application was tested. Since the major focus of the optimized solution is around highly available and scalable configurations, the application was configured to me et those criteria. Hence the documented test results are not directly comparable to any other E-Business Suite performance test results published by any vendor including Oracle. Such an attempt may lead to skewed, incorrect conclusions. Questions & Requests Feel free to direct your questions to the author of the white papers. If you are a potential customer who would like to test a specific E-Business Suite application module on any non-engineered syste m such as SPARC T4-X or engineered system such as SPARC SuperCluster, contact Oracle Solution Center.

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• NDepend 4.0 Released

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Last week version 4.0 of NDepend was released.  NDepend is a Visual Studio add-in designed for intense code analysis with the goal of high quality code.  A month ago I wrapped up my evaluation of the previous version of NDepend. The new version contains many minor changes, several bug fixes, and adds about 50 new code rules.  The version also adds support for Visual Studio 11, .NET Framework 4.5, and SilverLight 5.0.  But, the biggest change was the shift from CQL to CQLinq. Introducing CQLinq The latest version replaces the CQL rules language with CQLinq (CQL is still an option although the editor is buried).  As you might guess CQLinq is a flavor of Linq designed specifically for the code rules. The best way to illustrate the differences is with an example.  I used the following CQL example in Part 3 of my review: WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE IsInterface AND !NameLike “I” This same query looks like this when implemented in CQLinq: warnif count > 0 from t in Types where t.IsInterface == true && !t.NameLike(“I”) select t I like the syntax and it is a natural fit, but I found writing the queries frustrating in the Queries and Rules Edit window.  The Queries and Rules Edit window replaces the CQL Query Edit window.  The new editor has the same style of Intellisense as the previous editor.  However, it has a few annoyances.  The error indicator is a red block.  It has the tendency of obscuring your cursor.  Additionally, writing CQLing queries is like writing plain old Linq queries, so the fact that the editor uses Enter to select from Intellisense instead of Tab is jarring.  These issues can be an obstacle to writing queries quickly.CQLinq makes it possible to write rules that weren't possible before.  Additionally, a JustMyCode domain is now possible making it easy to eliminate generated code from the analysis.Should you Buy? I recommend NDepend overall.  It has some rough points for me that I have detailed in my earlier evaluation (starting here).  But, it’s definitely worth the money.  The bigger question is: should I pay for the upgrade to 4.0?  At this point I’m on the fence, but I would go for it if you need support for Visual Studio 2011, .NET Framework 4.5, or Silverlight 5.0; or if you need one of the many rules that weren't possible before CQLinq. Disclaimer: Patrick Smacchia contacted me about reviewing NDepend. I received a free license in return for sharing my experiences and talking about the capabilities of the add-in on this site. There is no expectation of a positive review elicited from the author of NDepend. Resources: NDepend Release Notes

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: American Home Mortgage

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter Solution Summary American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. (AHMSI) is a 3,000 employee company based in Coppell, Texas and provides services to homeowners and loan investors. With a multibillion portfolio under management, AHMSI is one of the country's largest servicers of Alt-A and subprime loans. AHMSI implemented a public-facing secure Web portal using Oracle WebCenter Suite to help investors make informed decisions more quickly and automated much of the investor approval process AHMSI reduced the time needed to process loan modification from approximately 30 days to one week.  UsingOracle WebCenter Content AHMSI can now share strategic & sensitive content in compliance with the various governance regulations.  Company OverviewAmerican Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. provides services to homeowners and loan investors. Whether a borrower holds a traditional, Alt-A, payment option, or subprime loan, the company's highly trained experts are committed to providing high levels of service as they work to address each customer's needs. AHMSI also carefully manages the loan portfolios of investors. With a multibillion portfolio under management, AHMSI is one of the country's largest servicers of Alt-A and subprime loans.  Challenges AHMSI’s biggest challenge was to improve security by minimizing the use of e-mail and FTP sites to share sensitive mortgage loan data with third parties, including estate investors.  Solutions AHMSI implemented Oracle WebCenter Suite to deploy a public-facing Web portal, enabling authorized external users to view content stored on the content server and Oracle WebCenter Content  to create a secure storage area for daily, weekly, and monthly reports. They leveraged the standard group spaces in Oracle WebCenter Portal to enable business users to collaborate more effectively.  Results By automating much of the investor approval process, they reduced the time needed to process loan modifications from approximately 30 days to one week and greatly minimized the use of e-mail and FTP sites to share information. Investors can now view supporting materials including real-time loan information and call center data to help them make more informed decisions more quickly.  The implemented solution complies with various government regulations in dealings with real estate investors.  “To maintain our commitment to providing customers with the highest possible levels of services while creating a competitive advantage for our business, we needed to be able to share strategic and sensitive content in a safe and secure manner. With Oracle WebCenter, we have a flexible and modern user experience platform that allows us to securely, reliably and efficiently manage our portfolio of sensitive data and share it with our business partners. This not only helps ensure compliance with various government regulations, it accelerates processes and supports more informed decision making.” Vince Holt, Manager, Application Management, American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc.  Additional Information AHMSI Customer Snapshot  Oracle WebCenter Suite Oracle WebCenter Content Oracle WebCenter Portal Oracle Fusion Middleware

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• I Clobbered a Leopard with a Window Last Night

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I’ve had my 15” Mac Book Pro for a little over a year now, and its hands-down the best laptop I’ve ever owned…hardware wise. And I tried, I really really tried, to like OSX. I even bought Parallels so I could run Windows 7 and all my development tools while still trying to live in an OSX world. But in the end, I missed Windows too much. There were just too many shortcomings with OSX that kept me from being productive. For one thing, Office for Mac is *not* Office for Windows. The applications are written by different teams, and Excel on the Mac is just different enough to be painful. The VM experience was adequate, but my MBP would heat up like crazy when running it and the experience trying to get Windows apps to interact with an OSX file system was awkward. And I found I was in the VM more than I thought I’d be. iMovie is not as easy to use for doing simple movie editing as Windows Movie Maker. There’s no free blog editing software for OSX that’s on par with Windows Live Writer. And really, all I was using OSX for was Twitter (which I can use a Windows client for) and web browsing (also something Windows can provide obviously). So I had to ask myself – why am I forcing myself to use an operating system I don’t like, on a laptop that can support Windows 7? And so I paved my MBP and am happily running Windows 7 on it…and its fantastic! All the good stuff with the hardware is still there with the goodness of Win 7. Happy happy. I did run into some snags doing this though, and that’s really what this blog post is about – things to be aware of if you want to install Win 7 directly on your MBP metal. First, Ensure You Have Your Original Mac Install Disk This was a warning my buddy Dylan, who’s been running Win 7 on his MBP for a while now, gave me early on. The reason you need that original disk is that the hardware drivers you need are all located there. Apparently you can’t easily download them, so make sure you have them ahead of time. Second, Forget BootCamp The only reason you need BootCamp is if you still want the option to boot into OSX. If you don’t, then you don’t need BootCamp. In fact, you don’t even need BootCamp to install Win 7. What you *will* need though is a DVD with Win 7 burnt on it. Apple doesn’t support bootable USB drives. Well, actually they do for Mac Book Airs which don’t come with optical drives…but to get it working you’ll need to edit a system file of BootCamp so your make of MBP is included in an XML document, and even then you *still* are using BootCamp meaning you’ll be making an OSX partition. So don’t worry about BootCamp, just burn a Windows 7 disc, put it into the DVD drive, and restart your MBP. Third, Know The Secret Commands So after putting in the Windows 7 DVD and restarting your MBP, you’ll want to hold down the ‘C’ key during boot up. This tells the MBP that it should boot from the DVD drive instead of the hard drive. Interestingly, it appears you don’t have to do this if its the Mac OSX install disc (more on that in a second), but regardless – hold down C and Windows will start the install process. Next up is the partition process. You’ll notice that there’s a partition called ETI or something like that. This has to do with the drive format that Apple uses and how they partition their system drives. What I did – I blew it away! At first I didn’t, but I was told I couldn’t install Windows on the remaining space due to the different drive format. Blowing away the ETI partition (and all other partitions) allowed me to continue the Windows install. *REMEMBER –  No warranty is provided or implied, just telling you what I did and how I got it to work. Ok, so now Windows is installed and I’m rebooting. Everything looks good, but I need drivers! So I put in the OSX install DVD and run the BootCamp assistant which installs all the Windows drivers I need. Fantastic! Oh, I need to restart – no problem. OH NO, PROBLEM! I left the OSX install DVD in the drive and now the MBP wants to boot from the drive and install OSX! I’m not holding down the C key, what the heck?! Ok, well there must be a way to eject this disk…hmm…no physical button on the side…the eject button doesn’t seem to work on the keyboard…no little pin hole to insert something to force the disc out…well what the…?! It turns out, if you want to eject a disc at boot up, you need (and I kid you not) to plug a mouse into the laptop and hold down the right-click button while its booting. This ejected the disc for me. Seriously. Finally, Things You Should Be Aware Of Once you have Windows up and running there’s a few things you need to be aware of, mainly new keyboard shortcuts. For instance, on the Mac keyboard there is no Home, End, PageUp or PageDown. There’s also no obvious way to do something like select large amounts of text (like you would by holding Shift-Home at the end of a line of text for instance). So here’s some shortcuts you need to know: Home – fn + left arrow End – fn + right arrow Select a line of text as you would with the Home key – Shift + fn + left arrow Select a line of text as you would with the End key – Shift + fn + right arrow Page Up – fn + up arrow Page Down – fn + down arrow Also, you’ll notice that the awesome Mac track pad doesn’t respond to taps as clicks. No fear, this is just a setting that needs to be altered in the BootCamp control panel (that controls the Mac Hardware-specific settings within Windows, you can access it easily from the system tray icon) One other thing, battery life seems a bit lower than with OSX, but then again I’m also doing more than Twitter or web browsing on this thing now. Conclusion My laptop runs awesome now that I have Windows 7 on there. It’s obviously up to individual taste, but for me I just didn’t see benefits to living in an OSX world when everything I needed lived in Windows. And also, I finally am back to an operating system that doesn’t require me to eject a USB drive before physically removing it! It’s 2012 folks, how has this not been fixed?! D

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Azul Brazilian Airlines

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) is the third-largest airline in Brazil serving  42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft and employs 4,500 crew members. The company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. To this end, Azul implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Azul can now complete the Web site content updating process—which used to take approximately 48 hours—in less than five minutes. Company OverviewAzul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (Azul Brazilian Airlines) has established itself as the third-largest airline in Brazil, based on a business model that combines low prices with a high level of service. Azul serves 42 destinations with a fleet of 49 aircraft. It operates 350 daily flights with a team of 4,500 crew members. Last year, the company transported 15 million passengers, achieving a 10% share of the Brazilian market, according to the Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (ANAC, or the National Civil Aviation Agency). Business ChallengesThe company wanted to offer an innovative site with a simple purchasing process for customers to search for and buy tickets and for the company’s marketing team to more effectively conduct its campaigns. Provide customers with an  innovative Web site with a simple process for purchasing flight tickets Bring dynamism to the Web site’s content updating process to provide autonomy to the airline’s strategic departments, such as marketing and product development Facilitate integration among the site’s different application providers, such as ticket availability and payment process, on which ticket sales depend Solution DeployedAzul worked with the  Oracle partner TQI to implement Oracle WebCenter Sites, succeeding in gathering all of the site’s key information onto a single platform. Previously, at least three servers and corporate information environments had directed data to the portal. The single Oracle-based platform now facilitates site updates, which are daily and constant. Business Results Gained development freedom in all processes—from implementation to content editing Gathered all of the Web site’s key information onto a single platform, facilitating its daily and constant updating, whereas the information was previously spread among at least three IT environments and had to go through a complex process to be made available online to customers Reduced time needed to update banners and other Web site content from an average of 48 hours to less than five minutes Simplified the flight ticket sales process thanks to tool flexibility that enabled the company to improve Website usability “Oracle WebCenter Sites provides an easy-to-use platform that enables our marketing department to spend less time updating content and more time on innovative activities. Previously, it would take 48 hours to update content on our Web site; now it takes less than five minutes. We have shown the market that we are innovators, enabling customer convenience through an improved flight ticket purchase process.” Kleber Linhares, Information Technology and E-Commerce Director, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras Additional Information Azul Brazilian Airlines Case Study Oracle WebCenter Sites Oracle WebCenter Sites Satellite Server

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• What Precalculus knowledge is required before learning Discrete Math Computer Science topics?

  - by Ein Doofus

  Below I've listed the chapters from a Precalculus book as well as the author recommended Computer Science chapters from a Discrete Mathematics book. Although these chapters are from two specific books on these subjects I believe the topics are generally the same between any Precalc or Discrete Math book. What Precalculus topics should one know before starting these Discrete Math Computer Science topics?: Discrete Mathematics CS Chapters 1.1 Propositional Logic 1.2 Propositional Equivalences 1.3 Predicates and Quantifiers 1.4 Nested Quantifiers 1.5 Rules of Inference 1.6 Introduction to Proofs 1.7 Proof Methods and Strategy 2.1 Sets 2.2 Set Operations 2.3 Functions 2.4 Sequences and Summations 3.1 Algorithms 3.2 The Growths of Functions 3.3 Complexity of Algorithms 3.4 The Integers and Division 3.5 Primes and Greatest Common Divisors 3.6 Integers and Algorithms 3.8 Matrices 4.1 Mathematical Induction 4.2 Strong Induction and Well-Ordering 4.3 Recursive Definitions and Structural Induction 4.4 Recursive Algorithms 4.5 Program Correctness 5.1 The Basics of Counting 5.2 The Pigeonhole Principle 5.3 Permutations and Combinations 5.6 Generating Permutations and Combinations 6.1 An Introduction to Discrete Probability 6.4 Expected Value and Variance 7.1 Recurrence Relations 7.3 Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms and Recurrence Relations 7.5 Inclusion-Exclusion 8.1 Relations and Their Properties 8.2 n-ary Relations and Their Applications 8.3 Representing Relations 8.5 Equivalence Relations 9.1 Graphs and Graph Models 9.2 Graph Terminology and Special Types of Graphs 9.3 Representing Graphs and Graph Isomorphism 9.4 Connectivity 9.5 Euler and Hamilton Ptahs 10.1 Introduction to Trees 10.2 Application of Trees 10.3 Tree Traversal 11.1 Boolean Functions 11.2 Representing Boolean Functions 11.3 Logic Gates 11.4 Minimization of Circuits 12.1 Language and Grammars 12.2 Finite-State Machines with Output 12.3 Finite-State Machines with No Output 12.4 Language Recognition 12.5 Turing Machines Precalculus Chapters R.1 The Real-Number System R.2 Integer Exponents, Scientific Notation, and Order of Operations R.3 Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication of Polynomials R.4 Factoring R.5 Rational Expressions R.6 Radical Notation and Rational Exponents R.7 The Basics of Equation Solving 1.1 Functions, Graphs, Graphers 1.2 Linear Functions, Slope, and Applications 1.3 Modeling: Data Analysis, Curve Fitting, and Linear Regression 1.4 More on Functions 1.5 Symmetry and Transformations 1.6 Variation and Applications 1.7 Distance, Midpoints, and Circles 2.1 Zeros of Linear Functions and Models 2.2 The Complex Numbers 2.3 Zeros of Quadratic Functions and Models 2.4 Analyzing Graphs of Quadratic Functions 2.5 Modeling: Data Analysis, Curve Fitting, and Quadratic Regression 2.6 Zeros and More Equation Solving 2.7 Solving Inequalities 3.1 Polynomial Functions and Modeling 3.2 Polynomial Division; The Remainder and Factor Theorems 3.3 Theorems about Zeros of Polynomial Functions 3.4 Rational Functions 3.5 Polynomial and Rational Inequalities 4.1 Composite and Inverse Functions 4.2 Exponential Functions and Graphs 4.3 Logarithmic Functions and Graphs 4.4 Properties of Logarithmic Functions 4.5 Solving Exponential and Logarithmic Equations 4.6 Applications and Models: Growth and Decay 5.1 Systems of Equations in Two Variables 5.2 System of Equations in Three Variables 5.3 Matrices and Systems of Equations 5.4 Matrix Operations 5.5 Inverses of Matrices 5.6 System of Inequalities and Linear Programming 5.7 Partial Fractions 6.1 The Parabola 6.2 The Circle and Ellipse 6.3 The Hyperbola 6.4 Nonlinear Systems of Equations

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: SICE

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummarySociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A. (SICE) is a Spanish company specializes in engineering and technology integration for intelligent transport systems and environmental control systems. They had a large quantity of engineering and environmental planning documents  which they wanted to manage, classify and integrate with their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. SICE adapted  Oracle WebCenter Content to classify and manage more than 30 different types, defined a security plan to ensure the integrity and recovery of various document types and integrated the document management solution with SICE’s third-party enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. SICE  accelerated time to market for all projects, minimized time required to identify and recover documents  and achieved greater efficiency in all operations. Company Overview Created in 1921, Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A. (SICE) currently specializes in engineering and technology integration for intelligent transport systems and environmental control systems. It has more than 2,500 employees, with operations in Spain and various locations in Latin America, the United States, Africa, and Australia. Business Challenges They had a large quantity of engineering and environmental planning documents generated in research and projects which they wanted to manage, classify and integrate with their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Solution Deployed SICE worked with the Oracle Partner ABAST Solutions to evaluate and choose the best document management system, ultimately selecting Oracle WebCenter Content over other options including  Documentum, SharePoint, OpenText, and Alfresco.They adapted Oracle WebCenter Content to classify and manage more than 30 different types, defined a security plan to ensure the integrity and recovery of various document types and integrated the document management solution  with SICE’s third-party enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to accelerate incorporation with the documentation system and ensure integrity ERP system data. Business Results SICE  accelerated time to market for all projects by releasing reports and information that support and validate engineering projects, stored all documents in a single repository with organizationwide accessibility, minimizing time required to identify and recover documents needed for reports to initiate and execute engineering and building projects. Overall they achieved greater efficiency in all operations, including technical and impact report development and construction documentation management. “The correct and efficient management of information is vital to our environmental management activity. Oracle WebCenter Content  serves as a basis for knowledge management practices, with the objective of adding greater value to everything that we do.” Manuel Delgado, IT Project Engineering, Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A Additional Information SICE Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content

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• Pro SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence Solutions

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). Oh yeah baby, it’s out finally! This book is what I wanted to write for so long now, but never really got a chance to. For SharePoint 2007, I authored the SharePoint section of “Smart BI Solutions with SQL Server 2008” for MS Press. But never really got the time, to author a full book that this topic deserved. Until SharePoint 2010, we actually have a full book on this topic. So first things first, I didn’t actually write it. My role was limited to the overall concept, the outline, the layout, completion of it, code samples, identifying what we need in here, vouching for technical accuracy, identifying authors etc. The real work was done by Srini (5 chapters), and Steve (1 chapter). So credit given where it is due. But, with that said, this is a pretty good book. It has always been a challenge to find the superman that knows both, data ware housing concepts, and SharePoint concepts. The data ware housing concepts include basic stuff you need to know to work in the BI area such as cubes, MDX queries, etc. So chapter 1 covers that – and if you’re a hardcore DBA, feel free to skip Chapter 1. Then beyond that, we take every single SharePoint 2010 BI topic, and slice and dice it in detail. The topics we deal with are - Visio Services Reporting services Business Connectivity Services Excel Services PerformancePoint Services And in covering each of these topics, we ensure that a general layout was followed for each topic, to ensure completeness of content. We make sure we cover Setup related issues and advice Point and click usage Code usage, i.e. extensibility using visual studio and a walkthrough of the administration side of things, including powershell. (Yes, I insisted on that in being there in every chapter). Writing a book is always a lot of work, so we hope you find it useful. And it should go very well with the other book I just reviewed, which is Microsoft ADO.NET 4, step by step. Comment on the article ....

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• Silverlight IConvertible TypeConverter

  - by codingbloke

  I recently answered the following question on stackoverflow:  Silverlight 3 custom control: only ‘int’ as numeric type for a property? [e.g. long or int64 seems to break] I quickly knocked up the class ConvertibleTypeConverter<T> that I posted in the question (listed later here as well). Afterward I fully expected to find that of the usual clever “bods who blog” to have covered this probably with a better solution than I.  So far though I’ve not found one so I thought I’d blog it myself. The Problem Here is a classic gotcha I’ve seen asked more than once on stackoverflow :- public class MyClass {     public float SomeValue { get; set; } } <local:MyClass SomeValue="45.15" /> This fails with the error  “Failed to create a 'System.Single' from the text '45.15'”  and results in much premature hair loss.  Fortunately this is SL4, in SL3 the error message is almost meaningless.  So what gives, how can it be that this fails when we can see other very similar values parsing happily all over the place? It comes down the fact that the Xaml parser only handles a few of the primitive data types namely: bool, int, string and double.  Since the parser has no idea how to convert a string to a float we get the above error. The Solution The sensible solution is “use double not float” but lets not dwell on that, there has to be occasions where such an answer isn’t acceptable. In order to achieve parsing of other types we need an implementation of TypeConverter for the type of the property and then we need to use the TypeConverterAttribute to decorate the property .  As an example the Silverlight SDK provides one for DateTime the DateTimeTypeConverter (yes I know DateTime isn’t really a primitive). The following class will parse in Xaml:- public class MyClass {     [TypeConverter(typeof(DateTimeTypeConverter))]     public DateTime SomeValue {get; set; } } So far though we would need to create a TypeConverter for each primitive type we are using, what if I had the following mad class to support in Xaml:- public class StrangePrimitives {     public Boolean BooleanProp { get; set; }     public Byte ByteProp { get; set; }     public Char CharProp { get; set; }     public DateTime DateTimeProp { get; set; }     public Decimal DecimalProp { get; set; }     public Double DoubleProp { get; set; }     public Int16 Int16Prop { get; set; }     public Int32 Int32Prop { get; set; }     public Int64 Int64Prop { get; set; }     public SByte SByteProp { get; set; }     public Single SingleProp { get; set; }     public String StringProp { get; set; }     public UInt16 UInt16Prop { get; set; }     public UInt32 UInt32Prop { get; set; }     public UInt64 UInt64Prop { get; set; } } Then I want to fill an instance of StrangePrimitives with the following Xaml which of course fails. <local:StrangePrimitives x:Key="MyStrangePrimitives"                          BooleanProp="True"                          ByteProp="156"                          CharProp="A"                          DateTimeProp="06 Jun 2010"                          DecimalProp="123.56"                          DoubleProp="8372.937803"                          Int16Prop="16532"                          Int32Prop="73738248"                          Int64Prop="12345678909298"                          SByteProp="-123"                          SingleProp="39.0"                          StringProp="Hello, World!"                          UInt16Prop="40000"                          UInt32Prop="4294967295"                          UInt64Prop="18446744073709551615"      /> I got to thinking, though, one thing all these primitive types have in common is that they all implement IConvertible so it should be possible to write just one converter to handle them all.  Here it is:- The ConvertibleTypeConverter public class ConvertibleTypeConverter<T> : TypeConverter where T : IConvertible {     public override bool CanConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type sourceType)     {         return sourceType.GetInterface("IConvertible", false) != null;     }     public override bool CanConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type destinationType)     {         return destinationType.GetInterface("IConvertible", false) != null;     }     public override object ConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, object value)     {         return ((IConvertible)value).ToType(typeof(T), culture);     }     public override object ConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, object value, Type destinationType)     {         return ((IConvertible)value).ToType(destinationType, culture);     } } I won’t bore you with an explanation of how it works, it simply adapts one existing interface (the IConvertible) and exposes it as another (the TypeConverter).   With that in place the previous strange primitives class can be modified as:- public class StrangePrimitives {     public Boolean BooleanProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Byte>))]     public Byte ByteProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Char>))]     public Char CharProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<DateTime>))]     public DateTime DateTimeProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Decimal>))]     public Decimal DecimalProp { get; set; }     public Double DoubleProp {get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Int16>))]     public Int16 Int16Prop { get; set; }     public Int32 Int32Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Int64>))]     public Int64 Int64Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<SByte>))]     public SByte SByteProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Single>))]     public Single SingleProp { get; set; }     public String StringProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<UInt16>))]     public UInt16 UInt16Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<UInt32>))]     public UInt32 UInt32Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<UInt64>))]     public UInt64 UInt64Prop { get; set; } } This results in the previous Xaml parsing happily.  Now it seems such an obvious thing to do that one may wonder why such a class doesn’t already existing in Silverlight or at least in the SDK.   I would not be surprised if there were some very good reasons hence use the ConvertibleTypeConverter with caution.  It does seem to me to be a useful little class to have lying around in the toolbox for the odd occasion where it may be needed.

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• OTN Virtual Technology Summit - July 9 - Middleware Track

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  The Architecture of Analytics: Big Time Big Data and Business Intelligence This four-session track, part of the free OTN Virtual Technology Summit on July 9, will present a solution architect's perspective on how business intelligence products in Oracle's Fusion Middleware family and beyond fit into an effective big data architecture, offering insight and expertise from Oracle ACE Directors and product team experts specializing in business Intelligence to help you meet your big data business intelligence challenges. Register now! Sessions Oracle Big Data Appliance Case Study: Using Big Data to Analyze Cancer-Genome Relationships Tom Plunkett, Lead Author of the Oracle Big Data Handbook What does it take to build an award winning Big Data solution? This presentation takes a deep technical dive into the use of the Oracle Big Data Appliance in a project for the National Cancer Institute's Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. The Frederick National Laboratory and the Oracle team won several awards for analyzing relationships between genomes and cancer subtypes with big data, including the 2012 Government Big Data Solutions Award, the 2013 Excellence.Gov Finalist for Innovation, and the 2013 ComputerWorld Honors Laureate for Innovation. [30 mins] Getting Value from Big Data Variety Richard Tomlinson, Director, Product Management, Oracle Big data variety implies big data complexity. Performing analytics on diverse data typically involves mashing up structured, semi-structured and unstructured content. So how can we do this effectively to get real value? How do we relate diverse content so we can start to analyze it? This session looks at how we approach this tricky problem using Endeca Information Discovery. [30 mins] How To Leverage Your Investment In Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Within a Big Data Architecture Oracle ACE Director Kevin McGinley More and more organizations are realizing the value Big Data technologies contribute to the return on investment in Analytics. But as an increasing variety of data types reside in different data stores, organizations are finding that a unified Analytics layer can help bridge the divide in modern data architectures. This session will examine how you can enable Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to play a role in a unified Analytics layer and the benefits and use cases for doing so. [30 mins] Oracle Data Integrator 12c As Your Big Data Data Integration Hub Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman Oracle Data Integrator 12c (ODI12c), as well as being able to integrate and transform data from application and database data sources, also has the ability to load, transform and orchestrate data loads to and from Big Data sources. In this session, we'll look at ODI12c's ability to load data from Hadoop, Hive, NoSQL and file sources, transform that data using Hive and MapReduce processing across the Hadoop cluster, and then bulk-load that data into an Oracle Data Warehouse using Oracle Big Data Connectors. We will also look at how ODI12c enables ETL-offloading to a Hadoop cluster, with some tips and techniques on real-time capture into a Hadoop data reservoir and techniques and limitations when performing ETL on big data sources. [90 mins] Register now!

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• Lambda&rsquo;s for .NET made easy&hellip;

  - by mbcrump

  The purpose of my blog is to explain things for a beginner to intermediate c# programmer. I’ve seen several blog post that use lambda expressions always assuming the audience is familiar with them. The purpose of this post is to make them simple and easily understood. Let’s begin with a definition. A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements, and can be used to create delegates or expression tree types. So anonymous function… delegates or expression tree types? I don’t get it??? Confused yet?   Lets break this into a few definitions and jump right into the code. anonymous function – is an "inline" statement or expression that can be used wherever a delegate type is expected. delegate - is a type that references a method. Once a delegate is assigned a method, it behaves exactly like that method. The delegate method can be used like any other method, with parameters and a return value. Expression trees - represent code in a tree-like data structure, where each node is an expression, for example, a method call or a binary operation such as x < y.   Don’t worry if this still sounds confusing, lets jump right into the code with a simple 3 line program. We are going to use a Function Delegate (all you need to remember is that this delegate returns a value.) Lambda expressions are used most commonly with the Func and Action delegates, so you will see an example of both of these. Lambda Expression 3 lines. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myfunc = x => x *x;             Console.WriteLine(myfunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Is equivalent to Old way of doing it. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }            static int myFunc(int x)          {              return x * x;            }       } } In the example, there is a single parameter, x, and the expression is x*x. I’m going to stop here to make sure you are still with me. A lambda expression is an unnamed method written in place of a delegate instance. In other words, the compiler converts the lambda expression to either a : A delegate instance An expression tree All lambda have the following form: (parameters) => expression or statement block Now look back to the ones we have created. It should start to sink in. Don’t get stuck on the => form, use it as an identifier of a lambda. A Lamba expression can also be written in the following form: Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myFunc = x =>             {                 return x * x;             };               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } This form may be easier to read but consumes more space. Lets try an Action delegate – this delegate does not return a value. Action Delegate example. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => { Console.WriteLine(x); };             myAction("michael has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lambdas can also capture outer variables (such as the example below) A lambda expression can reference the local variables and parameters of the method in which it’s defined. Outer variables referenced by a lambda expression are called captured variables. Capturing Outer Variables using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             string mike = "Michael";             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => {                 Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}", mike, x);          };             myAction(" has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lamba’s can also with a strongly typed list to loop through a collection.   Used w a strongly typed list. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             List<string> list = new List<string>() { "1", "2", "3", "4" };             list.ForEach(s => Console.WriteLine(s));             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Outputs: 1 2 3 4 I think this will get you started with Lambda’s, as always consult the MSDN documentation for more information. Still confused? Hopefully you are not.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Sberbank of Russia

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummarySberbank of Russia is the largest credit institution in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), accounting for 27% of Russian banking assets and 26% of Russian banking capital.Sberbank of Russia needed to increase business efficiency and employee productivity due to the growth in its corporate clientele from 1.2 million to an estimated 1.6 million.Sberbank of Russia deployed Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications to create a single client view, optimize client communication, improve efficiency, and automate distressed asset processing. Based on Oracle WebCenter Content, they implemented an enterprise content management system for documents, unstructured content storage and search, which became an indispensable service across the organization and in the board room business results. Sberbank of Russia consolidated borrower information across the entire organization into a single repository to obtain, for the first time, a single view on the bank’s borrowers. With the implemented solution they reducing the amount of bad debt significantly. Company OverviewSberbank of Russia is the largest credit institution in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), accounting for 27% of Russian banking assets and 26% of Russian banking capital. In 2010, it ranked 43rd in the world for Tier 1 capital. Business ChallengesSberbank of Russia needed to increase business efficiency and employee productivity due to the growth in its corporate clientele from 1.2 million to an estimated 1.6 million. It also wanted to automate distressed asset management to reduce the number of corporate clients’ bad debts. As part of their business strategy they wanted to drive high-quality, competitive customer services by simplifying client communication processes and enabling personnel to quickly access client information Solution deployedSberbank of Russia deployed Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications to create a single client view, optimize client communication, improve efficiency, and automate distressed asset processing. Based on Oracle WebCenter Content, they implemented an enterprise content management system for documents, unstructured content storage and search which became an indispensable service across the organization and in the board room business results. Business ResultsSberbank of Russia consolidated borrower information across the entire organization into a single repository to obtain, for the first time, a single view on the bank’s borrowers. They monitored 103,000 client transactions and 32,000 bank cards with credit collection issues (100% of Sberbank’s bad borrowers) reducing the amount of bad debt significantly. “Innovation and client service are the foundation of our business strategy. Oracle’s Siebel CRM applications helped advance our objectives by enabling us to deliver faster, more personalized service while managing and tracking distressed assets.” A.B. Sokolov, Head of Center of Business Administration and Customer Relationship Management, Sberbank of Russia Additional Information Sberbank of Russia Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content Siebel Customer Relationship Management 8.1 Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Edition 11g

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• Alert: It is No Longer 1982, So Why is CRM Still There?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Hot off the heels of Oracle’s recent LinkedIn integration announcement and Oracle Marketing Cloud Interact 2014, the Oracle Social Cloud is preparing for another big event, the CRM Evolution conference and exhibition in NYC. The role of social channels in customer engagement continues to grow, and social customer engagement will be a significant theme at the conference. According to Paul Greenberg, CRM Evolution Conference Chair, author, and Managing Principal at The 56 Group, social channels have become so pervasive that there is no longer a clear reason to make a distinction between “social CRM” and traditional CRM systems. Why not? Because social is a communication hub every bit as vital and used as the phone or email. What makes social different is that if you think of it as a phone, it’s a party line. That means customer interactions are far from secret, and social connections are listening in by the hundreds, hearing whether their friend is having a positive or negative experience with your brand. According to a Mention.com study, 76% of brand mentions are neutral, neither positive nor negative. These mentions fail to get much notice. So think what that means about the remaining 24% of mentions. They’re standing out, because a verdict, about you, is being rendered in them, usually with emotion. Suddenly, where the R of CRM has been lip service and somewhat expendable in the past, “relationship” takes on new meaning, seriousness, and urgency. Remarkably, legions of brands still approach CRM as if it were 1982. Today, brands must provide customer experiences the customer actually likes (how dare they expect such things). They must intimately know not only their customers, but each customer, because technology now makes personalized experiences possible. That’s why the Oracle Social Cloud has been so mission-oriented about seamlessly integrating social with sales, marketing and customer service interactions so the enterprise can have an actionable 360-degree view of the customer. It’s the key to that customer-centricity we hear so much about these days. If you’re attending CRM Evolution, Chris Moody, Director of Product Marketing for the Oracle Marketing Cloud, will show you how unified customer experiences and enhanced customer centricity will help you attract and keep ideal customers and brand advocates (“The Pursuit of Customer-Centricity” Aug 19 at 2:45p ET) And Meg Bear, Group Vice President for the Oracle Social Cloud, will sit on a panel talking about “terms of engagement” and the ways tech can now enhance your interactions with customers (Aug 20 at 10a ET). If you can’t be there, we’ll be doing our live-tweeting thing from the @oraclesocial handle, so make sure you’re a faithful follower. You’ll notice NOBODY is writing about the wisdom of “company-centricity.” Now is the time to bring your customer relationship management into the socially connected age. @mikestilesPhoto: Sue Pizarro, freeimages.com

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• Help writing server script to ban IP's from a list

  - by Chev_603

  I have a VPS that I use as an openvpn and web server. For some reason, my apache log files are filled with thousands of these hack attempts: "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 404 395 These attack attempts fill up 90% of my logs. I think it's a WordPress vulnerability they're looking for. Obviously they are not successful (I don't even have Wordpress on my server), but it's annoying and probably resource consuming as well. I am trying to write a bash script that will do the following: Search the apache logs and grab the offending IP's (even if they try it once), Sort them into a list with each unique IP on a seperate line, And then block them using the IP table rules. I am a bash newb, and so far my script does everything except Step 3. I can manually block the IP's, but that's tedious and besides, this is Linux and it's perfectly capable of doing it for me. I also want the script to be customizable so that I (or anyone else who wants to use it) can change the variables to suit whatever situation I/they may deal with in the future. Here is the script so far: #!/bin/bash ##IP LIST GENERATOR ##Author Chev Young ##Script to search Apache logs and list IP's based on custom filters ## ##Define our variables: DIRECT=~/Script ##Location of script&where to put results/temp files LOGFILE=/var/log/apache2/access.log ## Logfile to search for offenders TEMPLIST=xml_temp ## Temporary file name IP_LIST=ipstoban ## Name of results file FILTER1=xmlrpc ## What are we looking for? (Requests we want to ban) cd $DIRECT if [ ! -f $TEMPLIST ];then touch $TEMPLIST ##Create temp file fi cat $LOGFILE | grep $FILTER1 >> $DIRECT/$TEMPLIST ## Only interested in the IP's, so: sed -e 's/\([0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\).*$/\1/' -e t -e d $DIRECT/$TEMPLIST | sort | uniq > $DIRECT/$IP_LIST rm $TEMPLIST ## Clean temp file echo "Done. Results located at $DIRECT/$IP_LIST" So I need help with the next part of the script, which should ban the IP's (incoming and perhaps outgoing too) from the resulting $IP_LIST file. I don't care if it utilizes UFW or IPTables directly, as long as it bans the IP's. I'd probably run it as a cron task. What I'm having trouble with is understanding how to use line of the result file as a seperate variable to do something like: ufw deny $IP1 $IP2 $IP3, ect Any ideas? Thanks.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Alberta Agriculture and Rural Developmen

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development is a government ministry that works with producers and consumers to create a strong, competitive, and sustainable agriculture and food industry in the province of Alberta, Canada The primary business challenge faced by the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture was that of managing the rapid growth of their information.  They needed to incorporate a system that would work across 22 different divisions within the ministry and deliver an improved and more efficient experience for Desktop, Web and Mobile users, while addressing their regulatory compliance needs as part of the Canadian government. The customer implemented a centralized Enterprise Content Management solution based on Oracle WebCenter Content and developed a strong and repeatable information life cycle management methodology across all their 22 divisions and agencies. With the implemented solution, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development  centrally manages over 20 million documents for 22 divisions and agencies and they have improved time required to find records,  reliability of information, improved speed and accuracy of reporting and data security. Company OverviewAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development is a government ministry that works with producers and consumers to create a strong, competitive, and sustainable agriculture and food industry in the province of Alberta, Canada.  Business ChallengesThe business users were overwhelmed by growth in documents (over 20 million files across 22 divisions and agencies) and it was difficult to find and manage documents and versions. There was a strong need for a personalized easy-to-use, secure and dependable method of managing and consuming content via desktop, Web, and mobile, while improving efficiency and maintaining regulatory compliance by removing the risk of non-uniform approaches to retention and disposition. Solution DeployedAs a first step Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development developed a business case with clear defined business drivers: Reduce time required to find records Locate “lost” records Capture knowledge lost through attrition Increase the ease of retrieval Reduce personal copies Increase reliability of information Improve speed and accuracy of reporting Improve data security The customer implemented a centralized Enterprise Content Management solution based on Oracle WebCenter Content. They used an incremental implementation approach aligned with their divisional and agency structure which allowed continuous process improvement. This led to a very strong and repeatable information life cycle management methodology across all their 22 divisions and agencies. Business ResultsAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development achieved impressive business results: Centrally managing over 20 million files for 22 divisions and agencies Federated model to manage documents in SharePoint and other applications Doing records management for both paper and electronic records Reduced time required to find records Increased the ease of retrieval Increased reliability of information Improved speed and accuracy of reporting Improved data security Additional Information Oracle Open World 2012 Presentation Oracle WebCenter Content

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• Accounting for waves when doing planar reflections

  - by CloseReflector

  I've been studying Nvidia's examples from the SDK, in particular the Island11 project and I've found something curious about a piece of HLSL code which corrects the reflections up and down depending on the state of the wave's height. Naturally, after examining the brief paragraph of code: // calculating correction that shifts reflection up/down according to water wave Y position float4 projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,input.positionWS.y,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,-0.8,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; reflection_disturbance.y=max(-0.15,waveheight_correction+reflection_disturbance.y); My first guess was that it compensates for the planar reflection when it is subjected to vertical perturbation (the waves), shifting the reflected geometry to a point where is nothing and the water is just rendered as if there is nothing there or just the sky: Now, that's the sky reflecting where we should see the terrain's green/grey/yellowish reflection lerped with the water's baseline. My problem is now that I cannot really pinpoint what is the logic behind it. Projecting the actual world space position of a point of the wave/water geometry and then multiplying by -.5f, only to take another projection of the same point, this time with its y coordinate changed to -0.8 (why -0.8?). Clues in the code seem to indicate it was derived with trial and error because there is redundancy. For example, the author takes the negative half of the projected y coordinate (after the w divide): float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; And then does the same for the second point (only positive, to get a difference of some sort, I presume) and combines them: waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; By removing the divide by 2, I see no difference in quality improvement (if someone cares to correct me, please do). The crux of it seems to be the difference in the projected y, why is that? This redundancy and the seemingly arbitrary selection of -.8f and -0.15f lead me to conclude that this might be a combination of heuristics/guess work. Is there a logical underpinning to this or is it just a desperate hack? Here is an exaggeration of the initial problem which the code fragment fixes, observe on the lowest tessellation level. Hopefully, it might spark an idea I'm missing. The -.8f might be a reference height from which to deduce how much to disturb the texture coordinate sampling the planarly reflected geometry render and -.15f might be the lower bound, a security measure.

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• Java Grade Calculator program for class kepp geting the error "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException." [migrated]

  - by user2880621

  this is my first question I've posted. I've used this site to look at other questions to help with similar problems I've had. After some cursory looking I couldn't find quite the answer I was looking for so I decided to finally succumb and create an account. I am fairly new to java, only a few weeks into my first class. Anyway, my project is to create a program which takes any amount of students and their grades, and then assign them a letter grade. The catch is, however, that it is on a sort of curve and the other grades' letter are dependent on the the highest. Anything equal to or 10 points below the best grade is an a, anything 11-20 points below is a b, and so on. I am to use an array, but I get this error when ran "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException." I will go ahead and post my code down below. Thanks for any advice you may be able to give. package grade.calculator; import java.util.Scanner; /** * * @author nichol57 */ public class GradeCalculator { /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in); System.out.println("Enter the number of students"); int number = input.nextInt(); double[]grades = new double [number]; for (int J = number; J >=0; J--) { System.out.println("Enter the students' grades"); grades[J] = input.nextDouble(); } double best = grades[0]; for (int J = 1; J < number; J++) { if (grades[J] >= best){ best = grades[J]; } } for (int J = 0;J < number; J++){ if (grades[J] >= best - 10){ System.out.println("Student " + J + " score is " + grades[J] + " and grade is " + "A"); } else if (grades[J] >= best - 20){ System.out.println("Student " + J + " score is " + grades[J] + " and grade is " + "B"); } else if (grades[J] >= best - 30) { System.out.println("Student " + J + " score is " + grades[J] + " and grade is " + "C"); } else if (grades[J] >= best - 40) { System.out.println("Student " + J + " score is " + grades[J] + " and grade is " + "D"); } else { System.out.println("Student " + J + " score is " + grades[J] + " and grade is " + "F"); } } // end for loop for output }// end main method }

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