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  • Desktop login fails, terminal works

    - by Tobias
    I have a freshly setup 12.04 LTS pc system (120 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD, 16 GiB RAM); since a few days, I can't login to the graphical desktop anymore: there is very short flashing shell window which disappears very quickly, and I'm confronted with the login screen again. I believe there is something about modprobe and vbox, but I can't read it fast enough ... I can login to a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1). It did not help to chown all contents of my home directory to me:my-group, like suggested here. This is what I could find in /var/log, grepping for the date and time (I inserted linebreaks after <my-hostname>; real time values preserved): auth.log: <date> 22:43:01 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_succeed_if(lightdm:auth): requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met by user "tobias" <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session closed for user lightdm <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session opened for user tobias by (uid=0) <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_ck_connector(lightdm:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0 <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session closed for user tobias <date> 22:43:09 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm:session): session opened for user lightdm by (uid=0) <date> 22:43:09 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_ck_connector(lightdm:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0 <date> 22:43:10 <my-hostname> lightdm: pam_succeed_if(lightdm:auth): requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met by user "tobias" <date> 22:43:10 <my-hostname> dbus[756]: [system] Rejected send message, 2 matched rules; type="method_call", sender="1:43" (uid=104 pid=1639 comm="/usr/lib/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-ser") interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" error name="(unset)" requested_reply="0" destination=":1.15" (uid=0 pid=1005 comm="/usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon --no-daemon ") kern.log: <date> 22:43:00 <my-hostname> kernel: [ 16.084525] eth0: no IPv6 routers present syslog: <date> 22:43:00 <my-hostname> kernel: [ 16.084525] eth0: no IPv6 routers present <date> 22:43:01 <my-hostname> ntpdate[1492]: adjust time server 91.189.94.4 offset -0.162831 sec <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> acpid: client 969[0:0] has disconnected <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> acpid: client connected from 1553[0:0] <date> 22:43:08 <my-hostname> acpid: 1 client rule loaded I have Virtualbox and Truecrypt installed, but I can't think of a reason why they might prevent a graphical login. I'm confused: What is this about requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met? I do login using a password, and the password works ok when logging in to a terminal! Can I somehow read the error output, e.g. by delaying it, redirecting it to a file, or having the system prompt me for pressing a key? Has possibly any recent update caused my problem? Should I install the pending updates? How, btw, without access to the graphical UI? I have some working knowledge about the Linux shell, but I'm new to Ubuntu. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • maintaining a growing, diverse codebase with continuous integration

    - by Nate
    I am in need of some help with philosophy and design of a continuous integration setup. Our current CI setup uses buildbot. When I started out designing it, I inherited (well, not strictly, as I was involved in its design a year earlier) a bespoke CI builder that was tailored to run the entire build at once, overnight. After a while, we decided that this was insufficient, and started exploring different CI frameworks, eventually choosing buildbot. One of my goals in transitioning to buildbot (besides getting to enjoy all the whiz-bang extras) was to overcome some of the inadequacies of our bespoke nightly builder. Humor me for a moment, and let me explain what I have inherited. The codebase for my company is almost 150 unique c++ Windows applications, each of which has dependencies on one or more of a dozen internal libraries (and many on 3rd party libraries as well). Some of these libraries are interdependent, and have depending applications that (while they have nothing to do with each other) have to be built with the same build of that library. Half of these applications and libraries are considered "legacy" and unportable, and must be built with several distinct configurations of the IBM compiler (for which I have written unique subclasses of Compile), and the other half are built with visual studio. The code for each compiler is stored in two separate Visual SourceSafe repositories (which I am simply handling using a bunch of ShellCommands, as there is no support for VSS). Our original nightly builder simply took down the source for everything, and built stuff in a certain order. There was no way to build only a single application, or pick a revision, or to group things. It would launched virtual machines to build a number of the applications. It wasn't very robust, it wasn't distributable. It wasn't terribly extensible. I wanted to be able to overcame all of these limitations in buildbot. The way I did this originally was to create entries for each of the applications we wanted to build (all 150ish of them), then create triggered schedulers that could build various applications as groups, and then subsume those groups under an overall nightly build scheduler. These could run on dedicated slaves (no more virtual machine chicanery), and if I wanted I could simply add new slaves. Now, if we want to do a full build out of schedule, it's one click, but we can also build just one application should we so desire. There are four weaknesses of this approach, however. One is our source tree's complex web of dependencies. In order to simplify config maintenace, all builders are generated from a large dictionary. The dependencies are retrieved and built in a not-terribly robust fashion (namely, keying off of certain things in my build-target dictionary). The second is that each build has between 15 and 21 build steps, which is hard to browse and look at in the web interface, and since there are around 150 columns, takes forever to load (think from 30 seconds to multiple minutes). Thirdly, we no longer have autodiscovery of build targets (although, as much as one of my coworkers harps on me about this, I don't see what it got us in the first place). Finally, aformentioned coworker likes to constantly bring up the fact that we can no longer perform a full build on our local machine (though I never saw what that got us, either, considering that it took three times as long as the distributed build; I think he is just paranoically phobic of ever breaking the build). Now, moving to new development, we are starting to use g++ and subversion (not porting the old repository, mind you - just for the new stuff). Also, we are starting to do more unit testing ("more" might give the wrong picture... it's more like any), and integration testing (using python). I'm having a hard time figuring out how to fit these into my existing configuration. So, where have I gone wrong philosophically here? How can I best proceed forward (with buildbot - it's the only piece of the puzzle I have license to work on) so that my configuration is actually maintainable? How do I address some of my design's weaknesses? What really works in terms of CI strategies for large, (possibly over-)complex codebases?

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  • SQL SERVER – Performance Tuning Resolution

    - by pinaldave
    This blog post is written in response to T-SQL Tuesday hosted by MidnightDBAs. Taking resolutions is such an interesting subject. I think just like records, these are broken way more often. I find this is the funniest thing as we all take resolutions every year but not every year, we can manage to keep them. Well, does it mean we should not take resolutions? In fact I support resolutions. Every year, I take a resolution that I will strive reduce my body weight and I usually manage to keep eating healthy till the end of January. When February begins, I begin to loose focus from my goal and as March starts, the “As usual” eating habits begin. Looking at the positive side, what would happen if every year I do not eat healthy in January, I think that might cause terrible consequences to my health in the long run. So keeping resolutions is a good practise and following them to the extent one can is commendable. Let us come back to the world of SQL Server. What is my resolution for year 2011 for SQL Server? There are many, I am going to list three of very important resolutions that I have taken this new year over here. To understand SQL Server Performance Tuning at a deeper Level I think I am already half way through. I have been being very much busy during any given month doing hands-on performance tuning for at least 12 days on an average. That means, I am doing this activity for almost doing 2 weeks a month. I believe that I have a good understanding of the subject. Note that the word that I have used is “good,” and not “best.” There are often cases when I am stumped, and I have no clue of what to do next. Then, I usually go for my “trial and error” method - whichever method works, I make sure to keep a note on my blog. My goal is that I should never ever go for the trial and error method again to achieve the same solution. I should know the solution right away when I see the problem. I do understand that Performance Tuning can be a strange animal at times and one cannot guess the right step every time. However, aiming a high goal never hurts and I am going to learn more and more in this focused area. Going further from Basic BI understanding I do fairly decent with BI concepts. I know the nbasics of SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, PowerPivot and SharePoint (and few other things MDS, StreamInsight, etc). However, I still consider myself as a beginner. I do not have hands-on experience like many other BI Gurus around. I think I want to take my learning further in this direction. I do not want to be a BI expert as the first step but the goal is to move ahead from basic level towards an advanced level. I am going to start presenting in User Group Sessions and other places on this subject. When I have to prepare new subject for presentations, I think I force myself to learn more. I am committed to learn a bit more in this direction. Learning new features SQL Server 2011 Denali This is new thing from “Microsoft” for all the SQL Geeks. I am eagerly waiting for final product later this year and I am planning to learn it well. I think if I follow my above two goals, I think this goal will be automatically covered. I am eager and excited for this new offering from Microsoft. I guess, these are my resolutions; may be next year about the same time, I must revisit this post and see how much successful I am in following my goal. On a lighter note, I am particularly fan of following cartoon strip (Courtesy: Calvin and Hobbes). I think when we cannot resolve our resolutions, we tend to act like Calvin. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • T-SQL in Chicago – the LobsterPot teams with DataEducation

    - by Rob Farley
    In May, I’ll be in the US. I have board meetings for PASS at the SQLRally event in Dallas, and then I’m going to be spending a bit of time in Chicago. The big news is that while I’m in Chicago (May 14-16), I’m going to teach my “Advanced T-SQL Querying and Reporting: Building Effectiveness” course. This is a course that I’ve been teaching since the 2005 days, and have modified over time for 2008 and 2012. It’s very much my most popular course, and I love teaching it. Let me tell you why. For years, I wrote queries and thought I was good at it. I was a developer. I’d written a lot of C (and other, more fun languages like Prolog and Lisp) at university, and then got into the ‘real world’ and coded in VB, PL/SQL, and so on through to C#, and saw SQL (whichever database system it was) as just a way of getting the data back. I could write a query to return just about whatever data I wanted, and that was good. I was better at it than the people around me, and that helped. (It didn’t help my progression into management, then it just became a frustration, but for the most part, it was good to know that I was good at this particular thing.) But then I discovered the other side of querying – the execution plan. I started to learn about the translation from what I’d written into the plan, and this impacted my query-writing significantly. I look back at the queries I wrote before I understood this, and shudder. I wrote queries that were correct, but often a long way from effective. I’d done query tuning, but had largely done it without considering the plan, just inferring what indexes would help. This is not a performance-tuning course. It’s focused on the T-SQL that you read and write. But performance is a significant and recurring theme. Effective T-SQL has to be about performance – it’s the biggest way that a query becomes effective. There are other aspects too though – such as using constructs better. For example – I can write code that modifies data nicely, but if I haven’t learned about the MERGE statement and the way that it can impact things, I’m missing a few tricks. If you’re going to do this course, a good place to be is the situation I was in a few years before I wrote this course. You’re probably comfortable with writing T-SQL queries. You know how to make a SELECT statement do what you need it to, but feel there has to be a better way. You can write JOINs easily, and understand how to use LEFT JOIN to make sure you don’t filter out rows from the first table, but you’re coding blind. The first module I cover is on Query Execution. Take a look at the Course Outline at Data Education’s website. The first part of the first module is on the components of a SELECT statement (where I make you think harder about GROUP BY than you probably have before), but then we jump straight into Execution Plans. Some stuff on indexes is in there too, as is simplification and SARGability. Some of this is stuff that you may have heard me present on at conferences, but here you have me for three days straight. I’m sure you can imagine that we revisit these topics throughout the rest of the course as well, and you’d be right. In the second and third modules we look at a bunch of other aspects, including some of the T-SQL constructs that lots of people don’t know, and various other things that can help your T-SQL be, well, more effective. I’ve had quite a lot of people do this course and be itching to get back to work even on the first day. That’s not a comment about the jokes I tell, but because people want to look at the queries they run. LobsterPot Solutions is thrilled to be partnering with Data Education to bring this training to Chicago. Visit their website to register for the course. @rob_farley

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  • TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors

    - by RoyOsherove
    A month or so ago, Microsoft Israel started sending out emails to its partners and registered event users to “Save the date!” – Micraoft Teched Israel is coming, and it’s going to be this november! “Great news” I thought to myself. I’d been to a couple of the MS teched events, as a speaker and as an attendee, and it was lovely and professionally done. Israel is an amazing place for technology and development and TechEd hosted some big names in the world of MS software. A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to hear from a couple of people that Microsoft Israel plans to only accept non-MS teched speakers, only from sponsors of the event. That means that according to the amount that you have paid, you get to insert one or more of your own selected speakers as part of teched. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to gather more evidence of this, and have gotten some input from within MS about this information. It looks like that is indeed the case, though no MS rep. was prepared to answer any email I had publicly. If they approach me now I’d be happy to print their response. What does this mean? If this is true, it means that Microsoft Israel is making a grave mistake – They are diluting the quality of the speakers for pure money factors. That means, that as a teched attendee, who paid good money, you might be sitting down to watch nothing more that a bunch of infomercials, or sub-standard speakers – since speakers are no longer selected on quality or interest in their topic. They are turning the conference from a learning event to a commercial driven event They are closing off the stage to the community of speakers who may not be associated with any organization  willing to be a sponsor They are losing speakers (such as myself) who will not want to be part of such an event. (yes – even if my company ends up sponsoring the event, I will not take part in it, Sorry Eli!) They are saying “F&$K you” to the community of MVPs who should be the people to be approached first about technical talks (my guess is many MVPs wouldn’t want to talk at an event driven that way anyway ) I do hope this ends up not being true, but it looks like it is. MS Israel had already done such a thing with the Developer Days event previouly held in Israel – only sponsors were allowed to insert speakers into the event. If this turns out to be true I would urge the MS community in Israel to NOT TAKE PART AT THIS EVENT in any form (attendee, speaker, sponsor or otherwise). by taking part, you will be telling MS Israel it’s OK to piss all over the community that they are quietly suffocating anyway. The MVP case MS Israel has managed to screw the MVP program as well. MS MVPs (I’m one) have had a tough time here in Israel the past couple of years. ever since yosi taguri left the blue badge ranks, there was not real community leader left. Whoever runs things right now has their eyes and minds set elsewhere, with the software MVP community far from mind and heart. No special MVP events (except a couple of small ones this year). No real MVP leadership happens here, with the MVP MEA lead (Ruari) being on a remote line, is not really what’s needed. “MVP? What’s that?” I’m sure many MS Israel employees would say. Exactly my point. Last word I’ve been disappointed by the MS machine for a while now, but their slowness to realize what real community means in the past couple of years really turns me off. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing people at MS Israel begging for a room to host the Agile Israel user group. Maybe it’s time to say a big bye bye and start looking at a life a bit more disconnected.

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  • Upgrading from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 in Visual Studio 2010 and VS2008.

    - by Sam Abraham
    With MVC2 officially released, I was involved in a few conversations regarding the feasibility of upgrading existing MVC 1.0 projects to quickly leverage the newly introduced MVC features. Luckily, Microsoft has proactively addressed this question for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 and many online resources discussing the upgrade process are a "Bing/Google Search" away. As I will happen to be speaking about MVC2 and Visual Studio 2010 at the Ft Lauderdale ArcSig .Net User Group Meeting on April 20th 2010 (Check http://www.fladotnet.com for more info.), I decided to include a quick demo on upgrading the NerdDinner project (which I consider the "Hello MVC World" project) from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 using Visual studio 2010 to demonstrate how simple the upgrade process is. In the next few lines, I will be briefly touching on upgrading to MVC2 for Visual Studio 2008 then discussing, in more detail, the upgrade process using Visual Studio 2010 while highlighting the advantage of its multi-targeting support. Using Visual Studio 2008 SP1 For upgrading to MVC2 Using VS2008 SP1, a Microsoft White Paper [1] presents two approaches:  1- Using a provided automated upgrade tool, 2-Manually upgrading the project. I personally prefer using the automated tool although it comes with an "AS IS" disclaimer. For those brave souls, or those who end up with no luck using the tool, detailed manual upgrade steps are also provided as a second option. Backing up the project in question is a must regardless of which route one would take to upgrade. Using Visual Studio 2010 Life is much easier for developers who already adopted Visual Studio 2010. Simply opening the MVC 1.0 solution file brings up the upgrade wizard as shown in figures 1, 2, 3 and 4. As we proceed with the upgrade process, the wizard requests confirmation on whether we choose to upgrade our target framework version to .Net 4.0 or keep the existing .Net 3.5 (Figure 5). VS2010 does a good job with multi-targeting where we can still develop .Net 3.5 applications while leveraging all the new bells and whistles that VS2010 brings to the table (Multi-targeting enables us to develop with as early as .Net 2.0 in VS2010) Figure 1 - Open Solution File Using VS2010   Figure 2 - VS2010 Conversion Wizard Figure 3- Ready To Convert To VS2010 Confirmation Screen Figure 4 - VS2010 Solution Conversion Progress Figure 5 - Confirm Target Framework Upgrade In an attempt to make my demonstration realistic, I decided to opt to keep the project targeted to the .Net 3.5 Framework.  After the successful completion of the conversion process,  a quick sanity check revealed that the NerdDinner project is still targeted to the .Net 3.5 framework as shown in figure 6. Inspecting the Web.Config revealed that the MVC DLL version our code compiles against has been successfully upgraded to 2.0 (Figure 7) and hence we should now be able to leverage the newly introduced features in MVC2 and VS2010 with no effort or time invested on modifying existing code. Figure 6- Confirm Target Framework Remained .Net 3.5  Figure 7 - Confirm MVC DLL Version Has Been Upgraded In Conclusion, Microsoft has empowered developers with the tools necessary to quickly and seamlessly upgrade their MVC solutions to the newly released MVC2. The multi-targeting feature in Visual Studio 2010 enables us to adopt this latest and greatest development tool while supporting development in as early as .Net 2.0. References 1. "Upgrading an ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Application to ASP.NET MVC 2" http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/aspnet-mvc2-upgrade-notes

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  • ALC889 - GA-P55-UD4 -no sound - Ubuntu 11.10

    - by george
    I have computer with a Gigabyte P55A-UD4 motherboard. I have on-board audio - Realtek ALC889. I am using Ubuntu 11.10 and have no sound. please please heeeelp :). i have tryed to install high definition audio codecs from realtek but it doesn't work. in bios the azalia codec is turned on. ps : sorry for my english. 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 12) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 12) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06) 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev 06) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB Universal Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev a6) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 220] (rev a2) 01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) 03:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 03) 03:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 03) 04:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 91a3 (rev 11) 05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) 06:03.0 IDE interface: Integrated Technology Express, Inc. IT8213 IDE Controller 06:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) 3f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) 3f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) 3f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) 3f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) 3f:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) 3f:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) aplay -l karta 0: Intel [HDA Intel], urzadzenie 0: ALC889 Analog [ALC889 Analog] Urzadzenia podrzedne: 1/1 Urzadzenie podrzedne #0: subdevice #0 karta 0: Intel [HDA Intel], urzadzenie 1: ALC889 Digital [ALC889 Digital] Urzadzenia podrzedne: 1/1 Urzadzenie podrzedne #0: subdevice #0 karta 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], urzadzenie 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Urzadzenia podrzedne: 1/1 Urzadzenie podrzedne #0: subdevice #0 karta 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], urzadzenie 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Urzadzenia podrzedne: 1/1 Urzadzenie podrzedne #0: subdevice #0 karta 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], urzadzenie 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Urzadzenia podrzedne: 1/1 Urzadzenie podrzedne #0: subdevice #0 karta 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], urzadzenie 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Urzadzenia podrzedne: 1/1 Urzadzenie podrzedne #0: subdevice #0

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  • My Experience at Oracle !!! By Ayush Gupta

    - by Nadiya
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Hi! My name is Ayush, a Gratuate from BITS Pilani and now working and living in Bangalore. I joined Oracle in August 2013 as a Senior Consultant (SC) and would like to share my experiences over the first couple of months with you.It has been a wonderful journey so far. The last two months have been very exciting for me. First of all I would like to mention that the training program at Oracle that we went through really prepared us well. It matured us and allowed us to go from developing small applications in college to big enterprise products. Two months of initial training has had a lasting impact for me. I am also really enjoying the knowledge I have gained so far and also learning new things in the form of product training. It's really fun to work here. We are treated like adults and we are responsible for our own workloads.With that I can't keep from mentioning the fun times we as a team have in the form of Young Leadership programme in Hotel Fortune Trinity which included Luxurious buffet lunch too. Wishing it could happen more frequently.  Oracle provides one of the best opportunities to learn various technologies across different platforms. What I like best about working at Oracle is the work life balance. With the option of flexible timings, one can easily enjoy planned evenings with friends or maybe working out at the fitness centre in your building. Be it the birthday celebrations at office or the day long team outing at a resort, It’s all together a different experience. Overall, you get to take full ownership of your project and they give you a free leash on how you design your enhancements/changes.As one of the largest international companies, Oracle is obviously an expert on exploring the potential and possibility of inexperienced new hires. We were taught how to make an outstanding team work in a group training session at the first few weeks. From this experience I realized that perfect cooperation is not about where you come from or what your study background is, everyone can find his or her own role to support the team. Even though I am not that skilled in technology, my background has significantly helped me in learning new technologies in Oracle.My idea and suggestion is: for new joiners, the will to learn is be more important than what you have learnt before. Colleagues here at Oracle are professionals in their field, always friendly and glad to help. So don’t worry, all you need to do is just be confident, and have a nice attitude, Oracle will let you fully display your talent. Come and join us, here you can always find a tailor made role for you! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment

    - by Bill Evjen
    This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had the MTV revolution of TV. It has created shorter attention spans, it made us more materialistic, narcissistic, and not easily impressed. Then we came to the Internet. The amount of content has expanded. It contains a ton of user-generated content, provides filtering, organization, distribution. We now have a problem. We are in the age of digital excess. We can access whatever we want. In conjunction with this – we are moving. The challenge we have now is curation. The trends  we see: rapid shift from scheduled to on demand consumption. A move to Internet protocols from cable Rapid fragmentation of media a transition from the TV set to a variety of screens Social connections bring mediators and amplifiers. TiVo – the shift to on demand It is because of a time-crunch Provides personal experiences Once old consumption habits are changed, there is no way back! Experiences are that people are loading up content and then bringing it with them on planes, to hotels, etc. Rapid fragmentation of media sources Many new professional content sources and channels, the rise of digital distribution, and the rise of user-generated content contribute to the wealth of content sources and abundant choice. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, hulu, Pandora, iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Voddler, Spotify (these companies didn’t exist 5 years ago). People now expect this kind of consumption. People are now thinking how to deliver all these tools. Transition from the TV set to multi-screens The TV screen has traditionally been the dominant consumption screen for TV and video. Now the PC, game consoles, and various mobile devices are rapidly becoming common video devices. Multi-screens are now the norm. Social connections becoming key mediators What increasingly funnels traffic on the web, social networking enablers, will become an integral part of the discovery, consumption and sharing model for Television. The revolution will be broadcasted on Facebook and Twitter. There is business disruption There are a lot of new entrants Rapid internationalization Increasing competition from existing media players A fragmenting audience base Web browser Freedom to access any site The fight over the walled garden Most devices are not powerful enough to support a full browser PC will always be present in the living room Wireless link between PC and TV Output 1080p, plays anything, secure Key players and their challenges Services Internet media is increasingly interconnected to social media and publicly shared UGC Content delivery moving to IPTV Rights management issues are creating silos and hindering a great user experience and growth Devices Devices are becoming people’s windows into all kinds of media from all kinds of sources There won’t be a consolidation of the device landscape, rather the opposite Finding the right niche makes the most sense. We are moving to an on demand world of streaming world. People want full access to anything.

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  • Apps UX Unveils New Face of Fusion at OpenWorld 2012

    - by Kathy.Miedema
    By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience The Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team is getting ready to unveil the new face of Oracle Fusion Applications at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco next week. Photos by Martin Taylor, Oracle Applications User ExperienceJeremy Ashley, Vice President of Oracle Applications User Experience, shows the new face of Fusion Applications to a group of trainers at Oracle’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. Our team spent the past 6 months working on this project, which embraces simplicity with a modern, productive user experience that aims to help our applications customers rapidly scale deployment of essential self-service tasks and speed adoption by users who need quick access to do quick-entry tasks. We have spent the week before OpenWorld at Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, conducting training sessions with Fusion UX Advocates (FXA), Oracle UX Sales Ambassadors (SAMBA), and members of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB). We showed the new face of Fusion to customers, partners, ACE Directors, and people from our own sales organization. Next week during OpenWorld, they will be showing demos alongside our team members. To find them, look for the Usable Apps t-shirt, with this artwork: You can also get a look at the new face of Fusion during OpenWorld at the following sessions and demopods: GEN9433 - General Session: Oracle Fusion Applications—Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap Presenter: Chris Leone, Senior Vice President, Oracle Monday, Oct. 1, 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. in Moscone West 2002/2004 AND Wednesday, Oct. 3, 10:1 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. in Moscone West 2002/2004 CON9407 - Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management: Overview/Strategy/Customer Experiences/Roadmap Presenter: Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President, Oracle Monday, Oct. 1, 3:15 – 4:15 p.m. in Moscone West 2008 CON9438 - Oracle Fusion Applications: Transforming Insight into Action Presenters: Jeremy Ashley, Vice President Applications User Experience, Oracle; Katie Candland, Director Applications User Experience, Oracle; Basheer Khan, founder and CEO of Innowave Technology, an Oracle ACE Director for both Fusion Middleware and Applications, and a Fusion UX Advocate Tuesday, Oct. 2, 10:15 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. in Moscone West 2007 CON9467 - Oracle’s Roadmap to a Simple, Modern User Experience Presenter: Jeremy Ashley, Vice President Applications User Experience, Oracle Wednesday, Oct. 3, 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. in Moscone West 3002/3004 On the demogrounds: Come to the Apps UX pods for a look at enterprise applications on mobile devices such as smart phones and the iPad, and stay for a demo of the new face of Oracle Fusion Applications. Our demopods will also feature some of the cutting-edge tools in Oracle’s arsenal of usability evaluation methods. The Exhibition Hall at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 will be open Monday through Wednesday, Oct. 1-3. The demogrounds for Oracle Applications are located on the lower level of Moscone West in San Francisco. Hours for the Exhibition Hall are: · Monday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. · Tuesday, 9:45 a.m. to 6 p.m. · Wednesday, 9:45 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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  • Inside Red Gate - Experimenting In Public

    - by Simon Cooper
    Over the next few weeks, we'll be performing experiments on SmartAssembly to confirm or refute various hypotheses we have about how people use the product, what is stopping them from using it to its full extent, and what we can change to make it more useful and easier to use. Some of these experiments can be done within the team, some within Red Gate, and some need to be done on external users. External testing Some external testing can be done by standard usability tests and surveys, however, there are some hypotheses that can only be tested by building a version of SmartAssembly with some things in the UI or implementation changed. We'll then be able to look at how the experimental build is used compared to the 'mainline' build, which forms our baseline or control group, and use this data to confirm or refute the relevant hypotheses. However, there are several issues we need to consider before running experiments using separate builds: Ideally, the user wouldn't know they're running an experimental SmartAssembly. We don't want users to use the experimental build like it's an experimental build, we want them to use it like it's the real mainline build. Only then will we get valid, useful, and informative data concerning our hypotheses. There's no point running the experiments if we can't find out what happens after the download. To confirm or refute some of our hypotheses, we need to find out how the tool is used once it is installed. Fortunately, we've applied feature usage reporting to the SmartAssembly codebase itself to provide us with that information. Of course, this then makes the experimental data conditional on the user agreeing to send that data back to us in the first place. Unfortunately, even though this does limit the amount of useful data we'll be getting back, and possibly skew the data, there's not much we can do about this; we don't collect feature usage data without the user's consent. Looks like we'll simply have to live with this. What if the user tries to buy the experiment? This is something that isn't really covered by the Lean Startup book; how do you support users who give you money for an experiment? If the experiment is a new feature, and the user buys a license for SmartAssembly based on that feature, then what do we do if we later decide to pivot & scrap that feature? We've either got to spend time and money bringing that feature up to production quality and into the mainline anyway, or we've got disgruntled customers. Either way is bad. Again, there's not really any good solution to this. Similarly, what if we've removed some features for an experiment and a potential new user downloads the experimental build? (As I said above, there's no indication the build is an experimental build, as we want to see what users really do with it). The crucial feature they need is missing, causing a bad trial experience, a lost potential customer, and a lost chance to help the customer with their problem. Again, this is something not really covered by the Lean Startup book, and something that doesn't have a good solution. So, some tricky issues there, not all of them with nice easy answers. Turns out the practicalities of running Lean Startup experiments are more complicated than they first seem!

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  • Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

    - by Aaronaught
    In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 21, 2011 -- #1049

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Rob Eisenberg(-2-), Gill Cleeren, Colin Eberhardt, Alex van Beek, Ishai Hachlili, Ollie Riches, Kevin Dockx, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), and John Papa. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight 4: Creating useful base classes for your views and viewmodels with PRISM 4" Alex van Beek WP7: "Google Sky on Windows Phone 7" Colin Eberhardt Shoutouts: My friends at SilverlightShow have their top 5 for last week posted: SilverlightShow for Feb 14 - 20, 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: Rob Eisenberg MVVMs Us with Caliburn.Micro! Rob Eisenberg chats with Carl and Richard on .NET Rocks episode 638 about Caliburn.Micro which takes Convention-over-Configuration further, utilizing naming conventions to handle a large number of data binding, validation and other action-based characteristics in your app. Two Caliburn Releases in One Day! Rob Eisenberg also announced that release candidates for both Caliburn 2.0 and Caliburn.Micro 1.0 are now available. Check out the docs and get the bits. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 6) Gill Cleeren has Part 6 of his series on getting ready for the Silverlight Exam up at SilverlightShow.... this time out, Gill is discussing app startup, localization, and using resource dictionaries, just to name a few things. Google Sky on Windows Phone 7 Colin Eberhardt has a very cool WP7 app described where he's using Google Sky as the tile source for Bing Maps, and then has a list of 110 Messier Objects.. interesting astronomical objects that you can look at... all with source! Silverlight 4: Creating useful base classes for your views and viewmodels with PRISM 4 Alex van Beek has some Prism4/Unity MVVM goodness up with this discussion of a login module using View and ViewModel base classes. Windows Phone 7 and WCF REST – Authentication Solutions Ishai Hachlili sent me this link to his post about WCF REST web service and authentication for WP7, and he offers up 2 solutions... from the looks of this, I'm also putting his blog on my watch list WP7Contrib: Isolated Storage Cache Provider Ollie Riches has a complete explanation and code example of using the IsolatedStorageCacheProvider in their WP7Contrib library. Using a ChannelFactory in Silverlight, part two: binary cows & new-born calves Kevin Dockx follows-up his post on Channel Factories with this part 2, expanding the knowledge-base into usin parameters and custom binding with binary encoding, both from reader suggestions. All about UriMapping in WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a post up about URI mappings in WP7 ... what it is, how to enable it in code behind or XAML, then using it either with a hyperlink button or via the NavigationService class... all with code. Passing WP7 Memory Consumption requirements with the Coding4Fun MemoryCounter tool WindowsPhoneGeek's latest is a tutorial on the use of the Memory Counter control from the Coding4Fun toolkit and WP7 Memory consumption. Getting Started With Linq Jesse Liberty gets into LINQ in his Episode 33 of his WP7 'From Scratch' series... looks like a good LINQ starting point, and he's going to be doing a series on it. Linq with Objects In his second post on LINQ, Jesse Liberty is looking at creating a Linq query against a collection of objects... always good stuff, Jesse! Silverlight TV Silverlight TV 62: The Silverlight 5 Triad Unplugged John Papa is joined by Sam George, Larry Olson, and Vijay Devetha (the Silverlight Triad) on this Silverlight TV episode 62 to discuss how the team works together, and hey... they're hiring! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 06, 2011 -- #1042

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mike Taulty, Timmy Kokke, Laurent Bugnion, Arik Poznanski, Deyan Ginev, Deborah Kurata(-2-), Johnny Tordgeman, Roy Dallal, Jaime Rodriguez, Samuel Jack(-2-), James Ashley. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Customizing Silverlight properties for Visual Designers" Timmy Kokke WP7: "Back button press when using webbrowser control in WP7" Jaime Rodriguez Expression Blend: "Blend Bits 21–Importing from Photoshop & Illustrator…" Mike Taulty From SilverlightCream.com: Blend Bits 21–Importing from Photoshop & Illustrator… Mike Taulty is up to 21 episodes on his Blend Bits sequence now, and this one is about using Blend's import capability, such as a .psd file with all the layers intact. Customizing Silverlight properties for Visual Designers Timmy Kokke has part 1 of 2 parts on making your Silverlight control properties in design surfaces such as Visual Studio designer or Expression Blend. An error when installing MVVM Light templates for VS10 Express Laurent Bugnion has released a new version of MVVMLight that resolves a problem with VS2010 Express version of the templates... no problem with anything else. Reading RSS items on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski has a post up about reading RSS on a WP7, but better yet, he also has code for a helper class that you can grab, plus explanation of wiring it up. Integrating your Windows Phone unit tests with MSBuild #4: The WP7 Unit Test Application Deyan Ginev has a post up about Telerik's WP7 test app that outputs test results in XML from the emulator so they can be integrated with the MSBuild log. Accessing Data in a Silverlight Application: EF I apprently missed this post by Deborah Kurata last week on bringing data into your Silverlight app via Entity Frameworks... good detailed tutorial in VB and C#. Updating Data in a Silverlight Application: EF In Deborah Kurata's latest post, she is continuing with Entity Frameworks by demonstrating updating to the database... full source code will be produced in a later post. Fun with Silverlight and SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Control - Part 2 - An In Depth Look At The Ribbon Control Johnny Tordgeman has Part 2 of his Silverlight and Sharepoint 2010 Ribbon up... taking a deep-dive into the ribbon... great explanation of the attributes, code included. Geographic Coordinates Systems Roy Dallal has some Geo code up that's not necessarily Silverlight, but very cool if you're doing any GIS programming... ya gotta know the coordinate systems! Back button press when using webbrowser control in WP7 Jaime Rodriguez has a post up discussing the much-lamented back-button action in the certification requirements and how to deal with that in a web browser app. Multiplayer-enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 1 Samuel Jack challenged himself to build a WP7 game in 3 days... now he's challenging himself to make it multiplayer in 3 days... this first hour-to-hour post is research of networking and an azure server-side solution. Multiplayer-enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 2–Building a UI with XPF Day 2 for Samuel Jack getting the multiplayer portion of his game working in 3 days.. this day involves getting up-to-speed with XPF. How to Hotwire your WP7 Phone Battery Did you realize if you run your WP7 battery completely down that you can't charge it? James Ashley reports that circumstance, and how he resolved it. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Moving the Oracle User Experience Forward with the New Release 7 Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud

    - by mvaughan
    By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User ExperienceIn September 2013, Release 7 for Oracle Cloud Applications became generally available for Oracle Sales Cloud and HCM Cloud. This significant release allowed the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team to finally talk freely about Simplified UI, a user experience project in the works since Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Simplified UI represents the direction that the Oracle user experience – for all of its enterprise applications – is heading. Oracle’s Apps UX team began by building a Simplified UI for sales representatives. You can find that today in Release 7, and it was demoed extensively during OpenWorld 2013 in San Francisco. This screenshot shows how Opportunities appear in the new Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud, a user interface built for sales reps.Analyst Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, saw Simplified UI at Oracle Openworld 2013 and talked about it with CRM Buyer in “Oracle Revs Its Cloud Engines for a Better Customer Experience.” Wettemann said there are distinct themes to the latest release: "One is usability. Oracle Sales Cloud, for example, is designed to have zero training for onboarding sales reps, which it does," she explained. "It is quite impressive, actually -- the intuitive nature of the application and the design work they have done with this goal in mind."The software uses as few buttons and fields as possible, she pointed out. "The sales rep doesn't have to ask, 'what is the next step?' because she can see what it is."In fact, there are three themes driving the usability that Wettemann noted. They are simplicity, mobility, and extensibility, and we write more about them on the Usable Apps web site. These three themes embody the strategy for Oracle’s cloud applications user experiences.  Simplified UI for Oracle Sales CloudIn developing a Simplified UI for Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle’s UX team concentrated on the tasks that sales reps need to do most frequently, and are most important. “Knowing that the majority of their work lives are spent on the road and on the go, they need to be able to quickly get in and qualify and convert their leads, monitor and progress their opportunities, update their customer and contact information, and manage their schedule,” Jeremy Ashley, Vice President of the Applications UX team, said.Ashley said the Apps UX team has a good reason for creating a Simplified UI that focuses on self-service. “Sales people spend the day selling stuff,” he said. “The only reason they use software is because the company wants to track what they’re doing.” Traditional systems of tracking that information include filling in a spreadsheet of leads or sales. Oracle wants to automate this process for the salesperson, and enable that person to keep everyone who needs to know up-to-date easily and quickly. Simplified UI addresses that problem by providing light-touch input.  “It has to be useful to the salesperson,” Ashley said about the Sales Cloud user experience. Simplified UI can tell sales reps about key opportunities, or provide information about a contact in just a click or two. Customer information is accessible quickly and easily with Simplified UI for the Oracle Sales Cloud.Simplified UI for Sales Cloud can also be extended easily, Ashley said. Users usually just need to add various business fields or create and modify analytical reports. The way that Simplified UI is constructed allows extensibility to happen by hiding or showing a few necessary fields. The Settings user interface, starting in release 7, allows for the simple configuration of the most important visual elements. “With Sales cloud, we identified a need to make the application useful and very simple,” Ashley said. Simplified UI meets that need. Where can you find out more?To find out more about the simplified UI and Oracle’s ongoing investment in applications user experience innovations, come to one of our sessions at a user group conference near you. Stay tuned to the Voice of User Experience (VoX) blog – the next post will be about Simplified UI and HCM Cloud.

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  • Site Review: Facebook.com and Blockbuster.com - Navigation Schemes

    After cycling through a list of my favorite sites I decided to select Facebook.com and Blockbuster.com for this  post because I found their navigation schemes very intuitive. Facebook in my opinion took a very simplistic and minimalistic approach when they designed their site and its navigation. For example, when you login to your account you will find on the upper left hand side a generic section of the site common areas to all users like news, messages, events, photos and friends. Below this in a separate navigation menu is a list of applications that a user has elected to access through bookmarks. Finally in the upper right hand corner of the site contains links to administer the user’s account like account settings, public profile, and a link back to the users’ home page. Blockbuster on the other had tried to make site navigation a little more slick by using a menu-submenu approach to navigation where user can click on things like Rent, Buy, On Demand, Games, Stores, and Gifts and a submenu of corresponding items appears below the original menu item. In addition they also took this approach and added categorized lists of movies that they offer on the homepage so that users can click on an item like “DVD Spotlight” and a list of movies represented as actual DVD box cases appear on the user’s screen so they can scroll through the list by using left and right arrows on either side of the images displayed. Both Facebook and Blockbuster have more than one navigation groupings because their respected sites are so large and offer an absorbent amount of features. Because of this reason they have to group the main functionality of information in to logical groups based on their actions they perform and the access to specific information. For example it would not make sense for Facebook to include a particular game you like to play within your account with a section pertaining to account administration. The game link would be completely out of place and really confuse the users experience because the groupings where not logically grouped. In addition I think that Facebook users would benefit if Facebook allowed its users to specify what they want on the general navigation from within their site or at least create a section to show frequently accessed pages or favorite sections. Finally regarding additional navigation, I think blockbuster users really benefit from the submenu system of categorizing data, and if fact Blockbuster even allows them to refine the information they are looking for through the use of secondary submenu systems allowing users to really drill down in to what they are looking for to learn more on. I do not think that having more than one navigation bar on a web page is not confusing for the user. For example if you have a navigation bar at the top of your page and at the bottom will allow users to move around the website easier because they can utilize the navigation closest to where their cursor is on the page. In regards to designers forcing all the navigation in to one navigation bar, I think it would be hard for the user to fully understand what is going on based on the size and complexity of the site they are dealing with. For example Blockbuster has a ton of content that could not easily be put in to one navigation bar. From my experience with both Facebook and Blockbuster, they both do a good job with cross browser compatibility. I have had no issues with either site in IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari over the years. In addition, I do not believe that either Facebook or Blockbuster require any additional plug-in to utilize their navigation bars.

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  • I love it when a plan comes together

    - by DavidWimbush
    I'm currently working on an application so that our Marketing department can produce most of their own mailing lists without my having to get involved. It was all going well until I got stuck on the bit where the actual SQL query is generated but a rummage in Books Online revealed a very clean solution using some constructs that I had previously dismissed as pointless. Typically we want to email every customer who is in any of the following n groups. Experience shows that a group has the following definition: <people who have done A> [(AND <people who have done B>) | (OR <people who have done C>)] [APART FROM <people who have done D>] When doing these by hand I've been using INNER JOIN for the AND, UNION for the OR, and LEFT JOIN + WHERE D IS NULL for the APART FROM. This would produce two quite different queries: -- Old OR select  A.PersonID from  (   -- A   select  PersonID   from  ...   union  -- OR   -- C   select  PersonID   from  ...   ) AorC   left join  -- APART FROM   (   select  PersonID   from  ...   ) D on D.PersonID = AorC.PersonID where  D.PersonID is null -- Old AND select  distinct main.PersonID from  (   -- A   select  PersonID   from  ...   ) A   inner join  -- AND   (   -- B   select  PersonID   from  ...   ) B on B.PersonID = A.PersonID   left join  -- APART FROM   (   select  PersonID   from  ...   ) D on D.PersonID = A.PersonID where  D.PersonID is null But when I tried to write the code that can generate the SQL for any combination of those (along with all the variables controlling what each SELECT did and what was in all the optional bits of each WHERE clause) my brain started to hurt. Then I remembered reading about the (then new to me) keywords INTERSECT and EXCEPT. At the time I couldn't see what they added but I thought I would have a play and see if they might help. They were perfect for this. Here's the new query structure: -- The way forward select  PersonID from  (     (       (       -- A       select  PersonID       from  ...       )       union      -- OR        intersect  -- AND       (       -- B/C       select  PersonID       from  ...       )     )     except     (     -- D     select  PersonID     from  ...     )   ) x I can easily swap between between UNION and INTERSECT, and omit B, C, or D as necessary. Elegant, clean and readable - pick any 3! Sometimes it really pays to read the manual.

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  • Cutting-Edge Demos Coming to Collaborate12

    - by mvaughan
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience Are you building your Collaborate 2012 agenda? Leave room for a stop at the demogrounds while you’re in Las Vegas from April 22-26. In addition to several presentations on the Oracle user experience, the Applications User Experience (UX) team will be on the demo grounds with a new eye-tracking tool, as well as demos that showcase new user experience designs. Check out our cutting-edge technology, which we use to obtain feedback that helps improve the user experience of Oracle applications, and see what our next-generation designs are in the HCM and FIN user experiences.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Photo by Martin Taylor – Oracle Applications User Experience An Apps UX team member demonstrates what happens during an eye-tracking test. The dots on the screen show were test participants were looking and how long they spent at each point in the page. The UX team will also be staffing an on-site lab at Collaborate. At on-site labs, conference participants can sign up to join customer feedback sessions on several different kinds of work flow designs, from HCM to FIN to CRM to mobile. The feedback UX team members collect helps inform and fine-tune the user experiences being designed for next-generation applications. At Collaborate12, for example, user experience designs around Help and organizational charts will be tested for usability. The Apps UX team brings on-site labs to many major user group conferences, including OpenWorld 2012 in October in San Francisco. Stay tuned to find out when our recruiters are ready to sign up participants, or leave a comment below to find out whether an on-site lab will be at your next conference. For information on the following presentations, which will be delivered by Apps UX team members, check the Usable Apps Events page. • The Fusion Applications User Experience: Transforming Work into Insight • Customizations Under the Covers – Making Fusion Applications Your Own • OAUG Fusion Middleware SIG (FMWSIG) • 18 Months with Fusion Applications – Stories From The Trenhes • PeopleTools Tips and Techniques

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  • SQL SERVER – Partition Parallelism Support in expressor 3.6

    - by pinaldave
    I am very excited to learn that there is a new version of expressor’s data integration platform coming out in March of this year.  It will be version 3.6, and I look forward to using it and telling everyone about it.  Let me describe a little bit more about what will be so great in expressor 3.6: Greatly enhanced user interface Parallel Processing Bulk Artifact Upgrading The User Interface First let me cover the most obvious enhancements. The expressor Studio user interface (UI) has had some significant work done. Kudos to the expressor Engineering team; the entire UI is a visual masterpiece that is very responsive and intuitive. The improvements are more than just eye candy; they provide significant productivity gains when developing expressor Dataflows. Operator shape icons now include a description that identifies the function of each operator, instead of having to guess at the function by the icon. Operator shapes and highlighting depict the current function and status: Disabled, enabled, complete, incomplete, and error. Each status displays an appropriate message in the message panel with correction suggestions. Floating or docking property panels provide descriptive tool tips for each property as well as auto resize when adjusting the canvas, without having to search Help or the need to scroll around to get access to the property. Progress and status indicators let you know when an operation is working. “No limit” canvas with snap-to-grid allows automatic sizing and accurate positioning when you have numerous operators in the Dataflow. The inline tool bar offers quick access to pan, zoom, fit and overview functions. Selecting multiple artifacts with a right click context allows you to easily manage your workspace more efficiently. Partitioning and Parallel Processing Partitioning allows each operator to process multiple subsets of records in parallel as opposed to processing all records that flow through that operator in a single sequential set. This capability allows the user to configure the expressor Dataflow to run in a way that most efficiently utilizes the resources of the hardware where the Dataflow is running. Partitions can exist in most individual operators. Using partitions increases the speed of an expressor data integration application, therefore improving performance and load times. With the expressor 3.6 Enterprise Edition, expressor simplifies enabling parallel processing by adding intuitive partition settings that are easy to configure. Bulk Artifact Upgrading Bulk Artifact Upgrading sounds a bit intimidating, but it actually is not and it is a welcome addition to expressor Studio. In past releases, users were prompted to confirm that they wanted to upgrade their individual artifacts only when opened. This was a cumbersome and repetitive process. Now with bulk artifact upgrading, a user can easily select what artifact or group of artifacts to upgrade all at once. As you can see, there are many new features and upgrade options that will prove to make expressor Studio quicker and more efficient.  I hope I’m not the only one who is excited about all these new upgrades, and that I you try expressor and share your experience with me. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • You Probably Already Have a “Private Cloud”

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fan of the word “Cloud”. It’s too marketing-oriented, gimmicky and non-specific. A better definition (in many cases) is “Distributed Computing”. That means that some or all of the computing functions are handled somewhere other than under your specific control. But there is a current use of the word “Cloud” that does not necessarily mean that the computing is done somewhere else. In fact, it’s a vector of Cloud Computing that can better be termed “Utility Computing”. This has to do with the provisioning of a computing resource. That means the setup, configuration, management, balancing and so on that is needed so that a user – which might actually be a developer – can do some computing work. To that person, the resource is just “there” and works like they expect, like the phone system or any other utility. The interesting thing is, you can do this yourself. In fact, you probably already have been, or are now. It’s got a cool new trendy term – “Private Cloud”, but the fact is, if you have your setup automated, the HA and DR handled, balancing and performance tuning done, and a process wrapped around it all, you can call yourself a “Cloud Provider”. A good example here is your E-Mail system. your users – pretty much your whole company – just logs into e-mail and expects it to work. To them, you are the “Cloud” provider. On your side, the more you automate and provision the system, the more you act like a Cloud Provider. Another example is a database server. In this case, the “end user” is usually the development team, or perhaps your SharePoint group and so on. The data professionals configure, monitor, tune and balance the system all the time. The more this is automated, the more you’re acting like a Cloud Provider. Lots of companies help you do this in your own data centers, from VMWare to IBM and many others. Microsoft's offering in this is based around System Center – they have a “cloud in a box” provisioning system that’s actually pretty slick. The most difficult part of operating a Private Cloud is probably the scale factor. In the case of Windows and SQL Azure, we handle this in multiple ways – and we're happy to share how we do it. It’s not magic, and the algorithms for balancing (like the one we started with called Paxos) are well known. The key is the knowledge, infrastructure and people. Sure, you can do this yourself, and in many cases such as top-secret or private systems, you probably should. But there are times where you should evaluate using Azure or other vendors, or even multiple vendors to spread your risk. All of this should be based on client need, not on what you know how to do already. So congrats on your new role as a “Cloud Provider”. If you have an E-mail system or a database platform, you can just put that right on your resume.

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  • Conference networking for the socially awkward

    - by Melanie Townsend
    Do you approach a room full of strangers with excitement at all the new people you’re going to chat to over coffee and a muffin as you swap tales of how you convinced your manager to give you the day “off”? Or, do you find rooms full of strangers intimidating and begin by scouting out a place you can stand quietly and not be in someone’s way until the next session begins? If you’re on the train to extrovert city, that’s great, well done, move along. If, on the other hand, a room full of strangers who all seem to inexplicably know each other already is more challenge than opportunity, then making those connections with other professionals can be more difficult. So, here’s some advice, some gleaned from other things I’ve read online when trying to overcome my own discomfort in large groups (hopefully minus the infuriating condescension), others are just things I’ve found helpful over the years. Start small Smaller groups are less intimidating, and, now that you’ve taken the plunge to show up, it’s harder to remain inconspicuous. I find it’s easier to speak to new people once the option NOT to has been taken away. You’re there now, smile through the awkward and you’ll be forever grateful when the three people you’ve met and gotten to know here are also at that gigantic conference later on (ideally, introducing you to other people). Smile, or at the very least, stop scowling You probably don’t even know you’re doing it. If your resting face doesn’t come across as manically happy, tinge that with some social anxiety and you become one great ball of unapproachable. Normally, I wouldn’t suggest this as a problem that needs fixing, I have personally honed this face to use while travelling alone all the time. However, if you are indeed hoping to meet some useful people and get the most out of this conference, you may need to remind yourself to smile. Prepare some ice breakers This is going to sound stupid, like “no one does this right?” stupid, but, just, trust me a minute. It’s okay to prepare. You don’t need to write word-for-word questions to ask people and practice them in a mirror – that would be strange. I’m suggesting to just have an arsenal of questions to ask people if you get stuck, what session has been your favorite, which ones are you most looking forward to, have you heard X presenter speak before, what did you think of them? Even just thinking about these things in advance can help, and, as a bonus, while the other person is answering it gives you a moment to tamp down that panic, I mean breathe, I mean get to know them. You’re not alone (in the least creepy way possible) See that person in the corner clutching their phone with a mild deer in the headlights look?  That is potentially your new conference buddy. Starting with something along the lines of: I don’t know about you, the sessions here are great but I find the crowds a little tough to deal with. Mind if I park here for a second? is a decent opener. Just walking around and looking at exhibitors (if applicable) is fine, but it’s a little too easy to wander about and not actually speak to anyone if that’s all you’re doing. If joining a group of people talking is too much to start with, one-on-one can be easier. Have goals Are there people in particular you wanted to speak to? Did you have a personal goal of speaking to at least “x” new people? Are you trying to get a contact in a specific company because you want to work with them on something? Does the business have vague goals as well that you may or may not be judged on later? Making specific goals you can accomplish lets you know whether you’ve actually succeeded in your “networking pursuits” or what you need to work on more for next time. Everyone’s got their own coping technique. Some people are able to remind themselves that “humans are fundamentally social creatures” and somehow that helps them, others drink which is not really something I recommend for professional conferences but to each their own, and some focus on the fact that networking can play a big role in their career path. Just do what works for you, and if there’re any tricks you’ve found helpful over the years, please share em.

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 27, 2010 -- #871

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Max Paulousky, Jeff Wilcox, David Anson, René Schulte, Xianzhong Zhu, Jeff Handley, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, and Marlon Grech. Shoutouts: SilverLaw has a great demo at the Expression Gallery, and we're all going to look forward to the blog post explaining it: Flexible Surface Effect SilverLaw> has another use for the above in this text morphing Effect: Morphing Text Effect Matthias Shapiro contributed a chapter for a book on Visualization and it's available as a free download: Free Chapter From Beautiful Visualization Andy Beaulieu has a demo up as almost a spoiler for a future Coding4Fun app... and how cool is this: Shuffleboard: A Windows Phone 7 Sample Game From SilverlightCream.com: Separating Content and Presentation with the ContentControl Phil Middlemiss' latest is out on SilverlightShow and is all about the ContentControl and separating layout and content ... demo project source included Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 1 Max Paulousky has part one of a long series he's starting on a demo project to explain a bunch of MEF, MVVM, and WCF RIA concepts. This first one contains the overview and also discusses SEO. There is a link to the app and material in the post if you read Russian :) Updated Silverlight Unit Test Framework bits for Windows Phone and Silverlight 3 Jeff Wilcox has available updated Unit Test bits for Silverlight 3 -- read that as WP7... read the rest of the information on his post. Easily animate orientation changes for any Windows Phone application with this handy source code David Anson has some code up that you're going to want if you're programming WP7 ... just watch the video ... you'll be downloading the code just like I did :) SilverShader – Introduction to Silverlight and WPF Pixel Shaders René Schulte has a post up at Coding4Fun about PixelShaders... how to write them and an application that uses them... this is a great long tutorial... a must read. Developing Freecell Game Using Silverlight 3 Part 2 Xianzhong Zhu has part 2 of his FreeCell game development posted ... lots of detailed descriptions and code, plus all the code of course! Async Validation with RIA Services Jeff Handley has a post up that is sort of a follow-on to a year-old post on async validation with RIA services and DataForm and how it's all much easier now in SL4. Learning Blend with .toolbox (Silverlight TV #29) John Papa and Arturo Toledo discuss .toolbox in Silverlight TV #29 -- have you made yourself an avatar yet? ... well go get on-board with this great learning tool! Silverlight Out of Browser Dynamic Modules in Offline Mode OOB isn't difficult, dynamic modules can become a bit more, but what if you're OOB... ok what if you're OOB and offline? ... Jeremy Likness has a possible solution for this with an OfflineCatalog. MEFedMVVM v1.0 Explained Marlon Grech has a great into to MEFedMVVM in this post. If you're trying to get your head around MEF and MVVM in either WPF or Silverlight, here's a good starting point. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Welcome 2011

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

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  • Threading Overview

    - by ACShorten
    One of the major features of the batch framework is the ability to support multi-threading. The multi-threading support allows a site to increase throughput on an individual batch job by splitting the total workload across multiple individual threads. This means each thread has fine level control over a segment of the total data volume at any time. The idea behind the threading is based upon the notion that "many hands make light work". Each thread takes a segment of data in parallel and operates on that smaller set. The object identifier allocation algorithm built into the product randomly assigns keys to help ensure an even distribution of the numbers of records across the threads and to minimize resource and lock contention. The best way to visualize the concept of threading is to use a "pie" analogy. Imagine the total workset for a batch job is a "pie". If you split that pie into equal sized segments, each segment would represent an individual thread. The concept of threading has advantages and disadvantages: Smaller elapsed runtimes - Jobs that are multi-threaded finish earlier than jobs that are single threaded. With smaller amounts of work to do, jobs with threading will finish earlier. Note: The elapsed runtime of the threads is rarely proportional to the number of threads executed. Even though contention is minimized, some contention does exist for resources which can adversely affect runtime. Threads can be managed individually – Each thread can be started individually and can also be restarted individually in case of failure. If you need to rerun thread X then that is the only thread that needs to be resubmitted. Threading can be somewhat dynamic – The number of threads that are run on any instance can be varied as the thread number and thread limit are parameters passed to the job at runtime. They can also be configured using the configuration files outlined in this document and the relevant manuals.Note: Threading is not dynamic after the job has been submitted Failure risk due to data issues with threading is reduced – As mentioned earlier individual threads can be restarted in case of failure. This limits the risk to the total job if there is a data issue with a particular thread or a group of threads. Number of threads is not infinite – As with any resource there is a theoretical limit. While the thread limit can be up to 1000 threads, the number of threads you can physically execute will be limited by the CPU and IO resources available to the job at execution time. Theoretically with the objects identifiers evenly spread across the threads the elapsed runtime for the threads should all be the same. In other words, when executing in multiple threads theoretically all the threads should finish at the same time. Whilst this is possible, it is also possible that individual threads may take longer than other threads for the following reasons: Workloads within the threads are not always the same - Whilst each thread is operating on the roughly the same amounts of objects, the amount of processing for each object is not always the same. For example, an account may have a more complex rate which requires more processing or a meter has a complex amount of configuration to process. If a thread has a higher proportion of objects with complex processing it will take longer than a thread with simple processing. The amount of processing is dependent on the configuration of the individual data for the job. Data may be skewed – Even though the object identifier generation algorithm attempts to spread the object identifiers across threads there are some jobs that use additional factors to select records for processing. If any of those factors exhibit any data skew then certain threads may finish later. For example, if more accounts are allocated to a particular part of a schedule then threads in that schedule may finish later than other threads executed. Threading is important to the success of individual jobs. For more guidelines and techniques for optimizing threading refer to Multi-Threading Guidelines in the Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) whitepaper available from My Oracle Support

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  • ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

    - by Levi Morrison
    A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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