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• Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%

  - by Michael Snow

  Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New IT Projects up to 4x Faster, Enables Mobile Service, and Improves Business Agility Oracle Customer: JPL Location:  Uttar Pradesh, India Industry: Media and Entertainment Employees:  10,000 Annual Revenue:  $100 to $500 Million Jagran Prakashan Ltd. (JPL) is one of India's premier media and communications groups with interests spanning print, advertising, event management, and mobile services for weather, cricket scores, and educational activities. It is a major media enterprise, with 300 locations across 15 states. Its impressive stable of print publications includes Dainik Jagran, the world’s most widely read daily newspaper––with a readership of over 55 million––the country’s leading afternoon dailies, and a range of popular local, bilingual, and English language newspapers. JPL was using multiple systems to manage its business processes. Users were resistant to using multiple passwords for various applications, preferring to continue their less efficient, legacy work practices. In addition, there was no single repository for sharing documents across the organization, such as company announcements or project documents. The company relied on e-mail to disseminate up-to-date company information, often missing employees. It was also time-consuming and difficult for managers to track the status of ongoing assignments or projects because collaboration and document sharing was inefficient and ineffective.With diverse businesses and many geographic locations, JPL needed to implement a centralized and user-friendly enterprise portal to improve document sharing and collaboration and increase business agility. The company implemented Oracle WebCenter Portal to create a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve the user experience and increase operating efficiency. It improved staff productivity by 40%, accelerated new IT projects by up to 4x, boosted staff morale, and increased business agility.   Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New Products up to 2x Faster A word from JPL "With Oracle WebCenter Portal, we gained a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal that provided an exceptional user experience and enabled us to engage employees in a collaborative environment. It increased IT staff productivity by 40%, delivered new projects up to 4x faster, and enabled mobile service to improve our business agility.” Sarbani Bhatia, Vice President IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd Before implementing Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL stored project-critical information, such as page planning of daily newspaper editions and the launch of new editions or supplements on individual laptops or in the e-mail system. Collaboration between colleagues was limited to physical meetings, telephone discussions, and e-mail. It was difficult to trace and recover important project documents when a staff member resigned, which represented a significant risk to business continuity. Employees were also averse to multiple passwords and resisted using the systems, affecting staff productivity. With Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL created a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal with business activity streams. The portal allowed users to navigate, discover, and access information, such as advertising rates, requisition approvals, ad-hoc queries, and employee surveys from a single entry point with a single password. Managers can also upload important documents, such as new pricing for advertisers or newspaper distributors, and share them through the information and instruction section in the portal. In addition, managers can now easily track and review timelines for projects online rather than gathering information from meetings and e-mails. The company gained the ability to centrally manage information, ensured business continuity, and improved staff productivity by 40%.“In the media industry, news has a very short shelf life, so speed is crucial. Information delayed is like information lost,” said Sarbani Bhatia, vice president IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd. “Thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s contextual collaboration tools, we can provide and share feedback for new project launches, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster through discussion forums or knowledge groups. Tasks that previously required four months, we now complete in one month.”In addition, the company can broadcast announcements, flash employee birthdays, and promote important events through the message section on the webpage, instead of using the e-mail system. The company can also conduct opinion polls to gauge employee response to organizational issues and improve management decision-making.“With over 10,000 employees across 300 locations, it is critical for management to hear the voice of employees and develop a cohesive organizational culture. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables employees to engage with business processes and systems in a collaborative environment, providing users with an exceptional experience,” Bhatia said. Enables Mobility Access and Increases Business Agility Newspaper advertisements generate the majority of JPL’s revenue. With most sales staff on the move, the company needed to ensure timely approval of print advertisement discounts for specific clients and meet tight publication deadlines.  By integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal seamlessly with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other applications, such as the organizational mass mailing system, business intelligence, and management information system, JPL embedded its approval workflow processes into the enterprise portal and provided users with an integrated and intuitive interface. About 30% of JPL’s sales staff members now have tablets and receive advertising discount approval from managers while in the field and no longer need to return to the office, which has significantly improved efficiency and increased business agility.“Application mobility was critical for sales representatives in the field to meet stringent auditing requirements for online accountability, particularly for our newspaper advertising business. Staff member satisfaction has improved significantly now that the sales team can use tablets to access the portal––a capability we will extend to smart phones in the second stage of the implementation,” Bhatia said. Accelerates Application Development by up to 4x and Cuts Costs by up to 60% With Oracle WebCenter Portal, users can easily create, modify, and upload information to their personalized webpages without IT assistance. By seamlessly integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal with the payroll database, managers can decide which members of their team can access the page and with whom they will share information, a decision based on role or geographical location. A sales representative selling advertising space for a local language daily newspaper, for example, can upload an updated advertising rate relevant only to that particular publication. Users can also easily adapt to the new platform, thanks to its intuitive design and look, reducing the need for training and lowering resistance to using the system.Using Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box reusable components, such as portal pages and templates, provided JPL’s developers with a comprehensive and flexible user experience platform and increased the speed of application development. In less than five months, JPL developed more than 55 workflows. The IT team accelerated deployment of new applications by up to 4x, as they do not need to install them on individual machines now that they have a web-based environment.   “Previously, we would have spent a whole day deploying a new application for each department or location. With a browser-based environment, we have cut costs by up to 60% by reducing deployment time to zero, because our IT team can roll out a new application from a single point, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal,” Bhatia said. Challenges Provide a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve staff productivity and ensure business continuity Enable seamless integration with multiple enterprise applications to improve workflow efficiency—including approval of print advertisement discounts—and increase business agility Improve engagement with employees and enable collaboration to enhance management decision-making Accelerate time-to-market for new services, such as new advertising programs Solutions Oracle Product and ServicesOracle WebCenter Portal 11g Increased staff productivity by 40% and enhanced user satisfaction by enabling employees to easily navigate, discover, and access information from a single, self-service enterprise portal without IT assistance Launched new products, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster by enabling peer collaboration and incorporating feedback generated through discussion forums, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box collaboration tools Accelerated application development up to 4x by enabling developers to optimize reusable components for managing and deploying new applications in a browser-based environment rather than spending one day to install applications for each department, cutting costs by up to 60% Ensured business continuity by enabling managers to easily track and review project timelines online rather than storing important documents on individual laptops or relying on the e-mail system Increased business agility and operational efficiency by seamlessly integrating with the in-house, ERP system and embedding business processes into a single portal Boosted company revenue by enabling sales team members to submit print-advertising discount requests through mobile devices instead of waiting to return to office, ensuring timely approval from managers to meet tight publication deadlines Improved management decision-making by enabling employees to easily share and access feedback through opinion polls or forums, boosting staff morale Introduced the single sign-on capability and enhanced security by enabling managers to decide access level for staff members based on role or geographical location Reduced the need for staff training and minimized user resistance to systems by providing a dynamic and intuitive user experience Why Oracle JPL did not consider other products because the company was already using Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition with Real Application Clusters and had a positive experience with Oracle. JPL chose Oracle WebCenter Portal to ensure no compatibility issues for integration with its existing Oracle products and to take advantage of the experience and support of a reputable vendor to ensure business continuity. “We chose Oracle because we knew we could rely on its support and experience. In addition, Oracle WebCenter Portal’s speed, agility, and mobile access features were a perfect fit for our business requirements,” Bhatia said. Implementation Process JPL launched the enterprise portal to 500 users in the first phase of the project, and plans to extend this to 2,000 users when the portal is fully launched. Oracle partner PricewaterhouseCoopers used Oracle Application Development Framework for the intial set-up, user training and to develop and design sample workflows. JPL’s internal IT staff then took charge of the implementation, bringing it to completion on budget. Partner Oracle PartnerPricewaterhouseCoopers (India)

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• Evolution in coding standards, how do you deal with them?

  - by WardB

  How do you deal with evolution in the coding standards / style guide in a project for the existing code base? Let's say someone on your team discovered a better way of object instantiation in the programming language. It's not that the old way is bad or buggy, it's just that the new way is less verbose and feels much more elegant. And all team members really like it. Would you change all exisiting code? Let's say your codebase is about 500.000+ lines of code. Would you still want to change all existing code? Or would you only let new code adhere to the new standard? Basically lose consistency? How do you deal with an evolution in the coding standards on your project?

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• 10 Steps to access Oracle stored procedures from Crystal Reports

  Requirements to access Oracle stored procedures from CR The following requirements must be met in order for CR to access an Oracle stored procedure: 1. You must create a package that defines the REF CURSOR. This REF CURSOR must be strongly bound to a static pre-defined structure (see Strongly Bound REF CURSORs vs Weakly Bound REF CURSORs). This package must be created separately and before the creation of the stored procedure. NOTE Crystal Reports 9 native connections will support Oracle stored procedures created within packages as well as Oracle stored procedures referencing weakly bound REF CURSORs. Crystal Reports 8.5 native connections will support Oracle stored procedures referencing weakly bound REF CURSORs. 2. The procedure must have a parameter that is a REF CURSOR type. This is because CR uses this parameter to access and define the result set that the stored procedure returns. 3. The REF CURSOR parameter must be defined as IN OUT (read/write mode). After the procedure has opened and assigned a query to the REF CURSOR, CR will perform a FETCH call for every row from the query's result. This is why the parameter must be defined as IN OUT. 4. Parameters can only be input (IN) parameters. CR is not designed to work with OUT parameters. 5. The REF CURSOR variable must be opened and assigned its query within the procedure. 6. The stored procedure can only return one record set. The structure of this record set must not change, based on parameters. 7. The stored procedure cannot call another stored procedure. 8. If using an ODBC driver, it must be the CR Oracle ODBC driver (installed by CR). Other Oracle ODBC drivers (installed by Microsoft or Oracle) may not function correctly. 9. If you are using the CR ODBC driver, you must ensure that in the ODBC Driver Configuration setup, under the Advanced Tab, the option 'Procedure Return Results' is checked ON. 10. If you are using the native Oracle driver and using hard-coded date selection within the procedure, the date selection must use either a string representation format of 'YYYY-DD-MM' (i.e. WHERE DATEFIELD = '1999-01-01') or the TO_DATE function with the same format specified (i.e. WHERE DATEFIELD = TO_DATE ('1999-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD'). For more information, refer to kbase article C2008023. 11. Most importantly, this stored procedure must execute successfully in Oracle's SQL*Plus utility. If all of these conditions are met, you must next ensure you are using the appropriate database driver. Please refer to the sections in this white paper for a list of acceptable database drivers. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Simple script to get referenced table and their column names

  - by Peter Larsson

  -- Setup user supplied parameters DECLARE @WantedTable SYSNAME   SET     @WantedTable = 'Sales.factSalesDetail'   -- Wanted table is "parent table" SELECT      PARSENAME(@WantedTable, 2) AS ParentSchemaName,             PARSENAME(@WantedTable, 1) AS ParentTableName,             cp.Name AS ParentColumnName,             OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(parent_object_id) AS ChildSchemaName,             OBJECT_NAME(parent_object_id) AS ChildTableName,             cc.Name AS ChildColumnName FROM        sys.foreign_key_columns AS fkc INNER JOIN  sys.columns AS cc ON cc.column_id = fkc.parent_column_id                 AND cc.object_id = fkc.parent_object_id INNER JOIN  sys.columns AS cp ON cp.column_id = fkc.referenced_column_id                 AND cp.object_id = fkc.referenced_object_id WHERE       referenced_object_id = OBJECT_ID(@WantedTable)   -- Wanted table is "child table" SELECT      OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(referenced_object_id) AS ParentSchemaName,             OBJECT_NAME(referenced_object_id) AS ParentTableName,             cc.Name AS ParentColumnName,             PARSENAME(@WantedTable, 2) AS ChildSchemaName,             PARSENAME(@WantedTable, 1) AS ChildTableName,             cp.Name AS ChildColumnName FROM        sys.foreign_key_columns AS fkc INNER JOIN  sys.columns AS cp ON cp.column_id = fkc.parent_column_id                 AND cp.object_id = fkc.parent_object_id INNER JOIN  sys.columns AS cc ON cc.column_id = fkc.referenced_column_id                 AND cc.object_id = fkc.referenced_object_id WHERE       parent_object_id = OBJECT_ID(@WantedTable)

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• Introducing Agile development after traditional project inception

  - by Riggy

  About a year and a half ago, I entered a workplace that claimed to do Agile development. What I learned was that this place has adopted several agile practices (such as daily standups, sprint plannings and sprint reviews) but none of the principles (just in time / just good enough mentality, exposing failure early, rich communication). I've now been tasked with making the team more agile and I've been assured that I have complete buy-in from the devs and the business team. As a pilot program, they've given me a project that just completed 15 months of requirements gathering, has a 110 page Analysis & Design document (to be considered as "written in stone"), and where I have no access to the end users (only to the committee made up of the users' managers who won't actually be using the product). I started small, giving them a list of expected deliverables for the first 5 sprints (leaving the future sprints undefined), a list of goals for the first sprint, and I dissected the A&D doc to get enough user stories to meet the first sprint's goals. Since then, they've asked why we don't have all the requirements for all the sprints, why I haven't started working on stuff for the third sprint (which they consider more important but is based off of the deliverables of the first 2 sprints) and are pressing for even more documentation that my entire IT team considers busy-work or un-related to us (such as writing the user manual up-front, documenting all the data fields from all the sprints up front, and more "up-front" work). This has been pretty rough for me as a new project manager, but there are improvements I have effectively implemented such as scrumban for story management, pair programming, and having the business give us customer acceptance tests up front (as part of the requirements documentation). So my questions are: What can I do to more effectively introduce change to a resistant business? Are there other practices that I can introduce on the IT side to help show the business the benefits of agile? The burden of documentation is strangling us - the business still sees it as a risk management strategy instead of as a risk. What can we do to alleviate their documentation concerns and demands (specifically the quantity of documentation and their need for all of it up front)? We are in a separate building from our business, about 3 blocks away and they refuse to have their people on the project co-habitate b/c that person "won't be able to work on their other projects while they're at our building." They expect us to always go over there and to bundle our questions so that we can ask them all at once and not waste that person's time with "constant interruptions." What can we do to get richer communication from them? Any additional advice would also be appreciated. Thanks!

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• Blog...Dead & New Address

  - by Derek Comingore

  Hi Folks! For a while I was attempting (probably the correct word) to keep both this blog as well as my SQL Server Magazine SQL Server BI blog current. Working on growing B.I. Voyage , speaking, writing, and blogging is quite the work load. And so this blog suffered as a result. THANK YOU all who read my blog here on SQLTeam.com, I intend to leave it live for those who might benefit from its content at a later date. My consolidated, single blog can be found at http://www.sqlmag.com/blogs/sqlserverbi.aspx . Cheers, Derek

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• What percentage of software developers work solo?

  - by JMather

  I'm trying to put together some ideas for a talk, and one of the things that occurred to me, is if there's any documentation or research into how many programmers work as the lone developer within their team. I think this is an important distinction because individual developers (and perhaps small team developers) end up having to wear many more hats than developers part of a large developer group. It could give us some better insight to career development and transition tactics, as well. I've tried some generally googling, and wasn't able to turn up anything, so I'm hoping maybe someone has seen (or studied) something related to this. Thanks in advance!

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• SQL Saturday Atlanta: Intro To Performance Tuning

  - by Mike Femenella

  I'm looking forward to speaking in Atlanta on the 24th, will be fun to get back down that way to visit with some friends and present two topics that I really enjoy. First, an introduction to performance tuning. Performance tuning is a very wide and deep topic and we're staying close to the surface. I direct this class for newbie sql users who have less than 2 years of experience. It's all the things I wish someone would have told me in my first 2 years about what to look for when the database was slow...or allegedly slow I should say. We'll cover using profiler to find slow performing queries and how to save the data off to a table as well as a tour of other features. The difference between clustered, non clustered and covering indexes. How to look at and understand an execution plan (at a high level) and finally the difference between a temp table and a table variable and what the implications are of using either one in your code. That pretty much takes up a full hour. Second presentation, Loading Data in Real Time. It's really a presentation about partitioning but with a twist that we used at work recently to solve a need to load some data quickly and put it into production with minimal downtime. We'll cover partition functions, schemes,$partition, merge, sys.partitions and show some examples of building a set of partitioned tables and using the switch statement to move it from one table to another. Finally we'll cover the differences in partitioning between 2005 and 2008. Hope to see you there! And if you read my blog please introduce yourself!

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• PASS: Board Q&amp;A at the Summit

  - by Bill Graziano

  The last two years we’ve put the Board in front of the members and taken questions.  We’re going to do that again this year.  It will be in Room 307/308 from 12:15 to 1:30 on Friday. Yes, this time overlaps with the Birds of a Feather Lunch and the start of afternoon sessions – but only partially.  You can attend the Q&A and still get to parts of both of those.  There just isn’t a great time to do this.  Every time overlaps with something. We can’t do it after the last session on Friday.  We can’t fit it between the last session and the evening events on Wednesday or Thursday.  We had some discussion around breakfast time but I didn’t think that was realistic.  This is the least bad time we could come up with. Last year we had 60-70 people attend.  These are the items that were specific things that I could work on: The first question was whether to increase transparency around individual votes of Board members.  We approved this at the Board meeting the following day.  The only caveat was that if the Board is given confidential information as a basis for their vote then we may not be able to disclose individual votes.  Putting a Director in a position where they can’t publicly defend the reason for their vote is a difficult situation.  Thanks Kendal! Can we have a Board member discretionary fund?  As background, I took a couple of people to lunch so we could have a quiet place to talk.  I bought lunch but wasn’t able to expense it back to PASS.  We just don’t have a budget item for things like this.  I think we should.  I would guess the entire Board would like it also.  It was in an earlier version of the budget but came out as part of a cost-cutting move to balance the budget.  I’d like to see it added back in but we’ll have to see. I know there were a comments about the elections.  At this point we had created the Election Review Committee.  I’ve already written at length about this process. Where does IT work go?  PASS started to publish our internal management reports starting in December 2010.  You can find them on our Governance page.  These aren’t filtered at all and include a variety of information about IT projects.  The most recent update had roughly a page of updates related to IT.  Lots of the work was related to Summit and the Orator tool that we use to manage speaker submissions. There were numerous requests that Tina Turner not be repeated.  Done.  I don’t think we’ll do anything quite like that again.  We had a request for a payment plan for Summit.  We looked into this briefly but didn’t take any action.  We didn’t think the effort was worth the small number of people that would use it.  If you disagree, submit this on our Summit Feedback site and get some votes. There were lots of suggestions around the first-timers events – especially from first timers.  You can find all our current activities related to first-timers at the First Timers page on the Summit web site.  Plus links to 34 (!) blog posts on suggestions for first-timers.  And a big THANK YOU to Confio and Red Gate for sponsoring this. I hope you get the chance to attend.  These events are very helpful to me as a Board member.  I like being able to look around the room as comments are being made and see the audience reaction.  It helps me gauge the interest in an idea. I’d also like to direct you to the Summit Feedback site.  You can submit and vote on ideas to make the Summit a better experience.  As of right now we have the suggestions from last year still up.  We may reset these prior to the Summit though.

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• Presenting at PASS Summit 2011!

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am honored to be presenting at the PASS Summit 2011 11-14 Oct 2011 in Seattle! This year, I was selected to present a regular session and a pre-conference session. The pre-con is going to be fun. It’s a team effort with Tim Mitchell ( Blog | @Tim_Mitchell | SQLPeople ) and – even though he isn’t listed as a presenter – Matt Masson ( Blog | @mattmasson ). Like me, Tim’s been using SSIS since it was released; and Matt’s on the SSIS developer team at Microsoft – he helps build SSIS! Our...(read more)

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• Source Control and SQL Development &ndash; Part 3

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In parts one and two of this series, I have been specifically focusing on the latest version of SQL Source Control by Red Gate Software.  But I have been doing source-controlled SQL development for years, long before this product was available, and well before Microsoft came out with Database Projects for Visual Studio.  “So, how does that work?” you may wonder.  Well, let me share some of the details of how we do it where I work… The key to this approach is that everything is done via Transact-SQL script files; either natively written T-SQL, or generated.  My preference is to write all my code by hand, which forces you to become better at your SQL syntax.  But if you really prefer to use the Management Studio GUI to make database changes, you can still do that, and then you use the Generate Scripts feature of the GUI to produce T-SQL scripts afterwards, and store those in your source control system.  You can generate scripts for things like stored procedures and views by right-clicking on the database in the Object Explorer, and Choosing Tasks, Generate Scripts (see figure 1 to the left).  You can also do that for the CREATE scripts for tables, but that does not work when you have a table that is already in production, and you need to make just a simple change, such as adding a new column or index.  In this case, you can use the GUI to make the table changes, and then instead of clicking the Save button, click the Generate Change Script button (). Then, once you have saved the change script, go ahead and execute it on your development database to actually make the change.  I believe that it is important to actually execute the script rather than just click the Save button because this is your first test that your change script is working and you didn’t somehow lose a portion of the change. As you can imagine, all this generating of scripts can get tedious and tempting to skip entirely, so again, I would encourage you to just get in the habit of writing your own Transact-SQL code, and then it is just a matter of remembering to save your work, just like you are in the habit of saving changes to a Word or Excel document before you exit the program. So, now that you have all of these script files, what do you do with them?  Well, we organize ours into folders labeled ChangeScripts, Functions, Views, and StoredProcedures, and those folders are loaded into our source control system.  ChangeScripts contains all of the table and index changes, and anything else that is basically a one-time-only execution.  Of course you want to write your scripts with qualifying logic so that if a script were accidentally run more than once in a database, it would not crash nor corrupt anything; but these scripts are really intended to be run only once in a database. Once you have your initial set of scripts loaded into source control, then making changes, such as altering a stored procedure becomes a simple matter of checking out your CREATE PROCEDURE* script, editing it in SSMS, saving the change, executing the script in order to effect the change in your database, and then checking the script back in to source control.  Of course, this is where the lack of integration for source control systems within SSMS becomes an irritation, because this means that in addition to SSMS, I also have my source control client application running to do the check-out and check-in.  And when you have 800+ procedures like we do, that can be quite tedious to locate the procedure I want to change in source control, check it out, then locate the script file in my working folder, open it in SSMS, do the change, save it, and the go back to source control to check in.  Granted, it is not nearly as burdensome as, say, losing your source code and having to rebuild it from memory, or losing the audit trail that good source control systems provide.  It is worth the effort, and this is how I have been doing development for the last several years. Remember that everything that the SQL Server Management Studio does in modifying your database can also be done in plain Transact-SQL code, and this is what you are storing.  And now I have shown you how you can do it all without spending any extra money.  You already have source control, or can get free, open-source source control systems (almost seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it) and of course Management Studio is free with your SQL Server database engine software. So, whether you spend the money on tools to make it easier, or not, you now have no excuse for not using source control with your SQL development. * In our current model, the scripts for stored procedures and similar database objects are written with an IF EXISTS…DROP… at the top, followed by the CREATE PROCEDURE… section, and that followed by a section that assigns permissions.  This allows me to run the same script regardless of whether the procedure previously existed in the database.  If the script was only an ALTER PROCEDURE, then it would fail the first time that procedure was deployed to a database, unless you wrote other code to stub it if it did not exist.  There are a few different ways you could organize your scripts for deployment, each with its own trade-offs, but I think it is absolutely critical that whichever way you organize things, you ensure that the same script is run throughout the deployment cycle, and do not allow customizations to creep in between TEST and PROD.  If you do, then you have broken the integrity of your deployment process because what you deployed to PROD was not exactly the same as what was tested in TEST, so you effectively have now released untested code into PROD.

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• What to do when issue-tracker is down?

  - by Pablo

  It has happened in our team that our issue-tracker is down. Happens about once a week now (yes, wow), and there's not really much we can do to get it back up, since it's hosted by our client in a different timezone. It sometimes takes several hours for it to be operative again. In the meanwhile, we can't really tell which issues we were working on, and in case we do, we cannot update those issues, as in moving them through the workflow, logging used hours, checking the issue's description, leaving comments, and so on. So the question is: how can we, as a team, work in the meanwhile so that when the issue-tracker is up again, we have the least possible hassle updating it with what we've been working?

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• How to Build Your Own Siri App In a Browser

  - by ultan o'broin

  This post from Applications User Experience team co-worker Mark Vilrokx (@mvilrokx) about building your own Siri-style voice app in a browser using Rails, Chrome, and WolframAlpha is so just good you've now got it thrice! I love these kind of How To posts. They not only show off innovation but inspire others to try it out too. Love the sharing of the code snippets too. Hat tip to Jake at the AppsLab (and now on board with the Applications UX team too) for picking up the original All Things Rails blog post. Oracle Voice & Nuance demo on the Oracle Applications User Experience Usable Apps YouTube Channel Mark recently presented on Oracle Voice at the Oracle Usability Advisory Board on Oracle Voice and Oracle Fusion Applications and opened customers and partners eyes to how this technology can work for their users in the workplace and what's coming down the line! Great job, Mark.

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• SOA Suite demo pod at OOW 2012

  - by Simone Geib

  Visit us in the exhibition hall at Oracle Open World from Monday October 1st till Wednesday October 3rd. You'll have the opportunity to meet our engineering team and product managers and learn what SOA Suite is about and all the cool stuff you can do with it. Come to get a general demo, ask specific questions, give feedback or just have discussions with the Oracle SOA team. You can find us at Moscone South, Right - S-229. And don't forget to check out the Focus on SOA and BPM document for an overview of all SOA and BPM sessions

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• The JDEdwards EnterpriseOne PreSales University

  - by Julien Haye

  Istanbul NOV 5-9 Wednesday, NOV 7 - It is raining outside and I am sitting in my hotel room (#106) in Istanbul and create my first blog entry. Today this blog was enabled and I am excited to have the ability to share my (first) thoughts with the EMEA JDE Partner Community. I am here in Istanbul because we are currently running the JDEdwards PreSales University Event series. This PreSales University is an established event series which we deliver the fifth time now and the first time in the ECEMEA region. Delegates value the openness and competence from the Product Strategy and Product Development Team from Denver and India. Together with the regional Oracle PreSales team we had very valuable discussions around product features and functions and about the business value of the new delivered applications and tools. Additionally the event provides endless opportunities to exchange ideas with other JD Edwards Partner and the Oracle PreSales Team. With its focus on sharing and learning, best practice, user experience and transforming technologies, delegates will leave this event with an abundance of new ideas and best practices to try for your coming projects and existing customer implementations. A day out of the office gives delegates a chance to gain a new perspective on their business processes. Everybody sees better ways of working just by being immersed in an environment where the focus is on using products more effectively. Apps Track: Highly concentrated participants in Istanbul listening to Jeff Erickson presenting the news about OneView Reporting. Jeff: We believe “The things you said”. The event is organized into two tracks, one for Apps and one for Tech. Everybody was able to learn new features and functions and how to position this products. The focus was on the new Apps release 9.1 and Tools Release 9.1.2 and their Value Propositions. For all topics hands-on exercises has been given to the participants. Even very experienced senior consultants did learn a lot from this event. In total we have 55 people registered and we still have some more content to deliver. By the way: Istanbul is a nice place to be. I already booked my next trip to this beautiful city. In two weeks we deliver the JD Edwards EECIS Executive Forum again in Istanbul. Once again a tough Agenda. I will let you know if I had the ability to have a walk outside and see a bit more of this beautiful city. At least I expect to have a different room number. Many greetings Hartmut WieseOracle Alliances & Channels EMEA

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• PASS: International Travels

  - by Bill Graziano

  Nihao!  One of the largest changes PASS is going through is the the expansion outside the US and Canada.  We’ve had international chapters and events in Europe since the early 2000’s.  But nothing on the scale we’re seeing now.  Since January 1st there have been 18 SQL Saturday events outside North America and 19 events in North America.  We hope to have three international SQLRally events outside the US in FY13 (budget willing).  I don’t know the exact percentage of chapters outside the US but it’s got be 50% or higher. We recently started an effort to remake the Board to better reflect the growing global face of PASS.  This involves assigning some Board seats to geographic regions.  You can ask questions about this in our feedback forum, participate in a Twitter chat or ask questions directly of Board members.  You can email me at if you’d like to ask a question directly.  We’re doing this very slowly and deliberately in hopes that a long communication cycle gives us a chance to address all the issues that our members will raise. After the Summit we passed a budget exception allocating an extra $20,000 for Board members to travel to local events.  I think it’s important for Board members to visit new areas and talk to more of our members.  I sent out an email asking where people had attended events outside their home city.  Here’s the list I got back: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, London, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Orange County, Orlando, Pensacola, Perth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Redmond, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Tampa Bay, Vancouver, Washington DC and Wellington.  (Disclaimer: Some of this travel was paid for by employers or Board members themselves.  Some of this travel may have been completed before the Summit.  That’s still one heck of a list!) The last SQL Saturday event this fiscal year is SQL Saturday Shanghai.  And that’s one I’m attending.  This is our first event in China and is being put on in cooperation with the local Microsoft office.  Hopefully this event will be the start of a growing community in China that includes chapters, SQL Saturdays and maybe a SQLRally or two in the future.  I’m excited to speak with people that are just starting down this path and watching this community grow. I encourage you to visit the PASS Global Growth site and read through the material there.  This is the biggest change we’ve made to our governance since I’ve been on the Board.  You need to understand how it affects you and how it affects the organization. And wish me luck on the 15 hour flight to Shanghai on Friday afternoon.  Rob Farley flies from Australia to the US for PASS events multiple times per year and I don’t know how he does it so often.  I think one of these is going to wipe me out.  (And Nihao (knee-how) is Chinese for Hello.)

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• Error: type or namespace name 'AssemblyKeyFileAttribute' and 'AssemblyKeyFile' could not be found

  To associate an assembly with a strong key file to store it to GAC, we use should include following line after all the imports and before defing namespace. For VB.NET:  <Assembly: AssemblyKeyFile("c:\path\mykey.snk")> For C#:    [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(@"c:\path\mykey.snk")] but, you might encounter following two errors at the time of creating Assembly for GAC. 1. The type or namespace name 'AssemblyKeyFileAttribute' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) 2. The type or namespace name 'AssemblyKeyFile' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) How to resolve these errors: Just include "System.Reflection" namespace. It resolve above two errors. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• My Graduate Experience at Oracle by Mayuri Khinvasara

  - by david.talamelli

  My experience at Oracle. I still vividly remember the day, when my name was announced in the campus hiring list of Oracle at my college. I was proud of myself but at the same time, I was getting goose bumps!!! A new world had arrived before me and the anxiousness of whether I could survive it or not had gripped me. Nervous about moving into an unknown city, I came to visit Hyderabad with my father. One look at the Oracle Campus and I felt some kind of magnetism pulling me towards it. And then, I joined Oracle in June 2009, with a lot of apprehensions in my mind. The HR Rep made us really comfortable in the first week itself. I met so many new people, managers, HR folks and most importantly 20 other Campus Hires like me. Then we had our team bonding sessions, team parties etc. I didn’t realize when the transition from campus to corporate happened. And I had started loving it. The confidence the HR Reps gave us and the bonding our managers imbibed in us, made us all ready for the new life ahead. Then started the rigorous training sessions, the excitement about our new work, new cubicles, new desktops, our first business cards, our first conference call and so on. I made new friends which were now my extended family, the freedom and courage of living alone. I was enjoying all that. As I was getting totally immersed into my regular work schedule I started getting to know the innumerable Oracle products, their functionalities, implementations and realizing the brand that Oracle is. Work pressure started increasing and so did the challenges to understand and deliver. I Didn’t realize how days and soon months passed by. Then came a golden chance to visit the Oracle Headquarters in US for 45 days training in November 2009. Once again, the excitement was enormous about the counter team-mates in HQ, the trainings ahead, the US work culture and my stay there. I felt so privileged for the company I was working. Boarding an international flight for the first time and visiting famous US cities which I had just seen in movies, was now a reality. It was a totally amazing experience. Work pressure kept me really busy, with learning new things every day, the immense satisfaction of delivering something, the nightmares of debugging a mistake, only to realize how silly it was.  I was enjoying the process. Soon a year passed by. I had transformed into this corporate software professional, I couldn’t believe I could be. Today, I complete 1 year and 8 months at Oracle and continue to look forward to the enriching experience I will have here. Truly one of the Top Companies in the World. Mayuri Khinvasara

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• Day 2 of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 October 1st

  - by Maria Colgan

  Oracle OpenWorld started yesterday and San Francisco is just buzzing with Oracle folks! If you are attending the conference don't miss the opportunity to chat with the Optimizer development team at one of our technical sessions or at the Oracle Demo grounds. Our first technical session(Session CON8455) happens tomorrow at 1:15pm but the Oracle Optimizer Demo booth opens today. We are located in the database demo grounds, in Moscone South, booth number 3157. Members of the Optimizer team will be available from 9:45am to 6pm today, to answer any Optimizer questions you might have and of course to dole out our limited edition Optimizer bumper stickers! The must have souvenir from this years conference +Maria Colgan

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• In-depth Coverage for Oracle Workflow

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  I'm lucky to work with many talented people in the Applications Technology Group, and many of them contribute articles to this blog.  Some team members have their own blogs.  If you work with Oracle Workflow, here's one that you should be following: Oracle E-Business Suite - Workflow This blog is updated every few months by our development team with in-depth technical articles about Oracle Workflow-related topics.  For example, articles posted there include: Implementing a post-notification function to perform custom validation E-Business Suite Proactive Support - Workflow Analyzer Asynchronous Business Event Subscriptions - Troubleshooting Tips Oracle E-Busienss Suite RCD - Applications Technology Releases 12.1 and 12.2 SMTP Authentication Feature in R12.1.3 Configurable User LOV in Worklist UI Oracle Business Event and Subsciptions Execution Flow Understanding AQs in Workflow SSL in Oracle Workflow Leveraging Oracle Workflow for Declarative PageFlow If you have suggestions about Workflow topics that you'd like to see covered there, drop them a line.

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• Virtual Lab part 2&ndash;Templates, Patterns, Baselines

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Once you have a good virtualization platform chosen, whether it is a desktop, server or laptop environment, the temptation is to build “X”.  “X” may be a SharePoint lab, a Virtual Cluster, an AD test environment or some other cool project that you really need RIGHT NOW.  That would be doing it wrong. My grandfather taught woodworking and cabinetmaking for twenty-seven years at a trade school in Alabama.  He was the first instructor hired at that school and the only teacher for the first two years.  His students built tables, chairs, and workbenches so the school could start its HVAC courses.   Visiting as a child, I also noticed many extra “helper” stands, benches, holders, and gadgets all built from wood.  What does that have to do with a virtual lab, you ask?  Well, that is the same approach you should take.  Build stuff that you will use.  Not for solving a particular problem, but to let the Virtual Lab be part of your normal troubleshooting toolkit. Start with basic copies of various Operating Systems.  Load and patch server and desktop OS environments.  This also helps build your collection of ISO files, another essential element of a virtual Lab.  Once you have these “baseline” images, you can use your Virtualization software’s snapshot capability to freeze the image.  Clone the snapshot and you have a brand new fully patched machine in mere moments.  You may have to sysprep some of the Microsoft OS environments if you are going to create a domain environment or experiment with clustering.  That is still much faster than loading and patching from scratch. So once you have a stock of raw materials (baseline images in this case) where should you start.  Again, my grandfather’s workshop gives us the answer.  In the shop it was workbenches and tables to hold large workpieces that made the equipment more useful.  In a Windows environment the same role falls to the fundamental network services:  DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, Routing, File Services, and Storage services.  Plan your internal network setup.  Build out an AD controller with all the features listed.  Make the actual domain an isolated domain so it will not care about where you take it.  Add the Microsoft iSCSI target.  Once you have this single system, you can leverage it for almost any network environment beyond a simple stand-alone system. Having these templates and fundamental infrastructure elements ready to run means I can build a quick lab in minutes instead of hours.  My solutions are well-tested, my processes fully documented with screenshots, and my plans validated well before I have to make any changes to client systems.  the work I put in is easily returned in increased value and client satisfaction.

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• SQL 2012 Licensing Thoughts

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The only thing more controversial than new Federal Tax plans is new Licensing plans from Microsoft.  In both cases, everyone calculates several numbers.  First, will I pay more or less under this plan?  Second, will my competition pay more or less than now?  Third, will <insert interesting person/company here> pay more or less?  Not that items 2 and 3 are meaningful, that is just how people think. Much like tax plans, the devil is in the details, so lets see how this looks.  Microsoft shows it here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx First up is a switch from per-socket to per-core licensing.  Anyone who didn’t see something like this coming should rapidly search for a new line of work because you are not paying attention.  The explosion of multi-core processors has made SQL Server a bargain.  Microsoft is in business to make money and the old per-socket model was not going to do that going forward. Per-core licensing also simplifies virtualization licensing.  Physical Core = Virtual Core, at least for licensing.  Oversubscribe your processors, that’s your lookout.  You still pay for  what is exposed to the VM.  The cool part is you can seamlessly move physical and virtual workloads around and the licenses follow.  The catch is you have to have Software Assurance to make the licenses mobile.  Nice touch there. Let’s have a moment of silence for the late, unlamented, largely ignored Workgroup Edition.  To quote the Microsoft  FAQ:  “Standard becomes our sole edition for basic database needs”.  Considering I haven’t encountered a singe instance of SQL Server Workgroup Edition in the wild, I don’t think this will be all that controversial. As for pricing, it looks like a wash with current per-socket pricing based on four core sockets.  Interestingly, that is the minimum core count Microsoft proposes to swap to transition per-socket to per-core if you are on Software Assurance.  Reading the fine print shows that if you are using more, you will get more core licenses: From the licensing FAQ. 15. How do I migrate from processor licenses to core licenses?  What is the migration path? Licenses purchased with Software Assurance (SA) will upgrade to SQL Server 2012 at no additional cost. EA/EAP customers can continue buying processor licenses until your next renewal after June 30, 2012. At that time, processor licenses will be exchanged for core-based licenses sufficient to cover the cores in use by processor-licensed databases (minimum of 4 cores per processor for Standard and Enterprise, and minimum of 8 EE cores per processor for Datacenter). Looks like the folks who invested in the AMD 12-core chips will make out like bandits. Now, on to something new: SQL Server Business Intelligence Edition. Yep, finally a BI-specific SKU licensed for server+CAL configurations only.  Note that Enterprise Edition still supports the complete feature set; the BI Edition is intended for smaller shops who want to use the full BI feature set but without needing Enterprise Edition scale (or costs).  No, you don’t get ColumnStore, Compression, or Partitioning in the BI Edition.  Those are Enterprise scale features, ThankYouVeryMuch.  Then again, your starting licensing costs are about one sixth of an Enterprise Edition system (based on an 8 core server). The only part of the message I am missing is if the current Failover Licensing Policy will change.  Do we need to fully or partially license failover servers?  That is a detail I definitely want to know.

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• Renaming the sa Account

  - by Tara Kizer

  Today I renamed the sa account on 23 SQL Server 2005/2008 instances.  I used the CMS to assist with this task.  Later we realized all of the SQL Agent jobs were failing on these instances with the following error: “The job failed.  The owner (sa) of job XYZ does not have server access.” We use sa as the job owner, and it had correctly changed the owner to our new name as the sids had not changed.  We were at first confused why the jobs were failing but then realized restarting the SQL Agent service might help.  The restart corrected the problem. If you plan on renaming your sa account (best practice), make sure you restart the SQL Agent service afterwards to avoid failing jobs.  This is perhaps common knowledge, but it was something new learned by me today.

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• Simple Merging Of PDF Documents with iTextSharp 5.4.5.0

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  As we were working on our first SQL Saturday in Slovenia, we came to a point when we had to print out the so-called SpeedPASS's for attendees. This SpeedPASS file is a PDF and contains thier raffle, lunch and admission tickets. The problem is we have to download one PDF per attendee and print that out. And printing more than 10 docs at once is a pain. So I decided to make a little console app that would merge multiple PDF files into a single file that would be much easier to print. I used an open source PDF manipulation library called iTextSharp version 5.4.5.0 This is a console program I used. It’s brilliantly named MergeSpeedPASS. It only has two methods and is really short. Don't let the name fool you It can be used to merge any PDF files. The first parameter is the name of the target PDF file that will be created. The second parameter is the directory containing PDF files to be merged into a single file. using iTextSharp.text; using iTextSharp.text.pdf; using System; using System.IO; namespace MergeSpeedPASS { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { if (args.Length == 0 || args[0] == "-h" || args[0] == "/h") { Console.WriteLine("Welcome to MergeSpeedPASS. Created by Mladen Prajdic. Uses iTextSharp 5.4.5.0."); Console.WriteLine("Tool to create a single SpeedPASS PDF from all downloaded generated PDFs."); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Example: MergeSpeedPASS.exe targetFileName sourceDir"); Console.WriteLine(" targetFileName = name of the new merged PDF file. Must include .pdf extension."); Console.WriteLine(" sourceDir = path to the dir containing downloaded attendee SpeedPASS PDFs"); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine(@"Example: MergeSpeedPASS.exe MergedSpeedPASS.pdf d:\Downloads\SQLSaturdaySpeedPASSFiles"); } else if (args.Length == 2) CreateMergedPDF(args[0], args[1]); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit..."); Console.Read(); } static void CreateMergedPDF(string targetPDF, string sourceDir) { using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(targetPDF, FileMode.Create)) { Document pdfDoc = new Document(PageSize.A4); PdfCopy pdf = new PdfCopy(pdfDoc, stream); pdfDoc.Open(); var files = Directory.GetFiles(sourceDir); Console.WriteLine("Merging files count: " + files.Length); int i = 1; foreach (string file in files) { Console.WriteLine(i + ". Adding: " + file); pdf.AddDocument(new PdfReader(file)); i++; } if (pdfDoc != null) pdfDoc.Close(); Console.WriteLine("SpeedPASS PDF merge complete."); } } } } Hope it helps you and have fun.

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• Number of Weeks between 2 Dates in SQL Server and Oracle

  This post gives you queries in Oracle and SQL Server to find number of weeks between 2 given dates Microsoft SQL Server Syntax: SELECT DATEDIFF (ww, '01/01/1753', '12/31/9999'); Oracle Syntax: SELECT floor(              (to_date('12/31/9999','mm/dd/yyyy')               - to_date('01/01/1753','mm/dd/yyyy')              )              / 7) diff FROM DUAL; span.fullpost {display:none;}

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