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• Oracle Flashback Technologies - Overview

  - by Sridhar_R-Oracle

  Oracle Flashback Technologies - IntroductionIn his May 29th 2014 blog, my colleague Joe Meeks introduced Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) and discussed both planned and unplanned outages. Let’s take a closer look at unplanned outages. These can be caused by physical failures (e.g., server, storage, network, file deletion, physical corruption, site failures) or by logical failures – cases where all components and files are physically available, but data is incorrect or corrupt. These logical failures are usually caused by human errors or application logic errors. This blog series focuses on these logical errors – what causes them and how to address and recover from them using Oracle Database Flashback. In this introductory blog post, I’ll provide an overview of the Oracle Database Flashback technologies and will discuss the features in detail in future blog posts. Let’s get started. We are all human beings (unless a machine is reading this), and making mistakes is a part of what we do…often what we do best!  We “fat finger”, we spill drinks on keyboards, unplug the wrong cables, etc.  In addition, many of us, in our lives as DBAs or developers, must have observed, caused, or corrected one or more of the following unpleasant events: Accidentally updated a table with wrong values !! Performed a batch update that went wrong - due to logical errors in the code !! Dropped a table !! How do DBAs typically recover from these types of errors? First, data needs to be restored and recovered to the point-in-time when the error occurred (incomplete or point-in-time recovery).  Moreover, depending on the type of fault, it’s possible that some services – or even the entire database – would have to be taken down during the recovery process.Apart from error conditions, there are other questions that need to be addressed as part of the investigation. For example, what did the data look like in the morning, prior to the error? What were the various changes to the row(s) between two timestamps? Who performed the transaction and how can it be reversed?  Oracle Database includes built-in Flashback technologies, with features that address these challenges and questions, and enable you to perform faster, easier, and convenient recovery from logical corruptions. HistoryFlashback Query, the first Flashback Technology, was introduced in Oracle 9i. It provides a simple, powerful and completely non-disruptive mechanism for data verification and recovery from logical errors, and enables users to view the state of data at a previous point in time.Flashback Technologies were further enhanced in Oracle 10g, to provide fast, easy recovery at the database, table, row, and even at a transaction level.Oracle Database 11g introduced an innovative method to manage and query long-term historical data with Flashback Data Archive. The 11g release also introduced Flashback Transaction, which provides an easy, one-step operation to back out a transaction. Oracle Database versions 11.2.0.2 and beyond further enhanced the performance of these features. Note that all the features listed here work without requiring any kind of restore operation.In addition, Flashback features are fully supported with the new multi-tenant capabilities introduced with Oracle Database 12c, Flashback Features Oracle Flashback Database enables point-in-time-recovery of the entire database without requiring a traditional restore and recovery operation. It rewinds the entire database to a specified point in time in the past by undoing all the changes that were made since that time.Oracle Flashback Table enables an entire table or a set of tables to be recovered to a point in time in the past.Oracle Flashback Drop enables accidentally dropped tables and all dependent objects to be restored.Oracle Flashback Query enables data to be viewed at a point-in-time in the past. This feature can be used to view and reconstruct data that was lost due to unintentional change(s) or deletion(s). This feature can also be used to build self-service error correction into applications, empowering end-users to undo and correct their errors.Oracle Flashback Version Query offers the ability to query the historical changes to data between two points in time or system change numbers (SCN) Oracle Flashback Transaction Query enables changes to be examined at the transaction level. This capability can be used to diagnose problems, perform analysis, audit transactions, and even revert the transaction by undoing SQLOracle Flashback Transaction is a procedure used to back-out a transaction and its dependent transactions.Flashback technologies eliminate the need for a traditional restore and recovery process to fix logical corruptions or make enquiries. Using these technologies, you can recover from the error in the same amount of time it took to generate the error. All the Flashback features can be accessed either via SQL command line (or) via Enterprise Manager.  Most of the Flashback technologies depend on the available UNDO to retrieve older data. The following table describes the various Flashback technologies: their purpose, dependencies and situations where each individual technology can be used.   Example Syntax Error investigation related:The purpose is to investigate what went wrong and what the values were at certain points in timeFlashback Queries  ( select .. as of SCN | Timestamp )   - Helps to see the value of a row/set of rows at a point in timeFlashback Version Queries  ( select .. versions between SCN | Timestamp and SCN | Timestamp)  - Helps determine how the value evolved between certain SCNs or between timestamps Flashback Transaction Queries (select .. XID=)   - Helps to understand how the transaction caused the changes.Error correction related:The purpose is to fix the error and correct the problems,Flashback Table  (flashback table .. to SCN | Timestamp)  - To rewind the table to a particular timestamp or SCN to reverse unwanted updates Flashback Drop (flashback table ..  to before drop )  - To undrop or undelete a table Flashback Database (flashback database to SCN  | Restore Point )  - This is the rewind button for Oracle databases. You can revert the entire database to a particular point in time. It is a fast way to perform a PITR (point-in-time recovery). Flashback Transaction (DBMS_FLASHBACK.TRANSACTION_BACKOUT(XID..))  - To reverse a transaction and its related transactions Advanced use cases Flashback technology is integrated into Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Oracle Data Guard. So, apart from the basic use cases mentioned above, the following use cases are addressed using Oracle Flashback. Block Media recovery by RMAN - to perform block level recovery Snapshot Standby - where the standby is temporarily converted to a read/write environment for testing, backup, or migration purposes Re-instate old primary in a Data Guard environment – this avoids the need to restore an old backup and perform a recovery to make it a new standby. Guaranteed Restore Points - to bring back the entire database to an older point-in-time in a guaranteed way. and so on..I hope this introductory overview helps you understand how Flashback features can be used to investigate and recover from logical errors.  As mentioned earlier, I will take a deeper-dive into to some of the critical Flashback features in my upcoming blogs and address common use cases.

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• Neo4J and Azure and VS2012 and Windows 8

  - by Chris Skardon

  Now, I know that this has been written about, but both of the main places (http://www.richard-banks.org/2011/02/running-neo4j-on-azure.html and http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/02/announcing-neo4j-on-windows-azure.html) utilise VS2010, and well, I’m on VS2012 and Windows 8. Not that I think Win 8 had anything to do with it really, anyhews! I’m going to begin from the beginning, this is my first foray into running something on Azure, so it’s been a bit of a learning curve. But luckily the Neo4J guys have got us started, so let’s download the VS2010 solution: http://neo4j.org/get?file=Neo4j.Azure.Server.zip OK, the other thing we’ll need is the VS2012 Azure SDK, so let’s get that as well: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/downloads/ (I just did the full install). Now, unzip the VS2010 solution and let’s open it in VS2012: <your location>\Neo4j.Azure.Server\Neo4j.Azure.Server.sln One-way-upgrade? Yer! Ignore the migration report – we don’t care! Let’s build that sucker… Ahhh 14 errors… WindowsAzure does not exist in the namespace ‘Microsoft’ Not a problem right? We’ve installed the SDK, just need to update the references: We can ignore the Test projects, they don’t use Azure, we’re interested in the other projects, so what we’ll do is remove the broken references, and add the correct ones, so expand the references bit of each project: hunt out those yellow exclamation marks, and delete them! You’ll need to add the right ones back in (listed below), when you go to the ‘Add Reference’ dialog make sure you have ‘Assemblies’ and ‘Framework’ selected before you seach (and search for ‘microsoft.win’ to narrow it down) So the references you need for each project are: CollectDiagnosticsData Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient Diversify.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime Microsoft.WindowsAzure.CloudDrive Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient Right, so let’s build again… Sweet! No errors.   Now we need to setup our Blobs, I’m assuming you are using the most up-to-date Java you happened to have downloaded :) in my case that’s JRE7, and that is located in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7 So, zip up that folder into whatever you want to call it, I went with jre7.zip, and stuck it in a temp folder for now. In that same temp folder I also copied the neo4j zip I was using: neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip OK, now, we need to get these into our Blob storage, this is where a lot of stuff becomes unstuck - I didn’t find any applications that helped me use the blob storage, one would crash (because my internet speed is so slow) and the other just didn’t work – sure it looked like it had worked, but when push came to shove it didn’t. So this is how I got my files into Blob (local first): 1. Run the ‘Storage Emulator’ (just search for that in the start menu) 2. That takes a little while to start up so fire up another instance of Visual Studio in the mean time, and create a new Console Application. 3. Manage Nuget Packages for that solution and add ‘Windows Azure Storage’ Now you’re set up to add the code: public static void Main() { CloudStorageAccount cloudStorageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount; CloudBlobClient client = cloudStorageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient(); client.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30); CloudBlobContainer container = client.GetContainerReference("neo4j"); //This will create it as well   UploadBlob(container, "jre7.zip", "c:\\temp\\jre7.zip"); UploadBlob(container, "neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip", "c:\\temp\\neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip"); }   private static void UploadBlob(CloudBlobContainer container, string blobName, string filename) { CloudBlob blob = container.GetBlobReference(blobName);   using (FileStream fileStream = File.OpenRead(filename)) blob.UploadFromStream(fileStream); } This will upload the files to your local storage account (to switch to an Azure one, you’ll need to create a storage account, and use those credentials when you make your CloudStorageAccount above) To test you’ve got them uploaded correctly, go to: http://localhost:10000/devstoreaccount1/neo4j/jre7.zip and you will hopefully download the zip file you just uploaded. Now that those files are there, we are ready for some final configuration… Right click on the Neo4jServerHost role in the Neo4j.Azure.Server cloud project: Click on the ‘Settings’ tab and we’ll need to do some changes – by default, the 1.7.2 edition of neo4J unzips to: neo4j-community-1.7.2 So, we need to update all the ‘neo4j-1.3.M02’ directories to be ‘neo4j-community-1.7.2’, we also need to update the Java runtime location, so we start with this: and end with this: Now, I also changed the Endpoints settings, to be HTTP (from TCP) and to have a port of 7410 (mainly because that’s straight down on the numpad) The last ‘gotcha’ is some hard coded consts, which had me looking for ages, they are in the ‘ConfigSettings’ class of the ‘Neo4jServerHost’ project, and the ones we’re interested in are: Neo4jFileName JavaZipFileName Change those both to what that should be. OK Nearly there (I promise)! Run the ‘Compute Emulator’ (same deal with the Start menu), in your system tray you should have an Azure icon, when the compute emulator is up and running, right click on the icon and select ‘Show Compute Emulator UI’ The last steps! Make sure the ‘Neo4j.Azure.Server’ cloud project is set up as the start project and let’s hit F5 tension mounts, the build takes place (you need to accept the UAC warning) and VS does it’s stuff. If you look at the Compute Emulator UI you’ll see some log stuff (which you’ll need if this goes awry – but it won’t don’t worry!) In a bit, the console and a Java window will pop up: Then the console will bog off, leaving just the Java one, and if we switch back to the Compute Emulator UI and scroll up we should be able to see a line telling us the port number we’ve been assigned (in my case 7411): (If you can’t see it, don’t worry.. press CTRL+A on the emulator, then CTRL+C, copy all the text and paste it into something like Notepad, then just do a Find for ‘port’ you’ll soon see it) Go to your favourite browser, and head to: http://localhost:YOURPORT/ and you should see the WebAdmin! See you on the cloud side hopefully! Chris PS Other gotchas! OK, I’ve been caught out a couple of times: I had an instance of Neo4J running as a service on my machine, the Azure instance wanted to run the https version of the server on the same port as the Service was running on, and so Java would complain that the port was already in use.. The first time I converted the project, it didn’t update the version of the Azure library to load, in the App.Config of the Neo4jServerHost project, and VS would throw an exception saying it couldn’t find the Azure dll version 1.0.0.0.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• What's new in Solaris 11.1?

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Solaris 11.1 is released. This is the first release update since Solaris 11 11/11, the versioning has been changed from MM/YY style to 11.1 highlighting that this is Solaris 11 Update 1.  Solaris 11 itself has been great. What's new in Solaris 11.1? Allow me to pick some new features from the What's New PDF that can be found in the official Oracle Solaris 11.1 Documentation. The updates are very numerous, I really can't include all.  I. New AI Automated Installer RBAC profiles have been introduced to enable delegation of installation tasks. II. The interactive installer now supports installing the OS to iSCSI targets. III. ASR (Auto Service Request) and OCM (Oracle Configuration Manager) have been enabled by default to proactively provide support information and create service requests to speed up support processes. This is optional and can be disabled but helps a lot in supportcases. For further information, see: http://oracle.com/goto/solarisautoreg IV. The new command svcbundle helps you to create SMF manifests without having to struggle with XML editing. (btw, do you know the interactive editprop subcommand in svccfg? The listprop/setprop subcommands are great for scripting and automating, but for an interactive property editing session try, for example, this: svccfg -s svc:/application/pkg/system-repository:default editprop )  V. pfedit: Ever wondered how to delegate editing permissions to certain files? It is well known "sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/hosts" is not the right way, for sudo elevates the complete vi process to admin levels, and the user can "break" out of the session as root with simply starting a shell from that vi. Now, the new pfedit command provides a solution exactly to this challenge - an auditable, secure, per-user configurable editing possibility. See the pfedit man page for examples.   VI. rsyslog, the popular logging daemon (filters, SSL, formattable output, SQL collect...) has been included in Solaris 11.1 as an alternative to syslog.  VII: Zones: Solaris Zones - as a major Solaris differentiator - got lots of love in terms of new features: ZOSS - Zones on Shared Storage: Placing your zones to shared storage (FC, iSCSI) has never been this easy - via zonecfg.  parallell updates - with S11's bootenvironments updating zones was no problem and meant no downtime anyway, but still, now you can update them parallelly, a way faster update action if you are running a large number of zones. This is like parallell patching in Solaris 10, but with all the IPS/ZFS/S11 goodness.  per-zone fstype statistics: Running zones on a shared filesystems complicate the I/O debugging, since ZFS collects all the random writes and delivers them sequentially to boost performance. Now, over kstat you can find out which zone's I/O has an impact on the other ones, see the examples in the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29024/gmheh.html#scrolltoc Zones got RDSv3 protocol support for InfiniBand, and IPoIB support with Crossbow's anet (automatic vnic creation) feature.  NUMA I/O support for Zones: customers can now determine the NUMA I/O topology of the system from within zones.  VIII: Security got a lot of attention too:  Automated security/audit reporting, with builtin reporting templates e.g. for PCI (payment card industry) audits.  PAM is now configureable on a per-user basis instead of system wide, allowing different authentication requirements for different users  SSH in Solaris 11.1 now supports running in FIPS 140-2 mode, that is, in a U.S. government security accredited fashion.  SHA512/224 and SHA512/256 cryptographic hash functions are implemented in a FIPS-compliant way - and on a T4 implemented in silicon! That is, goverment-approved cryptography at HW-speed.  Generally, Solaris is currently under evaluation to be both FIPS and Common Criteria certified.  IX. Networking, as one of the core strengths of Solaris 11, has been extended with:  Data Center Bridging (DCB) - not only setups where network and storage share the same fabric (FCoE, anyone?) can have Quality-of-Service requirements. DCB enables peers to distinguish traffic based on priorities. Your NICs have to support DCB, see the documentation, and additional information on Wikipedia. DataLink MultiPathing, DLMP, enables link aggregation to span across multiple switches, even between those of different vendors. But there are essential differences to the good old bandwidth-aggregating LACP, see the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E28993/gmdlu.html#scrolltoc VNIC live migration is now supported from one physical NIC to another on-the-fly  X. Data management:  FedFS, (Federated FileSystem) is new, it relies on Solaris 11's NFS referring mechanism to join separate shares of different NFS servers into a single filesystem namespace. The referring system has been there since S11 11/11, in Solaris 11.1 FedFS uses a LDAP - as the one global nameservice to bind them all.  The iSCSI initiator now uses the T4 CPU's HW-implemented CRC32 algorithm - thus improving iSCSI throughput while reducing CPU utilization on a T4 Storage locking improvements are now RAC aware, speeding up throughput with better locking-communication between nodes up to 20%!  XI: Kernel performance optimizations: The new Virtual Memory subsystem ("VM2") scales now to 100+ TB Memory ranges.  The memory predictor monitors large memory page usage, and adjust memory page sizes to applications' needs OSM, the Optimized Shared Memory allows Oracle DBs' SGA to be resized online XII: The Power Aware Dispatcher in now by default enabled, reducing power consumption of idle CPUs. Also, the LDoms' Power Management policies and the poweradm settings in Solaris 11 OS will cooperate. XIII: x86 boot: upgrade to the (Grand Unified Bootloader) GRUB2. Because grub2 differs in the configuration syntactically from grub1, one shall not edit the new grub configuration (grub.cfg) but use the new bootadm features to update it. GRUB2 adds UEFI support and also support for disks over 2TB. XIV: Improved viewing of per-CPU statistics of mpstat. This one might seem of less importance at first, but nowadays having better sorting/filtering possibilities on a periodically updated mpstat output of 256+ vCPUs can be a blessing. XV: Support for Solaris Cluster 4.1: The What's New document doesn't actually mention this one, since OSC 4.1 has not been released at the time 11.1 was. But since then it is available, and it requires Solaris 11.1. And it's only a "pkg update" away. ...aand I seriously need to stop here. There's a lot I missed, Edge Virtual Bridging, lofi tuning, ZFS sharing and crypto enhancements, USB3.0, pulseaudio, trusted extensions updates, etc - but if I mention all those then I effectively copy the What's New document. Which I recommend reading now anyway, it is a great extract of the 300+ new projects and RFE-followups in S11.1. And this blogpost is a summary of that extract.  For closing words, allow me to come back to Request For Enhancements, RFEs. Any customer can request features. Open up a Support Request, explain that this is an RFE, describe the feature you/your company desires to have in S11 implemented. The more SRs are collected for an RFE, the more chance it's got to get implemented. Feel free to provide feedback about the product, as well as about the Solaris 11.1 Documentation using the "Feedback" button there. Both the Solaris engineers and the documentation writers are eager to hear your input.Feel free to comment about this post too. Except that it's too long ;)  wbr,charlie

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• Unlocking Productivity

  - by Michael Snow

  Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise, Part II

  - by dbayard

  Part II – Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise In the first post in this series (see https://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/solving_big_problems_with_oracle), we showed how you can use R to perform historical rate of return calculations against investment data sourced from a spreadsheet.  We demonstrated the calculations against sample data for a small set of accounts.  While this worked fine, in the real-world the problem is much bigger because the amount of data is much bigger.  So much bigger that our approach in the previous post won’t scale to meet the real-world needs. From our previous post, here are the challenges we need to conquer: The actual data that needs to be used lives in a database, not in a spreadsheet The actual data is much, much bigger- too big to fit into the normal R memory space and too big to want to move across the network The overall process needs to run fast- much faster than a single processor The actual data needs to be kept secured- another reason to not want to move it from the database and across the network And the process of calculating the IRR needs to be integrated together with other database ETL activities, so that IRR’s can be calculated as part of the data warehouse refresh processes In this post, we will show how we moved from sample data environment to working with full-scale data.  This post is based on actual work we did for a financial services customer during a recent proof-of-concept. Getting started with the Database At this point, we have some sample data and our IRR function.  We were at a similar point in our customer proof-of-concept exercise- we had sample data but we did not have the full customer data yet.  So our database was empty.  But, this was easily rectified by leveraging the transparency features of Oracle R Enterprise (see https://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/analyzing_big_data_using_the).  The following code shows how we took our sample data SimpleMWRRData and easily turned it into a new Oracle database table called IRR_DATA via ore.create().  The code also shows how we can access the database table IRR_DATA as if it was a normal R data.frame named IRR_DATA. If we go to sql*plus, we can also check out our new IRR_DATA table: At this point, we now have our sample data loaded in the database as a normal Oracle table called IRR_DATA.  So, we now proceeded to test our R function working with database data. As our first test, we retrieved the data from a single account from the IRR_DATA table, pull it into local R memory, then call our IRR function.  This worked.  No SQL coding required! Going from Crawling to Walking Now that we have shown using our R code with database-resident data for a single account, we wanted to experiment with doing this for multiple accounts.  In other words, we wanted to implement the split-apply-combine technique we discussed in our first post in this series.  Fortunately, Oracle R Enterprise provides a very scalable way to do this with a function called ore.groupApply().  You can read more about ore.groupApply() here: https://blogs.oracle.com/R/entry/analyzing_big_data_using_the1 Here is an example of how we ask ORE to take our IRR_DATA table in the database, split it by the ACCOUNT column, apply a function that calls our SimpleMWRR() calculation, and then combine the results. (If you are following along at home, be sure to have installed our myIRR package on your database server via  “R CMD INSTALL myIRR”). The interesting thing about ore.groupApply is that the calculation is not actually performed in my desktop R environment from which I am running.  What actually happens is that ore.groupApply uses the Oracle database to perform the work.  And the Oracle database is what actually splits the IRR_DATA table by ACCOUNT.  Then the Oracle database takes the data for each account and sends it to an embedded R engine running on the database server to apply our R function.  Then the Oracle database combines all the individual results from the calls to the R function. This is significant because now the embedded R engine only needs to deal with the data for a single account at a time.  Regardless of whether we have 20 accounts or 1 million accounts or more, the R engine that performs the calculation does not care.  Given that normal R has a finite amount of memory to hold data, the ore.groupApply approach overcomes the R memory scalability problem since we only need to fit the data from a single account in R memory (not all of the data for all of the accounts). Additionally, the IRR_DATA does not need to be sent from the database to my desktop R program.  Even though I am invoking ore.groupApply from my desktop R program, because the actual SimpleMWRR calculation is run by the embedded R engine on the database server, the IRR_DATA does not need to leave the database server- this is both a performance benefit because network transmission of large amounts of data take time and a security benefit because it is harder to protect private data once you start shipping around your intranet. Another benefit, which we will discuss in a few paragraphs, is the ability to leverage Oracle database parallelism to run these calculations for dozens of accounts at once. From Walking to Running ore.groupApply is rather nice, but it still has the drawback that I run this from a desktop R instance.  This is not ideal for integrating into typical operational processes like nightly data warehouse refreshes or monthly statement generation.  But, this is not an issue for ORE.  Oracle R Enterprise lets us run this from the database using regular SQL, which is easily integrated into standard operations.  That is extremely exciting and the way we actually did these calculations in the customer proof. As part of Oracle R Enterprise, it provides a SQL equivalent to ore.groupApply which it refers to as “rqGroupEval”.  To use rqGroupEval via SQL, there is a bit of simple setup needed.  Basically, the Oracle Database needs to know the structure of the input table and the grouping column, which we are able to define using the database’s pipeline table function mechanisms. Here is the setup script: At this point, our initial setup of rqGroupEval is done for the IRR_DATA table.  The next step is to define our R function to the database.  We do that via a call to ORE’s rqScriptCreate. Now we can test it.  The SQL you use to run rqGroupEval uses the Oracle database pipeline table function syntax.  The first argument to irr_dataGroupEval is a cursor defining our input.  You can add additional where clauses and subqueries to this cursor as appropriate.  The second argument is any additional inputs to the R function.  The third argument is the text of a dummy select statement.  The dummy select statement is used by the database to identify the columns and datatypes to expect the R function to return.  The fourth argument is the column of the input table to split/group by.  The final argument is the name of the R function as you defined it when you called rqScriptCreate(). The Real-World Results In our real customer proof-of-concept, we had more sophisticated calculation requirements than shown in this simplified blog example.  For instance, we had to perform the rate of return calculations for 5 separate time periods, so the R code was enhanced to do so.  In addition, some accounts needed a time-weighted rate of return to be calculated, so we extended our approach and added an R function to do that.  And finally, there were also a few more real-world data irregularities that we needed to account for, so we added logic to our R functions to deal with those exceptions.  For the full-scale customer test, we loaded the customer data onto a Half-Rack Exadata X2-2 Database Machine.  As our half-rack had 48 physical cores (and 96 threads if you consider hyperthreading), we wanted to take advantage of that CPU horsepower to speed up our calculations.  To do so with ORE, it is as simple as leveraging the Oracle Database Parallel Query features.  Let’s look at the SQL used in the customer proof: Notice that we use a parallel hint on the cursor that is the input to our rqGroupEval function.  That is all we need to do to enable Oracle to use parallel R engines. Here are a few screenshots of what this SQL looked like in the Real-Time SQL Monitor when we ran this during the proof of concept (hint: you might need to right-click on these images to be able to view the images full-screen to see the entire image): From the above, you can notice a few things (numbers 1 thru 5 below correspond with highlighted numbers on the images above.  You may need to right click on the above images and view the images full-screen to see the entire image): The SQL completed in 110 seconds (1.8minutes) We calculated rate of returns for 5 time periods for each of 911k accounts (the number of actual rows returned by the IRRSTAGEGROUPEVAL operation) We accessed 103m rows of detailed cash flow/market value data (the number of actual rows returned by the IRR_STAGE2 operation) We ran with 72 degrees of parallelism spread across 4 database servers Most of our 110seconds was spent in the “External Procedure call” event On average, we performed 8,200 executions of our R function per second (110s/911k accounts) On average, each execution was passed 110 rows of data (103m detail rows/911k accounts) On average, we did 41,000 single time period rate of return calculations per second (each of the 8,200 executions of our R function did rate of return calculations for 5 time periods) On average, we processed over 900,000 rows of database data in R per second (103m detail rows/110s) R + Oracle R Enterprise: Best of R + Best of Oracle Database This blog post series started by describing a real customer problem: how to perform a lot of calculations on a lot of data in a short period of time.  While standard R proved to be a very good fit for writing the necessary calculations, the challenge of working with a lot of data in a short period of time remained. This blog post series showed how Oracle R Enterprise enables R to be used in conjunction with the Oracle Database to overcome the data volume and performance issues (as well as simplifying the operations and security issues).  It also showed that we could calculate 5 time periods of rate of returns for almost a million individual accounts in less than 2 minutes. In a future post, we will take the same R function and show how Oracle R Connector for Hadoop can be used in the Hadoop world.  In that next post, instead of having our data in an Oracle database, our data will live in Hadoop and we will how to use the Oracle R Connector for Hadoop and other Oracle Big Data Connectors to move data between Hadoop, R, and the Oracle Database easily.

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• Best Practices - which domain types should be used to run applications

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) One question that frequently comes up is "which types of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer in most cases: "only run applications in guest domains", but enhancements to T-series servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and the advent of SPARC SuperCluster have made this question more interesting and worth qualifying differently. This article reviews the relevant concepts and provides suggestions on where to deploy applications in a logical domains environment. Review: division of labor and types of domain Oracle VM Server for SPARC offloads many functions from the hypervisor to domains (also called virtual machines). This is a modern alternative to using a "thick" hypervisor that provides all virtualization functions, as in traditional VM designs, This permits a simpler hypervisor design, which enhances reliability, and security. It also reduces single points of failure by assigning responsibilities to multiple system components, which further improves reliability and security. In this architecture, management and I/O functionality are provided within domains. Oracle VM Server for SPARC does this by defining the following types of domain, each with their own roles: Control domain - management control point for the server, used to configure domains and manage resources. It is the first domain to boot on a power-up, is an I/O domain, and is usually a service domain as well. I/O domain - has been assigned physical I/O devices: a PCIe root complex, a PCI device, or a SR-IOV (single-root I/O Virtualization) function. It has native performance and functionality for the devices it owns, unmediated by any virtualization layer. Service domain - provides virtual network and disk devices to guest domains. Guest domain - a domain whose devices are all virtual rather than physical: virtual network and disk devices provided by one or more service domains. In common practice, this is where applications are run. Typical deployment A service domain is generally also an I/O domain: otherwise it wouldn't have access to physical device "backends" to offer to its clients. Similarly, an I/O domain is also typically a service domain in order to leverage the available PCI busses. Control domains must be I/O domains, because they boot up first on the server and require physical I/O. It's typical for the control domain to also be a service domain too so it doesn't "waste" the I/O resources it uses. A simple configuration consists of a control domain, which is also the one I/O and service domain, and some number of guest domains using virtual I/O. In production, customers typically use multiple domains with I/O and service roles to eliminate single points of failure: guest domains have virtual disk and virtual devices provisioned from more than one service domain, so failure of a service domain or I/O path or device doesn't result in an application outage. This is also used for "rolling upgrades" in which service domains are upgraded one at a time while their guests continue to operate without disruption. (It should be noted that resiliency to I/O device failures can also be provided by the single control domain, using multi-path I/O) In this type of deployment, control, I/O, and service domains are used for virtualization infrastructure, while applications run in guest domains. Changing application deployment patterns The above model has been widely and successfully used, but more configuration options are available now. Servers got bigger than the original T2000 class machines with 2 I/O busses, so there is more I/O capacity that can be used for applications. Increased T-series server capacity made it attractive to run more vertical applications, such as databases, with higher resource requirements than the "light" applications originally seen. This made it attractive to run applications in I/O domains so they could get bare-metal native I/O performance. This is leveraged by the SPARC SuperCluster engineered system, announced a year ago at Oracle OpenWorld. In SPARC SuperCluster, I/O domains are used for high performance applications, with native I/O performance for disk and network and optimized access to the Infiniband fabric. Another technical enhancement is the introduction of Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which make it possible to give domains direct connections and native I/O performance for selected I/O devices. A domain with either a DIO or SR-IOV device is an I/O domain. In summary: not all I/O domains own PCI complexes, and there are increasingly more I/O domains that are not service domains. They use their I/O connectivity for performance for their own applications. However, there are some limitations and considerations: at this time, a domain using physical I/O cannot be live-migrated to another server. There is also a need to plan for security and introducing unneeded dependencies: if an I/O domain is also a service domain providing virtual I/O go guests, it has the ability to affect the correct operation of its client guest domains. This is even more relevant for the control domain. where the ldm has to be protected from unauthorized (or even mistaken) use that would affect other domains. As a general rule, running applications in the service domain or the control domain should be avoided. To recap: Guest domains with virtual I/O still provide the greatest operational flexibility, including features like live migration. I/O domains can be used for applications with high performance requirements. This is used to great effect in SPARC SuperCluster and in general T4 deployments. Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) make this more attractive by giving direct I/O access to more domains. Service domains should in general not be used for applications, because compromised security in the domain, or an outage, can affect other domains that depend on it. This concern can be mitigated by providing guests' their virtual I/O from more than one service domain, so an interruption of service in the service domain does not cause an application outage. The control domain should in general not be used to run applications, for the same reason. SPARC SuperCluster use the control domain for applications, but it is an exception: it's not a general purpose environment; it's an engineered system with specifically configured applications and optimization for optimal performance. These are recommended "best practices" based on conversations with a number of Oracle architects. Keep in mind that "one size does not fit all", so you should evaluate these practices in the context of your own requirements. Summary Higher capacity T-series servers have made it more attractive to use them for applications with high resource requirements. New deployment models permit native I/O performance for demanding applications by running them in I/O domains with direct access to their devices. This is leveraged in SPARC SuperCluster, and can be leveraged in T-series servers to provision high-performance applications running in domains. Carefully planned, this can be used to provide higher performance for critical applications.

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• XenServer Converting HVM to Paravirtualised

  - by Karl Kloppenborg

  Recently I have been tasked with the daunting process of converting a setup of HVM enabled VMs (running on Citrix XenServer 5.6.0) into PV (paravirtualised) containers. The constraints of the project was that: The operating system must be functionally identical after the migration. minimal modification to the operating system (with exception of kernel / drive mapping) I also was allowed to change the bootloader(ie, grub) in what ever way I see fit. However, I have attempted this, I will firstly like to show you my steps I took. This at the moment is CentOS5.5 specific: Steps: yum install kernel-xen This installed: 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen edited: /boot/grub/menu.lst changed my specs to match: title CentOS (2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=xvc0 initrd /initrd-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen.img Then I changed my xenserver parameters to match: xe vm-param-set uuid=[vm uuid] PV-bootloader-args="--kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen --ramdisk /initrd-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen.img" xe vm-param-set uuid=[vm uuid] HVM-boot-policy="" xe vm-param-set uuid=[vm uuid] PV-bootloader=pygrub xe vbd-param-set uuid==[Virtual Block Device/VBD uuid] bootable=true Some things to note, I am running a VolGroup LVM ;) Anyways, after all these steps (which aren't much!) I boot the VM and it boots initial kernel just fine, however I am presented with this error: Boot Screen: device-mapper: dm-raid45: initialized v0.2594l Waiting for driver initialization. Scanning and configuring dmraid supported devices Scanning logical volumes Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... Activating logical volumes Volume group "VolGroup00" not found Creating root device. Mounting root filesystem. mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root' Setting up other filesystems. Setting up new root fs setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory Switching to new root and running init. unmounting old /dev unmounting old /proc unmounting old /sys switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory Now my hints are that it cannot detect / because of the fact that when you change from HVM mode to PV it does something (not that obvious) When you make a SR (storage) on a HVM, you get it mounted to the guest os as /dev/hda. However in PV mode, this presents itself as /dev/xvda... Could this be the answer? and if so, how the heck to I implement it?? Update: So I have gotten a bit further in my quest, as it now detects the LVM's... To do this, I required to recompile the xen-kernel initrd image. Command: mkinitrd -v --builtin=xen_vbd --preload=xenblk initrd-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen.img 2.6.18-194.32.1.el5xen Now when I boot I get this: Boot Screen: Loading dm-raid45.ko module device-mapper: dm-raid45: initialized v0.2594l Scanning and configuring dmraid supported devices Scanning logical volumes Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... Found volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type lvm2 Activating logical volumes 3 logical volume(s) in volume group "VolGroup00" now active Creating root device. Mounting root filesystem. mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: Device or resource busy Setting up other filesystems. Setting up new root fs setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory Switching to new root and running init. unmounting old /dev unmounting old /proc unmounting old /sys switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

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• unattended-upgrades does not reboot

  - by Cheiron

  I am running Debian 7 stable with unattended-upgrades (every morning at 6 AM) to make sure I am always fully updated. I have the following config: $ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades // Automatically upgrade packages from these origin patterns Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern { // Archive or Suite based matching: // Note that this will silently match a different release after // migration to the specified archive (e.g. testing becomes the // new stable). "o=Debian,a=stable"; "o=Debian,a=stable-updates"; // "o=Debian,a=proposed-updates"; "origin=Debian,archive=stable,label=Debian-Security"; }; // List of packages to not update Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist { // "vim"; // "libc6"; // "libc6-dev"; // "libc6-i686"; }; // This option allows you to control if on a unclean dpkg exit // unattended-upgrades will automatically run // dpkg --force-confold --configure -a // The default is true, to ensure updates keep getting installed //Unattended-Upgrade::AutoFixInterruptedDpkg "false"; // Split the upgrade into the smallest possible chunks so that // they can be interrupted with SIGUSR1. This makes the upgrade // a bit slower but it has the benefit that shutdown while a upgrade // is running is possible (with a small delay) //Unattended-Upgrade::MinimalSteps "true"; // Install all unattended-upgrades when the machine is shuting down // instead of doing it in the background while the machine is running // This will (obviously) make shutdown slower //Unattended-Upgrade::InstallOnShutdown "true"; // Send email to this address for problems or packages upgrades // If empty or unset then no email is sent, make sure that you // have a working mail setup on your system. A package that provides // 'mailx' must be installed. E.g. "[email protected]" Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "root"; // Set this value to "true" to get emails only on errors. Default // is to always send a mail if Unattended-Upgrade::Mail is set Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true"; // Do automatic removal of new unused dependencies after the upgrade // (equivalent to apt-get autoremove) //Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "false"; // Automatically reboot *WITHOUT CONFIRMATION* if a // the file /var/run/reboot-required is found after the upgrade Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true"; // Use apt bandwidth limit feature, this example limits the download // speed to 70kb/sec //Acquire::http::Dl-Limit "70"; As you can see Automatic-Reboot is true and thus the server should automaticly reboot. Last time I checked the server was online for over 100 days, which means that the update from Debian 7.1 to Debian 7.2 has happened while the server was up (and indeed, all updates were installed), but this involves kernel updates, which means that the server should reboot. It did not. The server was running very slow, so I rebooted which fixed that. I did some research and found out that unattended-upgrades responds to the reboot-required file in /var/run/. I touched this file and waited one week, the file still exists and the server did not reboot. So I think that unattended-uppgrades ignores the auto-reboot part. So, am I doing somthing wrong here? Why did the server not restart? The upgrade part works perfect by the way, its just the reboot part that does not seem to work as it should.

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• Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

  - by SQLOS Team

  Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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• Introducing Oracle Multitenant

  - by OracleMultitenant

  0 0 1 1142 6510 Oracle Corporation 54 15 7637 14.0 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} The First Database Designed for the Cloud Today Oracle announced the general availability (GA) of Oracle Database 12c, the first database designed for the Cloud. Oracle Multitenant, new with Oracle Database 12c, is a key component of this – a new architecture for consolidating databases and simplifying operations in the Cloud. With this, the inaugural post in the Multitenant blog, my goal is to start the conversation about Oracle Multitenant. We are very proud of this new architecture, which we view as a major advance for Oracle. Customers, partners and analysts who have had previews are very excited about its capabilities and its flexibility. This high level review of Oracle Multitenant will touch on our design considerations and how we re-architected our database for the cloud. I’ll briefly describe our new multitenant architecture and explain it’s key benefits. Finally I’ll mention some of the major use cases we see for Oracle Multitenant. Industry Trends We always start by talking to our customers about the pressures and challenges they’re facing and what trends they’re seeing in the industry. Some things don’t change. They face the same pressures and the same requirements as ever: Pressure to do more with less; be faster, leaner, cheaper, and deliver services 24/7. Big companies have achieved scale. Now they want to realize economies of scale. As ever, DBAs are faced with the challenges of patching and upgrading large numbers of databases, and provisioning new ones.  Requirements are familiar: Performance, scalability, reliability and high availability are non-negotiable. They need ever more security in this threatening climate. There’s no time to stop and retool with new applications. What’s new are the trends. These are the techniques to use to respond to these pressures within the constraints of the requirements. With the advent of cloud computing and availability of massively powerful servers – even engineered systems such as Exadata – our customers want to consolidate many applications into fewer larger servers. There’s a move to standardized services – even self-service. Consolidation Consolidation is not new; companies have tried various different approaches to consolidation of databases in the cloud. One approach is to partition a powerful server between several virtual machines, one per application. A downside of this is that you have the resource and management overheads of OS and RDBMS per VM – that is, per application. Another is that you have replaced physical sprawl with virtual sprawl and virtual sprawl is still expensive to manage. In the dedicated database model, we have a single physical server supporting multiple databases, one per application. So there’s a shared OS overhead, but RDBMS process and memory overhead are replicated per application. Let's think about our traditional Oracle Database architecture. Every time we create a database, be it a production database, a development or a test database, what do we do? We create a set of files, we allocate a bunch of memory for managing the data, and we kick off a series of background processes. This is replicated for every one of the databases that we create. As more and more databases are fired up, these replicated overheads quickly consume the available server resources and this limits the number of applications we can run on any given server. In Oracle Database 11g and earlier the highest degree of consolidation could be achieved by what we call schema consolidation. In this model we have one big server with one big database. Individual applications are installed in separate schemas or table-owners. Database overheads are shared between all applications, which affords maximum consolidation. The shortcomings are that application changes are often required. There is no tenant isolation. One bad apple can spoil the whole batch. New Architecture & Benefits In Oracle Database 12c, we have a new multitenant architecture, featuring pluggable databases. This delivers all the resource utilization advantages of schema consolidation with none of the downsides. There are two parts to the term “pluggable database”: "pluggable", which is new, and "database", which is familiar.  Before we get to the exciting new stuff let’s discuss what hasn’t changed. A pluggable database is a fully functional Oracle database. It’s not watered down in any way. From the perspective of an application or an end user it hasn’t changed at all. This is very important because it means that no application changes are required to adopt this new architecture. There are many thousands of applications built on Oracle databases and they are all ready to run on Oracle Multitenant. So we have these self-contained pluggable databases (PDBs), and as their name suggests, they are plugged into a multitenant container database (CDB). The CDB behaves as a single database from the operations point of view. Very much as we had with the schema consolidation model, we only have a single set of Oracle background processes and a single, shared database memory requirement. This gives us very high consolidation density, which affords maximum reduction in capital expenses (CapEx). By performing management operations at the CDB level – “managing many as one” – we can achieve great reductions in operating expenses (OpEx) as well, but we retain granular control where appropriate. Furthermore, the “pluggability” capability gives us portability and this adds a tremendous amount of agility. We can simply unplug a PDB from one CDB and plug it into another CDB, for example to move it from one SLA tier to another. I'll explore all these new capabilities in much more detail in a future posting.  Use Cases We can identify a number of use cases for Oracle Multitenant. Here are a few of the major ones. 0 0 1 113 650 Oracle Corporation 5 1 762 14.0 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} Development / Testing where individual engineers need rapid provisioning and recycling of private copies of a few "master test databases" Consolidation of disparate applications using fewer, more powerful servers Software as a Service deploying separate copies of identical applications to individual tenants Database as a Service typically self-service provisioning of databases on the private cloud Application Distribution from ISV / Installation by Customer Eliminating many typical installation steps (create schema, import seed data, import application code PL/SQL…) - just plug in a PDB! High volume data distribution literally via disk drives in envelopes distributed by truck! - distribution of things like GIS or MDM master databases …various others! Benefits Previous approaches to consolidation have involved a trade-off between reductions in Capital Expenses (CapEx) and Operating Expenses (OpEx), and they’ve usually come at the expense of agility. With Oracle Multitenant you can have your cake and eat it: Minimize CapEx More Applications per server Minimize OpEx Manage many as one Standardized procedures and services Rapid provisioning Maximize Agility Cloning for development and testing Portability through pluggability Scalability with RAC Ease of Adoption Applications run unchanged It’s a pure deployment choice. Neither the database backend nor the application needs to be changed. In future postings I’ll explore various aspects in more detail. However, if you feel compelled to devour everything you can about Oracle Multitenant this very minute, have no fear. Visit the Multitenant page on OTN and explore the various resources we have available there. Among these, Oracle Distinguished Product Manager Bryn Llewellyn has written an excellent, thorough, and exhaustively detailed White Paper about Oracle Multitenant, which is available here.  Follow me  I tweet @OraclePDB #OracleMultitenant

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 05, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 05, 2012Popular ReleasesDesktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.BLACK ORANGE: HPAD TEXT EDITOR 0.9 Beta: HOW TO RUN THE TEXT EDITOR Download the HPAD ARCHIVED FILES which is in .rar format Extract using Winrar Make sure that extracted files are in the same folder Double-Click on HPAD.exe application fileTelerikMvcGridCustomBindingHelper: Version 1.0.15.247-RC2: TelerikMvcGridCustomBindingHelper 1.0.15.247 RC2 Release notes: This is a RC version (hopefully the last one), please test and report any error or problem you encounter. This release is all about performance and fixes Support: "Or" and "Does Not contain" filter options Improved BooleanSubstitutes, Custom Aggregates and expressions-to-queryover Add EntityFramework examples in ExampleWebApplication Many other improvements and fixes Fix invalid cast on CustomAggregates Support for ...ServiceMon - Extensible Real-time, Service Monitoring Utility: ServiceMon Release 0.9.0.44: Auto-uploaded from build serverJavaScript Grid: Release 09-05-2012: Release 09-05-2012xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-dotCover 0.6.1 (dotCover 2.1 beta): xunitcontrib release 0.6.1 for dotCover 2.1 beta This release provides a test runner plugin for dotCover 2.1 beta, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release adds support for running xUnit.net tests to dotCover 2.1 beta's Visual Studio plugin. PLEASE NOTE: You do NOT need this if you also have ReSharper and the existing 0.6.1 release installed. DotCover will use ReSharper's test runners if available. This release includes th...B INI Sharp Library: B INI Sharp Library v1.0.0.0 Realsed: The frist realsedActive Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...BI System Monitor: v2.1: Data Audits report and supporting SQL, and SSIS package Environment Overview report enhancements, improving the appearance, addition of data audit finding indicators Note: SQL 2012 version coming soon.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.New ProjectsA Simple Eng-Hindi CMS: A simple English- Hindi dual language content management system for small business/personal websites.Active Social Migrator: This project for managing the Active Social migration tool.ANSI Console User Control: Custom console control for .NET WinformsAutoSPInstallerGUI: GUI Configuration Tool for SPAutoInstaller Codeplex ProjectCode Documentation Checkin Policy: This checkin policy for Visual Studio 2012 checks if c# code is documented the way it's configured in the config of the policy. Code Dojo/Kata - Free Time Coding: Doing some katas of the Coding Dojo page. http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KataCataloguefjycUnifyShow: fjycUnifyShowHidden Capture (HC): HC is simple and easy utility to hidden and auto capture desktop or active windowHRC Integration Services: Fake SQL Server Integration Services. LOLKooboo CMS Sites Switcher: Kooboo CMS Sites SwitcherMod.CookieDetector: Orchard module for detecting whether cookies are enabledMyCodes: Created!MySQL Statement Monitor: MySQL Statement Monitor is a monitoring tool that monitors SQL statements transferred over the network.NeoModulusPIRandom: The idea with PI Random is to use easy string manipulation and simple math to generate a pseudo random number. Net Core Tech - Medical Record System: This is a Medical Record System ProjectOraPowerShell: PowerShell library for backup and maintenance of a Oracle Database environment under Microsoft Windows 2008PinDNN: PinDNN is a module that imparts Pinterest-like functionality to DotNetNuke sites. This module works with a MongoDB database and uses the built-in social relatioPyrogen Code Generator: PyroGen is a simple code generator accepting C# as the markup language.restMs: wil be deleted soonScript.NET: Script.NET is a script management utility for web forms and MVC, using ScriptJS-like features to link dependencies between scripts.SpringExample-Pagination: Simple Spring example with PaginationXNA and Component Based Design: This project includes code for XNA and Component Based Design

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• hyper-v fails when attaching more disk to VM. The VM won't start and generates an error

  - by CasperDK

  I'm lost at what to do about this: Hi... System: Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V farm running with failover cluster with a EVA 4400 as backend. When I attach a new disk to a VM it fails when I try to start it. If I move the VM to another, say node 1, I can add the disk and I can get them to start. If I move the VM back to node 2 where the problem arose and the VM is running, I get an error during live migration and the VM fails back to node1 where it did run... So it's like there is something wrong with Hyper-V on node 2 and not node 1. Also node 3 has the same issue. Restarting the nodes is NOT an option since I will have this problem again at a later time AND because not all the VMs can run on node 1 which means my client company will experience downtime on the VMs not running on node 1. Any fix for this? An update I have missed perhaps? It has been two years... Here are the errors: An error ocurred while attempting to change the state of virtual machine XXX. 'XXX' failed to start. Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to power on with Error 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' 'XXX' failed to start. (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to power on with Error 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) 'XXX': Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) 'XXX': Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) An error ocurred while attempting to change the state of virtual machine XXX. 'XXX' failed to start. Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to power on with Error 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' 'XXX' failed to start. (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to power on with Error 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) 'XXX': Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) 'XXX': Failed to open attachment 'X:\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) An error ocurred while attempting to change the state of virtual machine XXX. 'XXX' failed to start. Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to power on with Error 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' Failed to open attachment 'c:\clusterstorage/volume1/XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' Failed to open attachment 'c:\clusterstorage/volume1\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' 'XXX' failed to start. (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID {83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to power on with Error 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) 'XXX': Failed to open attachment 'c:\clusterstorage/volume1\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) 'XXX': Failed to open attachment 'c:\clusterstorage/volume1\XXX.vhd'. Error: 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.' (0x8007001F). (Virtual machine 36563C78-65B5-4C40-A52D-689BB39E8B08) In the Hyper-V logs I found some more errors: In the hyper-v VMMS logs I have this: 'ServerName' failed to perform the operation. The virtual machine is not in a valid state to perform the operation. (Virtual machine ID 0A6CC4A9-39D6-4413-8CF0-B6DAA35B68D7)

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• How to resolve "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" errors from iCal/CalDAV server after upgrade to Snow Leopard Server?

  - by morgant

  We recently upgraded our Open Directory Master & Replica to Mac OS X 10.6.4 Snow Leopard Server. We had a mismatched server FQDN & LDAP Search Base/Kerberos Realm, so we exported all users & groups, created the new Open Directory Master w/matching FQDN & Search Base/Realm, reimported users & groups, and re-bound all servers & workstations to the new OD Master. At the same time as all of this, we upgraded our iCal/CalDAV server to Mac OS X 10.6.4 Snow Leopard Server. Ever since doing so, we've seen the following issues with our iCal/CalDAV server and iCal clients on both Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard & Mac OS X 10.6: If a user attempts to move or delete an event (single or repeating) that was created prior to the upgrade to 10.6 Server, they get the following error: Access to "blah" in "blah" in account "blah" is not permitted. The server responded: "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" to operation CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation. New users added to the directory get the following error when attempting to add their account to in iCal's preferences: The user "blah" has no configured pricipals. Confirm with your network administrator that your account has at least one CalDAV principal configured. Interestingly, we've since discovered that users seem to be able to delete individual events from an old repeating event without error, but that's a massive amount of work to get rid of a repeating event. I will note that we have not yet added an SRV record in DNS as instructed on page 19 of iCal_Server_Admin_v10.6.pdf. Further Investigation: In this particular case, a user is attempting to decline repeating events created prior to the upgrade to Snow Leopard Server. Granting the user full write access with sudo calendarserver_manage_principals --add-write-proxy users:user1 users:user2 (which did work) doesn't allow deletion of the events. Still get the usual error: Access to "blah blah" in "blah blah" in account "blah blah" is not permitted. The server responded: "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" to operation CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation. The error that shows up in /var/log/caldavd/error.log on the iCal Server when attempting to delete one of the events is: 2011-03-17 15:14:30-0400 [-] [caldav-8009] [PooledMemCacheProtocol,client] [twistedcaldav.extensions#info] PUT /calendars/__uids__/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX/calendar/XXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX.ics HTTP/1.1 2011-03-17 15:14:30-0400 [-] [caldav-8009] [PooledMemCacheProtocol,client] [twistedcaldav.scheduling.implicit#error] Cannot change ORGANIZER: UID:XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX And the error in /var/log/system.log on the client is: Mar 17 15:14:30 192-168-21-169-dhcp iCal[33509]: CalDAV CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation failed: status 'HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden' request:\n\nBEGIN:VCALENDAR^M\nVERSION:2.0^M\nPRODID:-//Apple Inc.//iCal 3.0//EN^M\nCALSCALE:GREGORIAN^M\nBEGIN:VTIMEZONE^M\nTZID:US/Eastern^M\nBEGIN:DAYLIGHT^M\nTZOFFSETFROM:-0500^M\nTZOFFSETTO:-0400^M\nDTSTART:20070311T020000^M\nRRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU^M\nTZNAME:EDT^M\nEND:DAYLIGHT^M\nBEGIN:STANDARD^M\nTZOFFSETFROM:-0400^M\nTZOFFSETTO:-0500^M\nDTSTART:20071104T020000^M\nRRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU^M\nTZNAME:EST^M\nEND:STANDARD^M\nEND:VTIMEZONE^M\nBEGIN:VEVENT^M\nSEQUENCE:5^M\nDTSTART;TZID=US/Eastern:20090117T094500^M\nDTSTAMP:20081227T143043Z^M\nSUMMARY:blah blah^M\nATTENDEE;CN="First Last";CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT:urn:uuid^M\n :XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX^M\nATTENDEE;CN="First Last";CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED:mailto:user@d^M\n omain.tld^M\nEXDATE;TZID=US/Eastern:20110319T094500^M\nDTEND;TZID=US/Eastern:20090117T183000^M\nRRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=1^M\nTRANSP:OPAQUE^M\nUID:XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX^M\nORGANIZER;CN="First Last":mailto:[email protected]^M\nX-WR-ITIPSTATUSML:UNCLEAN^M\nCREATED:20110317T191348Z^M\nEND:VEVENT^M\nEND:VCALENDAR^M\n\n\n... response:\nHTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden^M\nDate: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:14:30 GMT^M\nDav: 1, access-control, calendar-access, calendar-schedule, calendar-auto-schedule, calendar-availability, inbox-availability, calendar-proxy, calendarserver-private-events, calendarserver-private-comments, calendarserver-principal-property-search^M\nContent-Type: text/xml^M\nContent-Length: 134^M\nServer: Twisted/8.2.0 TwistedWeb/8.2.0 TwistedCalDAV/2.5 (iCal Server v12.56.21)^M\n^M\n<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><error xmlns='DAV:'>^M\n <valid-attendee-change xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:caldav'/>^M\n</error> One thing I have noticed, and I'm not sure if this has any real effect is that in many of these pre-Snow Leopard Server migration events, the ORGANIZER is specified like the following: ORGANIZER;CN=First Last:mailto:[email protected] But newer ones are more like one of the two following: ORGANIZER;CN=First Last;[email protected];SCHEDULE-STATUS=1 ORGANIZER;CN=First Last;[email protected]:urn:uuid:XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX iCal_Server_Admin_v10.6.pdf notes that the ".db.sqlite" files are completely disposable, they're merely a performance cache and are re-built on the fly, so are safe to delete. I did delete the one for the organizer's calendars and it took longer to process the attempted event delete while it rebuilt the database, but still errored out in the end. FWIW the error is thrown by this code: https://trac.calendarserver.org/browser/CalendarServer/trunk/twistedcaldav/scheduling/implicit.py Any further suggestions? I see lots of questions about this in my Google searches, but not solutions and this is a widespread problem on our iCal Server. Now, we mostly try to get users to ignore them (hence the amount of time this question has been open), but every now and then I dig in deeper trying to find the culprit and/or solution.

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• Creating a multi-tenant application using PostgreSQL's schemas and Rails

  - by ramon.tayag

  Stuff I've already figured out I'm learning how to create a multi-tenant application in Rails that serves data from different schemas based on what domain or subdomain is used to view the application. I already have a few concerns answered: How can you get subdomain-fu to work with domains as well? Here's someone that asked the same question which leads you to this blog. What database, and how will it be structured? Here's an excellent talk by Guy Naor, and good question about PostgreSQL and schemas. I already know my schemas will all have the same structure. They will differ in the data they hold. So, how can you run migrations for all schemas? Here's an answer. Those three points cover a lot of the general stuff I need to know. However, in the next steps I seem to have many ways of implementing things. I'm hoping that there's a better, easier way. Finally, to my question When a new user signs up, I can easily create the schema. However, what would be the best and easiest way to load the structure that the rest of the schemas already have? Here are some questions/scenarios that might give you a better idea. Should I pass it on to a shell script that dumps the public schema into a temporary one, and imports it back to my main database (pretty much like what Guy Naor says in his video)? Here's a quick summary/script I got from the helpful #postgres on freenode. While this will probably work, I'm gonna have to do a lot of stuff outside of Rails, which makes me a bit uncomfortable.. which also brings me to the next question. Is there a way to do this straight from Ruby on Rails? Like create a PostgreSQL schema, then just load the Rails database schema (schema.rb - I know, it's confusing) into that PostgreSQL schema. Is there a gem/plugin that has these things already? Methods like "create_pg_schema_and_load_rails_schema(the_new_schema_name)". If there's none, I'll probably work at making one, but I'm doubtful about how well tested it'll be with all the moving parts (especially if I end up using a shell script to create and manage new PostgreSQL schemas). Thanks, and I hope that wasn't too long! UPDATE May 11, 2010 11:26 GMT+8 Since last night I've been able to get a method to work that creates a new schema and loads schema.rb into it. Not sure if what I'm doing is correct (seems to work fine, so far) but it's a step closer at least. If there's a better way please let me know. module SchemaUtils def self.add_schema_to_path(schema) conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection conn.execute "SET search_path TO #{schema}, #{conn.schema_search_path}" end def self.reset_search_path conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection conn.execute "SET search_path TO #{conn.schema_search_path}" end def self.create_and_migrate_schema(schema_name) conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection schemas = conn.select_values("select * from pg_namespace where nspname != 'information_schema' AND nspname NOT LIKE 'pg%'") if schemas.include?(schema_name) tables = conn.tables Rails.logger.info "#{schema_name} exists already with these tables #{tables.inspect}" else Rails.logger.info "About to create #{schema_name}" conn.execute "create schema #{schema_name}" end # Save the old search path so we can set it back at the end of this method old_search_path = conn.schema_search_path # Tried to set the search path like in the methods above (from Guy Naor) # conn.execute "SET search_path TO #{schema_name}" # But the connection itself seems to remember the old search path. # If set this way, it works. conn.schema_search_path = schema_name # Directly from databases.rake. # In Rails 2.3.5 databases.rake can be found in railties/lib/tasks/databases.rake file = "#{Rails.root}/db/schema.rb" if File.exists?(file) Rails.logger.info "About to load the schema #{file}" load(file) else abort %{#{file} doesn't exist yet. It's possible that you just ran a migration!} end Rails.logger.info "About to set search path back to #{old_search_path}." conn.schema_search_path = old_search_path end end

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• Installing Paperclip - "undefined method `has_attached_file` for" - Ruby on Rails

  - by bgadoci

  I just installed the plugin for Paperclip and I am getting an error message "undefined method has_attached_file for. Not sure why I am getting this. Here is the full error message. NoMethodError (undefined method `has_attached_file' for #<Class:0x10338acd0>): /Users/bgadoci/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/will_paginate-2.3.12/lib/will_paginate/finder.rb:170:in `method_missing' app/models/post.rb:2 app/controllers/posts_controller.rb:50:in `show' For some reason it is referencing the will_paginate gem. From what I can find, it seems that either there is something wrong w/ my PostsController#index or perhaps a previously attempt at installing the gem instead of the plugin (in which case I have read I should be able to remedy through the /config/environments.rb file somehow). I didn't think that previous gem installation would matter as I did it in an old version of the site that I trashed before installing the plugin. In the current version of the site I show that the Table has been updated with the Paperclip columns after migration. Here is my code: PostsController#index def index @tag_counts = Tag.count(:group => :tag_name, :order => 'count_all DESC', :limit => 20) conditions, joins = {}, :votes @vote_counts = Vote.count(:group => :post_title, :order => 'count_all DESC', :limit => 20) conditions, joins = {}, :votes unless(params[:tag_name] || "").empty? conditions = ["tags.tag_name = ? ", params[:tag_name]] joins = [:tags, :votes] end @posts=Post.paginate( :select => "posts.*, count(*) as vote_total", :joins => joins, :conditions=> conditions, :group => "votes.post_id", :order => "created_at DESC", :page => params[:page], :per_page => 5) @popular_posts=Post.paginate( :select => "posts.*, count(*) as vote_total", :joins => joins, :conditions=> conditions, :group => "votes.post_id", :order => "vote_total DESC", :page => params[:page], :per_page => 3) respond_to do |format| format.html # index.html.erb format.xml { render :xml => @posts } format.json { render :json => @posts } format.atom end end Post Model class Post < ActiveRecord::Base has_attached_file :photo validates_presence_of :body, :title has_many :comments, :dependent => :destroy has_many :tags, :dependent => :destroy has_many :votes, :dependent => :destroy belongs_to :user after_create :self_vote def self_vote # I am assuming you have a user_id field in `posts` and `votes` table. self.votes.create(:user => self.user) end cattr_reader :per_page @@per_page = 10 end /views/posts/new.html.erb <h1>New post</h1> <%= link_to 'Back', posts_path %> <% form_for(@post, :html => { :multipart => true}) do |f| %> <%= f.error_messages %> <p> <%= f.label :title %><br /> <%= f.text_field :title %> </p> <p> <%= f.label :body %><br /> <%= f.text_area :body %> </p> <p> <%= f.file_field :photo %> </p> <p> <%= f.submit 'Create' %> </p> <% end %>

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• Integrate Bing Search API into ASP.Net application

  - by sreejukg

  Couple of months back, I wrote an article about how to integrate Bing Search engine (API 2.0) with ASP.Net website. You can refer the article here http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2012/04/07/integrate-bing-api-for-search-inside-asp-net-web-application.aspx Things are changing rapidly in the tech world and Bing has also changed! The Bing Search API 2.0 will work until August 1, 2012, after that it will not return results. Shocked? Don’t worry the API has moved to Windows Azure market place and available for you to sign up and continue using it and there is a free version available based on your usage. In this article, I am going to explain how you can integrate the new Bing API that is available in the Windows Azure market place with your website. You can access the Windows Azure market place from the below link https://datamarket.azure.com/ There is lot of applications available for you to subscribe and use. Bing is one of them. You can find the new Bing Search API from the below link https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/5BA839F1-12CE-4CCE-BF57-A49D98D29A44 To get access to Bing Search API, first you need to register an account with Windows Azure market place. Sign in to the Windows Azure market place site using your windows live account. Once you sign in with your windows live account, you need to register to Windows Azure Market place account. From the Windows Azure market place, you will see the sign in button it the top right of the page. Clicking on the sign in button will take you to the Windows live ID authentication page. You can enter a windows live ID here to login. Once logged in you will see the Registration page for the Windows Azure market place as follows. You can agree or disagree for the email address usage by Microsoft. I believe selecting the check box means you will get email about what is happening in Windows Azure market place. Click on continue button once you are done. In the next page, you should accept the terms of use, it is not optional, you must agree to terms and conditions. Scroll down to the page and select the I agree checkbox and click on Register Button. Now you are a registered member of Windows Azure market place. You can subscribe to data applications. In order to use BING API in your application, you must obtain your account Key, in the previous version of Bing you were required an API key, the current version uses Account Key instead. Once you logged in to the Windows Azure market place, you can see “My Account” in the top menu, from the Top menu; go to “My Account” Section. From the My Account section, you can manage your subscriptions and Account Keys. Account Keys will be used by your applications to access the subscriptions from the market place. Click on My Account link, you can see Account Keys in the left menu and then Add an account key or you can use the default Account key available. Creating account key is very simple process. Also you can remove the account keys you create if necessary. The next step is to subscribe to BING Search API. At this moment, Bing Offers 2 APIs for search. The available options are as follows. 1. Bing Search API - https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/5ba839f1-12ce-4cce-bf57-a49d98d29a44 2. Bing Search API – Web Results only - https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/8818f55e-2fe5-4ce3-a617-0b8ba8419f65 The difference is that the later will give you only web results where the other you can specify the source type such as image, video, web, news etc. Carefully choose the API based on your application requirements. In this article, I am going to use Web Results Only API, but the steps will be similar to both. Go to the API page https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/8818f55e-2fe5-4ce3-a617-0b8ba8419f65, you can see the subscription options in the right side. And in the bottom of the page you can see the free option Since I am going to use the free options, just Click the Sign Up link for that. Just select I agree check box and click on the Sign Up button. You will get a recipt pagethat detail your subscription. Now you are ready Bing Search API – Web results. The next step is to integrate the API into your ASP.Net application. Now if you go to the Search API page (as well as in the Receipt page), you can see a .Net C# Class Library link, click on the link, you will get a code file named “BingSearchContainer.cs”. In the following sections I am going to demonstrate the use of Bing Search API from an ASP.Net application. Create an empty ASP.Net web application. In the solution explorer, the application will looks as follows. Now add the downloaded code file (“BingSearchContainer.cs”) to the project. Right click your project in solution explorer, Add -> existing item, then browse to the downloaded location, select the “BingSearchContainer.cs” file and add it to the project. To build the code file you need to add reference to the following library. System.Data.Services.Client You can find the library in the .Net tab, when you select Add -> Reference Try to build your project now; it should build without any errors. Add an ASP.Net page to the project. I have included a text box and a button, then a Grid View to the page. The idea is to Search the text entered and display the results in the gridview. The page will look in the Visual Studio Designer as follows. The markup of the page is as follows. In the button click event handler for the search button, I have used the following code. Now run your project and enter some text in the text box and click the Search button, you will see the results coming from Bing, cool. I entered the text “Microsoft” in the textbox and clicked on the button and I got the following results. Searching Specific Websites If you want to search a particular website, you pass the site url with site:<site url name> and if you have more sites, use pipe (|). e.g. The following search query site:microsoft.com | site:adobe.com design will search the word design and return the results from Microsoft.com and Adobe.com See the sample code that search only Microsoft.com for the text entered for the above sample. var webResults = bingContainer.Web("site:www.Microsoft.com " + txtSearch.Text, null, null, null, null, null, null); Paging the results returned by the API By default the BING API will return 100 results based on your query. The default code file that you downloaded from BING doesn’t include any option for this. You can modify the downloaded code to perform this paging. The BING API supports two parameters $top (for number of results to return) and $skip (for number of records to skip). So if you want 3rd page of results with page size = 10, you need to pass $top = 10 and $skip=20. Open the BingSearchContainer.cs in the editor. You can see the Web method in it as follows. public DataServiceQuery<WebResult> Web(String Query, String Market, String Adult, Double? Latitude, Double? Longitude, String WebFileType, String Options) {  In the method signature, I have added two more parameters public DataServiceQuery<WebResult> Web(String Query, String Market, String Adult, Double? Latitude, Double? Longitude, String WebFileType, String Options, int resultCount, int pageNo) { and in the method, you need to pass the parameters to the query variable. query = query.AddQueryOption("$top", resultCount); query = query.AddQueryOption("$skip", (pageNo -1)*resultCount); return query; Note that I didn’t perform any validation, but you need to check conditions such as resultCount and pageCount should be greater than or equal to 1. If the parameters are not valid, the Bing Search API will throw the error. The modified method is as follows. The changes are highlighted. Now see the following code in the SearchPage.aspx.cs file protected void btnSearch_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {     var bingContainer = new Bing.BingSearchContainer(new Uri(https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/SearchWeb/));     // replace this value with your account key     var accountKey = "your key";     // the next line configures the bingContainer to use your credentials.     bingContainer.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(accountKey, accountKey);     var webResults = bingContainer.Web("site:microsoft.com" +txtSearch.Text , null, null, null, null, null, null,3,2);     lstResults.DataSource = webResults;     lstResults.DataBind(); } The following code will return 3 results starting from second page (by skipping first 3 results). See the result page as follows. Bing provides complete integration to its offerings. When you develop search based applications, you can use the power of Bing to perform the search. Integrating Bing Search API to ASP.Net application is a simple process and without investing much time, you can develop a good search based application. Make sure you read the terms of use before designing the application and decide which API usage is suitable for you. Further readings BING API Migration Guide http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=248077 Bing API FAQ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=252146 Bing API Schema Guide http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=252151

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• Internationalize WebCenter Portal - Content Presenter

  - by Stefan Krantz

  Lately we have been involved in engagements where internationalization has been holding the project back from success. In this post we are going to explain how to get Content Presenter and its editorials to comply with the current selected locale for the WebCenter Portal session. As you probably know by now WebCenter Portal leverages the Localization support from Java Server Faces (JSF), in this post we will assume that the localization is controlled and enforced by switching the current browsers locale between English and Spanish. There is two main scenarios in internationalization of a content enabled pages, since Content Presenter offers both presentation of information as well as contribution of information, in this post we will look at how to enable seamless integration of correct localized version of the back end content file and how to enable the editor/author to edit the correct localized version of the file based on the current browser locale. Solution Scenario 1 - Localization aware content presentation Due to the amount of steps required to implement the enclosed solution proposal I have decided to share the solution with you in group components for each facet of the solution. If you want to get more details on each step, you can review the enclosed components. This post will guide you through the steps of enabling each component and what it enables/changes in each section of the system. Enable Content Presenter Customization By leveraging a predictable naming convention of the data files used to hold the content for the Content Presenter instance we can easily develop a component that will dynamically switch the name out before presenting the information. The naming convention we have leverage is the industry best practice by having a shared identifier as prefix (ContentABC) and a language enabled suffix (_EN) (_ES). So the assumption is that each file pair in above example should look like following:- English version - (ContentABC_EN)- Spanish version - (ContentABC_ES) Based on above theory we can now easily regardless of the primary version assigned to the content presenter instance switch the language out by using the localization support from JSF. Below java bean (oracle.webcenter.doclib.internal.view.presenter.NLSHelperBean) is enclosed in the customization project available for download at the bottom of the post: 1: public static final String CP_D_DOCNAME_FORMAT = "%s_%s"; 2: public static final int CP_UNIQUE_ID_INDEX = 0; 3: private ContentPresenter presenter = null; 4:   5:   6: public NLSHelperBean() { 7: super(); 8: } 9:   10: /** 11: * This method updates the configuration for the pageFlowScope to have the correct datafile 12: * for the current Locale 13: */ 14: public void initLocaleForDataFile() { 15: String dataFile = null; 16: // Checking that state of presenter is present, also make sure the item is eligible for localization by locating the "_" in the name 17: if(presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource() != null && 18: presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource().isNodeDatasource() && 19: presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource().getNodeIdDatasource() != null && 20: !presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource().getNodeIdDatasource().equals("") && 21: presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource().getNodeIdDatasource().indexOf("_") > 0) { 22: dataFile = presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource().getNodeIdDatasource(); 23: FacesContext fc = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); 24: //Leveraging the current faces contenxt to get current localization language 25: String currentLocale = fc.getViewRoot().getLocale().getLanguage().toUpperCase(); 26: String newDataFile = dataFile; 27: String [] uniqueIdArr = dataFile.split("_"); 28: if(uniqueIdArr.length > 0) { 29: newDataFile = String.format(CP_D_DOCNAME_FORMAT, uniqueIdArr[CP_UNIQUE_ID_INDEX], currentLocale); 30: } 31: //Replacing the current Node datasource with localized datafile. 32: presenter.getConfiguration().getDatasource().setNodeIdDatasource(newDataFile); 33: } 34: } With this bean code available to our WebCenter Portal implementation we can start the next step, by overriding the standard behavior in content presenter by applying a MDS Taskflow customization to the content presenter taskflow, following taskflow customization has been applied to the customization project attached to this post:- Library: WebCenter Document Library Service View- Path: oracle.webcenter.doclib.view.jsf.taskflows.presenter- File: contentPresenter.xml Changes made in above customization view:1. A new method invocation activity has been added (initLocaleForDataFile)2. The method invocation invokes the new NLSHelperBean3. The default activity is moved to the new Method invocation (initLocaleForDataFile)4. The outcome from the method invocation goes to determine-navigation (original default activity) The above changes concludes the presentation modification to support a compatible localization scenario for a content driven page. In addition this customization do not limit or disables the out of the box capabilities of WebCenter Portal. Steps to enable above customization Start JDeveloper and open your WebCenter Portal Application Select "Open Project" and include the extracted project you downloaded (CPNLSCustomizations.zip) Make sure the build out put from CPNLSCustomizations project is a dependency to your Portal project Deploy your Portal Application to your WC_CustomPortal managed server Make sure your naming convention of the two data files follow above recommendation Example result of the solution: Solution Scenario 2 - Localization aware content creation and authoring As you could see from Solution Scenario 1 we require the naming convention to be strictly followed, this means in the hands of a user with limited technology knowledge this can be one of the failing links in this solutions. Therefore I strongly recommend that you also follow this part since this will eliminate this risk and also increase the editors/authors usability with a magnitude. The current WebCenter Portal Architecture leverages WebCenter Content today to maintain, publish and manage content, therefore we need to make few efforts in making sure this part of the architecture is on board with our new naming practice and also simplifies the creation of content for our end users. As you probably remember the naming convention required a prefix to be common so I propose we enable a new component that help you auto name the content items dDocName (this means that the readable title can still be in a human readable format). The new component (WCP-LocalizationSupport.zip) built for this scenario will enable a couple of things: 1. A new service where a sequential number can be generate on request - service name: GET_WCP_LOCALE_CONTENTID 2. The content presenter is leveraging a specific function when launching the content creation wizard from within Content Presenter. Assumption is that users will create the content by clicking "Create Web Content" button. When clicking the button the wizard opened is actually running in side of WebCenter Content server, file executed (contentwizard.hcsp). This file uses JSON commands that will generate operations in the content server, I have extend this file to create two identical data files instead of one.- First it creates the English version by leveraging the new Service and a Global Rule to set the dDocName on the original check in screen, this global rule is available in a configuration package attached to this blog (NLSContentProfileRule.zip)- Secondly we run a set of JSON javascripts to create the Spanish version with the same details except for the name where we replace the suffix with (_ES)- Then content creation wizard ends with its out of the box behavior and assigns the Content Presenter instance the English versionSee Javascript markup below - this can be changed in the (WCP-LocalizationSupport.zip/component/WCP-LocalizationSupport/publish/webcenter) 1: //---------------------------------------A-TEAM--------------------------------------- 2: WCM.ContentWizard.CheckinContentPage.OnCheckinComplete = function(returnParams) 3: { 4: var callback = WCM.ContentWizard.CheckinContentPage.checkinCompleteCallback; 5: WCM.ContentWizard.ChooseContentPage.OnSelectionComplete(returnParams, callback); 6: // Load latest DOC_INFO_SIMPLE 7: var cgiPath = DOCLIB.config.httpCgiPath; 8: var jsonBinder = new WCM.Idc.JSONBinder(); 9: jsonBinder.SetLocalDataValue('IdcService', 'DOC_INFO_SIMPLE'); 10: jsonBinder.SetLocalDataValue('dID', returnParams.dID); 11: jsonBinder.Send(cgiPath, $CB(this, function(http) { 12: var ret = http.GetResponseText(); 13: var binder = new WCM.Idc.JSONBinder(ret); 14: var dDocName = binder.GetResultSetValue('DOC_INFO', 'dDocName', 0); 15: if(dDocName.indexOf("_") > 0){ 16: var ssBinder = new WCM.Idc.JSONBinder(); 17: ssBinder.SetLocalDataValue('IdcService', 'SS_CHECKIN_NEW'); 18: //Additional Localization dDocName generated 19: ssBinder.SetLocalDataValue('dDocName', getLocalizedDocName(dDocName, "es")); 20: ssBinder.SetLocalDataValue('primaryFile', 'default.xml'); 21: ssBinder.SetLocalDataValue('ssDefaultDocumentToken', 'SSContributorDataFile'); 22:   23: for(var n = 0 ; n < binder.GetResultSetFields('DOC_INFO').length ; n++) { 24: var field = binder.GetResultSetFields('DOC_INFO')[n]; 25: if(field != 'dID' && 26: field != 'dDocName' && 27: field != 'dID' && 28: field != 'dReleaseState' && 29: field != 'dRevClassID' && 30: field != 'dRevisionID' && 31: field != 'dRevLabel') { 32: ssBinder.SetLocalDataValue(field, binder.GetResultSetValue('DOC_INFO', field, 0)); 33: } 34: } 35: ssBinder.Send(cgiPath, $CB(this, function(http) {})); 36: } 37: })); 38: } 39:   40: //Support function to create localized dDocNames 41: function getLocalizedDocName(dDocName, lang) { 42: var result = dDocName.replace("_EN", ("_" + lang)); 43: return result; 44: } 45: //---------------------------------------A-TEAM--------------------------------------- 3. By applying the enclosed NLSContentProfileRule.zip, the check in screen for DataFile creation will have auto naming enabled with localization suffix (default is English)You can change the default language by updating the GlobalNlsRule and assign preferred prefix.See Rule markup for dDocName field below: <$executeService("GET_WCP_LOCALE_CONTENTID")$><$dprDefaultValue=WCP_LOCALE.LocaleContentId & "_EN"$> Steps to enable above extensions and configurations Install WebCenter Component (WCP-LocalizationSupport.zip), via the AdminServer in WebCenter Content Administration menus Enable the component and restart the content server Apply the configuration bundle to enable the new Global Rule (GlobalNlsRule), via the WebCenter Content Administration/Config Migration Admin New Content Creation Experience Result Content EditingContent editing will by default be enabled for authoring in the current select locale since the content file is selected by (Solution Scenario 1), this means that a user can switch his browser locale and then get the editing experience adaptable to the current selected locale. NotesA-Team are planning to post a solution on how to inline switch the locale of the WebCenter Portal Session, so the Content Presenter, Navigation Model and other Face related features are localized accordingly. Content Presenter examples used in this post is an extension to following post:https://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/entry/enable_content_editing_of_iterative Downloads CPNLSCustomizations.zip - WebCenter Portal, Content Presenter Customization https://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/resource/stefan.krantz/CPNLSCustomizations.zip WCP-LocalizationSupport.zip - WebCenter Content, Extension Component to enable localization creation of files with compliant auto naminghttps://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/resource/stefan.krantz/WCP-LocalizationSupport.zip NLSContentProfileRule.zip - WebCenter Content, Configuration Update Bundle to enable Global rule for new check in naming of data fileshttps://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/resource/stefan.krantz/NLSContentProfileRule.zip

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• Oracle Fusion Applications: Changing the Game

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  Originally posted in the Oracle Profit Magazine, November 2010 Edition. When the order processing system red-flags a customer's credit status, the IT department doesn't get the customer's call. When a supplier misses a delivery date for a key automotive assembly, it's not the CIO who has to answer for the error. Knowledge workers (known in IT circles as "users") are on the front lines when an exception occurs in an established business process. They're also the ones who study sales trends to decide when to open a new store in an up-and-coming neighborhood, which products are most profitable, how employee skill sets are evolving, and which suppliers are most efficient. In short, knowledge workers are masters of business as unusual. Traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other familiar enterprise applications excel at automating, managing, and executing standard business processes. These programs shine when everything goes as planned. Life gets even trickier when a traditional application needs to be extended with a new service or an extra step is added to a business process when new products are brought to market, divisions are merged, or companies are acquired. Monolithic applications often need the IT department to step in and make the necessary adjustments--incurring additional costs and delays. Until now. When Oracle unveiled the much-anticipated family of Oracle Fusion Applications at Oracle OpenWorld in September 2010, knowledge workers in particular had a lot to cheer about. Business users will soon have ready access to analytical information and collaboration tools in the context of what they are working on, so they can make better decisions when problems or opportunities arise. Additionally, the Oracle Fusion Applications platform will make it easy for business users to tweak processes, create new capabilities, and find information, often without the need for IT department assistance and while still following company guidelines. And IT leaders will be happy to hear about new deployment options, guided implementation and setup tools, and cost-saving management capabilities. Just as important, the underlying technologies in Oracle Fusion Applications will allow organizations to choose among their existing investments and next-generation enterprise applications so they can introduce innovations at a pace that makes the most business and financial sense. "Oracle Fusion Applications are architected so you don't have to do rip and replace," says Jim Hayes, managing director of the consulting firm Accenture. "That's very important for creating a business case that will get through the steering committee and be approved by the board. It shows you can drive value and make a difference in the near term." For these and other reasons, analysts and early adopters are calling Oracle Fusion Applications a game changer for enterprise customers. The differences become apparent in three key areas: the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology. Game Changer #1: New Standard for InnovationChange is a constant challenge for most businesses, whether the catalysts are market dynamics, new competition, or the ever-expanding regulatory environment. And, in an ongoing effort to differentiate, business leaders are constantly looking for new ways to do business, serve constituents, and bring new products and services to market. In addition, companies face significant costs to keep their applications up-to-date. For example, when a company adds new suppliers to a procurement system, the IT shop typically has to invest time, effort, and even consulting fees for custom integrations that allow various ERP systems to communicate with each other. Oracle Fusion Applications were built on Web services and a modular SOA foundation to ease customizations and integration activities among all applications--whether from Oracle or another vendor. Interfaces and updates written in ubiquitous Java, rather than a proprietary coding language, allow organizations to tap into existing in-house technical skills rather than seek expensive outside specialists. And with SOA, organizations can extend a feature set or integrate with other SOA environments by combining Web services such as "look up customer" into a new business process managed by the BPEL orchestration engine. Flexibility like this has long-term implications. "Because users capture these changes at a higher metadata layer, not in the application's code, changes and additions are protected even as new versions of Oracle Fusion Applications are released," says Steve Miranda, senior vice president of applications development at Oracle. "This is a much more sustainable approach because you don't incur costly customizations that prevent upgrades and other innovations." And changes are easier to make: if one change is made in the metadata, that change is automatically reflected throughout the application interface, business intelligence, business process, and business logic. Game Changer #2: New Standard for WorkBoosting productivity comes down to doing the basics right: running business processes more efficiently and managing exceptions more effectively, so users can accomplish more in the course of a day or spend more quality time with the most profitable customers. The fastest way to improve process efficiency is to reduce the number of steps it takes to execute common tasks, such as ordering office equipment from an internal procurement system. Oracle Fusion Applications will deliver a complete role-based user experience with business intelligence and collaboration capabilities provided in the context of the work at hand. "We created every Oracle Fusion Applications screen by asking 'What does the user need to know?' 'What does he or she need to do?' and 'Who do they need to work with to get the job done?'" Miranda explains. So when the sales department heads need new laptops, the self-service procurement screen will not only display a list of approved vendors and configurations, but also a running list of reviews by coworkers who recently purchased the various models. Embedded intelligence may also display prevailing delivery lead times based on actual order histories, not the generic shipping dates vendors may quote. The pervasive business intelligence serves many other business activities across all areas of the enterprise. For example, a manager considering whether to promote a direct report can see the person's employee profile, with a salary history, appraisal summaries, and a rundown of skills and training. This approach to business intelligence also has implications for supply chain management. "One of the challenges at Ingersoll Rand is lack of visibility in our supply chain," says Mike Macrie, global director of enterprise applications for global industrial firm Ingersoll Rand. "Oracle Fusion Applications are going to provide the embedded intelligence to give us that visibility and give us the ability to analyze those orders at any point in our supply chain." Oracle Fusion Applications will also create a "role-based user experience" that displays a work list of events that need attention, based on user job function. Role awareness guides users with daily lists of action items and exceptions. So a credit manager may see seven invoices with discounts that are about to expire or 12 suppliers that have been put on hold because credit memos are awaiting approval. Individualization extends to the search capabilities of Oracle Fusion Applications. The platform uses Web-style search screens powered by an Oracle enterprise search engine, with a security framework that filters search results so individuals will only see the internal information they're authorized to access. A further aid to productivity is Oracle Fusion Applications' integration with Web 2.0 collaboration and social networking resources for business environments. Hover-over text will reveal relevant contact information whenever the name of a person appears in an Oracle Fusion Application. Users can connect via an online chat, phone call, or instant message without leaving the main application, reducing the time required for an accounts payable staffer to resolve a mismatch between an invoiced charge and the service record, for example. Addresses of suppliers, customers, or partners will also initiate hover-over text to show contact details and Web-based maps. Finally, Oracle Fusion Applications will promote a new way of working with purpose-driven communities that can bring new efficiencies to everything from cultivating sales leads to managing new projects. As soon as a lead or project materializes, the applications will automatically gather relevant participants into an online community that shares member contact information, schedules, discussion forums, and Wiki pages. "Oracle Fusion Applications will allow us to take it to the next level with embedded Web 2.0 tools and the embedded analytics," says Steve Printz, CIO and vice president, supply chain management, at window-and-door manufacturer Pella. "[This] allows those employees today who are processing transactions to really contribute to the success of the company and become decision-makers." Game Changer #3: New Standard for Technology AdoptionAs IT becomes a dominant component of how businesses run and compete, organizations need to lower the cost of implementing applications and introducing new application features. In the past, rolling out new code often required creating a test bed system, moving beta code to a separate system for user feedback, and--once all the revisions were made--moving version one of the software onto production systems, where business users could finally get the needed new features. Oracle Fusion Applications will use a dedicated setup manager application to streamline this process. First, the setup manager will help scope out the project, querying users about their requirements. "From those questions and answers we determine the steps and the order of those steps that will enable that task," Miranda says. Next, system utilities will assign tasks to owners, track completion status, and monitor the overall status of a programming effort. Oracle Fusion Applications can then recommend Web services that allow users to migrate setup choices and steps across all the various deployments of the application. Those setup capabilities automate the migration from test systems to production systems, as well as between different business units that may be using the same application. "The self-service ability of the setup manager helps business users change setups with very little intervention from the IT team," says Ravi Kumar, vice president at IT services company Infosys. "That to me is a big difference from how we've viewed enterprise applications before." For additional flexibility, organizations will be able to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications modules in either of two modes: a single-instance alternative uses one database for all Oracle Fusion Applications, while a "pillar mode" creates separate databases to underpin each application. This means IT departments running any one of Oracle's applications or even third-party applications can plug Oracle Fusion Applications modules into their environment and see additional business value created on top of their existing systems. And Oracle Fusion Applications offer a hybrid approach to deployment. The applications are all software-as-a-service-ready, so customers can choose on-premises, public or private cloud, or a combination of these to suit their business needs. It's that combination of flexibility and a roadmap for the future that may be the biggest game changer of all. "The Oracle Fusion Applications architecture allows us to migrate our company at a pace that's consistent with our business strategy, whereas before we might have had to do it with a massive upgrade," says Macrie of Ingersoll Rand. "We're looking forward to that architecture to really give us more flexibility in how we migrate over time." For More InformationUser Input Key to the Success of Oracle Fusion ApplicationsTransforming Coexistence into Strategic ValueUnder the HoodOracle Fusion ApplicationsOracle Service-Oriented Architecture  

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• Summary of Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Webcasts and Training

  - by BillSawyer

  Last Updated: November 16, 2011We're glad to hear that you've been finding our ATG Live Webcast series to be useful.  If you missed a webcast, you can download the presentation materials and listen to the recordings below. We're collecting other learning-related materials right now.  We'll update this summary with pointers to new training resources on an ongoing basis.  ATG Live Webcast Replays All of the ATG Live Webcasts are hosted by the Oracle University Knowledge Center.  In order to access the replays, you will need a free Oracle.com account. You can register for an Oracle.com account here.If you are a first-time OUKC user, you will have to accept the Terms of Use. Sign-in with your Oracle.com account, or if you don't already have one, use the link provided on the sign-in screen to create an account. After signing in, accept the Terms of Use. Upon completion of these steps, you will be directed to the replay. You only need to accept the Terms of Use once. Your acceptance will be noted on your account for all future OUKC replays and event registrations. 1. E-Business Suite R12 Oracle Application Framework (OAF) Rich User Interface Enhancements (Presentation) Prabodh Ambale (Senior Manager, ATG Development) and Gustavo Jiminez (Development Manager, ATG Development) offer a comprehensive review of the latest user interface enhancements and updates to OA Framework in EBS 12.  The webcast provides a detailed look at new features designed to enhance usability, including new capabilities for personalization and extensions, and features that support the use of dashboards and web services. (January 2011) 2. E-Business Suite R12 Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) Using the E-Business Suite Adapter (Presentation, Viewlet) Neeraj Chauhan (Product Manager, ATG Development) reviews the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) capabilities within E-Business Suite 12, focussing on using the E-Business Suite Adapter to integrate EBS with third-party applications via web services, and orchestrate services and distributed transactions across disparate applications. (February 2011) 3. Deploying Oracle VM Templates for Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications Ivo Dujmovic (Director, ATG Development) reviews the latest capabilities for using Oracle VM to deploy virtualized EBS database and application tier instances using prebuilt EBS templates, wire those virtualized instances together using the EBS virtualization kit, and take advantage of live migration of user sessions between failing application tier nodes.  (February 2011) 4. How to Reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Using Oracle E-Business Suite Management Packs (Presentation) Angelo Rosado (Product Manager, ATG Development) provides an overview of how EBS sysadmins can make their lives easier with the Management Packs for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.  This session highlights key features in Application Management Pack (AMP) and Application Change Management Pack) that can automate or streamline system configurations, monitor EBS performance and uptime, keep multiple EBS environments in sync with patches and configurations, and create patches for your own EBS customizations and apply them with Oracle's own patching tools.  (June 2011) 5. Upgrading E-Business Suite 11i Customizations to R12 (Presentation) Sara Woodhull (Principal Product Manager, ATG Development) provides an overview of how E-Business Suite developers can manage and upgrade existing EBS 11i customizations to R12.  Sara covers methods for comparing customizations between Release 11i and 12, managing common customization types, managing deprecated technologies, and more. (July 2011) 6. Tuning All Layers of E-Business Suite (Part 1 of 3) (Presentation) Lester Gutierrez, Senior Architect, and Deepak Bhatnagar, Senior Manager, from the E-Business Suite Application Performance team, lead Tuning All Layers of E-Business Suite (Part 1 of 3). This webcast provides an overview of how Oracle E-Business Suite system administrators, DBAs, developers, and implementers can improve E-Business Suite performance by following a performance tuning framework. Part 1 focuses on the performance triage approach, tuning applications modules, upgrade performance best practices, and tuning the database tier. This ATG Live Webcast is an expansion of the performance sessions at conferences that are perennial favourites with hardcore Apps DBAs. (August 2011)  7. Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Deployment and System Administration (Presentation) Max Arderius, Manager Applications Technology Group, and Ivo Dujmovic, Director Applications Technology group, lead Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Deployment and System Administration covering important changes in E-Business Suite R12.2. The changes discussed in this presentation include Oracle E-Business Suite architecture, installation, upgrade, WebLogic Server integration, online patching, and cloning. This webcast provides an overview of how Oracle E-Business Suite system administrators, DBAs, developers, and implementers can prepare themselves for these changes in R12.2 of Oracle E-Business Suite. (October 2011) Oracle University Courses For a general listing of all Oracle University courses related to E-Business Suite Technology, use the Oracle University E-Business Suite Technology course catalog link. Oracle University E-Business Suite Technology Course Catalog 1. R12 Oracle Applications System Administrator Fundamentals In this course students learn concepts and functions that are critical to the System Administrator role in implementing and managing the Oracle E-Business Suite. Topics covered include configuring security and user management, configuring flexfields, managing concurrent processing, and setting up other essential features such as profile options and printing. In addition, configuration and maintenance of an Oracle E-Business Suite through Oracle Applications Manager is discussed. Students also learn the fundamentals of Oracle Workflow including its setup. The System Administrator Fundamentals course provides the foundation needed to effectively control security and ensure smooth operations for an E-Business Suite installation. Demonstrations and hands-on practice reinforce the fundamental concepts of configuring an Oracle E-Business Suite, as well as handling day-to-day system administrator tasks. 2. R12.x Install/Patch/Maintain Oracle E-Business Suite This course will be applicable for customers who have implemented Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 or Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. This course explains how to go about installing and maintaining an Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.x system. Both Standard and Express installation types are covered in detail. Maintenance topics include a detailed examination of the standard tools and utilities, and an in-depth look at patching an Oracle E-Business Suite system. After this course, students will be able to make informed decisions about how to install an Oracle E-Business Suite system that meets their specific requirements, and how to maintain the system afterwards. The extensive hands-on practices include performing an installation on a Linux system, navigating the file system to locate key files, running the standard maintenance tools and utilities, applying patches, and carrying out cloning operations. 3. R12.x Extend Oracle Applications: Building OA Framework Applications This class is a hands-on lab-intensive course that will keep the student busy and active for the duration of the course. While the course covers the fundamentals that support OA Framework-based applications, the course is really an exercise in J2EE programming. Over the duration of the course, the student will create an OA Framework-based application that selects, inserts, updates, and deletes data from a R12 Oracle Applications instance. 4. R12.x Extend Oracle Applications: Customizing OA Framework Applications This course has been significantly changed from the prior version to include additional deployments. The course doesn't teach the specifics of configuration of each product. That is left to the product-specific courses. What the course does cover is the general methods of building, personalizing, and extending OA Framework-based pages within the E-Business Suite. Additionally, the course covers the methods to deploy those types of customizations. The course doesn't include discussion of the Oracle Forms-based pages within the E-Business Suite. 5. R12.x Extend Oracle Applications: OA Framework Personalizations Personalization is the ability within an E-Business Suite instance to make changes to the look and behavior of OA Framework-based pages without programming. And, personalizations are likely to survive patches and upgrades, increasing their utility. This course will systematically walk you through the myriad of personalization options, starting with simple examples and increasing in complexity from there. 6. E-Business Suite: BI Publisher 5.6.3 for Developers Starting with the basic concepts, architecture, and underlying standards of Oracle XML Publisher, this course will lead a student through a progress of exercises building their expertise. By the end of the course, the student should be able to create Oracle XML Publisher RTF templates and data templates. They should also be able to deploy and maintain a BI Publisher report in an E-Business Suite instance. Students will also be introduced to Oracle BI Publisher Enterprise. 7. R12.x Implement Oracle Workflow This course provides an overview of the architecture and features of Oracle Workflow and the benefits of using Oracle Workflow in an e-business environment. You can learn how to design workflow processes to automate and streamline business processes, and how to define event subscriptions to perform processing triggered by business events. Students also learn how to respond to workflow notifications, how to administer and monitor workflow processes, and what setup steps are required for Oracle Workflow. Demonstrations and hands-on practice reinforce the fundamental concepts. 8. R12.x Oracle E-Business Suite Essentials for Implementers Oracle R12.1 E-Business Essentials for Implementers is a course that provides a functional foundation for any E-Business Suite Fundamentals course.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, December 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, December 27, 2010Popular ReleasesRocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresVCC: Latest build, v2.1.31226.0: Automatic drop of latest buildFxCop Integrator for Visual Studio 2010: FxCop Integrtor 1.1.0: New FeatureSearch violation information FxCop Integrator provides the violation search feature. You can find out specific violation information by simple search expression.Analyze with FxCop project file FxCop Integrator supports code analysis with FxCop project file. You can customize code analysis behavior (e.g. analyze specifid types only, use specific rules only, and so on). ImprovementImproved the code analysis result list to show more information (added Proejct and File column). Change...Flickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).Mcopy API: McopyAPI v.1.0.0.2: changed display help "mcopyapi /?" and a few minor changedOPSM: OPSM v2.0: Updated version, 30%-40% faster than v1.0. Requires .NET Framework 2.0People's Note: People's Note 0.19: Added touch scrolling to the note view screen. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.HSS Core Framework: HSS Core v4.0.700.10: Release v4.0.700.10 December 25th, 2010 Upgrade Instructions from v4.0.700 to v4.0.700.10: (patch release) Uninstall v4.0.700 Install the new v4.0.700.10 Upgrade Instructions: (full upgrade from a version prior to v4.0.700) Uninstall your old version Update the Log Configuration, by changing the logging from Database to Machine Backup and then Truncate the hss logging tables Uninstall the HSSLOG Database using the HSSLOG Database install wizard Uninstall the HSS Core Framework Ins...NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????MiniTwitter: 1.64: MiniTwitter 1.64 ???? ?? 1.63 ??? URL ??????????????VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.0: Please see changes: http://support.vivoware.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=48Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6 Beta - codename JUNO: The Umbraco 4.6 beta (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains more than 89 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login t...SSH.NET Library: 2010.12.23: This release includes some bug fixes and few new fetures. Fixes Allow to retrieve big directory structures ssh-dss algorithm is fixed Populate sftp file attributes New Features Support for passhrase when private key is used Support added for diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 and diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 key exchange algorithms Allow to provide multiple key files for authentication Add support for "keyboard-interactive" authentication method...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 2.3.0: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. Release notesThis will be the last release targeting ASP.NET MVC 2 and .NET 3.5. MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 will be targeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4 Web.config setting skipAssemblyScanOn has been deprecated in favor of excludeAssembliesForScan and includeAssembliesForScan ISiteMapNodeUrlResolver is now completely responsible for generating th...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.400: Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. A manual is included to get you startedMulticore Task Framework: MTF 1.0.1: Release 1.0.1 of Multicore Task Framework.SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 7: 1. added script save/load in user query window 2. fixed problem with connection dialog when choosing windows auth but still ask for user name 3. auto open user table when double click one table node 4. improved alert message, added log only methodEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.6 ALPHA: 2.2.6 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Fixing up some r...New ProjectsActiveDirectory Object Model Library: The ActiveDirectory Object Model Library, which can operate the AD easily.Allspark: Allspark is an BI focused sharing space.Calendar Control for WP7: Calendar Control for Wp7 (Windows Phone 7). I needed a calendar control for my WP7 app and since WP7 did not have any and I couldn't find anything on the internet I decided to write my own. Please feel free to use it in your project and share if you have improved on it.CryptoPad: CryptoPad is a simple notepad like application that works with encrypted files. Users can open,edit and save encrypted files using CrypoPad without andy other application, everythning is easy and transparent.Entity Visualizer: Entity Framework Debugger VisualizerHTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx is meant to be an open-source lightweight WYSIWYG HTML editor in which the user can see what they are doing in realtime. Comparable to my other project, Brandons HTML IDE, I'm hoping this to be a huge success.IL Inject: Aspect-oriented programming based on the injection of IL instruction in the methods of an assembly that is marked by attributesIntegração no Trabalho: Este projeto será desenvolvido para ser possível a integração entre funcionarios de uma empresa. O programa funcionará em rede e através dele será possível cadastrar projetos, atividades e seus colegas poderão comentar, criticar e dar dicas nos outros projetos .Knexsys Project: Knexsys, also know as KKD (Knexsys Knowledge Discovery), is a research program that aims to study the capabilities of SQL Server and the .NET framework to implement a rule production engine to mine real-time data. It's developed in C#.mysvn: This project host including some of my own projects. I am interested in WPF and RIA. Furthermore, I want to learn more about C, C++, Java, PHP, Python.OpenTwitter: Twitter clone made with C# and LINQ. this is only a webservice, there is no client for it, the main idea behind opentwitter is to provide a framework that you can use with your own clients ( mobile devices, web pages, etc ) and data provider ( xml, sql server, oracle, etc ).OPSM: OPSM Miner & information projectOutlook UI Tools: Changes to the Outlook UI to make it more usable: * Allow reply to address a recipient instead of the sender * Keep meeting reminders from popping up when overdue many daysSimpleUploadTo: Simple UploadToTFS 4 FPSE: Allow the ability for FrontPage Server Extensions to use TFS as a source control repository.TFS CheckInNotifier: Team Foundation Server 2010 Check-in event notifier desktop application.Universe.WCF.Behaviors: Universe.WCF.Behaviors provides behaviors: - Easy migration from Remoting - Transparent delivery - Traffic Statistics - WCF Streaming Adaptor for BinaryWriter and TextWriter - etc vebshop2: vebshop2Windows Weibo all in one for Sina Sohu and QQ: Windows Weibo all in one for Sina Sohu and QQ.

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• Windows 8 Will be Here Tomorrow; but Should Silverlight be Gone Today?

  - by andrewbrust

  The software industry lives within an interesting paradox. IT in the enterprise moves slowly and cautiously, upgrading only when safe and necessary.  IT interests intentionally live in the past.  On the other hand, developers, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) not only want to use the latest and greatest technologies, but this constituency prides itself on gauging tech’s future, and basing its present-day strategy upon it.  Normally, we as an industry manage this paradox with a shrug of the shoulder and musings along the lines of “it takes all kinds.”  Different subcultures have different tendencies.  So be it. Microsoft, with its Windows operating system (OS), can’t take such a laissez-faire view of the world though.  Redmond relies on IT to deploy Windows and (at the very least) influence its procurement, but it also relies on developers to build software for Windows, especially software that has a dependency on features in new versions of the OS.  It must indulge and nourish developers’ fetish for an early birthing of the next generation of software, even as it acknowledges the IT reality that the next wave will arrive on-schedule in Redmond and will travel very slowly to end users. With the move to Windows 8, and the corresponding shift in application development models, this paradox is certainly in place. On the one hand, the next version of Windows is widely expected sometime in 2012, and its full-scale deployment will likely push into 2014 or even later.  Meanwhile, there’s a technology that runs on today’s Windows 7, will continue to run in the desktop mode of Windows 8 (the next version’s codename), and provides absolutely the best architectural bridge to the Windows 8 Metro-style application development stack.  That technology is Silverlight.  And given what we now know about Windows 8, one might think, as I do, that Microsoft ecosystem developers should be flocking to it. But because developers are trying to get a jump on the future, and since many of them believe the impending v5.0 release of Silverlight will be the technology’s last, not everyone is flocking to it; in fact some are fleeing from it.  Is this sensible?  Is it not unprecedented?  What options does it lead to?  What’s the right way to think about the situation? Is v5.0 really the last major version of the technology called Silverlight?  We don’t know.  But Scott Guthrie, the “father” and champion of the technology, left the Developer Division of Microsoft months ago to work on the Windows Azure team, and he took his people with him.  John Papa, who was a very influential Redmond-based evangelist for Silverlight (and is a Visual Studio Magazine author), left Microsoft completely.  About a year ago, when initial suspicion of Silverlight’s demise reached significant magnitude, Papa interviewed Guthrie on video and their discussion served to dispel developers’ fears; but now they’ve moved on. So read into that what you will and let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, speculation that Silverlight’s days of major revision and iteration are over now is correct.  Let’s assume the shine and glimmer has dimmed.  Let’s assume that any Silverlight application written today, and that therefore any investment of financial and human resources made in Silverlight development today, is destined for rework and extra investment in a few years, if the application’s platform needs to stay current. Is this really so different from any technology investment we make?  Every framework, language, runtime and operating system is subject to change, to improvement, to flux and, yes, to obsolescence.  What differs from project to project, is how near-term that obsolescence is and how disruptive the change will be.  The shift from .NET 1.1. to 2.0 was incremental.  Some of the further changes were too.  But the switch from Windows Forms to WPF was major, and the change from ASP.NET Web Services (asmx) to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) was downright fundamental. Meanwhile, the transition to the .NET development model for Windows 8 Metro-style applications is actually quite gentle.  The finer points of this subject are covered nicely in Magenic’s excellent white paper “Assessing the Windows 8 Development Platform.” As the authors of that paper (including Rocky Lhotka)  point out, Silverlight code won’t just “port” to Windows 8.  And, no, Silverlight user interfaces won’t either; Metro always supports XAML, but that relationship is not commutative.  But the concepts, the syntax, the architecture and developers’ skills map from Silverlight to Windows 8 Metro and the Windows Runtime (WinRT) very nicely.  That’s not a coincidence.  It’s not an accident.  This is a protected transition.  It’s not a slap in the face. There are few things that are unnerving about this transition, which make it seem markedly different from others: The assumed end of the road for Silverlight is something many think they can see.  Instead of being ignorant of the technology’s expiration date, we believe we know it.  If ignorance is bliss, it would seem our situation lacks it. The new technology involving WinRT and Metro involves a name change from Silverlight. .NET, which underlies both Silverlight and the XAML approach to WinRT development, has just about reached 10 years of age.  That’s equivalent to 80 in human years, or so many fear. My take is that the combination of these three factors has contributed to what for many is a psychologically compelling case that Silverlight should be abandoned today and HTML 5 (the agnostic kind, not the Windows RT variety) should be embraced in its stead.  I understand the logic behind that.  I appreciate the preemptive, proactive, vigilant conscientiousness involved in its calculus.  But for a great many scenarios, I don’t agree with it.  HTML 5 clients, no matter how impressive their interactivity and the emulation of native application interfaces they present may be, are still second-class clients.  They are getting better, especially when hardware acceleration and fast processors are involved.  But they still lag.  They still feel like they’re emulating something, like they’re prototypes, like they’re not comfortable in their own skins.  They are based on compromise, and they feel compromised too. HTML 5/JavaScript development tools are getting better, and will get better still, but they are not as productive as tools for other environments, like Flash, like Silverlight or even more primitive tooling for iOS or Android.  HTML’s roots as a document markup language, rather than an application interface, create a disconnect that impedes productivity.  I do not necessarily think that problem is insurmountable, but it’s here today. If you’re building line-of-business applications, you need a first-class client and you need productivity.  Lack of productivity increases your costs and worsens your backlog.  A second class client will erode user satisfaction, which is never good.  Worse yet, this erosion will be inconspicuous, rather than easily identified and diagnosed, because the inferiority of an HTML 5 client over a native one is hard to identify and, notably, doing so at this juncture in the industry is unpopular.  Why would you fault a technology that everyone believes is revolutionary?  Instead, user disenchantment will remain latent and yet will add to the malaise caused by slower development. If you’re an ISV and you’re coveting the reach of running multi-platform, it’s a different story.  You’ve likely wanted to move to HTML 5 already, and the uncertainty around Silverlight may be the only remaining momentum or pretext you need to make the shift.  You’re deploying many more copies of your application than a line-of-business developer is anyway; this makes the economic hit from lower productivity less impactful, and the wider potential installed base might even make it profitable. But no matter who you are, it’s important to take stock of the situation and do it accurately.  Continued, but merely incremental changes in a development model lead to conservatism and general lack of innovation in the underlying platform.  Periods of stability and equilibrium are necessary, but permanence in that equilibrium leads to loss of platform relevance, market share and utility.  Arguably, that’s already happened to Windows.  The change Windows 8 brings is necessary and overdue.  The marked changes in using .NET if we’re to build applications for the new OS are inevitable.  We will ultimately benefit from the change, and what we can reasonably hope for in the interim is a migration path for our code and skills that is navigable, logical and conceptually comfortable. That path takes us to a place called WinRT, rather than a place called Silverlight.  But considering everything that is changing for the good, the number of disruptive changes is impressively minimal.  The name may be changing, and there may even be some significance to that in terms of Microsoft’s internal management of products and technologies.  But as the consumer, you should care about the ingredients, not the name.  Turkish coffee and Greek coffee are much the same. Although you’ll find plenty of interested parties who will find the names significant, drinkers of the beverage should enjoy either one.  It’s all coffee, it’s all sweet, and you can tell your fortune from the grounds that are left at the end.  Back on the software side, it’s all XAML, and C# or VB .NET, and you can make your fortune from the product that comes out at the end.  Coffee drinkers wouldn’t switch to tea.  Why should XAML developers switch to HTML?

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• So&hellip; What is a SharePoint Developer?

  - by Mark Rackley

  A few days ago Stacy Draper and I were chatting about what it means to be a SharePoint Developer. That actually turns about to be a conversation with lots of shades of grey. Stacy thought it would make a good blog post… well, I can’t promise this to be a GOOD blog post… So, anyway, I decided to let off a little bomb this morning by posting the following tweet on Twitter: @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? Now, I knew this is a debate that has been going on since the first SharePoint Designer User put SharePoint Developer on their resume. There are probably several blogs out there on the subject, but with the wildfire that is jQuery and a few other new features out there I believe it is an important subject to tackle again. I got a lot of great feedback as well on Twitter. The entire twitter conversation is at the end of this blog posting. Thanks everyone for their opinions. Who cares? Why does it matter? Can’t we all just get along? Yes it matters… everything must be labeled and put in it’s proper place. Pigeon holing is the only way to go!  Just kidding.. I’m not near that anal, but yes! It is important to be able to properly identify the skill set of those people on your team and correctly identify the role you are wanting to hire. Saying you are a “SharePoint Developer” is just too vague and just barely begins to answer the question. Also, knowing who’s on your team and what they can do will ensure you give your clients the best people for the job. A Developer writes code right? So, a Developer uses Visual Studio! Whoa, hold on there Sparky. Even if I concede that to be a developer you have to write code then you still can’t say a SharePoint Developer has to use Visual Studio.  So, you can spell C#, how well can you write XSLT? How’s your jQuery? Sorry bud, that’s code whether you like it or not. There are many ways to write code in SharePoint that have nothing to do with cracking open Visual Studio. So, what are the different ways to develop in SharePoint then? How many different ways can you “develop” in SharePoint?? A lot… Out of the box features In SharePoint you can create a site, create a custom list on that site, do basic calculations in a calculated column, set up alerts, and add all sorts of web parts to a page. Let’s face it.. that IS development! javaScript/jQuery Perhaps you’ve heard by now about this thing called jQuery? It’s all over the place and the answer to a lot of people’s prayers. However be careful, with great power comes great responsibility. Remember, javaScript is executed on the client side and if you abuse it your performance could be affected. Also, Marc Anderson (@sympmarc) wrote a pretty awesome javaScript library called SPServices.  This allows you to access SharePoint’s Web Services using jQuery. How freakin cool is that? With these tools at your disposal the number of things you CAN’T do without Visual Studio grows smaller and smaller. This is definitely development no matter what anyone else says and there is no Visual Studio involved. SharePoint Designer Ahhh.. The cause of and the answer to all of your SharePoint development problems. With SharePoint Designer you can use DataView Web Parts, develop (there’s that word again) your branding, and even connect to external datasources.  There’s a lot you can do in SharePoint Designer. It’s got it’s shortcomings, but it is an invaluable tool in the SharePoint developers toolbox. InfoPath So, can InfoPath development really be considered SharePoint development? I would say yes. You can connect to SharePoint lists, populate fields in a SharePoint list, and even write code in InfoPath. Sounds like SharePoint development to me. Visual Studio – Web Services/WCF So, get this. You can write code for SharePoint and not have a clue what the 12 hive is, what “site actions” means, or know how to do ANYTHING in SharePoint? Poppycock! You say? SharePoint Web Services I say… With SharePoint Web Services you can totally interact with SharePoint without knowing anything about SharePoint. I don’t recommend it of course, but it’s possible. What can you write using SharePoint Web Services? How about a little application called SharePoint Designer? Visual Studio – Object Model And here we are finally:  the SharePoint Object Model.  When you hear “SharePoint Developer” most people think of someone opening Visual Studio and creating a custom web part, workflow, event receiver, etc.. etc.. but I hope that by now I have made the point that this is NOT the only form of SharePoint Development! Again… Who cares? Just crack open Visual Studio for everything! Problem solved! Let’s ponder for a moment, shall we? The business comes to you with a requirement that involves some pretty fancy business calculations, and a complicated view that they do NOT want to look like SharePoint. “No Problem” you proclaim you mighty SharePoint Developer. You go back to your cube, chuckle at the latest Dilbert comic, and crack open Visual Studio. Then you build your custom web part… fight with all the deployment, migration, and UAT that you must go through and proclaim victory two weeks later!!!! Well done my good sir/ma’am! Oh wait… it turns out Sally who is not a “developer” did the exact same thing with a Dataview web part and some jQuery and it’s been in production for two weeks? #CockinessFail I know there are many ASP.NET developers out there that can create a custom control and wrap it to be a SharePoint Web Part.  That does NOT mean they are SharePoint Developers though as far as I’m concerned and I personally would much rather have someone on my team that can manipulate the heck (yes, I said ‘heck’) out of SharePoint using Dataview Web Parts, jQuery, and a roll of duct tape. Just because you know how to write code in Visual Studio does not mean you are a SharePoint Developer. What’s the conclusion here? How do we define ‘it’ and what ‘it’ is called? Fortunately, this is MY blog. I don’t have to give answers, I can stir the pot, laugh and leave you to ponder what it means! There is obviously no right or wrong answer here (unless you disagree with me,then you are flat out wrong). Anyway, there are many opinions.  Here’s mine.  If you put SharePoint Developer on your resume make sure to clearly specify HOW you develop in SharePoint and what tools you use. If we must label these gurus of jQuery and SPD, how about “SharePoint Client Developer” or “SharePoint Front End Developer”? Just throwing out an idea. Whatever we call them, to say they are not developers is short-sighted, arrogant, and unfair. Of course, then we need to figure out what to call all those other SharePoint development types.  Twitter Conversation @next_connect: RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? | I say no.... @mikegil:  @mrackley re: yr Developer question: SPD expert <> SP Developer. Can be "sous-developer," though. #SharePoint #SPD @WonderLaura:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -- My opinion is that devs write code. @exnav29:  Rt @mrackley Can someone be considered a SharePoint Dev if all they know how to do is work in SPD? => I think devs would use VS as well @ssKevin:  @WonderLaura @mrackley does that mean strictly vb and c# when it comes to #SharePoint ? @jimmywim:  @exnav29 @mrackley nah, I'd say they were a power user. Devs know their way around the 12 hive ;) @sympmarc:  RT @mrackley: Can someone be considered a SharePoint Developer if all they know how to do is work in SPD? -> Fighting words. @sympmarc:  @next_connect @mrackley Besides, we prefer to be called "hacks". ;+) @next_connect:  @sympmarc The important thing is that you don't have to develop code to solve problems and create solutions. @mrackley @mrackley:  @sympmarc @next_connect not tryin to pick fight.. just try and find consensus on definition @usher:  @mrackley I'd still argue that you have a DevLite title that's out there for the collaboration engineers (@sympmarc @next_connect) @next_connect: @usher I agree. I've called it Light Dev/ Configuration before. @sympmarc @mrackley @usher:  @next_connect I like DevLite, low calorie but still same great taste :) @mrackley @sympmarc @mrackley:  @next_connect @usher @sympmarc I don't think there's any "lite" to someone who can bend jQuery and XSLT to their will. @usher:  @mrackley okay, so would you refer to someone that writes user controls and assemblies something different (@next_connect @sympmarc) @usher:  @mrackley when looking for a developer that can write .net code, it's a bit different than an XSLT/jQuery designer. @sympmarc @next_connect @jimmywim:  @mrackley @sympmarc @next_connect I reckon a "dev" does managed code and works in the 12 hive @sympmarc:  @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect We had a similar debate a few days ago @toddbleeker et al @sympmarc:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @toddbleeker @stevenmfowler More abt my Middle Tier term, but still connected. Meet bus need. @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect I used "No Assembly Required" in the past. I also suggested "Supplimenting the SharePoint DOM" @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect Others suggested Information Worker Solutions/Enhancements @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler I also like "SharePoint Scripting Solutions". All the technologies are script. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect I like the IW solutions one... @toddbleeker:  @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler This is like the debate that never ends: it is definitely not called Middle Tier. @jimmywim:  @toddbleeker @sympmarc @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler "Scripting" these days makes me think PowerShell... @sympmarc:  @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler If it forces a debate on h2 best solve bus probs, I'll keep sayin Middle Tier. @usher:  @sympmarc so we know what we're looking for, we just can't define a name? @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler @sympmarc:  @usher @sympmarc @toddbleeker @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler The naming seems to matter more than the substance. :-( @jimmywim:  @sympmarc @usher @toddbleeker @mrackley @next_connect @stevemfowler work brkdn defines tasks, defines tools needed, can then b grp'd by user @WonderLaura:  @mrackley @toddbleeker @jimmywim @sympmarc @usher @next_connect Funny you're asking. @johnrossjr and I spent hours this week on the subject. @stevenmfowler:  RT @toddbleeker: @sympmarc @jimmywim @mrackley @next_connect @stevenmfowler it is definitely not called Middle Tier. < I'm with Todd

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• Tools of the Trade

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  I got pretty excited a couple of days ago when my new laptop arrived. “The new phone books are here!  The new phone books are here!  I’m a somebody!” - Steve Martin in The Jerk It is a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel i7 Core 2.8 GHZ running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 15.6” widescreen, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD.  For some of you high fliers, this may be nothing to write home about, but compared to the 32–bit Windows XP laptop with 2 GB of RAM and a regular hard disk that I’m coming from, it’s a really nice step forward.  I won’t even bore you with the details of the desktop PC I was first given when I started here 5 1/2 years ago.  Let’s just say that things have improved.  One really nice thing is that while we are definitely running a lean and mean department in terms of staffing, my boss believes in supporting that lean staff with good tools in order to stay lean instead of having to spend even more money on additional employees.  Of course, that only goes so far, and at some point you have to add more people in order to get more work done, which is why we are bringing on-board a new employee and a new contract developer next week.  But that’s a different story for a different time. But the main topic for this post is to highlight the variety of tools that I use in my job and that you might find useful, too.  This is easy to do right now because the process of building up my new laptop from scratch has forced me to assemble a list of software that had to be installed and configured.  Keep in mind as you look through this list that I play many roles in our company.  My official title is Software Engineering Manager, but in addition to managing the team, I am also an active ASP.NET and SQL developer, the Database Administrator, and 50% of the SAN Administrator team.  So, without further ado, here are the tools and some comments about why I use them: Tool Purpose Virtual Clone Drive Easily mount an ISO image as a DVD Drive.  This is particularly handy when you are downloading disk images from Microsoft for your tools. SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition We are migrating all of our active systems to SQL 2008 R2.  Developer Edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition, but intended for development use. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (BIDS ONLY) The migration to SSRS 2008 R2 is just getting started, and in the meantime, maintenance work still has to be done on the reports on our SQL 2005 server.  For some reason, you can’t use BIDS from 2008 to write reports for a 2005 server.  There is some different format and when you open 2005 reports in 2008 BIDS, it forces you to upgrade, and they can no longer be uploaded to a 2005 server.  Hopefully Microsoft will fix this soon in some manner similar to Visual Studio now allows you to pick which version of the .NET Framework you are coding against. Visual Studio 2010 Premium All of our application development is in ASP.NET, and we might as well use the tool designed for it. I’ve used a version of Visual Studio going all the way back to VB 6.0 and Visual Interdev. Vault Professional Client Several years ago we replaced Visual Source Safe with SourceGear Vault (then Fortress, and now Vault Pro), and I love it.  It is very reliable with low overhead - perfect for a small to medium size development team.  And being a small ISV, their support is exceptional. Red-Gate Developer Bundle with the SQL Source Control update for Vault I first used, and fell in love with, SQL Prompt shortly before Red-Gate bought it, and then Red-Gate’s first release made me love it even more.  SQL Refactor (which has since been rolled into the latest version of SQL Prompt) has saved me many hours and migraine’s trying to understand somebody else’s code when their indenting was nonexistant, or worse, irrational.  SQL Compare has been awesome for troubleshooting potential schema issues between different instances of system databases.  SQL Data Compare helped us identify the cause behind a bug which appeared in PROD but could not be reproduced in a nearly (but not quite exactly) identical copy in UAT.  And the newest tool we are embracing: SQL Source Control.  I blogged about it here (and here, and here) last December.  This is really going to help us keep each developer’s copy of the database in sync with one another. Fiddler Helps you watch the whole traffic stream on web visits.  Haven’t used it a lot, but it did help me track down some odd 404 errors we were finding in our own application logs.  Has some other JavaScript troubleshooting capabilities, but some of its usefulness has been supplanted by the Developer Tools option in IE8. Funduc Search & Replace Find any string anywhere in a mound of source code really, really fast.  Does RegEx searches, if you understand that foreign language.  Has really helped with some refactoring work to pinpoint, for example, everywhere a particular stored procedure is referenced, whether in .NET code or other SQL procedures (which we have in script files).  Provides in-context preview of the search results.  Fantastic tool, and a bargain price. SciTE SciTE is a Scintilla based Text Editor and it is a fantastic, light-weight tool for quickly reviewing (or writing) program code, SQL scripts, and extract files.  It has language-specific syntax highlighting.  I used it to write several batch and CMD programs a year ago, and to examine data extract files for exchanging information with other systems.  Extremely handy are the options to View End of Line and View Whitespace.  Ever receive a file that is supposed to use CRLF as an end-of-line marker, but really only has CRs?  SciTE will quickly make that visible. Infragistics Controls We do a lot of ASP.NET development, and frequently use the WebGrid, WebTab, and date picker controls.  We will likely be implementing the Hierarchical Data Grid soon.  Infragistics has control suites for WebForms, WinForms, Silverlight, and coming soon MVC/JQuery. WinZip - WITH Command-Line add-in The classic compression program with a great command-line interface that allows me to build those CMD (and soon PowerShell) programs for automated compression jobs.  Our versioned Build packages are zip files. XML Notepad Haven’t used this a lot myself, but one of my team really likes it for examining large XML files. LINQPad Again, haven’t used this one a lot, but it was recommended to me for learning and practicing my LINQ skills which will come in handy as we implement Entity Framework. SQL Sentry Plan Explorer SQL Server Show Plan on steroids.  Great for helping you focus on the parts of a large query that are of most importance.  Also great for just compressing the graphical plan into more readable layout. Araxis Merge A great DIFF and Merge tool.  SourceGear provides a great tool called DiffMerge that we use all the time, but occasionally, I like the cross-edit capabilities of Araxis Merge.  For a while, we also produced DIFF reports in HTML that showed all the changes that occurred between two releases.  This was most important when we were putting out very small, but very important hot fixes on a very politically hot system.  The reports produced by Araxis Merge gave the Director of IS assurance that we were not accidentally introducing ripples throughout the system with our releases. Idera SQL Admin Toolset A great collection of tools including a password checker to help analyze your SQL Server for weak user passwords, a Backup Status tool to quickly scan a large list of servers and databases to identify any that are overdue for backups.  Particularly helpful for highlighting new databases that have been deployed without getting included in your backup processing.  I also like Space Analyzer to keep an eye on disk space consumed by database files. Idera SQL Job Manager This free tool provides a nice calendar view of SQL Server Job Schedules, but to a degree, you also get what you pay for.  We will be purchasing SQL Sentry Event Manager later this year as an even better job schedule reviewer/manager.  But in the meantime, this at least gives me a good view on potential resource conflicts across multiple instances of SQL Server. DBFViewer 2000 I inherited a couple of FoxPro databases that I have to keep an eye on occasionally and have not yet been able to migrate them to SQL Server. Balsamiq Mockups We are still in evaluation-mode on this tool, but I really like it as a quick UI mockup tool that does not require Visual Studio, so someone other than a programmer can do UI design.  The interface looks hand-drawn which definitely has some psychological benefits when communicating to users, too. FeedDemon I have to stay on top of my WAY TOO MANY blog subscriptions somehow.  I may read blogs on a couple of different computers, and FeedDemon’s integration with Google Reader allows me to keep them all in sync.  I don’t particularly like the Google Reader interface, or the fact that it always wanted to mark articles as read just because I scrolled past them.  FeedDemon solves this problem for me, and provides a multi-tabbed interface which is good because fairly frequently one blog will link to something else I want to read, and I can end up with a half-dozen open tabs all from one article. Synergy+ In my office, I run four monitors across two computers all with one mouse and keyboard.  Synergy is the magic software that makes this work. TweetDeck I’m not the most active Tweeter in the world, but when I want to check-in with the Twitterverse, this really helps.  I have found the #sqlhelp and #PoshHelp hash tags particularly useful, and I also have columns setup to make it easy to monitor #sqlpass, #PASSProfDev, and short term events like #sqlsat68.   Whew!  That’s a lot.  No wonder it took me a couple of days to get everything setup the way I wanted it.  Oh, that and actually getting some work accomplished at the same time.  Anyway, I know that is a huge dump of info, and most people never make it here to the end, so for those who did, let me say, CONGRATULATIONS, you made it! I hope you’ll find a new tool or two to make your work life a little easier.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 13, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 13, 2011Popular ReleasesCommunity TFS Build Extensions: Alpha 1.0.0.4: Please see the Source Control change sets for updates in this release This is a minor release to wrap up the BuildReport activity This release contains signed assemblies and a CHM file. Effort is now going into improving the documentation. Note the help on the Guid activity. We plan to provide Actions and a self contained Sequence sample whenever possible. This should address most peoples needs. You can expect frequent updates over the next month as we add more activities and improve the ...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 1.0.4.1: Stable Release 51 Degrees.mobi Foundation is the best way to detect and redirect mobile devices and their capabilities on ASP.NET and is being used on thousands of websites worldwide. We’re highly confident in our software and we recommend all users update to this version. Changes to Version 1.0.4.1Changed the BlackberryHandler and BlackberryVersion6Handler to have equal CONFIDENCE values to ensure they both get a chance at detecting BlackBerry version 4&5 and version 6 devices. Prior to thi...Rawr: Rawr 4.1.06: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta6: ??AcDown?????????????，?????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta6 ?????(imanhua.com)????? ???? ?? ??"????","?????","?????","????"?????? "????"?????"????????"?? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????????????/???? ?? ????Windows 7???????????? ????????? ?? ????????????? ???????/??????????? ???????????? ?? ?? ?????(imanh...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.22: Added lots of optimizations related to expression optimization. Combining adjacent expression statements into a single statement means more if-, for-, and while-statements can get rid of the curly-braces. Then more if-statements can be converted to expressions, and more expressions can be combined with return- and for-statements. Moving functions to the top of their scopes, followed by var-statements, provides more opportunities for expression-combination. Added command-line option to remove ...Pulse: Pulse Beta 2: - Added new wallpapers provider http://wallbase.cc. Supports english search, multiple keywords* - Improved font rendering in Options window - Added "Set wallpaper as logon background" option* - Fixed crashes if there is no internet connection - Fixed: Rewalls downloads empty images sometimes - Added filters* Note 1: wallbase provider supports only english search. Rewalls provider supports only russian search but Pulse automatically translates your english keyword into russian using Google Tr...SizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.4: Fix: Contextual menu failures. Switch to ShellExecuteEx of Win32Api.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (June 2011) for .NET 4.0: Release of Phalanger 2.1 - the opensource PHP compiler for .NET framework 4.0. Installation package also includes basic version of Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio 2010. This allows you to easily create, build and debug Phalanger web or application inside this ultimate integrated development environment. You can even install the tools into the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated). To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phala...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.New ProjectsAFS - Application Foundation System: application foundation system,including organization structure,rights management,user management,event subscription etc.AuctionWorks: AuctionWorks 1.0Commander: CMD VB6 GUI a CMD application written in Visual Studio 2010 ultimate (VB6). Simple GUI interface, more functions to be addedCotizador de Serigrafia: Cotizador para Industrias SerigráficasESPGame: ESPGame renders a wonderful picture label game environment. It's developed in Python with web framework django.ETRoboCon Race Tracking System: The race tracking system of Embedded Technology Robot Contest in Japan.HNI2: get me at x.InkML JavaScript Library: The InkML JavaScript library allows InkML digital ink to be refernced within web pages and rendered directly into HTML5 <canvas> tags. Ink Markup Language (InkML) is a W3C standard for encoding digital ink (www.w3.org/tr/inkml). Ionut's C++ Programs: Ionut's C++ Programs Are you wondering were you can find software that suports any windows platform and the source code mai be compiled also for a NON-WINDOWS platforms. The Programs are Developed in C++ Mano Machine Emulator: Mano Machine Emulator makes it easier for Computer Science students to learn how the machine works in low level layers. You'll no longer have to imagine how the computer works, instead you will see how it works. It's developed in C#. MSMQ Client Library: MSMQ client library is a client for MSMQ server. It provides easy usage of MSMQ server, and can be used in any type of NET framework projects. It is developed in C#, Framework 4.0MVC Photos: ASP.NET MVC???????????。 mvcConf @:Japan???????????????。MvcPractice: learn the asp.net mvc3 source.Of Shared Points - Blog Demos and Samples: Blog samples and demonstration source code for "Of Shared Points" SharePoint blogPresentation Abstraction Control for Silverlight - PAC4SL: PAC4SL is a delivery framework used for developing Silverlight applications that uses the Presentation Abstraction Control delivery pattern. This delivery pattern is centered on team development with Silverlight. The focus of the pattern is spreading out of application logic into focused delivery tiers. The framework was developed in C# on the 4.0 framework and Silverlight 4.0 The framework is designed to be used with C# and Silverlight 4.0 or higher. queryexecutor: A generic database browserSilVM: MVVM, Silverlight, Arquitetura, ArchitectureSimple Dot Net Grapher: Demo project for drawing graphs based on a equation E.g F(x) = 5x^2 + 10x - 1 Just a math grapher I made to test the DynamicDataDisplay library and dynamic string evaluationSPEvolution: Migration for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 data - Content Types, List, Columns, ListItems and many other - in Rails-style. Write small evolution's steps which help to deploy and synchronize data schema beetween production and development environment. SQLDeploy.Net: SQLDeploy.Net is a utility to deploy [run] a set of SQL Scripts on SQL Server. The utility can be integrated with any deployment manager like Marimba , Hudson etc to automate database deployment. The project is developed on .Net Framework 4.0 but it is equally backward compatible. For a list of known issues and enhancements which are being worked upon, refer to Issue Tracker.webget: webgetwhoami: ip address resolverWPFGenie: about WPF, .Net, framework

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