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• Part 7: EBS Modifications and Flagged Files in R12

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  Let me, based on my previous blog, explain the procedure of flagged files a bit better and facilitate the same with screenshots. Flagged files is a concept within the Oracle eBusiness Suite (EBS) release 12, where you flag a standard deployment file, let’s say a Forms file, a Package or a Java class file. When you run the patch analyse, the list of flagged files will be checked and in case one of these files gets patched, the analyse report will tell you. Note: This functionality is also available in release 11, here it is implemented and known as “applcust.txt”. You can flag as many files as you want, in whatever relationship they are with your customizations. In addition to the flag itself you can add a comment. You should use this comment to point to your customization reference (here XXAR_RPT_066 or XXAP_CUST_030). Consider the following two cases: You have created your own report, based on a standard report. In this case you will flag the report file itself, and the key views used. When a patch updates one of these files, you will be informed and can initiate a proper review and testing. (ex.: first line for ARXCTA.rdf) You have created an extensive personalization and because it is business critical you like to be informed if the page definition gets updated. In this case you register the PG.xml file as flagged file. (ex.: second line below for CreateExtBankAcctPG.xml) The menu path to register flagged files is the following: (R) System Administrator > (M) Oracle Applications Manager > Site Map > Maintenance > Register Flagged Files     Your DBA should now run the Patch Analyse every time he is going to apply a new patch. (R) System Administrator > (M) Oracle Applications Manager > Patch Wizard > Task “Recommend/Analyze Patches” The screenshot above shows the impact summary. For this blog entry the number “2” titled “Flagged Files Changed“ is in our focus. When you click the “2” you will get a similar screen like the first in this blog, showing you exactly the files which will get patched if you continue and apply this patch in this environment right now. Note: It is also shown that just 20% of all patch files will get applied. This situation might be different in case your environments are on a different patch level. For sure also the customization impact might then be different. The flagging step can be done directly in the Oracle Applications Manager.  Our developers are responsible for. To transport such a flag+comment we use a FNDLOAD script. It is suggested to put the flagged files data file directly into your CEMLI patch. Herewith the flagged files registration will be executed right at the same time when the patch gets applied. Process Steps: Developer: Builds CEMLI Reviews code and identifies key standard objects referenced Determines standard object files and flags them Creates FNDLOAD file and adds the same to the CEMLI patch DBA: Executes for every new Oracle standard patch the patch analyse in a representative environment Checks and retrieves the flagged files and comments Sends flagged file list back to development team for analyse / retest Developer: Analyses / Updates / Retests effected CEMLIs Prerequisite: The patch analyse has to be executed in an environment where flagged files have been registered. (If you run the patch analyse in a vanilla or outdated environment (compared to your PROD), the analyse will not be so helpful!) When to start with Flagged files? Start right now utilizing this feature. It is an invest to improve the production stability and fulfil your SLA!   Summary Flagged Files is a very helpful EBS R12 technique when analysing patches. Implement a procedure within your development process to maintain such flags. Let the DBA run the patch analyse in an environment with a similar patch and customization level as your current production.   Related Links: EBS Patching Procedures - Chapter 2-13 - Registered Flagged Files

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• Windows Phone 7 Silverlight / XNA development talk

  - by subodhnpushpak

  Hi, I presented on Windows Phone 7 app development using Silverlight. Here are few pics from the event Windows Phone 7 development VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL     I demonstrated the Visual studio, emulator capabilities/ features. An demo on Wp7 app communication with an OData Service, along with a demo on XNA app. There was lot of curious questions; I am listing them here because these keep on popping up again and again: 1. What tools does it takes to develop Wp7 app? Are they free? A typical WP7 app can be developed either using Silverlight or XNA. For developers, Visual Studio 2010 is a good choice as it provides an integrated development environment with lots of useful project templates; which makes the task really easy. For designers, Blend may be used to develop the UI in XAML. Both the tools are FREE (express version) to download and very intuitive to use. 2. What about the learning curve? If you know C#, (or any other programming language), learning curve is really flat. XAML (used for UI) may be new for you, but trust me; its very intuitive. Also you can use Microsoft Blend to generate the UI (XAML) for you. 3. How can I develop /test app without using actual device? How can I be sure my app runs as expected on actual device? The WP7 SDK comes along with an excellent emulator; which you can use for development/ testing on a computer. Later you can just change a setting and deploy the application on WP7. You will require Zune software for deploying the application on phone along with Developers key from WP7 marketplace. You can obtain key from marketplace by filling a form. The whole process for registering  is easy; just follow the steps on the site. 4. Which one should I use? Silverlight or XNA? Use Silverlight for enterprise/ business / utility apps. Use XNA for Games app. While each platform is capable / strong and may be used in conjunction as well; The methodologies used for development in these platforms are very different. XNA works on typical Do..While loop where as Silverlight works on event based methodology. 5. Where are the learning resources? Are they free? There is lots of stuff on WP7. Most of them are free. There is a excellent free book by Charles Petzold to download and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone is full of demos /todos / vidoes. All the exciting stuff was captured live and you can view it here; in case you were not able to catch it live!! @ http://livestre.am/AUfx. My talk starts from 3:19:00 timeline in the video!! Is there an app you miss on WP7? Do let me know about it and I may work on it for free !!! Keep discovering. Keep is Simple. WP7. Subodh

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• Using rel=next and rel=prev with multiple sets of paginated content on the same page

  - by jakejgordon

  We are running into issues with trying to figure out how to implement rel="next" and rel="prev" -- coupled with rel="canonical" -- with multiple sets of paginated content on the same page, with pages in multiple cultures. In other words, how do we implement these when we have a pager for both Product Reviews and Questions and Answers (aka "Q&A") on the same page, with duplicate content across culture-specific URLs (e.g. /us/en/my-product vs. /ca/en/my-product)? Our current implementation will actually do a full postback when you click Page 2, and will add something to the query string (e.g. website.com/ca/en/my-product?previewpage=2 or website.com/ca/en/my-product?questionpage=2). If we only had one set of paginated content then the implementation would certainly be more straightforward. Adding a second set of paginated content (i.e. Q&A) complicates things. Let's assume that we want the United States English page to be the canonical target (i.e. /us/en/my-product) based on culture. If you go to the /ca/en/my-product page you'll have a rel="canonical" href="/us/en/my-product". So far so good. Let's also assume that we are not implementing a page that lists ALL Product Reviews and Q&A. This would likely solve a number of our problems by using rel="canonical" to this page, but is not an option for reasons that are out of scope for this discussion. Now if you click on page 2 of Product Reviews, it will reload the page with /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=2 as the URL. Given this scenario, here are my questions: On page 2 of the my-product page on the Canadian site, should there be a rel="canonical" to /us/en/my-product?reviewpage=2 (assuming the content is identical in the United States and Canada)? Should the rel="prev" go to /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=1 or should it go to /ca/en/my-product ? The query-string version would really only be accessible if using the pager and shows the exact same content as the base page. The following two questions are closely related to this one. Should the /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=1 have a rel canonical directly to /us/en/my-product (United States page with nothing in query string) since the content is identical)? Given that Q&A content is also paginated, should there be a rel="next" on the base page without query string? In other words, should the /ca/en/my-product page have a rel="next" to /ca/en/my-product?reviewpage=2 AND rel="next" to /ca/en/my-product?questionpage=2 . So far as I can tell it doesn't make sense to have multiple rel="next" implementations on the same page. I suspect that the pages with query string values should have rel="next" and rel="prev" that only point to other pages with query strings and not to the base page. The ?reviewpage=1 and ?questionpage=1 pages would then just have a rel="canonical" to /us/en/my-product . Thoughts? I know this is a tough one -- that's why I brought it to this community. Thanks so much for your help in advance!

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• How would I handle input with a Game Component?

  - by Aufziehvogel

  I am currently having problems from finding my way into the component-oriented XNA design. I read an overview over the general design pattern and googled a lot of XNA examples. However, they seem to be right on the opposite site. In the general design pattern, an object (my current player) is passed to InputComponent::update(Player). This means the class will know what to do and how this will affect the game (e.g. move person vs. scroll text in a menu). Yet, in XNA GameComponent::update(GameTime) is called automatically without a reference to the current player. The only XNA examples I found built some sort of higher-level Keyboard engine into the game component like this: class InputComponent: GameComponent { public void keyReleased(Keys); public void keyPressed(Keys); public bool keyDown(Keys); public void override update(GameTime gameTime) { // compare previous state with current state and // determine if released, pressed, down or nothing } } Some others went a bit further making it possible to use a Service Locator by a design like this: interface IInputComponent { public void downwardsMovement(Keys); public void upwardsMovement(Keys); public bool pausedGame(Keys); // determine which keys pressed and what that means // can be done for different inputs in different implementations public void override update(GameTime); } Yet, then I am wondering if it is possible to design an input class to resolve all possible situations. Like in a menu a mouse click can mean "click that button", but in game play it can mean "shoot that weapon". So if I am using such a modular design with game components for input, how much logic is to be put into the InputComponent / KeyboardComponent / GamepadComponent and where is the rest handled? What I had in mind, when I heard about Game Components and Service Locator in XNA was something like this: use Game Components to run the InputHandler automatically in the loop use Service Locator to be able to switch input at runtime (i.e. let player choose if he wants to use a gamepad or a keyboard; or which shall be player 1 and which player 2). However, now I cannot see how this can be done. First code example does not seem flexible enough, as on a game pad you could require some combination of buttons for something that is possible on keyboard with only one button or with the mouse) The second code example seems really hard to implement, because the InputComponent has to know in which context we are currently. Moreover, you could imagine your application to be multi-layered and let the key-stroke go through all layers to the bottom-layer which requires a different behaviour than the InputComponent would have guessed from the top-layer. The general design pattern with passing the Player to update() does not have a representation in XNA and I also cannot see how and where to decide which class should be passed to update(). At most time of course the player, but sometimes there could be menu items you have to or can click I see that the question in general is already dealt with here, but probably from a more elobate point-of-view. At least, I am not smart enough in game development to understand it. I am searching for a rather code-based example directly for XNA. And the answer there leaves (a noob like) me still alone in how the object that should receive the detected event is chosen. Like if I have a key-up event, should it go to the text box or to the player?

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• Indentify Codecs & Technical Information About Video Files

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever wanted to play an audio or video file but didn’t have the proper codec installed? Today we’ll show how to determine codecs, along with a host of other technical details about your media files with MediaInfo. Installation Download and install MediaInfo. You can find the download link at the bottom of the page. Note: When installing MediaInfo there is a recommended software bundle which you can opt out of by selecting Do not install option. Each recommended software choice may be different, like in this example it offers Spyware Terminator. The cool thing though is they use Open Candy which opts you out of the install. Just double check to make sure you’re not installing extra crapware. Using MediaInfo The first time you run MediaInfo it will display the Preferences window. There are various option such as language, output format, and whether or not you want MediaInfo to check for new versions. Click OK. Select a file or folder to analyze by clicking on the File or Folder icons on the left of the application window or by selecting File > Open from the menu. You can also drag and drop a file directly onto the application. MediaInfo will display details of your media file. In Basic view, you’ll see basic information. Notice in the example below the video and audio codecs, along with file size, running time of the media file, and even the application used to create the video file (Writing application).    You can switch to some of the other views by selecting View from the Menu and choosing form the dropdown list.   Sheet View will present the information a bit more clearly. You can see in the example below that the video and audio codec are listing in clearly identified columns. (AVC is often more commonly referred to H.264.)   Tree View is perhaps the most detailed. You can see from the example below the codec used for this AVI file is XviD.   Scrolling down even further you’ll see additional information like video and audio bit rates, frame rate, aspect ratio, and more.   In Basic View (and also in Sheet view) you can click to find a player for your file. In this instance with an MP4 file, it took me to the download page for Quicktime. This is by no means the only media player for this file, but if you are stuck for how to play a media file, this will forward you to a solution that works. You can do the same thing with Video codec. Click Go to the web site of this video codec to find a download.   MediaInfo is a simple but powerful tool that can be used to discover the details of a media file, or just to find a compatible codec. It works with most any video file type and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Some Mac and Linux versions, however, are currently command line only. Download MediaInfo Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Convert Videos to 3GP for Mobile PhonesFix for VLC Skipping and Lagging Playing High-Def Video FilesUsing VLC Player Under VistaUse Your Mac Mini as a Media Server Part 2How to Play .OGM Video Files in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Ancestry.com

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAncestry.com Inc is the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world and it operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites focused on the U.S. and nine foreign countries, develops and markets genealogical software, and offers a wide array of genealogical related services. As of June 2012, the company provided access to more than 10 billion records, 38 million family trees, and 2 million paying subscribers. Their main business challenges were to improve time to market and agility to respond quickly to fast changing Internet waves while integrating with their existing content (4 PetaByte) and legacy systems. Ancestry.com implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites as their Web Experience Management System for their landing pages and marketing micro sites, added dynamic sections to their existing websites and integrated the existing content and legacy systems through web services. The Ancestry.com landing pages and marketing sites are now managed by the business team without any involvement of engineering resources. Managed content can quickly be added to existing pages without having to refactor the whole page and existing content (4 PetaBytes)  is now served trough Oracle WebCenter Sites without having to migrate from existing systems. Company OverviewAncestry.com Inc is a publicly traded Internet company (NASDAQ: ACOM) based in Provo, Utah, USA. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites focused on the U.S. and nine foreign countries, develops and markets genealogical software, and offers a wide array of genealogical related services. As of June 2012, the company provided access to more than 10 billion records, 38 million family trees, and 2 million paying subscribers. Business ChallengesAncestry main business challenge was to respond quickly to fast changing Internet waves.  Product marketing could not change Web site content without going through development. They needed dedicated developers just to support their marketing efforts. Technical Requirements Support current systems and environments - ASP.NET, MVC.NET, Java, JSP, PHP Scalable and manageable for a world wide network Marketing Requirements Easy to enter content – Without having a degree in HTML Scheduling of content – When is content visible to users Product Requirements Easy to manage content – See when content is out-of-date Rotation of content – Producing new content as old content expires Solution DeployedAncestry implemented  Oracle WebCenter Sites as their Web Experience Management System to manage their landing pages and marketing micro sites. This sites are fully managed by their business team without involvement of any engineering resources. The integration with their existing Web sites is done through Spot Management which allows the ability to add dynamic content to certain sections of a web page. The dynamic content is managed by  Oracle WebCenter Sites. The integration with the existing content (4 PetaBytes!) is done trough  a custom content provider interface which allows to mix existing content with content from  Oracle WebCenter Sites. Business ResultsAncestry.com has achieved following impressive business results: Landing pages and marketing sites are now managed by the business team without any involvement of engineering resources Managed content can quickly be added to existing pages without having to refactor the whole page Provide access to existing content (4 PetaBytes)  without having to migrate from existing systems Additional Information Ancestry Webcast Oracle WebCenter Sites

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• 5 Ways to Celebrate the Release of Internet Explorer 9

  - by David Wesst

  The day has finally come: Microsoft has released a web browser that is awesome. On Monday night, Microsoft officially introduced the world to the latest edition to its product family: Internet Explorer 9. That makes March 14, 2011 (also known as PI day) the official birthday of Microsoft’s rebirth in the world of web browsing. Just like any big event, you take some time to celebrate. Here are a few things that you can do to celebrate the return of Internet Explorer. 1. Download It If you’re not a big partier, that’s fine. The one thing you can do (and definitely should) is download it and give it a shot. Sure, IE may have disappointed you in the past, but believe me when I say they really put the effort in this time. The absolute least you can do is give it a shot to see how it stands up against your favourite browser. 2. Get yourself an HTML5 Shirt One of the coolest, if not best parts of IE9 being released is that it officially introduces HTML5 as a fully supported platform from Microsoft. IE9 supports a lot of what is already defined in the HTML5 technical spec, which really demonstrates Microsoft’s support of the new standard. Since HTML5 is cool on the web, it means that it is cool to wear it too. Head over to html5shirt.com and get yourself, or your staff, or your whole family, an HTML5 shirt to show the real world that you are ready for the future of the web. 3. HTML5-ify Something Okay, so maybe a shirt isn’t enough for you. Maybe you need start using HTML5 for real. If you have a blog, or a website, or anything out there on the web, celebrate IE9 adding some HTML5 to your site. Whether that is updating old code, adding something new, or just changing your WordPress theme, definitely take a look at what HTML5 can do for you. 4. Help Kill Old IE and Upgrade your Organization See this? This is sad. Upgrading web browsers in an large enterprise or organization is not a trivial task. A lot of companies will use the excuse of not having the resources to upgrade legacy web applications they were built for a specific version of IE and it doesn’t render correctly in legacy browsers. Well, it’s time to stop the excuses. IE9 allows you to define what version of Internet Explorer you would like it to emulate. It takes minimal effort for the developer, and will get rid of the excuses. Show your IT manager or software development team this link and show them how easy it is to make old code render right in the latest and greatest from the IE team. 5. Submit an Entry for DevUnplugged So, you’ve made it to number five eh? Well then, you must be pretty hardcore to make it this far down the list. Fine, let’s take it to the next level and build an HTML5 game. That’s right. A game. Like a video game. HTML5 introduces some amazing new features that can let you build working video games using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Plus, Microsoft is celebrating the launch of IE9 with a contest where you can submit an HTML5 game (or audio application) and have a chance to win a whack of cash and other prizes. Head here for the full scoop and rules for the DevUnplugged. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• Impressions of Pivotal Tracker

  Pivotal Tracker is a free, online agile project management system. Ive been using it recently to better communicate to customers about the current state of our project. In Pivotal Tracker, the unit of work is a story and stories are arranged into iterations or delivery cycles. Stories can be any level of granularity you want, but the idea is to use stories to communicate clearly to customers, so you dont want to write a novel. You especially dont want to write a list of detailed programming tasks. A good story for a point of sale system might be: Allow managers to override the price of an item while ringing up a customer. A less useful story: Script out the process of adding a manager flag to the user table and stage that script into the deploy directory. Stories are estimated using a point scale, by default 1, 2 or 3. Iterations are then automatically laid out by combining enough tasks to fill the point total for that period of time. You have to start with a guess on how many points your team can do in an iteration, then adjust with real data as you complete iterations. This is basic agile methodology, but where Pivotal Tracker adds value is that it automatically and graphically lays out iterations for you on your project site. This makes communication and planning easy. Compiling release notes is no longer painful as it has been clear from the outset what work is going on. While I much prefer Pivotal Trackers customer facing interface over what we used previously (TFS), I see a couple of gaps. First, I have not able to make much headway with the reporting tools. Despite my complaints about TFS, it can produce some nice reports. Second, its not clear where if at all, Id keep track of purely internal tasks. Im talking about server maintenance, cleaning up source control, checking back on some code which you never quite felt right about. Theres no purpose in cluttering up an iteration backlog with these items, but if you dont track them, you lose them. Im not sure what a good answer for that is. One gap I thought Id see, which I dont, is more granular dev tasks. If Im implementing a story, Ill write out the steps and track my progress, but really, those steps arent useful to anybody but me. The only time Ive found that level of detail really useful is when my tasks are defined at too high a level anyway or when Im working with someone who needs more coaching and might not be able to finish a story in time without some scaffolding to get them going. You can learn more about Pivotal Tracker at: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/learnmore.   --- Relevant Links --- A good intro to stories: http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/userStory.htmDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Chalk Talk with John: How Does SOA Add Value to Your Enterprise?

  - by John Brunswick

  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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} In this episode of Chalk Talk with John we revisit our town of Middleware Fields from What Does User Experience Mean to You? to look at demystifying the business value of SOA. Middleware fields is an extremely eco-conscious community and has been trying to setup a commuting program for their employees. Though a good idea, they soon run into challenges ensuring that people are able to use the commuting services easily.  Take a look below to see how SOA is like a transit pass for your enterprise and how it addresses common issues you may have with your enterprise systems. 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} About me: Hi, I am John Brunswick, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. As an Oracle Enterprise Architect, I focus on the alignment of technical capabilities in support of business vision and objectives, as well as the overall business value of technology.  Before coming to Oracle, I was a Practice Manager within BEA System's Business Interaction Division consulting organization, orchestrating enterprise systems in support of line of business goals. Follow me on Twitter and visit my site for Oracle Fusion Middleware related tips.

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• Chalk Talk with John: What Does User Experience Mean to You?

  - by Tanu Sood

  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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Author: John Brunswick The "Chalk Talk with John" series will explore the practical value of Middleware in the context of two fictional communities, shared through analogies aligned to enterprise technology.  This format offers business stakeholders and IT a common language for understanding the benefits of technology in support of their business initiatives, regardless of their current level of technical knowledge. I will endeavor to showcase an episode highlighting business use cases and how technology plays a role in business on a bi-weekly basis. The debut episode highlights the benefits of user experience capabilities supplied by Portal technologies, by juxtaposing the communities of Middleware Fields and Codeaway Valley with regard to the time and effort their residents spend performing everyday tasks.  This comparison provides insight into the benefits of leveraging a common user experience foundation to support the tasks that our employees, customers and partners engage in on a daily basis with our organizations. Take a look and let me know your thoughts! 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} About me: Hi, I am John Brunswick, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. As an Oracle Enterprise Architect, I focus on the alignment of technical capabilities in support of business vision and objectives, as well as the overall business value of technology.  Before coming to Oracle, I was a Practice Manager within BEA System's Business Interaction Division consulting organization, orchestrating enterprise systems in support of line of business goals. Connect with me on Twitter and visit my site for Oracle Fusion Middleware related tips.

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• Lessons Building KeyRef (a .NET developer learning Rails)

  - by Liam McLennan

  Just because I like to build things, and I like to learn, I have been working on a keyboard shortcut reference site. I am using this as an opportunity to improve my ruby and rails skills. The first few days were frustrating. Perhaps the learning curve of all the fun new toys was a bit excessive. Finally tonight things have really started to come together. I still don’t understand the rails built-in testing support but I will get there. Interesting Things I Learned Tonight RubyMine IDE Tonight I switched to RubyMine instead of my usual Notepad++. I suspect RubyMine is a powerful tool if you know how to use it – but I don’t. At the moment it gives me errors about some gems not being activated. This is another one of those things that I will get to. I have also noticed that the editor functions significantly differently to the editors I am used to. For example, in visual studio and notepad++ if you place the cursor at the start of a line and press left arrow the cursor is sent to the end of the previous line. In RubyMine nothing happens. Haml Haml is my favourite view engine. For my .NET work I have been using its non-union Mexican CLR equivalent – nHaml. Multiple CSS Classes To define a div with more than one css class haml lets you chain them together with a ‘.’, such as: .span-6.search_result contents of the div go here Indent Consistency I also learnt tonight that both haml and nhaml complain if you are not consistent about indenting. As a consequence of the move from notepad++ to RubyMine my haml views ended up with some tab indenting and some space indenting. For the view to render all of the indents within a view must be consistent. Sorting Arrays I guessed that ruby would be able to sort an array alphabetically by a property of the elements so my first attempt was: Application.all.sort {|app| app.name} which does not work. You have to supply a comparer (much like .NET). The correct sort is: Application.all.sort {|a,b| a.name.downcase <=> b.name.downcase} MongoMapper Find by Id Since document databases are just fancy key-value stores it is essential to be able to easily search for a document by its id. This functionality is so intrinsic that it seems that the MongoMapper author did not bother to document it. To search by id simply pass the id to the find method: Application.find(‘4c19e8facfbfb01794000002’) Rails And CoffeeScript I am a big fan of CoffeeScript so integrating it into this application is high on my priorities. My first thought was to copy Dr Nic’s strategy. Unfortunately, I did not get past step 1. Install Node.js. I am doing my development on Windows and node is unix only. I looked around for a solution but eventually had to concede defeat… for now. Quicksearch The front page of the application I am building displays a list of applications. When the user types in the search box I want to reduce the list of applications to match their search. A quick googlebing turned up quicksearch, a jquery plugin. You simply tell quicksearch where to get its input (the search textbox) and the list of items to filter (the divs containing the names of applications) and it just works. Here is the code: $('#app_search').quicksearch('.search_result'); Summary I have had a productive evening. The app now displays a list of applications, allows them to be sorted and links through to an application page when an application is selected. Next on the list is to display the set of keyboard shortcuts for an application.

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• How would you gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?

  - by ruslan

  I'm relatively new to StackExchange and not sure if it's appropriate place to ask design question. Site gives me a hint "The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed". Please let me know. Anyway.. One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are: After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them "target IDs". Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey. Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable { @Id transient private Long id; transient private Long version = (long) 0; transient private Long startDate; @Parent transient private Key parent; // fake parent which contains target id @Transient int targetId; private double avgPercent; private long hitCount; } But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are avgPercent and hitCount in HitsStatsDO. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this: // Contains stats for one hour private class Shard { ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID public void saveToDatastore(); public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits); } and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long) private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>(); // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have class LifetimeStats which keeps Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - I have only ONE backend instance :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion: Can I do this without using backend instance ? What if one instance is not enough ? How can I split data between multiple dynamic backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases. I know I can launch exact number of resident backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive. What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting? Thank you very much in advance for your thoughts.

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• What is the difference between Workcenters, Dashboards, and the Interaction Hub?

  - by Matthew Haavisto

  Oracle Open World has just concluded.  Over the course of the conference, we presented several sessions covering different aspects of the PeopleSoft user experience, including Workcenters, Dashboards, and the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub (formerly known as the PeopleSoft Applications Portal).  Although we've produced collateral on these features and covered them in sessions, it became apparent at the conference that customers still have many questions about the these products, including how they are licensed, how they are installed, what their various purposes are, and how they can be used together synergistically. Let's Start with Licensing and Installation As you may know, we've extended the restricted use license (RUL) for the Interaction Hub.  This grants customers with PeopleTools 8.52 licenses the right to install the Interaction Hub for free for use as specified in the Tools license notes.  Note that this means customers receive a restricted use license for the Interaction Hub that doesn't cost them an additional license fee, but it is a separate product, not part of PeopleTools or PeopleSoft applications, and is a separate installation.  This means customers must provide the infrastructure to install and run the Hub, just like any other application.  The benefits of using the Hub to unify your PeopleSoft user experience can be great.  PeopleSoft applications have not yet delivered instances of the Hub with their products, though they may in the future. Workcenters and Dashboards, on the other hand, are frameworks provided by PeopleTools.  No other license is required, and no additional installation of a separate product is needed (apart from PeopleTools and PeopleSoft applications).  PeopleSoft applications are delivering instances of the workcenters and dashboards with their products.  Some are available now, and more are coming in future releases.  These delivered workcenter and dashboard instances require no additional licenses, and no additional installations beyond Tools and the applications that provide them.  In addition, the workcenter and dashboard frameworks provided by PeopleTools can be used by customers to build their own workcenters and dashboards, and it's quite easy and simple to do so. What are Their Differences?  What Purposes do they Serve? Workcenters, Dashboards and the Interaction Hub appear somewhat similar.  They all contain pagelets, and have some visual characteristics in common.  However, their strengths and purposes are very different, and they were designed to provide different benefits to your PeopleSoft ecosystem. Workcenters and Dashboards have the following characteristics: Designed for specific roles Focus on the daily tasks of those roles Help to streamline the work performed most often Personal view of my work world Makes navigation and search easier and quicker, particularly for transactions and decision support Reports and data needed for day-to-day work Personalizable, but minimal Delivered by PS Apps, but can be altered by customer for their requirements Customers can create their own Workcenters can be used for guided processes  The Interaction Hub is designed to aggregate content from multiple applications, and is is used to unify the user experience of those applications.  It offers a rich, web site-based user experience, and is often used to provide access to infrequently performed activities like benefits enrollment, payroll inquiries, life event changes, onboarding, and so on. Full-featured and robust Centrally administered Pushed to large audience Broad info like Company News Infrequent activities like benefits, not day-to-day tasks Self-service, access to employer info Central launch point for other activities and can navigate to workcenters and dashboards Deployed by customers or consultants, instances not delivered by PeopleSoft (at this time) Content management Unified PS application navigation Although these products are quite different and serve different purposes in your PeopleSoft environment, they can be used together to provide a richer, more efficient and engaging user experience for your all your user communities.

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• October in Review

  - by Richard Bingham

  With OpenWorld over October was time to get back to serious work for everyone, including the Fusion Applications Developer Relations team. Don't forget the OpenWorld content is still available, including presentation downloads, for a limited period of time so be sure to grab anything you found useful or take another scan for anything you might have missed. Of all the announcements, the continued evolution of the Oracle Cloud services for extending and integrating with Fusion Applications is increasing in popularity, and certainly the Cloud Marketplace is something we're becoming involved in. More details to follow. Fusion Concepts Last week Vik from our team started the new "Fusion Concepts" series of articles, providing those new to Fusion Applications an explanation of the architectural basics, with the aim to reduce the learning curve and lay the platform for more efficient and effective development. The series begun with an insightful first post on the different schemas that exist in the Fusion Applications database. Look out for upcoming posts on multi-lingual entities, profile options, look-ups and more. New Learning Resources Our YouTube channel continued to expand with more 'how to' videos on using page composer, extending the Simplified UI (aka FUSE), and integrating BI reports and analytics. Also the Oracle Learning Library is now well established as a central resource for knowledge, now with thousands of tutorials, videos, and documents. Of particular note are the great new extensibility-related videos added by the CRM Product Management team, including more on the ever-expanding capabilities of Application Composer. To see some examples of these search using keyword 'customization' or the product 'Sales Cloud'. Finally on learning resources, as Oliver mentioned the Oracle Press book on Fusion Application Customization and Extensibility is now available for pre-order on Amazon (due out 1st Jan). Out And About October also saw us attend the annual Apps Conference held by the UK Oracle User Group in London. Interestingly there was an Applications Transformation stream of sessions and content that included Fusion Applications with all the latest in the Oracle Applications evolution, as always focused around the three tenets of social, mobile, and cloud. Read more in Richard's post-event write up. Other teams around Oracle have also been busy. Angelo from the Platform Technical Services group has done quite a bit of work using web services with Fusion SaaS and has published many interesting findings on his blog. It's definitely recommended reading if you are working on any related integration projects. The middleware-for-applications group has built a new tool called "AppAdvantage" offering an online assessment of your use of Fusion Middleware technologies with Oracle Applications. As the popularity of integrating cloud applications with on-premises systems continued to grow, leveraging existing middleware technologies (and licenses) to support the integration solution is likely to be of paramount importance. Similarly the "Build Enterprise Application Extensions with Ease" section of the related webpage has AppsUX director Killan Evers speaking about customization using the composer tools. Both are useful resources for those just getting started with a move to Fusion Applications. The Oracle A-Team, specialists in middleware technical architecture, always publish superb content via their 'chronicles' site, now with a substantial amount specifically related to Fusion Applications. Click on the Fusion Applications menu on the top right of their homepage to see more. Last month of particular note was an article on customizing the timeout pop-up message that shows to inactive users, providing design-time insight and easy-to-follow steps. Finally if you're looking at using Oracle Middleware and Cloud to tailor and extend your applications then you may also be interested in this new blog post on the roadmap for Oracle SOA and the latest on-demand Cloud Development webcast.

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• What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

  - by Daniel Moth

  Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• PASS: International Travels

  - by Bill Graziano

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

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• disks not ready in array causes mdadm to force initramfs shell

  - by RaidPinata

  Okay, this is starting to get pretty frustrating. I've read most of the other answers on this site that have anything to do with this issue but I'm still not getting anywhere. I have a RAID 6 array with 10 devices and 1 spare. The OS is on a completely separate device. At boot only three of the 10 devices in the raid are available, the others become available later in the boot process. Currently, unless I go through initramfs I can't get the system to boot - it just hangs with a blank screen. When I do boot through recovery (initramfs), I get a message asking if I want to assemble the degraded array. If I say no and then exit initramfs the system boots fine and my array is mounted exactly where I intend it to. Here are the pertinent files as near as I can tell. Ask me if you want to see anything else. # mdadm.conf # # Please refer to mdadm.conf(5) for information about this file. # # by default (built-in), scan all partitions (/proc/partitions) and all # containers for MD superblocks. alternatively, specify devices to scan, using # wildcards if desired. #DEVICE partitions containers # auto-create devices with Debian standard permissions # CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes # automatically tag new arrays as belonging to the local system HOMEHOST <system> # instruct the monitoring daemon where to send mail alerts MAILADDR root # definitions of existing MD arrays # This file was auto-generated on Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:50:41 -0700 # by mkconf $Id$ ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid6 num-devices=10 metadata=1.2 spares=1 name=Craggenmore:data UUID=37eea980:24df7b7a:f11a1226:afaf53ae Here is fstab # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # / was on /dev/sdc2 during installation UUID=3fa1e73f-3d83-4afe-9415-6285d432c133 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sdc3 during installation UUID=c4988662-67f3-4069-a16e-db740e054727 none swap sw 0 0 # mount large raid device on /data /dev/md0 /data ext4 defaults,nofail,noatime,nobootwait 0 0 output of cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : active raid6 sda[0] sdd[10](S) sdl[9] sdk[8] sdj[7] sdi[6] sdh[5] sdg[4] sdf[3] sde[2] sdb[1] 23441080320 blocks super 1.2 level 6, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [10/10] [UUUUUUUUUU] unused devices: <none> Here is the output of mdadm --detail --scan --verbose ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid6 num-devices=10 metadata=1.2 spares=1 name=Craggenmore:data UUID=37eea980:24df7b7a:f11a1226:afaf53ae devices=/dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sde,/dev/sdf,/dev/sdg,/dev/sdh,/dev/sdi,/dev/sdj,/dev/sdk,/dev/sdl,/dev/sdd Please let me know if there is anything else you think might be useful in troubleshooting this... I just can't seem to figure out how to change the boot process so that mdadm waits until the drives are ready to build the array. Everything works just fine if the drives are given enough time to come online. edit: changed title to properly reflect situation

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• Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012.  This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies.  Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold.  I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat.  Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos.  The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device.  At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms.  The actually made sense. Then things got strange.  Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage.  Usually this type of information is left to the product leads.  He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb.  Then he got to the meat of the presentation.  We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space.  In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN.  He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features.  For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming.  In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them.  Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox.  These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform.  He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors.  His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform.  This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team.  This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast.  He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist.  While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented.  These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development   The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”.  He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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• Sunshine after the iCloud release?

  - by Laila

  "Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators.  It is wonderful what a rename can do.  Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and  iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere.  I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe.  It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as  June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly  a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn.  On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

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• Stir Trek 2: Iron Man Edition

  Next month (7 May 2010) Ill be presenting at the second annual Stir Trek event in Columbus, Ohio. Stir Trek (so named because last year its themes mixed MIX and the opening of the Star Trek movie) is a very cool local event.  Its a lot of fun to present at and to attend, because of its unique venue: a movie theater.  And whats more, the cost of admission includes a private showing of a new movie (this year: Iron Man 2).  The sessions cover a variety of topics (not just Microsoft), similar to CodeMash.  The event recently sold out, so Im not telling you all of this so that you can go and sign up (though I believe you can get on the waitlist still).  Rather, this is pretty much just an excuse for me to talk about my session as a way to organize my thoughts. Im actually speaking on the same topic as I did last year, but the key difference is that last year the subject of my session was nowhere close to being released, and this year, its RTM (as of last week).  Thats right, the topic is Whats New in ASP.NET 4 how did you guess? Whats New in ASP.NET 4 So, just what *is* new in ASP.NET 4?  Hasnt Microsoft been spending all of their time on Silverlight and MVC the last few years?  Well, actually, no.  There are some pretty cool things that are now available out of the box in ASP.NET 4.  Theres a nice summary of the new features on MSDN.  Here is my super-brief summary: Extensible Output Caching use providers like distributed cache or file system cache Preload Web Applications IIS 7.5 only; avoid the startup tax for your site by preloading it. Permanent (301) Redirects are finally supported by the framework in one line of code, not two. Session State Compression Can speed up session access in a web farm environment.  Test it to see. Web Forms Features several of which mirror ASP.NET MVC advantages (viewstate, control ids) Set Meta Keywords and Description easily Granular and inheritable control over ViewState Support for more recent browsers and devices Routing (introduced in 3.5 SP1) some new features and zero web.config changes required Client ID control makes client manipulation of DOM elements much simpler. Row Selection in Data Controls fixed (id based, not row index based) FormView and ListView enhancements (less markup, more CSS compliant) New QueryExtender control makes filtering data from other Data Source Controls easy More CSS and Accessibility support Reduction of Tables and more control over output for other template controls Dynamic Data enhancements More control templates Support for inheritance in the Data Model New Attributes ASP.NET Chart Control (learn more) Lots of IDE enhancements Web Deploy tool My session will cover many but not all of these features.  Theres only an hour (3pm-4pm), and its right before the prize giveaway and movie showing, so Ill be moving quickly and most likely answering questions off-line via email after the talk. Hope to see you there! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Phil Factor

  Around twenty-five years ago, I was trying to solve the problem of recruiting suitable developers for a large business. I visited the local University (it was a Technical College then). My mission was to remind them that we were a large, local employer of technical people and to suggest that, as they were in the business of educating young people for a career in IT, we should work together. I anticipated a harmonious chat where we could suggest to them the idea of mentioning our name to some of their graduates. It didn’t go well. The academic staff displayed a degree of revulsion towards the whole topic of IT in the world of commerce that surprised me; tweed met charcoal-grey, trainers met black shoes. However, their antipathy to commerce was something we could have worked around, since few of their graduates were destined for a career as university lecturers. They asked me what sort of language skills we needed. I tried ducking the invidious task of naming computer languages, since I wanted recruits who were quick to adapt and learn, with a broad understanding of IT, including development methodologies, technologies, and data. However, they pressed the point and I ended up saying that we needed good working knowledge of C and BASIC, though FORTRAN and COBOL were, at the time, still useful. There was a ghastly silence. It was as if I’d recommended the beliefs and practices of the Bogomils of Bulgaria to a gathering of Cardinals. They stared at me severely, like owls, until the head of department broke the silence, informing me in clipped tones that they taught only Modula 2. Now, I wouldn’t blame you if at this point you hurriedly had to look up ‘Modula 2′ on Wikipedia. Based largely on Pascal, it was a specialist language for embedded systems, but I’ve never ever come across it in a commercial business application. Nevertheless, it was an excellent teaching language since it taught modules, scope control, multiprogramming and the advantages of encapsulating a set of related subprograms and data structures. As long as the course also taught how to transfer these skills to other, more useful languages, it was not necessarily a problem. I said as much, but they gleefully retorted that the biggest local employer, a defense contractor specializing in Radar and military technology, used nothing but Modula 2. “Why teach any other programming language when they will be using Modula 2 for all their working lives?” said a complacent lecturer. On hearing this, I made my excuses and left. There could be no meeting of minds. They were providing training in a specific computer language, not an education in IT. Twenty years later, I once more worked nearby and regularly passed the long-deserted ‘brownfield’ site of the erstwhile largest local employer; the end of the cold war had led to lean times for defense contractors. A digger was about to clear the rubble of the long demolished factory along with the accompanying growth of buddleia and thistles, in order to lay the infrastructure for ‘affordable housing’. Modula 2 was a distant memory. Either those employees had short working lives or they’d retrained in other languages. The University, by contrast, was thriving, but I wondered if their erstwhile graduates had ever cursed the narrow specialization of their training in IT, as they struggled with the unexpected variety of their subsequent careers.

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• PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Working and Studying in Oracle, how I balance my time....

  - by anca.rosu

  Hi, my name is Laura. I am working as an Intern within Executive Administration at Oracle Denmark, whilst studying Information Management at Copenhagen Business school. I have recently handeding a paper on Information Systems which gave me exposure to Oracle. Once completing this paper I came across a job posting on my University’s intranet site and I applied directly online. When I submitted my application for the job offer, I wondered about what language I should use for the application form, as the job posting was in Danish, but the contact person and number looked Irish. I therefore chose English. Later that same day, Fiona, one of Oracle’s Graduates Recruitment Consultants based in Ireland, contacted me. This shows how global Oracle truly is. I went for my face-to-face interview in Oracle Denmark with Charlotte, one of the team managers. I spent 5 minutes waiting in the lobby, just looking around, thinking to myself, I really want to work here. The atmosphere seemed so pleasant with a relaxed approach between colleagues, employees and guests. The interview took about an hour, but we touched on a lot of different subjects. The profile I got of Oraclewas that this is a place where you are encouraged to think for yourself, and you are given the freedom to use your ideas. Later that evening, Fiona called and offered me the job. I was very happy. At Oracle Denmark we have 4 different zones: a Quiet Zone, a Project Zone, a Dialogue Zone and a Call Zone. Everyday when you arrive you consider what will be the most productive for the day’s task, and you take your toolbox and go find a desk in the zone you have decided on. It is therefore very unusual to be next to the same person two days in a row. At Oracle, people are located all over the world, and everybody has team members, colleagues or leaders in other countries, or even other time zones. Initially,I was worried about how I would adapt to this approach but I soon realized I had nothing to worry about and now I appreciate working this way. My colleagues have been very supportive and they have openly welcomed me into my new role. I typically work two days a week and have three days at University. During exam periods, I have the flexibility to work less hours and focus on the exams, in return for putting in more hours at work when needed. The first time I had to ask for time off before handing in a paper, my boss looked at me and said, ”Of course! Your education is the most important!” I hope that by sharing my experiences with you, I can inspire or encourage you to consider Oracle as a potential employer, where you can grow both professionally and personally. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com Technorati Tags: Intern,Oracle Denmark,Information Systems,Business school,Copenhagen,Graduates Recruitment,Ireland,Quiet Zone,Project Zone,Dialogue Zone,Call Zone,University,flexibility

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• Fun with Python

  - by dotneteer

  I am taking a class on Coursera recently. My formal education is in physics. Although I have been working as a developer for over 18 years and have learnt a lot of programming on the job, I still would like to gain some systematic knowledge in computer science. Coursera courses taught by Standard professors provided me a wonderful chance. The three languages recommended for assignments are Java, C and Python. I am fluent in Java and have done some projects using C++/MFC/ATL in the past, but I would like to try something different this time. I first started with pure C. Soon I discover that I have to write a lot of code outside the question that I try to solve because the very limited C standard library. For example, to read a list of values from a file, I have to read characters by characters until I hit a delimiter. If I need a list that can grow, I have to create a data structure myself, something that I have taking for granted in .Net or Java. Out of frustration, I switched to Python. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Python is very easy to learn. The tutorial on the official Python site has the exactly the right pace for me, someone with experience in another programming. After a couple of hours on the tutorial and a few more minutes of toying with IDEL, I was in business. I like the “battery supplied” philosophy that gives everything that I need out of box. For someone from C# or Java background, curly braces are replaced by colon(:) and tab spaces. Although I tend to miss colon from time to time, I found that the idea of tab space is actually very nice once I get use to them. I also like to feature of multiple assignment and multiple return parameters. When I need to return a by-product, I just add it to the list of returns. When would use Python? I would use Python if I need to computer anything quick. The language is very easy to use. Python has a good collection of libraries (packages). The REPL of the interpreter allows me test ideas quickly before committing them into script. Lots of computer science work have been ported from Lisp to Python. Some universities are even teaching SICP in Python. When wouldn’t I use Python? I mostly would not use it in a managed environment, such as Ironpython or Jython. Both .Net and Java already have a rich library so one has to make a choice which library to use. If we use the managed runtime library, the code will tie to the particular runtime and thus not portable. If we use the Python library, then we will face the relatively long start-up time. For this reason, I would not recommend to use Ironpython for WP7 development. The only situation that I see merit with managed Python is in a server application where I can preload Python so that the start-up time is not a concern. Using Python as a managed glue language is an over-kill most of the time. A managed Scheme could be a better glue language as it is small enough to start-up very fast.

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• Custom Templates: Using user exits

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the features of Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 is the ability to use templates and user exits to extend the base configuration files. The configuration files used by the product are based upon a set of templates shipped with the product. When the configureEnv utility asks for configuration settings they are stored in a configuration file ENVIRON.INI which outlines the environment settings. These settings are then used by the initialSetup utility to populate the various configuration files used by the product using templates located in the templates directory of the installation. Now, whilst the majority of the installations at any site are non-production and the templates provided are generally adequate for that need, there are circumstances where extension of templates are needed to take advantage of more advanced facilities (such as advanced security and environment settings). The issue then becomes that if you alter the configuration files manually (directly or indirectly) then you may lose all your custom settings the next time you run initialSetup. To counter this we allow customers to either override templates with their own template or we now provide user exits in the templates to add fragments of configuration unique to that part of the configuration file. The latter means that the base template is still used but additions are included to provide the extensions. The provision of custom templates is supported but as soon as you use a custom template you are then responsible for reflecting any changes we put in the base template over time. Not a big task but annoying if you have to do it for multiple copies of the product. I prefer to use user exits as they seem to represent the least effort solution. The way to find the user exits available is to either read the Server Administration Guide that comes with your product or look at individual templates and look for the lines: #ouaf_user_exit <user exit name> Where <user exit name> is the name of the user exit. User exits are not always present but are in places that we feel are the most likely to be changed. If a user exit does not exist the you can always use a custom template instead. Now lets show an example. By default, the product generates a config.xml file to be used with Oracle WebLogic. This configuration file has the basic setting contained in it to manage the product. If you want to take advantage of the Oracle WebLogic advanced settings, you can use the console to make those changes and it will be reflected in the config.xml automatically. To retain those changes across invocations of initialSetup, you need to alter the template that generates the config.xml or use user exits. The technique is this. Make the change in the console and when you save the change, WebLogic will reflect it in the config.xml for you. Compare the old version and new version of the config.xml and determine what to add and then find the user exit to put it in by examining the base template. For example, by default, the console is not automatically deployed (it is deployed on demand) in the base config.xml. To make the console deploy, you can add the following line to the templates/CM_config.xml.win.exit_3.include file (for windows) or templates/CM_config.xml.exit_3.include file (for linux/unix): <internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled>false</internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled> Now run initialSetup to reflect the change and if you check the splapp/config/config.xml file you will see the change applied for you. Now how did I know which include file? I check the template for config.xml and found there was an user exit at the right place. I prefixed my include filename with "CM_" to denote it as a custom user exit. This will tell the upgrade tools to leave that file alone whenever you decide to upgrade (or even apply fixes). User exits can be powerful and allow customizations to be added for advanced configuration. You will see products using Oracle Utilities Application Framework use this exits themselves (usually prefixed with the product code). You are also taking advantage of them.

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