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  • Fully FOSS EMail solution

    - by Ravi
    I am looking at various FOSS options to build a robust EMail solution for a government funded university. Commercial options are to be chosen only in the worst case scenario. Here are the requirements: Approx 1000-1500 users - Postfix or Exim? (Sendmail is out;-)) Mailing lists for different groups/Need web based archive - Mailman? Sympa? Centralised identity store - OpenLDAP? Fedora 389DS? Secure IMAP only - no POP3 required - Courier? Dovecot? Cyrus?? Anti Spam - SpamAssasin? what else? Calendaring - ?? webmail - good to have, not mandatory - needs to be very secure...so squirrelmail is out;-)? Other questions: What mailbox storage format to use? where to store? database/file system? Simple and effective HA options? Is there a web proxy equivalent to squid in the mail server world? software load balancers?CARP? Monitoring and alert? Backup? The govt wants to stimulate the local economy by buying hardware locally from whitebox vendors. Also local consultants and university students will do the integration. We looked at out-of-the-box integrated solutions like Axigen, Zimbra and GMail but each was ruled out in favour of a DIY approach in the hopes of full control over the data and avoiding vendor lockin - which i though was a smart thing to do. I wish more provincial governments in the developing world think of these sort of initiatives As for OS - Debian, FreeBSD would be first preference. Commercial OS's need not apply. CentOS as second tier option...

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  • How to test server throughput

    - by embwbam
    I've always used apache benchmark to try to get a rough idea of how many requests/second my server can handle. I read that it was good, and it seemed to work well. Enter node.js, which is fully event-based, so it never blocks. If I run apache benchmark on a simple hello world server it can handle 2500 requests per second or so. However, if I put a timeout in the hello world function, so that it responds after 2 seconds, apache benchmark reports a dramatically reduced throughput: about 50/s. I'm running 100 concurrent connections with ab. If I increase the concurrency, it goes up. This makes sense, because apache benchmark is basically sending out requests in batches of 100, which come back every 2 seconds. 100 requests / 2 seconds = 50 requests / second If I increase the concurrency to about 400 or 500, it starts to crash. I don't think I've hit node.js's limit, I think I'm hitting a wall in my operating system on the number of open file descriptors or sockets or something. Any way I can get a good guess about how many requests my server can handle? I want to make sure the test computer isn't the one causing the problem.

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  • What's the piece of hardware listening on Facebook's or Wikipedia's IP address?

    - by Igor Ostrovsky
    I am trying to understand how massive sites like Facebook or Wikipedia work, for my intellectual curiosity. I read about various techniques for building scalable sites, but I am still puzzled about one particular detail. The part that confuses me is that ultimately, the DNS will map the entire domain to a single IP address, or a handful of IP addresses in the case of round-robin DNS. For example, wikipedia.org has only one type-A DNS record. So, people from all over the world visiting Wikipedia have to send a request to the one IP address specified in DNS. What is the piece of hardware that listens on the IP address for a massive site, and how can it possibly handle all the load coming from the requests for users all over the world? Edit 1: Thanks for all the responses! Anycast seems like a feasible answer... Does anyone know of a way to check whether a particular IP address is anycast-routed, so that I could verify that this really is the trick used in practice by large sites? Edit 2: After more reading on the topic, it appears that anycast is not typically used for dynamic web content. Anycast is usually used for UDP (e.g., DNS lookups), or sometimes for static content. One interesting thing to note is that Facebook uses profile.ak.fbcdn.net to host static content like style sheets and javascript libraries. Each time I ping this name, I get a response from a different IP address. However, I can't tell whether this is anycast in action, or a completely different technique. Back to my original question: as far as I can tell, even a large site will have a single expensive piece of load-balancing hardware listening on its handful of public IP addresses.

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  • WWNs,WWPNs and Fibre Channel addresses

    - by user238230
    Lots of contradictory on these subjects and I don't know why. My first question is about the 64 bit WWN. One reference claims the terms WWN and WWPN are synonymous. An online source seems to refute this. They say: A WWPN (world wide port name) is the unique identifier for a fibre channel port where a WWN (world wide name) the unique identifier for the node itself. A good example is a dual port HBA. There will be two WWPN's (one for each port) and only a single WWN for the card itself. Question #1: Which is correct? I’m almost positive I read that every “Port” has a WWN. My next question is about the 24 bit FC address that is dynamically allocated to a port when it is introduced to the switch. The Domain ID field is defined as: "a unique number provided to each switch in the fabric." Question #2: Do Domain IDs only apply to switch ports? For example what would the Domain ID be for a HBA? None? The same as the switch port it is connected to? Question #3: My last question is about the Name Server of a switch. A book example shows the routing of a message through the switch. It uses the WWNs of the source and destination ports to route the message. I am assuming that the Name Server must associate the WWN and the FC address in some way in order to route the message, correct?

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  • Backup script to FTP with timed subfolders

    - by Frederik Nielsen
    I want to make a backup script, that makes a .tar.gz of a folder I define, say fx /root/tekkit/world This .tar.gz file should then be uploaded to a FTP server, named by the time it was uploaded, for example: 07-10-2012-13-00.tar.gz How should such backup script be written? I already figured out the .tar.gz part - just need the naming and the uploading to FTP. I know that FTP is not the most secure way to do it, but as it is non-sensitive data, and FTP is the only option I have, it will do. Edit: I ended up with this script: #!/bin/bash # have some path predefined for backup unless one is provided as first argument BACKUP_DIR="/root/tekkit/world/" TMP_DIR="/tmp/tekkitbackup/" FINISH_DIR="/tmp/tekkitfinished/" # construct name for our archive TIME=$(date +%d-%m-%Y-%H-%M) if [ $1 ]; then BACKUP_DIR="$1" fi echo "Backing up dir ... $BACKUP_DIR" mkdir $TMP_DIR cp -R $BACKUP_DIR $TMP_DIR cd $FINISH_DIR tar czvfp tekkit-$TIME.tar.gz -C $TMP_DIR . # create upload script for lftp cat <<EOF> lftp.upload.script open server user user password lcd $FINISH_DIR mput tekkit-$TIME.tar.gz exit EOF # start backup using lftp and script we created; if all went well print simple message and clean up lftp -f lftp.upload.script && ( echo Upload successfull ; rm lftp.upload.script )

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  • After connecting wlan0 to bridge interface (and then removing it), can't connect to AP

    - by gmonk
    I'm on a laptop running Debian Jessie with kernel 3.13-1-amd64; lspci shows that my wireless NIC + driver is 04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3160 (rev 83) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi This has been working without any problems, until I tried creating a bridge for lxc containers to use. I did the same thing as this person here: How-to set up a network bridge on a laptop for LXC use? -- and ended up having the same problem as this poster did, so I decided to "undo" my actions. This hasn't been successful. Actions taken so far: To configure the bridge: #> ip link add type veth #> iw dev wlan0 set 4addr on #> ifconfig veth0 up #> brctl addbr br0 #> brctl addif br0 wlan0 #> brctl addif br0 veth0 #> ifconfig br0 192.168.0.4/24 #> ifconfig wlan0 0.0.0.0 To "deconfigure": #> brctl delif br0 wlan0 #> brctl delif br0 veth0 #> iw dev wlan0 set 4addr off #> ifconfig veth0 down #> ifconfig wlan0 down #> ifconfig br0 down #> brctl delbr br0 Now, dmesg and /var/log/syslog show repeated attempts at connecting to the AP that was working before, which fail after authentication: May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.757172] wlan0: authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.759036] wlan0: send auth to 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:01 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating May 27 09:16:01 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: Trying to associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.762615] wlan0: authenticated May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.762753] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.762755] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.765080] wlan0: associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:01 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> associating May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.767474] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (capab=0x411 status=12 aid=0) May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.767476] wlan0: 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 denied association (code=12) May 27 09:16:01 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-ASSOC-REJECT bssid=00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 status_code=12 May 27 09:16:01 myhostname kernel: [11350.788475] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 by local choice (reason=3) May 27 09:16:01 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associating -> disconnected May 27 09:16:01 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning May 27 09:16:02 myhostname dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14 May 27 09:16:04 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: SME: Trying to authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.559579] wlan0: authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.561458] wlan0: send auth to 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:04 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: Trying to associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:04 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> associating May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.563445] wlan0: authenticated May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.563631] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.563633] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.565727] wlan0: associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:04 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: Associated with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.568091] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=9) May 27 09:16:04 myhostname kernel: [11354.569030] wlan0: associated May 27 09:16:04 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associating -> associated May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.978204] wlan0: deauthenticated from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (Reason: 15) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 reason=15 May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.992729] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995004] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995005] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995006] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995007] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995007] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995008] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995009] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname kernel: [11354.995010] cfg80211: (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz), (N/A, 0 mBm) May 27 09:16:05 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associated -> disconnected May 27 09:16:05 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning May 27 09:16:09 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: SME: Trying to authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.763968] wlan0: authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.765796] wlan0: send auth to 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating May 27 09:16:09 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: Trying to associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.769957] wlan0: authenticated May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.770102] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.770104] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.770846] wlan0: associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.773358] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (capab=0x411 status=12 aid=0) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.773361] wlan0: 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 denied association (code=12) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> associating May 27 09:16:09 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-ASSOC-REJECT bssid=00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 status_code=12 May 27 09:16:09 myhostname kernel: [11358.802187] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 by local choice (reason=3) May 27 09:16:09 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associating -> disconnected May 27 09:16:09 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning May 27 09:16:12 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: SME: Trying to authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.573442] wlan0: authenticate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.575270] wlan0: send auth to 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:12 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating May 27 09:16:12 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: Trying to associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (SSID='myaccesspoint' freq=2437 MHz) May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.580334] wlan0: authenticated May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.580503] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.580516] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.583508] wlan0: associate with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (try 1/3) May 27 09:16:12 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> associating May 27 09:16:12 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: Associated with 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.585908] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=9) May 27 09:16:12 myhostname kernel: [11362.586781] wlan0: associated May 27 09:16:12 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associating -> associated May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.947693] wlan0: deauthenticated from 00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 (Reason: 15) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname wpa_supplicant[8946]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:18:f8:54:a3:d6 reason=15 May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.973461] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975673] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975675] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975676] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975677] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975678] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975678] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975679] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname kernel: [11362.975679] cfg80211: (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz), (N/A, 0 mBm) May 27 09:16:13 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associated -> disconnected May 27 09:16:13 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <warn> Activation (wlan0/wireless): association took too long. May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: config -> failed (reason 'no-secrets') [50 120 7] May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> Marking connection 'Auto myaccesspoint' invalid. May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <warn> Activation (wlan0) failed for connection 'Auto myaccesspoint' May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none') [120 30 0] May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): deactivating device (reason 'none') [0] May 27 09:16:14 myhostname NetworkManager[13992]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> disconnected The things that jump out at me are "deauthenticating ... by local choice( reason=3)" and the lines that contain "(reason=15)". I've tried various fixes: iwconfig wlan0 power off killing wpa_supplicant connecting with iwconfig + dhclient instead of gnome's network -manager explicitly configuring wlan0 in /etc/network/interfaces creating a /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file ...but nothing seems to work. I'm not sure what I did wrong, or what step I've skipped in trying to get wlan0 back as a non-bridged device -- I removed it from the bridge and then deleted the bridge itself. Any ideas?

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  • Assigning IPs to OpenVZ containers

    - by Vojtech
    I have recently bought myself a physical server and I am trying to create containers which would have their IPs. The physical machine has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. I have accessible another IPv4 and some other IPv6 addresses which I would like to assign to the container. I managed to assign the addresses as follows: # vzctl set 101 --ipadd 144.76.195.252 --save I can ping to the machine from the physical machine, but not from the outside world. This also applies to the IPv6 I assigned as well. This is ifconfig of the physical machine: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr d4:3d:7e:ec:e0:04 inet addr:144.76.195.232 Bcast:144.76.195.255 Mask:255.255.255.224 inet6 addr: 2a01:4f8:200:71e7::2/64 Scope:Global inet6 addr: fe80::d63d:7eff:feec:e004/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:217895 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:16779 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:322481419 (307.5 MiB) TX bytes:1672628 (1.5 MiB) venet0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet6 addr: fe80::1/128 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:3 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:1108 (1.0 KiB) TX bytes:1108 (1.0 KiB) This is ifconfig of the OpenVZ container: # ifconfig venet0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:127.0.0.2 P-t-P:127.0.0.2 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.255.255 inet6 addr: 2a01:4f8:200:71e7::3/64 Scope:Global UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:1108 (1.0 KiB) TX bytes:1108 (1.0 KiB) venet0:0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:144.76.195.252 P-t-P:144.76.195.252 Bcast:144.76.195.252 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1 What do I need to do to have the container accessible from the outside world? What could I have forgotten? Thanks.

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  • Is there any reason this cronjob would fail in cron, but not on the command line?

    - by Treffynnon
    I have written a little one liner that will email me when a list of files changes - I used sha512 to generate a list of hashes and then periodically check that those hashes still match. */5 * * * * /usr/bin/sha512sum --status -c /sha512.sumlist && echo "Success" > /dev/null || echo "Check robots.txt and index.html in /var/www as staging sites are now potentially exposed to the world and the damned googlebot" | /usr/bin/mail -s "Default staging server files have changed" [email protected] It works fine on the command line with: /usr/bin/sha512sum --status -c /sha512.sumlist && echo "Success" > /dev/null || echo "Check robots.txt and index.html in /var/www as staging sites are now potentially exposed to the world and the damned googlebot" | /usr/bin/mail -s "Default staging server files have changed" [email protected] As soon as I run it as a cronjob though it emails every time it runs with the failure message instead of only when the sha512sum check should fail. Is there something silly I have missed in a rush? I forgot to mention that I am running an Ubuntu machine.

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  • securing communication between 2 Linux servers on local network for ports only they need access to

    - by gkdsp
    I have two Linux servers connected to each other via a cross-connect cable, forming a local network. One of the servers presents a DMZ for the other server (e.g. database server) that must be very secure. I'm restricting this question to communication between the two servers for ports that only need to be available to these servers (and no one else). Thus, communication between the two servers can be established by: (1) opening the required port(s) on both servers, and authenticating according to the applications' rules. (2) disabling IP Tables associated with the NIC cards the cross-connect cable is attached to (on both servers). Which method is more secure? In the first case, the needed ports are open to the external world, but protected by user name and password. In the second case, none of the needed ports are open to the outside world, but since the IP Tables are disabled for the NIC cards associated with the cross-connect cables, essentially all of the ports may be considered to be "open" between the two servers (and so if the server creating the DMZ is compromized, the hacker on the DMZ server could view all ports open using the cross-connect cable). Any conventional wisdom how to make the communication secure between two servers for ports only these servers need access to?

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  • 26 Days: Countdown to Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Michael Snow
    Welcome to our countdown to Oracle OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner. In less than 26 days, San Francisco will be invaded by an expected 50,000 people from all over the world. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, we’ve all been working to help make the experience a great one for all our WebCenter customers. For a sneak peak  – we’ll be spending this week giving you a teaser of what to look forward to if you are joining us in San Francisco from September 30th through October 4th. We have Oracle WebCenter sessions covering all topics imaginable. Take a look and use the tools we provide to build out your schedule in advance and reserve your seats in your favorite sessions.  That gives you plenty of time to plan for your week with us in San Francisco. If unfortunately, your boss denied your request to attend - there are still some ways that you can join in the experience virtually On-Demand. This year - we are expanding even more up North of Market Street and will be taking over Union Square as well. Check out this map of San Francisco to get a sense of how much of a footprint Oracle OpenWorld has grown to this year. With so much to see and so many sessions to learn from - its no wonder that people get excited. Add to that a good mix of fun and all of the possible WebCenter sessions you could attend - you won't want to sleep at all to take full advantage of such an opportunity. We'll also have our annual WebCenter Customer Appreciation reception - stay tuned this week for some more info on registration to make sure you'll be able to join us. If you've been following the America's Cup at all and believe in EXTREME PERFORMANCE you'll definitely want to take a look at this video from last year's OpenWorld Keynote. 12.00 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-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;} Important OpenWorld Links:  Attendee / Presenters Toolkit Oracle Schedule Builder WebCenter Sessions (listed in the catalog under Fusion Middleware as "Portals, Sites, Content, and Collaboration" ) Oracle Music Festival - AMAZING Line up!!  Oracle Customer Appreciation Night -LOOK HERE!! Oracle OpenWorld LIVE On-Demand Here are all the WebCenter sessions broken down by day for your viewing pleasure. Monday, October 1st CON8885 - Simplify CRM Engagement with Contextual Collaboration Are your sales teams disconnected and disengaged? Do you want a tool for easily connecting expertise across your organization and providing visibility into the complete sales process? Do you want a way to enhance and retain organization knowledge? Oracle Social Network is the answer. Attend this session to learn how to make CRM easy, effective, and efficient for use across virtual sales teams. Also learn how Oracle Social Network can drive sales force collaboration with natural conversations throughout the sales cycle, promote sales team productivity through purposeful social networking without the noise, and build cross-team knowledge by integrating conversations with CRM and other business applications. CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Oracle WebCenter is a user engagement platform for social business, connecting people and information. Attend this session to learn about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage customers, empower employees, and enable partners. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—Web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! ¶ HOL10208 - Add Social Capabilities to Your Enterprise Applications Oracle Social Network enables you to add real-time collaboration capabilities into your enterprise applications, so that conversations can happen directly within your business systems. In this hands-on lab, you will try out the Oracle Social Network product to collaborate with other attendees, using real-time conversations with document sharing capabilities. Next you will embed social capabilities into a sample Web-based enterprise application, using embedded UI components. Experts will also write simple REST-based integrations, using the Oracle Social Network API to programmatically create social interactions. ¶ CON8893 - Improve Employee Productivity with Intuitive and Social Work Environments Social technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. Forward-thinking organizations today need technologies and infrastructures to help them advance to the next level and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver a user experience that simplifies business processes and enterprise application engagement. Attend this session to hear from an innovative Oracle Social Network customer and learn how you can improve productivity with intuitive and social work environments and empower your employees with innovative social tools to enable contextual access to content and dynamic personalization of solutions. ¶ CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Oracle WebCenter provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. ¶ CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. ¶ CON8896 - Living with SharePoint SharePoint is a popular platform, but it’s not always the best fit for Oracle customers. In this session, you’ll discover the technical and nontechnical limitations and pitfalls of SharePoint and learn about Oracle alternatives for collaboration, portals, enterprise and Web content management, social computing, and application integration. The presentation shows you how to integrate with SharePoint when business or IT requirements dictate and covers cloud-based (Office 365) and on-premises versions of SharePoint. Presented by a former Microsoft director of SharePoint product management and backed by independent customer research, this session will prepare you to answer the question “Why don’t we just use SharePoint for that?’ the next time it comes up in your organization. ¶ CON7843 - Content-Enabling Enterprise Processes with Oracle WebCenter Organizations today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Many business processes are content-intensive and unstructured, requiring ad hoc collaboration, and distributed in nature, requiring many approvals and generating huge volumes of paper. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer content-enable its enterprise with Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate them with Oracle Applications. ¶ CON6114 - Tape Robotics’ Newest Superhero: Now Fueled by Oracle Software For small, midsize, and rapidly growing businesses that want the most energy-efficient, scalable storage infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing data demands, Oracle’s most recent addition to its award-winning tape portfolio leverages several pieces of Oracle software. With Oracle Linux, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Fusion Middleware tools, the library achieves a higher level of usability than previous products while offering customers a familiar interface for management, plus ease of use. This session examines the competitive advantages of the tape library and how Oracle software raises customer satisfaction. Learn how the combination of Oracle engineered systems, Oracle Secure Backup, and Oracle’s StorageTek tape libraries provide end-to-end coverage of your data. ¶ CON9437 - Mobile Access Management With more than five billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session focuses on how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON7815 - Customer Experience Online in Cloud: Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle ATG Apps, Oracle Exalogic Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle’s ATG product line together can provide a compelling marketing and e-commerce experience. When you couple them with the extreme performance of Oracle Exalogic, you’ll see unmatched scalability that provides you with a true cloud-based solution. In this session, you’ll learn how running Oracle WebCenter Sites and ATG applications on Oracle Exalogic delivers both a private and a public cloud experience. Find out what it takes to get these systems working together and delivering engaging Web experiences. Even if you aren’t considering Oracle Exalogic today, the rich Web experience of Oracle WebCenter, paired with the depth of the ATG product line, can provide your business full support, from merchandising through sale completion. ¶ CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from customers how Oracle WebCenter Portal extends the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. ¶ CON8880 - The Connected Customer Experience Begins with the Online Channel There’s a lot of talk these days about how to connect the customer journey across various touchpoints—from Websites and e-commerce to call centers and in-store—to provide experiences that are more relevant and engaging and ultimately gain competitive edge. Doing it all at once isn’t a realistic objective, so where do you start? Come to this session, and hear about three steps you can take that can help you begin your journey toward delivering the connected customer experience. You’ll hear how Oracle now has an integrated digital marketing platform for your corporate Website, your e-commerce site, your self-service portal, and your marketing and loyalty campaigns, and you’ll learn what you can do today to begin executing on your customer experience initiatives. ¶ GEN11451 - General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud With the prevalence of smart mobile devices, companies are facing an increased demand to provide access to data and applications from new channels. However, developing applications for mobile devices poses some unique challenges. Come to this session to learn how Oracle addresses these challenges, offering a simpler way to develop and deploy cross-device mobile applications. See how Oracle Cloud enables you to access applications, data, and services from mobile channels in an easier way.  CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses.  --- Tuesday, October 2nd HOL10194 - Enterprise Content Management Simplified: Oracle WebCenter Content’s Next-Generation UI Regardless of the nature of your business, unstructured content underpins many of its daily functions. Whether you are working with traditional presentations, spreadsheets, or text documents—or even with digital assets such as images and multimedia files—your content needs to be accessible and manageable in convenient and intuitive ways to make working with the content easier. Additionally, you need the ability to easily share documents with coworkers to facilitate a collaborative working environment. Come to this session to see how Oracle WebCenter Content’s next-generation user interface helps modern knowledge workers easily manage personal and enterprise documents in a collaborative environment.¶ CON8877 - Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables users to have information available at their fingertips, enabling them to take action the moment they make a decision, interact in the moment of convenience, and take advantage of new service offerings in their preferred channels. All your employees have your mobile applications in their pocket; now what are you going to do? It is a critical step for companies to think through what their employees, customers, and partners really need on their devices. Attend this session to see how Oracle WebCenter enables you to better engage your customers, employees, and partners by providing a unified experience across multiple channels. ¶ CON9447 - Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users How do you grow your business by identifying, authenticating, authorizing, and federating users on the Web, leveraging social identity and the open source OAuth protocol? How do you scale your access management solution to support hundreds of millions of users? With social identity support out of the box, Oracle’s access management solution is also benchmarked for 250-million-user deployment according to real-world customer scenarios. In this session, you will learn about the social identity capability and the 250-million-user benchmark testing of Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager running on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON2906 - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining Oracle Fusion Middleware You chose Oracle Fusion Middleware products to help your organization deliver superior business results. Now learn how to take full advantage of your software with all the great tools, resources, and product updates you’re entitled to through Oracle Support. In this session, Oracle product experts provide proven best practices to help you work more efficiently, plan and prepare for upgrades and patching more effectively, and manage risk. Topics include configuration management tools, remote diagnostics, My Oracle Support Community, and My Oracle Support Lifecycle Advisors. New users and Oracle Fusion Middleware experts alike are guaranteed to leave with fresh ideas and practical, easy-to-implement next steps. ¶ CON8878 - Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how we build applications, automate processes, collaborate, and share and in how we secure our enterprise. Additionally, as you adopt cloud-based services in your organization, it’s likely that you will still have many critical on-premises applications running. With these mixed environments, multiple user interfaces, different security, and multiple datasources and content sources, how do you start evolving your strategy to account for these challenges? Oracle WebCenter offers a complete array of technologies enabling you to solve these challenges and prepare you for the cloud. Attend this session to learn how you can use Oracle WebCenter in the cloud as well as create on-premises and cloud application mash-ups. ¶ CON8901 - Optimize Enterprise Business Processes with Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BPM Do you have business processes that span multiple applications? Are you grappling with how to have visibility across these business processes; how to manage content that is associated with these processes; and, most importantly, how to model and optimize these business processes? Attend this session to hear how Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Process Management provide a unique set of integrated solutions to provide a composite application dashboard across these business processes and offer a solution for content-centric business processes. ¶ CON8883 - Deliver Engaging Interfaces to Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Critical business processes live within enterprise applications, and application users need to manage and execute these processes as effectively as possible. Oracle provides a comprehensive user engagement platform to increase user productivity and optimize overall processes within Oracle Applications—Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards product families—and third-party applications. Attend this session to learn how you can integrate these applications with Oracle WebCenter to deliver composite application dashboards to your end users—whether they are your customers, partners, or employees—for enhanced usability and Web 2.0–enabled enterprise portals.¶ Wednesday, October 3rd CON8895 - Future-Ready Intranets: How Aramark Re-engineered the Application Landscape There are essential techniques and technologies you can use to deliver employee portals that garner higher productivity, improve business efficiency, and increase user engagement. Attend this session to learn how you can leverage Oracle WebCenter Portal as a user engagement platform for bringing together business process management, enterprise content management, and business intelligence into a highly relevant and integrated experience. Hear how Aramark has leveraged Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to deliver a unified workspace providing simpler navigation and processing, consolidation of tools, easy access to information, integrated search, and single sign-on. ¶ CON8886 - Content Consolidation: Save Money, Increase Efficiency, and Eliminate Silos Organizations are looking for ways to save money and be more efficient. With content in many different places, it’s difficult to know where to look for a document and whether the document is the most current version. With Oracle WebCenter, content can be consolidated into one best-of-breed repository that is secure, scalable, and integrated with your business processes and applications. Users can find the content they need, where they need it, and ensure that it is the right content. This session covers content challenges that affect your business; content consolidation that can lead to savings in storage and administration costs and can lower risks; and how companies are realizing savings. ¶ CON8911 - Improve Online Experiences for Customers and Partners with Self-Service Portals Are you able to provide your customers and partners an easy-to-use online self-service experience? Are you processing high-volume transactions and struggling with call center bottlenecks or back-end systems that won’t integrate, causing order delays and customer frustration? Are you looking to target content such as product and service offerings to your end users? This session shares approaches to providing targeted delivery as well as strategies and best practices for transforming your business by providing an intuitive user experience for your customers and partners. ¶ CON6156 - Top 10 Ways to Integrate Oracle WebCenter Content This session covers 10 common ways to integrate Oracle WebCenter Content with other enterprise applications and middleware. It discusses out-of-the-box modules that provide expanded features in Oracle WebCenter Content—such as enterprise search, SOA, and BPEL—as well as developer tools you can use to create custom integrations. The presentation also gives guidance on which integration option may work best in your environment. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON7817 - Migration to Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g Customers today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. The accounts payable process—which is often distributed in nature, requires many approvals, and generates huge volumes of paper invoices—is automated by many customers. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer migrate its existing Oracle Imaging and Process Management Release 7.6 to the latest Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate it with Oracle’s JD Edwards family of products. ¶ CON8910 - How to Engage Customers Across Web, Mobile, and Social Channels Whether on desktops at the office, on tablets at home, or on mobile phones when on the go, today’s customers are always connected. To engage today’s customers, you need to make the online customer experience connected and consistent across a host of devices and multiple channels, including Web, mobile, and social networks. Managing this multichannel environment can result in lots of headaches without the right tools. Attend this session to learn how Oracle WebCenter Sites solves the challenge of multichannel customer engagement. ¶ HOL10206 - Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g: Transforming the Content Contributor Experience Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g makes it easy for marketers and business users to contribute to and manage Websites with the new visual, contextual, and intuitive Web authoring interface. In this hands-on lab, you will create and manage content for a sports-themed Website, using many of the new and enhanced features of the 11g release. ¶ CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion Social and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. ¶ CON9625 - Taking Control of Oracle WebCenter Security Organizations are increasingly looking to extend their Oracle WebCenter portal for social business, to serve external users and provide seamless access to the right information. In particular, many organizations are extending Oracle WebCenter in a business-to-business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. This session focuses on how customers are leveraging, securing, and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. You will learn best practices and hear real-world examples of how to provide flexible and granular access control for Oracle WebCenter deployments, using Oracle Platform Security Services and Oracle Access Management Suite product offerings. ¶ CON8891 - Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Oracle Social Network is an extensible social platform that enables contextual collaboration within enterprise applications and business processes, providing relevant data from across various enterprise systems in one place. Attend this session to see how an Oracle Social Network customer is integrating multiple applications—such as CRM, HCM, and business processes—into Oracle Social Network and Oracle WebCenter to enable individuals and teams to solve complex cross-organizational business problems more effectively by utilizing the social enterprise. ¶ Thursday, October 4th CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change What does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change our organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. It takes a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. ¶ CON6851 - Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to Create Vendor Portals Large manufacturers of grocery items routinely find themselves depending on the inventory management expertise of their wholesalers and distributors. Inventory costs can be managed more efficiently by the manufacturers if they have better insight into the inventory levels of items carried by their distributors. This creates a unique opportunity for distributors and wholesalers to leverage this knowledge into a revenue-generating subscription service. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle WebCenter Portal play a key part in enabling creation of business-managed business intelligence portals for vendors. This session discusses one customer that implemented this by leveraging Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. ¶ CON8879 - Provide a Personalized and Consistent Customer Experience in Your Websites and Portals Your customers engage with your company online in different ways throughout their journey—from prospecting by acquiring information on your corporate Website to transacting through self-service applications on your customer portal—and then the cycle begins again when they look for new products and services. Ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and personalized across online properties—from branding and content to interactions and transactions—can be a daunting task. Oracle WebCenter enables you to speak and interact with your customers with one voice across your Websites and portals by providing an integrated platform for delivery of self-service and engagement that unifies and personalizes the online experience. Learn more in this session. ¶ CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we’re not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. ¶ CON8908 - Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Oracle WebCenter Portal applications use task flows to display and integrate content stored in the Oracle WebCenter Content server. Among the most flexible task flows is Content Presenter, which renders various types of content on an Oracle WebCenter Portal page. Although Oracle WebCenter Portal comes with a set of predefined Content Presenter templates, developers can create their own templates for specific rendering needs. This session shows the lifecycle of developing Content Presenter task flows, including how to create, package, import, modify at runtime, and use such templates. In addition to simple examples with Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) UI elements to render the content, it shows how to use other UI technologies, CSS files, and JavaScript libraries. ¶ CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Every year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from online marketers how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. ¶ CON8892 - Oracle’s Journey to Social Business Social business is a revolution, one that is causing rapidly accelerating change in how companies and customers engage with one another and how employees work together. Oracle’s goal in becoming a social business is to create a socially connected organization in which working collaboratively across geographical locations, lines of business, and management chains is second nature, enabling innovative solutions to business challenges. We can achieve this by connecting the right people, finding the right content, communicating with the right people, collaborating at the right time, and building the right communities in the right context—all ready in the CLOUD. Attend this session to see how Oracle is transforming itself into a social business. ¶  ------------ If you've read all the way to the end here - we are REALLY looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

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  • NLP with greatly contrained input and abilities

    - by Mike F
    Hat in hand here. I'm a seasoned developer and I would be grateful for a bit of help. I don't have time to read or digest long intricate discussions on theoretical concepts around NLP (or go get my PHD). That said, I have read a few and it's a damn interesting field. The problem is I need real world solutions, for real world products, in real world time frames. The problem I'm having is right now I'm not sure what the right questions are to ask to get started implementing. I believe this is mostly related to vocabulary. I'll read somewhere, a blog post, a forum post, a whitepaper, and it says, I'm doing flooping with the blargy blarg method, and I go google flooping and blargy blarg, and I get references to more obscurity. It seemingly never ends. So, my question is multiphased. First, more generally, how do I become passingly educated on this quickly? Just in time educated. I only need to know what I need to know to take the next step. I've spent 20 years writing code. Explain quick. I'll get it. (I mean provide a reference to something that explains quickly of course). I'm happy to read the right book, but I don't want to read a book where I read the chapter introduction that explains what floopy floop is and then skip over the rest of the chapter with examples of floopy flooping (because now I get what it is). I also don't want to read a book that goes into too much detail with theoretical underpinnings or history. For example, the Jurafsky book seems like way more than I need: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131873210. But I will read it if this is the right book to read. (It's also dang expensive!) I need the root node of the expedited learning tree here, if you will. Point me in the right direction and I'll be quite grateful. I'm expecting quite a lot of firehose drinking - I just need the right firehose. Second, what I need to do is take a single sentence, with a very reduced vocabulary, and get a grammar tree (sorry if this is the wrong terminology) that I can do something with. I know I could easily write this command line input style in c in a more conventional manner, but I need it to be way better than that. But I don't need a chatterbot either. What I'm doing needs to live in a constrained environment. I can't use Python (unfortunately). I can't ship with gigabytes of corpuses. I need any libraries I use to be in c/c++. If I have to write this myself, I will. Hopefully, it will be achievable considering the reduced problem set. Maybe, probably, that's just naive. If so, let me know. :-) Thanks in advance - Mike

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  • WTSVirtualChannelRead Only reads the first letter of the string.

    - by Scott Chamberlain
    I am trying to write a hello world type program for using virtual channels in the windows terminal services client. public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } IntPtr mHandle = IntPtr.Zero; private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { mHandle = NativeMethods.WTSVirtualChannelOpen(IntPtr.Zero, -1, "TSCRED"); if (mHandle == IntPtr.Zero) { throw new Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error()); } } private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { uint bufferSize = 1024; StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder(); uint bytesRead; NativeMethods.WTSVirtualChannelRead(mHandle, 0, buffer, bufferSize, out bytesRead); if (bytesRead == 0) { MessageBox.Show("Got no Data"); } else { MessageBox.Show("Got data: " + buffer.ToString()); } } protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) { if (mHandle != System.IntPtr.Zero) { NativeMethods.WTSVirtualChannelClose(mHandle); } base.Dispose(disposing); } } internal static class NativeMethods { [DllImport("Wtsapi32.dll")] public static extern IntPtr WTSVirtualChannelOpen(IntPtr server, int sessionId, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)] string virtualName); //[DllImport("Wtsapi32.dll", SetLastError = true)] //public static extern bool WTSVirtualChannelRead(IntPtr channelHandle, long timeout, // byte[] buffer, int length, ref int bytesReaded); [DllImport("Wtsapi32.dll")] public static extern bool WTSVirtualChannelClose(IntPtr channelHandle); [DllImport("Wtsapi32.dll", EntryPoint = "WTSVirtualChannelRead")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool WTSVirtualChannelRead( [In()] System.IntPtr hChannelHandle , uint TimeOut , [Out()] [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)] System.Text.StringBuilder Buffer , uint BufferSize , [Out()] out uint pBytesRead); } I am sending the data from the MSTSC COM object and ActiveX controll. public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { rdp.Server = "schamberlainvm"; rdp.UserName = "TestAcct"; IMsTscNonScriptable secured = (IMsTscNonScriptable)rdp.GetOcx(); secured.ClearTextPassword = "asdf"; rdp.CreateVirtualChannels("TSCRED"); rdp.Connect(); } private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { rdp.SendOnVirtualChannel("TSCRED", "Hello World!"); } } //Designer code // // rdp // this.rdp.Enabled = true; this.rdp.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(12, 12); this.rdp.Name = "rdp"; this.rdp.OcxState = ((System.Windows.Forms.AxHost.State)(resources.GetObject("rdp.OcxState"))); this.rdp.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(1092, 580); this.rdp.TabIndex = 0; I am getting a execption every time NativeMethods.WTSVirtualChannelRead runs Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. EDIT -- mHandle has a non-zero value when the function runs. updated code to add that check. EDIT2 -- I used the P/Invoke Interop Assistant and generated a new sigiture [DllImport("Wtsapi32.dll", EntryPoint = "WTSVirtualChannelRead")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool WTSVirtualChannelRead( [In()] System.IntPtr hChannelHandle , uint TimeOut , [Out()] [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)] StringBuilder Buffer , uint BufferSize , [Out()] out uint pBytesRead); it now receives the text string (Yea!) but it only gets the first letter of my test string(Boo!). Any ideas on what is going wrong? EDIT 3 --- After the call that should of read the hello world; BytesRead = 24 Buffer.Length = 1; Buffer.Capacity = 16; Buffer.m_StringValue = "H";

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  • Search engine solution for Django that actually works?

    - by prometheus
    The story so far: Decided to go with Xapian as search backend because it has all search-engine features I was looking for, knows about Unicode, stemming, has few dependencies and requires no bloated app-server installation on top of it. Tried Django and Haystack (plus xapian-haystack, the backend glue code to tie Haystack to Xapian) because it was advertised on quite some blogs as "working". Did not work. Neither django-haystack nor the xapian-haystack project provide a version combination that actually works together. MASTER from both projects yields an error from Xapian, so it's not stable at all. Haystack 1.0.1 and xapian-haystack 1.0.x/1.1.0 are not API-compatible. Plus, in a minimally working installation of Haystack 1.0.1 and xapian-haystack MASTER, any complex query yields zero results due to errors in either django-haystack or xapian-haystack (I double-verified this), maybe because the unit-tests actually test very simple cases, and no edge-cases at all. Tried Djapian. The source-code is riddled with spelling errors (mind you, in variable names, not comments), documentation is also riddled with ambiguities and outdated information that will never lead to a working installation. Not surprisingly, users rarely ask for features but how to get it working in the first place. Next on the plate: exploring Solr (installing a Java environment plus Tomcat gives me headaches, the machine is RAM- and CPU-constrained), or Lucene (slightly less headaches, but still). Before I proceed spending more time with a solution that might or might not work as advertised, I'd like to know: Did anyone ever get an actual, real-world search solution working in Django? I'm serious. I find it really frustrating reading about "large problems mostly solved", and then realizing that you will never get a working installation from the source-code because, actually, all bloggers dealing with those "mostly solved problems" never went past basic installation and copy-pasting the official tutorials. So here are the requirements: must be able to search for 10-100 terms in one query must handle + (term must be present) and - (term must not be present), AND/OR must handle arbitrary grouping (i.e. parentheses around AND/OR) must allow for Django-ORM filtering before or after fulltext-search (i.e. pre-/post-processing of results with the full set of filters that Django knows about) alternatively, there must be a facility to bulk-fetch the result set and transform it into a QuerySet should be light on the machine, so preferably no humongous JVM and Java-based app-server installation Is there anything out there that does this? I'm not interested in anecdotal evidence, or references to some blog posts that claim it should be working. I'd like to hear from someone who actually has a fully-functional setup working in the real world, under real conditions, with real queries. EDIT: Let me repeat again that I'm not so much interested in anecdotal evidence that someone, somewhere has a somewhat running installation working with unspecified properties. I already went there, I read all the blog posts, mailing lists, I contacted the authors, but when it came to actual implementation of real-world scenarios, nothing ever worked as advertised. Also, and a user below brought that point up as well, considering the TCO of any project, I'm definitely not interested in hearing that someone, somewhere was able to pull it off once a vendor parachuted in an unknown number of specialists to monkey-patch the whole installation with specific domain-knowledge that's documented nowhere. So, please, if you claim you have a working installation that actually satisfies minimum requirements for a full-fledged search (see requirements above), please provide the following so that we can all benefit from a search solution for Django that actually solves the problem: exact Linux distribution, release version, exact release version of Haystack (or equivalent) and release version of search backend, exact release version of the search engine publicly (!) available documentation how to set up all components exactly in the way that your installation was set up such that the minimal requirements above are met. Thank you.

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  • Search engine solution for Django that actually works?

    - by prometheus
    The story so far: Decided to go with Xapian as search backend because it has all search-engine features I was looking for, knows about Unicode, stemming, has few dependencies and requires no bloated app-server installation on top of it. Tried Django and Haystack (plus xapian-haystack, the backend glue code to tie Haystack to Xapian) because it was advertised on quite some blogs as "working". Did not work. Neither django-haystack nor the xapian-haystack project provide a version combination that actually works together. MASTER from both projects yields an error from Xapian, so it's not stable at all. Haystack 1.0.1 and xapian-haystack 1.0.x/1.1.0 are not API-compatible. Plus, in a minimally working installation of Haystack 1.0.1 and xapian-haystack MASTER, any complex query yields zero results due to errors in either django-haystack or xapian-haystack (I double-verified this), maybe because the unit-tests actually test very simple cases, and no edge-cases at all. Tried Djapian. The source-code is riddled with spelling errors (mind you, in variable names, not comments), documentation is also riddled with ambiguities and outdated information that will never lead to a working installation. Not surprisingly, users rarely ask for features but how to get it working in the first place. Next on the plate: exploring Solr (installing a Java environment plus Tomcat gives me headaches, the machine is RAM- and CPU-constrained), or Lucene (slightly less headaches, but still). Before I proceed spending more time with a solution that might or might not work as advertised, I'd like to know: Did anyone ever get an actual, real-world search solution working in Django? I'm serious. I find it really frustrating reading about "large problems mostly solved", and then realizing that you will never get a working installation from the source-code because, actually, all bloggers dealing with those "mostly solved problems" never went past basic installation and copy-pasting the official tutorials. So here are the requirements: must be able to search for 10-100 terms in one query must handle + (term must be present) and - (term must not be present), AND/OR must handle arbitrary grouping (i.e. parentheses around AND/OR) must allow for Django-ORM filtering before or after fulltext-search (i.e. pre-/post-processing of results with the full set of filters that Django knows about) alternatively, there must be a facility to bulk-fetch the result set and transform it into a QuerySet should be light on the machine, so preferably no humongous JVM and Java-based app-server installation Is there anything out there that does this? I'm not interested in anecdotal evidence, or references to some blog posts that claim it should be working. I'd like to hear from someone who actually has a fully-functional setup working in the real world, under real conditions, with real queries. EDIT: Let me repeat again that I'm not so much interested in anecdotal evidence that someone, somewhere has a somewhat running installation working with unspecified properties. I already went there, I read all the blog posts, mailing lists, I contacted the authors, but when it came to actual implementation of real-world scenarios, nothing ever worked as advertised. Also, and a user below brought that point up as well, considering the TCO of any project, I'm definitely not interested in hearing that someone, somewhere was able to pull it off once a vendor parachuted in an unknown number of specialists to monkey-patch the whole installation with specific domain-knowledge that's documented nowhere. So, please, if you claim you have a working installation that actually satisfies minimum requirements for a full-fledged search (see requirements above), please provide the following so that we can all benefit from a search solution for Django that actually solves the problem: exact Linux distribution, release version, exact release version of Haystack (or equivalent) and release version of search backend, exact release version of the search engine publicly (!) available documentation how to set up all components exactly in the way that your installation was set up such that the minimal requirements above are met. Thank you.

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  • Why are there 3 conflicting OpenCV camera calibration formulas?

    - by John
    I'm having a problem with OpenCV's various parameterization of coordinates used for camera calibration purposes. The problem is that three different sources of information on image distortion formulae apparently give three non-equivalent description of the parameters and equations involved: (1) In their book "Learning OpenCV…" Bradski and Kaehler write regarding lens distortion (page 376): xcorrected = x * ( 1 + k1 * r^2 + k2 * r^4 + k3 * r^6 ) + [ 2 * p1 * x * y + p2 * ( r^2 + 2 * x^2 ) ], ycorrected = y * ( 1 + k1 * r^2 + k2 * r^4 + k3 * r^6 ) + [ p1 * ( r^2 + 2 * y^2 ) + 2 * p2 * x * y ], where r = sqrt( x^2 + y^2 ). Assumably, (x, y) are the coordinates of pixels in the uncorrected captured image corresponding to world-point objects with coordinates (X, Y, Z), camera-frame referenced, for which xcorrected = fx * ( X / Z ) + cx and ycorrected = fy * ( Y / Z ) + cy, where fx, fy, cx, and cy, are the camera's intrinsic parameters. So, having (x, y) from a captured image, we can obtain the desired coordinates ( xcorrected, ycorrected ) to produced an undistorted image of the captured world scene by applying the above first two correction expressions. However... (2) The complication arises as we look at OpenCV 2.0 C Reference entry under the Camera Calibration and 3D Reconstruction section. For ease of comparison we start with all world-point (X, Y, Z) coordinates being expressed with respect to the camera's reference frame, just as in #1. Consequently, the transformation matrix [ R | t ] is of no concern. In the C reference, it is expressed that: x' = X / Z, y' = Y / Z, x'' = x' * ( 1 + k1 * r'^2 + k2 * r'^4 + k3 * r'^6 ) + [ 2 * p1 * x' * y' + p2 * ( r'^2 + 2 * x'^2 ) ], y'' = y' * ( 1 + k1 * r'^2 + k2 * r'^4 + k3 * r'^6 ) + [ p1 * ( r'^2 + 2 * y'^2 ) + 2 * p2 * x' * y' ], where r' = sqrt( x'^2 + y'^2 ), and finally that u = fx * x'' + cx, v = fy * y'' + cy. As one can see these expressions are not equivalent to those presented in #1, with the result that the two sets of corrected coordinates ( xcorrected, ycorrected ) and ( u, v ) are not the same. Why the contradiction? It seems to me the first set makes more sense as I can attach physical meaning to each and every x and y in there, while I find no physical meaning in x' = X / Z and y' = Y / Z when the camera focal length is not exactly 1. Furthermore, one cannot compute x' and y' for we don't know (X, Y, Z). (3) Unfortunately, things get even murkier when we refer to the writings in Intel's Open Source Computer Vision Library Reference Manual's section Lens Distortion (page 6-4), which states in part: "Let ( u, v ) be true pixel image coordinates, that is, coordinates with ideal projection, and ( u ~, v ~ ) be corresponding real observed (distorted) image coordinates. Similarly, ( x, y ) are ideal (distortion-free) and ( x ~, y ~ ) are real (distorted) image physical coordinates. Taking into account two expansion terms gives the following: x ~ = x * ( 1 + k1 * r^2 + k2 * r^4 ) + [ 2 p1 * x * y + p2 * ( r^2 + 2 * x^2 ) ] y ~ = y * ( 1 + k1 * r^2 + k2 * r^4 ] + [ 2 p2 * x * y + p2 * ( r^2 + 2 * y^2 ) ], where r = sqrt( x^2 + y^2 ). ... "Because u ~ = cx + fx * u and v ~ = cy + fy * v , … the resultant system can be rewritten as follows: u ~ = u + ( u – cx ) * [ k1 * r^2 + k2 * r^4 + 2 * p1 * y + p2 * ( r^2 / x + 2 * x ) ] v ~ = v + ( v – cy ) * [ k1 * r^2 + k2 * r^4 + 2 * p2 * x + p1 * ( r^2 / y + 2 * y ) ] The latter relations are used to undistort images from the camera." Well, it would appear that the expressions involving x ~ and y ~ coincided with the two expressions given at the top of this writing involving xcorrected and ycorrected. However, x ~ and y ~ do not refer to corrected coordinates, according to the given description. I don't understand the distinction between the meaning of the coordinates ( x ~, y ~ ) and ( u ~, v ~ ), or for that matter, between the pairs ( x, y ) and ( u, v ). From their descriptions it appears their only distinction is that ( x ~, y ~ ) and ( x, y ) refer to 'physical' coordinates while ( u ~, v ~ ) and ( u, v ) do not. What is this distinction all about? Aren't they all physical coordinates? I'm lost! Thanks for any input!

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  • opengl 3d texture issue

    - by user1478217
    Hi i'm trying to use a 3d texture in opengl to implement volume rendering. Each voxel has an rgba colour value and is currently rendered as a screen facing quad.(for testing purposes). I just can't seem to get the sampler to give me a colour value in the shader. The quads always end up black. When I change the shader to generate a colour (based on xyz coords) then it works fine. I'm loading the texture with the following code: glGenTextures(1, &tex3D); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_3D, tex3D); unsigned int colours[8]; colours[0] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Blue); colours[1] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Red); colours[2] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Green); colours[3] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Magenta); colours[4] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Cyan); colours[5] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Yellow); colours[6] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::White); colours[7] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Black); glTexImage3D(GL_TEXTURE_3D, 0, GL_RGBA, 2, 2, 2, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, colours); The colours array contains the correct data, i.e. the first four bytes have values 0, 0, 255, 255 for blue. Before rendering I bind the texture to the 2nd texture unit like so: glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_3D, tex3D); And render with the following code: shaders["DVR"]->Use(); shaders["DVR"]->Uniforms["volTex"].SetValue(1); shaders["DVR"]->Uniforms["World"].SetValue(Mat4(vl_one)); shaders["DVR"]->Uniforms["viewProj"].SetValue(cam->GetViewTransform() * cam->GetProjectionMatrix()); QuadDrawer::DrawQuads(8); I have used these classes for setting shader params before and they work fine. The quaddrawer draws eight instanced quads. The vertex shader code looks like this: #version 330 layout(location = 0) in vec2 position; layout(location = 1) in vec2 texCoord; uniform sampler3D volTex; ivec3 size = ivec3(2, 2, 2); uniform mat4 World; uniform mat4 viewProj; smooth out vec4 colour; void main() { vec3 texCoord3D; int num = gl_InstanceID; texCoord3D.x = num % size.x; texCoord3D.y = (num / size.x) % size.y; texCoord3D.z = (num / (size.x * size.y)); texCoord3D /= size; texCoord3D *= 2.0; texCoord3D -= 1.0; colour = texture(volTex, texCoord3D); //colour = vec4(texCoord3D, 1.0); gl_Position = viewProj * World * vec4(texCoord3D, 1.0) + (vec4(position.x, position.y, 0.0, 0.0) * 0.05); } uncommenting the line where I set the colour value equal to the texcoord works fine, and makes the quads coloured. The fragment shader is simply: #version 330 smooth in vec4 colour; out vec4 outColour; void main() { outColour = colour; } So my question is, what am I doing wrong, why is the sampler not getting any colour values from the 3d texture? [EDIT] Figured it out but can't self answer (new user): As soon as I posted this I figured it out, I'll put the answer up to help anyone else (it's not specifically a 3d texture issue, and i've also fallen afoul of it before, D'oh!). I didn't generate mipmaps for the texture, and the default magnification/minification filters weren't set to either GL_LINEAR, or GL_NEAREST. Boom! no textures. Same thing happens with 2d textures.

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  • Custom string class (C++)

    - by Sanctus2099
    Hey guys. I'm trying to write my own C++ String class for educational and need purposes. The first thing is that I don't know that much about operators and that's why I want to learn them. I started writing my class but when I run it it blocks the program but does not do any crash. Take a look at the following code please before reading further: class CString { private: char* cstr; public: CString(); CString(char* str); CString(CString& str); ~CString(); operator char*(); operator const char*(); CString operator+(const CString& q)const; CString operator=(const CString& q); }; First of all I'm not so sure I declared everything right. I tried googleing about it but all the tutorials about overloading explain the basic ideea which is very simple but lack to explain how and when each thing is called. For instance in my = operator the program calls CString(CString& str); but I have no ideea why. I have also attached the cpp file below: CString::CString() { cstr=0; } CString::CString(char *str) { cstr=new char[strlen(str)]; strcpy(cstr,str); } CString::CString(CString& q) { if(this==&q) return; cstr = new char[strlen(q.cstr)+1]; strcpy(cstr,q.cstr); } CString::~CString() { if(cstr) delete[] cstr; } CString::operator char*() { return cstr; } CString::operator const char* () { return cstr; } CString CString::operator +(const CString &q) const { CString s; s.cstr = new char[strlen(cstr)+strlen(q.cstr)+1]; strcpy(s.cstr,cstr); strcat(s.cstr,q.cstr); return s; } CString CString::operator =(const CString &q) { if(this!=&q) { if(cstr) delete[] cstr; cstr = new char[strlen(q.cstr)+1]; strcpy(cstr,q.cstr); } return *this; } For testing I used a code just as simple as this CString a = CString("Hello") + CString(" World"); printf(a); I tried debugging it but at a point I get lost. First it calls the constructor 2 times for "hello" and for " world". Then it get's in the + operator which is fine. Then it calls the constructor for the empty string. After that it get's into "CString(CString& str)" and now I'm lost. Why is this happening? After this I noticed my string containing "Hello World" is in the destructor (a few times in a row). Again I'm very puzzeled. After converting again from char* to Cstring and back and forth it stops. It never get's into the = operator but neither does it go further. printf(a) is never reached. I use VisualStudio 2010 for this but it's basically just standard c++ code and thus I don't think it should make that much of a difference

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  • Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community

    There we go! I finally managed to push myself forward and pick up an old, actually too old, idea since I ever arrived here in Mauritius more than six years ago. I'm talking about a community for all kind of ICT connected people. In the past (back in Germany), I used to be involved in various community activities. For example, I was part of the Microsoft Community Leader/Influencer Program (CLIP) in Germany due to an FAQ on Visual FoxPro, actually Active FoxPro Pages (AFP) to be more precise. Then in 2003/2004 I addressed the responsible person of the dFPUG user group in Speyer in order to assist him in organising monthly user group meetings. Well, he handed over management completely, and attended our meetings regularly. Why did it take you so long? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details but short version is that I was too busy on either job (building up new companies) or private life (got married and we have two lovely children, eh 'monsters') or even both. But now is the time where I was starting to look for new fields given the fact that I gained some spare time. My businesses are up and running, the kids are in school, and I am finally in a position where I can commit myself again to community activities. And I love to do that! Why a new user group? Good question... And 'easy' to answer. Since back in 2007 I did my usual research, eh Google searches, to see whether there existing user groups in Mauritius and in which field of interest. And yes, there are! If I recall this correctly, then there are communities for PHP, Drupal, Python (just recently), Oracle, and Linux (which used to be even two). But... either they do not exist anymore, they are dormant, or there is only a low heart-beat, frankly speaking. And yes, I went to meetings of the Linux User Group Meta (Mauritius) back in 2010/2011 and just recently. I really like the setup and the way the LUGM is organised. It's just that I have a slightly different point of view on how a user group or community should organise itself and how to approach future members. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing others doing a very good job, I'm only saying that I'd like to do it differently. The last meeting of the LUGM was awesome; read my feedback about it. Ok, so what's up with 'Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community' or short: MSCC? As I've already written in my article on 'Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion' I think it is essential in a world of IT to stay 'connected' with a good number of other people in the same field. There is so much dynamic and every day's news that it is almost impossible to keep on track with all of them. The MSCC is going to provide a common platform to exchange experience and share knowledge between each other. You might be a newbie and want to know what to expect working as a software developer, or as a database administrator, or maybe as an IT systems administrator, or you're an experienced geek that loves to share your ideas or solutions that you implemented to solve a specific problem, or you're the business (or HR) guy that is looking for 'fresh' blood to enforce your existing team. Or... you're just interested and you'd like to communicate with like-minded people. Meetup of 26.06.2013 @ L'arabica: Of course there are laptops around. Free WiFi, power outlet, coffee, code and Linux in one go. The MSCC is technology-agnostic and spans an umbrella over any kind of technology. Simply because you can't ignore other technologies anymore in a connected IT world as we have. A front-end developer for iOS applications should have the chance to connect with a Python back-end coder and eventually with a DBA for MySQL or PostgreSQL and exchange their experience. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of cross-platform development, and it is very pleasant to have pure Web developers - with all that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JS libraries stuff - and passionate C# or Java coders at the same table. This diversity of knowledge can assist and boost your personal situation. And last but not least, there are projects and open positions 'flying' around... People might like to hear others opinion about an employer or get new impulses on how to tackle down an issue at their workspace, etc. This is about community. And that's how I see the MSCC in general - free of any limitations be it by programming language or technology. Having the chance to exchange experience and to discuss certain aspects of technology saves you time and money, and it's a pleasure to enjoy. Compared to dusty books and remote online resources. It's human! Organising meetups (meetings, get-together, gatherings - you name it!) As of writing this article, the MSCC is currently meeting every Wednesday for the weekly 'Code & Coffee' session at various locations (suggestions are welcome!) in Mauritius. This might change in the future eventually but especially at the beginning I think it is very important to create awareness in the Mauritian IT world. Yes, we are here! Come and join us! ;-) The MSCC's main online presence is located at Meetup.com because it allows me to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments very easily, and any member can have a look who else is involved so that an exchange of contacts is given at any time. In combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there is a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Trello is also available as free smartphone app. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians! Recent updates The MSCC is now officially participating in the O'Reilly UK User Group programm and we are allowed to request review or recension copies of recent titles. Additionally, we have a discount code for any books or ebooks that you might like to order on shop.oreilly.com. More applications for user group sponsorship programms are pending and I'm looking forward to a couple of announcement very soon. And... we need some kind of 'corporate identity' - Over at the MSCC website there is a call for action (or better said a contest with prizes) to create a unique design for the MSCC. This would include a decent colour palette, a logo, graphical banners for Meetup, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and of course badges for our craftsmen to add to their personal blogs and websites. Please spread the word and contribute. Thanks!

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 01, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 01, 2010New ProjectsActiveWorlds World Server Admin PowerShell SnapIn: The purpose of this PowerShell SnapIn is to provide a set of tools to administer the world server from PowerShell. It leverages the ActiveWorlds S...AWS SimpleDB Browser: A basic GUI browser tool for inspection and querying of a SimpleDB.Desktop Dimmer: A simple application for dimming the desktop around windows, videos, or other media.Disk Defuzzer: Compare chaos of files and folders with customizable SQL queries. This little application scans files in any two folders, generates data in an A...Dynamic Configuration: Dynamic configuration is a (very) small library to provide an API compatible replacement for the System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager class so...Expression Encoder 3 Visual Basic Samples: Visual Basic Sample code that calls the Expression Encoder 3 object model.Extended Character Keyboard: An lightweight onscreen keyboard that allows you to enter special characters like "á" and "û". Also supports adding of 7 custom buttons.FileHasher: This project provides a simple tool for generating and verifying file hashes. I created this to help the QA team I work with. The project is all C#...Fluent Assertions: Fluent interface for writing more natural specifying assertions with more clarity than the traditional assertion syntax such as offered by MSTest, ...Foursquare BlogEngine Widget: A Basic Widget for BlogEngine which displays the last foursquare Check-insGraffiti CMS Events Plugin: Plugin for Graffiti CMS that allows creating Event posts and rendering an Event CalendarHeadCounter: HeadCounter is a raid attendance and loot tracking application for World of Warcraft.HRM Core (QL Nhan Su): This is software about Human Resource Management in Viet Nam ------------ Đây là phần mềm Quản lý nhân sự tiền lương ở Việt Nam (Nghiệp vụ ở Việt Nam)IronPython Silverlight Sharpdevelop Template: This IronPython Silverlight SharpDevelop Template makes it easier for you to make Silverlight applications in IronPython with Sharpdevelop.kingbox: my test code for study vs 2005link_attraente: Projeto Conclusão de CursoORMSharp.Net: ORMSharp.Net https://code.google.com/p/ormsharp/ http://www.sqlite.org/ http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlite-dotnet2/Orz framework: Orz framework is more like a helpful library, if you are develop with DotNet framework 3.0, it will be very useful to you. Orz framework encapsul...OTManager: OTManagerSharePoint URL Ping Tool: The Url Ping Tool is a farm feature in SharePoint that provide additional performance and tracing information that can be used to troubleshoot issu...SunShine: SunShine ProjectToolSuite.ValidationExpression: assembly with regular expression for the RegularExpressionValidator controlTwitual Studio: A Visual Studio 2010 based Twitter client. Now you have one less reason for pressing Alt+Tab. Plus you still look like you're working!Velocity Hosting Tool: A program designed to aid a HT Velocity host in hosting and recording tournaments.Watermarker: Adds watermark on pictures to prevent copy. Icon taken from PICOL. Can work with packs of images.Zack's Fiasco - ASP.NET Script Includer: Script includer to * include scripts (JS or CSS) once and only once. * include the correct format by differentiating between release and build. Th...New ReleasesAll-In-One Code Framework: All-In-One Code Framework 2010-02-28: Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date list, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. Samples for ASP.NET Name ...All-In-One Code Framework (简体中文): All-In-One Code Framework 2010-02-28: Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date list, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. Latest Download Link: http://c...AWS SimpleDB Browser: SimpleDbBrowser.zip Initial Release: The initial release of the SimpleDbBrowser. Unzip the file in the archive and place them all in a folder, then run the .exe. No installer is used...BattLineSvc: V1: First release of BattLineSvcCC.Votd Screen Saver: CC.Votd 1.0.10.301: More bug fixes and minor enhancements. Note: Only download the (Screen Saver) version if you plan to manually install. For most users the (Install...Dynamic Configuration: DynamicConfiguration Release 1: Dynamic Configuration DLL release.eIDPT - Cartão de Cidadão .NET Wrapper: EIDPT VB6 Demo Program: Cartão de Cidadão Middleware Application installation (v1.21 or 1.22) is required for proper use of the eID Lib.eIDPT - Cartão de Cidadão .NET Wrapper: eIDPT VB6 Demo Program Source: Cartão de Cidadão Middleware Application installation (v1.21 or 1.22) is required for proper use of the eID Lib.ESPEHA: Espeha 10: 1. Help available on F1 and via context menu '?' 2. Width of categiries view is preserved througb app starts 3. Drag'nd'drop for tasks view allows ...Extended Character Keyboard: OnscreenSCK Beta V1.0: OnscreenSCK Beta Version 1.0Extended Character Keyboard: OnscreenSCK Beta V1.0 Source: OnscreenSCK Beta Version 1.0 Source CodeFileHasher: Console Version v 0.5: This release provides a very basic and minimal command-line utility for generating and validating file hashes. The supported command-line paramete...Furcadia Framework for Third Party Programs: 0.2.3 Epic Wrench: Warning: Untested on Linux.FurcadiaLib\Net\NetProxy.cs: Fixed a bug I made before update. FurcadiaFramework_Example\Demo\IDemo.cs: Ignore me. F...Graffiti CMS Events Plugin: Version 1.0: Initial Release of Events PluginHeadCounter: HeadCounter 1.2.3 'Razorgore': Added "Raider Post" feature for posting details of a particular raider. Added Default Period option to allow selection of Short, Long or Lifetime...Home Access Plus+: v3.0.0.0: Version 3.0.0.0 Release Change Log: Reconfiguration of the web.config Ability to add additional links to homepage via web.config Ability to add...Home Access Plus+: v3.0.1.0: Version 3.0.1.0 Release Change Log: Fixed problem with moving File Changes: ~/bin/chs extranet.dll ~/bin/chs extranet.pdbHome Access Plus+: v3.0.2.0: Version 3.0.2.0 Release Change Log: Fixed problem with stylesheet File Changes: ~/chs.masterHRM Core (QL Nhan Su): HRMCore_src: Source of HRMCoreIRC4N00bz: IRC4N00bz v1.0.0.2: There wasn't much updated this weekend. I updated 2 'raw' events. One is all raw messages and the other is events that arn't caught in the dll. ...IronPython Silverlight Sharpdevelop Template: Version 1 Template: Just unzip it into the Sharpdevelop python templates folder For example: C:\Program Files\SharpDevelop\3.0\AddIns\AddIns\BackendBindings\PythonBi...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.4.56156: Fixed handling exceptions; previous handling could lead to freezing items state; Fixed validating uploading.com links;OTManager: Activity Log: 2010.02.28 >> Thread Reopened 2010.02.28 >> Re-organized WBD Features/WMBD Features 2010.02.28 >> Project status is active againPicasa Downloader: PicasaDownloader (41175): NOTE: The previous release was accidently the same as the one before that (forgot to rebuild the installer). Changelog: Fixed workitem 10296 (Sav...PicNet Html Table Filter: Version 2.0: Testing w/ JQuery 1.3.2Program Scheduler: Program Scheduler 1.1.4: Release Note: *Bug fix : If the log window is docked and user moves the log window , main window will move too. *Added menu to log window to clear...QueryToGrid Module for DotNetNuke®: QueryToGrid Module version 01.00.00: This is the initial release of this module. Remember... This is just a proof of concept to add AJAX functionality to your DotNetNuke modules.Rainweaver Framework: February 2010 Release: Code drop including an Alpha release of the Entity System. See more information in the Documentation page.RapidWebDev - .NET Enterprise Software Development Infrastructure: ProductManagement Quick Sample 0.1: This is a sample product management application to demonstrate how to develop enterprise software in RapidWebDev. The glossary of the system are ro...Team Foundation Server Revision Labeller for CruiseControl.NET: TFS Labeller for CruiseControl.NET - TFS 2008: ReleaseFirst release of the Team Foundation Server Labeller for CruiseControl.NET. This specific version is bound to TFS 2008 DLLs.ToolSuite.ValidationExpression: 01.00.01.000: first release of the time validation class; the assembly file is ready to use, the documentation ist not complete;VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30228.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke: CKEditor Provider 1.7.00: Whats New FileBrowser: Non Admin Users will only see a User Sub folder (..\Portals\0\userfiles\UserName) CKFinder: Non Admin Users will only see ...Watermarker: Watermarker: first public version. can build watermark only in left top corner on one image at once.While You Were Away - WPF Screensaver: Initial Release: This is the code released when the article went live.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Microsoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsRawrBlogEngine.NETMapWindow GISCommon Context Adapterspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLRSLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality ToolkitDiffPlex - a .NET Diff GeneratorRapid Entity Framework. (ORM). CTP 2jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 12, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 12, 2010New Projects3 Hour Game Design Contest: The 3 Hour Game Design Contest is a programming contest for making simple games in 3 hours. 3 hours may not seem like enough time to make a game, b...BI Monkey SSIS ETL Framework: The BI Monkey SSIS ETL Framework is an ETL Execution, Control and Logging system for ETL projects using SSIS. It is supported by a SQL Server metad...Blend Sample Data Helpers: Helper behavior classes to generate sample images and data from Internet sources such as Flickr images. Bold TCP for Delphi 7: Open Sourcing the Bold TCP for Delphi 7.cfThreadingTools: This library project contains classes and extensions which will allow easy handling of multi-threaded UI-accesses.CuBiX_SDL: CuBiX_SDL : CuBiX est un projet personnel.Draglets: Draglets makes it easier for editors and CMS-developers to move and reorder content at their web sites. It's developed in ASP.NET, C# with WCF and ...DSQLT - Dynamic SQL Templates: DSQLT - Dynamic SQL Templates Use Stored Procedures as templates for dynamic SQL statements. Substitute parameters @0-@9 with values like objectna...Edtter: Edtter is a sample web application built on ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework. (Japanese Version Only)Forms Based Authentication Management - SharePoint2007FBA: This is my own update to Stacy Draper's FBABasic project for Forms Based Authentication in MOSS 2007. In additon to managing your fba user's roles,...Height Map to 3D World at XNA: Height Map to 3D World is a XNA project that developed firstly by Eric Grossinger and secondly improved by Karadeniz Technical University Computer ...HouseFly: A simple contact and note taking applicationITM 495 - iPhone Web App: School ProjectKaufleute: This will be finished laterLR: this project is about connecting toPowerShell Integration Services: A set of tools aimed at Extract Transform and Load tasks. Focused on getting the most common ETL tasks done without SSIS. Salient: A collection of, hopefully, useful libraries.Samurai.Validation: Extensible and flexible .Net object validation frameworkSamurai.Workflow: Samurai Workflow is a slim, easy-to-use workflow framework for WPF applications.SharePoint User Management WebPart: SharePoint User Management WebPartUrl shorte(ne)r: It's simple Url Shortener (like: http://tinyurl.com) Currently only Polish language is supported. In future will be provided multi language suppor...Yasbg: Yasbg (pronounced yas-bug) is Yet Another Static Blog Generator. It is made in C# using MarkdownSharp for markdown. Currently in alpha. New Releases.NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library: Release 2010.06: Added an universal approach for grouping extension methods like conversions. Conversion are now available on any data type (it's actually extension...3 Hour Game Design Contest: 3H-GDC mVII: This is the collection of game files for the 7th 3H-GDCB&W Port Scanner: Black`n`White Port Scanner 3.0: B&W Port Scanner 3 includes FTP Server detection tool, Better stability, Optimized memory management, Saving & Opening Result sets ... and more new...BI Monkey SSIS ETL Framework: Framework v1 Alpha: This Alpha release is not fully tested and some functionality is not operating as intended.Bluetooth Radar: Version 1.7: UI Changes Device UserControl Randomly placed devices.BugTracker.NET: BugTracker.NET 3.4.1: For the tasks/time tracking feature, added a way of viewing all the tasks at once, not just the tasks for one bug. Also added a way of exporting a...cfThreadingTools: cfThreadingTools 0.1.1.8: This is the first public available release. Following items are included: BaseTools-class which allows thread-safe setting of properties and callin...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: DeepZoom Pivot Constructor v0.1: This is a test release of the library platform - Targets .NET 3.5 No samples yet, etc., but it works well :-)DSQLT - Dynamic SQL Templates: Initial release with License Included: nothing changed but license print procedure included the zip file contains database backup SQL script readmeForms Based Authentication Management - SharePoint2007FBA: SharePoint2007FBA 1.0.0.0: Downloads for the Project solution and the WSP package. Please read the Setup Guide. If you are unfamiliar with setting up Forms Based Authenticati...Foursquare BlogEngine Widget: foursquare widget for BlogEngine.NET version 0.3: To see the changes which have been made, visit http://philippkueng.ch/post/Foursquare-BlogEngineNET-widget-version-03.aspx For installation instruc...Framework Detector: FrameworkDetect Support .NET 4 v2: FrameworkDetect Support .NET 4Happy Turtle Plugins for BVI :: Repository Based Versioning for Visual Studio: Happy Turtle 1.0.46860: This is the second beta release of the SVN based version incrementor. Please feel free to create a thread in the discussion tabs and provide feedb...Height Map to 3D World at XNA: 3DWorld: Just open .rar file and extract it any folder and run Proje2Dto3D.exe file.HTML Ruby: 6.20.2: Removed rubyLineSpace option Improved options panel Fixed ruby text font-size rendering issue with complex ruby annotation Removed more waste...HTML Ruby: 6.20.3: Removed unused code Temporary partial fix for Firefox 3.7a4pre nightly buildHTML Ruby: 6.21.0: Added support for current HTML5 ruby annotation format. All ruby annotations are converted to XHTML 1.1 complex ruby annotation.Kooboo HTML form: Kooboo HTML Form Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo Menu: Kooboo CMS Menu for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo Meta: Kooboo Meta Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo PageMenu: Kooboo CMS PageMenu for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo Search: Kooboo CMS Search module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 50212: Added bulk import user page Added General settings page for updating Company Name, Theme, and API Key Add/Edit application calls Full URL to h...Rawr: Rawr 2.3.14: - Rawr3: Tons of fixes for Rawr3 compatability and UI. - Significant performance improvements all around. - More fixes and improvements to Wowhea...Rich Ajax empowered Web/Cloud Applications: 6.4 beta 2: The first fully featured version of Visual webGui offering web/cloud development tool that puts all ASP.NET Ajax limits behind with enhanced perfor...SharePoint User Management WebPart: User Management Web part 1.0: Most of the organization have one SharePoint Site which is configured with windows authenticated which is for internal employees having AD authenti...SkeinLibManaged: SkeinLibManaged 1.1.0.0 (Beta): This is the compiled DLL with XML documentation, so there should be plenty of context sensitive help and Intellisense. This is the Release version,...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30411.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPX: Code References 1.1 Beta: Visit the Code References Info Page for complete information about this release.VisioAutomation: VisioAutomation 2.5.0: VisioAutomation 2.5.0- General cleanup/bugfixes - Many low-level changes the the VisioAutomation extension methods - these are far fewer now - This...Visual Studio DSite: English To Spanish Translator (Visual C++ 2008): A simple english to spanish translator made in visual c 2008, using the Google Translate API.WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke: CKEditor Provider 1.10.00: Whats NewFile Browser: Inherits Folder Permissions from DotNetNuke Updated the Editor to Version 3.2.1 revision 5372 Added CkEditor jQuery Adap...Web/Cloud Applications Development Framework | Visual WebGui: 6.4 beta 2: The first fully featured version of Visual webGui offering web/cloud development tool that puts all ASP.NET Ajax limits behind with unique develope...WPF Data Virtualization: 1.0.0.0: First ReleaseYasbg: Yasbg Alpha: ReadmeYet Another Static Blog Generator is a command line utility that generates static html files for blogs. Currently, it is NOT feed enabled. I...異世界の新着動画: Ver. 10-04-12: ニコ生の仕様変更に対応 アンケート時間の設定追加Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsRawrnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.AutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterBlogEngine.NETBeanProxy

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  • Calling Web Service Functions Asynchronously from a Web Page

    - by SGWellens
    Over on the Asp.Net forums where I moderate, a user had a problem calling a Web Service from a web page asynchronously. I tried his code on my machine and was able to reproduce the problem. I was able to solve his problem, but only after taking the long scenic route through some of the more perplexing nuances of Web Services and Proxies. Here is the fascinating story of that journey. Start with a simple Web Service     public class Service1 : System.Web.Services.WebService    {        [WebMethod]        public string HelloWorld()        {            // sleep 10 seconds            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10 * 1000);            return "Hello World";        }    } The 10 second delay is added to make calling an asynchronous function more apparent. If you don't call the function asynchronously, it takes about 10 seconds for the page to be rendered back to the client. If the call is made from a Windows Forms application, the application freezes for about 10 seconds. Add the web service to a web site. Right-click the project and select "Add Web Reference…" Next, create a web page to call the Web Service. Note: An asp.net web page that calls an 'Async' method must have the Async property set to true in the page's header: <%@ Page Language="C#"          AutoEventWireup="true"          CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"          Inherits="_Default"           Async='true'  %> Here is the code to create the Web Service proxy and connect the event handler. Shrewdly, we make the proxy object a member of the Page class so it remains instantiated between the various events. public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page {    localhost.Service1 MyService;  // web service proxy     // ---- Page_Load ---------------------------------     protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        MyService = new localhost.Service1();        MyService.HelloWorldCompleted += EventHandler;          } Here is the code to invoke the web service and handle the event:     // ---- Async and EventHandler (delayed render) --------------------------     protected void ButtonHelloWorldAsync_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        // blocks        ODS("Pre HelloWorldAsync...");        MyService.HelloWorldAsync();        ODS("Post HelloWorldAsync");    }    public void EventHandler(object sender, localhost.HelloWorldCompletedEventArgs e)    {        ODS("EventHandler");        ODS("    " + e.Result);    }     // ---- ODS ------------------------------------------------    //    // Helper function: Output Debug String     public static void ODS(string Msg)    {        String Out = String.Format("{0}  {1}", DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss.ff"), Msg);        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(Out);    } I added a utility function I use a lot: ODS (Output Debug String). Rather than include the library it is part of, I included it in the source file to keep this example simple. Fire up the project, open up a debug output window, press the button and we get this in the debug output window: 11:29:37.94 Pre HelloWorldAsync... 11:29:37.94 Post HelloWorldAsync 11:29:48.94 EventHandler 11:29:48.94 Hello World   Sweet. The asynchronous call was made and returned immediately. About 10 seconds later, the event handler fires and we get the result. Perfect….right? Not so fast cowboy. Watch the browser during the call: What the heck? The page is waiting for 10 seconds. Even though the asynchronous call returned immediately, Asp.Net is waiting for the event to fire before it renders the page. This is NOT what we wanted. I experimented with several techniques to work around this issue. Some may erroneously describe my behavior as 'hacking' but, since no ingesting of Twinkies was involved, I do not believe hacking is the appropriate term. If you examine the proxy that was automatically created, you will find a synchronous call to HelloWorld along with an additional set of methods to make asynchronous calls. I tried the other asynchronous method supplied in the proxy:     // ---- Begin and CallBack ----------------------------------     protected void ButtonBeginHelloWorld_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        ODS("Pre BeginHelloWorld...");        MyService.BeginHelloWorld(AsyncCallback, null);        ODS("Post BeginHelloWorld");    }    public void AsyncCallback(IAsyncResult ar)    {        String Result = MyService.EndHelloWorld(ar);         ODS("AsyncCallback");        ODS("    " + Result);    } The BeginHelloWorld function in the proxy requires a callback function as a parameter. I tested it and the debug output window looked like this: 04:40:58.57 Pre BeginHelloWorld... 04:40:58.57 Post BeginHelloWorld 04:41:08.58 AsyncCallback 04:41:08.58 Hello World It works the same as before except for one critical difference: The page rendered immediately after the function call. I was worried the page object would be disposed after rendering the page but the system was smart enough to keep the page object in memory to handle the callback. Both techniques have a use: Delayed Render: Say you want to verify a credit card, look up shipping costs and confirm if an item is in stock. You could have three web service calls running in parallel and not render the page until all were finished. Nice. You can send information back to the client as part of the rendered page when all the services are finished. Immediate Render: Say you just want to start a service running and return to the client. You can do that too. However, the page gets sent to the client before the service has finished running so you will not be able to update parts of the page when the service finishes running. Summary: YourFunctionAsync() and an EventHandler will not render the page until the handler fires. BeginYourFunction() and a CallBack function will render the page as soon as possible. I found all this to be quite interesting and did a lot of searching and researching for documentation on this subject….but there isn't a lot out there. The biggest clues are the parameters that can be sent to the WSDL.exe program: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7h3ystb6(VS.100).aspx Two parameters are oldAsync and newAsync. OldAsync will create the Begin/End functions; newAsync will create the Async/Event functions. Caveat: I haven't tried this but it was stated in this article. I'll leave confirming this as an exercise for the student J. Included Code: I'm including the complete test project I created to verify the findings. The project was created with VS 2008 SP1. There is a solution file with 3 projects, the 3 projects are: Web Service Asp.Net Application Windows Forms Application To decide which program runs, you right-click a project and select "Set as Startup Project". I created and played with the Windows Forms application to see if it would reveal any secrets. I found that in the Windows Forms application, the generated proxy did NOT include the Begin/Callback functions. Those functions are only generated for Asp.Net pages. Probably for the reasons discussed earlier. Maybe those Microsoft boys and girls know what they are doing. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens

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  • How to Use USER_DEFINED Activity in OWB Process Flow

    - by Jinggen He
    Process Flow is a very important component of Oracle Warehouse Builder. With Process Flow, we can create and control the ETL process by setting all kinds of activities in a well-constructed flow. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2, there are 28 kinds of activities, which fall into three categories: Control activities, OWB specific activities and Utility activities. For more information about Process Flow activities, please refer to OWB online doc. Most of those activities are pre-defined for some specific use. For example, the Mapping activity allows execution an OWB mapping in Process Flow and the FTP activity allows an interaction between the local host and a remote FTP server. Besides those activities for specific purposes, the User Defined activity enables you to incorporate into a Process Flow an activity that is not defined within Warehouse Builder. So the User Defined activity brings flexibility and extensibility to Process Flow. In this article, we will take an amazing tour of using the User Defined activity. Let's start. Enable execution of User Defined activity Let's start this section from creating a very simple Process Flow, which contains a Start activity, a User Defined activity and an End Success activity. Leave all parameters of activity USER_DEFINED unchanged except that we enter /tmp/test.sh into the Value column of the COMMAND parameter. Then let's create the shell script test.sh in /tmp directory. Here is the content of /tmp/test.sh (this article is demonstrating a scenario in Linux system, and /tmp/test.sh is a Bash shell script): echo Hello World! > /tmp/test.txt Note: don't forget to grant the execution privilege on /tmp/test.sh to OS Oracle user. For simplicity, we just use the following command. chmod +x /tmp/test.sh OK, it's so simple that we’ve almost done it. Now deploy the Process Flow and run it. For a newly installed OWB, we will come across an error saying "RPE-02248: For security reasons, activity operator Shell has been disabled by the DBA". See below. That's because, by default, the User Defined activity is DISABLED. Configuration about this can be found in <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/bin/admin/Runtime.properties: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint=DISABLED The property can be set to three different values: NATIVE_JAVA, SCHEDULER and DISBALED. Where NATIVE_JAVA uses the Java 'Runtime.exec' interface, SCHEDULER uses a DBMS Scheduler external job submitted by the Control Center repository owner which is executed by the default operating system user configured by the DBA. DISABLED prevents execution via these operators. We enable the execution of User Defined activity by setting: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint= NATIVE_JAVA Restart the Control Center service for the change of setting to take effect. cd <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/rtp/sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @stop_service.sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @start_service.sql And then run the Process Flow again. We will see that the Process Flow completes successfully. The execution of /tmp/test.sh successfully generated a file /tmp/test.txt, containing the line Hello World!. Pass parameters to User Defined Activity The Process Flow created in the above section has a drawback: the User Defined activity doesn't accept any information from OWB nor does it give any meaningful results back to OWB. That's to say, it lacks interaction. Maybe, sometimes such a Process Flow can fulfill the business requirement. But for most of the time, we need to get the User Defined activity executed according to some information prior to that step. In this section, we will see how to pass parameters to the User Defined activity and pass them into the to-be-executed shell script. First, let's see how to pass parameters to the script. The User Defined activity has an input parameter named PARAMETER_LIST. This is a list of parameters that will be passed to the command. Parameters are separated from one another by a token. The token is taken as the first character on the PARAMETER_LIST string, and the string must also end in that token. Warehouse Builder recommends the '?' character, but any character can be used. For example, to pass 'abc,' 'def,' and 'ghi' you can use the following equivalent: ?abc?def?ghi? or !abc!def!ghi! or |abc|def|ghi| If the token character or '\' needs to be included as part of the parameter, then it must be preceded with '\'. For example '\\'. If '\' is the token character, then '/' becomes the escape character. Let's configure the PARAMETER_LIST parameter as below: And modify the shell script /tmp/test.sh as below: echo $1 is saying hello to $2! > /tmp/test.txt Re-deploy the Process Flow and run it. We will see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: Bob is saying hello to Alice! In the example above, the parameters passed into the shell script are static. This case is not so useful because: instead of passing parameters, we can directly write the value of the parameters in the shell script. To make the case more meaningful, we can pass two dynamic parameters, that are obtained from the previous activity, to the shell script. Prepare the Process Flow as below: The Mapping activity MAPPING_1 has two output parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. The User Defined activity has two input parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. All the four parameters are of String type. Additionally, the Process Flow has two string variables: VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER. Through VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, the input parameter FROM_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter FROM_USER of MAPPING_1. We achieve this by binding both parameters to VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER. See the two figures below. In the same way, through VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER, the input parameter TO_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter TO_USER of MAPPING_1. Also, we need to change the PARAMETER_LIST of the User Defined activity like below: Now, the shell script is getting input from the Mapping activity dynamically. Deploy the Process Flow and all of its necessary dependees then run the Process Flow. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! 'USER B' and 'USER A' are two outputs of the Mapping execution. Write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder In the previous section, the shell script is located in the /tmp directory. But sometimes, when the shell script is small, or for the sake of maintaining consistency, you may want to keep the shell script inside Oracle Warehouse Builder. We can achieve this by configuring these three parameters of a User Defined activity properly: COMMAND: Set the path of interpreter, by which the shell script will be interpreted. PARAMETER_LIST: Set it blank. SCRIPT: Enter the shell script content. Note that in Linux the shell script content is passed into the interpreter as standard input at runtime. About how to actually pass parameters to the shell script, we can utilize variable substitutions. As in the following figure, ${FROM_USER} will be replaced by the value of the FROM_USER input parameter of the User Defined activity. So will the ${TO_USER} symbol. Besides the custom substitution variables, OWB also provide some system pre-defined substitution variables. You can refer to the online document for that. Deploy the Process Flow and run it. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! Leverage the return value of User Defined activity All of the previous sections are connecting the User Defined activity to END_SUCCESS with an unconditional transition. But what should we do if we want different subsequent activities for different shell script execution results? 1.  The simplest way is to add three simple-conditioned out-going transitions for the User Defined activity just like the figure below. In the figure, to simplify the scenario, we connect the User Defined activity to three End activities. Basically, if the shell script ends successfully, the whole Process Flow will end at END_SUCCESS, otherwise, the whole Process Flow will end at END_ERROR (in our case, ending at END_WARNING seldom happens). In the real world, we can add more complex and meaningful subsequent business logic. 2.  Or we can utilize complex conditions to work with different results of the User Defined activity. Previously, in our script, we only have this line: echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt We can add more logic in it and return different values accordingly. echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt if CONDITION_1 ; then ...... exit 0 fi if CONDITION_2 ; then ...... exit 2 fi if CONDITION_3 ; then ...... exit 3 fi After that we can leverage the result by checking RESULT_CODE in condition expression of those out-going transitions. Let's suppose that we have the Process Flow as the following graph (SUB_PROCESS_n stands for more different further processes): We can set complex condition for the transition from USER_DEFINED to SUB_PROCESS_1 like this: Other transitions can be set in the same way. Note that, in our shell script, we return 0, 2 and 3, but not 1. As in Linux system, if the shell script comes across a system error like IO error, the return value will be 1. We can explicitly handle such a return value. Summary Let's summarize what has been discussed in this article: How to create a Process Flow with a User Defined activity in it How to pass parameters from the prior activity to the User Defined activity and finally into the shell script How to write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder How to do variable substitutions How to let the User Defined activity return different values and in what way can we leverage

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  • Node.js Adventure - Node.js on Windows

    - by Shaun
    Two weeks ago I had had a talk with Wang Tao, a C# MVP in China who is currently running his startup company and product named worktile. He asked me to figure out a synchronization solution which helps his product in the future. And he preferred me implementing the service in Node.js, since his worktile is written in Node.js. Even though I have some experience in ASP.NET MVC, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, I don’t think I’m an expert of JavaScript. In fact I’m very new to it. So it scared me a bit when he asked me to use Node.js. But after about one week investigate I have to say Node.js is very easy to learn, use and deploy, even if you have very limited JavaScript skill. And I think I became love Node.js. Hence I decided to have a series named “Node.js Adventure”, where I will demonstrate my story of learning and using Node.js in Windows and Windows Azure. And this is the first one.   (Brief) Introduction of Node.js I don’t want to have a fully detailed introduction of Node.js. There are many resource on the internet we can find. But the best one is its homepage. Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl, sponsored by Joyent. It’s consist of about 80% C/C++ for core and 20% JavaScript for API. It utilizes CommonJS as the module system which we will explain later. The official definition of Node.js is Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. First of all, Node.js utilizes JavaScript as its development language and runs on top of V8 engine, which is being used by Chrome. It brings JavaScript, a client-side language into the backend service world. So many people said, even though not that actually, “Node.js is a server side JavaScript”. Additionally, Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking IO model. This means in Node.js there’s no way to block currently working thread. Every operation in Node.js executed asynchronously. This is a huge benefit especially if our code needs IO operations such as reading disks, connect to database, consuming web service, etc.. Unlike IIS or Apache, Node.js doesn’t utilize the multi-thread model. In Node.js there’s only one working thread serves all users requests and resources response, as the ST star in the figure below. And there is a POSIX async threads pool in Node.js which contains many async threads (AT stars) for IO operations. When a user have an IO request, the ST serves it but it will not do the IO operation. Instead the ST will go to the POSIX async threads pool to pick up an AT, pass this operation to it, and then back to serve any other requests. The AT will actually do the IO operation asynchronously. Assuming before the AT complete the IO operation there is another user comes. The ST will serve this new user request, pick up another AT from the POSIX and then back. If the previous AT finished the IO operation it will take the result back and wait for the ST to serve. ST will take the response and return the AT to POSIX, and then response to the user. And if the second AT finished its job, the ST will response back to the second user in the same way. As you can see, in Node.js there’s only one thread serve clients’ requests and POSIX results. This thread looping between the users and POSIX and pass the data back and forth. The async jobs will be handled by POSIX. This is the event-driven non-blocking IO model. The performance of is model is much better than the multi-threaded blocking model. For example, Apache is built in multi-threaded blocking model while Nginx is in event-driven non-blocking mode. Below is the performance comparison between them. And below is the memory usage comparison between them. These charts are captured from the video NodeJS Basics: An Introductory Training, which presented at Cloud Foundry Developer Advocate.   Node.js on Windows To execute Node.js application on windows is very simple. First of you we need to download the latest Node.js platform from its website. After installed, it will register its folder into system path variant so that we can execute Node.js at anywhere. To confirm the Node.js installation, just open up a command windows and type “node”, then it will show the Node.js console. As you can see this is a JavaScript interactive console. We can type some simple JavaScript code and command here. To run a Node.js JavaScript application, just specify the source code file name as the argument of the “node” command. For example, let’s create a Node.js source code file named “helloworld.js”. Then copy a sample code from Node.js website. 1: var http = require("http"); 2:  3: http.createServer(function (req, res) { 4: res.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"}); 5: res.end("Hello World\n"); 6: }).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1"); 7:  8: console.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/"); This code will create a web server, listening on 1337 port and return “Hello World” when any requests come. Run it in the command windows. Then open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:1337/. As you can see, when using Node.js we are not creating a web application. In fact we are likely creating a web server. We need to deal with request, response and the related headers, status code, etc.. And this is one of the benefit of using Node.js, lightweight and straightforward. But creating a website from scratch again and again is not acceptable. The good news is that, Node.js utilizes CommonJS as its module system, so that we can leverage some modules to simplify our job. And furthermore, there are about ten thousand of modules available n the internet, which covers almost all areas in server side application development.   NPM and Node.js Modules Node.js utilizes CommonJS as its module system. A module is a set of JavaScript files. In Node.js if we have an entry file named “index.js”, then all modules it needs will be located at the “node_modules” folder. And in the “index.js” we can import modules by specifying the module name. For example, in the code we’ve just created, we imported a module named “http”, which is a build-in module installed alone with Node.js. So that we can use the code in this “http” module. Besides the build-in modules there are many modules available at the NPM website. Thousands of developers are contributing and downloading modules at this website. Hence this is another benefit of using Node.js. There are many modules we can use, and the numbers of modules increased very fast, and also we can publish our modules to the community. When I wrote this post, there are totally 14,608 modules at NPN and about 10 thousand downloads per day. Install a module is very simple. Let’s back to our command windows and input the command “npm install express”. This command will install a module named “express”, which is a MVC framework on top of Node.js. And let’s create another JavaScript file named “helloweb.js” and copy the code below in it. I imported the “express” module. And then when the user browse the home page it will response a text. If the incoming URL matches “/Echo/:value” which the “value” is what the user specified, it will pass it back with the current date time in JSON format. And finally my website was listening at 12345 port. 1: var express = require("express"); 2: var app = express(); 3:  4: app.get("/", function(req, res) { 5: res.send("Hello Node.js and Express."); 6: }); 7:  8: app.get("/Echo/:value", function(req, res) { 9: var value = req.params.value; 10: res.json({ 11: "Value" : value, 12: "Time" : new Date() 13: }); 14: }); 15:  16: console.log("Web application opened."); 17: app.listen(12345); For more information and API about the “express”, please have a look here. Start our application from the command window by command “node helloweb.js”, and then navigate to the home page we can see the response in the browser. And if we go to, for example http://localhost:12345/Echo/Hello Shaun, we can see the JSON result. The “express” module is very populate in NPM. It makes the job simple when we need to build a MVC website. There are many modules very useful in NPM. - underscore: A utility module covers many common functionalities such as for each, map, reduce, select, etc.. - request: A very simple HTT request client. - async: Library for coordinate async operations. - wind: Library which enable us to control flow with plain JavaScript for asynchronous programming (and more) without additional pre-compiling steps.   Node.js and IIS I demonstrated how to run the Node.js application from console. Since we are in Windows another common requirement would be, “can I host Node.js in IIS?” The answer is “Yes”. Tomasz Janczuk created a project IISNode at his GitHub space we can find here. And Scott Hanselman had published a blog post introduced about it.   Summary In this post I provided a very brief introduction of Node.js, includes it official definition, architecture and how it implement the event-driven non-blocking model. And then I described how to install and run a Node.js application on windows console. I also described the Node.js module system and NPM command. At the end I referred some links about IISNode, an IIS extension that allows Node.js application runs on IIS. Node.js became a very popular server side application platform especially in this year. By leveraging its non-blocking IO model and async feature it’s very useful for us to build a highly scalable, asynchronously service. I think Node.js will be used widely in the cloud application development in the near future.   In the next post I will explain how to use SQL Server from Node.js.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Oracle WebCenter Partner Program

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    In competitive marketplaces, your company needs to quickly respond to changes and new trends, in order to open opportunities and build long-term growth. Oracle has a variety of next-generation services, solutions and resources that will leverage the differentiators in your offerings. Name your partnering needs: Oracle has the answer. This week we’d like to focus on Partners and the value your organization can gain from working with the Oracle PartnerNetwork. The Oracle PartnerNetwork will empower your company with exceptional resources to distinguish your offerings from the competition, seize opportunities, and increase your sales. We’re happy to welcome Christine Kungl, and Brian Buzzell, from Oracle’s World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C) WebCenter Partner Enablement team, as today’s guests on the Oracle WebCenter blog. Q: What is the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)?A: Christine: Oracle’s PartnerNetwork (OPN) is a collaborative partnership which allows registered companies specific added value resources to help differentiate themselves from their competition. Through OPN programs it provides companies the ability to seize and target opportunities, educate and train their teams, and leverage unparalleled opportunity given Oracle’s large market footprint. OPN’s multi-level programs are targeted at different levels allowing companies to grow and evolve with Oracle based on their business needs.  As part of their OPN memberships partners are encouraged to become OPN Specialized allowing those partners additional differentiation in Oracle’s Partner Network Community.  Q: What is an OPN Specialization and what resources are available for Specialized Partners?A: Brian: Oracle wanted a better way for our partners to differentiate their special skills and expertise, as well a more effective way to communicate that difference to customers.  Oracle’s expanding product portfolio demanded that we be able to identify partners with significant product knowledge—those who had made an investment in Oracle and a continuing commitment to deliver Oracle solutions. And with more than 30,000 Oracle partners around the world, Oracle needed a way for our customers to choose the right partner for their business. So how did Oracle meet this need? With the new partner program:  Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized. In this new program, Oracle partners are: Specialized :  Differentiating themselves from the competition with expertise that set them apart Recognized:  Being acknowledged for investing in becoming Oracle experts in specialized areas. Preferred :  Connecting with potential customers who are seeking  value-added solutions for their business OPN Specialized provides all partners with educational opportunities, training, and tools specially designed to build competency and grow business.  Partners can serve their customers better through key resources:OPN Specialized Knowledge Zones – Located on the updated and enhanced OPN portal— provide a single point of entry for all education and training information for Oracle partners. Enablement 2.0 Resources —Enablement 2.0 helps Oracle partners build their competencies and skills through a variety of educational opportunities and expanded training choices. These resources include: Enablement 2.0 “Boot camps” provide three-tiered learning levels that help jump-start partner training The role-based training covers Oracle’s application and technology products and offers a combination of classroom lectures, hands-on lab exercises, and case studies. Enablement 2.0 Interactive guided learning paths (GLPs) with recommendations on how to achieve specialization Upgraded partner solution kits Enhanced, specialized business centers available 24/7 around the globe on the OPN portal OPN Competency Center—Tracking ProgressThe OPN Competency Center keeps track as a partner applies for and achieves specialization in selected areas. You start with an assessment that compares your organization’s current skills and experience with the requirements for specialization in the area you have chosen. The OPN Competency Center then provides a roadmap that itemizes the skills and the knowledge you need to earn specialized status. In summary, OPN Specialization not only includes key training resources but a way to track and show progression for your partner organization. Q: What is are the OPN Membership Levels and what are the benefits?A:  Christine: The base OPN membership levels are: Remarketer: At the Remarketer level, retailers can choose to resell select Oracle products with the backing of authorized, regionally located, value-added distributors (VADs). The Remarketer level has no fees and no partner agreement with Oracle, but does offer online training and sales tools through the OPN portal.Program Details: RemarketerSilver Level: The Silver level is for Oracle partners who are focused on reselling and developing business with products ordered through the Oracle 1-Click Ordering Program. The Silver level provides a cost-effective, yet scalable way for partners to start an OPN Specialized membership and offers a substantial set of benefits that lets partners increase their competitive positioning. Program Details: SilverGold Level: Gold-level partners have the ability to specialize, helping them grow their business and create differentiation in the marketplace. Oracle partners at the Gold level can develop, sell, or implement the full stack of Oracle solutions and can apply to resell Oracle Applications.Program Details: GoldPlatinum Level: The Platinum level is for Oracle partners who want the highest level of benefits and are committed to reaching a minimum of five specializations. Platinum partners are recognized for their expertise in a broad range of products and technology, and receive dedicated support from Oracle.Program Details: PlatinumIn addition we recently introduced a new level:Diamond Level: This level is the most prestigious level of OPN Specialized. It allows companies to differentiate further because of their focused depth and breadth of their expertise. Program Details: DiamondSo as you can see there are various levels cost effective ways that Partners can get assistance, differentiation through OPN membership. Q: What role does the Oracle's World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C), Partner Enablement teams and the WebCenter Community play?  A: Brian: Oracle’s WWA&C teams are responsible for manage relationships, educating their teams, creating go-to-market solutions and fostering communities for Oracle partners worldwide.  The WebCenter Partner Enablement Middleware Team is tasked to create, manage and distribute Specialization resources for the WebCenter Partner community. Q: What WebCenter Specializations are currently available?A: Christine:  As of now here are the following WebCenter Specializations and their availability: Oracle WebCenter Portal Specialization (Oracle WebCenter Portal): Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Specialization provides insight into the following products: WebCenter Services, WebCenter Spaces, and WebLogic Portal.Oracle WebCenter Specialized Partners can efficiently use Oracle WebCenter products to create social applications, enterprise portals, communities, composite applications, and Internet or intranet Web sites on a standards-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The suite combines the development of rich internet applications; a multi-channel portal framework; and a suite of horizontal WebCenter applications, which provide content, presence, and social networking capabilities to create a highly interactive user experience. Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization: Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization provides insight into the following products; Universal Content Management, WebCenter Records Management, WebCenter Imaging, WebCenter Distributed Capture, and WebCenter Capture.Oracle WebCenter Content Specialized Partners can efficiently build content-rich business applications, reuse content, and integrate hundreds of content services with other business applications. This allows our customers to decrease costs, automate processes, reduce resource bottlenecks, share content effectively, minimize the number of lost documents, and better manage risk. Oracle WebCenter Sites Specialization: Available Q1 2012Oracle WebCenter Sites is part of the broader Oracle WebCenter platform that provides organizations with a complete customer experience management solution.  Partners that align with the new Oracle WebCenter Sites platform allow their customers organizations to: Leverage customer information from all channels and systems Manage interactions across all channels Unify commerce, merchandising, marketing, and service across all channels Provide personalized, choreographed consumer journeys across all channels Integrate order orchestration, supply chain management and order fulfillment Q: What criteria does the Partner organization need to achieve Specialization? What about individual Sales, PreSales & Implementation Specialist/Technical consultants?A: Brian: Each Oracle WebCenter Specialization has unique Business Criteria that must be met in order to achieve that Specialization.  This includes a unique number of transactions (co-sell, re-sell, and referral), customer references and then unique number of specialists as part of a partner team (Sales, Pre-Sales, Implementation, and Support).   Each WebCenter Specialization provides training resources (GLPs, BootCamps, Assessments and Exams for individuals on a partner’s staff to fulfill those requirements.  That criterion can be found for each Specialization on the Specialize tab for each WebCenter Knowledge Zone.  Here are the sample criteria, recommended courses, exams for the WebCenter Portal Specialization: WebCenter Portal Specialization Criteria Q: Do you have any suggestions on the best way for partners to get started if they would like to know more?A: Christine:   The best way to start is for partners is look at their business and core Oracle team focus and then look to become specialized in one or more areas.  Once you have selected the Specializations that are right for your business, you need to follow the first 3 key steps described below. The fourth step outlines the additional process to follow if you meet the criteria to be Advanced Specialized. Note that Step 4 may not be done without first following Steps 1-3.1. Join the Knowledge Zone(s) where you want to achieve Specialized status Go to the Knowledge Zone lick on the "Why Partner" tab Click on the "Join Knowledge Zone" link 2. Meet the Specialization criteria - Define and implement plans in your organization to achieve the competency and business criteria targets of the Specialization. (Note: Worldwide OPN members at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level and their Associates at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level may count their collective resources to meet the business and competency criteria required for specialization in this area.) 3. Apply for Specialization – when you have met the business and competency criteria required, inform Oracle by completing the following steps: Click on the "Specialize" tab in the Knowledge Zone Click on the "Apply Now" button Complete the online application form Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Specialized status. Need more information? Access our Step by Step Guide (PDF) 4. Apply for Advanced Specialization (Optional) – If your company has on staff 50 unique Certified Implementation Specialists in your company's approved Specialization's product set, let Oracle know by following these steps: Ensure that you have 50 or more unique individuals that are Certified Implementation Specialists in the specific Specialization awarded to your company If you are pooling resources from another Associate or Worldwide entity, ensure you know that company’s name and country Have your Oracle PRM Administrator complete the online Advanced Specialization Application Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Advanced Specialized status. There are additional resources on OPN as well as the broader WebCenter Community: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE 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-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;}

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  • PASS Summit Feedback

    - by Rob Farley
    PASS Feedback came in last week. I also saw my dentist for some fillings... At the PASS Summit this year, I delivered a couple of regular sessions and a Lightning Talk. People told me they enjoyed it, but when the rankings came out, they showed that I didn’t score particularly well. Brent Ozar was keen to discuss it with me. Brent: PASS speaker feedback is out. You did two sessions and a Lightning Talk. How did you go? Rob: Not so well actually, thanks for asking. Brent: Ha! Sorry. Of course you know that's why I wanted to discuss this with you. I was in one of your sessions at SQLBits in the UK a month before PASS, and I thought you rocked. You've got a really good and distinctive delivery style.  Then I noticed your talks were ranked in the bottom quarter of the Summit ratings and wanted to discuss it. Rob: Yeah, I know. You did ask me if we could do this...  I should explain – my presentation style is not the stereotypical IT conference one. I throw in jokes, and try to engage the audience thoroughly. I find many talks amazingly dry, and I guess I try to buck that trend. I also run training courses, and find that I get a lot of feedback from people thanking me for keeping things interesting. That said, I also get feedback criticising me for my style, and that’s basically what’s happened here. For the rest of this discussion, let’s focus on my talk about the Incredible Shrinking Execution Plan, which I considered to be my main talk. Brent: I thought that session title was the very best one at the entire Summit, and I had it on my recommended sessions list.  In four words, you managed to sum up the topic and your sense of humor.  I read that and immediately thought, "People need to be in this session," and then it didn't score well.  Tell me about your scores. Rob: The questions on the feedback form covered the usefulness of the information, the speaker’s presentation skills, their knowledge of the subject, how well the session was described, the amount of time allocated, and the quality of the presentation materials. Brent: Presentation materials? But you don’t do slides.  Did they rate your thong? Rob: No-one saw my flip-flops in this talk, Brent. I created a script in Management Studio, and published that afterwards, but I think people will have scored that question based on the lack of slides. I wasn’t expecting to do particularly well on that one. That was the only section that didn’t have 5/5 as the most popular score. Brent: See, that sucks, because cookbook-style scripts are often some of my favorites.  Adam Machanic's Service Broker workbench series helped me immensely when I was prepping for the MCM.  As an attendee, I'd rather have a commented script than a slide deck.  So how did you rank so low? Rob: When I look at the scores that you got (based on your blog post), you got very few scores below 3 – people that felt strong enough about your talk to post a negative score. In my scores, between 5% and 10% were below 3 (except on the question about whether I knew my stuff – I guess I came as knowledgeable). Brent: Wow – so quite a few people really didn’t like your talk then? Rob: Yeah. Mind you, based on the comments, some people really loved it. I’d like to think that there would be a certain portion of the room who may have rated the talk as one of the best of the conference. Some of my comments included “amazing!”, “Best presentation so far!”, “Wow, best session yet”, “fantastic” and “Outstanding!”. I think lots of talks can be “Great”, but not so many talks can be “Outstanding” without the word losing its meaning. One wrote “Pretty amazing presentation, considering it was completely extemporaneous.” Brent: Extemporaneous, eh? Rob: Yeah. I guess they don’t realise how much preparation goes into coming across as unprepared. In many ways it’s much easier to give a written speech than to deliver a presentation without slides as a prompt. Brent: That delivery style, the really relaxed, casual, college-professor approach was one of the things I really liked about your presentation at SQLbits.  As somebody who presents a lot, I "get" it - I know how hard it is to come off as relaxed and comfortable with your own material.  It's like improv done by jazz players and comedians - if you've never tried it, you don't realize how hard it is.  People also don't realize how hard it is to make a tough subject fun. Rob: Yeah well... There will be people writing comments on this post that say I wasn't trying to make the subject fun, and that I was making it all about me. Sometimes the style works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the comments mentioned the fact that I tell jokes, some in a nice way, but some not so much (and it wasn't just a PASS thing - that's the mix of feedback I generally get). One comment at PASS was: “great stand up comedian - not what I'm looking for at pass”, and there were certainly a few that said “too many jokes”. I’m not trying to do stand-up – jokes are my way of engaging with the audience while I demonstrate some of the amazing things that the Query Optimizer can do if you write your queries the right way. Some people didn’t think it was technical enough, but I’ve also had some people tell me that the concepts I’m explaining are deep and profound. Brent: To me, that's a hallmark of a great explanation - when someone says, "But of course it has to work that way - how could it work any other way?  It seems so simple and logical."  Well, sure it does when it's explained correctly, but now pick up any number of thick SQL Server books and try to understand the Redundant Joins concept.  I guarantee it'll take more than 45 minutes. Rob: Some people in my audiences realise that, but definitely not everyone. There's only so much you can tell someone that something is profound. Generally it's something that they either have an epiphany on or not. I like to lull my audience into knowing what's going on, and do something that surprises them. Gain their trust, build a rapport, and then show them the deeper truth of what just happened. Brent: So you've learned your lesson about presentation scores, right?  From here on out, you're going to be dry, humorless, and all your presentations will consist of you reading bullet points off the screen. Rob: No Brent, I’m not. I'm also not going to suggest that most presentations at PASS are like that. No-one tries to present like that. There's a big space to occupy between what "dry and humourless" and me. My difference is to focus on the relationship I have with the crowd, rather than focussing on delivering the perfect session. I want to see people smiling and know they're relaxed. I think most presenters focus on the material, which is completely reasonable and safe. I remember once hearing someone talking about product creation. They talked about mediocrity. They said that one of the worst things that people can ever say about your product is that it’s “good”. What you want is for 10% of the world to love it enough to want to buy it. If 10% the world gave me a dollar, I’d have more money than I could ever use (assuming it wasn’t the SAME dollar they were giving me I guess). Brent: It's the Raving Fans theory.  It's better to have a small number of raving customers than a large number of almost-but-not-really customers who don't care that much about your product or service.  I know exactly how you feel - when I got survey feedback from my Quest video presentation when I was dressed up in a Richard Simmons costume, some of the attendees said I was unprofessional and distracting.  Some of the attendees couldn't get enough and Photoshopped all kinds of stuff into the screen captures.  On a whole, I probably didn't score that well, and I'm fine with that.  It sucks to look at the scores though - do those lower scores bother you? Rob: Of course they do. It hurts deeply. I open myself up and give presentations in a very personal way. All presenters do that, and we all feel the pain of negative feedback. I hate coming 146th & 162nd out of 185, but have to acknowledge that many sessions did worse still. Plus, once I feel the wounds have healed, I’ll be able to remember that there are people in the world that rave about my presentation style, and figure that people will hopefully talk about me. One day maybe those people that don’t like my presentation style will stay away and I might be able to score better. You don’t pay to hear country music if you prefer western... Lots of people find chili too spicy, but it’s still a popular food. Brent: But don’t you want to appeal to everyone? Rob: I do, but I don’t want to be lukewarm as in Revelation 3:16. I’d rather disgust and be discussed. Well, maybe not ‘disgust’, but I don’t want to conform. Conformity just isn’t the same any more. I’m not sure I’ve ever been one to do that. I try not to offend, but definitely like to be different. Brent: Count me among your raving fans, sir.  Where can we see you next? Rob: Considering I live in Adelaide in Australia, I’m not about to appear at anyone’s local SQL Saturday. I’m still trying to plan which events I’ll get to in 2011. I’ve submitted abstracts for TechEd North America, but won’t hold my breath. I’m also considering the SQLBits conferences in the UK in April, PASS in October, and I’m sure I’ll do some LiveMeeting presentations for user groups. Online, people download some of my recent SQLBits presentations at http://bit.ly/RFSarg and http://bit.ly/Simplification though. And they can download a 5-minute MP3 of my Lightning Talk at http://www.lobsterpot.com.au/files/Collation.mp3, in which I try to explain the idea behind collation, using thongs as an example. Brent: I was in the audience for http://bit.ly/RFSarg. That was a great presentation. Rob: Thanks, Brent. Now where’s my dollar?

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